Nova Scotia! Land of many roads! MANY roads!

If you build them, they won't walk.

Among the urban planning types that I know, it’s a given that building more roads for cars never actually speeds up traffic. It just encourages more people to drive more cars everywhere.

As much as I might look to Toronto or Vancouver to demonstrate this, Nova Scotia is the king of road-building.

The population of Nova Scotia is about a million people. A little less than half of those live in and around Halifax. So why is it that every highway in Nova Scotia is a four, or even six lane divided road? There’s no conceivable way that there are enough cars and trucks to merit the millions of dollars spent, and being spent right now, to build these high speed monstrosities.

I’m talking about four lane highways that go for nearly 100 km through nothing but brush and trees. No houses, no businesses…. nothing.

As far as I’ve been able to tell, Nova Scotia has no train service, although it used to. Maritime Bus has some service between towns, but not down as far as Liverpool, much less Yarmouth.

So if you need to travel in Nova Scotia, you drive. Admittedly that’s true in most of Canada, for much the same reasons. Via Rail is next to useless, and expensive, and Greyhound has shut down most of their bus routes. So we all drive.

After a year in France it has taken a few days to adjust to Nova Scotia drivers. In France everyone drives in the right hand lane unless passing. And aside from the Mercedes and BMW drivers I do mean everyone. In Nova Scotia you will usually see all four or six lanes of the highways filled with scattered cars all driving more or less the same speed.

Of course those cars will all be driving at 110 to 120 kmh, despite speed limits of 100 kmh. Again, in France everyone just drives the speed limits (130 on controlled access highways), in part because of the notorious, but often vandalised, French speed cameras.

Until living in France I really didn’t understand how pleasant and how safe it is when everyone just follows the rules of the road. You can assume that the next person on the road will behave sensibly, and stay in his or her lane, and not do something dangerous or stupid. And you can assume that when entering a town or village they will automatically slow to 50 kmh, or even 30 kmh, because that’s what’s requested.

Part of this is because France makes extensive use of speed bumps and chicanes to slow down cars in town, but part of it is because people in France have largely agreed to abide by rules that make everyone’s life better. Or because they’re just polite.

I will admit that Nova Scotia is almost as good as France at one thing: stopping for pedestrians. Coming from the Lower Mainland I have had to adapt to the idea that it is actually safe to cross the street on foot.

I will though add one more thing: dear god, Halifax drivers hit their horn buttons for any reason, at any time. Obnoxious! Thank god we’re living on the South Shore.