It is time that a certain transit system woke up and realized that it is servicing a big city now and needs to grow with the times.
Specifically speaking: the ferry NEEDS to run longer than 11:45pm to actually accomodate people who don’t have a parental curfew i.e. adults, who want to return home later than 11:45 without the hassle and expense of grabbing a cab.
Some main bus routes should be available during the wee hours too. Other cities seem to have after midnight transit successfully figured out. Time for our antiquated transit system to rethink it’s mandate.
>>>Ferry Fan<<< (topside)
This article appears in Aug 27 – Sep 2, 2009.
I live within stumbling distance of the ferry, and I think it should be open a half an hour after the bars close… Even if the buses aren’t running is a 3:00 am ferry really too much to ask for? Not for the amount of taxes we pay in this shit hole!
Or, perhaps they don’t do it because there isn’t sufficient demand for a bus or ferry service that late at night?
I was on the ferry at 11:30 pm last night and the wife and I were the only ones on. Yeah, there’s no need for it, considering the fuel they burn and that MT is at an operating loss already.
Every transit system operates at a loss – especially the ones, like in Halifax, that are planned in the most haphazard way possible. Calgary operates at a profit, but then again, they power their whole sytem with wind power.
Who is going home at 11:30 – I mean someone who is going out all night isn’t going home at 11:30, hence why you were probably the only ones on the ferry, Dr. Fever.
If people knew it was an option then they’d be queuing up for the ferry vs. saving up for a $25 cab ride. But likely later than 11:30.
To determine demand they would have to depend on surveys, advertising and some test runs – not subjective analysis based on a point in time where no one thinks of it as a possibility!
I think it is a conspiracy to insure that the crazy people in Dartmouth are in lock down by midnight.
Yes the crazy people in Dartmouth are home by midnight – the crackheads of Halifax on the other hand get to: party all the time, party all the time, party all the ti-i-i-i-i-i-ime!
I love the idea of a 3am ferry. Nothing better than a boat full of drunk kids. Can’t see any problems arising from that.
Yes god forbid we’d have a ferry full of dunk kids vs. a road network full of drunk drivers… Couldn’t agree more… lol
Yes, because those are the only options. Drunk driving or 3am ferry, that’s it.
Alright Dartmouthy, So they can. Want to know why? Calgary (as well as many other Prairie cities) is completely sub-devised into little squares, no incline, the soil is soft and pliable, and there was enough oil money to fund a train system in the early 80’s. Also, Calgary has a population of about 1 million people, whereas Halifax has a population of about 300 K. The median income is about twice that of Halifax as well, so there’s more tax dollars. Want to compare apples to apples? Well, try the Winnipeg transit system vs. Halifax’s. It’s actually very similar, considering the aforementioned advantages of terrain. The current fare is 2.30, and the latest most of the buses run is 12:30. All of this information is readily available on the Winnipeg city website, by the way, if you can filter through their crappy website design.
Alright Dr. Fever, Calgary was building their LRT network when it had less population than Halifax has now… in the late 70s, early 80s. Sure they have oil money but it’s all a matter of priorities – we need a four pad hocey rink that costs $40 million right? Yeah we don’t need good transit.
And… the median family income in Calgary is about $85K, it is $67K in Halifax…
No wonder Calgary has 1.2 Million people in their CMA now… they had the forethought to expand their transit network to allow dense residential developments farther from the downtown without the prerequisite traffic snarls…
And yes people do judge civic infrastructure before choosing to move somewhere. I’m sure people from away area really excited at the possibility of a place where transit consists of only busses and ferries, that shut down at midnight.
When the taxi system is so heavily regulated (like everything else in our socialist wonderland) that you can’t possibly get one at 3 in the morning Yorkke… yes those are about the only options.
That is unless you plan on walking, or flailing your arms on Barrington St. for an hour looking for a cab.
Then when you finally see one with it’s lights on (which in any other civilized berg would mean they don’t yet have a hare) you realize that the cab drives by full of people…
Only in Halifax would they not subscribe to that rule… so frustrating!
Wrong again Dartmouthy, Calgary had a population of about 600 K in 1981 when the C-train was built. Not to mention too, that was the height of an oil boom that was bringing an unseen amount of money into the area. Halifax at this time shows a population of about 280-300 K depending on who you ask.
Well I am off slightly Dr Fever but so are you.
http://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tut…
Calgary had 500,000 people when they began BUILDING their LRT system. By the time it was done, in 1981, they had 600,000 people.
Halifax has 370,000 people according to the 2006 census… not sure if in the past 3 years we have passed the 400,000 mark or not – if we did I’m sure it’s composed of people with no vision who are more than happy to shoot down any ideas that would make Halifax a more livable city that appeals to folks looking to move here… like yourself.
