Dartmouth Common anger
Dartmouth residents at a recent city planning session were unified in their opposition to the imminent expansion of Metro Transit's bridge terminal into an adjacent wilderness area.
by Tim Bousquet
About 100 Dartmouth residents who came to a city planning session Monday night appeared unified in their position: They have no love whatsoever for the imminent expansion of Metro Transit's bridge terminal into an adjacent wilderness area.
Residents charge that Common land has through the years been improperly sold to private developers and eaten away at by questionable operations like the Sportsplex, which is nominally open to the public but has a large membership fee. The terminal expansion, say residents, is more of the same, an attack on what should be inviolable green space.
The "public input" meeting was the second of two called by engineering firm CBCL, which is contracted to write a 20-year plan for the Dartmouth Common. In general, the residents seemed pleased that, bus terminal aside, CBCL had responded positively to their input from the first meeting.
CBCL's proposed plan for the Common includes an outdoor skating rink, an ampitheatre and more trails along the waterfront, and calls for the city to buy the McDonald's on Nantucket Avenue and turn the ground beneath it back to park land. That plan will go to city council for approval sometime next year, said CBCL's Gordon Smith.
As originally planned, the new bus terminal would have stretched up Nantucket to within just a few metres of Dartmouth High School. The revised plan, however, orients the terminal perpendicular to Nantucket, stretching through the wilderness area to Thistle Street.
Smith himself is pained by the terminal plan, but said the expansion plan was demanded by city council. "That train has left the station," he said.
"It's a huge thing we're giving up, and it requires great enumeration," said resident Jean Llewellyn, who noted that the Common plan comes with no dedicated funding to achieve any of its lofty goals.
Work on the bus terminal, however, will commence almost immediately, in time for use by next summer. [Disclosure: I live very close to the Dartmouth Common.] —Tim Bousquet
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I don't see why they are even doing these studies... has that much changed since the last round of studies and consultations done in the early 90s by Dartmouth City Sperry/McLennan Planners? No. Another excuse to keep another group of consultants in business.
Why the bus terminal isn't being moved to Downtown Dartmouth, next to the Ferry Terminal, is beyond me. Stupid Halifax City Council.
Why do you put public input in quotes? Is it because your "fair and balanced" reporting isn't up to snuff? Or is it because your bias of living very close to the Common is showing?
I live very close to the Common, and commute from that hell-hole of a transit station every day. Where should the new terminal go? Across the street on the Keating held empty lot? The traffic entry and exit points are all wrong for it.
Smith is "pained" by the plan? Council "demanded" the expansion? Did Mr. Smith bravely man the ramparts holding back the howling elected officals, while a tear briefly formed in his eye for the pristine land about to be lost.
Bullshit. The land in question is mainly used by stoners from DHS hiding from their teachers.
Let's get realistic about transit and start to fix some of the problems instead of nattering about an over grown meadow full of tokers and drinkers.
You mean the ferry terminal that has the amphitheater next to it and hosts multiple events and concerts and creates revenue? Yes let's stick it there, it totally wouldn't cause any weird traffic snarls either.
"Public input" is in quotes because that was the purpose of the meeting.
Frankly, I don't have strong feelings one way or the other about the bus terminal, but I disclosed my potential conflict. I don't know what else I'm supposed to do.
That piece of land between the Sportsplex parking lot and Dartmouth High is certainly far from pristing wilderness area! I live in this neighbourhood, and you couldn't pay me to walk through there. As Mr. Luthor pointed out in his post, you'd be displacing far more teenage gropers and stoners than you would birds and reptiles.
I think the greater public need in this instance is for a better bus terminal for the thousands of commuters that pass through this collection and drop-off point, not to preserve some marginal green space.
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