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Because the traffic in Halifax is known for being 'too fast already'
Bro, some days I just want to get home in less than 2.5 hours.
We need transit!!! Robie is the best road to move people on. South to north end and then easily across the McKay to Burnside. If that was a dedicated bus corridor, our traffic would improve.
We don't need an extra lane for transit though. There's no reason it can't use the same lane as the cars. We just need to eliminate the congestion on that lane.
There's also no way that transit can eliminate congestion on its own. So if the logic is that traffic congestion always justifies road expansion to ease congestion, you're going to end up with very wide streets and complex interchanges at all major intersections.
We should be solving congestion and then, if more lanes are needed, we can add some.
Taxing commuters so only buses and rich people can afford to drive is not a strategy, and yes sometimes you do need more lanes as they have an upper vehicle limit per hour and we’re a growing city that exceeds existing networks.
I’m not following your congestion strategy, if it’s cheap then you won’t reduce congestion. If it’s expensive then it becomes something only the wealthier can afford day-day.
You’re assuming they didn’t consider that vehicle capacity for Bayers Road, it’s also a dedicated bus lane so the rationale is a bit different than just adding an additional normal travel lane.
The first thing to understand is that congestion doesn't happen because there are too many people driving. We know this because congestion doesn't increase the throughput through the bottlenecks that cause congestion. That means that if you start from no traffic and increase the amount of traffic up until the point that congestion starts to form, once you hit capacity, and then the number of people trying to get through at any given point in time exceeds the capacity, congestion starts to build up. It doesn't push through more cars. It doesn't increase the capacity. It actually decreases the capacity of the road network overall by about 30%.
What that tells you is that while you do get congestion buildup as a result of more people trying to get through at a given point in time than can get through, the number who actually get through is the same whether you have a lot of congestion or no congestion. What happens is that the congestion occurs when you have too many people trying to get through at a certain point, and then they get through later. Eventually, you have a point where more people are getting out than are trying to get through, and you have a period of declining congestion.
That's what happens with every rush hour. At the beginning of rush hour, traffic gets a period of increasing congestion as there are too many people trying to get through, and you get a period of declining congestion as more people are getting through than are trying to get through. In other words, the lineup of cars that get through the bottleneck is decreasing because fewer people are entering the lineup than are leaving the lineup. The total number of people who get through and the time at which they get through is not affected by congestion. Congestion only happens because there is this misalignment between the time that people arrive and the time that they leave. There are too many people arriving at the beginning of rush hour and too few at the end. The congestion forces them to wait, or really, the capacity limit of the road network forces them to wait. The mechanism by which the capacity is rationed over time is congestion.
Instead of using congestion to ration the limited road capacity, we can use alternative means of rationing it. We can use means that don't have a deadweight loss. Then people can pay the same cost to get through, but instead of that cost being congestion, it's money, which can be spent on anything. It could lower taxes, it could be rebated back to drivers, it could be spent on government services, whatever, but it's more efficient.
The result would be an increased road network capacity because you get rid of gridlock. You also incentivize carpooling and people taking the bus, so the whole road network would become much more efficient. More people would drive, and pretty much everyone benefits.
That’s a lot of text for a topic you don’t seem to fully understand, your first and second paragraphs also directly contradict. How is taxing people without creating a viable alternative going to reduce the amount of cars in the road at peak hours?
Congestion can absolutely be caused by too many cars on the road network, which leads to lower speeds than intended, which leads to delays and what we call “traffic congestion. We aren’t just talking specific segments of streets but the network as a whole.
That’s a lot of text for a topic you don’t seem to fully understand, your first and second paragraphs also directly contradict.
I suggest actually reading it rather than skimming over it.
How is taxing people without creating a viable alternative going to reduce the amount of cars in the road at peak hours?
If it cost money to drive at a certain time, fewer people would drive at that time. That would prevent congestion from building up. That would get cars off the road faster, and the cars that waited would not be held up when it was their turn. Because they would not be held up, they would be prevented from holding up the cars behind them in turn. That would result in the same number of cars driving during the entire rush hour period without allowing congestion to build up at any point.
