Sprawl Spending: Funding may dictate Hammonds Plains Rd fixes

By PATRICIA BROOKS ARENBURG Staff Reporter

Chronicle Herald

HRM must balance the cost of servicing existing development with the cost of servicing new development projects.

Christina Parker and other members of the Highland Park Ratepayers Association are lobbying the city for improvements to traffic, policing and transit services on Hammonds Plains Road. They say residential growth in the area has overwhelmed the roadway, leading to safety issues. (Ingrid Bulmer / Staff)

HAMMONDS PLAINS — The city is looking into safety on the Hammonds Plains Road.

Municipal staff will review the issues presented by the Highland Park Ratepayers Association but that doesn’t mean the city will be able to fix the reported problems, said Ken Reashor, metro’s transportation and public works director.

“Funding is always an issue, especially in the coming year,” Reashor said.

The association called for reduced speed limits, additional lights, pull-off lanes for Metro Transit buses and advance warning signs, among other things, at a meeting with city officials earlier this month.

Christina Parker, association spokeswoman, said residents feel their concerns “have been ignored out here for far too long.”

She once took the Hammonds Plains Road bus but stopped because “it was too dangerous waiting for the bus (and) it was too dangerous trying to cross the road at peak travel times with over 20,000 vehicles a day. You just simply couldn’t cross the road safely, so I gave up.”

Even waiting at bus stops along the road is risky, she said.

“We have people standing in the pitch black, in the wintertime, within three feet of vehicles driving in excess of 80 km/h. You add snowbanks to that, it’s dangerous,” Parker said.

But Reashor said bus pull-off lanes may not be so easy to navigate. The road has narrow shoulders and the city would have to consider ditches and drainage issues, which would add to the cost, he said.

Cars don’t yield to buses trying to pull back onto roadways, meaning longer commuting time for bus passengers, he said.

Parker said the group is petitioning the provincial government for changes to the Motor Vehicle Act, making it illegal for motorists not to yield to buses.

The ratepayers’ group also wants to reduce the posted limit along the stretch between Tantallon and Kingswood to 70 km/h from 90 km/h. Reashor said metro as already reduced the posted speed limit to 80 km/h.

The group also asked the RCMP to ramp up enforcement in the area.

Force spokesman Cpl. Joe Taplin said the RCMP metro traffic unit has been out in full force and has boosted its enforcement at Pockwock Road and the two traffic lights close to Kingswood and a school zone.

Their main concern is the safety of children around the school zone, but said officers have “increased our checkpoints out there during evening hours and daytime hours, as well as increased radar patrols along there.”

Traffic concerns on the road, which was once a provincial responsibility, have grown along with the development of subdivisions in the area.

The province is still considering a proposal for Highway 113, which would to span 9.9 kilometres between Highway 103 near Exit 4 and Highway 102 near Exit 4, the Hammonds Plains Road exit. The project would help ease traffic levels on the Hammonds Plains Road and Highways 102 and 103.

The province is in the “buying process for property from developers along the corridor,” Patricia Jreige, spokeswoman for Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal, said of the undeveloped area.

In 2005, the province said the project would be completed in 10 to 15 years, but “it might be even further out than that,” Jreige said.

For now, Parker said, the “only way to really reduce the volume on that road is to have a better transit system.

“But until they implement safety measures and make is safer for people to stand and wait for buses and cross and get the buses. They could put 20 buses up there and nobody would take them”