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  #141  
Old Posted Apr 5, 2013, 3:17 PM
worldlyhaligonian worldlyhaligonian is offline
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Originally Posted by Antigonish View Post
Another great video, thanks. The 7.5% model seems like the most practical approach to solving a number of Halifax's developmental and growth problems. Those examples he gave with accompanying diagrams shows that with proper transit corridors you could grow the population and tax base to support the growing infrastructure without even compromising the strict height bylaws on the peninsula.

The images showing the growth of 5-6 story buildings along the transit corridors with the [somewhat] suburban growth in between reminded me of the South/West/North End neighbourhoods in Halifax. Very thorough and pragmatic, a vision that seems to be currently lacking in HRM. Have you ever thought of working for HRM again HBNS?
^ I wish he would too!

I think most of Halifax is built up in this way, we just need more 10 - 12 story apartment buildings to fill in the gaps along corridors.
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  #142  
Old Posted Apr 5, 2013, 4:44 PM
OldDartmouthMark OldDartmouthMark is offline
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I am not sure this is correct. Let's say you move a big business from downtown to Burnside:

- You now have people living in places like Clayton Park who have to cross most of the city to get to work. The fact is that, in the context of metro Halifax, the peninsula is the easiest spot for an average group of people to get to.
- They might have taken the bus before, but they probably won't now if they can avoid it; the office parks are hard to serve with transit and so they have horrible transit service.
- On top of all this the city has to take a financial hit to build a bunch of new infrastructure. Or they could pass this all on to developers and suddenly downtown would be a lot more popular.
- Also, the physical environment of the office parks sucks. You have to drive to get anywhere and there aren't good lunch places or places to go after work. This is fine for some people but a big negative for others. It's why tech companies like Amazon and Microsoft have started building office campuses in urban settings. That's what their employees want in SF/Seattle/Portland/Vancouver. Expect the same trend to come to Halifax in 5-10 years.

I would say that the city has tried out the office park model pretty thoroughly with Bayers Lake and Burnside and the results are less than stellar. They even suffer from traffic congestion.

It would be much better if Halifax just built a proper transit system. That alone would probably "solve" traffic problems in the sense that it would create a quick way for large numbers of people to get downtown. If the downtown really did get unsustainably busy (highly debatable in a town with under half a million people), there would then be opportunities to build up secondary employment centres on brownfield sites near train stations.
Thanks for a very insightful answer. From observation, it seems that the business parks (at least Burnside) have created traffic problems of their own. I know Burnside was originally conceived and developed in the late sixties before Dartmouth was part of HRM, but it appears that little thought was given to future traffic patterns, as if somebody never imagined that people from Bedford, Sackville and outlying areas (fed from the 118) would have to pass by and through the park to get to Halifax. The area was much smaller then and the road system was less complex, but still with a little imagination you would have to think that someday it will be a problem.

I pretty much agree with the negative aspects of the parks as well, especially the lack of transit. Coverage is poor and in some cases people have to walk in dangerous areas (no sidewalks or crosswalks) to get to the bus stop!

The lunch situation (in Burnside) is much better now than it was, with the opening of many new restaurants, including Dartmouth Crossing, but you still have to drive to many of them (unless you can take a long lunch break to walk).

All that being said, even the commute you mentioned from Clayton Park to Burnside (I used to do that one about 15 years ago) wouldn't be all that bad (especially in terms of a Toronto suburb commute) as you are going against the main flow of traffic, so it still is only about a 20 minute commute. The worst one is still from the suburbs to downtown Halifax, but even then... 45 minutes? A dream for many Torontonians (not those living downtown), I think. Luckily, we are still small enough that there is time to correct the situation before it gets really bad.

For the future - transit! Build it and they will ride...
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  #143  
Old Posted Apr 5, 2013, 11:39 PM
halifaxboyns halifaxboyns is offline
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Originally Posted by worldlyhaligonian View Post
^ I wish he would too!

I think most of Halifax is built up in this way, we just need more 10 - 12 story apartment buildings to fill in the gaps along corridors.
Working on it That is all I will say at this point...
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  #144  
Old Posted Apr 5, 2013, 11:53 PM
halifaxboyns halifaxboyns is offline
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I wanted to take a quick second to give a couple thoughts on some of the industrial parks and the question that ODM asked and SO123 gave a comment on...

I think the industrial parks really need to be left as a industrial/office or potential future manufacturing (if I remember the zonings correctly?). Cities need to have cheap office space (class B and I think they call it class C too?) as incubator space for businesses - that's how they evolve to eventually move into downtown and become big sized corporations. So their value is important and should the economy of HRM really grow with research/development, manufacturing or offshore oil support - these areas will become even more important for growing those sectors.

