HALIFAX—Spring Garden Rd. will get wider sidewalks under a new plan recommended by council’s transportation committee, but a more radical option that would have banned car traffic on a stretch of the road was rejected.

Council’s transportation standing committee approved the staff recommendation for the redevelopment of Spring Garden Rd. between South Park St. and Queen St. on Thursday.

It’s part of a bigger plan to redevelop the full length of Spring Garden Rd., often called the busiest pedestrian thoroughfare east of Montreal.

At a public meeting in January, staff unveiled three options for the street, ranging from a status quo approach to a more extreme plan that would ban vehicles on most of that section of Spring Garden Rd. during the day, allowing several buses, including the popular Routes 1 and 10, to tighten their schedules.

The radical option was the most popular among the public, and it scored the highest on municipal staff’s rubric for the options, which was weighted to pedestrian and transit experience.

But there were concerns: the Spring Garden Area Business Association didn’t want to lose all the loading zones on the street, and residents on side streets like Dresden Row and Birmingham St. were worried that removing vehicles from Spring Garden Rd. would increase traffic in their neighbourhood.

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As a compromise, municipal planner Hanita Koblents presented a fourth option to the committee on Thursday, described as a hybrid between options 2 and 3.

“The sidewalks are consistently widened and loading is removed, except for one location at the western end of the street near the McDonald’s,” she said.

“This option doesn’t limit vehicles entirely, but does limit certain manoeuvres of vehicles and particularly left turns off of Spring Garden Rd. so that buses don’t get hung up behind left-turning cars.”

Councillors on the committee voted unanimously in favour of sending the recommendation along to regional council.

“I think this is fabulous,” said Councillor Shawn Cleary. “I don’t want to call it a compromise. It’s a win-win.”

Councillor Sam Austin praised the work, but was concerned one loading zone, which will have undetermined time limitations, could cause problems.

“It takes a special sort of jerk as a motorist to just pull up on the sidewalk and leave the car there,” he said.

“When it comes to commercial vehicles though, there seems to be a bit more of a cavalier approach of, ‘I have a business to run. I’m only here for a few minutes. I’m more important.’”

Austin was worried those vehicles would encroach on the adjacent bus stop.

Koblents felt the narrower street would deter illegal parkers, but said enforcement would be necessary.

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During the construction period, currently slated for sometime in 2020, Koblents said the municipality will have to shut down the street to traffic. Staff will use that as a pilot project to test whether the more extreme option, removing cars from Spring Garden Rd., would work.

Staff will also consider converting Dresden Row and Birmingham St. to one-way streets.

After council debates the recommendation from the transportation standing committee, staff and consultants with Halifax firm Ekistics Plan + Design will finalize the design. The project will move to the engineering phase in the fall, when the construction schedule is expected to be finalized.

The total budget for the redesign of the full length of Spring Garden Rd. is about $10 million.

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