Victoria Road is an important roadway running through Dartmouth. It’s a very busy road, but it also passes through neighbourhoods and is an important route for pedestrians and transit. One section of Victoria Road stands out though as being completely out of character compared to the rest of the street: Albro Lake Road to Highfield Park Drive. While most of Victoria Road is a busy two-lane road, the Albro to Highfield section is really wide with multiple lanes in each direction, no buildings fronting on it, and, unsurprisingly given its layout, high vehicle speeds. It’s a very hostile environment for anyone not in a car. Kids going to Harbourview School have to cross the street in the sky, while concrete barriers with chain-link fencing deters anyone unlucky enough to find themselves at ground level from trying to dash across. Victoria Road from Albro to Highfield is ugly, unsafe, and divides the community. It’s a relic from a different era. It’s time to change that.
If re-elected, I will initiate redesign project of Victoria Road from Highfield Park Drive to Albro Lake Road.
Victoria Road’s hostile design would make sense if it was a controlled access highway, like the nearby Circ, but it’s not. It’s a road that goes right through the community, and its hostile design effectively cuts Dartmouth North in two. Victoria Road from Albro to Highfield is the worst of both worlds: it’s not a highway, and it’s not an urban street. So why is it like this?
Once upon a time, Dartmouth’s engineers and planners wanted to turn Victoria Road into an expressway. The idea was first floated in the 1960s and in 1971 an actual plan was undertaken that imagined Victoria Road turning into a sunken expressway that would provide access to the Macdonald Bridge from the Circ and end in a giant roundabout in what is now Starr Park by Sullivan’s Pond. Had the Victoria Road expressway been built, it would have been every bit as damaging to Dartmouth as the Cogswell Interchange was to Halifax. You can check out the declassified 1971 Dartmouth study in the municipal archives here.
Luckily, the City of Dartmouth didn’t have the money to destroy itself and the plan never really went anywhere, with one exception: Albro Lake to Highfield. Albro Lake Road was still basically the edge of town in the early 1970s so it was easy to build this section of Victoria Road to fit what the planners and engineers had been imaging for years: a controlled access highway whisking traffic back and forth from the Macdonald Bridge. The study says this about Victoria from Albro to the Circ:
Building the rest of the Victoria Road nightmare would have been way more complicated, and would have involved buying houses, cutting off all sorts of side streets, relocating underground infrastructure, and all around general destruction. No one had the money or stomach for that, leaving us with a stub of a highway coming off the Circ that was meant to connect to an expressway that was never built. Albro to Highfield is the hostile semi-highway it is today because that’s what the plan was for all of Victoria Road when it was built! Just as the Cogswell interchange ended up being an interchange that doesn’t go anywhere, Albro to Highfield is a stub of a never built urban expressway.
A lot has changed over the decades, but Victoria Road from the Circ to Albro is still just as awful as when it was built, arguably more so because actual neighbourhoods have grown up around it. Albro to Highfield doesn’t have to remain a time capsule for all the worst planning mistakes of the Post War era. There is no reason why the transition point from highway to city street couldn’t happen at the intersection of Victoria Road and Highfield instead of at Albro Lake Road as it does now. Victoria Road from Albro to Highfield could instead be a place that is pedestrian and bike friendly, where crossing the street doesn’t mean risking life and limb. It could be a place that prioritizes transit and since Albro to Highfield is so wide, there could even be the opportunity to reclaim space for other uses, just like is happening at the Cogswell project in Halifax. A redesigned Victoria Road could reconnect neighbourhoods on either side. It’s time to take a real look at what the possibilities are for a redesign of what is one of the most awful sections of road in all of District 5. If re-elected this is a change that I will champion.
Dartmouth, we do great things together.
was the idea of linking Woodland and Nantucket and bisecting the golf course before this time?
Yes, but I don’t think by much. I’m not sure exactly when the Woodland Avenue/Brightwood decision was made.
That catwalk has been the safest way for the children to get to school since my parents were young. I really think you need to look at the big picture of affordable housing. Getting our hard working people into housing not these little huts. Those are a bandaid not a fix!
As a north end dartmouth resident our community is not an eye sore!
Thanks Robyn. The Pedway could end up remaining for those who still want to use it. How exactly we change Victoria Road is a bit of an unknown and something that I’m hoping to be able to explore with the community. And to be clear, Dartmouth North isn’t an eyesore, but Victoria Road with its concrete barriers and chainlink fencing sure as heck is!
Hi Sam!
I like the idea a lot and see a peer to it with Hwy 118 dumping into Woodland at Micmac Blvd.
Both Highfield and the new growth nodes at Mic Mac Mall require larger roads to accommodate the residential density but the feeder roads definitely divide the communities. Children over Victoria at least have a protected safe path across in a way that they don’t over Woodland/118 between Lancaster Ridge / Albro Lake and Crichton Park.
If you want to redesign Victoria, what’s the plan for Woodland? How does that all link up with traffic over the MacDonald Bridge? Are we thinking about improvements to Wyse to acomodate turning onto the secondary highway 7 that goes around Alderney + Windmill + Prince Albert? If so, how do we get Hwy 118 traffic over to Prince Albert instead of slamming into Woodland?
I know there are some plans for Wyse, Windmill, and a roundabout at Micmac Blvd and Woodland, but are they all connected and can we get them done?
Great review! Interesting choice of descriptors: hostile, nightmare, destroy, unsafe, ugly, etc. The blame for this failure is laid at the feet of city staff, the engineering and planning departments. Now to be fair you should also add that district councillor and entire council who championed and voted for that project. Was there any public consultation? Any traffic studies? It sounds like there was a competency issue all around. A concept was floated and a lack of proper or any evaluation undertaken. A lack of any risk assessment. A lack of safety culture. A lack of experience and expertise. A complete lack is second sober thought. Now why is that? Arrogance? Insecurity? Legacy desire? Same apparently goes for the Cogswell interchange. Same goes for many project concepts today. This is not just a back in the day problem.