Uncertainty looms for Yarmouth County residents due to Highway 103 project: Will homes be lost?

YARMOUTH, NS – Neighbours Jan Carrington and Helena Brown walk along Myrtle Lane that runs in front of their homes. They can walk down the centre line without worry of traffic.

Other than another neighbour pulling up in their vehicle, the only thing that has crossed the road in the past 25 minutes is a chipmunk.

It’s quiet, peaceful and tranquil.

It’s everything they searched for when looking for a place to live.

The lane, incidentally, is named after Carrington’s mother.

But now, they and many other residents in this part of Yarmouth County are worried a major Highway 103 construction project could force them to lose their homes or major swaths of their properties.

They’re desperate for answers the provincial Department of Public Works says are too early to provide.

“It’s very frustrating to be on our side of that,” says Brown. “Their total lack of information has made stress levels out of this world. Beyond what anybody can imagine.”

FUTURE CHANGES

Myrtle Lane, branching off of Nakile Drive, is a dead-end road, as is the Oak Park Road across the river from it, which is accessed by Trunk 3.

What stands between the ends of these two residential areas are the pillar remnants of an old bridge from long ago.

But if Public Works’ current conceptual plans go forward, there will be a new bridge constructed and a wider road built that will connect these dead-end roads to each other and to a new Argyle interchange at a new Exit 32. The project will also see the elimination of exits 32A at Glenwood and the current Exit 32. It will see the creation of two ramp roundabouts. The construction of an overpass.

The work will also create safer access to Nakile Drive.

It’s a project expected to cost at least $50 million with construction starting in 2025 and lasting two to three years.

The project is aimed at addressing serious safety issues on Highway 103 that fall in less than a one-kilometre span from Exit 32 to Exit 32A.

No one is disputing that improved safety is needed. Concerns have been raised for over a decade.

In 2015, the province identified it as a priority.

It was only this year in 2023 that the project made its way onto the province’s five-year Highway Plan.

But the proposed project is causing a lot of angst for local residents who live in areas where the changes will happen – both those who live on the dead-end roads to be impacted and around where the interchange and ramp roundabouts will be constructed for the new Exit 32, along with a new bridge overpass structure.

They don’t know if their homes and properties will need to be sacrificed.

Looking at the home she lives in, Brown can’t see how it can be avoided. It’s the closest property to where the bridge will be built.

“It’s a beautiful spot, it’s private, its own entity. It’s a beautiful little community. It’s rich in all things lovely,” she says about what attracted her to living here.

She needs answers.

“Quit stressing people to the point that they don’t know where their lives are going to be in a years’ time. To do that to people is horrible.”

Her neighbour Jan Carrington feels the same. After losing both of her parents, she decided on a change.

“I decided to pack up my life in Truro and move home to my family home where it’s been on this quiet, little picturesque dead-end road. It’s been this way since I was a little girl. One of the reasons I decided to relocate here is because of where it is and what this community is like. I know all my neighbours feel the same way.”

That’s not to say the sound of traffic doesn’t reach them.

You can hear and see vehicles whizzing past on Highway 103. You can also look across a pond to see the highway. 

Carrington says she could now be surrounded by traffic. In back of her home, the highway. In the front, a new widened, two-lane busy Trunk 3.

“It’ll be like being in a fish bowl,” she says, and it will bring an end to the quiet way of life those living here experience.

She says everyone is wondering: Whose homes will have to go? How much of people’s properties will be lost?

“We get these canned answers, ‘Well, things aren’t finalized yet so it’s hard to tell how you’re going to be impacted,’” she says.

But the uncertainty is already having a huge impact, especially in the midst of a housing crisis where home purchases aren’t as easy as they were in the past.

WHY THE CHANGES?

So why is this happening?

It’s to address and fix safety issues on Highway 103. From Exit 32 to Exit 32A there are three at-grade, level intersections.

It creates risky situations.

To access Nakile Home for Special Care, a seniors-long term facility, vehicles turning from Highway 103 onto Nakile Drive don’t have the benefit of a right-hand turn lane. This is also the only place to access Myrtle Lane.

Because vehicles are turning directly off of the highway in a 100 km/h zone, they have to slow down on the highway impacting traffic coming behind them – and pray they don’t get rear-ended – or they have to make the turn faster than they’d like because of traffic behind them, which sometimes can be large transport trucks.

If vehicles decide to, or need to, swerve around the slower, turning vehicles, they’ll swerve into a left-hand turn lane from the other direction where a vehicle might be present.

And that left-hand turning lane onto Nakile Drive and a left-hand turn lane at Exit 32 are back-to-back so there have been near misses in those turn lanes.

No one is disputing that safety fixes are needed.

“It’s a very tricky spot and it is unsafe,” says Carrington.

She and others making right turns onto Nakile Drive will tell you how and when they begin calculating the turn – working things out in their minds, scanning their rearview mirror for traffic, putting their turn signal on well in advance to alert traffic behind them that a turn will be coming.

It’s a definite situation that needs to be fixed.

Still, the province’s proposed plan to address this section of highway is being described by many as “overkill.”

They wonder why less costly options, and options that would have less impact on people’s homes and properties, aren’t being proposed.

