The Greater Winnipeg Transit Commission has announced its first tentative step towards a policy of service, which may help to cut traffic congestion in the downtown area. It plans an express bus from Assiniboia municipality and west St. James to the city centre. The plan must be approved by the Municipal and Public Utility Board and involves a premium fare.

If this marks an end to snowballing fares as the sole means of repairing the fiscal difficulties of the Transit Commission, The Tribune welcomes it. This newspaper has been advocating express service for some time.

It is perhaps too much to hope that it marks an end to the type of thinking in Greater Winnipeg municipal governments which designates the system as a purely commercial operation, an unsuccessful one.

The experiment with express buses should not be judged on a purely financial basis, or at least purely on G.W.T.C. finances, and it should not be judged hastily. Consideration must be given to its implications for the broad problems of traffic planning, including congestion in the downtown area and on arterial routes and, not least of all, the parking problem.

The question of whether it is cheaper in the long run to minimize the increase in automobile traffic by providing satisfactory bus service, even at some cost to taxpayers, or to allow the number of cars using the downtown streets to grow apace and pay for widening thoroghfares and more and more bridges, is one that must be faced sooner or later — preferably sooner.

The planned express service for the west end of the metropolitan area can be used as a controlled experiment in this field. The first requisite is the best possible service, properly promoted and carried on over a period of serveral months at least. Trends in use of the transit system and in automobile traffic on this route should be checked against trends on other major routes.

This way the experiment may provide a useful basis for revision of Greater Winnipeg transit policy in its broadest aspects. Should the experiment show signs of success in the early stages, it should be extended to some of the other main routes, still on a controlled basis, without waiting until it has run its full course. Express services to North Main, River Heights or south St. Vital could serve as a double check on the commission's findings.