Spring Garden Streetscape

[Empire]

Originally Posted by ILoveHalifax

Halifax has always done very poor plantings around the city - little tiny gardens like the one coming off the bridge with scrawny little plants AND WHY wait until July to plant for the season, the summer is practically over by then - the city needs to invest in greenhouses and quality labor to prepare seedlings ahead of time - The most impressive seasonal plantings that I've seen is Brampton ON which has a reputation with plants and flowers - they are stunningly beautiful

Yes, HRM is very poor at landscaping. Firstly, they make the wrong choices for the location and secondly, they ignore their poor choice in terms of maintenance so the result is a very bad application. The planters on SGR are incorrect for many reasons. Wrong choice of vegetation, wrong installation technique, and the grade of the plantings is wrong in relation to the size and shape of the exposed concrete planters. I think they all should be revamped. I realise the landscaping is subbed out but it is HRM that is responsible.

[Haliguy]

I cant believe they are going to start the bus only on Monday and they still don't have South Park St open with the work they are doing there.

[Dartguard]

Originally Posted by Haliguy

I cant believe they are going to start the bus only on Monday and they still don't have South Park St open with the work they are doing there.

Halifax Water is an entity unto itself, that makes its own rules, timelines, billing options and all within the absence of anything resembling Customer service.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by Haliguy

I cant believe they are going to start the bus only on Monday and they still don't have South Park St open with the work they are doing there.

It'll be interesting for sure. I find motorists tend to be somewhat adaptable, though, they'll find a way around it, or just no go there unless they have to.

I don't have much faith in Halifax's ability to plan and coordinate, though, so none of this is really surprising to me.

[Haliguy]

Originally Posted by Dartguard

Halifax Water is an entity unto itself, that makes its own rules, timelines, billing options and all within the absence of anything resembling Customer service.

That's true. The city could still wait to make SG bus only until after its finished.

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by Dartguard

Halifax Water is an entity unto itself, that makes its own rules, timelines, billing options and all within the absence of anything resembling Customer service.

All quite true, sadly. The whole operation needs a purge. To that point, I read that HW is going to dig up a stretch of Wyse Rd in Dartmouth to install some sort of new underground line. One can only hope that the recently-installed (at great expense) bike lane bollards, multi-color street paint, streetside curbing and the plethora of Samsticks (TM Regd.) attached to them get misplaced during the project and never return. But more likely, they will have to re-do it all over again after these suffer damage from being removed. Your HRM tax dollars at work...

[MonctonRad]

They reported on an interesting little snag with the new traffic pattern for SGR on CTV News this evening.

Apparently, garbage trucks are prohibited from picking up garbage on SGR before 7 AM due to a noise bylaw. Meanwhile, the new traffic bylaw prevents garbage trucks from travelling on SGR after 7 AM.

Things are about to get very stinky down there.........

[Hali87]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

Apparently, garbage trucks are prohibited from picking up garbage on SGR before 7 AM due to a noise bylaw. Meanwhile, the new traffic bylaw prevents garbage trucks from travelling on SGR after 7 AM.

Classic Halifax

The noise bylaw thing seems pretty crazy because the city also sends street sweepers down my (purely residential) street twice a week at like 3:00am on weekdays. They're way louder than a garbage truck, very slow (so it's loud for a long time), street parking is not allowed on those nights, and they do it even when the streets are already clean The residential units on/near SGR have much better soundproofing on average than the area where I live, and I don't see why garbage collection couldn't happen before 7AM (or in the evening, and/or using side streets). And I'm pretty sure that neighbourhood also gets street-cleaned sometime between midnight and 5AM, so... yeah.

Realistically this won't actually get fixed quickly but luckily I still have a bunch of n95 masks left.

In other news, cars simply continued to drive on that stretch of SGR all day today.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Other than tweaking the regulation, what would be the problem of garbage trucks collecting on SGR anyhow? It's only once a week (garbage one week, green bins/recyclables the next), so buses will have to pass a garbage truck for about a 15 minute time period once per week.

Where's the problem?

[Keith P.]

The heavy hand of HRM govt regulation knows little of common sense, Mark. Of course in this case they are regulating themselves, and presumably those tickets they could give out would go from the left hand of HRM to the right hand.

I am envious of Hali87 living on a street that gets cleaned regularly. Where I am we see the sucker/sweeper trucks a couple of days each fall to move around the leaves that collect at the curb, otherwise we're on our own when it comes to street cleaning.

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

They reported on an interesting little snag with the new traffic pattern for SGR on CTV News this evening.

Apparently, garbage trucks are prohibited from picking up garbage on SGR before 7 AM due to a noise bylaw. Meanwhile, the new traffic bylaw prevents garbage trucks from travelling on SGR after 7 AM.

Things are about to get very stinky down there.........

More on the entire mess from Global, who had Bulldog Sue Uteck on their morning show:

https://twitter.com/globalhalifax/status/1544288719699574785


Aside from the bungling of the traffic issue, she highlights the mess HRM and their contractors have made of the entire $11 million streetscaping project, referring to it as a nice concept that received approval but the execution of same being sadly lacking. It is alarming when she mentions that the cobblestone paving has already begun to fail and that the entire thing has been a disappointment. It appears the only people who are happy with the result are the street beggars who now have plenty of nice new designer benches to ply their trade and hang out on.

Frankly, she has a part to play in this by abandoning her past Bulldog Sue persona and going along far too easily with Mason and his woo-woo friends on this. Perhaps what is needed is for suppliers to refuse to deliver goods to merchants on SGR and making them start to howl since she seems strangely passive on this.

[OldDartmouthMark]

I don't think I've seen any one project on this board where opinions are all over the place like this one (except perhaps the new library?).