That said - where I really see the biggest potential for future change is the big box retail areas of Bayers Lake and Dartmouth Common. I say that with the catch that this should only happen if a future regional plan should identify future transportation routes to go through these areas. I've posted this map of my ideas for future higher order transit in HRM that takes advantage (and boosts) the corridors concept in the Regional Centre Plan and really works with the 7.5% idea that Rob Adams has of densifying around transit. If you look at Portland Street, all that auto oriented commercial along Portland Street could convert to low or mid-rise mixed use with an LRT along there.

I think the same principle could work for DC/BL - assuming some form of this plan occurs in the future. Think of it from this perspective: These sites (Dartmouth Common/Bayers Lake) are pretty buffered from other residential, have huge land sites with lots of open space because of the surface parking lots. Where better (should a future transit go through the area) to put tall, high density buildings? Take the Costco site in Bayers Lake for example - if my math is correct, that site is about 1.1ha. If 500 ppl/ha is a 8 stories (from Rob's presentation), then imagine what you could get out there if you crank the densities up (to support the transit) to 1500 or 2000 ppl/ha? We're talking up to 32 stories! You could easily blow away the costco - rework the lot grading so that the mainfloor of the building lines up with Bayers Lake DR on the corner and then build up. You could easily get 3 or 4 towers on the site and the costco could go back into the mixed use building in a more urban form!

The only catch with this plan would be that considering the cost of putting in the original infrastructure (and the lack of it being paid back in property taxes) - there would be a need to significantly reinvest in providing additional sewer/water capacity since the area wasn't designed for those densities. That can be recouped through levies, tax increment financing, density bonusing - you name it. But if you think about how much land area that the big box area in both areas is - that's a significant amount of potential future density.

In looking at how some of the big box stores are moving, I can tell you that Costco and Target seem to be leading the way with moving towards urban format (same with best buy) while Walmart keeps lagging behind (and I couldn't be happier frankly). But this is food for thought that while we might not be able to change them now...in 20 years, if we build LRT/BRT - the potential is quite high.
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  #145  
Old Posted Apr 6, 2013, 12:10 AM
Hali87 Hali87 is offline
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There seems to be a big urban/rural divide and a blue/white collar divide, but the overall trend is toward smaller households and more mobility.

I am not sure how much of this is cultural and how much of it is dictated by economic factors. Young people now tend to spend a lot more time in school and they have to move around more now to find good jobs.
Maybe the differences then are post-secondary employment rates and availability of good jobs. Most of the married young people I know are in the three westernmost provinces - in AB and Sask there are exceptionally strong job markets so it seems like more young people expect to be able to settle down conveniently whenever they want. BC is a little different but seems to have a very stable economy, a lot of well-paying jobs that don't necessarily require much post-secondary, and perhaps most importantly a post-secondary system that is distributed very well across the entire province, so young people are less likely to need to leave their hometown to go to school, again resulting in overall (voluntarily) reduced mobility compared to the much more pronounced mobility/reduced sense of stability seen in the eastern provinces (perhaps excluding Quebec)
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  #146  
Old Posted Jul 31, 2013, 9:37 AM
ILoveHalifax ILoveHalifax is offline
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Does anybody know what happened re buying the house on Bayers Rd. I believe it was discussed in camera last nite. This has to do with the widening of Bayers Rd.
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  #147  
Old Posted Jul 31, 2013, 1:08 PM
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This item was deferred until next week because they ran out of time.
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  #148  
Old Posted Jul 31, 2013, 1:50 PM
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Yes, they were too busy turning down the creation of density on the peninsula.
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  #149  
Old Posted Jul 15, 2020, 12:46 PM
Northend Guy Northend Guy is offline
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I was super-surprised to find this thread so far down the list! 7 years since the last post!
In any case, work has begun in earnest on this. Equipment on site, trees falling, and earth being moved.
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  #150  
Old Posted Jul 15, 2020, 3:06 PM
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Originally Posted by Northend Guy View Post
I was super-surprised to find this thread so far down the list! 7 years since the last post!
In any case, work has begun in earnest on this. Equipment on site, trees falling, and earth being moved.
Good thing HRM made it a priority.

Am I correct in assuming that the bridges over the rail cut are not being touched and so the widening will not occur until east of those?
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  #151  
Old Posted Jul 15, 2020, 3:37 PM
atbw atbw is offline
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Originally Posted by Keith P. View Post
Good thing HRM made it a priority.

