Winnipeg City Council: Support real road relief through transit choices & halting new suburbs.
Honestly, giving there's been a push against rapid transit in our city politicians need to know just how it helps our infrastructure issues in the long run.
Transit advocates have to take responsibility for the role they played in this project going off the rails. When the City came out with the routing for the second phase, a route that even the report the City relied on admitted that there was no public support for that alignment, instead of holding the City accountable, transit advocates blindly accepted the City's analysis and cheered on the routing. Unfortunately, you'd be spending hundreds of millons to actually degrade transit service along Pembina between Jubilee and Bishop Grandin. Additionally, unlike every other city planning rapid transit expansions, Winnipeg has not bothered to clearly state why rapid transit is needed, where the lines will go, how these lines will interact with the existing bus system, and when each segment can be expected to be completed.
This is why people like Rob Ford get elected. I feel that most of the left is in control of people who live in more urban parts of the City, and while they understand a great deal about what makes other cities liveable, I wonder what their awareness of the suburbs (where I live) is. Go to south Pembina or Polo Park or the St. Vital Centre. Do they not realize that this is what the vast majority of the City of Winnipeg looks like? Yes, take a look at what works in other cities, but also test that against the particular circumstances that exist in Winnipeg, and apply these solutions with Winnipeg's local conditions in mind. In short, Rob Ford does not need the urban activist vote, and he knows it. Urban activists need the swing voters who live in the suburbs, but they don't realize that.
St Vital is an urbanist utopia compared to the newer suburbs.
The dog leg route is a bad route, IMHO, and the direct line down Pembina would be better. Nonetheless, Scott Fielding is trying to make transit itself an issue by opposing any Southwest Transitway expansions until the very far off future. People in the suburban southwest need to realize that Fielding would stall the transit line there.
I think opposing new suburban development like Ridgewood South or any suburb to be approved after it makes perfect sense both for people in the inner city and the inner suburbs as well as people in existing outer suburbs - there's only so much road budget to go around, after all. Bulding new suburbs without sufficient population growth really does overstretch our infrastructure budgets and politicos of all stripes need to realize that.
Double Post
[url=http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/voters-want-say-in-rapid-transit-... us vote against the rapid transit system: Winnipeggers[/url]
Seventy-one per cent say they want to vote on whether the city should go ahead with the second phase of bus rapid transit from the Pembina Underpass at Jubilee Avenue to the University of Manitoba.Forty-seven per cent would reject building the next phase of rapid transit while 42 per cent would vote in favour of it. Another 11 per cent said they aren't sure how they would vote or did not respond to the question.
Those are the findings of a Probe Research Inc. poll, commissioned by the Winnipeg Free Press and conducted June 10 to 19, which asked two questions to 603 Winnipeg adults randomly sampled by phone: Whether they want Winnipeggers to have the chance to vote on whether city council should approve the second phase of rapid transit, and whether $590 million should be spent to complete the Southwest Transitway to the University of Manitoba. The poll is accurate within plus or minus four per cent, with 95 per cent certainty.
I find some of the regional polarization in support for the transit line interesting, particularly with the southwest being much more supportive than northeast. What rapid transit advocates need to do a better job of is informing people that there are other planned rapid transit lines - including some that extend northeast - which won't get built if the city stalls on the southwest line.
[url=http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/Bus-rapid-transit-flip-flo... jumps off rapid transit bus[/url]
Steeves said the project proposed now is different and more expensive than when he was a councillor. While he supported it three months ago, he said after further analysis, "the BRT plan does not hold up, and I can no longer support it."Steeves said city council has not made any provision for the $20 million needed annually for 30 years to pay for its share of the project, adding he’s concerned that will mean a four to five per cent property-tax increase.
"I believe this project will do more harm than good," Steeves said, adding the controversial dogleg route alongside the Parker lands will hurt development on Pembina Highway between Bishop Grandin Boulevard and Jubilee Avenue.
I did not realize transit was an issue on the south (south-west) end of Winnipeg. From where I live, there seems to plenty of bus routes and buses at all times of the day.
Webgear, here is some [url=http://enmasse.ca/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8116]background information[/url] about rapid transit issues in Winnipeg and how we got to the point we are now. I hope this and the points made above in this thread answer your questions.
