A “connector road” between Highway 103 and old route 3, halfway between the Tantallon and Hubbards exits—so-called Exit 51/2—would increase pressure for development in the rural area, says Sean Kirby, a local resident who leads opposition to the roadway.
And that’s a sentiment that seems to have been shared by a planner for HRM. One of the documents Kirby obtained through a Freedom of Information request to the province is a March 7, 2006 email exchange between Phil Corkum and Janice Harland, two engineers in the department of Transportation; in the email, Corkum tells Harland that HRM planner Maureen Ryan told him the connector road “is not consistent with HRM’s Regional Plan to create growth in this area. She wanted to know if the province would agree to not build an interchange in support of their planning strategy.” See the email here.
Ryan would not speak with The Coast, but her boss, planning manager Austin French, doesn’t deny the conversation occurred. French, however, backs away from saying HRM opposes the connector road. “It’s a question of establishing growth centres where it’s appropriate, based on a number of factors, infrastructure being one,” he says. “That’s why we review the regional plan every five years, because things change, and if this is changing, we’ll look at our growth centres.”
But doesn’t that stand the planning process on its head? Shouldn’t the plan dictate where roads get built, rather than the other way around?
“It’s always a factor of chicken and egg,” answers French. “In this case, we need to look at the establishment of the interchange and see if that is likely to create enough potential that it would justify making a change in the plan.”
The city started a the five-year review of the regional plan last week. A coalition of environmental groups is arguing that the plan is already too conducive to suburban sprawl like that feared by Kirby.
This article appears in Oct 13-19, 2011.
Kirby, the Liberal lobbyist, lost the battle when he went into government offices throwing his weight around and threatening staff. He forgot that Liberals have no power and their decades of entitlement and coercion are over.
Bill Estabrooks doesn’t take kindly to that nonsense and Kirby poisoned the well from an early date.
http://prospectusassociates.com/people/sea…
Unfortunate how Kirby went about it. Not the way to win friends and influence people.
But there’s more than one kind of “nonsense” and if a journalist dug deep, plenty of it would be revealed. When will the real story on this road be told? So the head honchos at City Hall are going to wait and see what happens once it’s built? In the meantime, a major landowner that would benefit from this road gets a land-use by-law quietly amended by HRM Council. With no community input, the (already inadequate) Black Point Fire Station is planned for “de-commisioning” the HRM withdraws funding for the Hubbards Fire Station, (oh, it’s in Lunenburg County. Take THAT, Hubbards, for straddling country lines.) Yes, there is a new fire station at Exit 5, but no matter how you slice it, it’s a good 15 minute drive from there to many homes on the #3 highway. Exit or no Exit. The Black Point Fire Station is needed, and it is needed 24 hours a day. The Regional Plan? oh we’ll just amend it “because things change.” Excuse me? They WILL change and not for the better if the road is built. Either Hubbards or Upper Tantallon will lose major amounts of business when this road is built. When people dash off to Bayers Lake there’ll be another complaint about traffic there. Oh and the Provincial government has turned a blind eye as a massive tract of land in Hubbards is cleared for a trailer park, on top of a former auto salvage yard. Brilliant. Just more “nonsense” not from one person with an agenda, but from all quarters in Government and the powers that be in the private sector. We have bridges falling apart. Narrow paved roads with shoulders that drop 6 – 8 inches from the paved surface. Huge tree branches blocking most of the wayfinding signage in the whole province. Wayfinding signs that are peeling, falling over, are vague to the point of being useless. No money for Visitors’ Centres or staff. Side roads that haven’t been graded in forever, or have 10 inch deep holes in the pavement. Road markings that haven’t been painted all summer. No wonder there’s no information. No one talks to anyone, and those who ask get shut down. Once the connector is built, and the area (conveniently near a lake) (why wonder why this route was chosen?) is developed, then will come a couple of sets of traffic lights on the new “connector.” It will take some time, of course, for all this to happen. All the current politicians will be safely retired before an all new “connector” is needed. The deer, skunks, racoons, porcupines, moose, they can all live in the new backyards so cosy. Something new to complain about “down the road.”
If you throw infrastructure projects around like a game of chance and than write the development plan after-the-fact than why bother with a plan at all? I wonder how much the people who develop the plan are getting paid.