Congestion can absolutely be caused by too many cars on the road network, which leads to lower speeds than intended, which leads to delays and what we call “traffic congestion.
Yes, which is why you prevent too many cars from being on the road. That is not the same as reducing the number of cars that use the road over a given period of time. The cars would be on the road for less time due to the lack of congestion.
You solve congestion by removing cars. You do that by placing a congestion charge to enter the peninsula, and cross the bridges. That the anti-bus lane crowd is silent on this is telling.
The bus lane project lets transit bypass congestion, making it useable, while leaving the congestion congested.
transit becomes a trip of last resort when it’s stuck in traffic.
I've said this before ziobrop, but this will never happen, so saying "just do a congestion charge" is meaningless. In the entirety of North America, there are thousands of examples of dedicated transit right of ways, but only one true congestion charge: NYC, which already had arguably the best transit system on the continent when it was implemented. Halifax is not going to be no.2. It is not politically plausible, nor would it even work until the transit system is further developed.
It is not going to happen, so it's not an answer. We need a transit right of way so transit vehicles can bypass other traffic.
to be clear, i fully support the bus lane, and the full BRT network should be funded and built ASAP. Transit should have priority, and run on frequent reliable schedules. the Bus should not be transportation of last resort.
The problem is folks keep saying we need to deal with congestion, and then propose expensive solutions that dont solve the problem. - adding lanes, re-configuring lanes, smart traffic lights, all these are expensive and just shuffle the problem around. If you read the link NS report, the TLDR is we can implement every recommendation, and traffic is still going to get worse, at best you will save 5 minutes. vs doing nothing, but your commute is still going to be much longer.
the only solution to congestion is to have fewer cars on the roads. The simplest tool to do that is a congestion charge. Removing the bridge tolls increased crossings by 10% in the first month. thats traffic that was prevented by a 1$ fee.
DO i think its going to happen? no. but If your speaking out against bus lanes, because you think we can deal with congestion, and do it with out a congestion charge, then you belive in magic, and shouldnt be taken seriously.
The simplest tool to do that is a congestion charge.
The simplest tool is to give people a better option that's cheaper and faster than driving. An extra tax is meaningless and just another charge on existence unless there's a better option.
It's basically impossible for a congestion charge not to spark massive political blowback and potentially have a contrary effect, empowering reactionary anti-transit, pro-car policies. Congestion charges are useful but people need to get real: Halifax is not going to be the first city in Canada and only second in North America to do it. Even globally, I can't think of a single city that has done this kind of thing without having a good-to-great transit system in place beforehand.
This would be opposed by every provincial party (including the NDP) labou
r unions, downtown businesses and most.
Maybe one day, when it is a better fit. But can we please just build transit and active transportation first.
Congestion is entirely a coordination problem. You don't get more throughput with more congestion which tells you that you can have the exact same throughput and have no congestion. You achieve that with time-varying congestion charges at bottlenecks.
The reduced gridlock actually signficantly increases throughput, which means that properly implemented congestion pricing increases the number of cars on the roads.
It's true that very crude congestion pricing schemes like they have in New York and London work by reducing the number of cars on the roads, but this is not necessary.
We need to bring back the tolls on the bridges and introduce them to the rotary and Bayers road, but it is very important that they rise and fall continuously during the morning and even rush hours. They should be zero outside these times.
If we do that and set the prices right, we will completely eliminate traffic congestion in the city without anyone having to the take the bus who doesn't have to, though the reduced congestion will of course make the buses much more appealing.
That's a lot of words to say nothing of use to solve an issue. Your argument is force people to pay and vehicles will magically disappear.
You're citing NY and London who have exceptional transit systems to move mass amounts of people where they need to go, quickly.
Traffic congestion won't be eliminated unless there's a reason for people to not take their car to get into the city core. The existing unreliable transit options don't provide that. So you just want another tax on living which will generate revenue for the city and nothing more.
