For the first time ever, there are no tolls on Halifax bridges. Why now?

Andrew Sampson · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 25, 2025 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 11 minutes ago

It's been 1 week since tolls were officially removed connected the MacKay and Macdonald bridges betwixt Halifax and Dartmouth, bringing to an extremity 70 years of paying to transverse the harbour. But immoderate Nova Scotians are questioning the timing. 

"I don't cognize who was asking for this," says Christine Saulnier, the manager of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives-Nova Scotia, a progressive think-tank that focuses connected issues including societal justness and economical equality.

"I don't deliberation it was apical of caput for astir radical successful presumption of affordability."

In a quality league marking the toll removal past Monday, Progressive Conservative MLA Tim Outhit explained what Premier Tim Houston told him astir the decision, which follows a 2021 determination to destruct toll fees for Nova Scotians driving done Highway 104's Cobequid Pass.

"He mentioned that helium had heard from radical coming from extracurricular of HRM to spell to the hospitals, to spell to a Mooseheads crippled … they didn't recognize wherefore they had to wage but they don't person to wage anyplace other successful Nova Scotia," said Outhit, a erstwhile Halifax determination councillor. 

"And past helium mentioned helium had immoderate folks successful Fairview that were getting bushed of having to wage to spell to enactment successful Burnside each time and wage a toll."

Money good spent? 

The premier has positioned this latest move — a committedness made past twelvemonth during his run for re-election in which his enactment won a supermajority — arsenic a win-win, redeeming drivers wealth and speeding up their commute.

But it remains to beryllium seen if removing the tolls volition really amended congestion and Saulnier questions whether getting escaped of them is the astir adroit usage of taxpayer money.

"We're not doing enough," she said. "We're not gathering nationalist lodging to the grade that we should be. There aren't capable rent subsidies for radical who request those close now. We don't person beardown capable rules astir eviction. You know, each of that would really marque a overmuch bigger quality than the tolls."

In Cape Breton, Sydney-Membertou MLA Derek Mombourquette, the interim Nova Scotia Liberal Party leader, says his constituents are frustrated by having to ft the bill, particularly knowing that the MacKay Bridge volition person to beryllium replaced by 2040.

"The tolls successful Halifax represented a important magnitude of gross for infrastructure that we're going to request to replace," Mombourquette said.  

"We ne'er supported the removal of the tolls. We ne'er heard from galore radical supportive of removing the toll."

In 2024, Halifax Harbour Bridges brought successful astir $36 cardinal successful toll revenue. 

This year, the state is spending $15 cardinal for an operating assistance to the span commission, which volition go a caller Crown corporation, and $86 cardinal for superior repairs.

The Nova Scotia authorities is besides making a one-time summation of $300 cardinal to the provincial indebtedness to relationship for taking implicit work for the bridges.

The determination by Houston's authorities to ditch the tolls comes arsenic its arguable Bill 24, which would assistance the state sweeping powers implicit proscription and transit decisions, is discussed again successful the legislature this week.

"To me, the full toll removal, the mode it was done, is benignant of a cautionary communicative erstwhile it comes to Bill 24," Kathryn Morse, the councillor for Halifax-Bedford Basin West, said past month.

Move short-sighted, says transit advocate

Douglas Wetmore, a subordinate of the transit advocacy radical It's More Than Buses, says the determination to region the tolls feels similar a measurement backward for sustainability.

"It seems counterintuitive to a batch of efforts going guardant to deprioritize question by cars and alternatively favour different options similar walking, cycling [and] buses," helium said. 

"It feels similar we're encouraging radical much than ever to instrumentality their cars from Sackville and Dartmouth and thrust it crossed a span into the city."

Wetmore is concerned the state is putting resources toward eliminating tolls erstwhile much backing is inactive required to marque the municipality's rapid transit strategy a reality. 

That's going to beryllium a much effectual mode to trim congestion connected the peninsula, helium said. 

"If we proceed stalling connected it, by the clip we really rotation astir to implementing it, it's already going to beryllium outdated for our colonisation growth."