Joint Regional Transportation Agency

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by IanWatson

I'm sorry, but there's no way congestion pricing would work in Halifax. In theory, yes, there is a "cost" to the drivers in congestion in terms of time and frustration, but that doesn't necessarily translate in their minds to money. People aren't rational; they aren't going to make that 1:1 equation.

There are also lots of people for whom it's simply not possible to make the substitution. If you're poor, you might be able to grin and bear the frustration and time, but you simply can't come up with the extra money. And you can't afford to live in the neighbourhoods where driving isn't necessary.

You can't penalize people for doing something when there aren't any other options.

The only way this is going to get better is if the Province and HRM accelerate plans for higher order transit.

I don't think it's good to use pejorative language "penalizing" just because a user fee is necessary to provide a functional product or service. Transit users already have a user fee in addition to the subsidy even though many people have no choice but to use it. And we have no choice but to heat our homes in the winter, yet we have to pay for energy. Are our heating bills a "penalty"? Things just cost money. No one is trying to be mean by "penalizing" anyone.

There was another thread where people were calling for tax cuts but if we were to pay for the road capacity needed to handle growth without any user fees it will take an ever increasing number of tax dollars. It reminds me of the Simpsons episode where the old lady told the boy packing her groceries that she wants everything all in one bag but doesn't want the bag to be heavy. He says he doesn't think that's possible and she sarcastically asks if he's the possible police. Like yes, people want everyone to be able to dive, they don't want there to be congestion, they don't want any road user fees, and they don't want the tax bill needed to pay for it.

In terms of the poor people, while there are pros and cons to every plan this honestly is the weakest con I've heard. Like, someone is so poor that they can't afford to pay the congestion charge because they're spending their last cent on the car? That's the last person who should be driving because they can't afford it already. Compared to the cost to fuel, park, license, insure, and maintain a car - by far the priciest form of transportation - the congestion fee would be trivial. Yes it's their decision how to spend their money but the idea that we should shape public policy around helping them be irresponsible is crazy. And usually the only people "forced" to drive in central parts of the city are doing it for business purposes, and commercial uses gain the greatest benefit from shorter and more reliable travel times. And of course there's no reason special cases can't be granted exemptions.

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

Have to agree, and that means all forms of transit, not just adding more buses. As I mentioned in a post above, transit should be created such that it becomes a more attractive option than jumping in the car, rather than negatively trying to put the pressure on people to make their lives more difficult. I don't understand that line of thinking - iMHO it belongs in the 20th century Soviet Union.

I don't think it's hard to understand at all. First of all, transit would become significantly more attractive by not being hampered by congestion. So it isn't a case of just making driving worse. In addition to making transit faster and more reliable, it would save enough money to allow more services such as expresses between terminals with the same number of buses and staff. Plus the funds could be used to cover additional improvements. Second, the charge would not make driving worse. It would make it better because driving is not attractive if everyone is stuck in traffic. And it would be easier to find parking when and where you wanted with fewer cars to compete with. It would be more expensive but also a better, more premium experience.

And the whole USSR thing makes so little sense I'm not even sure where to start. Congestion pricing is the most capitalist, free-market based solution possible because it simply applies the principles of supply and demand to charge people the true value of using the service (road space). In other words, more expensive but higher quality and more functional while allowing people the freedom to choose whether they want to purchase the product or service. Kind of like Canada vs US healthcare with theirs being higher quality but much more expensive while ours covers everyone but often with longer waits and other flaws. The main difference being that there are more affordable alternatives to driving such as transit and active transportation while there isn't for healthcare resulting in many people in the US being excluded.

The communist USSR solution would be to simply ban or restrict car usage either altogether or in particular areas. People simply wouldn't be permitted to drive at certain times of day or in certain areas and told to either stay home or be told what mode to use. People wouldn't have any sort of market choice where they can decide what to do based on the pros and cons and how much they wish to spend. On the bright side, every city in the USSR had good transit including rail in some surprisingly small cities.

I remember one news segment years ago when they were talking about proposed NY congestion pricing where they interviewed a couple who lived in their van. They kept driving the van around Manhattan all day because the gas was cheaper than parking, while there was no cost at all for using the road. There was once you parked, but not as long as you were driving. That's a classic market failure. All space in a city is valuable - at least in a growing and prosperous city. Yet use of a huge amount of it is being given away for free. Whenever something valuable is under-priced, it creates more demand than can be filled resulting in shortages. That's exactly what congestion is. A shortage of valuable road space because it's under-priced.

