You got a fast car
I want a ticket to anywhere
Halifax. Downtown. On a good day…
Different cities have different transportation philosophies. In Europe, at least France, the starting point is what some people call a “fifteen minute city,” with all of the day to day things within a fifteen minute walk of your home, and even better, with that area largely blocked off from cars.
North America though advocates for cars over any other form of transport.
It’s a choice, and whether or not it’s a good one depends very much of how it’s implemented. Some cities do it fairly successfully, some less so so.
Then there’s Halifax, Nova Scotia…
Halifax is really a big pedestrian city. It has a compact downtown area, lots of bars and restaurants, and a large student population. Add tourists in summer and a lot of people are wandering around from place to place on foot.
Halifax’s reaction to all of this foot traffic? More roads for cars!
Yes there are busses (except that for some inexplicable reason Halifax is also desperately short on bus tickets, and hasn’t yet discovered any of the many forms of “tap a card” payment systems.) And yes Halifax has a smattering of those bike lanes that say “Aww Mom, do I really have to do this??”
Honestly though, everything is geared towards cars. And having made that choice?
Halifax is honestly the worst city I’ve seen to try and navigate as a driver. Random and confusing signage. Random and confusing freeways and elevated highways. Toll bridges that that still offer only two options: a windshield sticker for locals, or EXACT CHANGE. I mean really, it has been at least two decades since I carried cash, especially a pocket full of change.
Halifax has a great love for intersections where five roads meet at random directions, or where one or both through streets are twenty or thirty feet off center. Add random traffic lights that any rational person would see as “Red: don’t go” and it suddenly becomes even more confusing. Yeah the light in front of you, in your line of sight, is red, but that’s not actually your light.
Plus, eventually you probably need to park. Downtown that means spotting one of the very few parking garages, reached by navigating a myriad of one-way streets that you’re convinced will never let you actually reach the entrance.
Or trying to comprehend the many and confusing parking signs as you drive by. Halifax is an absurdly difficult place to park a car. It’s like the municipal bosses have managed to simultaneously strongly encourage everyone to drive, and also to not let them ever stop and get out of their cars.
And, of course, all of Halifax is under construction, so none of the above entirely applies….
I loved driving in New York, and in Paris, and in tiny medieval villages on French mountaintops. I do not though like driving in Halifax.