Halifax… in their 25 Year plan (!) hasn’t even begun to look at LRT service, or to begin planning for ROWs – and instead hopes that they will be able to buy the land required for it in the future… Yes that’s vision, planning and forethought, Halifax style.
Having used the Calgary system for 7+ years on a daily basis, I can assure you that it still falls short on many levels. It’s insanely overcrowded at peak hours, frequently requires you to make an insane amount of transfers to reach your destination, and still offers little or no service to several areas of the city.
I question whether you’ve ever spent much time in Calgary, Dartmouthy, because I nearly spit out my coffee at your suggestion that the residential developments there are ‘dense’ and that the infrastructure showed ‘forethought’. Anyone who’s ever lived there should be well aware of the city’s issues of urban sprawl, heavy traffic, and various other results of poor city planning.
I really don’t know what the point of the Calgary transit comparison is anyway, because they don’t offer late night service either.
I’ve never lived there, only visited there on a few occasions meOw… I have family there though. I’m sure it is overcrowded, because it is popular… ie.e it makes money. They are expanding as fast as their bulldozers will let them. Though their transit does operate beyond 1am most nights which is a start.
I don’t think what you describe is necessarily poor planning, more so too much success – too much growth in a short period of time. Even the best planned city would have trouble coping with the population increase that Calgary has enjoyed over the past few decades.
And… Calgary is 50% denser than Halifax you know, as far as Stats Canada is concerned…?
Where would we put a light rail system Dartmouthy? Over the harbour? Up and down the hills? I’d love to see a light rail system contend with steep inclines in freezing rain 5 months of the year. Yeah that makes complete sense. Again, Calgary is flat, has little to no bedrock to contend with, and is thousands of kilometres away from anything that resembles Halifax Harbour. Apples to apples, Halifax’s system (although imperfect in many ways) serves us well, considering the issues our city has (that being terrain mostly). It’s good to see that people still see Alberta as a shining beacon of prosperity and perfection.
There are many ROWs still present Dr. Fever… All along Barrington Street along the harbor for example… pretty flat too. From Dwontown to Sackville all along the harbor would make the most sense to me – and if they ever replace the old bridge they could put a train on that too.
Most LRT’s can deal with a 10% grade with no problems, even at 55MPH, like in Boston. Bedrock isn’t an issue, and anyway it’s shale… one of the easiest things to tear though. Ever hear of the cut and cover method? Not that it is really applicable, I’m not talking about subways, but still – that is how the majority of the world’s subways systems are built.
If we really have 5 months of freezing rain; which we don’t; what makes you think a bus can fare better in that kind of weather?
Just about anywhere else is a shining beacon of perfection compared to Halifax, in all honesty.
If the number one would run until 3 am that would be excellent. I could get off at the Dartmouth side and stumble down the hill to my house. It would most likely be more useful to more people than a 3am ferry.
The subway in toronto doesn’t start running until 9am in some spots on sundays…
As nice as it would be to have the busses running all night, it just isn’t feasible.
Shit, I’d be happy if they ran the 4 every half hour past 6pm instead of every hour. Or the 52 every half hour on Saturday nights. THAT would be nice.
Two Words… “Alberta Advantage”
Four more… “No Provincial Sales Tax”
And one more for good measure… “privatization”
About LRT’s… if you can see a freight train run along the shore line you can have an LRT. Enough said?
meow, Calgary is my home town and since I’ve come East I’ve had people tell me how old the infrastructure is and that’s WHY the layout is simply BAD considering the horse and buggy got parked a while ago. And I agree the term “dense” does not apply at all to sprawling housing development. In fact, Calgary is probably the nicest city in Canada BECAUSE of their planning. For example, lake communities WITH professional development centres, grocery stores, doctor’s offices, schools AND low-income housing… doesn’t matter how “rich” the neighborhood, affordable housing is spread throughout the city rather than depressed areas becoming more so. They go a step further to layout the foot path connector to hook up with Fish Creek Park before a single property gets sold. HRM could learn a lot from Cow Town.
As for multiple transfers on the transit system.. ALL buses hit the LRT station (transfer 1) ALL trains hit the downtown core (transfer 2). If you need a train or a bus after that you should probably move to that end of town… it’s the biggest city in Canada. Haligonian’s couldn’t possibly appreciate that given (example) Tantallon is to Downtown HRM as Canyon Meadows/South Calgary is to downtown Calgary and, meow, you know the city limit isn’t isn’t even close to Canyon Meadows.
One other thing, Calgary has the Bow and Elbow rivers to contend with as well as the Reservoir and varying lake communities… we built bridges (no toll)
FYI, all Calgary transit routes make their final departures from DT prior to 1am, and even then, only certain routes are active at that hour.
