Halifax council Tuesday refused to kill outright the plan to widen Bayers Road, opting instead to study the issue further after the upcoming five-year review of the regional plan. The decision is a setback for opponents of the road widening.
At issue was a planning document called the “Road Network Functional Plan,” which included various road projects called for in the 2006 regional plan, including the widening of Bayers Road to six lanes west of Connaught Avenue and to four lanes between Connaught and Windsor Street. That idea is reflected in provincial plans to widen Highway 102 to up to eight lanes in places; in total, the road- and highway widening will likely cost about a billion dollars.
Councillor Jennifer Watts moved that the functional plan be passed, but that the Bayers Road component be removed; her intent, she explained later, was to force city staff to go through the five-year review of the regional plan with the understanding that Bayers Road could not be widened for cars. That would require staff to find other possible options when conducting the five-year review of the , including transit lanes. But council flipped the issue, putting the functional plan after the five-year review, and therefore keeping the widening-for-cars option in the mix.
This article appears in Sep 22-28, 2011.
What passes for thought and good judgement at council…
A setback? Is that what it is?
It’s funny, one could have seen this coming from a mile away after the presentation at the public meeting. The bureaucrat was at turns defiant, jargony, condescending, misleading, disingenuous, generally unhelpful and in places just plain wrong with his cultured bureaucratic shell game in front of a large and diverse group of citizens who were as close to unanimously agreed as any group will ever be – and quite articulate about it.
The only interesting thing is that Jack Novak might use this series of events in his next book as an example of citizens and local government being baffled by bureaucracy in spite of being deadly clear about what they want for the community.
I can’t think of many members of our government, at any level, that once elected aren’t defiant, jargony, condescending, misleading, disingenuous, generally unhelpful lol. And then there is the unelectable, unaccountable staff – even worse.
This is a rare instance of council at least coming close to doing the right thing. The right thing would be to turf Watts’ absurd motion entirely and move forward with a badly-needed project. Instead, we have to wait until after the next election. But it must happen.