Quote:
Originally Posted by Good Baklava
No one loves traffic congestion. What I do love is to think about whether the solutions presented would be the best options for solving the problem.
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Your comment "What I do love is to think about whether the solutions presented would be the best options for solving the problem" is intriguing. Well, let me tell you my story of visiting DT Halifax on Friday morning.
I avoid DT at all costs these days. It is helpful that I usually no longer have any need to go there most of the time. But on Friday I had some business that meant I had to go DT for the first time in months.
It was the morning after our first significant snowfall of the season, mid-morning on the last full week of business before Christmas, so I expected potential pandemonium. What I saw was very interesting. Traffic was virtually nil in most places mid-morning. Downtown seemed, if not quite dead, at least on life support. The only congestion I saw was on Hollis St where the interchange transitions into the old street. That part seemed unchanged as it has always been so there. Container trucks in stop and crawl mode, grappling with the narrow street. Vehicles trying to squeeze past other vehicles. The usual situation that has been the norm for decades. But this time was different.
It has been changed recently, and the overnight snow highlighted it starkly. Now, the 3-lane Hollis St is supposedly 2 travel lanes, one rightmost bike lane, and zero in the way of parking or turning lanes. In yesterday's case the two vehicle lanes to the left and in the center were damp but clear blacktop. The rightmost lane was the bike lane and was filled with untouched snow. Of course there was nary a bicycle in sight.
No doubt the planners will be thinking, "we need to fix that so the bike lane gets cleared". What they really need to think about though is the reality of what they created. Because despite their best efforts, Hollis St is still very much a business street, with office buildings and commercial tenants trying to go about their day. And this is where the arse comes out of the planning theory.
With the "protected" but otherwise unusable and useless bike lane completely out of the equation, those trying to go about their business are forced to resort to the left-most lane. Trying to drop off or pick up a passenger? You have to stop in that lane. Making a delivery or picking up up a parcel? Same. A courier delivering important papers? You know the drill. This time it had the extra added attraction of those people who stopped in the left lane to do their business having to run across the street, hopefully avoiding the container trucks, hurdle the bike lane protective curbing buried under the snow, and then wade though 8 inches of uncleared frozen precip if they needed to enter a building on the west side of the street. All the way down Hollis was a constant series of interruptions to the movement of vehicles because of normal obstacle-creating activities one expects to find in a city's downtown, but now with no way for traffic to get around them easily and quickly. Meanwhile the abandoned and neglected bike lane sits there in its white coat of snow sticking out like a very sore thumb. Only 2/3rds of an already too-narrow ROW is being used.
Now you are no doubt thinking "Oh, there's Keith ranting about bike lanes again" but this really isn't that. The bike lane argument is settled based on what I saw yesterday. It is sheer and utter folly. Nobody can deny that. Perhaps on a nice day in September when it is not too hot and not too cold and not too wet and not too snowy there might be a few bikes using it. But the operative word here is "few". Compared to the other demands being placed on a street like Hollis it is well, well down the list of priorities. It is the only way southbound truck traffic can reach the container pier. It is the street upon which the seat of govt and many office buildings are found. It is the main southbound corridor for the entire downtown. And our city leaders have kneecapped it for what can only be seen as a philosophical statement instead of what is a good and practical solution that serves the broader needs of the city.
Incidentally when I had to leave I needed to use Water St for that and that experience was almost as bad. There were a series of new-to-me green and white striped posts along the right side which I assume are also a bike lane of a different type, although again it was mostly snow-covered and bereft of activity. The street itself is now mostly a single lane northbound. You can imagine how it would be on a typical day. Because of the pandemic I presume, traffic was at least manageable and I was able to get out without dealing with the typical gridlock. But the same argument would apply if it was a normal day.
So if Council and HRM bureaucrats are truly interested in answering the question of "whether the solutions presented would be the best options for solving the problem", the first answer should be "I have seen the enemy, and it is us".
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