Council will consider reversing centre lane on Bedford Highway

HALIFAX –  A staff report looking at changing the traffic flows on the Bedford Highway will be brought before Regional Council on Tuesday.

The report, ordered in June 2013, looks at the feasibility of adding a reversible centre lane or a high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane to try to reduce congestion during rush hour.

It specifically looks at the Rockingham area of the Bedford Highway between Kearney Lake Road and Fairview Overpass.

National guidelines suggest, “the ratio of peak direction flow to off-peak direction flow should be 2:1 to 3:1 for effective application of reversing lanes,” according to the report. It finds that traffic on the Bedford Highway didn’t meet this requirement, ranging from 1.71:1 to 1.89:1.

It says that while “reversing the center lane in the morning to provide two inbound lanes and one outbound lane will substantially reduce delays,” for inbound traffic, it will create significant increases in delays for outbound traffic, “since traffic queuing to turn left will block through traffic.”

The report also says a reversing centre lane would choke traffic further down the road at the Fairview Overpass.

“The limited inbound capacity regulates the amount of traffic entering the Fairview Interchange area so that it closely match its capacity,” the report says, but adding an extra inbound lane would overwhelm its capacity.

“With the reversing lane, the wait at Flamingo may disappear, but the wait at the Fairview Interchange (or Joseph Howe Drive for vehicles that exit there) is expected to increase to a four-light wait.”

Councillor Matt Whitman asked for the staff report and will be presenting it at council tomorrow. He said that he still believes the reversing lanes or HOV lanes could work.

“We’re one of the biggest little cities I know of, that doesn’t have High-Occupancy Vehicle lanes and so the fact that staff doesn’t think that that’s a good fit, I disagree.”

Whitman said he will see whether his colleagues have an appetite to look at making changes to the traffic flow, and may put forward a motion to do a pilot project to test it out.

“It won’t be expensive or difficult to implement,” he said. “I’ve heard from hundreds of residents from my area that would love to see this.”

He said he believes it’s important to try to get people to carpool or use buses.

“Traffic is getting worse,” he said. “This is the part of Halifax that’s developing, Hammonds Plains, Tantallon, West Bedford, and so the more creative solutions the better.”