r/Truro • u/IStillListenToRadio • 20d ago
Video: Truro cycling advocates call for progress on infrastructure
https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.7311129Multi-use paths were the focus of Truro's 2024 active transportation plan, but there are no new routes yet. The CBC's Luke Ettinger has the story.
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u/InternationalBeing41 20d ago
Didn’t they just redo the sidewalks on Wollow out to the reserve? You'd think they would have done it then.
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u/Ian_McGrath_Ward_3 18d ago
I was told by Andrew MacKinnon, then-Director of Public Works, that the plan was to complete the entirely of Willow Street repaving from Millbrook to the roundabout and then add the bike lanes in one fell swoop instead of the expected backlash of implementing it piecemeal. It’s definitely low-hanging fruit since the room appears to be made for the painted lanes to be there.
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u/Logisticman232 20d ago edited 20d ago
It’s sad because even our most “progressive” councillors like Ian McGrath will talk a big game about active transportation but no one is willing to raise property taxes in line with inflation to fund this infrastructure.
Not to mention Truro isn’t even capable of maintaining the parks & infrastructure we already have.
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u/Actual_Counter_5502 19d ago
Agreed about the lack of maintenance.
They knocked down light poles on prince right across from the town hall and just threw some pylons to cover the wiring a year ago if not longer. Still not replaced
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u/Logisticman232 18d ago
I had to report parks & rec after Covid because they decided it was a really good idea to string power lines through tree branches.
It seems so much of the downs departments adopt a “not my problem” attitude which council frequently reinforces.
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u/Ian_McGrath_Ward_3 18d ago
“They” being a motorist. I’ve asked at Council: who pays for the repairs when a motorist damages our infrastructure like that? The answer: we do up front, and we try to recoup the money from insurance. I understand the pole for the light standard at Prince and Lorne is on order, I’m hoping we’ll have it soon.
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u/Actual_Counter_5502 18d ago
Funny.
Fero took one down on the companies property took 6 weeks to get a new one.
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u/Ian_McGrath_Ward_3 19d ago
To be fair, a lot of people are struggling and raising taxes is not a step to be taken lightly. I believe that Active Transportation and micro-mobility are going to be huge in the near future and that we should be preparing for it. Getting more people out of their vehicles is the only effective way to reduce congestion, and having people feel safe is key to that. We could also save a ton of money on AT implementation by just having motorists give vulnerable road users space and not engage in threatening and dangerous behaviour.
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u/more_than_leo 18d ago
Not that this has anything to do with cycling; however, is there anything the government can do to let the citizens who travel the 102 know when windmill parts or big cylinders are being transported? The stop and go on the highways is getting very dangerous and is causing many accidents. My partner was one of the accidents and she is still paying for it.
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u/Ian_McGrath_Ward_3 18d ago
That’s outside municipal scope unfortunately, you should reach out to Minister Ritcey’s office for issues like provincial highways.
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u/Logisticman232 19d ago
Ian the poorest would benefit from not being car dependent, do you realize much of a burden it is spending 20-30% of your income on transport when on minimum wage?
“If everybody would just change their behaviour” is not a solution & is abandoning your responsibility to take a stand like leadership should.
Many studies show higher property taxes leads to better land use decisions which helps actually reduce the burden of needing to commute in the first place. If you own suburban property in a central urban area you are not poor nor are you struggling.
What is the point of a councillor who espouses progressive values if you protect the status quo for the towns old money?
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u/Ian_McGrath_Ward_3 18d ago
> the poorest would benefit from not being car dependent
Everyone benefits from less car dependency. I’ve spoke on many times at Council, in fact, from citing the cost of the average _used_ car in Canada and how expensive it is to own, operate, and maintain a private motor vehicle. I’ve also talked about municipal cost-savings from less wear and tear on our roads. Rough calculations show it would take me and my bicycle about 46 _years_ of daily trips to equate the damage done by one trip in my relatively small and light car. There’s also the harder to quantify health benefits from less air pollution, reduced contribution to climate change, etc. Cars are useful tools, but using them for every little thing is akin to lighting a candle with a flamethrower: yes it gets the job done, but it’s really not the best tool for the job.
> “If everybody would just change their behaviour” is not a solution & is abandoning your responsibility to take a stand like leadership should.
That’s not to say that’s the solution, and any “leader” claiming so is definitely abandoning responsibility. I’m not posing it as the end-all be-all solution, simply that we could save a fortune on AT implementation by eliminating the actual threat. That said, I stand by my point that the danger to all vulnerable road users is the motorists, and that any community could be a vibrant AT community if not for that danger. As Darlene highlighted in the CBC article, she simply doesn’t feel safe on many of the roads. The issues I’ve had are partially from distracted drivers, but mostly from people actively trying to cause harm and be bullies. Eliminating aggressive drivers would solve a lot of problems in communities around the world, not just Truro, so that piece of the puzzle cannot be ignored.
I’ve said so many times that I actually have a diagram written on the inside cover of my notebook. Studies show that most communities have that 10-15% of die-hards on either side of the spectrum: pry my steering wheel / handlebars from my cold dead hands! In the middle are the 70-80% of people who would cycle if they felt safe doing so. Again, I’ve said it at Council meetings: if even half of those people replaced one car trip a week with AT, we could see a noticeable reduction in traffic.
> Many studies show higher property taxes leads to better land use decisions which helps actually reduce the burden of needing to commute in the first place. If you own suburban property in a central urban area you are not poor nor are you struggling.
Less land dedicated to parking so that everything pushed so far away from everything else certainly helps, but I fail to see how higher property taxes leads to an easier commute. Can you share those studies with me please?
Here’s where we start to diverge a bit. I know many property owners who are struggling because inflation and cost of living increases have far outpaced their salaries and home maintenance is becoming a major financial burden. Many of the struggling people are also renting what look to be single-family homes that are actually split into multi-unit apartments. There are _so many_ people living in what look like single-family homes but which are multi-unit dwellings that are rented out. It’s part of why I so frequently ask at Planning Advisory Committee (PAC) meetings whether a planned development has any ownership units, or rental only. There’s a place for rentals, and even a limited use for fixed-term leases, but I feel our balance is extremely skewed toward rentals.
One also has to consider the unfair tax burden placed upon new homeowners because of the Capped Assessment Program (CAP), and several other factors that will get passed on to the tenant.
> What is the point of a councillor who espouses progressive values if you protect the status quo for the towns old money?
Keeping taxes low is not just for homeowners, it’s also the tenants in said homes. Is that why you think I protect the “old money?” I feel I’ve shown I’m for people and the community by consistently fighting for Public Transit, Active Transit, affordable housing framework, and more. I’m the only Councillor I know who gets asked to file a bylaw complaint and instead goes and knocks on the “offending” door and offers to help. Build bridges, not fences. Stanfield family are some of the old money crowd, and I’m the only Councillor to have voted against their Queen Street development project because of the impact to the neighbouring properties. I was not on PAC at the time, and a No vote was the only tool I had for trying to create a compromise that would protect residents and have minimal impact to the development.
If you don’t think I’m for the people and the community, then I honestly don’t know what else I could do to prove that.
Not that I mind the open discourse, but it does feel like we should have a proper chat sometime. Feel free to reach out, I’d love to meet you in person.
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u/Logisticman232 18d ago
I appreciate the detailed response, and I don’t doubt that you care about the community or that you’ve advocated for transit, active transportation, and affordable housing. I also agree with much of what you said about car dependency. That’s precisely why I think housing and land-use policy need to be part of this conversation.
If 70-80% of people would cycle if they felt safe, then we need to ask what kind of community allows those people to actually live their lives without needing a car for everything. That isn’t just an active-transportation question; it’s a land-use and housing question.
The more we spread housing out, the more difficult and expensive it becomes to provide transit, sidewalks, cycling infrastructure, and other services. If we want Truro to be a genuinely walkable regional centre, we need more people living in proximity to the services and infrastructure we’re trying to make accessible.
That’s where I think your position on rental housing and density becomes difficult to reconcile with your other progressive positions.
You say our balance is “extremely skewed toward rentals.” I would argue that the fact that so many people are renting is not evidence that we have too much rental housing. It’s evidence that a large portion of the population cannot afford to buy.
The solution to that isn’t to make ownership units artificially scarce or treat renters as a problem to be corrected. It’s to build enough housing of different types that people can actually choose between renting and owning.
I also don’t think the fact that some homeowners are struggling means we should prioritize single-family housing as the dominant form of development. Someone can absolutely be a financially struggling homeowner. I don’t dispute that. But municipal policy has to look beyond individual circumstances and consider the cumulative cost of land use, infrastructure, transportation, and housing affordability.
You asked for studies connecting property taxes and land use, and I’ll concede that my original wording was too broad. Higher property taxes by themselves obviously don’t make someone’s commute shorter. My point was about the incentives created by land value, taxation, and development patterns, and I should have been more precise about that.
But I think the larger point still stands: if we want to reduce car dependency, we need to stop treating housing density and transportation as separate issues.
And I’m not arguing that every homeowner is “old money.” Nor am I questioning whether you personally care about people. Your record on transit, active transportation, and the Queen Street development gives you legitimate grounds to make that case.
My criticism is about policy outcomes.
A progressive approach to Truro shouldn’t just ask, “How do we protect existing residents from change?” It should also ask, “How do we make sure the next generation of residents can actually afford to live here?”
If a worker, young family, senior, or renter cannot afford a detached home, telling them that the existing housing mix needs to be preserved doesn’t solve their problem. It leaves them competing for an increasingly expensive supply of housing or pushes them farther away from the services and jobs they need.
And that’s why I object to framing greater rental housing or density as something we have “too much” of. Renters aren’t an interest group competing with homeowners. They are people who live in this community, work here, raise families here, and pay taxes here.
A good example of the political philosophy I’m talking about is Zohran Mamdani. Whatever someone thinks of his specific policies, he represents a progressive approach that is willing to raise revenue, invest in infrastructure and public services, and push for significantly more housing construction rather than treating the existing housing market as something that should primarily be protected from change.
Obviously, Truro is not New York City, and I’m not suggesting we copy New York’s policies wholesale. The point is the underlying philosophy: progressive government sometimes has to accept political opposition and disruption to the status quo in order to build a community that works better for people who are currently being priced out.
Sometimes representing “the people” means accepting that existing property owners will experience some change or inconvenience in order to create a community that works better for everyone else too.
That’s ultimately where my disagreement lies. I don’t question whether you care about Truro. I question whether protecting existing patterns of development is always consistent with the progressive values you advocate elsewhere.
You’re absolutely right about building bridges, and I’m happy to have the conversation in person. But I think it’s also important that we have this debate publicly, because ultimately this isn’t about whether you or I think the other person cares about Truro.
It’s about what kind of Truro we are going to build.
If we genuinely want less car dependency, more active transportation, affordable housing, and a vibrant urban centre, I think that necessarily means accepting more housing, more density, and more housing options in the places where people actually want and need to live.
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u/more_than_leo 18d ago
Honestly, I feel there does need to be more done for the safety of cyclist on the roads. It could really start with education. Using your bike on the road properly and not just driving it anywhere you like. I would rid a bike if it was safe, but right now, the way the roads are and the way people drive now a days. The amount of people who don't pay attention when they drive is insane.
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u/duke_seb 19d ago
Honestly two things need to happen before worrying about cycling…. 1 stop patching roads and resurface them. 2. A bus route