After nearly 10 years, Halifax’s plan to create a safer, healthier transportation network where fewer people rely on cars is getting an update.

On Thursday, municipal staff brought an updated version of the Integrated Mobility Plan to Halifax’s transportation committee.

It streamlines the plan’s original 137 actions down to 39, but the focus remains on improving transit and active-transportation options across the municipality, while managing traffic congestion.

The plan is a key part of hitting Halifax’s goal to have 30 per cent of trips made by active transportation or transit by 2031 — just five years away.

Mike Connors, manager of transportation planning, said the consequences are clear if that does not happen.

“You’re going to see congestion continue to worsen, and it’ll be harder for people to get around,” Connors said.

“It hampers the ability for the region to grow, if we don’t see more people move to transit.”

A 2022-23 Dalhousie University travel study said those types of trips were at about 19 per cent in Halifax.

Staff said most of the Integrated Mobility Plan’s original actions have been done, are in progress, or have become standard practice.

The plan aims to mostly complete a connected bike network by 2028, with rapid buses and ferries remaining other key parts of the plan. 

New projects include gathering better data, evaluation of what is or isn’t working, studying transit links to other municipalities, and looking into smaller municipal vehicles for urban streets, including for Halifax Fire.

It also includes pilot projects for active transportation and micro-transit in certain rural communities.

But staff said the plan has faced challenges in recent years given rising construction costs, major population growth, and new legislation and involvement in transportation from the provincial government.

Although Premier Tim Houston took aim at one Halifax cycling project last summer, Connors said municipal staff work closely with Link Nova Scotia.

Link’s new transportation plan for Halifax and a one-hour radius around the city largely aligns with the Integrated Mobility Plan, Connors said, and the municipality is working alongside the province on the new review of streets on the peninsula.

Coun. Trish Purdy of Cole Harbour-Preston-Westphal-Cherry Brook said she has long thought the original plan was too “aspirational” and did not properly address the trade-offs and challenges needed to finish it.

She said some street improvements in Cole Harbour have not made traffic smoother, or pedestrians safer.

“We need to be realistic with what we are planning, with what we’re telling the public,” Purdy said.

But Coun. Sam Austin said in a growing city with limited physical space, safe and reliable transit and active transportation is the only way forward.

“Congestion is going to get worse by some measure — it’s a question of how much worse, and whether or not people have alternatives that they can get out of it in. That’s really the truth of it,” Austin said.

Multiple residents and community advocates spoke to the committee Thursday during public participation, saying the plan should go further and faster to improve transit and make cycling and walking safer.

Catherine Cervin, a retired family doctor representing Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) Nova Scotia, and Vision Zero Kjipuktuk-Halifax, said it is alarming to see road-related deaths rising in recent years.

It has been five years since Cervin said her partner was struck in a Halifax crosswalk, later dying in hospital. 

She said Halifax should not be widening roads or co-funding highway upgrades with the province, but rather focus on reducing car trips and allocating more road space for transit and safe pedestrian and cycling routes.

“And to someone who might say, ‘Is this realistic,’ I would ask what is the number of devastated families that is acceptable?” Cervin said.

The updated plan will now go to regional council for final approval.

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