The most dangerous bus stop in Halifax
Westphal Woman pays special tax to risk life and limb to catch the bus
By Antonia Zwissler
The little numbers identifying the Marko’s street address are fastened onto the same pole as a “MAXIMUM 60” speed limit sign. Cars hurtle past the driveway in rushes of air and dust. The road is Main Street in Westphal. It’s also Highway 107, Trunk 7 and Maddie Marko’s only way to her bus stop on Lake Major Road.
Her mother, Elgin Marko, is worried. “If she gets hit…” There’s a weighty pause. Under a hat and sunglasses, Elgin’s face is inscrutable. Her 23-year-old daughter Maddie busses to college in Halifax five days a week. There’s a stop on their block. Elgin pays extra tax for the stop on her annual property tax bill. Last year, she paid $312.04 for that life-threatening bus stop because it’s “within one kilometre walking distance.”
Walking distance, sure. But walking conditions? To get to the stop, Maddie turns right from her house and takes the bumpy, cracked sidewalk until it trails off after a minute of walking. Then she’s on the road shoulder, within touching distance of speeding cars allegedly going a “MAXIMUM 60.”
“Let’s just assume for a second, she gets hit at 60,” said Elgin. Let’s assume. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, if Maddie is hit at 60 km/h her chances for survival are statistically zero. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development reviewed three studies to come to this conclusion. HRM operates under the same assumption. Any car going 70km/h outside Elgin and Maddie’s home is regularly overtaken.
Heading to the stop, she’s in the right-hand lane. Only on return does she “have the luxury” of seeing oncoming traffic. “I just have to trust,” she said, “that everyone who’s going to pass me is going to be within the lines, and paying attention.” She repeated herself while telling the story; standing in the driveway, the rushing, whooshing, sound of cars kept drowning out her voice.
In winter, it’s worse. Maddie leaves the house before sunrise. The city stopped plowing the “sidewalk” this past winter, without notifying the Markos. In an email, their councillor, Trish Purdy, said it was because “the sidewalk is in such disrepair” that the sidewalk damaged the contractor’s equipment. Past the sidewalk, the road was still plowed, the snowbank piled onto the road shoulder/Maddie’s footpath. For an extra $312.04 in taxes, to prevent damage to snow plow equipment, Elgin’s daughter, draped in orange hi-vis material, was forced to make the walk in the lane with a posted speed of a fatal “MAXIMUM 60.”
It’s not a coincidence that the Markos live right on the edge of the Prestons, a low-income area whose infrastructure (but not tax collection) is traditionally neglected by the HRM. According to a 2001 study in the American Journal of Public Health pedestrians in low-income areas are more likely to be hit by a car. The study focused on the Island of Montreal, where, similarly to HRM, higher-income neighbourhoods tend to be more walkable. Pedestrians in the poorer neighbourhoods were found to be 6.3 times more likely to be injured by a car.
Elgin isn’t the type to contact the government. “I don’t stir things up,” she said. But every time an ambulance goes by, a part of her thinks it’s for Maddie. Elgin feels her daughter has “a high chance of being maimed or killed every time she goes on that highway in the mornings.” Despite a gut feeling that it was futile, she reached out to her representatives.
In an interview with Grand Parade, Coun. Purdy said Maddie’s life-threatening commute is “not ideal.”
Purdy said she contacted relevant departments, like Public Works and Halifax Transit. She said Halifax Transit is “doing an investigation” to see if they can add more stops and that Public Works called it a “complex constrained site.” Which means it’s unlikely the sidewalk will be extended. Speeding enforcement lands in the RCMP’s wheelhouse, but the legal 60km/h is still fatal for Maddie
“It’s frustrating,” Purdy said several times.
Now that winter is over and construction season has begun, the only thing that seems likely to improve for the Markos is sufficient repairs to the existing sidewalk so that plowing can resume come the next snow. Purdy is waiting on a quote and said she would be willing to use district funds if it can’t come out of the city’s capital budget.
But when the sidewalk ends, the Markos are on their own.
Halifax updates bylaws to mitigate flood risk Sackville River
by Matt Stickland
On Tuesday, April 29, at Halifax’s regular council meeting, councillors voted unanimously to protect communities along the Sackville River from flooding.
The motion was first introduced in 2018 by councillors Lisa Blackburn and Steve Craig, but the summer of 2023 provided a potent reminder that there are risks to developing along the Sackville River. Craig, after passing the motion in 2018, became an MLA, then a cabinet minister, and then retired from politics before coming back to chambers last Tuesday to be present when the city finally got around to ensuring that people are only building where it’s safe in a floodplain, as his motion first instructed the city to do back in 2018.
The new regulations do not permit development in floodplains, meaning places that flood frequently. In floodways, areas with a 5% annual chance of flooding, some land uses that are hard to evacuate, like a daycare, or environmentally damaging, like a gas station, are no longer allowed. Ones that exist can stay, but if they get destroyed by a flood and aren’t repaired in six months, they lose their grandfathered status and can’t be rebuilt. Since we don’t want people living in a floodway, the city now forbids future residential uses. And any land use allowed in floodways must now be built flood-resistant.
This bylaw change still lets people live in places with a 1% annual chance of flooding, aka the flood fringe, but here, too, whatever is built on this fringe must be flood-resistant.
The work done by staff on mapping and modelling flood risk is solid, and this change is good for the city overall. But it negatively impacts two subsets of people living on the Sackville River: people who’ve been on the land since flooding became an HRM issue, and people who recently moved here. During the meeting, councillor Billy Gillis asked if there was any update on the province buying out the property owners of Union Street who got flooded out in 2023. City staff told Gillis that the province was working on it, and if that goes ahead, it is likely to set the precedent for how the unfairness to negatively affected property owners will be compensated for in the future for being allowed to buy a house bult on flood prone property and not being the one that allowed a house to be built on a flood-prone piece of property.
City’s plan to sabotage councillors
by Matt Stickland
Although it is not intentional, city staff have a plan, titled “Halifax Regional Municipality
SERVICE CATALOGUE” which is working to sabotage our councillors. And this unintentional sabotage is quite effective.
The city’s service catalogue lays out what is a municipal responsibility and which department in the city is responsible for it.
For example, on page 3 of the catalogue, Halifax Transit is listed as responsible for “the strategic and capital planning for Halifax Transit” and “responsible for implementation of new transit service.” New transit service like the planned Bus Rapid Transit? Apparently not.
Last week, Grand Parade reported that the planned expansion of Robie Street was not in service of Halifax Transit or Bus Rapid Transit and the city’s service catalog further proves that to be true, because if the Robie Street widening and the planned BRT were in fact a transit project, Halifax Transit would be the lead on the Robie Street transportation corridor and the implementation of Halifax’s planned new transit service, the BRT. But Halifax Transit is not in charge of the Robie Street project, the Department of Public Works is instead.
DPW’s job, in this case, is to ensure “street efficiency in regard to traffic patterns, flow, and density while considering all mobility options.” However, due to the size and cost of car infrastructure, when staff are instructed to include cars, every infrastructure project becomes a car priority. Adding one car lane to 900m of Robis Street is costing the city three times more than the entire planned bike and sidewalk networks combined, but about half of last year’s routine maintenance street repaving budget.
The municipal service catalogue’s inherent, inadvertent car priority means all of the council’s other strategic transportation plans will fail until it is fixed.
What Happened Last Week:
Monday, April 28
The Executive Standing Committee met and got an update from the Women and Gender Equity Advisory Committee. Please be advised, that for this issue, and maybe for the next two or three this recap will be quite brief. Eventually it should become more than just links and provide more detail as I figured out how to balance a print issue of a newspaper, a digital issue of a newspaper, a podcast, running a small business, spending time with my family and time spent just exisiting, usually on my bike.
Tuesday, April 29
A regular meeting of council happened. They changed the bylaws to match the floodplains, like you’ve read about in this issue. Between the paper and this post on our website and at least one other of your healthy news diet of Suzanne Rent over at Halifax Examiner, Haley Ryan at the CBC or Colin at that other news site that portends to cover all of Nova Scotia, and you should be set for what happened on Tuesday.
Wednesday, April 30
The Special Events Advisory Committee met and got the new committee members got an official orientation. They then recommended that council pre-approve, pending budget approval, four years of grant spending.
Thursday, May 1
There were two meetings on the agenda: the Harbour East Marine Drive Community Council and the Environment and Sustainability Standing Committee. Both have councillor Sam Austin as a member, and on Tuesday he was approved to be excused from the Environment and Sustainability meeting to attend a conference. Both meetings were cancelled. Coincidence? No. It’s likely that Austin (and over half of the other committee members) also couldn’t make it, so meetings were cancelled due to lack of quorum.
But the Youth Advisory Committee met to discuss their work plan for the coming year.
The Women and Gender Equity Committee also met and received a staff report on developing a Senior Safety Strategy before they too discussed their work plan.
Did you miss what happened the week before last? Catch up on the go with our city hall podcast.
Doing the crossword at home? Here’s the paper for your printer.