“I don’t think what you describe is necessarily poor planning, more so too much success”…What an absurdly optimistic picture you paint. You should write speeches for politicians, Dartmouthy! If godawful treeless subdivisions sprawling as far as the eye can see with almost no infrastructure to support them is your measure of success, then I guess I’m kinda glad Halifax has been less ‘successful’ than Calgary.
O Alberta, the land of milk and honey….and industrial waste, and environmental catastrophes, and housing shortages, and redneck millionaires and their plastic wives driving their his-n-hers Hummers to the Walmart down the block. I miss it, really I do….
In any case, a comparison of Halifax to Calgary is utterly ridiculous. Old, economically depressed, small population city versus new, excessively wealthy, large population city. Of course Calgary is going to look like bright, shiny utopia in comparison. Just wait till the oil money dries up, then we’ll check in on those cute little suburbs an hour’s drive from city centre and see how they’re faring.
Calgary’s C-Train free-zone downtown is a great idea! I used it it to explore the city a few times last winter. Heck it was only a 5 minute or so walk from the hotel I stayed at.
The other smart idea CT had was to put 60-foot articulated buses on dedicated BRT service that costs the same as normal buses and gets you across town with limited stops. It was simple to get from my hotel to the Westbrook Mall and back. Even their “community transit” buses to small neighbourhoods are well planned out. Half of my sightseeing in Cgy was thanks to getting on the wrong buses and getting an unplanned, yet enjoyable, city tour.
Only downside was taking the C-train in the wrong direction and deciding to get off at a station in a very, very sketchy neighbourhood to catch the return trip. I walked over to the shopping mall nextdoor and I might as well been standing at the Dartmouth Bridge Terminal… same sketchy type of people everywhere and I was probably the only white guy in the whole complex. But I did find a few good deals on clothing 🙂
kay are you talking about those two streams? A big difference between a few hundred feet max 9the streams) to a mile (the harbour). The bridges still have a couple of hundred years or more of life in them (so no LTR on the MacDonald for a while).
Maybe Calgary operates at a profit because they don’t have enough equipment. When I was based at CFB Calgary, the base had more snow removal equipment than the city.
Three simple words: “Vote-for-Victor”
Hey uh, kay, comparing the Bow river to Halifax Harbour is like comparing the Red River to the Atlantic Ocean. There’s no way in hell that those piss streams compare. To build an LTR along the harbour using existing infrastructure may sound like a good idea but in reality, considering the costs involved, the high-speed ferry system works far better for those looking to avoid the shit-storm that is the Bedford Highway.
I’ve heard people bitch about not having a light rail system in the downtown core.
Know what I think?
Shut the fuck up and walk the godamn hills you lazy bastards.
It is not Metro Transit’s responsibility to chauffeur a bunch of drunks. There are many other improvements that need to be implemented before later service is considered. Also, as to the comparison of Halifax VS Calgary, I have lived in both, and one thing I do know is that Calgary is an incredibly bland city built with dirty oil money. For it’s size, there is actually less to do in Calgary then Halifax.
Yes many other improvements on the horizon… like a Fast Ferry for Bedford and a new 4 Pad Skating Rink for Bedford and a New Central Library for Halifax… there’s more than $100 million right there… which is about 10km of LRT.
Glad you citizens have your priorities straight.
No wonder no one really moves here and we’re stuck with less than half a million people… Well except for MeOw of course.
Kay, if Calgary is so wonderful, why don’t you just go the fuck back?
No one asked you to move your life east to marry gary beals.
Does HRM actually own the land next to the CN tracks or is the municipality going to be paying a premium for land leases to lay down LRT tracks and other infrastructure. Don’t forget that CN can control trespassing and public crossing of their own tracks and they won’t be interested in adjusting their freight schedules and those of VIA trains to ensure safe pedestrian crossings of CN tracks.
HRM will end up tunnelling under the CN tracks for pedestrian access to the LRT just like the AMT did in Montreal at Dorval to bypass the CP/CN lines. More money! And HRM doesn’t exactly have a bunch of experienced people when it comes to managing and operating LRT. I’m not even convinced the fast ferry will result in a huge drop in single occupant vehicles along the Bedford Highway.
MT needs to offer more “direct” routes into downtown from outlying areas, expand their queue jumping lanes and priority lights for buses and even convert some of the dual traffic lanes into car-pool and bus only use at rush hours. The single occupant vehicle drivers need some sort of incentive to use park n ride facilities so make it a bit of a hassle for them to travel it into town with 3 empty seats in their cars.
LOL Pretty Kitty, so Kay is the reason Gary turned gay 🙂
10 KM of LRT for 100 million?! How dare we uphold literacy and physical activity! Guess we should have an undereducated, overweight populous, but hell, we’ve at least got 10 KM of light rail! Whoo! We can go from Bedford to the Fairview container terminal! Only another 100 mil and we can go from BagTown to Downtown! Dartmouthy, you’re the greatest city planner ever! You really need to switch jobs. Fuck, you’re a tool.
