Is it a pipe dream, this talk of a subway for Winnipeg? Probably the average taxpayer is "flabbergasted" at the sum involved, $200 to $300 million — nobody knows how much." said Greater Winnipeg Transit Commission general manager on Tuesday.
D. I. MacDonald told (the) Kiwanis Club at (a) luncheon in the Royal Alexandra Hotel he considered it no pipe dream. GWTC was now moving 8,000 to 10,000 persons an hour, at peak periods.
"If we put any more buses on the streets, they wouldn't move at all. Toronto was trying to move 10,000 to 20,000 an hour on Yonge St. when it built the subway in 1950. The subway's capacity is 40,000," he said.
Transportation shaped a city: New York's highly concentrated area was served by subways now publicly subsidized." Los Angeles, spread all over the map, (has) virtually no public transit.
What they do is build more and more super highways for the one million cars owned by (the) two million population," said Mr. MacDonald.
"What is happening in the U.S. now is what will happen in Canada soon. Population estimates made 10 years ago are already outstripped. Toronto has built North America's newest subway and Winnipeg is learning a lot from Toronto, where a 10-year capital expenditure budget is equally divided between roads and public transit.
"What are we to do here? Nobody knows the whole answer. The Downtown Business Association organized a traffic study, that cost $40,000. A system of expressways to circle the city was recommended — because 40 percent of traffic was only passing through."
"To save downtown — is the only way down — into the ground? Experts say our soil conditions are quite favourable for subway construction, that the proposal is both feasible and desirable. Toronto has found the subway preserved the central business area — in fact its assessed value has gone up by 75 per cent."
In a post mortem discussion, Mr. MacDonald said road saturation didn't "scare motorists onto buses; it only scares them away from downtown." He is chairman of Chamber of Commerce civics bureau.