What has happened to the streets of Halifax?
The other day, with a dog in tow, I approached the Halifax corner where Henry Street meets Jubilee Road. Ahead, a big white half-ton had nosed out, hoping to make a right.
I had, the way I saw it, few options: take my life in my hands by walking in front out into the Jubilee traffic or admit defeat and take a detour behind the truck.
At moments like that I have often fantasized of opening the back door of a vehicle barring a crosswalk then, as deftly as a ninja, sliding through the backseat exiting on the other side as the driver looks back, bug-eyed, in the rear-view mirror.
This time my choice was made for me. The driver snapped his truck into reverse and backed up, giving me plenty of room to make my passage.
It was a nice, human moment. I touched fingers to forehead to acknowledge his small kindness. He raised a hand in response.
Yet the mere fact that I am recounting this mundane tale is, I think, noteworthy. In this city, the bar for behaviour while behind the wheel of a vehicle has fallen so low that just trying to obey the rules of the road, merely treating a pedestrian with common courtesy, is worthy of fulsome praise.
But you already know this, don’t you? Because you walk, drive and bike in the same place that I do, which means that we both are likely asking the same question: just what the hell has happened to Halifax’s streets?
When did it become such a scary city on which to roam by foot?
Why is it suddenly such a vile place in which to take the wheel?
How did our streets become so mean?
I know, I know, we’re a big city now. Halifax’s population has climbed 20 per cent since amalgamation in 1996. All those people drive cars. Many of them, as well, commute to jobs downtown, adding to the congestion on the streets, all of which is another way of saying that traffic problems are the price of progress.
Except anyone can see that it’s a lot more than that. Last year, on a clear day, a friend was T-boned where Oxford Street meets Chebucto Road. Before that, a neighbour was hit riding her bicycle out by the Dingle. Earlier this year, a neighbour who walked everywhere in this city was killed when struck by a delivery truck in a crosswalk on Young Street.
All of this makes me feel craven for whining about being screamed at by passing drivers and having to jump out of the way of SUVS barrelling around corners, particularly when folks from bigger places say Halifax is a walker's paradise compared to where they came from.
Except, when I went on Facebook the other day, I discovered I was not alone in my feelings that things have changed.
There, I learned that COVID surely must shoulder some of the blame: all those Uber Eats drivers bringing sustenance to the folks working at home; the wagon train of 18-wheelers bringing stuff that we once went out and bought in stores, right to our door.
Our never-ending construction boom means dump trucks and front-end loaders clogging the streets, bored sub-contractors with stop signs wielding their absolute power to halt traffic, and walkers forced to mimic parkour traceurs to circumvent the obstacles they unexpectedly find in their paths.
Although there’s another side to this question, folks mentioned the panhandlers now patrolling the medians at every major intersection. added to the confusion They cited the way streets, too narrow in the first place, have become congested with bicycle and bus lanes, bumps, and pinch points, along with other traffic calming techniques meant to keep people safer but which also make it harder, in some ways, to drive around the streets.
Poor planning is said to be part of it. How else to explain the Almon and Connaught intersection. (“Set up the opposite of turning rules” a Facebooker told me, “insane!!!) The yield lane to Highway 102 at the Bedford Sackville exchange. (“Much too short and too blind to safely allow a merge to fast traffic coming down the hill from the airport.”) The point where Joseph Howe Drive merges with the Fairview overpass. (“An attempt to get to the new bridge alive!!!”)
I turn out to have company in thinking that exiting the A. Murray Mackay Bridge on the Dartmouth side of the harbour requires the composure of an air traffic controller. I also turn out to be not alone in my befuddlement every time I hit the intersection of Windsor and Cunard streets and Chebucto Road.
The increased number of roundabouts do not make things go more smoothly for everyone, although I long ago decided that the right of way at the Armdale Rotary goes to the most decrepit vehicle.
We have ourselves to blame, because, as I understand it, we are lousy drivers: jumping the queue at four-way stops, tailgating, holding up traffic for long minutes while trying to turn left onto high-traffic streets or during high-traffic times, ignoring the rules whether it is no-passing in construction zones, blasting through yellow lights, or edging into populated crosswalks.
Our turning abilities, in fact, came in for particular criticism among my Facebook friends. Where are the blinkers, they ask? Why do drivers turning left or right make wide, loopy farmer’s turns?
I’m told something else has changed: drivers are angrier, in more of a hurry than ever before to, I guess, get their double-double at Tim’s, less likely to follow the rules of the road.
It is as if, because they are inside huge metal missiles, they reign supreme. Human beings best know their place. Better yet, hurry up and get out of the way because, increasingly, cars trump people on these mean streets.