MOTORIN’ PAST THE GAS STATION
E-bikes, scooters take the pain out of high gas prices
https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/business/motorin-past-the-gas-station-576…
GAS stations are almost foreign territory for Ian Walker. Prices climb to
record highs — $1.99 per litre one day, more than $2 the next — and Walker
cruises by, unaffected.
He’s one of a growing number of Manitobans who’ve shifted their feet from
gas pedals to the footholds of electric bikes and scooters.
“If we’re going long distances, the e-bike is amazing,” Walker, 41, said.
“I’ve found the e-bike is replacing car trips.”
He’s cycled his Urban Arrow to Birds Hill Provincial Park. One “wickedly
windy” May day, he loaded his son in the bike’s front basket and trekked
him to a birthday party a half hour’s ride away.
“It would’ve been way too much work on a conventional bike,” Walker said.
He’ll adjust the bike’s motor to work in tandem with him as he lugs
equipment to his Grade 3 classroom, as he comes home from a grocery store
and as he battles weather conditions.
Walker isn’t new to the e-bike industry — he’s been a rider for two years —
but the number of people joining him has skyrocketed in tandem with the
rising cost of fuel.
“It’s been explosive,” said Michael Pasquali, president of the Canadian
Electric Bike Association.
Governments don’t track the number of e-bike users, so growth rates are
anecdotal, Pasquali said. Still, the association has noted a sharp uptick
in the past months by talking with Canadian shop owners.
“With gas prices, obviously, it’s put a big crunch on people,” Pasquali
said.
A typical e-bike charge costs about 10 to 25 cents, he said. Owners plug
their bikes’ lithium batteries into electrical outlets; Walker’s bike takes
four hours to recharge.
It’s a roughly $3 to $5 increase to the monthly Hydro bill, depending on
the rider, Pasquali said. A typical e-bike charge has a distance of 30 to
60 kilometres, he said. “There are not many things you can invest in today
that’s going to pay for itself as quickly as an e-bike,” he said.
The two-wheelers can range from around $1,000 to upwards of $15,000.
Woodcock Cycle Works on St. Mary’s Road has more than doubled the number of
e-bike sales this year compared to last, owner Tim Woodcock said.
“In Canada, we’re just hitting the point where they’re becoming more
recognized,” Woodcock said.
He’ll take his down city streets, along gravel floodway paths and through
grassy plains. He might bump the bike’s motor to a higher setting, meaning
it does more work and he doesn’t break a sweat.
En route home, Woodcock might choose eco-mode to “get more of a workout.”
E-bikes in Manitoba have a maximum speed of 32 km/h.
Kevin McLaren sold five electric bikes in 2017, his first year of bringing
them to market through More Than Bikes. This summer, he might sell five in
a week.
“Once the gas started hitting $2, the demand for bikes picked up,” McLaren
said.
So has the desire for electric scooters.
“The high-end ones we’ve sold more of — a lot more than we did last year,”
McLaren said.
Then, More Than Bikes sold more scooters in the $2,000 to $2,500 range, he
said. This year, models costing $4,000 to $6,000 are more popular.
“(Customers) went with bigger batteries so they could get a farther range,”
he said.
Gas-powered scooters, known as mopeds, have also entered the spotlight.
Jennifer Abel swapped her Kia Niro for a canary yellow Vespa to get around
Virden, her home community.
“The thought of driving an entire summer on likely about $50 for gas is
very appealing,” Abel said.
The 49-year-old said she bought the Vespa to celebrate her 50th birthday,
but the gas savings are a major perk. The tank fills up — with premium gas
— for less than $15, Abel said.
“I’ve driven 35 km on it so far and it hasn’t even come off ‘F,’ (for
full)” she said.
She didn’t need a new licence — the vehicle has a top speed of 50 km/h, and
her Class 5 driver’s licence is sufficient. However, she needed to get a
licence plate and basic insurance.
Electric scooters, which have a maximum speed of 32 km/h, don’t require
users to have a licence, but drivers to be at least 14 years old.
“I believe the culture of scooters has grown so much, and every year, it
grows more,” said Leehee Hasid, general manager of Scooter City.
Neither electric nor gas-powered scooters stay in the Main Street retailer
long before being sold, Hasid said.
“Once you ride it, you really get addicted to it,” she said.
Manitoba had 1,632 registered mopeds as of March 31, an increase of 28 from
the previous year, said Kristy Rydz, Manitoba Public Insurance’s
communications manager.
Both figures are from before gas prices spiked.
Abel is keeping her Kia. She can’t take her yellow Vespa on the highway,
and she’s a regular highway user.
Walker avoids driving his family’s electric car whenever possible, but it’s
still an option. He’s also on the Peg City Car Co-op’s board and borrows
vehicles when needed, like the pickup truck he took to this year’s Winnipeg
Folk Festival.
