The major reasons for the Metro Corporation's decision to apply for an increase in transit fares is the mounting burden on real property. Taxation on real property for all manner of services threatens to reach the point where home ownership is imperilled and where rents will rise beyond capacity to pay.

No other reason could justify the type of accounting now thrust upon the users of public transit. While it is true that transit fares in Winnipeg are lower than the average of major Canadian cities, the proposed increase is yet another indication that the opportunity to really plan transit as a community service is still not being seized.

The opinion stated above is confirmed by the final chapter in the $400,000 transportation study done by Metro administrative personnel. The final plan calls for yet more freeways and mor bridges to bring still more private automobiles into the downtown area to create more congestion.

It is the same tired old plan that has been prepared for every urban area these many years. Winnipeg is thus forced to follow the parade to higher fares, declining riding, poorer public service, expensive freeways, costly bridges, traffic congestion and decentralization leading to the rot of the metropolitan centre.

Some cities where the condition has reached the crises stage earlier than in Winnipeg are already trying painfully to retrace their steps. In San Francisco there is currently an attempt being made to institute a rapid transit system to serve the whole Bay area.

Los Angeles, choked by smog from automobile exhausts, is desperately trying to undo the work of traffic engineers and planners who recommended the same sort of solutions for the movement of people as are now being offered to Winnipeggers. If there was a solution this way there might be some justification for spending three quarters of a billion dollars. But all experience demonstrates that the end result is worse than the present.

The current Metro budget, on which incrased transit fares are being recommended, is redolent of this philosophy. It contains all manner of street widenings, freeway appropriations and items related to these, undertakings which are not needed for any other purpose than to move more automobiles. This is not the way to tackle the transportation problems of any urban centre and the literature is full of reasons why this is so.