Imagine a car-free Halifax

Cars are the number-one killer of people under 35 in this part of the world. A
couple of thousand pounds of high-speed steel and glass may have seemed
like a good idea at one time, but cars have made simple acts like
walking risky business.

Urban sprawl increases that risk. Abundant research shows a strong
link between sprawl and traffic fatalities. Large car-biased cities
like Orlando and Phoenix are most dangerous for pedestrians and drivers. Planners and safety experts say a 10-percent reduction in
sprawl reduces traffic deaths by 15 percent.

But the reality of sprawl makes life without cars unthinkable—how
would we get to Walmart?

Vauban, a suburban township of Freiburg Germany, doesn’t care about
that—Walmart was all but exiled from Germany in 2006. The town of
5,000 was designed and built by ex-hippies in the mid-’90s to be
sustainable, car-free.

The only motor vehicles in Vauban—a former Nazi barracks—are
delivery trucks. Their stay is limited to a few minutes. People
traverse on foot and bicycle. Vauban’s become a tourist attraction for
the eco-curious, who arrive by the busload to watch children make chalk
art in the middle of the road.

If a former base for one of humanity’s worst atrocities, and a
suburb, can be transformed into a model of sustainable living, maybe
there is hope for Halifax Regional Municipality, even though it’s huge,
sparsely populated, with a crappy bus system.

According to Genuine Progress Index Atlantic, the average HRMer
drives 8,000 kilometres a year, emitting two tonnes of greenhouse
gasses. We spend four grand each in property and income taxes for
building and repairing driving infrastructure and on accidents. We
travel just 26 km on public transit each year, while 90 percent of us
live within 500 metres of a bus stop. Personally, I don’t own a car and
yet I manage to drive—thanks to sharing friends’—more than I take
the bus.

We have the equivalent of a two-pack-a-day habit. Our patch may be
the act of integrating our transportation systems, says Jason Pelley,
co-lead of Fusion Halifax’s sustainability team. “When you arrive at
the airport you should be able to get onto a train into the city,”
Pelley says, “hop on the bike you’ve left parked at the train station,
cycle home.”

Vauban couldn’t be car-free if it weren’t for the reliable tram that
takes people in and out of town. Meanwhile, “Halifax is notorious for
its buses not showing up and 300 metres of disconnected bike lanes
without benefit,” says Pelley.

Nova Scotia’s transportation system is hampered by a weak economy,
but the Halifax Chamber of Commerce says greater efficiency and cost
savings come from integration—bringing management of all the various
modes of transportation together into one system. “It’s time Halifax
considered creating an Integrated Transit Authority,” Pelley
argues.

If we look beyond the cost of transit we see rewards of increased
productivity, fewer traffic jams, reduced costs of healthcare and
highway policing. Integration doesn’t necessarily mean trams, but we
need to see reliable public transit as a basic right for HRM
residents—give people in places like Beaver Bank and Lucasville
innovative means to get downtown without cars.

“In the Hamptons they have a series of cost-effective, semi-private
small buses or vans called jitneys,” Pelley says. It reminds me of
places like Indonesia and Ghana, which give even the poorest residents
reliable, regular transportation in cities and often the countryside
too. It isn’t exactly car-free, but such systems could drastically
reduce the number of cars on HRM roads.

Pelley argues further for a change in mindset to transportation
planning based on people, not vehicles. “The generation that built our
infrastructure for cars still has a lot of power,” Pelley says. “We
need real leadership listening to knowledgeable constituents.”

One such constituent, Charmaine Dymond, grew up in Sackville and
spent a few too many hours on the “dreaded 80” bus. Her family of three
has been car-free for about two years. “We live on the peninsula now,”
she says, “so that makes it easier.”

She has a wish-list that would make car-free life in HRM better.
“I’d love to get rid of all those parking lots on the waterfront and
have a beautiful water park, lots of green space, a decent kiddie
pool,” she says.

She is a fan of the shuttle bus approach—direct routes to
high-traffic areas like Bayers Lake and Dartmouth Crossing. “Or better
yet,” she adds, “get rid of them. Encourage street shopping and stores
in neighbourhoods where people live and can walk, bike or bus
easily.”

That’s the Vauban spirit.

This article appears in Aug 27 – Sep 2, 2009.