Halifax spending $64M on land to widen Robie Street for bus lanes

Some Halifax residents and councillors are questioning whether a multimillion-dollar plan to widen a busy roadway is the right move, but municipal staff say it's needed to improve transit now and in the decades to come.

On Thursday, municipal staff provided an update to the city's transportation committee about the Robie Street transit corridor. The city is creating bus lanes in both directions on Robie over the coming years, with lanes already installed in some sections in 2020.

Municipal staff have said these lanes are a vital part of Halifax's future rapid-transit system since two routes will run along Robie Street.

Because the north end of Robie narrows between Cunard and Young streets, the city has been buying up land to eventually widen it and allow two-way bus lanes.

The municipality plans to buy 33 properties before the fall of 2026, and a staff report said they have secured about half of those properties so far. The price tag for this portion of land acquisition alone is about $64 million.

About $9 million of the $15 million spent on land so far has been provincial money, the report said.

Halifax spokesperson Laura Wright said in an email Friday that the province is a funding partner to help offset these land acquisition costs for Halifax Regional Municipality. For properties the province owns, it will grant to Halifax the road right-of-way required for the transit corridor, "with rights to build and operate the corridor."

Long-term tenants in affordable apartments have told CBC they are worried about losing their homes and finding something else during a housing crisis, while some business owners have already been displaced or closed up shop completely.

"My main concerns are to talk about 'properties,' when it's actually buildings where people live," resident Peggy Cameron, who has been advocating against the widening, said outside the meeting.

"Despite what the staff says, many, many people are unaware that this is happening."

The section of Robie between Almon and Cunard streets is the narrowest and will be the most impacted by widening, the report said. This means 40 mature trees will be removed.

Halifax will plant new trees as part of the project, ending up with more than are there now, but Cameron said the existing trees are "irreplaceable" and bring environmental and neighbourhood benefits.

Cameron said she felt the staff analysis from the report about using other rapid-transit options in this area was "thin." She pointed to cities like Zurich, Switzerland, that use traffic priority signals to allow buses to jump ahead of traffic.

She said it was also disappointing staff could not say Thursday how much time buses would save with a widened road and dual bus lanes.

"Many people will buy into the idea, 'oh, it's transit, we can't say no to transit.' And yet, we're not really seeing, is that the best bang for the buck?" Cameron said.

Coun. Patty Cuttell raised similar concerns during the meeting. She asked staff to bring back more details about transit time savings and analysis on other options, like reversing lanes, to a future meeting.

"This is a significant project with a significant cost and it's gonna have an impact on the city and in particular a specific neighbourhood," said Cuttell.

"While we're looking at this through a lens particular to transportation, I think it's incumbent on us, especially as council, to look at it from all perspectives and understand what the trade-offs are in doing some of this work."

Mike Connors, Halifax's manager of transportation planning, said various options have been considered by staff and consultants at multiple planning sessions over the years. 

He said traffic priority lights don't do enough to keep buses moving quickly through the roadway, and a reversing lane doesn't work well for Robie because there is high-volume traffic in both directions throughout the day.

"There's not a lot of alternatives particularly in that area, given the width of the street," Connors said.

The staff report also said Robie isn't a good fit for reducing general traffic to a one-way lane because there isn't a close parallel street where traffic could flow the opposite direction. It said Windsor Street is too far away and doesn't have enough connections to Robie.

Connors also said widening the street allows for the possibility of bus lanes through the centre of the street in years to come, which would make bus trips even faster. Those median bus lanes could also eventually be upgraded to light rail transit.

"I'm actually quite satisfied with the information you've provided and the direction we're going in," Coun. Shawn Cleary said.

He and others noted that lands along Robie Street have been rezoned in recent years to allow taller high-density development. Those projects, and the pending Young Street growth area, depend on rapid transit to move large populations more quickly.

Halifax staff will bring a design for the bus lanes on the north end of Robie Street to councillors in the coming months.

Construction on this north section of Robie is expected to start in 2028, and take about four years. Designs for the remaining sections of Robie south of Cunard are expected in 2026 and 2027, with construction starting around 2030.

The total cost for the Robie Street transit project, including land acquisition and construction, currently sits at about $149 million.