“We’ve designed Winnipeg to be very car-dependent,” Walker said. “It’s a
hard city to live in without a car. Now it’s leaving people at the mercy of
the fossil fuel industry.”
Walker will ride his e-bike in the middle of winter if roads and paths are
cleared.
“As long as it’s dry on the ground, you can still ride your e-bike,” said
Pasquali from the Canadian Electric Bike Association.
A major problem facing the industry is a lack of mechanics with expertise,
he added.
“They’re pulling parts off and trying to plug parts in until they figure
out the problem,” said Pasquali, who heads a program for new technicians
through Canadian bike association. “You want it to be standardized, just
like a mechanic.”
Without mechanics’ proper training, bikes that need fixing will remain in
shops or must be sent back without repair, Pasquali said.
There are a “few hundred” e-bike technicians across Canada, he said. He
wouldn’t give an exact number but said there’s plenty of room for more.
gabrielle.piche(a)winnipegfreepress.com
Transit ridership up due to high gas prices
https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/transit-ridership-up-due-to-high-ga…
THE jump in gas prices has resulted in a leap in people getting on the bus.
The latest City of Winnipeg report on the financial implications of
COVID-19, says Winnipeg Transit has had roughly a 29 per cent increase in
passengers in the last four weeks.
Coun. Jeff Browaty, chairman of the civic finance committee, said Friday
that even though ridership is still down about 25 per cent from
pre-pandemic levels, it’s a step in the right direction.
“It’s because both the world is opening up again, with people going back to
the workplace, and people are going back to old patterns, but the cost of
running cars has also gone up,” Browaty said.
“You hear (that) people who have never taken the bus before are now taking
it because of gas prices and others are coming back.”
Browaty said the city is facing the same fuel price crunch as motorists,
but it helps when there are more passengers on buses.
“It’s wonderful to see more people on the bus because the cost of running
empty buses is the same as running a full bus,” he said.
“Hopefully, people are coming back and will stay.”
A civic report shows COVID-19 will put a $41.3-million dent in city coffers
this year.
The report says transit is looking at a budget shortfall of $7 million this
year, in part because of an increase in overtime costs due to employees
being off sick or isolating because of the virus. The Fire Paramedic
Services is $3 million over-budget because of similar overtime costs, and
parking revenue is down about $500,000.
Other hits to the city’s budget include the snow clearing and ice control
budget: $34.2 million over-budget this year and a possible $5 million to
$13 million extra expenditure if fuel prices remain high.
Currently, $7.9 million in property taxes is in arrears. The number of
property owners who pay their entire tax bill at once, but have outstanding
payments, is 7,430 accounts out of about 230,000 accounts.
About $600,000 in business property taxes is outstanding.
kevin.rollason(a)freepress.mb.ca
‘Not a penny’ to get more Winnipeggers to take the bus
https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/not-a-penny-to-get-more-winnipegger…
ONE might expect loud cheers from mass transit advocates after the three
levels of government announced $539 million for Winnipeg Transit on
Thursday.
Their responses, however, were low key because there’s nothing in the
announcement to make more Winnipeggers gung-ho about taking the bus.
“Half-a-billion dollars and not a penny is being spent to improve service,”
said Brent Bellamy, a Winnipeg architect and columnist who advocates for
improved transportation.
“We are in a climate crisis and an affordability crisis,” he said.
“Improving transit frequency and service to attract more riders is a response
to both.”
The city is struggling to attract riders after the pandemic, Bellamy said.
Even before COVID-19, he said, Winnipeg was the only major city in Canada
to have lower transit ridership than it did 20 years ago. “Every effort
should be made to improve service,” said Bellamy.
Functional Transit Winnipeg, a grassroots advocacy group, agrees.
“What’s really going to get people excited about using transit is shorter
wait times, more frequent service,” said vice-president Matt Austman.
Still, the long-overdue money for a new garage and buses was welcome news,
he said.
“As a transit advocacy organization, it’s more funding for capital projects
and infrastructure to support Transit. That’s a good thing from our
perspective,” Austman said after the announcement. “It’s only one piece of
the puzzle,” though.
The challenge is the operational side of the transit master plan, Austman
said. “It’s about more buses, more frequent service,” that are desperately
needed in Winnipeg more than ever, he said.
“With gas hovering around $2 a litre right now, people need other options,”
he said.
Winnipeg’s manager of transit service development promised service will be
more frequent years from now.
“We’re basically taking the existing route network, throwing it out the
window and redrawing it from scratch,” Bjorn Radstrom said Thursday. It
includes $7 million to plan a complete overhaul of Winnipeg routes, he said.
