Stop Saint John Sprawl

The Facebook Group “Stop Saint John Sprawl” is starting to get some media attention!

Today’s Telegraph-Journal featured an article “Facebook group fosters debate about planned highway expansion“:

SAINT JOHN – Smart cities grow up, not out, says Kurt Peacock, a Saint John civic activist and urban researcher.

Peacock, and fellow civic activist Shawn Peterson, are the administrators of a rapidly growing Facebook group called Stop Saint John Sprawl. The group, with close to 200 members, aims to create public debate about the planned Mackay Highway expansion and discuss the merits of smart and sustainable urban growth.

Plans to add two additional lanes to the Mackay Highway were unveiled in July of last year with the intention of improving traffic flow in and out of the city as part of the Route 1 Gateway Project.

The proposed expansion made headlines again this summer after Mayor Ivan Court publicly urged the province to reconsider.

Peacock said there was no public discussion surrounding the merits of the proposal, calling it “bad transportation policy.”

“There’s a maxim among transportation engineers that increasing highway capacity to combat congestion is like increasing your pant size to tackle obesity,” he said.

“It just does not work.”

Peacock referred to a report published by the provincial government outlining its goal of making Saint John a more sustainable city. He feels the planned expansion goes against a “more sustainable” Saint John and said it has little economic or environmental benefit for the city.

“That’s why we’ve created this group and we’re hoping in the weeks and months to come to challenge candidates for the New Brunswick legislature and find out quite simply, are they for or against urban sprawl,” he said.

The group is home to posts both for and against the proposed expansion, in addition to posted studies, reports and examples of how other cities have fared through highway expansions.

Peacock said studies done on cities such as Los Angeles, Atlanta and Toronto have proven that expanding highways can have a negative effect.

“They’re much less livable now than they were 20 or 30 years ago, largely because government invested in highways as opposed to investing in structures that people truly care about. Better schools. Better cultural facilities. Better sports and recreation,” he said, adding that the traffic problem on the highway is miniscule in comparison to larger metropolitan areas.

For Peacock and his fellow activists, the planned expansion goes against the concept of smart growth. The concept has become one of the central discussions in this year’s Plan SJ public forum.

Cyndi Rottenberg-Walker is a partner with Urban Strategies, a Toronto-based planning and urban design firm. She is also the project lead for Plan SJ.

Rottenberg-Walker said the goal of smart growth is to increase the quality of life in urban areas by investing in city institutions such as streets, schools, recreation areas and cultural spots in the city’s core.

“For many decades the city of Saint John’s population has been declining while its developed footprint has been sprawling. One key goal of the new municipal plan will be to – in the words of Saint Johners – ?grow the city smaller and smarter,’ ” she said.

“The next step in PlanSJ is to define options for growth and change that can create more compact communities that have a healthy mix of land uses and good range of housing choices, while supporting transit, walking and cycling.”

She said Saint John has a high potential to be a smart growing city, with development potential in the uptown area, as well as neighbourhoods like the east side and the old north end.

Peacock said too much of the city’s growth has been taking place in suburbs on the outskirts of the city and it is detrimental to people living in the urban core.

“People can spend their leisure time in outdoor cafs or soccer fields or they can spend their leisure time sitting in a highway, driving back and forth to their suburban home,” he said.

Peacock said although group numbers are still too small to have an impact on a vote, he thinks the next step would be for the group to hold a public meeting.

“Highway expansions have been stopped in many communities across North America. … There’s no reason why we can’t have a similar form of civic activism here in Saint John.”

Thoughts on this subject? Leave your comments here, and remember to check out the Stop Saint John Sprawl group on Facebook!