For a city of its size, Halifax doesn’t have that bad of a transit system. Rather than comparing Halifax to Toronto or Montreal, let’s compare apples to apples – Victoria vs Halifax, for example. Sure Victoria has cool double decker buses, but their system stops a lot earlier than in Halifax and it runs a lot less frequently. No express buses there, either. Plus Victoria is a really bland, superficial, pretentious city that just plain sucks.
I think that Metro Transit is doing just fine and improving every year – new express buses start tomorrow by the way! Light rail is not economically feasible in a city of less than 1 million people like Halifax.
VOR: makes sense, doesn’t it 😛
Hey we have double deckers here. Thy’re just operated by a tour company.
The X-route is a good start (Tantallon to Hfx). I suppose the next one will be from Musquodobit Hbr. And with any luck, Elmsdale/Airport.
Heaven forbid we get any sports infrastructure or new library. I’m more apt to use those facilities than public transport but cities need all of these.
Many many moons ago when I did use transit the biggest problem was getting to Lr Sackville from Dartmouth (then you had to go via Halifax) and timely transfers. Sackville has been pretty well resolved. I imagine there may still be some problems with transfers but have no doubt you’ll get those complaints in any urban centre.
Takes one to know one hey Dr. Fever? haha
And judging from your flippant responses Dr. Fever, an uneducated populace is what we’ve already got… anyway you’re much too busy trolling these boards to have the time to go read a book at the library, or visit a 4 pad hockey rink in Bedford. Which means, you’re probably incredibly overweight too… especially after all of your trips to the Hungry Hut…
So why should you care? 🙂
Beyond the personal jabs, dartmouthy, dr fever is right. The city does have it’s priorities straight, and sorry, pretty sure that the lack of a LRT is not hindering this city’s growth. Stop fabricating arguments just to try and get your point across.
Sorry bub, I’m well educated, and yeah, know what? I won’t use a skating rink. However, other people will. I guess the kids that would go to the library and use the skating rink get to fall to the wayside, because Halifax needs light rail, we’ll never get past being just Halifax unless we get it, and we’ll never have a proper public transit system (even given that I and others provided more than enough proof that our transit system more than exceeds other cities when it comes to size, and equivalent city income) unless we get an H-Train.
Re: Calgary.
Visit Calgary anytime weekday between 4 and 6 pm, and you’ll never compare Calgary’s mass transit or traffic favourably to Halifax again. Residents complain mightily. Traffic is actually really bad outside of rushour too!
If you can’t visit Calgary during rushhour, just look at a current city map and see how little those LRT lines extend into the suburbs. Calgarians have wanted the lines extended for years and despite all their oil money, it’s hard to make it happen. Transit systems are incredibly expensive, even for a city like Calgary that is ideally set up for one. (80% of people work in the downtown core, new city so planning from the ground up is down, relatively flat and little bedrock just clay/soil, no lakes other than a few man-made custom destined ones, and 2 rivers)
Ok, even if we can’t have a late night booze-filled ferry on the weekends, could we at least have ferry service before 10:30 past 6:30 on Sunday?! Not everyone works 9-5, monday to friday. For all those poor souls who work shifts and have to find a way to commute on “God’s Day”, my heart goes out to you.
“In fact, Calgary is probably the nicest city in Canada BECAUSE of their planning.”
What a utopia you’ve described! A lot of people listen to these things and move there and are sorely disappointed! Calgary has a wonderful PR department, but not always fair, just like Kay’s comments!!
I agree they do a lot of planning and some of it is good, but the net effect is a sprawling city of cookie cutter homes.
“For example, lake communities”
For anyone who has never lived in Calgary, there are mabye 4 lake communities. These 4 lakes were dug with backhoes and they look like a puddle dug with a backhoe. (Ugly.) There is at least one of them that can’t be visited (like you’d want to swim in it) unless you buy property in the neighbourhood. There is another one that is the city’s reservoir and you can boat on it but not touch the water (swim). The other 2 are just stupid looking. Calgary should stick to bragging about their mountains (although at 1-2 hour drive away and not by mass transit!) rather than their fake lakes!
In my opinion, Calgary is a place to live if money is the most important thing in your life. Period.
It’s also a city that will have tremendous water shortages in the future.
Kay, if it’s a nice city in your eyes, then move home. You’re the most delusional poster on this site!
Sorry to the OP… didn’t mean to hijack your thread with all of this nonsense!
My only point – back there somewhere – was that Halifax doesn’t even plan for the eventuality. They have no plans for a proper transit system – someday, even if it’s 25 years from now – that doesn’t rely on fossil fuels to make it happen.
