There is a public meeting tonight at Dartmouth High School, nominally to get public input on a zoning change to allow the Bridge Terminal relocation and expansion to proceed—the meeting is required under zoning change rules, but approval seems a foregone conclusion, as public input was already taken through the Dartmouth Common plan, and council has already allocated the money for the terminal expansion.
Basically, the plan calls for relocating the terminal in a strip running behind the Sportsplex, from Nantucket Avenue to Thistle Street. This entails ripping out six acres of the “urban wilderness” between the Sportsplex and Dartmouth High. Unless something unexpected happens, work should start this spring, and be completed in time for the beginning of school in August.
I’m conflicted about the proposal, in several ways.
First, I live very close to the site, and so the terminal relocation affects me personally in several ways. It slightly shortens the walk part of my morning commute, it makes the waiting-for and exiting the bus portion of my commute more agreeable and it arguably will bring more noise and traffic closer to my house. But I think I can separate out those issues from the issues of general public concern.
When Metro Transit first proposed expanding the terminal, the idea was simply to stretch it up the hill along Nantucket Avenue. But that suggestion was roundly condemned by the Dartmouth High community, because it would bring the terminal grounds within eight metres of the high school building.
One student, Jacob Larkin, met with architects and planners to come up with a compromise proposal to place the terminal beneath an intervening hill, to give some protection to the increased noise and light that will inevitably be associated with the terminal. That proposal is pretty much the one that has moved forward.
But even though many see the new proposal as much better than the original proposal, they still don’t like that Common land is being used for the terminal. “If a similar process happened to acquire six acres of the Halifax Common, the citizens would not be happy,” Dartmouth High teacher Mike Cosgrove told me Sunday, the first sunny, warm day of the year. “Most locals want better bus services, but Common Land is somewhat special. The Halifax Common has ball diamonds, football fields, basketball courts, tennis courts, a skate park, a swimming pool and a rock venue. In many ways it helps define the city. How many people spent time on the Halifax Common today?”
Before it was constructed at its present location, the Bridge Terminal was across the street in the Dartmouth Shopping Centre parking lot. That location is probably too small for the expanded terminal, but locals argue that vacant land across Wyse Road, across from the Bridge liquor store, would suffice. The city rejected that idea, however, mainly because of the price tag of acquiring the land, although its proximity to nearby residences was also a concern.
On the other hand, some very few people—most don’t live nearby– complain that the urban wilderness provides cover for criminals, and so welcome its removal. I find this argument uninformed; I’ve walked through the urban wilderness pretty much every day for five years, and have never had any problems. So far as I’m aware, there has only been once in that time when the wilderness has been the subject of a police action, and that involved someone running into it to avoid the cops, not using it as a cover for predation.
It is true that some of the high school kids hang out in the woods, and some of those might occasionally smoke pot, but in all the times I’ve crossed paths with them, the pot smokers have either been indifferent to my presence or passably courteous, at least for teenagers. I certainly don’t begrudge them the toking-in-the-woods experience that defined much of my own teenager years. (And look how responsible I turned out.) It’s a special kind of anal retentiveness that sees high school dope smoking as a reason to bulldoze a forest.
That said, the urban wilderness is awkwardly placed, and suffers from governmental neglect. It’s a neat idea, to create an urban wilderness, but like much else in Dartmouth, it has been ignored and left to rot. Park crews clean the place once a year (although the high school has more regular clean-ups), and the trails running through it are very poorly maintained– it’s typically mid-summer before I venture to cross it without boots. And there doesn’t appear to be any effort to rid the place of non-native plants or even to encourage much in the way of biodiversity. It’s really too bad that there was never a well-funded management plan for the wilderness; that there wasn’t explains much of the present ambivalence towards it.
All of these concerns are balanced by a great public good, of course: a much better, and safer, Bridge Terminal, which is already the busiest transit terminal east of Montreal. To its credit, Metro Transit has also included a terminal building, so commuters can find refuge from the elements; the lack of such a building is in my opinion the biggest drawback of the present terminal. If we are to build a reliable and user-friendly transit system—and we must—then this kind of terminal is essential.
So, I’ll be quite interested the public’s response to the proposal tonight. I’ll report back afterwards.
This article appears in Mar 4-10, 2010.
Good points, Tim
I live very near as well, and bus almost exclusively.
I hate to see the “urban wilderness” go, but the spot on Wyse that folks are talking about would involve too many buses having to make 2 left turns to get to it.
Dartmouth Common = cheap land for HRM.
I don’t disagree that the planned location is probably a decent choice – for me the single objection is that destroying that patch of woods once again sets a bad precedent. It may be a scrubby patch of woods but at least it’s not a manicured park. And as for the cost of acquiring private land (I do agree that over by the NSLC outlet isn’t the greatest spot) I seem to recall that finding cash to expropriate land to widen roads doesn’t seem to be too much of a problem.