The connector road is not needed in my opinion, its only to provide access to land for a private developer, it is not in the best interest of the community. The fire department is unmanned, if you have a house fire, you probably would have to go get the fire truck yourself. The community is a tourist community with all of the beaches, why not keep that in mind and develop the area for that use. They have spent mega bucks on paving the road, where is the bike lane, there are cyclists on the road all the time, making it unsafe for both driver and cyclist. I`m not a cyclist, but fear that I will hit one on the road with its winding turns, why not let the community develop small business with toursim in mind rather then selling us out to a private developer. SHAME ON YOU HRM, you are ruining our community.
Residents gave the provincial government every opportunity to exercise common sense on the connector road issue but instead the government decided to harm homes and properties unnecessarily, ignored community input, broke its own freedom of information law, undercut HRM’s regional development strategy, and ultimately announced that it is going to build the connector on the route it picked years ago despite the community’s opposition to it. Given the government’s inappropriate behaviour, we were left with no choice but to highlight what the government was doing in the hope that it would be shamed into serving citizens instead of working against them.
This case is no longer just about this particular connector road – it is about defending basic democratic principles: The government shouldn’t harm homes and properties when it has other options. The government shouldn’t break its own freedom of information law. The government shouldn’t say it is considering multiple routes when all the evidence suggests it has already made up its mind. The government should have a development plan and stick to it. The government should serve citizens, not ignore them.
Sean Kirby
The issue is not about Kirby, it is about Bill Estabrooks who wants this road built regardless of public opinion and common sense. The focus should be what motivations are driving this one MLA to spend money on a project no one else seems to want.
First the ‘people’s representative’ claims if people don’t want it, it won’t happen. Then when people voice their opinion that they don’t want it, it suddenly becomes a public safety issue. Now they want to close the firehouse that was pinged for the public safety excuse. What will be Estabrooks’ next justification? An alarming asphalt surplus that needs to be laid somewhere? C’mon. There must be something there driving this boondoggle.
Here’s a radical thought: not one more dime for new road surface until existing roads are properly maintained. Proper maintenance doesn’t mean every road needs to be repaved every 5 years either. There are roads in the province right now where if you keep to the lane that you are supposed to be in, you will damage your car. There are roads where you cannot drive at night faster than 35 or 40 kmh because you will not see a hazard in time, and will damage your car or have a serious accident. There are some “paved” roads that you cannot safely travel in *daytime* unless you’ve got a truck. There are dozens of paved roads in the province that are appreciably worse than most of the packed dirt and gravel roads we’ve got.
Given all that, the politicians (of all stripes) insist on wasting hundreds of milions of dollars on building new roads that we will also not be able to maintain. All that useless twinning. All these useless secondary roads to keep developer buddies happy.
It’s truly remarkable when people like Estabrooks can mouth off about public safety being the reason for building new roads like this connector…and yet they ignore existing roads that are public safety hazards. Are they seriously that ignorant? Or are there more sordid motives?
The amount of unnecessary paving in Estabrooks’ riding is ridiculous. 103, Exit 4, left on St. Margaret’ Bay Rd. Left on Silver Birch. Right of Five Island Road. End of Five Island Road paved to a dead-end private subdivision. Residents there were trying to get taxpayers to pay for paving forever. Estabrooks gets elected, road to private subdivision got paved. Same thing for granite cove drive. And completely unnecessary work from hubley road to SMBR. The traffic volume and population using the intersection just doesn’t warrant the amount of infrastructure dollars it must be costing. But hey it’s in Estabrooks’ riding so now it’s time for the gravy train to finally arrive for the residents of Bill’s riding. I used to live near Bill and it’s amazing how the quality of the roads in the area has changed once he got his hands of the strings of the public purse. Not sue if provincial or HRM responsibility in that area but things sure did change rapidly once Bill got elected.
Sean Kirby has been crying about this for months now – in whatever venue will have him. I agree that the process by which the location of the connector road was chosen seems to be suspect (documents being held back), but if you look at a map with elevation information that location makes sense.
This is not about the city subsidizing the suburbs. This is provincial tax dollars being spent on improving a major artery to the South Shore (hint: Lunenburg County is not a part of HRM).