The survey said that only cities with a population of a million have found commuter rail viable, well, HRM is half-way here. Halifax metro will continue to grow and sprawl as rural NS shrinks, perhaps we might actually get a head of a problem for once?
Another issue that stands out in comparing HRM with other cities; the downtown core is on a peninsula, unlike a lot of cities, and that eliminates a lot of opportunities for congestion relief.

Perhaps rail would be more feasible now since Via is cutting service to 3 days a week.

Yes we have traffic issues. Yes you may have to sit in bottle necked traffic for a while, but we do not have as big a problem as most cities. We have an old city and the streets do not handle traffic well as they are narrow and even when an area is widened it ends up going into a bottle neck at one end or the other. More public transit is good but the streets can't deal with the buses any better than the cars. In fact the busses and the stops slow traffic when they can't pull off the road. We are not large enough or laid out well for a rapid transit system. We can't afford the cost and there is no real route for rapid transit to get people where they want and need to go. The closest is the rail cut through the south end but most people wanting to go downtown do not want to walk from the south end of Barrington to the business areas. It is not an easy situation to deal with.

we really need is a mayor and council that will make this a better HRM not a plaything/grandstanding/eyesore of a city that we now have. Sure transit is good but we are all paying enough high taxes now even though a lot of us never use transit. Let the users start paying a bigger share of the costs instead of pushing it and everything else on the backs of those that do not use transit,libaries etc. It is time to stop wasting money on stupid things that most people never get to use and start charging more to those that do use them.

Personally, I'm tired of internal politics in Metro Transit persistently attempting this year to devalue our valuable ferry service. First attempt, cut back on its evening operating hours for the summer. Second attempt, refusal to listen to its ships captains experience and NOT put on a regular weekday schedule for the Tall Ships weekend. That Tall Ships fiasco is an excellent opportunity to give severe reprimands on the transit management responsible for that deliberate oversight. A 9 year old could have better foreseen that one! It appears on the surface that Transit is trying to reduce our ferry services satisfaction scores and ridership DOWN in the gutter with the buses.
There is absolutly no advertising from HRM this year promoting the ferry service or the cheaper/free parking readily available for visitors near the Dartmouth ferry at night and on the weekends.
The BIGGEST complaint most visitors have about the Halifax waterfront is the expensive Halifax parking and heavy handed parking enforcement techniques unique to this area. It's a scam when you stop for a hour but these parking lots make you pay for the entire day!
WHY is the readily accessable, efficient Dartmouth ferry option being swept under the rug?

Finally. I have been writing to get light rail traffic, through Halifax, for years. Appeared nobody was listening. Don't spend all that money, up front. Go to BOMBARDIER, and rent a couple of dayliners. Start at say, Wndsor Junction. Don't build a station, or pave a yard, YET. Very few stops. Maybe Bedford, End of Hammonds Plains road, behind the old Simpsons bargain center ( BAY ) and end of rails, at the hotel. Won't work, UNLESS you have busses and taxi's enough, to disperse the riders, at both ends. At first, for a trial, just run, say 6am till 10am, and 3pm till 7pm. As fast and as often as possible. Have automatic ticket machines. Don't charge full fare, in the trial stages, as there will be many problems. STOP all the road widening ideas. You are on a narrow peninsula. You do NOT want more cars. Just the opposite- you want LESS cars. No place to park now. You just want more people, without their cars. This can work, if the right person, pushes it.

The big part of HRM's traffic congestion problem is that too many streets don't intersect at right angles but are instead a confusing, haphazard maze of winding roads ending with 5 roads intersecting or ending in a yet more confusing roundabout (or rotary). There are far too many roads that are only single-lane 2 way traffic in downtown Halifax and when cars or delivery vehicles are parked on the sides of these roads, traffic grinds to a halt. It seems none of the traffic lights on streets like Barrington have no synchronization so that even when a drivers go the legal speed limit they hit a red light at every intersection. And how come drivers around here can't seem to drive down a straight stretch of road like on one of the bridges or the Magazine hill road without having an accident that shuts down traffic for hours? And perhaps HRM or the Bridge Commission should consider spending more money to make it totally impossible for jumpers on the MacDonald bridge. If they can't or won't fully enclose the pedestrian and bicycle lanes with some kind of fencing then pedestrian and bicycle traffic on the bridge should be shut down.

What Halifax should be doing is encouraging people to use the transit system instead of driving. Most cities are doing that. Before considering a commuter rail system, the transit system we have now needs improving. People would be encouraged to use the transit systems on weekends if the service wasn't so awful. Hourly buses on Saturdays and Sundays? Give me a break! You can't make a quick trip anywhere on the weekend with that schedule.

