True enough, but I can't help but think if they had planned things more carefully with an eye on maintaining a good mix of interesting/significant older buildings combined with new development, they could have made it work without the 'blast it all out and build fresh' mentality.
For example, the tight spot referred to was also affected by the location of the Ordnance Yard, shown in the 1878 map below. The boundary wall is seen in the background of the upper photo and to the right of the lower photo. That whole area was demolished during the urban renewal project, so the traffic flow could have been improved while keeping the Pentagon Building and widening the street on the Ordnance Yard side.
https://novascotia.ca/archives/maps/archives.asp?ID=33
The area can also be seen in the diagram below:
http://www.halifax.ca/property/CogswellHistory.php
Other than the truck traffic from the container terminal, the overall traffic situation in the downtown really isn't all that bad and could definitely be improved with a good transit system. When this is taken into consideration, it becomes clear that the whole Harbour Drive proposal was not a good solution for Halifax, and should never have gotten off the ground in the first place. Some clear thinking, rather than simply following the planning trends that were popular in other cities at the time, could have given us a downtown area which would have been much better than what we have been left with.
Hopefully, with the chance to start from a clean slate again through the removal of Cogswell, our city planners and politicians will put more thought into it than they did the last time... I'm a little nervous that they will screw it up again, though, in seeing the above proposal.