Each January, our first issue of the year, we offer up our annual Fix the City suggestions in the spirit of civic-mindedness; truly, we’re trying to make this a better place to live. But does anyone listen? Are we making any difference, or is this a pointless exercise in navel-gazing?
Turns out, most years we do pretty well—generally, about half our proposed Fixes are actually implemented.
Most years. But not last year. Of the 17 Fixes we proposed last January, only three of them were fully implemented—a “success” rate of just 18 percent. Ouch. But three more of the fixes fell into a middling “sort of” or “don’t know how to rate” category, so while our failure rate of 64 percent (there was no action on the remaining 11 Fixes) was abysmal, it wasn’t as bad as it might’ve been. To recap:
Fixed!
The “Bridge to Nowhere”—an off-ramp from the MacKay Bridge that once connected to Robie Street, but which was discontinued in 1992—was torn down last spring, as per our suggestion.
Also, two of our suggested changes at City Hall have been implemented: a better air exchange system works and wireless internet connection for public use has been installed. Now, I can stay awake at council meetings, and even blog them live via Twitter (see twitter.com/twitcoast, most Tuesdays).
Kinda, sorta, not really
There has been improvement at placing route maps at bus terminals, but not at all stops, as we suggested. The litter patrols are doing a better job cleaning up Granville Mall, but a full re-build is still on a wish list. The soldiers at the Old Armoury seem to be doing a better job shovelling snow off the sidewalks, but that might just be because it hasn’t snowed so much this winter.
Forget about it
Councillors and mayor Peter Kelly still reject any notion that all their votes should be recorded and posted on the internet. Even though GPS technology allows every cab to be tracked, our city stupidly requires taxis to keep their roof lights on at all times, confusing and frustrating people waiting street-side for cabs (the policy supposedly guards against cabbies committing nefarious crimes). Liquor stores don’t accept empties for recycling. You still gotta run like crazy to beat the pedestrian light at Quinpool and Robie.
People continue to rip holes in intervening fences, because Chebucto Lane doesn’t connect with Quinpool Centre. Artists don’t get city grant money. There are no garbage cans to speak of on Gottingen Street. We buy blue plastic bags to put our recyclables in, even though the city could provide proper blue bins at much less cost. There are no recycling bins on the Common.
A bus doesn’t go down Terminal Road, home of the new NSCAD campus and soon-to-be-home of the new farmers’ market and Nova Scotia Power headquarters, and worse still, the proposal to run a free shuttle bus through the area was scuttled in the latest Five Year Transit Plan.
Hall of Fame
Last year, we awarded Metro Transit’s GoTime its very own circle of hell. GoTime was proposed sometime in the mid-1990s, I think, and has been a running joke ever since.
The computer screens at the terminals usually don’t work at all; when they do work, they scroll past the #1 info too quickly to read, but take five or six minutes to get past all the “no scheduled” bus info in the evenings. (Reader John Andrea suggested a blank line be put above the #1, and the non-running buses be removed, sensible ideas that Metro Transit evidently rejected because they were too user-friendly.)
For a decade or so, we’ve been promised a system where we can call from a bus stop and find when the bus will arrive, but still, we get scheduled arrival times, not real-time times. Real transit companies have nice websites showing where all the buses are, allowing you to sit in your warm house, watch the site and dart out to your stop without spending 20 minutes standing in an ice storm, but Halifax will likely sooner get flying cars than such a workable system.
The situation is completely ridiculous—Metro Transit can’t build a system but, citing intellectual property rights, it denies scheduling information to residents trying to build their own systems.
What’s worse than a circle of hell? I don’t know, but whatever it is, Metro Transit deserves it for GoTime.
Related Stories
Our Annual Halifax Fix the City list
This article appears in Jan 7-13, 2010.
Metro Transit *Management* deserves all the blame. Most of the drivers are awesome most of the time, and thats, well, awesome.
Give Drivers some luv, but lets send Metro Transit management a big fat “F” for failure to make the system better for most users, using the system.
For example, Mumford Terminal display screen, it USED to show when the next bus was scheduled, but its not working right now AT ALL. Also, if your waiting for the the number 9 in the nice dry and warm shelter, and see it as it comes into the station, good luck sprinting the 100m to get to the stop in freezing slippery rain before it leaves.
So all the councillors voted against recorded votes?
Come on Tim. Don’t be lazy.
I gotta say, Tim, the latter half of this piece was pretty much the whiniest piece of writing I’ve read in years.
if by most you mean 60% then yes those transit driver get an awesome the other 40% make mine and other ppls lives a living, cold, miserable, slow assed, hell it should never take 90 mins to get from mumford to portland hills terminal after 6pm, why do all the buses the serve portland hills depart the bridge at the same damn time…there’s 3 regular routes to that location..SPREAD THEM OUT so if i “miss” a connection i don’t have to wait 30 f’in mins in these poor excuses fo shelters for the next opportunity to get home 3 buses 30 mins send one every ten minutes OMG !!! don’t even get me started on the service on the weekends no wonder you need a car to live out here….I Hate U metro transit
They’ve gone ahead and removed most of the screens now. It’s a magnificent pain in the ass unless you carry a schedule. That’s fine anyways, they’re often too hard to see due to graffiti covering the screen.
The cab light thing confuses the hell out of me; and always has. Off when not on duty/with a fare, on when available. I don’t know if this is something that is out in other cities, but it’s certainly frustrating when you go to get into a cab on the street and bam, you get told he’s not on duty.
To the other points, well, I don’t plan to see them anytime soon. Especially the blue bins for recycling. I’d still end up buying blue bags to place recyclables in, so I really don’t need to have a blue bin. Unless they do what they did with the green bins, a nice small bin that you empty into a large bin. Let’s take it a step further, shall we? Let’s get black bins for household garbage?