[Nouvellecosse]

Speaking of rail, I find it interesting how several people claim that it would be needed before we could consider congestion pricing. I'd love to see us get a rail line, but mostly because I want something faster than buses. So having say, a streetcar in mixed traffic wouldn't interest me much. But that was based on the assumption that traffic will only just get worse as the city grows making a rapid transit line the only viable way to get around quickly (other than biking). But if that isn't true and buses could be made faster by eliminating congestion, that would cut the need for a rail line by 75%. So congestion pricing would make a rail line less necessary rather than more. Well, unless transit ridership increased so significantly that we needed rail for the capacity. In that case, the funds from congestion pricing would come in pretty handy.

[HarbingerDe]

Originally Posted by someone123

I find this meme very misleading and depressing. Congestion isn't the only aim; there is also throughput. And more generally this is a kind of folksy half-baked version of the economic theory of what happens when you add road capacity. It is in fact possible to reduce congestion through road building and some places have lots of roads and therefore less congestion. It's not going to be practical or desirable in certain areas like peninsular Halifax, but it is possible. If you provide better alternatives you can also take pressure off the roads and adding a bit of road capacity can be a part of that overall plan.

To me it seems like a bad sign that this received wisdom is often parroted by professional planners. Maybe it's more the media latching on or improperly paraphrasing as this was not a direct quote. Sometimes you ever hear planners suggest that the pain of traffic delays is desirable as it will drive people to walk or take transit. If there is no alternative it won't and there are well-planned places in the world that don't exist in this state of perpetual pressure. Some of these places have great transit and good road infrastructure.

9 times out of 10 when it comes to North American city planning, more/wider roads is not the solution... I think Halifax is just a rare case that falls under the 1 out of 10 where horrendously poor planning of infrastructure means there is a lot of possible improvement on that front alone.

Even just an extension of Connaught would be a big help. It would allow so many more people to get to the South End or Downtown when entering Halifax coming from Spryfield or the 102 without having to filter through a web of residential side streets or funnel up to Robie where they interact with cars coming from everywhere else in the HRM.

All that said, the focus should still be on public transit and denser housing near places where people work. But we should also make strategic improvements to the road network where sensible.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by HarbingerDe

All that said, the focus should still be on public transit and denser housing near places where people work. But we should also make strategic improvements to the road network where sensible.

Yes. I agree. Transit needs the most relative investment but bottlenecks should be fixed strategically and obviously roads are needed for new greenfield developments which have to happen if the city continues to grow.

Transit vs. roads isn't even all that coherent a view in a city where the transit system is mostly buses. Bayers was a road building and transit project. There are other mixed transportation conundrums like this, such as a desire to get transit lanes over a harbour bridge or along Robie. If Halifax were building lots of underground tunnels or elevated trains maybe the story would be different but that's a radically different and unlikely scenario.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by someone123

If Halifax were building lots of underground tunnels or elevated trains maybe the story would be different but that's a radically different and unlikely scenario.

I don't see how we can get away with not doing this, if doubling the province's population is an attainable goal(?), given that a good portion of that new population would end up in and around Halifax.

Slicing and dicing existing roadways to install bus lanes for yet more buses will reach its capacity sooner than later. New ROWs will be needed, and rail in tunnels plus elevated would probably be the only way to do it. Only problem is, the longer you delay it, the more difficult it will be to do it.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

Slicing and dicing existing roadways to install bus lanes for yet more buses will reach its capacity sooner than later. New ROWs will be needed, and rail in tunnels plus elevated would probably be the only way to do it. Only problem is, the longer you delay it, the more difficult it will be to do it.

I think there would still be new road construction projects like an expanded 102 corridor in the mix though. Maybe there will be light rail built in a tunnel but Halifax could afford 1 or 2 routes like that, and they wouldn't be a solution for sparser outlying areas.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by someone123

I think there would still be new road construction projects like an expanded 102 corridor in the mix though. Maybe there will be light rail built in a tunnel but Halifax could afford 1 or 2 routes like that, and they wouldn't be a solution for sparser outlying areas.

I was thinking mainly of the more urban areas, in terms of splicing up existing roads that haven't really been adequate for a long time. You could definitely build more roads for outlying areas.

If such rail lines aren't possible, then perhaps choking off vehicle traffic to the core, by charging fees so only the well-off could afford to drive and park there (as others have suggested), would be a solution, but not a happy one. It would at least allow the city to double down on its favourite form of transit, the bus.

[Keith P.]

Nobody within the HRM bureaucracy wants to hear this, but North St remains a huge east-west bottleneck and cannot be easily fixed. The fact that only the two blocks of it closest to the Halifax side has more than a single lane capacity in either direction nearly 70 years after the bridge was built is so very prototypical Halifax.

[IanWatson]

Yeah I have no idea how you'd ever go about increasing capacity on North. It would probably require acquiring and demoing a quarter to half a billion of real estate, which would be vastly unpopular.

A third harbour crossing is probably more realistic in terms of getting people from the Dartmouth side into downtown and to the major employers like the hospitals and universities.

