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Originally Posted by Drybrain
That photo really demonstrates how much we need higher-order transit (i.e., more than buses) and we need it ASAP. Unfortunately, most people will look at that and think the answer is more lanes for traffic.
This is anecdotal, but last month I spent about five days each in Reykjavik (population 250,000) and Amsterdam (population 2.5 million), and it really made plain the the paradoxical relationship between additional road capacity and worsened traffic.
Modern Reykjavik has developed in a mostly car-oriented, sprawly way. It's got a wonderful, walkable, compact city centre, but outside of that it turns into a bunch of huge roads and overbuilt overpasses connecting far-flung single-family subdivisions and big-box retail destinations. There's a decent bus network, but that's it, and it's clearly not the locals' first choice of transport. It's very Halifax-like.
Amsterdam is, of course, classic European mid-rise density, spread almost uniformly through the whole metropolitan area. The region is connected to nearby towns and cities by a robust rail network, and internally by a highly developed system of in-town trams. Streets are mostly narrow, with the exception of some wide boulevards that nonetheless generally have only one lane of auto traffic in each direction, with the rest given over to transit ROWs and cycling. There are highways in and out of the city, but even though the population is ten times greater than Reyjkavik's, the highways are no more numerous, and are all the same width or narrower.
And yet driving in Amsterdam was way easier, faster, and more free-flowing, despite that there was obviously much less road space per citizen than in Reykjavik, where traffic was absurdly over-congested for a small city.
Obviously that's anecdotal, but still: On the one hand, a big city with relatively little road space and relatively minor congestion problems, and on the other, a city ten times smaller with buckets of road space and constant congestion.
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Interesting comparison. When you compare the land area of each it's even more interesting:
Amsterdam: 219 square kilometers
Reykjavic: 274.5 square kilomiters
Halifax: 5490 square kilometers
Your comment about Amsterdam:
"The region is connected to nearby towns and cities by a robust rail network, and internally by a highly developed system of in-town trams."
I think this is specifically relevant to Halifax, in that the "suburbs" are basically the equivalent of the nearby towns and cities that you speak of, as that's how "the suburbs" started out, as independent towns and cities.
The difference, as I see it, is that although pretty much all the towns and cities in Nova Scotia were once connected by rail, they were subsidized by the government and thus able to remain in operation despite being generally underutilized. Eventually, in light of the onslaught of other forms of transportation (e.g. automobiles and buses), our population density wasn't really large enough to financially support regular rail service and our government didn't have the political strength (or, perhaps, the foresight) to maintain and bolster rail service like typical European cities/countries did. This eventually led to the country's rail system becoming privatized and lines being dropped by the private companies when it was realized that they were not financially viable (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadi...and_refocusing). This resulted in the rails for these branch lines being torn up and the ROWs repurposed as activity paths instead. Sadly, the costs associated with changing them back to rail, should we ever decide to do so, would be astronomical and thus unlikely to be viable for the foreseeable future.
To keep it in perspective, however, it's important to point out the difference in population between Halifax and Amsterdam, in that Amsterdam has over six times the population of Halifax in a much smaller land mass, or even more aptly, The Netherlands has over
sixteen times the population of Nova Scotia on less land area (NS: 55,283 km² vs The Netherlands: 41,540 km²). Given these stats, a highly developed rail system has been a necessity for a long time in The Netherlands, whereas it has not really been economically viable in Nova Scotia.
To give it yet more perspective, consider if The Netherlands had similar levels of car usage among its population as Nova Scotia, it would be chaos - you would never be able to move. In comparison, the current level of traffic in Halifax is really not all that bad - it gets snagged up every now and then when something goes wrong, but relatively speaking it generally works pretty well. I think we just like to complain about it disproportionately (human nature). Every time I drive in a larger city elsewhere, I'm always pleased to return home to Halifax's relatively light traffic. Even further, once you get outside of Halifax, to other areas of the province, traffic problems are basically nonexistent.
I'm a big supporter of rail transit, of using what is currently a surplus ROW (the rail cut) to more efficiently move people around the area, but I do realize that economics must play into it for it to work. Therefore we have to service the areas of greater population immediately (even if it is at a loss but benefits a large part of the population), but it will perhaps be several decades before (if ever) it becomes practical to move people by rail to every small town and village in the province, such as it is now in The Netherlands.
Perhaps if we look to balance the type of traffic that we have, keeping in mind the challenges presented by our particular population geography, the best overall scenario would be to develop a few key pieces of infrastructure and transit now, so that we can build on that for the future, however that evolves.
Examples could include
- a third harbour crossing and maybe a Northwest Arm crossing if possible;
- commuter rail and overall improvement in the efficiency of transit altogether (which could include a type of trolley service, but most importantly involves all types of transit functioning as one entity);
- and yes, increased/improved bicycle access ("if you build it they will come").
Also, we must keep in mind that these should not be considered mutually exclusive. Example: a third harbour crossing, for example, could be designed to provide special accomodations for alternate forms of transit, such as rail and separated bicycle lanes. Commuter rail transit could be designed to be able to accommodate fluctuating percentages of bicycle commuters. And so on.
Just my