[someone123]

Looks interesting, although it's not clear what the proposed solution downtown would be. It would be nice to have a tunnel connecting the rail lines through downtown but that would be prohibitively expensive and shouldn't be bundled with plans to improve transit.

That being said, a better transit hub at Cogswell on the other hand is a great idea, and the time to do that is now because of the interchange work. It is disappointing that the Metro Transit and the city don't seem to be pushing to do much about transit there.

A bigger issue I see with this is that it's an "all things to all people" type plan. It is overly complicated by proposals to run routes out to Clayton Park or maybe tunnel to Dartmouth. The proposed route is also quite long and the loop arrangement makes it less convenient. It would be better to focus on one simpler route that serves the main parts of Halifax, has some room for transit-oriented development, and could enable a better bus network. That would have a vastly higher ROI.

Another thing I wonder is why there is so much of an obsession with reusing the existing rail tracks. Yes, they are already there, but they carry heavy freight traffic so they make cheaper, faster light rail vehicles impossible. They are also not in the ideal locations for serving the population. It would be far better to create some corridors along major streets. There is tons of space to do that; you just get rid of mixed traffic lanes. The routes could start with buses, diesel or electric, then perhaps transition to rail in the future. Or maybe there would be little advantage to rail given self-driving cars and electric vehicles.