Third Harbour Crossing
 

From the Herald (http://www.thechronicleherald.ca/Front/9006038.html):

Halifax council considers tunnel or third bridge to ease congestion

By AMY PUGSLEY FRASER City Hall Reporter
Tue. Mar 25 - 7:18 PM

It could be three’s company for the twin spans across Halifax Harbour.

With Halifax’s population growth and the associated traffic congestion, the A. Murray MacKay and the Angus L. Macdonald bridges need help from a new south-end bridge or tunnel as early as 2016, the bridge commission said Tuesday.

The existing bridges – built in 1970 and 1955 respectively – aren’t going to be able to handle the growing traffic much longer.

With 32 million crossings a year, up from about 24 million in 1981, the bridges are going to need some help accommodating the daily commuters, bridge commission chairman Tom Calkin said Tuesday.

And while the argument between a $1.1-billion six-lane bridge and a $1.4-billion four-lane tunnel has yet to be played out, the best place for the third crossing has already been selected.

The new connector could link Woodside, at Highway 111, with the CN Rail cut in the south end at the container terminal.

The province has already announced its plans to pave the south-end rail cut to accommodate trucks servicing the container pier as part of the Atlantic Gateway.

A study, done four years ago, revealed that the cost to pave and widen that could reach as high as $50 million.

In addition to the cost of the construction for the new crossing and its approaches, there are also issues of land ownership to be played out.

However, Mr. Calkin said that they have the “option to expropriate land.”

He hosted a media briefing Tuesday afternoon, in advance of a presentation to regional council at its regular weekly meeting Tuesday night.

City hall asked the commission for a “needs assessment” study on the bridges back in 2006. The tender for the early-stage analysis – at a cost of about $375,000 – was awarded by the commission last March to MRC Delphi.

Their report outlines that, at one point, 23 different crossings were contemplated as possible choices. However, they streamlined that number to six.

In addition to the Woodside-south-end bridge and tunnel, the ideas also include twinning the MacKay bridge on its north or south side.

Traffic patterns show, however, that the desired crossing would be located closer to the institutions that daily commuters are trying to reach, including the hospitals, universities and the financial sector in downtown Halifax.

Another option showed two tunnels to accommodate bus rapid transit only.

The combined seven lanes on both bridges represent almost 30 per cent of the 22 lane entryways onto the Halifax peninsula. Growing commuter congestion is clogging those arteries, the report finds.

Back in 1999, the bridges experienced only 25 days when cross-harbour trips were over 100,000.

Last year, there were 164 such days, the commission’s chief engineer told reporters Tuesday.

It may not seem like a lot, Jon Eppell said, but when you take out weekends, holidays and summer vacation, it represents 85 per cent of possible peak-traffic days.

“We are approaching the ceiling,” Mr. Eppell said.

“It’s an inevitable reality that an additional crossing has to be considered.”

(apugsley@herald.ca)

$1.1 billion dollars for a third bridge :koko:

I think that would be a horrid use of money and I don't see how we could ever afford that kind of expenditure in the near future.

Well it sounds like the bridge commission has already made up its mind.

Its only the truth it will have to happen so yeh might as well start planning for it know.

It would do wonders for growth in southern parts of Dartmouth and move the trucks off downtown streets. Plus it would be user-pay so the risk to the taxpayer would be minimal. As far as I'm concerned, it can't happen soon enough.

I think the cost is that high because the length of the bridge would have to be much longer than the other 2 spans if the woodside site was chosen, and not to mention that 6 lanes is a fairly wide bridge.

If you look at Google Maps and track where this would go, it would narowly miss George's Island and land somewhere in the vicinity of the Cunard Center and the Dover Flour mill. The railway cut offers several possibilities for access -- one natural one (but surely contentious) is at the south end of Robie Street; another, even more contentious one is at the south end of Connaught Avenue. The natural demarcation point would be at the end of Quinpool or the start of Joe Howe Drive, but that too would be contentious. However, it does offer a tremendous opportunity to finally do something to move traffic in this town. The Quinpool option would also tie naturally into an eventual Arm crossing.

I seem to recall reading that Point Pleasant Drive was originally created so that it could eventually be part of a full loop going from a third crossing to a bridge over the Northwest Arm and then an extension of NW Arm Drive/Dunbrack or possibly some extension of the 102. I'm not sure where Halterm fit into that plan (it's possible that it didn't exist at the time). The other problem is that Young St/South Park is the only straightforward path into the downtown, although a Barrington Street extension would probably be possible. Maybe it was in the original plan.

Another interesting possibility on a new bridge would be a rail line. I'm not sure how much that adds to the cost. Light rail is probably no heavier than a typical lane of heavy traffic, but a freight train would be much heavier. There could also be schemes to separate traffic and put trucks into a dedicated lane.

