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.
