Transportation Master Plan. (How exciting!)

According to Blade Runner, filmed in 1982, we will have colonies on other planets and androids so perfect as to be "more human than human" by the year 2019 -- only 8 years from now. Think about it: that's when Hugh McFadyen was planning on balancing the Manitoba budget. In fact, in the movie the 'Nexus 6' model of replicant has already reached the end of its 4 year life span, meaning in only 4 years we will be building these 6th generation bots that are so advanced that you can have sex with them and make them breakfast without even knowing they aren't human.

People, I think, have a tendency to believe things will happen faster than they really will. Sometimes things do progress quickly ... for example: in 1918 we were flying biplanes in WWI, and less than 30 years later we had jet airplanes and nuclear weapons. In other cases the pace of progress disappoints. Which brings me to the point of this post ...

The City of Winnipeg has unveiled their $1.25 million Transportation Master Plan. There are two major components to the plan: a $2.7 billion rapid transit initiative, and $2.1 billion in road improvements. Sorry: "improvements". All of which is to come to fruition (did I really just use that word?) in a mere 20 years. (The active transportation component is mostly window dressing and can be discussed separately some other time.)

ROADS

To me, road improvements would involve making existing roads better. Maybe I misunderstand the term, because the focus of the "improvements" in the Master Plan mostly involve adding miles of new roads on the periphery of the city, sucking more infrastructure money away from the populated areas of town. I personally would call this "facilitating sprawl", but what do I know?

There are plans to widen Kenaston and St.Mary's, which will help. Otherwise, the focus is on building a ring road network inside the perimeter highway and around CentrePort. This plan is a component of the overall OurWinnipeg plan. In the Our Winnipeg plan, there is a map that identifies key "Regional Mixed Use Centres" and "Major Redevelopment Sites". For giggles, I decided to plot these destinations on the map of road improvements from the Transportation Master Plan -- green circles for Mixed Use Centres and yellow rectangles for Redevelopment Sites:



Virtually all of the road improvements on the map lie outside of the key urban areas identified by the City's own visionary document. We are building a web of roads around the city while the roads in the city that people use everyday get more cluttered and dangerous. Supposing we could actually get our hands on $2.1 billion for road improvements, I propose fixing some of the poor planning of the past, rather than just saying "oh well, what's done is done .. let's build more roads!"

I'll give you an example: Fermor @ Lagimodiere is a busy intersection and a dangerous one, ranking #2 in the city with $5.9 million in bodily injuries in an eight year span. . Instead of spending $80 million building an extension of Bishop Grandin to Fermor, why not spend the money fixing Fermor @ Lag? There is plenty of room for an overpass, ramps, merge lanes or whatever. But no. Instead we will build a redundant road through a field, resulting in 3 dangerous and annoying intersections where before there were only 2.

I looked for answers at the Master Plan Open House today . The guy I was talking to explained that the purpose of the Bishop Grandin extension was to provide access to the Sage Creek and Southlands neighbourhoods, which makes no sense at all for reasons I'll explain in the comments to save room up here. I had it out with this guy over all kinds of road-related things, but generally related to poor planning and creating a sprawling network of roads. He scoffed at the idea that developers should or would pay for proper infrastructure. My response: if there is demand for another 10,000 houses or a sprawling retail development, the developers will pay what it takes. There is no need to encourage faster sprawl by cutting corners on infrastructure, and by building new roads in the middle of farm land.


RAPID TRANSIT

A lot can happen in 20 years, but apparently not rapid transit in Winnipeg. I don't even know when the rapid transit planning started, but in the last decade all we've accomplished is a partially completely 3.2 km piece of pavement for a yet-to-be-determined mode of transportation. I was not encouraged by the sign board at the open house that said the SW Rapid Transit Corridor was expected to be completed "Before 2031". What, is Sam planning on running for mayor another 5 times?

I certainly support its development, and I have no initial complaints about the proposed routes in the plan -- except the maybe it will maybe it won't .... But it will ... jog in the SW transit corridor away from Pembina highway into the controversial proposed new development. But let's be realistic: we just came off a decade of economic growth, budget surpluses, and increasing transfer payments, and we got nothing done. We are now in a period of slow economic growth and massive budget deficits. How will we get money for this? If comes down to a choice between rapid transit and new roads, I fear new roads will win out. After all, we at least know what kind of roads we're going to build, and there's less resistance to building them given that most are in the middle of nowhere.

The bottom line is that if we really want to make rapid transit happen, we need determined and decisive leadership, both within the City of Winnipeg and the Province. Place your bets now. While we can put together glossy $1.25 million transportation plans, the sad reality is that I'm more likely to have my Nexus 6 sex bot order filled before we have anything close to efficient transportation infrastructure in this town.