Of course the city has other priorities, rightfully so. It is not black and white, cities have to juggle lots of things. Transit though is integral – especially when you have a lower density city that sprawls all over the place… and for it’s size urban Halifax is pretty spread out.
Of course we need libraries and skating rinks and parks and bike lanes… and ferries that run past 5pm on a Sunday or past midnight on Friday and Saturday nights…
The only reason I brought Calgary into play here is they are a Canadian city that was _planning_ for LRT construction when it was around the same size Halifax is NOW.
Halifax, even 25 years out, has no such plan and would rather rely on expensive to operate and maintain custom made ferries, and expensive to operate and maintain busses to prop up the local unions or whatever… without thinking about other options. They could put aside a few million a year over 25 years – they could offer bonds – they could press the feds/province for money in the future. It’s an eventuality that Halifax will expand and grow. I’d like to see it be successful.
The common denominator for any successful city I’ve ever been to – has been a great modern transit system.
Not a $40 million skating rink for the burbs.
Even if they were to expand the obviously successful Metro Link – even if they had express busses that skip every three stops during rush hour like any other city – anything!? Doesn’t have to be an LRT, though they are the bomb.
Instead they consider $40 million on a “fast ferry” to service 5% of the city’s population – coincidentally the same 5% that our mayor will be trolling for votes when he runs in provincial politics… with a 4 pad skating rink and a fast ferry to his name. Wonderful!
What’s with all this talk of Halifax getting an LRT? Sorry, but as cool as they are, it’s not going to happen here, nor should it – most transportation planners nowadays see them as far too expensive to build and maintain when compared to buses. A decent, good quality bus system with dedicated bus lanes and priority signals would work just as well while being cheaper and far more flexible.
For more information, check out this handy “Information sheet” on commuter rail in Halifax:
http://www.halifax.ca/metrotransit/Commute…
Yes I’ve seen the “information sheet”, i.e. propaganda from a city unwilling to look to alternatives beyond gas guzzling buses and looking for reasons to justify their road budgets.
If you notice they don’t document what the population size of the the cities WERE when they were LOOKING at building their LRT’s… just comparisons between present day populations of cities who have had rail transit for DECADES vs. Halifax, which has never had anything like that. Meaningless comparisons.
Any city that has instituted an LRT has grown leaps and bounds… since an LRT can carry more in “two lanes” that what a 16 lane highway can transport.
Also, they assume that the only alternative for an LRT is to use the rail cut along the arm, which since it doesn’t terminate anywhere near downtown, isn’t feasible. There are other alternatives… that were completely ignored.
If they were looking for a way to avoid any real discussion about LRT in this city… I don’t think they could have tried any harder!
More meaningless garbage from Peter Kelly, David McCusker, and their cronies. Kudos to them on this fine “document” lol!
dartmouthy, while I’m no fan of Peter Kelly either, the fact remains that constructing and maintaining a decent light rail transit system in Halifax would not be feasible. We’re only a city of just under 400,000 people and not expected to reach 1 million for at least another 50 years. Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver didn’t grow only because of a nice new light rail system, but for plenty of other obvious reasons as well. What advantage does light rail have over buses, really? Light rail still produces plenty of emissions, just from a different source. Express buses and dedicated bus lanes, even dedicated roads for buses, would work just as well as light rail and be more flexible at a fraction of the cost. Read up on what today’s transportation planners around the world are saying, or even take a transportation planning course yourself if it’s something you’re interested in and passionate about.
Well you are right in one way: developing a transit system such as this – or even having a plan over the next 25 years to have a transit system such as this which is really what I am referring to; needs a development vision as a part of the puzzle. Which is pretty well non exsistant here.
Patchwork suburbia (like the new Bedford west development and Clayton Park/BLIP) without an actual high speed transit corridor – is destined to become a failure – and by failure I mean people waiting for hours in traffic between point A and point B – whether they are on a bus or not. Buses wait in traffic too, and hold up traffic as well – they are on the roadway! Priority signalling may get them through an intersection first but then it’s back to gridlock.
If you are referring to creating roads just for BRTs – well then you are talking about $20 million US per lane per mile – about the same or more than what LRT costs – with higher maintenance costs vs. rail. Except LRT can transport many times the people in the same space for the same cost. Not to mention you need one operator per LRT train (which can hold thousands of passengers.) How many thousands of people can you fit on _A_ bus?
So I’m not sure what “modern” transportation planners are saying, but if they are really so against LRT as an alternative why are they being built again and again across North America and around the world… to this day? And into the future according to many plans and projects currently on the books?
I think the missing piece of the puzzle is an intense immigration agenda for Halifax too – that’s how Calgary and Edmonton and Vancouver and Toronto got big – it’s not because us Canadians are having tons of babies anymore. Any population growth is through immigration. Until we get Federal and provincial help with that, well our city is dead in the water.