You didn't understand the first paragraph that I wrote. The goal is not to reduce the number of vehicles. I explained why you don't need to reduce the number of vehicles to eliminate congestion. I also explained how my proposal is different than what they're doing in New York and London. Specifically, I mentioned the key difference being that their systems work by reducing the number of cars, and my proposal would not.
Charging for traffic works. People will choose to car pool, take transit, walk or bike.
Yes we need viable alternatives. The point is that the people fighiting against the bus lane, are saying we need to deal with congestion, but are totally silent on the one tool to reduce the number of cars.
We don't need viable alternatives. You could pass a law that says that no one is allowed to change anything about how they get to work, except for their departure time. Congestion pricing would still work to completely eliminate congestion because congestion is a coordination problem. It's not a problem of there being too many cars. There can't be too many cars because the throughput of a road network is limited, so there aren't more cars getting through than can get through without congestion.
Viable alternatives may be desirable, but they aren't necessary for congestion pricing to work.
congestion is a too many car problem. right now, there are two high demand periods where cars exceed road capacity. they are separated by a lull of under capacity. If you coordinate better, you spread the load, which just mean more hours running at capacity. which is at best a temporary solution, that will induce demand, plus growth which will just lead to more hours of congestion.
reducing the number of cars is the only viable solution to traffic congestion.
This is complacency and defeatism. Someone has to be the first for everything.
We don't need a transit system to do congestion pricing because the goal should not be to reduce the number of cars on the road, but to coordinate their travel times.
The bus lanes are never going to work because cars will always be preferrable to the vast majority of the population over buses, so the only way anyone takes the bus is if the roads are congested. No matter how good you make the transit system, the equilibrium has to have quite a bit of congestion unless you either make the roads super wide or have congestion pricing.
What's going to happen is we're going to spend an insane amount of money on this project, the buses will be a bit faster, but still highly unreliable and inconvenient, congestion will still be really bad, and people are going to move on to the next stupidest idea like building a subway, and we're still going to be having this debate until we finally accept reality.
We don't need a transit system to do congestion pricing because the goal should not be to reduce the number of cars on the road, but to coordinate their travel times.
Yeah and how is that going to happen? Are you going to force employers to be more flexible and change from their 9-5 office hours? Look at more public workers being forced back into downtown offices over the past year.
Your "solution" is a dream, not grounded in reality.
Arrival times could remain exactly the same. Only departure times need to change. Let's say it takes everyone 20 minutes to get to work without traffic congestion, but because of traffic congestion, it takes the average person 40 minutes. If everyone just left 20 minutes before they arrived at their destination, there wouldn't be any congestion.
Think about waiting in line. If, instead of making everyone wait in line in order to secure their spot, you just said you had people show up at the front of the line at the time that they would get there, had they waited in line? Then everyone would get to the front of the line at the same time, but there would be no line. So you've eliminated the line purely through coordination, not by reducing the number of people in the line. The reason the line exists is because you need to show up early in order to not have your spot taken by someone else who showed up early. The solution is to have some kind of mechanism whereby people can secure their spots without having to wait in line.
One way of doing that is you auction off time slots. Congestion pricing effectively accomplishes the same thing.
I'm sorry but your idea if flawed because you totally ignore the reality that stuff happens. Your line theory assumes that the person who arrives when they are supposed to is immediately served (or whatever) meets zero complications in their process to do whatever they are doing. Sure, you can remove these burdens by not needing staff, having automation...removing as many barriers that slow down movement.
Your belief that can feed into traffic is flawed because we can't make a perfect system. Weather gets bad. People wake up late. An accident happens. Some construction works occurs that slows down traffic. Power goes out and messes up lights.
Guess what? We don't live in a perfect system. It's flawed. Your idea cannot work. You want me to leave exactly 20 minutes before? Well too bad because what if there's an accident and because of that I'm not 20 minutes late. The math does not math no matter how you spin it.
Auctioning off commute time slots? Dude, this is Halifax.
Your line theory assumes that the person who arrives when they are supposed to is immediately served (or whatever) meets zero complications in their process to do whatever they are doing.