I have always thought a line from the Woodside exit of 111 across the harbour though South St. or Inglis, then expand the route across the NWA(bridge or tunnel) to connect up to South Mainland and Spryfield. Of course, there may be a few buildings in the way for the bridge to connect directly up to South/Inglis, but the arm tunnel would certainly allow workers to exit the peninsula without jamming the round-about.

Possible Short-term Solutions
 

One thing they might not have considered in this presentation was that 60'000 cars come down Windmill Road in Dartmouth a day and most of those end up on the McKay or the McDonald. They might be able to reduct the amount of vehicles if they work on other entries from Bedford and Sackville cuz thats were the 60'000 of the 100'000 cars originate.
I can think of a few things that might help this short-term THESE ARE ONLY FOR THE MACKAY (cuz helping the McDonald is near impossible):
1. Make it so when you are going Dartmouth-bound there are no slow downs until you are well off the bridge (the expressway, reconfigure Victoria Road interchange, stop train traffic crossing over Princess Margaret during rush hour, ect).
2. To reduce people coming from Bedford/Sackville make other routes more attracting (like the Bi-Hi)
3. Have more MetroLink services (to Bedford/Highfield/Mic Mac area ect) when the Sackville one came in service the traffic dropped dramatically.

Of course my ideas would only solve some problems short-term and most of these would only stop the bottlenecks getting off the bridge. Only the Link would drop the car rates. Eventually they'll need a new bridge and i do support a Woodside one because going around the Circ is faster then going down Barrington or Robie.

The most important thing to realize is that the bridge will shape future development and redirect current traffic. Right now, people in Woodside-Eastern Passage go to the MacDonald or MacKay bridges. They would use the new bridge, freeing up room on the MacKay for people coming from Bedford and Sackville. Similarly, tens of thousands of houses will be built in Halifax in the coming decades. These could go in the empty land around Shearwater if a new bridge is built. This is a better alternative to Fall River or Hammonds Plains for a variety of reasons.

The effect would be similar to when the old bridges were built. When the MacDonald bridge went up Dartmouth more than quadrupled in size within a decade or so. Major transportation projects should be used as tools to shape the city in desirable ways, not merely as simple "fixes" to current problems.

I think a tunnel would work better in terms of where it can physically fit.

I think a tunnel would work better in terms of where it can physically fit.

The option of a tunnel system may make more sense for the connecting routes on the Halifax side. If you could figure out where you want traffic to exit on the peninsula -- a difficult choice, since there is no existing high-traffic artery in the area, mostly residential surface streets in a ritzy part of town -- you could minimize the impact on the neighborhoods it passes through by going underground, at least for relatively short distances.

Im glad you guys see this the same way I do.

The comments on the Chronicle Herald page about this are so negative its almost angering. Although some bring up logical points like it would be better to improve public transit than putting more cars into town, but regardless of how good our transit system becomes, theres always going to be people taking their cars, and with population increases theres just no catching up. A third crossing will be needed.

On the other hand, you get people making comments like how it'll destroy the harbour views, or how our population will start declining soon, and other false comments. Sigh....

I know its so painful reading those comments....people really don't have a clue do they.

Im glad you guys see this the same way I do.

The comments on the Chronicle Herald page about this are so negative its almost angering. Although some bring up logical points like it would be better to improve public transit than putting more cars into town, but regardless of how good our transit system becomes, theres always going to be people taking their cars, and with population increases theres just no catching up. A third crossing will be needed.

On the other hand, you get people making comments like how it'll destroy the harbour views, or how our population will start declining soon, and other false comments. Sigh....

Folly... a third bridge would be pure folly. Why not take that 1.4 b and invest it, into better mass transit, so that any newer development, have a better chance of going onto the peninsula, instead? Shoot, you could take the 1 billion and put it into 2 or 3 ferries for the harbour.

It seems council has forgotten the main goal of cities, which is to be able to have as many people as possible, in one spot, as efficiently as possible.

Check out the needs assessment (left of page, PDF - 63 pages)
http://www.needsassessment.ca/
Lots of good info, maps, graphs, ect

edit:
Page 54 has a sketch up of the bridge
Page 56 has a sketch up of the tunnel

Unlike virtually all mass transit projects, the crossing would have a revenue stream that would pay for itself. It's not a question of spending money on subsidies for transit projects or building the crossing. You could do both as long as you had the tax funding to pay the transit subsidies.

Yes, the new bridge would probably have $2 tolls or something, which would translate into tens of thousands of dollars per day in revenues.

I'm not sure why people are complaining about how this is "pro-car". This is a project that would improve connectivity in the core. The report includes details about new BRT routes over the bridge. In reality a Southern bridge would likely make the city much more compact since it will promote growth in Dartmouth instead of North of the city. It will also make the downtown easier to get to for more people and encourage employment growth in the centre. Currently the HRM is headed along a trajectory where the "middle" of the metropolitan area is slowly shifting North because areas to the South do not have proper transportation connections.

The alignments presented in the report integrate well with the road network on both sides and wouldn't require disturbing existing neighbourhoods much.