“It literally doubles the number of people in the city who are within a
five-minute walk of frequent transit service,” said Radstrom. “It’s a much
more efficient network, as well. It gets us 20 per cent more capacity
without having to invest in any additional resources, or additional bus
hours. We don’t need more buses. We get 20 per cent more capacity because
the network is that much more efficient.”
The newly designed network will include six new corridors, with three lines
and loops at the end of the routes, some terminals, an elevated portion
through Union Station, heated shelters, new signals and be
“transformational,” the planner said.
“It will take to 2025-26 to do that design,” Radstrom said. “The $7 million
for the preliminary design allows us to get to the level of the design
detail where we could apply for funding to build it.”
He said ridership is just over 70 per cent; some riders might still be
working from home and not coming back.
“We need the new master plan to attract new riders,” said Radstrom.
The city has 646 buses and Thursday’s announcement works out to 16 net new
buses added.
“We’re not expanding the fleet greatly,” Radstrom said.
Thanks to the efficiencies expected from the route overhaul, “we don’t need
a lot of new buses.”
Hiring enough drivers for the existing fleet is hard enough, said Romeo
Ignacio, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1505.
The pay is decent but concerns about safety persist, he said. The union
leader said he hopes the city and the province can work together to address
some of the systemic issues that result in bus shelters being misused,
drivers being assaulted and riders fearing for their safety.
“Now, there’s a lot more people that are suffering from poverty, the root
cause of homelessness and, of course, drug addiction, the root cause of a
crime,” said Ignacio.
carol.sanders(a)freepress.mb.ca
New zero-emission buses, new garage in works
Transit to get $539-M boost
https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/half-billion-dollars-rolls-out-for-…
DESPITE substantial delays that left millions of federal infrastructure
dollars unspent for years, the Progressive Conservative government is being
commended for finally getting on board a tri-level agreement to modernize
Winnipeg Transit to the tune of $539 million.
As rapid transit buses rolled through Seel Station in Winnipeg’s Fort Garry
neighbourhood Thursday morning, Premier Heather Stefanson said the province
will spend nearly $170 million to purchase approximately 235 new buses,
build a new Transit garage and implement planned changes to its network.
“These new infrastructure projects will help to reduce our carbon footprint
while also promoting job growth and opportunities for Manitoba businesses,”
Stefanson said at the announcement, flanked by Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman
and Manitoba Liberal MPs Terry Duguid and Kevin Lamoureux.
The three levels of government will spend a combined $539 million to buy
100 zero-emission buses and requisite infrastructure by 2027; purchase 135
new diesel buses during the transition to a zero-emission fleet; construct
a new, LEED certified garage in the North End neighbourhood; conduct
further design work to carry out the Winnipeg Transit Master Plan; replace
325 wheelchair securement devices on Transit vehicles; and upgrade radio
hardware and equipment on buses.
The federal government’s share of the projects is $203.3 million, and the City
of Winnipeg will contribute $135.2 million.
The money comes through the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program, a
cost-sharing deal the PCs signed with federal Liberals in 2018.
Manitoba has been slow to access that cash, as former Tory premier Brian
Pallister sought to constrain spending, and chafed against federal criteria
Ottawa eventually loosened.
However, Stefanson has struck a different tone since taking office in
November, federal and municipal leaders said Thursday.
Bowman said the project had been “stalled on the former premier’s desk” and
praised Stefanson for being more active and sticking to a commitment to
fund Transit improvements.
“You made good on that and you delivered for Winnipeg,” he said. “After
years of idling, we’re shifting to drive, and finally moving Winnipeg
Transit forward in a transformative way.”
Duguid, member of Parliament for Winnipeg South, also thanked the premier
for her approach.
“We’re all singing from the same song sheet,” Duguid said. “You have set a
new tone, which I think is really making a difference.”
Lamoureux noted the Liberals’ last major transit announcement in Winnipeg,
in February 2019, involved Ottawa signing a deal directly with the city,
bypassing a reluctant province.
“When the different levels of government come together, we can really get
things done,” said the Winnipeg North MP.
Stefanson, meanwhile, said her government is keen to collaborate with all
levels of government to advance infrastructure projects, and is
fully subscribed to the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program. An
announcement is expected in the coming weeks under the infrastructure plan
to complete upgrades of the North End Winnipeg sewage treatment plant.
While admitting it has been “too long” since she used Transit, Stefanson
said the partnership between the three levels of government to enhance the
capital city’s public network is one way to boost ridership, which has yet
to rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s working collaboratively with the City of Winnipeg to do that, and so
if there are some ideas that people have, we’re certainly open to those
ideas — because we all want the end goal that people are utilizing our
transit system more,” the premier said. “It’s better for the environment,
and so we’ll continue to work collaboratively with City of Winnipeg on
various programs.”
However, Opposition environment critic Lisa Naylor said the Tories missed
an opportunity for a “cleaner, healthier” province by supporting the
purchase of new diesel buses.
