Winnipeg's official plan, Bylaw 2960/81, recognizes the intimate relationship between land use and transportation. It directs the use of transportation facilities to promote compact and orderly development.
"The city shall implement, as need dictates, a transit-oriented long-range transportation plan consistent with a general containment approach to accommodating future growth," the official plan says. It says also: "The emphasis on public transit shall be considered in constructing one- and five-year streets and transportation capital budgets."
Examination of the city's five-year capital program approved by council shows that it is much more road-oriented than transit-oriented. A number of major additions to the regional streets system are scheduled for early starts and with the exception of the extension of York and St. Mary Avenues, these projects are entirely in suburban areas.
The Kildonan bridge and road system, the Charleswood bridge, the improvement and extension of Bishop Grandin Boulevard, the improvement of Regent Avenue and North Main Street are no doubt desirable improvements to the street systems in the areas affected. Collectively they add up to a significant share of the city's enhanced capital budget.
They will stimulate land development on the periphery, they will have no measurable impact on the areas where traffic congestion in the city is worst, that is on the constricted approaches to the central business district, and the do not constitute transit orientation or containment. Two of them are scheduled for commencement in 1988 and the Charleswood bridge in 1989.
The city has interited some bad planning decisiois. Many years ago the St. James council designated Moray Street as a future thoroughfare connection too a bridge crossing of the Assiniboine River. At the same time it allowed the fronting properties to develop as single-family residences. These chickens are now coming home to roost and the proposed bridge will convert Moray Street into an arterial thoroughfare, the consequences of which may be observed by glancing at Kenaston Boulevard.
The argument will be advanced that the people who live on Moray have known that sooner or later this would happen and therefore it serves them right.
Exactly the same observation could be made regarding Waverley Street north of Grant Avenue and Inkster Boulevard east of McPhillips. However, today no politician in his right mind and with a desire for political or even physical survival would advocate converting these streets into major thoroughfares as originally planned.
The only significant transit improvement included in the five-year capital program is the long delayed south-west transit corridor, although Plan Winnipeg also makes provision for a transit corridor to the north east. The program indicates a 1991 start on the south-west corridor and makes it subject to the caveat that it must secure 75 per cent financing from the federal and provincial governments. Since no such provision applies to the major road projects, they clearly have a running start on the transit corridors.
It should be the other way around. It is essential to the attempts to revive Portage Avenue as a retail service centre that dramatically improved access be provided and only fast, direct, uninhibited transit service between the central city and its suburban areas can do this.
It should be pointed out that the transit corridors as described in Plan Winnipeg suffer from a major defect in their downtown routing.
In particular the south-west corridor's route from Corydon and Osborne takes it through a barren area along the riverbank, through the East Yards before finally entering the downtown area by a back door to Graham Avenue. It should cross the river just west of the Midtown Bridge and proceed directly into the downtown area via special transit lanes northbound on Hargrave Street and outbound lanes on Carlton Street.
A similar observation may be made with respect to the north-east corridor, also proposed to be routed through the East Yards. This corridor should cross the river on an alignment which would connect it to exclusive lanes on McDermot and Bannatyne Avenues, connecting to the south-west corridor at the intersections of threse streets with Carlton and Hargrave.
It is essential that transit corridors penetrate directly into the areas to be served in order to attract the maximum number of riders and to keep operating costs at a minimum. To take transit riders on a Cook's tour of the East Yards before taking them to their destination has nothing to be said for it, not even the opportunity to view, twice daily, the clutter of odds and ends with which the Forks Renewal Board proposes to disfigure this historic site.
It is strongly suggested that the city recognize the planning priorities of its official plan and advance the construction of both major transit corridors. Assuming that it cannot finance concurrently both the major road and transit projects, it should postpone the former and get on with the latter. Penetrating the barriers to the central business district with high capacity transit service on protected rights-of-way will be more in keeping with the present needs of the city at large and more supportive of the city's declared planning goals and may, in fact, be indispensable to the achievement of those goals, particularly as they apply to the revitalization of Portage Avenue.
It would be an over-simplification to suggest that improved public transit alone can overcome the deep-seated social and economic problems of inner-city deterioration. Obviously the long-term strategies of the core area renewal will also have to be pursued with added resources and increasing vigor over an extended period of years.