PUBLIC CONSULTATION

Much of this was aired at a public consultation meeting hosted by Public Works on June 19. Representatives said three other options were considered, which ranged from full interchanges at both exits, to half interchanges at each exit, to differences in where Trunk 3 would connect to the highway. The cons, which caused the department not to proceed, included:

• too costly

• the need for a new four-lane bridge on Highway 103

• land impacts to the provincial park in Glenwood

• the non-connectivity of Trunk 3 (a benefit to opening up Trunk 3, the province says, is it creates a detour route in cases of emergencies)

• wetland impacts

• navigation confusion for motorists

• and the need to construct additional highway structures

Maps, including the pros and cons of those options, were explained during the public session.

When Option 4 that the province is pushing was displayed, it didn’t go unnoticed that the visual was missing something that all three of the others had.

“Where’s the list of cons for that option?” asked someone from the gathering.

SPEED LIMIT REDUCTION?

People asked why a reduction in the speed limit to 80 km/h, and/or the addition of a right-hand turn lane at Nakile Drive, isn’t being pursued. Many see this as the easiest fix.

“It’s not something we looked at because we know what driver behavior is,” explained Dwayne Cross, manager of Highway Planning and Design.

Unlike other undeveloped parts of Highway 103 where there are reduced speed-limit zones due to the presence of homes, businesses and driveways – and other twisty parts of the highway that require slower speeds – this section of highway is controlled access and is meant to move people along at speeds of 100 km/h, he said. A speed reduction is unlikely to work.

“You can stick an 80-kilometre sign out there. Unless you’ve got a cop sitting by that every day, people will not drive it at 80, they’ll continue to drive it at 100 or 110,” Cross said.

Therefore, safety issues will still exist.

At the public session, some people offered other alternatives for the province to consider that they feel would be less invasive to homes and properties.

Public Works says from 2007 to 2012, there were 47 collisions between Exit 32 and 33, which included nine injuries and two fatalities. No more current stats were offered. Some people in attendance, however, suggested not all collisions were directly attributable to the configuration of the highway. There have been instances of driver error.

Meanwhile, project planning continues. Aboriginal consultations have started, as have environmental screening and archeology work.

One thing discussed is the need for consultants hired to carry out environmental assessments to have access to private properties. To do so they need the owner’s permission.

Some have granted this permission, but not everyone. It was explained this is not an invasive process where holes will be dug. It’s a walkabout that would be carried out over a day, possibly two, to flag any environmental concerns.

“Having that access to do the reviews helps us include the environment protections as much as possible, or the mitigation that’s got to be done with that,” said Cross. “If we run into surprises along the way at the 11th hour, it can get very expensive and there may be additional impacts beyond what we’re trying to do with minimizing those.”

DETAILED PLANNING TO COME

On the subject of minimizing impacts, Cross also explained that as the project works its way through the detailed planning, the department will do whatever it can, where possible, to minimize the impact on homes and properties. While there are defined standards for how wide the cross-section of a trunk road is, sometimes there is other flexibility.

“The centre line of the road right now doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the centre line of the upgraded road,” he said. “It’s not going to avoid everybody, but it can minimize the number of impacts or the severity of impacts.”

At one point in the meeting, someone jokingly asked if it wouldn’t just be easier to move the Nakile facility.

When it comes to highway work, Public Works says if the province has to do land and property acquisitions, it always strives for negotiated and amicable agreements. If people refuse to sell and the property stands in the way of work, the province can go through expropriation. That is always a last resort.

But people are desperate for answers now.

“It seems surreal that there is this quaint little community, and there is going to be all of this taking place, and basically if your house, if your property, falls in line with that, then you are going to be required to sell your house,” said Tracey Surette.

“We’re in a housing crisis, and to say that you aren’t sure about what properties yet, I don’t think that can be completely accurate because you’ve already bought a house on Myrtle Lane, two houses. So obviously you have some ideas…The bottom line is these are people’s homes.”

Cross said the department will know more, and can pass along more, when the project moves into the detailed planning stage.

“Sometimes we get criticized: Why did you wait so long to talk to people about it? Why did you take so long to inform us?” he said.“We have more answers the longer you wait, but people, generally, want to know what’s going on as early as possible. But the earlier in the process you are, the less answers we have to specific questions.”

Meaning, for now, people are left wondering.

Oak Park Road resident Tristan Hubbard purchased his family’s home in 2019. He doesn’t think he’ll lose his house, but he suspects he’ll lose a huge chunk of his front property.

“I bought it because it was private and it was a dead-end road. I’m raising a family there and we play outside every day,” he said at the meeting.

“If you were in my position and you bought that house because of the location and the quietness and just liked the beauty of the area, and you heard they were gonna put the bridge back in and make the road wider, construction was going to be two to three years, possibly, right in front of your house – with a two-year-old, would you try and sell your house and move away in this market,” he asked Cross.

“Would you just feel like you’re stuck?”

Seated close by was Blake Sandham, another resident of Myrtle Lane, who moved into his house a year and a half ago.

Like others, he was drawn by the tranquility and quiet nature of the road. He too wonders what the future holds. He sat quietly in the meeting, absorbing all that was being said.

His neighbour Helena Brown, however, couldn’t hold back what she was feeling. She spoke during the meeting.

“Somebody is not giving us the information we need,” she said. “My life, and a lot of people’s lives, have been greatly impacted. You can say all you want about not having information. You’ve got a hell of a lot more information than we’ve got.

“We’re trying to plan our lives and renovate homes and rent homes. Do we sell? Do we stay here? Do we move?” she said. “We love our community…We deserve more. Much more.”