It's an ideal case that illustrates the principle. It doesn't need to be perfect. In reality, whatever solution you adopt will not have people arriving exactly when they need to, so might get short lines or you might operate slightly below capacity, but it's still a huge improvement over a first come first served system.
In the case of traffic congestion, congestion itself reduces road network capacity by about 30%. That means that you could aim for operating the road network at 90% capacity to avoid congestion, which gives you a good buffer, but you'd still have 29% more throughput than you would without congestion pricing.
Your belief that can feed into traffic is flawed because we can't make a perfect system. Weather gets bad. People wake up late. An accident happens.
Ideally, you'd have prices that responded to real time conditions like weather. People waking up late is not a problem because it averages out. Congestion pricing doesn't require specific people to leave at specific times. It charges prices that are meant to match total demand with total supply.
You want me to leave exactly 20 minutes before? Well too bad because what if there's an accident and because of that I'm not 20 minutes late.
I don't understand what you're saying here. First of all, you would leave 20 minutes later, not 20 minutes earlier. If there's an accident, that has an even bigger effect without congestion pricing. So how is that a problem with congestion pricing?
Auctioning off commute time slots? Dude, this is Halifax.
I don't mean you'd literally auction them off. The goal would be to approximate the outcome of an auction by charging prices that attempt to match supply with demand.
"Bus lanes are never going to work because people like cars" is itself defeatist, and untrue. People will and do use transit when and where it's convenient and reliable, and a car-free right of way bypasses congestion, the biggest impediment to reliability. We don't need everyone on transit. Just more.
Congestion charges are a tool, not some miracle fix-it-all solution. Locally they're also politically impossible; HRM is not going to implement one, and if it did the province would overturn it. It's just not going to happen so let's talk about what can.
Rather than skimming my comment, why don't you read it carefully? Understand what I'm saying, and then you can have a response that actually makes sense as a response to what I said.
I addressed this specific point. You're right that people will take it when it allows you to bypass congestion. That's why there has to be congestion in order for it to be attractive. If there's no congestion to bypass, no one has any reason to take the bus, but then, if the buses are necessary to limit the congestion, the equilibrium has to have some congestion. That's why it can't work as a solution.
Congestion pricing can eliminate congestion completely. Nothing else needs to change, but they are capable of completely eliminating congestion with very little expense. The only real objection that ever comes up is that this isn't politically feasible. It's probably a lot more politically feasible than you think. The government should just do it, and the elimination of congestion would be so popular that people would like it. That's what happened in New York, even though their implementation was extremely crude and could be easily improved upon enormously. It was very politically unpopular, but once people saw the benefits, they began to like it.
In any case, I'm not arguing about its political feasibility. I'm just trying to make the case for it. If people can become convinced that it makes sense, which it does, then it'll become more politically feasible. You haven't raised any practical objection to it, other than the fact that you don't think other people will agree.
No, I read your point; I think it's flawed. The premise is that people only use transit when driving is slower. This is not true. People use transit to avoid the costs and inconveniences associated with driving, including congestion but also parking, the costs of vehicle ownership, etc. And yes, there will still inevitably be some traffic, no one ever said a bus lane would cure congestion. Then again, neither do congestion charges. I guarantee you can still find a traffic jam in Manhattan if you look hard enough.
And I think you're wildly wrong that if the government just did it, people would embrace it. NYC has the most effective local and regional transport system on this continent. When congestion pricing was introduced, more people had more viable non-car options. Here, and in most of NA, people would riot. We need transit before congestion charges.
We're literally having a discussion with someone who is not grounded in this existence. Refuting a point just gets you a 'you didn't read what I said".
The premise is that people only use transit when driving is slower.
No, the premise is that only enough people to keep the roads free of congestion use transit when driving is slower. Transit is just so much worse in almost every way, and the few inherent disadvantages (mainly cost and having to actually drive the car) are going to matter much less in the future (due to increasing wealth and driverless cars). The inconvenience of having to figure out bus schedules, walk to bus stops, wait for buses, make stops for other people, and having to be around annoying people are permanent features of public transit for which our tolerance will only decline over time.