“As Winnipeg grows, the need for a safer, more reliable and cleaner public
transit system grows as well,” Naylor said. “Yet, for six years, the PCs
did nothing to improve transit infrastructure.”
And while the new Transit spending is a positive development, delays will
likely mean inflation “is going to take a much bigger bite of this
investment,” Manitoba Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont said. The province
ought to also investigate the potential for relocating railways outside the
city to use then vacated tracks for a public commuter system, he said.
“If we really want to transform our city, we can go further than just a lot
more of the same,” Lamont said.
Meanwhile, Winnipeg Transit manager of service development Bjorn Radstrom
said Thursday’s announcement is the most significant funding commitment of
his career.
“This is the first time we’ve ever done a complete redesign of the route
network and it really is the basis for what Transit is going to look like
for the next 100 years,” Radstrom said. “This, for me, is really the most
exciting thing. I’m very happy today.”
— with files from Dylan Robertson
danielle.dasilva(a)freepress.mb.ca
Monday editorial in the Globe and Mail:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-montreal-is-on-th
e-road-to-greater-livability-and-other-cities-should/
Fifteen years ago, the defining symbol of Montreal was the pothole. Every
time a driver kathunked over a crater in the asphalt, it felt like a
reminder of the corruption, mismanagement and malaise of a faded metropolis.
Today there are still a lot of potholes in Montreals streets. Its not
Zurich. But the city also has a new infrastructural hallmark, with a happier
story to tell.
That would be the humble bike lane, whose narrow painted lines represent a
particular kind of urban revival. Call it the theory of livability. Other
cities should take note.
When Valérie Plante became mayor in 2017, cyclists knew they had a champion
at City Hall. Her party, Projet Montréal, had already become famous, or
infamous, for transforming the boroughs it governed like the
bourgeois-bohemian Plateau-Mont-Royal into more walkable, bikeable places
that were also notably more difficult to drive in.
Projet had many weapons in its self-confessed war on the car in the Plateau.
It narrowed streets, made others one-way, expanded and beautified sidewalks,
and above all built bike lanes. They perfectly expressed the partys green,
Europe-inflected vision.
In the past five years, Ms. Plante has taken that ethos citywide. The
defining policy of her first term was the 184-kilometre REV bike highway. It
has been a hit, even producing an unexpected and quite wonderful problem:
bicycle traffic jams.
Her suburban critics might disagree, but the mayor doesnt have a fetish for
getting around on two wheels, even if that happens to be her lifestyle
preference Ms. Plante lives in the trendy Rosemont neighbourhood, without
a car.
But making cities livable also benefits society as a whole. As she likes to
explain, cycling represents a concept of the city that Canada could use more
of. Bike lanes are part of a broader vision designed to ensure that dense
city centres stay attractive to young families, to curb urban sprawl.
Pandemic-era remote work tempted some people to drift out of commuting range
from downtown offices. The shift is probably mostly temporary, but a
mortgage in the Laurentians or Guelph makes a powerful argument for keeping
the home office. Between the summers of 2020 and 2021, Montreal lost nearly
40,000 people to other parts of the province, the most in 20 years.
Now in her second term after a landslide re-election, Ms. Plante is building
an argument for why cities are still the best, most vibrant places to live,
even in the era of remote work. The results have been impressive.
On top of all those bike lanes, shes trying to use her limited municipal
levers to make homes a bit more affordable (although another Montrealer,
Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem, may do more toward that end with
rising interest rates). Her 20-20-20 policy mandates a certain share of
affordable housing in big developments, and the city plans to use its right
of first refusal to buy hundreds of properties on which it will build social
housing.
Like the Gilded Age progressives who dreamed up swathes of urban green space
for the masses, the Plante administration is also on a park-building spree.
It rapidly expanded the grand parc de louest at the western tip of the
Island of Montreal it covers some 30 square kilometres and plans to
recreate the feat at the citys eastern edge.
With Projet Montréal, the big infrastructure schemes have always come with a
healthy concern for the aesthetic. The party has a flair for the design of
little things such as curb bump-outs and public planters.
Call them frills if you want, but young professionals are less likely to
flee a beautiful city. The pedestrianization of Mont-Royal Ave. a busy
commercial strip, and one of several streets closed to cars for at least
part of the summer shows the Plante recipe in full force: whimsical street
furniture, makeshift vegetable gardens, hordes of flâneurs and, yes,
headaches for drivers.
But then, this mayor has always been comfortable with the trade-off between
livability and driveability. Sure, Montreal has some natural advantages in
its bike-lane revolution, like tightly packed triplex housing and a layout
that long predates the automobile.
But a message to other Canadian cities: Forget about Montreals potholes. On
the road to creating a greener, more attractive place for people to live,
its lapping the field. And its riding a bike.
Charles Feaver