Halifax council has been doing good work on the transit front. Councillors have committed to buying 45 new articulated buses—15 will hit the streets in coming months—and have agreed “in concept” to an aggressive five-year transit expansion plan that, if implemented, will see big improvements in bus service.
Of course it will cost more money to operate that expanded transit system—there’s a “funding gap” of $20.5 million between existing bus service and the system outlined in the five-year plan.
Where will that missing transit money come from? Metro Transit suggests raising bus fares 25 cents every other year, and property taxes in alternate years, forever—either of which will be a hard political pill to swallow. City hall thinks the province, which itself is facing huge deficits, should pony up. Or councillors could avoid the hard choices and do nothing, letting transit expansion plans languish. However it plays out, transit funding will likely be one of the defining political issues of the next few years.
But compare uncertain transit funding to the 10s of millions of dollars we lavish on highway interchanges.
On the BiHi, construction crews are presently building an interchange to handle some suburban sprawl about to go up along Larry Uteck Boulevard. The price tag for just that one interchange is $21 million—more than enough to pay for the entire transit expansion plan.
Additionally, we’ve recently built the Mount Hope Avenue interchange on the Circ in Dartmouth, opening up huge swaths of land south of Russell Lake to development—total cost, $12 million. The newish Dartmouth Crossing interchange cost $19.1 million to build. On the 101 in Sackville, an $8.5-million Margeson Drive interchange is in the works.
Here’s how ridiculously easy it is to build highways: last year, HRM asked that $11 million in economic stimulus money go toward a new Woodside ferry. Instead, the feds approved $10 million to build an underpass under the 102, to connect Bayers Lake to Clayton Park—a project the city didn’t even ask for.
That’s $70.6 million for five highway projects.
It’s a common misconception that the money to build highways comes exclusively from gas taxes. In reality, the interchanges are funded mostly through agreements between the city, the province and the feds. On the federal and provincial level, the money for new highways comes from general tax revenues, including income taxes.
As for the city, its share of the money theoretically comes from fees charged to developers as they build in the area. Planners use computer model to figure out overall transportation (cars, not buses) patterns, and how any one particular development impacts the whole, then divvy up the cost as developers sub-divide their property. This way, the “true impact” of the development is paid for.
But seen another way, the provincial and federal funding is a subsidy to developers. Consider that the owners of Dartmouth Crossing paid a mere $3.35 million of the $19.1 million it cost to build the interchange to access their new big-box development—just 18 percent of the total.
And sometimes the funding plans go wrong. The total cost of the Mount Hope interchange, for example, was $12 million, and HRM’s share $8 million. The city’s funding formula anticipated the private development of the Shearwater military base lands, but the military changed course and held onto that land—pulling the rug out from under about half the anticipated developer contribution.
The missing $4 million is going to come straight out of the regular city budget—money that could otherwise have been used for transit.
And there’s the rub. We have supposedly exacting formulas and processes well in place for funding highway construction; no one even questions them. And when the plans do occasionally fall short, we just make up the shortfall with general tax revenues. This apparently is no big deal—before now, did you even know about the missing $4 million Mount Hope funds?
But when it comes to funding transit, every expense is a conundrum, a problem for politicians, the subject of great public debate.
Until government starts funding transit with the certainty it funds highways, we won’t get a decent bus system.
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This article appears in Feb 25 – Mar 3, 2010.
I usually support transit fare hikes. This is a bit excessive, however, as little as it may be: 0.50c over four years; which accounts for inflation, more or less. $2.75 brings us close to some of the larger city’s transit systems and they have more and better service. The Feds should have to pony up the money, especially considering how HRM’s been boned by stimulus spending. That’s a dream however.
The problem with the highway developments is that they’re needed too, and long overdue for some of them, especially the “unplanned” BLIP/Clayton Park underpass.
Our roadway system is an obsolete relic of the 1950s. Meanwhile HRM is sending buses to the boondocks to serve a handful of people who moved there knowing full well that there was no bus service. Build the roads we need before adding more buses to our obsolete network.
Seriously though, Sambro has a transit run. Sambro! Hi, I moved 20km from the rotary to a community with 52 people, wheres my bus service? Fucking idiots.
Excellent article Tim, I had no idea HRM paid that much money for half an exit (Mt. Hope, an exit that doesn’t even connect to the Woodside industrial park). I can see the Bayers Lake exit and Larry Uteck exit as useful, but the Sackville one still puzzles me. As for the $20 million shortfall, if fares go up, I hope they don’t hit passholders as hard.