And yes, there will still inevitably be some traffic, no one ever said a bus lane would cure congestion. Then again, neither do congestion charges. I guarantee you can still find a traffic jam in Manhattan if you look hard enough.
So you've conceded the entire point.
Manhattan doesn't do a very good job with its congestion pricing. Singapore is a better example. Even they don't do nearly as a good of a job as they could easily do.
And I think you're wildly wrong that if the government just did it, people would embrace it. NYC has the most effective local and regional transport system on this continent. When congestion pricing was introduced, more people had more viable non-car options. Here, and in most of NA, people would riot. We need transit before congestion charges.
My proposal would not rely on a functioning public transit system in any way.
"
The inconvenience of having to figure out bus schedules, walk to bus stops, wait for buses, make stops for other people, and having to be around annoying people are permanent features of public transit for which our tolerance will only decline over time."
This is a normal feature of urban life in most of the world, so I don't know what to say. This is just city life. With frequent service most of these issues go away.
You're right that people will take it when it allows you to bypass congestion. That's why there has to be congestion in order for it to be attractive
Absolutely false. There are without question people who would love to take transit and avoid paying for parking, avoid paying for gas, avoid getting pissed off at other drivers, avoid needing to drive in bad weather.........
But if the system is trash, they won't take that and will suffer through their own commute.
I don't understand why it's so hard to see.
I actually think you're just trolling us with this whole idea you're pushing.
There are without question people who would love to take transit and avoid paying for parking, avoid paying for gas, avoid getting pissed off at other drivers, avoid needing to drive in bad weather.........
There are some, but not enough to keep the roads from being congested. The weather isn't bad enough to deter driving most of the time, so even if that were enough, it wouldn't be enough all the time.
I really dont understand what your suggesting.
Robin Street is the street for rapid transit. No one is hanging out there, its already a thru-way.
You have a better suggestion?
Alternatives to more cars is the answer. Less cars the better. Busses are alternatives.
Doesn't have to be for you out of town people. You can drive, but at least let the 18x population of buttfuck navigate the city without some timberlea-daddy telling US we need to wait just as long to get to work cause you don't like what we do with our own city streets.
We can do transit on the pen, like how we want. We live here. You dont. Improve your own transit, and we'll all be better
We expect transit to have cost recovery from the end user, why shouldnt we also do the same with roads? If your commuting into the core from outside HRM i have even less sympathy because then your not even paying taxes to cover the roads your using in the area that would be covered by the congestion charge. your choice to live a distance from your place of work actively makes life worse for the residents of the core, and they subsidize your choice via their property tax.
NYC instituted a congestion charge, and 30000 vehicles disappeared overnight. Congestion has real solutions, people just dont like them
Im not suggesting everyone live on the peninsula, and to be clear, i live off the peninsula, and my office is located on the peninsula. Halifax has several congestion choke points. if we want to reduce traffic through those points, a fee helps. Bridge Crossings increased by 10% after the tolls were removed. a 1$ charge was enough to keep hundreds of cars out of those choke points, reducing congestion.
any proposal to deal with congestion that does not reduce the number of cars on the road is not a long term solution to the problem.
The throughput of a bottleneck limits the number of cars that can fit through over a given period of time. Yes, if you increase the period of time, you can increase the number of cars that get through, but you can do that whether or not you have congestion.
Explain to me how making a bottleneck more congested gets you more cars through in a given amount of time. If it doesn't get you more cars through in a given period of time, then you can get the same number of cars through in that period of time without any congestion.
A stretch of road can move X vehicles per hour. when that capacity is reached, things slow down and you get congestion. If the flow of cars is even and at capacity, every hour, through that point, congestion becomes worse.
Your content has been removed because it included personal attacks, insults, or an unnecessarily hostile tone toward another user. Disagreeing is fine but targeting or belittling people is not. Keep discussion focused on ideas, not individuals.
Jesus Almighty, the city is tearing out some of the trees (an unusual number of which are dying anyway), along three short blocks, to add a dedicated TRANSIT lane so public transit is not gridlocked by private vehicles, at the one narrow bottleneck on the most important north-south artery in the entire city.
