At Halifax Regional Council’s Tuesday, Jan 28 meeting, by a tight vote of 8 to 6, councillors made a tough decision to do the right thing. For the past six years or so the city has been working on a plan to re-do the Windsor Street Exchange. At first it was supposed to be a small project, to accommodate the federal government’s desire to increase the capacity for truck traffic through the Fairview Cove container terminal. The federal and provincial governments put up $36.2 million dollars and the city was on the hook for just $10 million—it seemed a cheap way for the city to get more than $45 million worth of improvements to a congested roadway used daily by approximately 100,000 vehicles.
But like most renovation projects, the WSX plan grew in scope. The version of the redesign that came before council on Tuesday includes things like Halifax Water’s capital infrastructure upgrades as well as council’s priorities, like more people moving around the city by foot, bike or bus. At a meeting last summer, the then-latest iteration of the design was panned by council because it prioritized car throughput instead of council priorities. Councillors instructed staff to come up with a new plan that was in line with their priorities. However, no one told council that in order for staff to make a design that was in line with their priorities, due to the limited space for competing properties, staff would have to had be instructed to let go of the federal and provincial money as a priority, which council did not instruct them to do last summer.
As a result, city staff came up with a plan that jams as much of council’s priorities as they could without compromising the $36 million in funding from other governments, but now also including a $53.75 million price tag for the city. Staff explained at Tuesday’s meeting that even though the improvements they were suggesting for pedestrians were not ideal for pedestrians—a mixed-use pathway shared with bicycles, rather than protected sidewalks—because the redesign would be better than what currently exists, it could be considered a substantial increase to active transit, and thus in line with council’s priorities. Staff said that to truly accomplish council’s priorities of better bus connections and active transit would be a much more expensive phase of work, which could be completed later. So in the meantime, the best they can do is some partial bus lanes and signal priority.
During the debate, the council split into two camps. The first camp, the pro-WSX crowd, reasoned that the interchange’s current state was so bad that even though the repairs were expensive, and not really in line with council’s priorities, and not what council instructed staff to do last summer, the improvements would be better than what we have now. And the longer we wait the more expensive things get, and there’s a risk we’ll lose the $36 million in funding.
The other camp, the majority, were irate that council’s priorities were being shortchanged and compromised due to the strings attached to the funding from the other levels of government. Councillor Shawn Cleary specifically seemed extra irate that during last summer’s meeting, no one bothered to mention the promise of federal money meant ignoring council’s priorities. They were annoyed that the plan staff came back to council with, after being explicitly told to improve it, was exactly the same. They understand fiscal responsibility, and understand that if we build this exchange now, without planning for the Bus Rapid Transit Strategy that Halifax is eventually supposed to implement, we’ll have to find a couple hundred million dollars for that capital project. They think the city should only spend municipal money on municipal priorities.
The question in the debate that revealed the most about the level of staff’s failure was from councillor Sam Austin. He asked staff what the design would look like if they ignored federal and provincial funding, and just designed this thing completely in line with council priorities: Would they still have come up with the partial bus lanes in the intersection? Staff explained that yes, they would. In order to get dedicated bus lanes through the Windsor Street intersection, they would need to be planning for what prioritizing bus traffic throughout the city’s entire bus network would look like, which is not something staff are doing even though council has passed the Integrated Mobility Plan and the Moving Forward Together Plan, HalifACT and the Road Safety Framework, all of which are transportation strategies that require the city to have a priority network for alternative methods of travel to cars. So we also learned why these plans aren’t really being implemented.
The debate over the WSX makeover finally came down to a choice between going forward with the current mess of a plan, or calling the whole thing off—giving up on the last few years of work and the $36 million funding package from other governments. Councillors Cathie Deagle Gammon, Becky Kent and Billy Gillis were absent. For the meeting attendees, mayor Andy Fillmore was joined by councillors Patty Cuttell, Nancy Hartling, David Hendsbee, Trish Purdy and Janet Steele, who voted to spend millions of dollars not to achieve council priorities, but to make things marginally better, maybe, in the short term. They were defeated by councillors Sam Austin, Shawn Cleary, Virginia Hinch, Tony Mancini, Kathryn Morse, Jean St-Amand, Laura White and John Young, who rebuked staff for shoddy work and voted to kill a plan that didn’t achieve council’s priorities so that money can be better spent on fiscally responsible long-term infrastructure spending this upcoming budget season.
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This article appears in Dec 19, 2024 – Jan 31, 2025.
That federal money was partly to increase the truck throughput to the terminal. Hundreds of trucks go through downtown daily and this plan would have drastically reduced that number. Council’s priorities need to include this truck traffic reduction through the downtown core. It was the original reason for a portion of the funding, as well as the redesign itself..
I am all in favour of doing this right but this delay has cost us the funding. Would it really have been so bad to take that money and implement what we can now?
Heres to another 5+ years of building shaking earthquakes caused by these container trucks….
A part of me knew they weren’t implementing the strategies. The fact that staff said they were not implementing the new road design standards should have told me as such. And the fact that Bedford Highway has been repaved at certain sections without implementing the functional plan. This was the final straw for me. And I’m glad it was the final straw for Council. I just wish so much of everyone’s time wasn’t wasted.
It needs a dam roundabout and education for the idiots that can’t use them!