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  #21  
Old Posted Aug 12, 2009, 6:34 PM
phrenic phrenic is offline
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Maybe in your ideal Halifax, but sure not in mine.
+1
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  #22  
Old Posted Aug 12, 2009, 7:56 PM
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Originally Posted by Bedford_DJ View Post
If you look closely at the alignment of Robie Street in the area you'll notice that the Bloomfield side is perfectly in line with the wider part near Young St. Its the other side of the street that needs to be bought out in order to widen it correctly.
Maybe so, but it seems rather foolish to miss this chance. You could always do minor realignment, use the area for a bus pullover, whatever.

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Ideally the whole length should be six lanes with a boulevard but its very unlikely to be that anytime soon.
Agreed, that stretch from Almon to North is a significant bottleneck on the major north-south artery in the city. Unfortunately the kind of comments that followed your post are far too typical of the level of thought or importance given to the road network in this town. Amazing how some people think single-lane paved cowpaths are perfectly acceptable for a city of this size.
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  #23  
Old Posted Aug 12, 2009, 8:55 PM
phrenic phrenic is offline
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I can be forgiven if I live quite close to this area and really don't want to see more space for more traffic, instead preferring the city put it's efforts into developing more walkable, livable streetscapes.

I didn't say it wouldn't be practical to allow for traffic to flow more freely through that area. I implied it wouldn't be an ideal solution. Which it is not.

Unfortunately your kind of comment which followed my and the preceding post is far too typical of the level of thought or importance given to thinking outside the car in this town. Amazing how some people think that the solution to more traffic is to just make room for it and that is acceptable for any city of any size.

I'm getting off topic. Yay Bloomfield master plan.
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  #24  
Old Posted Aug 12, 2009, 11:55 PM
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Originally Posted by phrenic View Post
Unfortunately your kind of comment which followed my and the preceding post is far too typical of the level of thought or importance given to thinking outside the car in this town. Amazing how some people think that the solution to more traffic is to just make room for it and that is acceptable for any city of any size.
How eloquent. How original. How wrong.

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I'm getting off topic. Yay Bloomfield master plan.
Boo hiss.
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  #25  
Old Posted Aug 13, 2009, 12:01 AM
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Don't get me wrong guys I'm all for a walkable, livable city but one still has to remember that there will always be a requirement for roads in town and the best way to streamline traffic while keeping neighbourhoods livable is to get the traffic onto one road and off the side streets until such a time that roads can be closed to traffic.

At the very least the intersection of Robie and North should be fixed to allow left-hand turns.

As for bus pull-overs I find them useless in town since they just make the trip even longer since nobody lets them back onto the street.
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  #26  
Old Posted Aug 13, 2009, 12:15 AM
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Originally Posted by Bedford_DJ View Post

Ideally the whole length should be six lanes with a boulevard but its very unlikely to be that anytime soon.
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  #27  
Old Posted Aug 13, 2009, 12:21 AM
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Barrington south Barrington south is offline
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Yeh, keith, cus like everyone knows that a city like LA, which is a slave to the car, is much more dynamic and thriving, than say...Manhatten...
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  #28  
Old Posted Aug 13, 2009, 1:18 AM
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Originally Posted by Barrington south View Post
Yeh, keith, cus like everyone knows that a city like LA, which is a slave to the car, is much more dynamic and thriving, than say...Manhatten...
I don't think 5th Avenue is one lane, BS.
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  #29  
Old Posted Aug 13, 2009, 1:47 AM
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I don't think 5th Avenue is one lane, BS.
so what's your point?....nither is Quinnpool..and I think you may find Quinnpool has the same number of lanes dedicated to traffic only...non parking lanes that is
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  #30  
Old Posted Aug 13, 2009, 8:30 AM
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planarchy planarchy is offline
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Originally Posted by Bedford_DJ View Post
the best way to streamline traffic while keeping neighbourhoods livable is to get the traffic onto one road and off the side streets until such a time that roads can be closed to traffic.
There is evidence to the contrary throughout North America. This is nothing more than a dangerously outdated technocratic planning strategy. What you are basically suggesting is that a highway be cut through the centre of the peninsula, but where is it going? And where does it end. If you close off side street access (which is a completely ridiculous notion anyway - save this for the suburbs where people think a cul-de-sac provides a better quality of life) , you then have to have a number of other main access roads running east-west. So you are forced to cut up the city even more. You are then left with a hierarchy of streets that define the city more than any other aspect - cutting off certain neighborhoods, destroying others. A city defined mostly by roads, is hardly even a city. And certainly not a livable one. Not that this widening of Robie at this one suggested location will be the end of the city, but HRM is already inclined to make these sort of half-assed 'fixes'. This is what happens when road engineers are in charge! They see they city only through the roads. They need some new maps! - or to turn on more than the street layer in their autoCAD files!

