This is all very rushed…
Apparently, premier Darrell Dexter was on CTV news tonight, and said that his office opposes changes to the land use bylaws that make the new terminal possible. (See here for more detail.)
You’ll recall that after initial plans to have the Bridge Terminal travel alongside Nantucket Street were met by complaints from nearby Dartmouth High School, the city changed the orientation of the terminal to run perpendicular from Nantucket, across to Thistle Street. The new plan reduced the size of the terminal from 6 to 3 acres, and moved it farther away from the school.
But apparently, Dexter has raised procedural issues. No one at HRM– and I’ve talked to several councillors, the mayor Peter Kelly, CAO Dan English, and others– seems to quite understand the objection, or why it’s raised at such a late date. As Kelly noted, the province could’ve raised any objections at any time through the process. The city is now well into its plans, and hopes to start construction by fall.
Dan English will meet with Kevin Malloy, the deputy minister of Service Nova Scotia, tomorrow to attempt to iron out differences.
This article appears in Jun 10-16, 2010.
Dexter is being a dick.
Its about time that someone objected to the city paving more greenspace
GC– that’s really not the issue: if the province derails the present plan, there’s nothing at all stopping the city from moving forward with the first plan (along Nantucket). That would bulldoze twice the green space, and bring the terminal within 80 feet of the school. Anyone complains, the city can say, “blame Dexter.”
Once again the idiots who run my home fuck their constituents over.
What the fuck do I care though? I’m getting a car soon and then I plan to never ride a fucking bus again. I’m pro environment but I’ve had it with this shitty, backwards (like everything else in Nova Scotia) transit system. Install a real one and I’ll consider ditching the air polluter.
Dexter put the terminal on Dartmouth Common in the brief time he was on Dartmouth council (1995)
He needs to read the HRM charter because the decision last week cannot be appealed.
If he wants to stop the present plan he must declare a ‘Provincial Interest’ and go from there. A lot of NDP people opposed to the terminal plan did not show up for the public hearing so I guess they are using the back door political route.
Going back to the original plan would save $4 million and doing a deal with Scotiabank could keep the terminal further away from the school.
Ask him who called him and lobbied against the site.
This is a disappointment because, frankly, we need a new terminal at the bridge. The one there now is a joke. Further delays will only do a disservice to transit users, forcing more of them, like hishighness here, to abandon sustainable transportation.
Haha wicked!
Dexter is trying to make a “popular” decision. Problem is, it’ll backfire.
If we had sustainable transportation here I wouldn’t have to abandon anything. But when you have a system where two busses going to the same place for a lot of their route go by 2 minutes apart forcing you to wait 28 minutes if you miss the second one, when you have a system where in the year 2 fuckin thousand 10 we don’t have night busses, when you have a system where one of the major terminals (i.e. the bridge terminal) looks like it was designed by an office temp with a bad attitude, that’s when you start to think “You know, maybe destroying the environment isn’t so bad…”
I really wish we did have a good transit system here jennier, but like everything else in Nova Scotia progress is held up by the old guard, afraid of any ideas that were conceived after 1950. And then when someone in government does want to make a positive change they have to fight tooth and nail against ignoramus residents and backwards colleagues to do it.
I wish I didn’t have family ties here I’d have been gone years ago.
HRM used bait and switch and now they have been caught.
Back to square one, and don’t lie to the legislature.
Oh, and send Mary Ellen Donovan back to law school, she doesn’t know the meaning of ‘adjacent’.
Green space???? That small piece of dirty scrub is definately not green space.
The one time I walked through I saw about 10 high school age kids smoking pot.
This appears to be the only usefull thing that so called ‘green space’ is good for, except a bus terminal of course.
Public land used for public transit. Makes sense to me.
I still say leave the damn greenbelt alone !
Go across the street to where the Bus station USED TO BE !
Rip out that Esso station & use that area for the buses, THere’s also a section of that parking lot by the gas station that could also help expand the size of the bus lot.
You then have your new bus station, right at the bridge.
You don’t have buses too close to the school.
The trees stay where they are.
I don’t see why that cannot be done.