So do you build the infrastructure and hope that people come? Do you wait for the people to come, and then build the infrastructure when it costs five times as much? Some combination?
And these depressing predictions from city hall about Halifax having less than 500,000 people – even in 25 years – will turn out to be true.
It seems to me it is a catch 22/self fulfilling prophesy on the part of city hall. Or is that what is coined being a “realist” these days around here? Yikes… Sad.
The 370,000 figure gets thrown around a lot. The fact is, that figure is for HRM as a whole, which is largely comprised of rural areas far, far away from anything that one would consider part of the city. The actual urban “city” part of HRM has about 280,000 people, and they are spead out pretty thin too.
I cannot understand why people in Halifax just don’t seem to get the fact that they live in a small town, and they can never expect the level of services they’d see in a medium-sized or large city.
We’re NEVER going to have Go-Trains, Metros, skyscrapers, a real stadium, a Ferrari dealership, Armani and Chanel boutiques, or a cheesy 70s rock band names after us. Get over it. If you like real cities, move to a real city. Seriously.
That said, there are are lots of things we do have, and it would be great to see better planning for how we will build on those things. Halifax could be a beautiful, walkable, “cool” little town if our leaders had some vision of how to build on what it has – instead of striving for pipe dreams that can never happen, or destroying what could be for fear of losing what’s in many cases already been lost.
And… emissions wise, Calgary powers their whole LRT system on wind power… pretty sweet I’d say. Does that qualify as emissions? Oh I forgot I’m supposed to hate Calgary. Well at least they have a development vision.
Even a tram along lower water would be pretty sweet!
What is “depressing” about a projection that shows that HRM will avoid the population exposions of cities like Vancouver and Calgary?
What kind of naive “frontier” mentality has you convinced the we can only thrive with the type of over-crowding, grotesquely inflated property prices, forests of hastily cobbled together high-rises and gridlocked traffic lanes that we see in those cities?
“Intense immigration agenda”…WTF?! Have you BEEN to Richmond in the past 10 years? Surrey?
We are already suffering for un-proportional rising property prices here along the south shore…50 of the 150 islands in the St. Margaret’s/Mahone Bay area have already been sold for peanuts to wealthy Europeans and Germans, who waste no time in fencing in the island and posting “verbotten” signs along the perimeter…this is what you want for Nova Scotia?
After Hong Kong returned to China, the lower mainland of BC was inundated with the wealthiest .0005% of china’s poulation, they bought up land, condos and housing, sight unseen, some building were sold out with 15 minutes of legally being allowed to go on sale! many of these homes were flipped a few hourse later!! What is this? Potential housing for Canadians being scalped like fucking Hannah Montanna tickets?
Halifax doen’t need more public transportation…people don’t use the one it has to full capacity.
We need
1)clean power (3rd generation nuclear)
2) small and efficient personal vehicles like in the EU…3 wheeled cars, electric scooters etc etc
3) Improved snow-clearing and repairs to roads
You want to ride the train like so many sardines…move to London
How can those fucking Metro Transit boneheads put a bus yard off the Prospect Road but not service this road? I, like many residents, know there are more than enough people wanting to travel by bus but as usual, we’re fucking ignored.
LadyS has a good idea !
a bus that runs over to Dartmouth & back. (could cut down on the drunk drivers trying to find change for the bridge;)
Also instead of rails service trying to get up & down our massive hills lol… why not put in a Subway !
From Cole Harbour, Downtown Dartmouth, across (ok ,under) the harbour to Hellifax with a branch out to Bedford/Tantallon way, & out towards Herring cove area.
What is “depressing” is… with projections of a $17 billion dollar debt, increasing forever, how do you think we’ll ever get out of that trap?
More Tax payers.
Are you going to singlehandedly increase the population of Nova Scotia? I didn’t think so. We need an “intense immigration agenda” because it’s the only hope in hell that we can keep our precious socialistic way of life. Otherwise, get used to the pot holes, the crumbling infrastructure. Cause once the baby boomers kick it, or at the very least are only paying property taxes…. we are all fucked.
So yeah, I’ll move on to NYC before then I hope.
But I totally agree on the 3rd generation nuclear Frosty… like Pebble Bed. Too bad we have laws against any nuclear capacity here whatsoever! lol.
TTFN – its reasons such as those that “people don’t use the (current public transit infrastructure) we have to full capacity”. Among others.
I don’t want an LRT. I just want to be able to use the existing transit system to get home at the end of the evening!
Musquobodoit Fucking Goddamn Harbour is going to get one of these X buses and the Prospect Rd. can’t get anything? I’ve lived here for 15 years and have seen dozens of subdivisons fly up – the traffic has quadrupled over the last decade and still no one at MT gives a shit.
