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Hello everyone,
I am sending this notice out to urge everyone to take action
against the planned adoption of the Interim Regional Transportation
Strategy by Halifax regional council at the council meeting on Aug 22.
The Traffic Authority of HRM plans to present the final draft of
the strategy to council
at that time. THe document will only be available to the public the day
before. However,
sources in the dept. have confirmed that the final draft is essentially
the same as has been presented at various open houses since april.
This document lays out plans for $225 million in road widening over
the next 20 years, including widening Robie ST to 4 lanes, bayers
rd-young st to 4 lanes from the end of the 102 down to barrington st,
and others. Only lipservice is paid to other tranport demand management
measures such as car pool, bikes, better transit, and commuter rail.
Essentially, the traffic engineers, who are only trained to look at
the car as a means of transport, want to set this strategy in stone,
without a regional planning staregy in place first.
I urge people to contact their councillor to let them know how they
feel about this
plan. The councillor's support office # is 490-4050(Hlfx.) fax 490-4122;
Dart 490-5692;
sackville869-4360; cole harbour 490-6261; fall river 860-4358.
Here are several points that you may wish to use when talking to
your councilllor:
1. The IRTS vision of a sustainable tranport system as outlined in
the introduction is not followed through in the rest of the document.
2. Spending $225 million of OUR MONEY, even over 20 years, without
exploring all other options first, is bad financial management-election
time is near too!
3. Adopting a traffic strategy first, without a regional plan that
looks at HRM in a holistic manner, including health, employment, and
land use planning, makes no sense. Traffic is but one element in such a
picture, not the end all be all.
4. HRM council has already adopted as goals the reduction of
greenhouse gas emissions by 20%, which the IRTS fails to mention; THe
HRM vision 2020 talks about a cleaner/greener future for HRM, the IRTS
contradicts this. And finally, the vision which the IRTS opens with was
copied from the Tranport assoc. of Canada as the TAC's generic vision
for the future, which HRM HAS adopted.
THank you for your time, and I hope that many of you will talk to
your representatives about this trend establishing plan.
David Aalders.
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The preceding message was posted on the Sustainable Maritimes
mailing list (sust-mar). http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/lists/sust-mar
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