The big challenge that would remain is getting people from the Dartmouth side to the rotary and beyond, because the south end doesn't have any great options for direct, easy connections.

Realistically we're very much at the point where we need to start planning an "all of the above approach" with a third crossing, light rail, and fast ferries.

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by IanWatson

Realistically we're very much at the point where we need to start planning an "all of the above approach" with a third crossing, light rail, and fast ferries.

Agreed. Any solution will have to be multifactorial.

[someone123]

Rising land values and increased density will change the economics, shifting the balance away from demos and road widening toward other solutions like higher density transport options, tunnels, etc.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by IanWatson

Realistically we're very much at the point where we need to start planning an "all of the above approach" with a third crossing, light rail, and fast ferries.

It may not be evident. but this is what I've been trying to say all along. Completely agree.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

Nobody within the HRM bureaucracy wants to hear this, but North St remains a huge east-west bottleneck and cannot be easily fixed. The fact that only the two blocks of it closest to the Halifax side has more than a single lane capacity in either direction nearly 70 years after the bridge was built is so very prototypical Halifax.

I just posted this quote in the 'old Halifax' thread, but thought it was pertinent to your post above:

The firm of Monsarrat and Pratley were engaged to carry out studies of a possible high-level highway bridge linking the 2 sides of the harbour as far back as 1928. The bridge location between North Street in Halifax, and Thistle Street in Dartmouth was approved by Dominion Authorities and the British Admiralty in 1933. The 1945 master plan for Halifax assumed that this would be the location for the bridge, and suggested widening North Street to accommodate traffic. Dartmouth’s master plan of 1945 also assumed this would be the location.

Source

Having read that, it's a little perplexing that the widening never happened.

[someone123]

I wonder how much of the planning morass has to do with politicians and staff who have been around for a while and look at the same old projects that were treated in a leisurely fashion in the 2000's. Back in 2002 people were talking about commuter rail but it wasn't viewed as urgent and municipal staff didn't think it was a good use of resources. That thinking wasn't entirely wrong at the time although it turned out to be too conservative. It's good to say that "all of the above" makes sense but it is important to note that a lot of the ideas floating around are tired and were pulled years ago from a limited set of frugal options. Even the BRT plan was based on demographic predictions that are now seriously outdated, though it could still make sense as part of a path to something more ambitious.

Maybe the JRTA will shake things up a bit?

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by someone123

Yes. I agree. Transit needs the most relative investment but bottlenecks should be fixed strategically and obviously roads are needed for new greenfield developments which have to happen if the city continues to grow.

Transit vs. roads isn't even all that coherent a view in a city where the transit system is mostly buses. Bayers was a road building and transit project. There are other mixed transportation conundrums like this, such as a desire to get transit lanes over a harbour bridge or along Robie. If Halifax were building lots of underground tunnels or elevated trains maybe the story would be different but that's a radically different and unlikely scenario.

Bus-only transit definitely isn't a long term solution for when (if?) Halifax get to say, over a million. At that point we'll need some form of rapid transit, likely with underground sections. The question is what to do in the interim. Accommodating more cars through major road widening projects means both huge cost and the potential destruction of urban fabric despite being a temporary solution since we'd still need rail eventually. Whereas the existing road network can transport several times more people by increasing the increasing the number of passengers per vehicle until rail can be built. We know that rail can negate the need for wide roads since we see many places - particularly in Europe - with narrower roads than we have in NA while having equal or greater population.

I'm not entirely against road widening. But the narrow roads on the peninsula are an important part of the city's urban character and aesthetics. It makes the city aesthetically more interesting and appealing than many cities in NA. I don't find wide, multi-lane roads very pleasant to be around and crossing them is more dangerous. So I'd have to feel that there wasn't any reasonable alternative before supporting major widening projects. Few people actually "like" buses, but balancing growth, personal/government expense, history, the environment, the economy and personal comfort/convenience is hard and involves trade offs. It's just a matter of pragmatism.

[someone123]

LRT projects were started in Calgary, Edmonton, and Kitchener-Waterloo when they were smaller than Halifax is today (I used to say "by the time LRT gets running", but the city blew past that). A lot of smaller European cities have many transit options beyond buses, and I'd guess that densities on the peninsula will be comparable to some of those places in a few years. To be able to say much about it there would need to be more detailed evaluation of many possible options for specific alignments (plus rezoning etc.), which I'm not sure ever happened with commuter rail. Specific planning limitations like bottlenecks on the peninsula will make transit projects more necessary while generic population milestones are not a very accurate way to look at it. If there is a roadblock I would guess it has more to do with investment priorities than the amount of money available or demand for the service.

