Transportation Public Session

July 30, 2008 

Wednesday, July 30 marked Citizens for Halifax’s first Public Session on Transportation – a World Café Dialogue session featuring guest speakers Brian Flemming, Laena Garrison and Frank Palermo. Held at St. James Anglican church – a venue chosen in part due to its proximity to the controversial Chebucto Road widening project.

Laena Garrison drew on her expertise as TRAXX Coordinator for the Ecology Action Centre by citing statistics on transportation use in HRM and advocating programs and incentives to get people out of cars and onto busses, bikes and pedestrian routes.

Brian Flemming, policy advisor and former Chair of the Canada Transportation Act Review Panel, addressed issues around restructuring of roadways and the formation of a centralized transportation authority.

Frank Palermo, Director of the Cities and Environment Unit at DalhousieUniversity, hailed the meeting as a pivotal moment in the move towards a new, post-industrial vision for Halifax – a citizen-driven initiative that would see installation of a permanent public commuter system whose efficiency would render car use virtually obsolete.

During the World Café Dialogue Session, the entire group (speakers and organizers included) broke up into tables of four, with each table nominating a “host” to take notes and welcome the next group. Three questions were presented for discussion, with each group switching tables to discuss each and a host remaining at the table to brief the new group on what was said when discussing the previous question. The questions were:

1. On a scale of 1 to 5, how do you currently rank Halifax’s transportation system? Why do you feel this way?
2. In your future vision of Halifax, what role and shape do you see transportation taking in our lives?
3. What habits and competencies do we as a city need to let go of and need to acquire in order to address our current and future transportation needs?

The event concluded with a Harvest Question: “What is going to enable Halifax to address its transportation challenges?” This yielded a range of responses which included calls for “creative thinking,” “leadership, not management,” and “accountability and visibility of responsibility,” as well as more concrete ideas such as “developing a holistic approach to transportation planning,” “sending ambassadors to research and experience other geographies,” and “developing incentives to leave cars at home.”

This feedback has been distilled under the following broader themes, which Citizens for Halifax will use to shape its own policies and as a basis for designing future public workshops on transportation: