Halifax’s integrated mobility planning suffers another humiliating defeat

$150 million down the drain?

On Thursday, April 24, Halifax’s Transportation Standing Committee met for a regular meeting. The meeting was well attended by visiting councillors because the Robie Street widening was being discussed, and it’s a major corridor for the city. In addition, the two councillors with Robie Street in their districts are not members of the Transportation Standing Committee. So all councillors were invited to attend the meeting. This meant a larger than average number of councillors to pepper Halifax’s beleaguered traffic planning staff with questions. And throughout the onslaught, it became clear that Halifax’s long-term transportation planning has some serious issues.

The whole 5km of Robie is an integral transportation corridor for the HRM. It sees about 20,000 private vehicles and just under 3,600 transit riders daily. Back in December 2017, city staff said that Robie from Young Street to Inglis Street was a “transit priority corridor” and that’s why staff have “prioritized its delivery.” The city has started installing bus lanes on Robie where there is enough road for dedicated public and private vehicle lanes (aka bus lanes and car lanes). Still, for the 900 meters between Cunard and Almon, there isn’t enough real estate for four lanes of traffic. There’s definitely not room for four lanes of traffic if the city also wants to take pedestrian safety seriously and install safety features like medians between lanes of vehicle traffic.

Since 2017, the city has spent $17.7 million on the Robie widening, with $2.5 million spent on the construction of bus lanes, $15 million on buying land and the remaining $250,000 or so on design. Over the next four years, the city will spend $49.5 million buying property and $4.5 million on design. When all is said and done, the city expects to spend $150 million so that the Robie Street Transit Priority corridor can maintain its private vehicle capacity. There is enough room to run a Bus Rapid Transit on Robie, or allow private vehicles two-way access, but not both. So, city staff have recommended spending $64.5 million buying property so there’s enough room to do both.

Even though there’s not enough room to do both, three lanes are available, so councillor Laura White asked if staff had ever considered adding two bus lanes and making Robie a one-way street for car traffic. City staffers told her that one-way Bus Rapid Transit lanes on Robie and Windsor weren’t seen as feasible. This is obvious and likely why White asked about diverting car traffic off Robie to Windsor, not making the Robie BRT single one-way lanes on different streets.

Making car traffic one-way on Robie and Windsor is likely feasible, but it would require drivers to take a less direct route to their destination, like lowly transit riders, pedestrians, and cyclists. But staff never really considered the option to save $64.5 million, and likely millions more in construction costs, all the while achieving multiple stated goals of multiple municipal plans. As a result, city staff were wildly unprepared to answer questions from councillors who wanted to seriously consider a feasible solution to the Robie Street BRT problem that could save money and achieve a slew of council’s priorities.

To be clear, making Robie Street one-way for car traffic would have knock-on effects throughout the city. There would be benefits and drawbacks—things that are both at the same time. Restricting car traffic on Robie would be bad for people who currently drive on it, but better for hundreds, soon to be thousands, of people who live there. Widening the road makes it better for trucking but harder for Halifax to meet its modal shift goals. But council should get to decide which tradeoff they're willing to make.

Ultimately, this update was an information item to be sent to council, for council to decide how to proceed. Councillor Patty Cuttell amended the motion so that when this information comes to council, it comes with a presentation. The city’s manager of transportation planning, Mike Connors, reassured council that this was still a 60% design, which is a rough draft, and a lot still can change. These reassurances would be much more reassuring except that one of the last times Connors gave these same reassurances was back in January, right before council voted to reject the Windsor Street Exchange redesign plan, in part, due to a lack of network-wide transit planning around the exchange.

It is also worth mentioning that back in Jan, when answering councillor Sam Austin’s questions, Connors said he couldn’t say what an ideal Bus Rapid Transit connection to the Windsor Street Exchange would be because the city hadn’t really started planning for what prioritizing buses throughout the city’s transportation network would look like. But if that’s true, that means we’re spending $150 million on a piece of infrastructure with no guarantees it fits into the larger yet unplanned Bus Rapid Transit network.

Also at this meeting the committee got an update from Halifax Transit. They’re doing fine. In the third quarter last year, ridership recovered to pre-pandemic levels in absolute terms, but since our population has grown, that’s fewer people, proportionally, on the bus. Which means more people, proportionally, driving a car.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Transit ridership i the Robie Street corridor was 9,000.