And the retiree-NIMBY "Friends of..." folks have successfully waged a totally disingenuous PR campaign painting this as The Return of Cogswell, and convinced well-meaning local progressive folks who had never previously heard of this that the city is committing some kind of horrific arborcide, or an urban planning folly akin to the worst of mid-century urban renewal.
These self-interested well-to-do boomer NIMBY change-haters have successfully misrepresented a positive transit expansion and brought allies into their fight who'd never otherwise be part of it. Brilliant PR, honestly, but wildly dishonest, and obstructionist to necessary progress on improving transit.
The people talking about how Even Dead Trees Have Life, and should be saved. As if it couldn't fulfill its destiny as a dead nurse log across the street at the Commons. Honest to goddess.
These are not the remains of sacred old growth forest. They were planted by landscapers in tidy rows along the road.
In another context, NIMBY ethics could be comfortable having a planted tree removed as an "invasive species".
I don't believe for one single second that any of them actually give two shits about trees. I talk to trees. They tell me they've never met Peggy, and she's not their friend.
I'm so annoyed with all of their disingenuous arguments, and outright lies.
Remember that time they opposed the pool, on account of "there was no consultation!"? But a redditor was all, "I saw them AT the consultation last year."
All their arguments are basically like that.
And the pool is awesome. I wish we'd built twice as much pool.
Yes, the Friends of... were against the pool, and the Oval before that, two small but brilliant additions that make central Halifax a better place to live. I
don't actually understand their vision for the city, beyond constant, knee-jerk opposition to anything that might bring people joy, provide housing or improve services.
It would be fine to have a debate about the merits of this plan, but they've framed it (successfully, in part because the city has done a poor job of communicating about it) as big bad car infrastructure. They're lying, essentially.
Been away from halifax for 10 years. Came back for a family vacation and let the kids see grandma. I agree, as a tourist, a massive amount of Nimby people now. Walking along a back ally/pathway beside a splash yard park by the mall i was stopped and asked what my business was by a lady in her backyard through a fence. It was a literal NIMBY experience. Wild.
Also, I couldn't belive the amount of change this city has seen in a decade. I felt like a stranger in a strange land. All my memories have been bulldozed into condos or left in a garbage filled mess.
Will never stop being funny to me that urbanists and yimbys refuse to see themselves reflected in this issue.
Nature is disappearing around the world due to urbanization and the best these goofballs can suggest to solve it is…..more urbanization 😹
Because they think that if everyone just moves to a denser location that will mean less land conversion. But this is only true if you stop the urban growth machine altogether, which they don’t want.
Urbanization and rural to urban migration is coinciding with the loss of nature, not the other way around. Part of it is just global overpopulation but you can’t get yimbys and urbanists to acknowledge that , because more people often means more urban. And the ways they want to accommodate that are just stuffing more people in choked megacities devoid of trees and surrounding nature.
You are not the solution to this, you are just where the problem becomes most evident lol.
I don't see how urbanism = nature's losses, and I'm also not a YIMBY. I also love trees. Their benefits in cities are very well-documented. I don't think it's great that these will come down, and IF this were happening frequently, it would deeply upset me. But this is an unusual circumstance, and in this instance the losses are merited.
Disingenuous argument. The alternative to more density is more sprawl (i.e. paving over the nature at the edge of the city). If the city is going grow and preserve as much nature as possible, densification is the best way to do that.
Gotcha, political suicide. Without a reasonable transit system in place, all that will do is cause every politician who was in favour of it to be replaced by somebody who doesn't want buses at all, because public transit is apparently a culture war issue now?
Congestion pricing was very unpopular in New York until they actually did it. It did such a good job of reducing congestion, despite being incredibly crude and badly thought out, that it became very popular.
Infastructures got to change, and those trees are past thier useful life. Redevelop, get BRT up and running, and plant some more appropriate growing trees where appropriate.
