Halifax Regional Municipality has ordered a report to look into creating a functional plan for Hammonds Plains Road, almost five months after wildfires swept through the communities of Tantallon and Hammonds Plains.
Following the May 28 fires, residents of the area began voicing their concerns about safety after many were stuck in traffic trying to access Hammonds Plains Road as the sky grew black with smoke.
“It was gridlock for the first however many hours,” says Shawn King, a resident of the area. “I was terrified. You could smell smoke, you could see it was getting darker by the minute. It was coming into the car, it was getting warmer.”
King says it got to the point where he and his wife planned to run to the closest body of water if they saw flames.
“There was a lake down the road, and we were just going to leave our cars and go,” he says. “You don’t have to go through that too many times to understand the importance of taking some action.”
On Monday, council decided to continue working toward drafting a plan for Hammonds Plains.
District 13 Coun. Pam Lovelace says a new staff report will consider infrastructural changes, including previously promised connector roads in the area, proper lighting and power poles on Hammonds Plains Road, modern intersections, sidewalks and safer off-street transit stops.
The report will also consider the impact of the Schedule J growth restrictions on developing a connected road network.
King says Hammonds Plains Road has been an issue ever since he can remember. He says one option would be widening the road to include a third lane. Although evacuation routes are another option, they would still have to funnel onto the main roadway, defeating the purpose, he added.
However, Hammonds Plains Road is under Schedule J of the subdivision bylaw, which restricts the implementation of new public roads in an effort to protect rural resource land.
“It has significant deficiencies from an infrastructure perspective,” Lovelace says. “All of this has been growing and getting worse because of the immense development that’s happening in District 13.”
For King, infrastructure to match the area’s rapid population growth is long overdue.
“When we moved out there 15 years ago, to get home from downtown Halifax you literally drove through forest. And I can tell you now that half of that’s gone,” he says. “There are high schools, there are condos, there are shopping malls.… It’s constant development.
“I’m not against development; I think it’s the best thing that can happen. My biggest issue is, has the infrastructure caught up with that development? I don’t think it has.”
King says he’s happy to see progress is being made, but is concerned that it’s going to take too long.
“It’s good to know when to expedite that process and make things happen,” King says. “If we are in fact the recipients of a ‘fire season’ now, we’ve got less than a year before the next one.”
— with a file from Global News’ Megan King