I'm not suggesting the city doesn't need good access roads, but the answer isn't always adding more lanes. It is nothing more than a short term gain with long term losses for the city, financially and otherwise. What this city is seriously lacking is creativity in both private and public planning and development actions. Rarely do they look to other examples outside of the US or Canada (two very conservative countries) for bold interventions. There are other ways to build good cities. Of course this requires a comprehensive transit strategy, rather than the sectoral approach taken by HRMs planning department and their go-to out-of-province planning office, Office for Urbanism.

Last edited by planarchy; Aug 13, 2009 at 8:40 AM.
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  #31  
Old Posted Aug 13, 2009, 12:16 PM
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Originally Posted by planarchy View Post
There is evidence to the contrary throughout North America. This is nothing more than a dangerously outdated technocratic planning strategy. What you are basically suggesting is that a highway be cut through the centre of the peninsula

<sigh> Here we go again. This sounds exactly like the absurd type of overstatement that poisoned the entire Chebucto widening project last year, or the even more absurd arguments made a few years prior about adding one lane to Robie between Cunard and West. Nobody is talking about punching an interstate through the middle of the city. What is being suggested is that reasonable capacity be added to the main north-south route in the city to take it from more than a single lane over a 3-block bottleneck. The point about getting traffic off side streets is exactly that, to let arteries carry arterial traffic and not to encourage shortcutting onto residential streets because the main arteries are so jammed because of poor design. Unfortunately the very thought of widening streets in this town invariably leads to cries of "the sky is falling" from the usual anti-car activists.
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  #32  
Old Posted Aug 13, 2009, 1:38 PM
beyeas beyeas is offline
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I am somewhere in the middle on this argument. I do agree that there is WAY to much focus on car travel in this city, but equally there are some incredibly poorly designed roadways that reflect poorly on the city's overall feel & experience.

I think that at the end of the day my biggest beef is the piece-meal approach to all this by the city. We have one group at city hall scraping away at slight improvements to public transit. Another group at city hall working on slight improvements to bike transportation. Another group at the bridge commission focussing on new bridge/tunnel. Another group at the province working on slightly improved 100 series highways. And another group at city hall working on slight improvements to city roads.

What NEEDS to happen is for there to one single body responsible for the big picture... i.e. a Halifax Region Transportation Committee with real power and teeth. There NEEDS to be a plan that is integrated, thought out as a whole, and part of a overall picture.

Sometimes the answer is new/bigger roads, sometimes the answer is higher/lower tolls, sometimes the answer is better public transit etc etc etc. There is no one answer. But the problem with the existing system is that road engineers want to build new roads, bridge commissions want to build new bridges, and public transit designers want more buses etc. I would feel better about the decisions that get made if I new they were part of an overall sustainable long term plan, rather than disparate groups each defending their fiefdom.
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  #33  
Old Posted Aug 13, 2009, 2:20 PM
Spitfire75 Spitfire75 is offline
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Originally Posted by beyeas View Post
I am somewhere in the middle on this argument. I do agree that there is WAY to much focus on car travel in this city, but equally there are some incredibly poorly designed roadways that reflect poorly on the city's overall feel & experience.

I think that at the end of the day my biggest beef is the piece-meal approach to all this by the city. We have one group at city hall scraping away at slight improvements to public transit. Another group at city hall working on slight improvements to bike transportation. Another group at the bridge commission focussing on new bridge/tunnel. Another group at the province working on slightly improved 100 series highways. And another group at city hall working on slight improvements to city roads.