How we never got funding for a ferry people would use is beyond me. As for Sambro, good idea, but the money spent on that was taken away from running the 20 downtown on Saturdays. The people who would use that currently cram themselves onto the 1. So it goes.
We really should be expanding public transportation and discouraging people in every way possible from driving everywhere in private automobiles.
Check back with me in about ten years. Car culture is about to die a very messy death.
Bo Gus, our highway system is really overgrown for a city of this size. Perhaps the need for road improvements in some areas stems from suburban development that never should have happened in the first place. Good article Tim. We’ll pay out the ass for the 113 and the 107 extension, then they’ll expand the 102 to eight lanes as the “Bedford West” and “Bedford South” areas fill out with more sprawl, then the 103 will become a problem area as the “Western Common” and Tantallon is further developed…it never ends if we keep allowing such unchecked sprawl, which is why I am so pleased to hear the news re: the Five Bridges Lakes and Blue Mountain areas being protected.
Hey, maybe if the developers who build these massive urban sprawls actually had to pay for the services that the city installs for free (not to mention the highway expansions, additions, ramps that eventually are needed) we would have a few bucks to give to transport. I read the other day that the city is going to cut back on things like trails rather than raise taxes. This place DOES suck.
One other cost that seems to enjoy the same unconsidered, unbounded approval from city councils is the funding of traffic lights. It’s seldom mentioned, let alone debated. Finding intersections with absolutely state of the art technology, including pedestrian buttons, custom designed poles, racks of lights facing every possible way, is easy. It looks like a growth industry unaffected by economic downturns and unhampered by criticism. Do council meetings ever consider economizing on the absurd levels of intersection hardware, or do such questions cruise by under the radar?
You can double check this, Tim, but I’m pretty sure the province is responsible for where our federal dollars go in HRM. The city government can ask for whatever it wants, but there’s a chain of command, and provincial recommendations are what determine where federal money gets spent in Halifax. This has been a problem in the past… John Hamm once lied to HRM, saying that he had asked for Harbour Solutions funding, when in fact he had requested highway project funding.
Also… why don’t we have a regional transportation authority, incorporating transit, active transpo, bridges, highways and local roads? Instead of having departments competing for funds against each other, we could grow an orchestrated transportation system!
Transit competing against active transpo, competing against road work, competing against sidewalks… it just doesn’t make sense. All these modes are on the same team — the one that gets people around — and we need to start thinking like that.
Tim, thanks for yet another insightful piece. Imagine if we actually factored in environmental harms into such decision making processes? The obvious shortsightedness of building more highways in lieu of infrastructure that supports bonafide sustainable modes of transportation could then be made crystal clear.
Lisa Kretz
Like Bo Gus says, we people in the boonies, moved out here knowing full well there was going to be no buses,& no sidewalks, no water, or sewer services & that’s exactly why I moved here !
Everyone out here I know is fine with that . We don’t want it !
B U T, if a bus stop is within 3 kms of our homes…we get to pay higher taxes for something in My & my neighbors cases, we’ll never use.(which is IMO the real reason they’re doing it)
He’s a Bartender, they stop serving at 2 am.
By the time they clean up , do their cash, restock etc. Its hours past the time the last bus has gone by.
I’m in the same boat, when I do work in the city, shows finish while buses are still running, but we have to tear out the show, which means 2-3 am we’re done, exactly what bus can I catch to get home ?
None.
When all these new dream/pie in the sky bus routes are in, which bus will take me home to Elmsdale at 3 am ? (actually we’re past Elmsdale down by Dutch Settlement)
How about NONE !
So its a waste of time for me, my neighbors…even my girlfriend who lives in Dartmouth, who is also a Bartender…can’t get a bus home because she doesn’t close until 1 or 1:30 by the time she finishes all the work done after her bar closes its 2am or later…same problem as my neighbor who works at a bar in Halifax.
It Cucking Frazy, this bus bullshit.
Make the system that they have now…BETTER. Don’t make it bigger.
Follow a model like Montreal or Toronto, where you don’t wait 30 to 40 minutes to get a bus 5-10 minutes maximum wait. You do that & you’ll see an increase in riders
CONVENIENCE is what is needed, PEOPLE IN CHARGE OF THE BUS SYSTEM
C O N V E N I E N C E —THAT –IS –WHAT–PEOPLE–WANT ! ! !