People on #14 route can't have any type of night life, unless you budget a taxi home into your night out. The last bus from down town on Saturday night leaves Barrington and Duke at 10:48, the last one Sunday is at 9:36. The last week day bus leaves downtown at 10:32! I guess we're all supposed to be out of downtown early. There aren't too many routes that are as bad, let alone worse!

Emission control's ? If every-one stopped using their car's and all we had were buses on the street's , you would have to wear a gas mask around town ! If it's good enough for B.C. why can't N.S. have "EMISSION CONTROL'S"???????????

I have read the comments here and do you people actually take public transit? I agree that we seriously need better transit in HRM. I work shift work and it is so difficult to get home at night and on weekends because of no buses on some routes past 10:30 at night. Not everyone works 8:00 am to 4:30 pm weekdays when the better routes have buses that run. Service on most routes are horrible even after 6 pm week days. Some routes are being downsized like the 89 and a few others. Try getting a bus on Sundays and holidays, even taxis are difficult to find and wait times are unreal. For people like me that don't have a car, relying on public transit is a nightmare!! Something HAS TO BE DONE!!!

Once again the transit issue comes up....how to improve transit? This despite the wonderful picture here of cars lined up in traffic (probably many with single riders) as everyone takes their car and grumbles despite traffic, high gas prices, parking and bridge toll costs. Why do we love our cars?

CONVENIENCE. That is one way to make transit better. Our convenient modern society has difficulty with using transit to take an hour what takes 10-15 minutes by car. Sure the 7-8am and 400-500pm weekday rush hours might be more comparable time-wise, but what about the rest of the day...let alone weekends? Try getting to the outer shopping centres (or walking between stores carrying bags at Bayers Lake) or getting a bus home when you work evenings. (finish work at 10pm, wait for late bus, take hour to get home by 1130pm as opposed to car and be home by 1020pm).

COMFORT. It is also difficult to try to get people to take transit and put up with hot crowded buses and standing, rude people (ex. loud mouths, loud earphones, seat-hoggers) as opposed to the quiet sanctum of your car with a coffee and your favorite music on, air-conditioned (especially now during this heat) and your space around you.

I still take transit to work, but having no car for years and finally getting one I can see why people prefer their car despite how much it costs. I will probably give in and start using it for my commute too sooner or later.

Transit won't spend money until it gets ridership, and people won't take transit until transit spends money and improves its service. Catch 22 - one side has to give in sooner or later, and since transit is a public service to serve our community that we taxpayers pay for, then it makes sense that municipality take the leadership role here (isn't that what government is - elected LEADERS that represent the people?) and DO something to improve the service instead of more of these debates and studies.

Get the ball rolling guys....build it and the people will come they say. Increasing the existing ferry service and having buses running more often would be a good start.

Halifax was founded because of its harbour, use it!

You could add three or four more terminals, Bedford, northwest arm, burnside, Clayton park for example and move people on our ice free harbour. No additional bridges, tunnels, subways or road construction.

I recently returned to Vancouver to see the billions they spent on the monorail, we're definitely not ready for that kind of investment and you're still faced with how do you get to Dartmouth and beyond.

USE THE HARBOUR!

We simply need a more efficient bus system. Better connection times, no more misconnections! A fluent schedule is needed. Metro Transit and city council also need to realize that not every rider of MT is travelling from the suburban areas to the downtown core working 9-5. I would love to rely on public transit more often, but poor schedules, especially on the weekends, long routings and long wait times doesn't make it feasible. For example, it takes me less than 10 minutes to drive to Dartmouth Crossing, however if I were to take Metro Transit, it would require 3 buses and take about 2 hours. How is that acceptable whatsoever?

The problem with Metro Transit is... Metro Transit. The ability of that organization to deliver anything close to an acceptable level of customer service is nonexistent. It is likely a combination of poor management, the militant union, and the overall culture. Until all that changes people will continue to view Transit as a route of last resort to get where they need to go. Continuing with more of their current unpleasant, dirty, late, time-consuming, unsafe, poorly-routed offerings will not convince riders to use the service.

HRM transit wasn't designed to move people. HRM transit is Halifax transit with parts cobbled on. Routes wind about and drivers put in their shift while passengers fight to get on or off.

Most everyone wants improvements to transit. Even if you never use transit you can tell what is wrong with it by looking at the bus stop signs. You can not get anywhere on transit without stopping everywhere. This means that the closer you get to "downtown" the more transit there is, and the more stops. A 20 minute trip becomes 60 minutes by bus.

I am telling you this: make it mandatory that city employees including council and the mayor use transit and you will see transit improvements. Until then you will simply see ideas to increase the size of the kingdom.