It's great, it's terrible, it's mediocre, it would be great except for ___, etc.

I find it interesting, how polarizing it has been.

My opinion: Overall, it's not bad, but the details were not looked after. Seems to be an improvement from the pedestrian point of view but couldn't quite reach the point of "nice" or "beautiful"... i.e. not much bang for the buck.

The transit-only thing is a separate issue from the makeover, but IMHO doesn't do anything to improve the street - it might end up improving bus traffic (though I wonder because the bottlenecks on other streets such as Barrington still exist), but it will not improve the health of the street.

Now where's that popcorn eating icon?...

[Haliguy]

I think overall it has been a positive! There are some things to work out with the planters and still some touching up to do. I think part of it was that it was really rushed at the end last year to get it finished.

As for the transit only. I'm still not sure if I'm for or against. I hope it does work now that they have gone ahead with it. I have seen how much of a positive it can be in other cities, but wondering if Spring Garden is the appropriate Street for it. My biggest complaint so far is the management of it and the coordination with other projects in the area such as the work on South Park that Halifax Water is doing.

[someone123]

I haven't seen it in person and I don't know what it's like but a couple things stand out to me. One is that sometimes people talk about it like it was a big project or boondoggle, but the budget was modest, it's not "gold plated", and the street was neglected for many decades with some of the old material dating to the trolleybus era or earlier. This area has massive assessments and brings in big bucks for City Hall.

Point number two is that Halifax eventually will have to come to terms with the fact that it needs major transit investment, and this ain't it. Edmonton had about 300,000 people when LRT planning began, and their urban core had a much more developed road network. Halifax is currently building a medium sized urban core with an old historic road network and small town transit.

[someone123]

I was not completely clear in my post but basically if you look at bigger cities you'll find that streets like SGR or Barrington have a metro running under them typically with low speed mixed traffic above. They don't serve as arteries; they are for pedestrians, local slow transit (e.g. access-a-bus), taxis/rideshare, deliveries, etc.

Halifax isn't big enough to have giant subways running everywhere but it is big enough to have a short downtown underground LRT segment which would eliminate most of the bus traffic. An underground segment would allow for an ideal alignment too.

Maybe it would be impractical if studied but I think if it is considered a priori beyond the scope of what could be considered then the city's transit planning horizon is not ambitious enough.

[Arrdeeharharharbour]

Trying to 'sell' the SPR traffic changes as a transit improvement has certainly coloured the entire project in a negative way for me. Is staff/council inept or desperate? Yesterday due to a 'paving emergency' on the McKay, afternoon traffic was backed up the exit 0 ramp onto the 102. The Bedford Hwy was backed up at least two kms. Robie was backed up to Young or beyond. No buses were moving, BRT or otherwise. Halifax has no hope of having a reliable transit system until there exists a dedicated LRT bridge across the harbour. A grade seperated LRT loop fed by BRT, short route regular buses, commuter rail and harbour ferries is needed to achieve anywhere close to 100 percent reliability. If current council doesn't have this as a priority then they should be voted out.

[Dartguard]

Originally Posted by Arrdeeharharharbour

Trying to 'sell' the SPR traffic changes as a transit improvement has certainly coloured the entire project in a negative way for me. Is staff/council inept or desperate? Yesterday due to a 'paving emergency' on the McKay, afternoon traffic was backed up the exit 0 ramp onto the 102. The Bedford Hwy was backed up at least two kms. Robie was backed up to Young or beyond. No buses were moving, BRT or otherwise. Halifax has no hope of having a reliable transit system until there exists a dedicated LRT bridge across the harbour. A grade seperated LRT loop fed by BRT, short route regular buses, commuter rail and harbour ferries is needed to achieve anywhere close to 100 percent reliability. If current council doesn't have this as a priority then they should be voted out.

Yup 👍

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by Arrdeeharharharbour

Trying to 'sell' the SPR traffic changes as a transit improvement has certainly coloured the entire project in a negative way for me. Is staff/council inept or desperate?

I think we all know the answer to that. While the "paving emergency" wasn't their fault, this Council has consistently proven they are a bunch of buffoons.

Halifax has no hope of having a reliable transit system until there exists a dedicated LRT bridge across the harbour. A grade seperated LRT loop fed by BRT, short route regular buses, commuter rail and harbour ferries is needed to achieve anywhere close to 100 percent reliability. If current council doesn't have this as a priority then they should be voted out.

They should all be voted out for reasons like this and a great many others. They are unable to get their arms around Transit since it is run by the ATU and hence resistant to structural change and efficient customer service, and since none of our "progressive" councillors are willing to say that publicly. There is no hope of that organization in its current form ever being able to provide what the city requires, and it should be dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up with a different type of operational and governance model. Also yesterday we had another rollover crash in Dartmouth, this one in front of the Sportsplex on Wyse Rd., thanks to Bicycle Sam's famous bike lane concrete dividers, which are seemingly designed to cause just such an effect if a driver (as happened in heavy rain yesterday) accidentally rides up on one at just the wrong angle and speed. This is at least the third such incident of which I am aware.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

Also yesterday we had another rollover crash in Dartmouth, this one in front of the Sportsplex on Wyse Rd., thanks to Bicycle Sam's famous bike lane concrete dividers, which are seemingly designed to cause just such an effect if a driver (as happened in heavy rain yesterday) accidentally rides up on one at just the wrong angle and speed. This is at least the third such incident of which I am aware.

Wow. There must be a better way of doing this.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

Wow. There must be a better way of doing this.

I saw the footage of the aftermath, and that car must have been going WAY over the speed limit to roll over like it did. It's hard to blame the bike-lane design when the driver was probably driving very illegally.

Though yes, I'd be perfectly happy to see much higher/heftier and more imposing barriers.