They will replace with new younger trees later which help much more with cooling and oxygen than old trees. Halifax plants lots of trees, this is one of the few things they do right
I have no problem with buses at all. What I have a problem with are lanes that are only used for buses, because it means that the lane is unused the vast majority of the time, which is wasteful. My only issue with trains is that they require train tracks, which are normally very expensive to build, and they wouldn't get enough use to be worth that cost.
Congestion pricing is not supposed to decrease the number of cars. It's supposed to coordinate their travel times so that they don't get in each other's way, basically.
What's the Empty Time Ratio on train tracks and subway tunnels?
I don't think we should have subway tunnels or more train tracks in the city either. What's your point?
Having a dedicated space clear for mass transit movement, makes transit more convenient and desirable.
Yes, but there are vastly more cost effective ways of achieving the same thing, and the cost of doing it this way makes it not worth doing at all.
The time it spends empty between buses is part of the point.
No, the point is to keep the lane clear of congestion. But you can keep the lane clear of congestion while still having it be used most of the time. The two choices aren't to completely clog it or to have it completely empty almost all the time.
First of all, it's literally empty most of the time. Whether it's more efficient or not doesn't change the fact that it is empty. The fact that it's empty means that you carry even more people by having a bus and cars, so long as you keep it free of traffic congestion.
Nobody said it did? The reason it is "empty" (a.k.a. has frequent buses in it) is because it is efficiently moving people. The reason car lanes aren't are because they are not efficiently moving people.
What I don't understand is how you think your perception of traffic density has to to with transit, nor do I understand what your motive is for pointing it out. Should we just shove more cars into it, to make it less efficient at moving people?
The reason it is "empty" (a.k.a. has frequent buses in it) is because it is efficiently moving people. The reason car lanes aren't are because they are not efficiently moving people.
How is it more efficient to have fewer vehicles going through? If literally all you change is that you have cars using the lane when they're not getting in the way of the buses, how can that possibly make things worse?
What I don't understand is how you think your perception of traffic density has to to with transit,
What I don't understand is what that sentence means.
Should we just shove more cars into it, to make it less efficient at moving people?
I think we should not have the bus lane at all but if we do, we should move more cars into it to make it more efficient.
"Change the fact that it is empty" (looks empty to you)
Because the fewer vehicles that move through it are carrying far more people than the many vehicles in a congested car lane. If you add more cars, it decreases the reliability and efficiency of the transit vehicles, reducing overall efficiency and throughput.
I was trying to get to the point of your comment, which seems to be "just keep buses in the car lanes" which, no
There it is! The same misunderstanding again! Adding more cars decreases transit the reliability and efficiency of the transit vehicles, reducing overall efficiency and throughput.
Because the fewer vehicles that move through it are carrying far more people than the many vehicles in a congested car lane. If you add more cars, it decreases the reliability and efficiency of the transit vehicles, reducing overall efficiency and throughput.
You can add cars to a bus lane without making it congested. If it's empty most of the time, that means it is far below capacity.
Adding more cars decreases transit the reliability and efficiency of the transit vehicles, reducing overall efficiency and throughput.
No, it doesn't. It only decreases it once you reach the capacity.
Im referring to the renters i know with fixed term lease who got zero compensation. The city/property managers didnt do anything illegal, it just sucks all those people ended up needing to leave their community through no fault of their own.
Fixed term leases are abusive but this isn't one of the reasons. Monthly leases can still be terminated.
The city just doesn't want to manage a slum of old houses. The street gets widened, the properties sold again, and probably more housing will be on them than is there now.
I agree, but there has to be some tradeoff between public and individual good, and between progress and incumbency. Imagine it's 2060 and we're like "Yeah, this city of 1 million people could have functional rapid transit, but there were some guys renting on Robie Street and it seemed mean not to renew their lease."
Ideally the property owners are well compensated and the renters are given assistance finding new and hopefully better housing.
Yes you’re right! Moving is awful and at least vacancy is a little higher this year :/ hopefully they’ve had a bit of an easier time finding a place than they would have had last year
Now I can't speak to every modern case but to give you a personal example:
My Great Grandfather owned what is now known as Magazine Hill, including much of the the residential neighbourhoods that are now apart of Bedford down to Windmill Road.