AGREE AGREE AGREE
Musquoboboit Harbour isn’t getting service this year, Tantallon is first online when it comes to the MetroX and Sambro is going so see a MetroX bus used as a Community Transit bus, both started today.
As for the bus barn being built off Propect Road, that facility will save many tens of thousands of dollars in deadheading labour (ie. overtime) and bridge tolls (which don’t come into HRM’s revenue fund). Cutting back on those costs will allow that money to be redirected into actual bus route expansions so hopefully Prospect will be considered but it takes a community to demand it formally. Get a group together and send out surveys to homes/businesses and ask that they respond, then take that data and the completed questionaires to city hall and demand they look at it again.
Tantallon, the #7/107 Highway and eventually the the 102 Corridor are getting service because the funding received was specifically earmarked for those projects. Those regions demanded and showed a need for transit service. You can’t expect the Feds and Provincial officials to ignore money being redirected to something that wasn’t approved as in the original documents.
There is lots of good reading to be found re. transit initiatives:
http://www.halifax.ca/metrotransit/news/do…
http://www.halifax.ca/metrotransit/ssi/Fut…
Ask Bostonians what they think of their $14.6 billion “Big Dig”. Exactly what do u think a subway anywhere in this city would cost.
LTR – if you’re lucky you might be able to use CN tracks, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. The bitching that was going on for the little bit of land appropiation for the North St widening was bad enough. Could you remotely imagine what would happen if the city tried appropriating land for an LTR?
A subway in Halifax? LOL!!!!
Man oh man, you people should all work for HRM. With all your education and years of experience in city planning, you would all be valuable assets in the city. Here’s an idea, why don’t you all take these great ideas of yours and inundate the city with email suggestions instead of wasting your time and blowing hot air around here.
me0w, “treeless subdivisions sprawling as far as the eye can see with almost no infrastructure to support them”
Calgary is a city on the prairies. Don’t be a dumb fuck. People don’t build infrastructure to support trees *double-take* And the “oil money” isn’t going to dry up given the leading edge technology in this country comes out of that town.
Fever, “comparing the Bow river to Halifax Harbour is like comparing the Red River to the Atlantic Ocean…”
Hardly matters if you’re stuck on one side and need to get to the other.
Broc, you don’t get out much, do ya?
kitty, “No one asked you to move your life east to marry gary beals”
Who the FUCK is Gary Beals? Actually, I don`t care. And you’re wrong, kitty. I was asked to move here.
VOR, “…Gary turned gay”
Oh, it’s a choice and one is not actually born a homosexual. Thanks for clearing that up *wink*
Hold on to your hats Haligonians. You’re government is providing lucrative tax incentives for companies to setup shop here and it’s working (ie RIM… and they got a NEW MT bus route just for their employees.. that`s how it works). The low property values (and presumed academia) are sucking them in and that’s EXACTLY what happened to Calgary in the 90’s. Head offices operating out of Van or TO took advantage of the “Alberta Advantage” economy and the population soared. Calgary’s not a coastal city nor a border town so the argument that it’s filled with immigrants comes from all the BIG businesses recruiting them or relocating them to new digs. Now you can guess why I’m here and maybe you can even understand why I won’t go back to Calgary. It used to be a nice little town.
Mr Frosty: hear hear. I’m with you on this one. It’s somehow a “bad” thing that the urban area of HRM is projected to stay small (if under 500,000 is “small”) for decades? We “need” massive immigration just to pump up numbers? There’s a fucked up argument if I ever heard one..improving public transit by doubling the population. If that hypothetical population, for the convenience of transit planners, concentrated itself in useful locations, we’d have Soviet (or Toronto or Detroit) style apartment projects.
The idea of solving anything through increased population is absurd. We’re still mired in that poverty of thinking, though…individual productivity continues to drop as we all become service workers, so the only solution for many is either to breed more or to import immigrants. All that does, with current trends, is increase the problem.
Maybe it’s just me, but if we had a wealthier population, rather than just more relatively poor people, that would be a better way of increasing the tax base. We’d also avoid the replacement of dozens of square kilometres of woods and agricultural land by cookie-cutter subdivisions, new roads, and shopping malls.
Christ, we should be overjoyed with the population we have here right now. That’s why people love snapping up land here, for fuck’s sakes…they’re seeking to escape their own overcrowded hellholes. So we have people who want to recreate the sordid conditions elsewhere? Go figure. Maybe they don’t travel enough.
So who is going to pay for your socialist services Realist… you know… when the baby boomers kick it? Are you? Or are you a Baby Boomer, and therefore, don’t care?
And oh yes… Soviet style apartment buildings… oh you must mean like the Trillium going up on South Park, right? lol.
