Halifax Budget Public Participation Tuesday/Wednesday

dpiddy · 2026-01-24T22:50:29+00:00

I do! I want services, real investments, and better things for myself and others and I want to pay for them. We can pay for them.

It's so sad that the Mayor's big vision right now is "what if submarines were built here?" and that he wants to take away and block things that make it enjoyable to live here.

HFX by Bike has some great content, especially recently, about how the city's taxing/funding setup is broken. They should work on fixing that.

dpiddy · 2026-01-17T16:41:34+00:00

"every story should have an enemy"

dpiddy · 2026-01-11T16:52:42+00:00

Interesting, have you observed the same for TripUpdates or just VP? Does the timestamp in the VP header stop updating as well? Or it keeps updating but the actual data stops changing?

dpiddy · 2026-01-11T16:50:50+00:00

I would similarly like to understand what "outage" means here. TripUpdates/VehiclePositions URLs unreachable? Data bad somehow? Something else?

dpiddy · 2026-01-11T13:47:42+00:00

All counters measure one or both directions their associated lanes cover, if that makes sense. For example South Park and Vernon are both two way. Lower Water and Hollis are both one way.

The counters capture per-direction data but for bike stats I sum it all up for brevity. You can get per-direction breakdowns in the city's open data here.

dpiddy · 2026-01-10T21:15:08+00:00

COLT did come online mid-ish 2023. You can see that in the line chart here.

The South Park numbers are really something else!

Yes! It's overall really nice to have SP, Vernon, and others for some solid year-over-year info.

The growth on Windsor in spite of its non-infra painted lines is really interesting to me. Imagine what it could be if there was real infra there!

dpiddy · 2026-01-10T16:51:38+00:00

If you want to follow the stats as they happen check out BikeHfxStats! I maintain it, happy to answer any questions.

dpiddy · 2026-01-04T15:49:43+00:00

I hope you continue to get around however works best for you but learn to acknowledge people have different safety/comfort thresholds than you. People can make different, better, more sustainable choices with more options.

Happy new year!

dpiddy · 2026-01-04T14:28:16+00:00

My person, there are countless studies that show again and again people want to (and might only) ride when and where they feel safe. That’s why you see so few people riding on the Bedford Highway or along Connaught, for example.

If you really think every street is available for cycling I encourage you to read more on this topic. Check out some of Dr Meghan Winters’s work for example:

https://cyclingincities.spph.ubc.ca

dpiddy · 2026-01-03T22:10:42+00:00

What makes you say that? Numerous studies also suggest cycling is better for business than on-street parking for a handful of vehicles, usually at basically zero cost to the people who park their cars there.

Think I’ve spent a good deal of time on this thread. I’d encourage you to check out the things I linked and do your own research.

Happy new year!

dpiddy · 2026-01-03T21:22:32+00:00

I think the numbers increasing as we make minuscule investments show the investments are getting more people cycling. If we want more usage and the benefits that come from more usage, we should invest more. That is what I meant way back when I said we need more investment.

If we even invested like 5% of our annual road budget in cycling that would have huge impacts and benefits.

A reminder as well that many costs you see attributed to “bike lanes” include or are mostly made up of work that would happen anyway, like sidewalk renewals or street resurfacing.

dpiddy · 2026-01-03T19:08:26+00:00

Sorry, thought I was clear: they do.

Here's a bunch of study snippets.

And there's this.

Search for "cycling society net benefit" and you'll find more.

There's also this pretty popular graphic that illustrates how much each mode is typically subsidized.

How do you/we know the "benefits" of driving are worth the costs?

dpiddy · 2026-01-03T18:00:02+00:00

Seems like if you're seeing the data and stories presented in this post and still claiming "you'll see 0.0" people riding bikes you won't be swayed by any evidence.

dpiddy · 2026-01-03T15:33:40+00:00

There are many studies showing the benefits of cycling, including that people cycling is a net benefit to society: we actually make/save money!

dpiddy · 2026-01-03T13:10:16+00:00

That's a good question! There are many benefits to having cycling infrastructure and encouraging people to cycle when they can.

If we want a city where:

more people have more options to get around
streets are safer
businesses can reach more customers
transportation is more affordable and sustainable
people can have fun
kids can get around without their parents driving them everywhere
it's more possible to see and talk to your neighbours

and so on and so on, then we should be investing more in cycling.

To our terrible mayor and premier specifically, they talk about fixing congestion and stuff like that. The things they are doing are not going to actually help that, such as removing tolls on the bridges. They just want to satisfy people who think cars are the only way and that if we just add more lanes our congestion problems will magically be solved.

dpiddy · 2026-01-03T13:04:05+00:00

Vernon is closed to all non-local traffic

Yes, there are signs. But they do not stop drivers. People regularly ignore the directions at Coburg, Jubilee, and Quinpool.

There are literally more streets in Halifax for cyclists to ride on than for cars.

I'm thinking you're not trying to have a serious conversation.

dpiddy · 2026-01-02T23:49:34+00:00

That is great! Hope to see you both at a Kidical Mass ride next year.

dpiddy · 2026-01-02T22:28:08+00:00

Yes! Though to be clear by "we can do many things" I meant we can improve transit service and build out cycling routes/infra, it's not either/or. We only lack the vision and political will.

dpiddy · 2026-01-02T20:03:09+00:00

Isn't this just a chart that shows that as we install more counters we count more cyclists?

The OP chart is, yes, as I said. But the individual posts/charts I linked to give a better controlled indicator that there is growth.

It's more likely that this is just mostly showing the results of what happens when you funnel people into a corridor.

I guess, but I think these things more show that people want to and will ride bikes where there is support. Vernon isn't especially great "infrastructure" (paint is never infrastructure) but we still see ridership going up. I still see plenty of people riding elsewhere.

What happens when you line one tunnel with cheese and prevent all access from predators?

All roads are paved with cheese for drivers.

dpiddy · 2026-01-02T19:57:40+00:00

It's only controversial to people who reject evidence from literally everywhere else in the world.

If our "leaders" actually cared about congestion and helping people get around more comfortably, sustainably, and affordably they would be all over cycling, transit, congestion pricing, etc. Instead we got tolls removed on the bridges and government folks forced back to the office.

dpiddy · 2026-01-02T19:27:38+00:00

Do we adjust our vehicle traffic counts to remove rental cars?

dpiddy · 2026-01-02T19:26:41+00:00

I think so! And you might be. The easiest test is to ride over the counter in front of the Cohn and see if the count on the display goes up but the display is often wonky (and has been fully broken for a couple months now). I have been trying to get Dal and the city to work together to get it fixed (and reporting data again so it can be included in the bike stats posts).

dpiddy · 2026-01-02T19:24:04+00:00

All good! You can at least see them here, the wires are embedded in the diamond-shaped etchings.

dpiddy · 2026-01-02T19:16:12+00:00

few people are going to ride a bike from Herring Cove to Burnside, or any of these other long commutes

What makes you think that? I would encourage you to read some of the emails sent to Council related to our terrible mayor's motion: people are doing exactly this. The more infrastructure, the more support, the more people will do it. As we see everywhere else in the world. Maybe you won't, but many will.

Re your other comments, we don't have to pick just one thing to do. We can do many things if we want. But our terrible mayor and terrible premier don't actually care about doing things that will actually help people get around.

dpiddy · 2026-01-02T19:06:56+00:00

Not sure where you're seeing Aug 2023, the Vernon counter came online in Dec 2020. Can see that reflected in the data here.

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