Am I correct in assuming that the bridges over the rail cut are not being touched and so the widening will not occur until east of those?
I don’t think the current project extends past Romans Ave.
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  #152  
Old Posted Jul 16, 2020, 3:34 AM
Northend Guy Northend Guy is offline
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I don’t think the current project extends past Romans Ave.
There is currently sod cut back, tapering right into the bridge.
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  #153  
Old Posted Jan 12, 2021, 11:00 PM
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Dmajackson Dmajackson is offline
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The first section turned out nicely. The AT trail is a welcome addition and will be a great addition when it gets connected to other AT facilities.


Halifax Developments Blog (Photo by David Jackson)
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  #154  
Old Posted Jan 13, 2021, 4:33 AM
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Thanks! I was wondering how this was coming along.

I wonder how they will bridge the remaining gap in the AAA network between this and the Dutch Village Road bike lanes (and Chain of Lakes Trail). The Bi-Hi ramps make it a bit challenging. New multi-use path on the north side of Bayers (between Romans Ave and Joe Howe) maybe?
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  #155  
Old Posted Jan 13, 2021, 3:19 PM
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Thanks! I was wondering how this was coming along.

I wonder how they will bridge the remaining gap in the AAA network between this and the Dutch Village Road bike lanes (and Chain of Lakes Trail). The Bi-Hi ramps make it a bit challenging. New multi-use path on the north side of Bayers (between Romans Ave and Joe Howe) maybe?
Don't quote me on this since it's been years since I've seen the plans but IIRC;

The current trail ends just before the inbound Bayers Road railcut bridge. The bridge would be upgraded or new bridge built beside it. The trail would then follow the southside of the 102 and cross under the elevated section and tie into an upgraded Joe Howe / 102 ramps intersection. The alternative is local street bikeways on Ralston - Abbott - Ashburn - Elliott.

On the other end the trail is going to end at George Dauphinee Ave which will be converted to LSB soon. The walkway to Liverpool Street will connect to that LSB candidate route which will tie into Windsor Street. There is a plan to make Windsor @ Almon a protected bicycle intersection (first in HRM) and the protected lanes would extend down Almon to Agricola. The last step was supposed to be installed by now but Richmond Yards construction easement is in the way.
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  #156  
Old Posted Jan 14, 2021, 1:59 AM
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Originally Posted by Dmajackson View Post
Don't quote me on this since it's been years since I've seen the plans but IIRC;

The current trail ends just before the inbound Bayers Road railcut bridge. The bridge would be upgraded or new bridge built beside it. The trail would then follow the southside of the 102 and cross under the elevated section and tie into an upgraded Joe Howe / 102 ramps intersection. The alternative is local street bikeways on Ralston - Abbott - Ashburn - Elliott.

On the other end the trail is going to end at George Dauphinee Ave which will be converted to LSB soon. The walkway to Liverpool Street will connect to that LSB candidate route which will tie into Windsor Street. There is a plan to make Windsor @ Almon a protected bicycle intersection (first in HRM) and the protected lanes would extend down Almon to Agricola. The last step was supposed to be installed by now but Richmond Yards construction easement is in the way.
Thanks! Now that I look at it on Google Maps, that route makes sense. It seems like it could be built entirely on public ROW.
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  #157  
Old Posted Jan 14, 2021, 11:30 PM
atbw atbw is offline
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Thanks! Now that I look at it on Google Maps, that route makes sense. It seems like it could be built entirely on public ROW.
I wonder what CN's involvement in this is. What level of ownership do they have over the existing bridges, and what control would they have over new crossings?
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  #158  
Old Posted Aug 26, 2021, 11:59 AM
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Councillor defends growing cost of Bayers Road widening project in Halifax



Looks like Phase 2 is going to be delayed until 2023, but they'll paint a temporary bus lane between Connaught and Windsor for now.
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  #159  
Old Posted Aug 26, 2021, 4:35 PM
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Typical poor estimating by HRM staff, either intentional or due to ineptitude. Likely the former as it is far easier to get approval on cost overruns than on an initial giant estimate, even in free-spending HRM-land..
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  #160  
Old Posted Aug 26, 2021, 4:59 PM
OldDartmouthMark OldDartmouthMark is offline
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Typical poor estimating by HRM staff, either intentional or due to ineptitude. Likely the former as it is far easier to get approval on cost overruns than on an initial giant estimate, even in free-spending HRM-land..


It's easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission...
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