You are quick to shoot down why we need the population without explaining who is going to pay for your precious “one tier” health care system once all of the tax payers, themselves, are on life support. An interesting future you have cooked up for everyone… hey at least there will be lots of land to go die on when there is no hospital beds for you.
The problem is that MT feels the need to spend money encouraging drivers to take public transit instead, rather than spend money making current bus riders happier. If you are complaining that service in your area sucks, it means you probably already take it, you just wish it were better. They think it’s better to get a fast ferry for bedford for people who don’t currently take the bus at all.
If it works, more people will take MT, which will increase their budget, and hopefully will then be able to increase current service. What will more likely happen though is that people who live in bedford will continue to take their cars, so the ferry will be mostly empty, most of the time, which will make MT ridership stats look lower than before.
That “Soviet style apartment buildings” comment was rich – like buildings around here are designed so much better. Whenever I cross the Makay bridge into Dartmouth and look down I always think of Chernobyl.
I don’t think the quality of service offered by MT to the average user (ie: not the affluent suburbanite commuters) will ever improve unless some major changes take place within the organization. Essentially, they need someone who is actually interested in providing responsive, quality service to users to step in, clean house and rebuild the whole organization from the top down. The problem with Metro Transit and the reason things will never change is that a culture or apathy and mediocrity exists at all levels of the organization. Metro Transit has the potential, with a little foresight and better planning, to be a great system but sadly it will never see that potential realized.
Gee I always thought that of the North end of Hali.
Bro Tim what exactly about the North End of Halifax makes you think of Chernobyl? The tree lined streets of the Hydrostone? The character-filled homes that surround Needham Park? The European style market on Young Street? The tasteful condominium buildings? Please elaborate.
Oh Kay, always so quick to display your base nature in any argument. Why don’t you try insulting someone without sounding like a dockyard hooker sometime, hm?
As usual, your reading comprehension skills are terribly lacking. The infrastructure I was referring to is for the PEOPLE in those ugly subdivisions. You know, roads, transit services, etc. Trees could even be considered part of that infrastructure. Much of Calgary already naturally supports tree growth, and trees could be planted and thrive even on the more arid land there. Any simpleton should be able to see the benefit of trees in new developments, but since you’re not just any simpleton, I’ll spell it out for you. Aside from providing much-needed shade and blocking wind, they help reduce heat-island effects, absorb carbon from the air, and let rainwater seep naturally into the ground so there is less need for flood-control infrastructure. And besides that, they increase people’s sense of well being and improve the neighborhood aesthetic, not to mention helping to define one hideous beige stucco dwelling from the next.
And do you really think that those technologies aren’t based there because of their relationship to the oil industry? When the oil money dries up, which it will, all other commerce in that city will suffer too. Calgary already has a very transient populace. Do you think people are going to remain living in an under-supported development an hour’s commute from city centre, while they lose their jobs and their property values drop, out of some sort of bizarre loyalty?
If we’re going to continue make these absurd small city to big city comparisons, let’s at least use Vancouver, a place that’s been successful in building a dense but livable city within a more limited geography, and has seen a steady but not overwhelming population growth in the past few decades.
jenny: sorry, but the north end of halifax does not begin and end in the two square blocks around the hydrostone. Look around honey, there are a few pretty dreary looking buildings in the north end. agreed that chernobyl is a low blow exageration.
Fachee as someone who lives in the North End (not the Hydrostone) I am well aware of the geography. For the most part, the North End is filled with lots of beautiful old trees, great character homes, and plenty of green space. Sure there are a couple crappy buildings, but you’ll also find sketchy buildings in the West End, South End, and Central Halifax. The homes in the NE might not be as large and lavish as the SE, for example, but it’s certainly not one large ghetto.
Somebody should have told God the prairies suck and all of Canada ought to sport tall trees because it improves a human being’s sense of well being. Boy He really fucked up, didn’t He, meow?
Do a little research into the energy crisis under Trudeau and you’ll find Alberta’s oil economy and technology is now spread across the country so a similar energy crisis doesn’t happen again. In a nutshell, Albertan’s thought , “why should we pay through the nose for a product produced here just because the world economy is off the rails?” So we favoured Albertans and Canadians in general by keeping the price down in Canada trying to make up the difference in exports. The impact it had on our market overall churned out a stock market crash unlike anything seen before the 80’s (save for the dirty 30’s). Now, I realize this is a mickey mouse description of what happened but the result is the same… Canada’s leading edge medical technology centre out of the Foothills Hospital / Tom Baker Cancer Centre / U of C. Industrial technologies like the Canada Arm were spearheaded by Albertans as well. Many leading technology development like networking, virtual and medical information technologies are spearheaded and supported in industry by the Alberta Research Council… The west holds the keys to our technological future… with or without trees growing on the prairie.
Take heart though… Alberta is full of educated Nova Scotians and we’ve made these advances together. Go figure.