Building on existing initiatives
The RTP did not start from scratch. It was built on a considerable body of work by the Core Partners and municipalities in the Region, and it complements and extends existing transportation plans and projects.
It also works towards Nova Scotia’s climate goals, building on existing net-zero initiatives underway across the province.
The RTP is shaped by provincial population projections (how many people will live in the Region) and the expectations of municipalities in the Region for how this growth will be geographically distributed (where people will live).
It is the first transportation plan in the province to account for the pace of recent growth and the potential for continued growth.
Business as Usual Scenario
Transportation projects that have been started or funded before the completion of the RTP are included in a Business as Usual (BAU) scenario – a future without any of the recommended actions outlined in the RTP. This BAU scenario allows for the comparison of a future with and without the RTP.
The BAU includes:
- 100-series highway investments:
- Highway 107 extension connecting Sackville and Bedford to Burnside.
- Twinning along Highways 101 and 103.
- Capacity enhancements along Highway 102 and select interchange upgrades.
- The Windsor Street Exchange Redevelopment and the Halifax Port Rail Solution.
- New connections between:
- Trunk 2 in Wellington and Highway 102.
- Hammonds Plains Road and Highway 101.
- The Mill Cove Ferry.
- HRM’s Regional Centre All Ages & Abilities Cycling Network and select active transportation projects that have secured funding.
Travel Demand Model
Link Nova Scotia and HRM (in partnership with WSP Canada and the University of Toronto) have produced an activity-based travel demand model (ABM). The ABM helps us make more informed decisions and support major transportation projects in the region going forward.
The ABM is a flexible, realistic, and policy-sensitive tool that simulates travel behaviour (where, how, and when people travel). A regional-scale travel demand model examines the interactions of population, employment, land use, and mobility options. It allows us to test different possible futures, estimate the future need for travel, and assess the impact and benefit of different modes of transportation that will be required to serve the region in the future.
Other types of travel models focus on estimating trips between origins and destinations based on the characteristics of different areas. These trips are then combined to represent travel patterns.
ABMs start at the individual person and household level and are based on people’s participation in activities outside of their homes (like going to work, school, appointments, events, etc.). These activities generate a daily schedule and are linked together to provide a more realistic representation of the complexity of people’s travel patterns. These daily schedules also consider time and space constraints (like returning home after completed activities) which further enhances the ability to replicate real world travel behaviour.
While you travel from home to work on a weekday morning, you may also drop off your children at daycare, or stop for coffee, before you get there. A trip-based model would count those as separate trips.
But an ABM understands this is a series of linked trips on a tour. It helps us more accurately understand when, where, how, and why people travel.
Representing the daily travel decisions for a growing region of 600,000+ people required a significant amount of data, time, and technical work to understand their habits, choices, and preferences well enough to examine not only how things are operating today and why, but how this might change in the future.
Scenario Planning
The RTP focuses on the long-term vision for the regional transportation system. Traditionally in long-term planning, past trends would be used to predict future transportation needs. This approach assumes the future will be like the present.
But, the world we live in is becoming more uncertain (as recent years have demonstrated), quickly outdating plans that have used this approach.
The exploration of different scenarios is a proven method to help address this uncertainty. Watch the video to learn more.
Network Planning
Network Planning narrowed in on the BAU and systematically explored collections of network improvements, iterating until the most optimal grouping of projects and initiatives was found.
Whereas scenario planning looked at a 40-year time horizon, network planning focused on a narrower 20-year period.
This stage of work tested numerous options, starting with five Network Options, which were refined into two Shortlist Options, and ultimately the Draft and Final Recommended Transportation Network.
Using the added detail from the ABM, the options tested in each iteration were evaluated using system-level measures of effectiveness (like those used in the Scenario Planning phase). These measures provided big-picture insights for how the network was performing in each municipality in the Region.
Initiatives to be tested were identified based on the results of the previous phase, feedback from our Core Partners, and an assessment of future most likely baseline conditions.
We also conducted sensitivity tests, where projects or collections of projects were added / removed to determine their importance to network performance.