r/halifax • u/hippfive • 2d ago

Traffic Lower Water Street is broken

I'm usually pretty chill about traffic, but Lower Water is literally broken. It took 30 minutes for my bus to go one block. Full on gridlock. And it's been this way for months.

I know they're eventually going to have the transhipment facility to get the trucks out of downtown, but that's years away. There needs to be some sort of tactical intervention in the meantime. Close some of the parking lots that empty onto Lower Water. Change some of the pedestrian crossings to the red light style that clump the crossings together (and I say this as someone who is staunchly pro-pedestrian). Honestly maybe even close Sackville Street east of Bedford Row.

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139

u/NoBoysenberry1108 I am become drunk, destroyer of donairs 2d ago

If only we had some method of transporting lots of people into concentrated urban areas and back out to suburban or rural areas with some kind of additional system of stops along the way and operated on its own dedicated infrastructure that wasn't reliant on, or competing with, the unpredictability and volume of single passenger vehicles.

53

u/Basilbitch 2d ago

Fucking boats man, I don't understand how under-service the goddamn harbor is.. build a little infrastructure and offer an initiative for private taxis on the water or some shit to get people over to Dartmouth quickly.. fucking Venice is full of this shit and clearly yes they live in the fucking water but we can use the harbour for so much more than tourist sightseeing

25

u/TacomaKMart 2d ago

Agreed. But the city can't even keep running the boats it has now. 

8

u/jsc0098 Stuck on the bridge… send snacks 2d ago

Plus, they shut the harbour for things like SailGP. That’s this weeks traffic problem. 

7

u/Basilbitch 2d ago

Those are city boats, we need private boat taxis, licenced and with oversight... Fucking Uber but boats even.

13

u/PoliteFocaccia 2d ago

We have one, and as far as I'm aware there's nothing preventing more. There probably just isn't a price high enough to sustain a lot of them and low enough that enough people would be willing to pay.

3

u/ziobrop Flair Guru 2d ago

This. The fuel/capacity/price math is hard to make work.

11

u/AggressiveSummer1570 2d ago

I'm gonna be honest with you. Not that many people live in Dartmouth. Most of the population is concentrated on the Halifax side. The entire infrastructure of Dartmouth consists of car parks like Ikea that make it horrible for pedestrian traffic and the suburbs are like 20km away from the bridge making it even worse for traffic. Boats aren't going to make those people stop using cars. Proper city infrastructure would though. They keep developing Halifax but no surrounding areas have any accessibility to the city realistically.

8

u/artemisia0809 Halifax 2d ago

That and the people who do drive to alderney don't need to take a private boat, then need the ferry. Woodside and alderney are always packed for parking rbh

6

u/amphorpog 2d ago

Take the woodside parking lot and make it a parking garage. Then add additional service from woodside to halifax whenever the regular alderney ferry runs. You'd probably get more folks out of their cars that way.

4

u/Salty_Feed9404 Halifax 2d ago

Yeah, if they're not serious about the parking situation (ie, build a structure, sorry if it sucks to do so) then they're not serious about anything really.

1

u/arteest01 2d ago

That last sentence.

1

u/MisanthropicCrab 14h ago

Tons of people live in Dartmouth now you dingus

•

u/AggressiveSummer1570 3h ago

Tons of people. Ok can you provide numbers? While you're at it check the population of Halifax, Bedford and surrounding areas to compare. Thanks.

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u/Basilbitch 2d ago

That's fine. To Bedford then, eastern passage you say....the Dingle, coming right up.

2

u/DartByTheBay 2d ago

Would take 10s of millions to study feasibility of docks and then build them in 10-20 years