And it seems to me like city council and HRM planning staff never saw a chunk of green space but that visions of paving and construction started dancing in their heads. They needed access to canoeing/kayaking related structures at Graham’s Grove, so they constructed a road right through that little park. And once King’s Landing is underway (assuming that it ever is), I fully expect large chunks of the green spaces along Alderney Drive to be gobbled up by asphalt.
I suggest that city council be held to a no net loss policy of green space, like for like. Destroy a hectare of park in a given area – create another hectare of park somewhere close by. Destroy a hectare of woods or scrub in a given area – create another hectare of the same somewhere close by. Destroy a hectare of turf in a commons – create a hectare of turf somewhere close by. And so forth.
Even better make it 1 for 2 so they have to think about it a bit.
What a bunch of NIMBYs last night!
“Put it across the street on the expensive land where it would effect other people’s homes”
The only person who made sense was the guy in the wheelchair!
What they should do IMO is either get rid of the Scotia Bank on the corner & put the station in the expanded spot. or cross the street to where it used to be & remove the Gas Station.
For too long anytime the City wants to, the Dartmouth Common has suffered and unlike a concert taking up the Halifax Common for a week or so, this will become permanent. Like Dartmouth high, The junior High, the damn Sportsplex ! All of this was common land once ! Yet they keep picking away at it…How soon before they dig up the grave yard & use that for something else ?
There really needs to be something done to not just save, but retake the land back, I unlike some others, was very pleased to see the old Dartmouth Library get torn down & the land revert back to Common land, but I see the parking lot is still there & the fence hasn’t been changed….couldn’t it be made into a play area for local kids ?
I wasn’t aware of the meeting last night, otherwise I might have gone… I do have to say though, as somebody new-ish to the area (I’ve been in the area for less than a year) I wouldn’t mind seeing the Common go. It’s poorly maintained, it lacks any real cohesion and any real interest for the average person. I’d rather take a stroll through the adjacent cemetery. I admit it serves a purpose, but, due to neglect, it’s essentially scrub land, which might as well be a swamp if it wasn’t placed on a hill. I’d rather go the extra mile and go to any of the walking paths along Lake Banook.
Hopefully they’ll be able to create a dedicated transit traffic corridor so that there’s no battles over letting the buses go through much like what goes on now.
Difficult choices to be sure. I don’t want to see areas like the Dartmouth Commons chopped up and paved over as has been happening over the years. Once urban green space is gone it is gone forever. Council should approach this kind of decision with a great deal of trepidation. I would have preferred another location in the city’s inventory of vacant sites. However . . .
This city does need to greatly expand and utilize public transportation. The urban cores of both Dartmouth and Halifax are so compact that an affordable and practical public transportation system could remove many of the private vehicles from our downtown streets. The planners at city hall should be looking at turning some streets in Halifax and Dartmouth into permanent pedestrian malls, ie. no cars. They shouldn’t allow anymore parking garages to be built on the peninsula. Metered parking fees should increase so as to discourage people from taking their cars downtown. They should concentrate on making this city more bike friendly and reducing the number of cars on the road and opening up REAL bike lanes would go a long way towards this.
It seems pointless to me to have people sitting in their idling cars on Nantucket Ave, waiting to get onto the Macdonald Bridge at rush hour, all the while looking out the window at the green space and thinking that they’ve done such a great thing by preserving it. We need those people to get OUT of their cars and onto affordable and efficient public transportation.
I could be more supportive of using a part of the Dartmouth Commons land for the bus terminal expansion if I saw evidence that the city bureaucrats were moving towards a sustainable transportation system in this town, but in many other instances I see them acting as if the main goal should be to make our roads as wide as possible so as to allow the greatest number of cars onto the peninsula from the hours of 7 am to 6 pm. A case in point: the Chebucto Road expansion was billed as a solution to current and future traffic levels onto the peninsula. Didn’t these guys get the memo? We should be trying to get rid of urban car culture, not build it up. It is a proven fact that building more roadways to ease congestion only serves to boost traffic levels.
And don’t get me started about the proposal to turn part of the Halifax Commons into a permanent outdoor concert venue . . . aaaaggghhhh!!!!
HRM hates grass. That is why they run around paving over it, building on it, selling it.
They think the urban area needs less grass.
The only place you see flowers is at a funeral, at a wedding, in a flower shop, on private property or some hanging baskets on light poles.
The history of Halifax & Dartmouth Common is replete with private speculation(19th century) and buildings labelled as ‘the common good’.
Ask your councillor when they last visited an art gallery or museum or theatre.
Then ask the premier the same questions.
Uneducated, ignorant people running the province and HRM.
End of rant.
In the woods behind the bus terminal, that’s a great place for me to hide after I commit my crimes!