It took around a decade from approval to operation for ION LRT. A decade of current growth rates in Halifax would put the population at around 870,000 and it's hard to imagine the current transport network sustaining that traffic around the core of the city. I doubt current growth rates will continue for a decade but I'm not sure that consistent growth rates should be considered outside the scope of planning or modeling exercises. It really shows how far behind this process is.

[JET]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

I just posted this quote in the 'old Halifax' thread, but thought it was pertinent to your post above:


Source

Having read that, it's a little perplexing that the widening never happened.

Coming across the MacDonald to Halifax on the bus the last couple of mornings it has been very slow in the right lane. Traffic getting back up heading to the dockyard really slows down the traffic trying to get to downtown, once the traffic is past the dockyard traffic it fairly flies. There needs to be a better way to funnel the traffic heading to Halifax in the morning. The left lane moves much better.

[Drybrain]

I don't think LRT is ncessarily a must-have for Halifax--Calgary and Edmonton are certainly exceptions, having built such systems when they were fairly small cities. So I don't think we're doomed without planning for something along those lines. Having said that, I think we're very parsimonious and timid on long-range planning, and it's a bit of a miracle in some ways that we have a transit system as relatively functional as we do. I have some optimism that the reality of the current growth boom has started sinking in, and the JRTA--whatever it does or doesn't yield--is in some measure a recognition of that. But really, could we please just get this BRT funded and built? Whether or not it's a half-measure, it's a clear improvement over the status quo, it's relatively inexpensive, and it doesn't foreclose any future options. It's ludicrous shovels aren't already in the ground.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

Having said that, I think we're very parsimonious and timid on long-range planning, and it's a bit of a miracle in some ways that we have a transit system as relatively functional as we do. I have some optimism that the reality of the current growth boom has started sinking in, and the JRTA--whatever it does or doesn't yield--is in some measure a recognition of that. But really, could we please just get this BRT funded and built?

Yes. My point isn't that LRT as such must be built, it's that people who discount it are probably prematurely narrowing the range of transportation options. Hopefully the JRTA will identify the transportation needs and then look at specific technologies and alignments and many different possibilities. The transit discussion in Halifax often feels stuck in low gear compared to what I'm used to in other cities where the transit authorities release actual plans and then alternatives are discussed in public.

The BRT plan could be a stepping stone to something else. I suggest that it be thought of as a mildly outdated modest plan rather than an ambitious and comprehensive regional transportation solution.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by someone123

LRT projects were started in Calgary, Edmonton, and Kitchener-Waterloo when they were smaller than Halifax is today (I used to say "by the time LRT gets running", but the city blew past that). A lot of smaller European cities have many transit options beyond buses, and I'd guess that densities on the peninsula will be comparable to some of those places in a few years. To be able to say much about it there would need to be more detailed evaluation of many possible options for specific alignments (plus rezoning etc.), which I'm not sure ever happened with commuter rail. Specific planning limitations like bottlenecks on the peninsula will make transit projects more necessary while generic population milestones are not a very accurate way to look at it. If there is a roadblock I would guess it has more to do with investment priorities than the amount of money available or demand for the service.

It took around a decade from approval to operation for ION LRT. A decade of current growth rates in Halifax would put the population at around 870,000 and it's hard to imagine the current transport network sustaining that traffic around the core of the city. I doubt current growth rates will continue for a decade but I'm not sure that consistent growth rates should be considered outside the scope of planning or modeling exercises. It really shows how far behind this process is.

I think Calgary, Edmonton and KWC are great examples to show that we're not too small to justify higher order transit, but not so much that we need it at our size. Interestingly enough, each of those cases are examples of pragmatic compromise projects in that Calgary was initially planning a metro system before downgrading to LRT for cost reasons while the others also took advantage of pre-existing ROWs. Calgary's ended up running on the street, in medians, and rail corridors which is much cheaper than full grade separation. And Edmonton and KWC both make extensive use of pre-existing surface corridors. For instance, in Edmonton the initial 6.9km phase had about 1.2km in a tunnel containing two stations, while the other 5.7km and was added beside an existing freight rail route. And in KWC, about 6.5km uses an existing rail corridor and the remaining 10km was either on street or vacant green space. The business case is going to be quite different for cities picking low hanging fruit compared to those looking for options specifically because low hanging fruit like vacant surface space isn't available.

Being more expensive doesn't necessarily mean it's a poor investment. But it does mean there's a greater cost burden on taxpayers. We'd either need to spend a lot of money on widening street corridors to give an LRT or BRT dedicated space (while their streets were already wide enough) or we'd need even pricier tunneling. Or both. I'd personally support spending on such a project, but we have to acknowledge the pragmatics that it's hard to get the city and province to fork out for transit. So for all the concerns about the political feasibility of congestion pricing (which yes, are justified), building rail doesn't avoid political obstacles either.