Halifax mayor defends motion to temporarily pause new bike lane infrastructure

Halifax Mayor Andy Fillmore is defending a motion he intends to put forward next week at regional council to temporarily pause awarding new design and construction contracts for bike lanes.

In his memo to colleagues, which was posted to Reddit on Friday, Fillmore said the move is in response to frustration among residents and business owners over "worsening traffic congestion" and the escalating project costs for the AAA (all ages and abilities) bicycle network.

Fillmore stated the municipality is also failing to deliver a "balanced and efficient mobility system" as per its integrated mobility plan.

Fillmore told CBC Radio's Mainstreet Halifax on Friday that his goal is to build cycling infrastructure and active transportation infrastructure "in the right way, in a way that doesn't create the very unfortunate backlash that is very real in our city right now."

The mayor said he'd like to create cycling infrastructure in Halifax that doesn't sacrifice the needs of others who use the roads, like bus drivers, people who ride the bus, delivery and commercial vehicle drivers, people who have to drive in a car because they're not on a bus route, and those who aren't able to ride bikes.

"We have to have a very balanced approach and I just push back on any commentary that we're facing some sort of a binary choice," Fillmore told Mainstreet.

"This is very much a pause so that we can all move forward together in a mindful way that reflects the changing reality we have in our growing and busy city."

Only applies to tenders not yet awarded

Fillmore said the municipal bicycle network was only meant to cost $25 million. He said $16 million has already been spent, but that the budget for the project now is $93 million.

"That leaves $77 million yet to be spent. Only $8 million will come from provincial and federal sources, and that leaves an unexpected $69 million to be funded through the municipal tax rate," Fillmore said.

Fillmore said construction being done right now will be finished. Tenders identified in the capital budget for the next four years — but not yet awarded — would be put on hold.

"This gives us an opportunity to have staff come back to us with a list of all those projects that are in that capital budget with a red light or a green light," he said, adding projects that threaten to "worsen congestion" will be paused.

"All that red light means is, OK, we're just going to take a redesign here," Fillmore continued. "I expect a great percentage of the projects on that list will get a green light and may only have a holdup of a month or two."

'Misguided proposal'

David Trueman, the chair of the Halifax Cycling Coalition, called Fillmore's recommendation a "misguided proposal." He's calling on people to write to their regional councillor and urge them to vote against it.

"We just got the cycling infrastructure projects back on track with the report to council from staff where they took the plan that was supposed to be delivered by the end of 2024 and they presented a detailed plan to get to it by 2028," Trueman said.

"If we have a temporary pause, this is going to be delayed by years. We have a lot of staff and consultants tied up in designing these infrastructure protects, which take years through the pipeline. If you stop the pipeline, the flow is cut off and there can be untold delays and escalating costs."

Trueman said the roads are already built and cycling is catching up. He said the upkeep cost on cycling infrastructure is a tiny fraction of what it would be for road costs.

Divisive issue

"These projects include all the costs of revamping a given street, and often there are other aspects of the road improvement ... [that] reduce the impact on car traffic," he said, citing a flyover bicycle bridge planned for the Macdonald Bridge site.

"If we weren't worried about cars, we could do a much less expensive solution there. It's our propensity to avoid any impact to cars that raises the cost of cycling."

Trueman said he thinks Fillmore's proposal is politically motivated.

"Halifax has the second highest rate of active transportation of any city in Canada. Surely we don't want to throw that away," he said.

"But what Andy Fillmore is keying in on is that cycling is a divisive issue. There's maybe 30 per cent of the population that has their doubts or their objections to it and he wants to create a wedge issue."