Traffic went ‘eerily quiet’ during lockdown
Halifax experienced 98 days with low traffic last year, mostly between mid-march and late June, according to a global analysis that paints a picture of just how quiet our streets got with the pandemic lockdown.
The same rings true for Nova Scotia's highways, said Cpl. Mike Carter, a traffic services officer with the Nova Scotia RCMP.
“It was eerily quiet,” Carter said of March until June of 2020.
While Mounties saw a significant drop in road traffic last spring, there was a weird corollary at play.
“As people started to get back on the roads again, we started to notice a significant increase in speeding offences,” Carter said. “And we started laying lots of charges for excessive speeds — 30 (kilometres per hour over the limit), 40 over, 50 over — in those ranges, in the stunting levels. We saw an increase of that. And we could only attribute it to the space they had on the roads to do it.”
With a fraction of the normal traffic “that opened up the spaces on the roads for people to go faster,” he said.
“It's a frustrating behaviour, but people do it,” Carter said. “It's a psychological thing.”
According to Halifax's own data, traffic collisions in the city were down by a little over 35 per cent last year. The city's open data portal shows there were 3,967 motor vehicle collisions in 2020, down from 6,161 in 2019.
“It's the inevitable outcome; the less we are moving, the less probability of having collisions,” said Ahsan Habib, a traffic expert at Dalhousie University.
Habib offered some consolation “given our misery” with COVID-19.
“We probably reduced a lot of greenhouse gas emissions in this time and we started reflecting on how to travel other than by car,” he said.
Traffic reduced significantly during the pandemic, Habib said. “Lockdown has impacts.”
Lots of destinations were eliminated at the onset of the pandemic, he said, noting restaurant closures and gathering limitations Halifax saw last year to cut down on the spread of the coronavirus.
“Our mandatory activities — meaning work and school — that stops completely. The universities are online, so the university area has decreased (traffic).”
Public transit use plummeted while people started walking and riding bicycles more, Habib said.
“So, there are lots of shifts going on with different aspects of congestion which are worth observing. The reason is we might retain some of the newer trends in post-pandemic times. We might still prefer business meetings online even when everything is alright.”
Post-pandemic, “we might retain this telecommuting behaviour,” he said.
“COVID-19 showed us you can still be productive by working from home.”
Last January was Halifax's most congested month on the roads and April, when the premier told everyone to “stay the blazes home,” was the least, according to the Tomtom 2020 Traffic Index released Tuesday.
The company says it creates the index by collecting “data anonymously via GPS probes on roads, vehicle navigation systems, and other devices generating over 61-billion location measurements every day.”
Our busiest day behind the wheel was Nov. 3.
Halifax's roads were congested by 17 per cent last year, down nine per cent from 2019, according to the report from Tomtom.
That means, on average, it took 17 per cent more time to travel in the city than it would in uncongested conditions, said Habib, a transportation engineer and the director of Dal's School of Planning.
“I am anticipating that it is underestimated,” he said, noting he believes traffic congestion was likely reduced more than the nine per cent reported in the Tomtom study.
“But it's a good indicator though.”
January saw a 26 per cent congestion rate and April clocked in at a meagre five per cent, according to the Tomtom traffic study.
Halifax ranked as the sixth most congested region in Canada, with Vancouver in the top spot, Toronto taking second, followed by Montreal, Ottawa and London, Ont.
Winnipeg also had a 17 per cent congestion level last year, but the Manitoba capital only had 73 low traffic days, less than Halifax's 98. Low traffic days are defined as at least 50 per cent less congested than the same dates in 2019.
“Globally, 388 cities (out of 416) saw traffic decrease since 2019,” said a news release from Tomtom. “For the Traffic Index, the company analyzed billions of locationbased data points to provide detailed insights on traffic congestion levels in 416 cities in 57 countries across the world to understand how a variety of coronavirus safe-street programs affected mobility trends.”