Council Update: Morris Street (again)

Agenda, August 5

Morris Street
The Morris Street bike lane circus was back before Council. Council’s approved direction for Morris Street was to convert it to a one-way street in order to accommodate a two-direction bike lane. After the Mayor initiated a review of the decision, Council took a second look at Morris Street and few weeks ago, Council once again approved the original one-way option. Since then, the Province has indicated clearly to HRM that if the municipality proceeds with the one-way design, they will overrule our decision. Given that strong Provincial response, the whole mess was back before Council. Council ultimately voted to reconsider the decision (again).

Morris Street has been under development for years and we’ve had engagement with the public, and stakeholders, including Emergency Health Services. It’s easy to second guess Council’s one-way decision because there is no perfect solution. Morris Street doesn’t have enough room for two lanes of vehicles, two-way bike lanes, parking, and trees. No matter what we do, we’re dealing with trade-offs, which makes it easy to criticize, especially when you don’t have to offer an alternative of your own. If there was a perfect option, we would do it!

As I wrote in my e-newsletter, nothing that’s been happening here is normal in terms of how the Province and HRM interact with each other. This has been a political circus. The Province offered no feedback to HRM in advance of Council’s decision, but since then the Premier has blasted us in the media, and the PC Party has been vigorously attacking the Morris Street decision on social media. This has been about divisive wedge politics, not about working together. A government that wanted to work with HRM would have spoken up when the decision was being made, and, if they missed it, would ask us to review and discuss. A government that wants to play politics would take the approach encapsulated below:

So what to do? Council agreed to rescind the original direction for Morris Street. I voted in favour. It was tempting to hold firm and force the Premier to overrule us directly. A don’t comply in advance stance had appeal, but I ultimately voted to rescind for purely pragmatic reasons. Tim Houston won’t be Premier forever. There will eventually be someone else in power, and that someone else might be more interested in both working with HRM and in evidence-based decision-making. Heck I would take the indifference of Stephen MacNeil’s time in office compared to the micro-management that Houston is offering! If the Province issues an order on Morris Street now, that could last well into the future, beyond the Houston government. It’s in HRM’s interests not to end up with a written order that would curtail future flexibility and that would require a future provincial government to actively repeal it. Better to retreat from a battle we will most definitely lose now if doing so means we live to fight another day with our freedom to revisit this issue intact. Council voted to rescind 11-5.

So what happens next? Staff will now go back to the drawing board and look at all the options for Morris Street. This includes using adjacent streets (Clyde/Dal/Bishop, and South Street) and making different space trade-offs on Morris Street itself (parking and trees instead of vehicle lanes). Council did support me in amending the motion to add the one-way option back into the mix in that examination alongside the other alternatives. It’s clear that the politics around Morris Street mean that no matter what evidence is provided or what arguments are made, the Province isn’t going to allow the one-way project to proceed. Politics had replaced evidence and discussion on this one. So it’s a fair question, why keep the one-way in the mix for consideration at all?

The main reason to keep the one-way option in the analysis is that if the one-way option is truly the best option, we shouldn’t eliminate it from the planning process. If going back through and relooking at everything results in the one-way once again being the best option, than when this comes forward again, Council may want to defer the Morris Street project entirely to wait for a change in political circumstances rather than build something else. We should have all the data in that future staff report to consider all our options, including a wait Houston out approach.

The last question was what to do with University Avenue. University Avenue still makes sense, even without Morris Street, because it connects major destinations to the protected lanes that HRM has already built on South Park Street. The approved design for University Avenue has bike lanes in the centre median, which avoids any impact to traffic or on-street parking (something that was a concern of the Hospitals). Council accepted staff’s recommendation to check again with stakeholders to reconfirm the University Avenue median approach is acceptable. It’s hard for me to see any issue there given that the alternative to using the centre median is to takeaway parking or, I suppose, not build anything at all. Staff aren’t expecting any changes to the University Avenue design, but given how things have gone with Morris Street, want to double check. They intend to return to Council with the University Avenue portion before Christmas. The Morris and University portions of this project are clearly diverging and it seems very likely will now be built separately. For now, the circus is maybe leaving town for a bit and we can go a Council meeting or two without talking about Morris Street.

Other:

• Granted a noise exemption for the Halifax Salsa and Bachata Festival in Downtown Halifax
• Approved several military flypasts for upcoming ceremonies
• Received a presentation on the Point in Time count of homelessness (I wrote about this in detail previously in my e-newsletter here)
• Adopted a new four year Strategic Plan. I generally don’t get too worked up about this stuff since it’s all at such a high level that you can generally fit whatever you might want to it later. It’s not where the real guts of politics and decision-making happens in my opinion so haven’t done a write up
• Awarded snow clearing contracts in Sackville
• Scheduled a public hearing to consider a development at 2764-2778 Robie Street
• Amended the bylaw for licensing of construction demolition sites to (mostly house keeping type stuff, but some enhanced requirements around avoiding litter)
• Approved heritage grants in the Schmidtville Heritage District
• A bunch of Councillor motions requesting staff reports including a review of the Local Street Bikeways Administrative Order, options to manage congestion on Hammonds Plains Road and Lucasville Road, writing the Province to follow-up on HRM’s requests for a municipal lobbyist registry (original request dates to 2018!), expanding micro/on demand transit options to rural areas, and on allowing an extra two storeys on mass timber buildings in the Centre Plan’s tall mid-rise classification (maximum 12 instead of 10)