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Originally Posted by someone123
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The buses are unfortunate but if you're up a few floors and behind the setback like the one they have the noise and exhaust probably isn't that bad. Presumably those units all have AC. It's horrible to have to choose between boiling in your apartment or listening to loud traffic all night in the summer.
This ties back in with the transit thread in that I wish something would be done about transit in the urban core. Transit in Halifax seems to be widely viewed as a utilitarian service where frills are a waste, and traditionally there's been a big slant toward coverage rather than service quality.
I've been to Portland, Oregon a few times and was back there a couple of weeks ago. They have several streetcar routes that carry about as many passengers as Halifax's main transit corridors. It's easy to imagine a similar service in Halifax when you see how they operate in Portland (the level of development/traffic, street widths, and topography are all in the same general ballpark). They're fairly old at this point but they are still much nicer than buses. A narrow street with electric streetcar service is a completely different environment from one filled with roaring diesel buses.
One of the novel things about Portland (for North America) is that the streetcar addition was driven partly to increase the desirability of the inner city and promote development. Moving the largest number of people around as quickly and cheaply as possible was not the sole or even necessarily the prime motivation. An enormous amount of real estate development occurred near the streetcar lines after they went in, generating extra income for the city and offsetting the cost. Had this spinoff effect been overlooked the streetcars would have looked like a very bad investment. Unfortunately, the commuter rail study makes exactly that mistake and Halifax is not even to the point of seriously considering new forms of transit for the urban core.
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Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse
^ Can you post your recommended streetcar route in the rail transportation thread?
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Originally Posted by someone123
It might be fun to make some new routes up if I have time, not that I am a transit expert.
One thing that has changed is that the Cogswell redevelopment isn't too far off, and commuter rail might happen. I think an interesting route would be one that links up the South End rail station to downtown, serves the new Cogswell neighbourhood, then follows Gottingen through the North End, Stadacona, shipyard, and some areas chosen for development potential (e.g. Young Street). This isn't unlike the classic pre-war streetcar route along Barrington. Maybe you could even get away with just streetcars and community shuttles on the peninsula. The streetcar would connect up with commuter rail, MetroLink, and the ferries.
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Obviously I like the concept of improving downtown transit, but I'm not sold on the idea that a streetcar would accomplish much. First of all, a streetcar downtown or mainly in very central areas like the one in Portland isn't going to "carry as many passengers as our main transit corridors" unless we force most people coming into downtown on all those different routes to transfer onto the streetcar just to travel a short distance. That would keep the diesel buses out of downtown, but would also be crazy.
The other option would be to have the streetcar go from Mumford to, say, the Bridge terminal, perhaps making the short jog down to the ferry terminal. It wouldn't be unreasonable to force transfers at the Bridge and Mumford, however you still have services for the peninsula that would need to go downtown. Definitely #7, but also several others such as #20, #6, #2, etc. depending on the route the streetcar took between downtown and Mumford.
This could be solved by having several streetcar lines that better served the peninsula, but this then gets very $$. I still say the best option is to simply electrify the buses. To start, make them dual mode diesel electric trolly buses, and electrify the central corridor. This is the type of bus used on Boston's Silver line. The first electrified section could be SGR and Barrington from SGR to Scotia sq, and eventually the whole #1 route could be done and the #1 could be operated with standard trolley buses. And perhaps the Portland corridor could eventually be electrified as you suggested previously, although that's a rather long distance. Perhaps just as far as Penhorn.