What NEEDS to happen is for there to one single body responsible for the big picture... i.e. a Halifax Region Transportation Committee with real power and teeth. There NEEDS to be a plan that is integrated, thought out as a whole, and part of a overall picture.

Sometimes the answer is new/bigger roads, sometimes the answer is higher/lower tolls, sometimes the answer is better public transit etc etc etc. There is no one answer. But the problem with the existing system is that road engineers want to build new roads, bridge commissions want to build new bridges, and public transit designers want more buses etc. I would feel better about the decisions that get made if I new they were part of an overall sustainable long term plan, rather than disparate groups each defending their fiefdom.
Well said!
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  #34  
Old Posted Aug 13, 2009, 5:49 PM
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To me there's really only two main roads in Halifax that require to be efficient, and those are Robie (north-south connector) and North/Chebucto (crosstown). Off of these two I would not support widening unless theres a damn good reason.

But anyways at the very least I say fix the Robie/North intersection to allow left-hand turns and consider installing bicycle lanes along Robie, Agricola or Windsor.
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  #35  
Old Posted Aug 15, 2009, 1:05 PM
Halifax Hillbilly Halifax Hillbilly is offline
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Originally Posted by Bedford_DJ View Post
Don't get me wrong guys I'm all for a walkable, livable city but one still has to remember that there will always be a requirement for roads in town and the best way to streamline traffic while keeping neighbourhoods livable is to get the traffic onto one road and off the side streets until such a time that roads can be closed to traffic.
That idea has been the planning orthodoxy for more than sixty years. If you look at most suburban areas this is exactly how roads are layed out - local roads feeding into collectors, feeding into arterials, sometimes feeding into highways. It's actually a poor way to look at things. Traffic is an exceptionally complex system. Thousands of individuals, with many potential routes, make thousands of individual decisions. With a hiearchical road structure you discourage or remove many of those potential routes in favour of fewer routes with heavier traffic, and generally higher speeds. You remove a lot of complexity from the system, believing that the simplified "streamlined" system is obviously going to work better than the chaotic traffic patterns you replaced. The opposite happens because you've taking a huge amount of traffic from many different roads and placed it on a couple. Equally important you've removed the option of taking alternative routes when one arterial becomes congested. Instead of choosing between many potential routes with moderate congestion there are simply a couple of routes with heavy traffic.

A lot of the justification for this road structure comes from the idea of removing cars and traffic from local, residential streets. It comes from a deeply ingrained idea that the automobile is a dangerous beast that's unfit for many parts of our cities - a position that almost everyone on this board seems to hold in some shape or form. Some feel that since the automobile and taffic are a nuissance and potentially dangerous we should restrict the bulk of traffic to properly designed arterials and increase capacity when we need to. This may improve traffic flow in one small part of the system, at the expense of the "livability" of one or two particular streets, but that's the price we pay to move cars, which is clearly a necessity. Most other arguments fit into some form of cars and traffic are inherently bad for cities, and most things we do to accomodate them are therefore bad. Hence the "anti-car" argument.

The idea that the automobile is evil isn't true. The automobile is not ruining our cities. Certain byproducts of how we plan and accomodate cars are the problem - oversized parking lots, high speed arterials, congestion, air pollution and smog, etc. Some may argue these things are a necessary evil, but I doubt many would argue these things are good for our cities. The problem is not that we have cars in our cities but that too much emphasis has been placed on moving cars efficiently, generally at the expense of other forms of transportation, or livability and urbanism.

In the end the debate usually comes down to whether to widen a congested arterial, and a fight breaks out between the two camps. Shouldn't the first question be "can we provide alternative routes or alternative transportation modes to relieve this congestion?" Most cities streets carry hardly any traffic, and this is a deliberate choice. We've made this choice because we hold the simplistic belief that cars are unsuitable for most streets. This is partly true - the way traffic moves on high speed arterials is unsuitable for most streets, including some of those arterials. But we've deliberatly designed arterials to work that way in the first place. Local roads could carry an increased proportion of the traffic, at lower speeds, reducing the need for road widenings and the disruption they cause. We have to move past this belief that anything but local traffic is 1) something unsutaible for most streets and 2) something that is fixed by "streamlining" the street system or adding a lot of capacity in select parts of a very complex system.
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  #36  
Old Posted Sep 9, 2009, 2:13 PM
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Taken from The Chronicle Herald:


Council approves $7.7m plan for Bloomfield Centre

Council unanimously approved in principle Tuesday a master plan to redevelop a Halifax north-end community centre and surrounding lands into an arts and culture complex.

