Halifax's rail cut: The century-old project that ruins your daily commute

Visitors to Halifax would be forgiven for puzzling over the quirky routes of some of the city's main thoroughfares.

For Haligonians, navigating the sudden road terminations and traffic bottlenecks has become a routine frustration during the daily commute.

The peninsula's peculiar road layout was not the result of creative urban planning, but of a massive and disruptive engineering project from over a century ago.

Historian Bob Chaulk says the construction of the Halifax rail cut was such a transformational moment in the city's history, he decided to explore its story more fully. His recent book Railroaded: The Untold History of Halifax's Rail Cut chronicles the project's turbulent history.

"The cut that goes right across the peninsula, which all people in Halifax know about because there are 15 bridges that they need to drive over … has not mangled the movement of traffic. But it messed it up," he said.

The rail cut was a trench blasted across the peninsula to connect trains to a new ocean terminal, reshaping the city's orderly street grid to a tangle of cutoff roads.

It explains such peculiarities as Connaught Avenue's abrupt termination at Jubilee Road and Robie Street's petering out at a wooded area.

The rail cut was born from a challenging time in the history of Halifax.

Founded as a British naval base in 1749, the city faced an uncertain future when the Royal Navy announced its withdrawal in 1904.

The military presence had been the economic engine of the city.

By 1907, the Royal Naval Dockyard was officially transferred to the government of Canada.

"The whole reason for the existence of Halifax ceased, basically," Chaulk said.

"The logical thing to do was to become a commercial harbour. And that meant a huge amount of investment in both rail infrastructure and wharfs and docks."

The Board of Trade's solution was to reshape Halifax as a major commercial port.