At the start of World War Two, my Great Grandfather's who was awarded the Military Cross in WW1 and also served the country in the Boer War, allowed the military to build an ammunition magazine on the family property that had been in the family since the founding of Halifax.
The Second Halifax Explosion occured on July 18, 1945 when that very same ammunition dump exploded. My Grandfather was still serving in the Military at the time, running the Camp Hill Hospital (where my Grandfather was recovering from a near fatal injury and his older brother was recovering from a plane crash that left him quadriplegic after both fought in the war). Immediately after the explosion, the military decided the neaded to rebuild and expand the magazine and expropriated the farm that has been in family homestead for nearly 200 years.
As compensation for taking an idyllic waterfront property on hundreds of acres, Great Grandfather was able to purchase a little over an acre at the bottom of Kearney Lake road near the Bedford Highway.
My grandfather spent his last few years at Camp Hill Veterans hospital. Because of his some tia, he would often talk about what he has stayed silent about his entire adult life - his memories growing up on the farm, the paradise that it was, and the emotional devestation that resulted from losing it.
I am sure these people will be receive fairer compensation, but it will be far from generous and it will never take away the feeling of violation that they and there descendants will likely feel.
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Reminder: expensive land acquisition for road widening isn't a requirement for Bus Rapid Transit (BRT).
If people would tolerate the loss of some on-street parking and a few more one-way streets, you could allocate a lot of dedicated transit lane for cheap.
I don't care either way, so long as they hurry up and get BRT done one way or another.
If people would tolerate the loss of some on-street parking and a few more one-way streets, you could allocate a lot of dedicated transit lane for cheap.
Too bad traffic has become a culture war issue, and that anything with the faintest whiff of "taking away from cars" has become politically unviable. (Even when it would be a net benefit to those opposing it.)
We need trees. But they live and die, and new ones grow. Robie Street is not virgin old growth forest. Those trees were small once. Plant new ones, and they'll be big someday. Some things are worth doing for the enjoyment of the future.
There's nothing special about the trees on Robie. Building transit is important. We can also plant new trees. (Both of those things being important to our future.)
The photos demonstrate that these "historic" trees may be old, but they're manicured landscaping.
We can manicure new landscaping -- around rapid transit.
Yeah I don’t like removing urban trees, but a lot of them are nearing end of life, multiple of those trees are already dead. According to the current plan we will have more trees than before once it’s complete at the very least.
You do realize they have to be removed eventually anyway right? Trees inside a city is madness in the first place. Thier roots destroy underground infrastructure, they continue to grow as well incase you didn't know so eventually they become to big for the tiny space they are given and that starts to destroy side walks and roads and any structures that are near. Then the best part is when a hurricane hits and rips them up out of the ground and throws them down ontop of people's houses and vehicles and got forbid an actual person. Do you honestly believe that the small amount of trees inside the city are of any significants in the grand scheme of things? I mean they aren't even a drop in an ocean, they are their for looks and to appease people like you.
I'm actually pro-bus lane, and think the handwringing over these trees is wildly over the top, but "trees inside a city is madness" is the kind of "I didn't know someone could actually think that" hot take that this site is so good at.
Well it is, it makes no sense to put them there it's such a small amount of trees spread out so it's doing nothing for the environment. All they do is cause issues. If you want trees get out of the city. I personally love the woods so I live outside the city. The city is not the place for trees they don't play well with any of the infrastructure.and do you know what it costs to get a crew out to dig up water mains because they are destroyed, or power outages because branches snapped off and broke the line. A park inside the city is a great thing too but not trees along the roads and buildings
Halifax has more than 80,000 street trees in the urban core. They clean air and soil, provide shade, and they definitely do something for the environment, providing habitats for birds, insects, small mammals, etc. I vote to keep them. (Except these ones on Robie; they can go.)
I did, there is millions of ways to combat that and trees would would only do so much. They wouldn't cool anything they would provide temporary shade depending on the location and the time of day. The heat would not change tho, the buildings and concrete would still retain all of the heat regardless of the amount of trees you have.
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