"A community within a community" would be created from a $7.7-million reconstruction of the Bloomfield Community Centre and adjacent buildings into 60,000 square feet of arts and culture space.

"This is the most exciting thing that has happened for arts and culture in Halifax," said Coun. Dawn Sloane (Halifax Downtown).

She said the centre would not just be used by residents of the north end but by people from throughout peninsular Halifax.

About 260 new townhouses and condos would be built on the land, and commercial and office space would support the arts and culture theme. Two older buildings with heritage qualities that are next to the Bloomfield centre would be renovated and preserved.

The plan calls for a minimum of 47 units of affordable housing to be built.

Halifax Regional Municipality would retain ownership of the arts and culture complex and 80 per cent of the land. Its capital contribution would be $628,000.

The value of the land when developed, excluding the complex, is estimated at $7.1 million and the project is expected to garner about $700,000 in annual property taxes.

Open-space courtyards and green space are also part of the plan.

"We have created a substantial amount of public park where there was none. There was simply asphalt," said city staffer Peter Bigelow, who presented part of the master plan to councillors on Tuesday night.

"There is a provision for child care, there would be playgrounds, that type of thing. It would be an exercise to design this that we would go through with the community.

"The idea is to provide a variety of housing opportunities for a variety of income levels."

The north-end neighbourhood has had input into the preliminary plan through public meetings. It is expected that the project will get funding from different levels of government, and the next step is for the municipality to look for partners and explore funding options.

Coun. Jerry Blumenthal (Halifax North End) said the plan, which has been a long time in the making, would make the complex "a centrepiece" in the north end for arts and culture. He encouraged council to move ahead briskly with the project but not to rush it, so that it is done properly.

While it is not clear when the project will become a reality, Mr. Blumenthal said he hopes a more detailed plan could come back before council within a year.
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  #37  
Old Posted Sep 9, 2009, 8:43 PM
Halifax Hillbilly Halifax Hillbilly is offline
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What is the value of each portion of the project, Bloomfield Centre redevelopment and the 260 residential units? Am I the only one confused by that part of the article. By my reading HRM keeps most of the land, pays $628,000 to rehabilitate the two heritage buildings on site, and the rest of the site will be worth $7.1 million after 260 residential units are built - but $27,000 per unit seems really cheap.
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  #38  
Old Posted Sep 9, 2009, 11:31 PM
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I'm tempted to say the project makes no sense, but in reality it makes no sense to me given the reporting around it and the disjointed facts. I don't know what we are getting for our $8 million nor whom will benefit. Seems spendy, but of course HRM council never has a problem spending our money on useless things.
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  #39  
Old Posted Sep 10, 2009, 1:16 AM
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Looks like they added the HRM "capital contribution" to the value of the land, which is totally meaningless. This is just sloppy reporting - it is almost certain that a private developer would fund the construction of the housing and that the total value of the project would be much higher than $7.7M.

The actual plan seems to be to trade off part of the land in exchange for some new development and some improvements to public amenities (public buildings, playground space). Given the fact that this is currently an under-used, under-developed, money-losing site, this kind of development makes perfect sense. I just hope they keep it simple and move forward with it in a timely manner.
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  #40  
Old Posted Sep 10, 2009, 1:34 AM
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The actual plan seems to be to trade off part of the land in exchange for some new development and some improvements to public amenities (public buildings, playground space). Given the fact that this is currently an under-used, under-developed, money-losing site, this kind of development makes perfect sense. I just hope they keep it simple and move forward with it in a timely manner.
I'm concerned because the actual specifics seem very sketchy and the call to use the municipal portion for arts and nonprofit groups sounds like a plan to turn it into a pretty slummy looking place pretty quickly. Given the city's atrocious track record in maintaining its own buildings I would expect it to look pretty half-assed after a short time. Plus if I read the report correctly they are saying that one of the two old school buildings would be donated to a nonprofit to renovate -- good luck with that.
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