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WFP: Brandon council asks province for power over speed limit (Apr24'26)
by Beth McKechnie 24 Apr '26

24 Apr '26

Caution! This message was sent from outside the University of Manitoba. Brandon council asks province for power over speed limit https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/2026/04/24/brandon-council-asks-pro… BRANDON — City council is urging the provincial government to let it lower the city’s default speed limit to help make residential roads safer. The default speed limit in urban areas across the province is 50 kilometres per hour, while rural roads are subject to a 90 km/h speed limit. Brandon councillors have repeatedly discussed reducing the default limit for residential streets. “I hope that we bring residents on board for this conversation and dialogue around residential speed zones, whether it’s 40 or even 30 (km/h),” Coun. Kris Desjarlais said at Monday’s council meeting. Council agreed to send a letter to Municipal Relations Minister Glen Simard requesting the city take over setting the default speed limit. “The best way for our municipality to proceed with a legislation change would be to petition the minister,” said city traffic and transportation planner Sam van Huizen at the meeting. A provincial change would allow the city to put up “gateway signage” at entrances to Brandon that notify drivers of the default speed limit. The province could also lower the default speed limit across the board, which would affect hundreds of communities in all parts of Manitoba. Currently, the city is able to individually reduce the speed limit below the default limit on all residential roads, but would have to put up signs at every intersection to alert drivers to the change. Van Huizen said the cost to do that would be $2.25 million for more than 4,000 posts and signs, which would be “fiscally irresponsible.” “We basically can’t effectively enact similar neighbourhood-size reductions to speed limits at our local level without running into some physical requirements for signage and such,” van Huizen told the Brandon Sun after the meeting. Desjarlais said the cost for the city to enact the change on its own is just too high. “I don’t think any of us are interested in spending two and a half million to switch over, but I think we are interested in saving lives,” said Desjarlais. He noted that parts of Toronto have a speed limit of 30 km/h on residential streets to save lives. Lately, the City of Winnipeg has been similarly petitioning the province to lower the default speed limit to 40 km/h. Last month, Premier Wab Kinew told CBC that Winnipeg can make the change on its own — by putting a sign at every intersection — but that a provincial decision would mean changes for every community. Brandon Mayor Jeff Fawcett said it makes sense for the Wheat City to send its request at the same time as Winnipeg. “The bottom line is, Winnipeg had been kind of kicking this around a little bit … and the whole concept is it has to be done provincially. It can’t be random cities doing things differently,” said Fawcett after the meeting. “So it’ll be discussions over the next year or two.” Fawcett said the feedback from residents about speed-related pilot projects has been fairly positive. In 2021, the city reduced the speed limit on part of Durum Drive to 40 km/h to address speed and traffic volumes. The program expanded to include neighbourhoods and a 30 km/h zone near Rideau Park, according to a city report. Van Huizen agreed the project has produced positive results. “You’re never going to please everybody, but certainly we’ve seen people who are very much in favour of this, have seen the benefits of a reduced speed limit,” he said. “We’ve also seen and heard people (who do) not see those benefits.” If the default speed limit were to change, van Huizen said the city is aware that uptake might not be immediate. “It doesn’t happen overnight, it’s almost a culture of change,” he said. He likened it to when drunk driving and seatbelt laws were implemented. It took a long time for some people to get used to, but most people can’t imagine not wearing a seatbelt today. — Brandon Sun

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WFP: Pedestrian struck on Henderson dies (Apr21'26)
by Beth McKechnie 21 Apr '26

21 Apr '26

Caution! This message was sent from outside the University of Manitoba. PEDESTRIAN STRUCK ON HENDERSON DIES A 32-YEAR-OLD man is dead after he was hit by a vehicle while crossing Henderson Highway on foot Friday morning. The pedestrian was crossing Henderson shortly before 5:20 a.m. when he was hit by a vehicle travelling northbound, a Winnipeg Police Service news release stated. Police were sent to the intersection of Henderson and Neil Avenue after the driver called 911. The driver spoke with officers at the scene. The victim was taken to hospital in critical condition and later died. The traffic division is continuing the investigation. Anyone with information or video from the time of the incident is asked to call officers at 204-986-7085<tel:204-986-7085> or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 204-786-8477<tel:204-786-8477> (TIPS).

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WFP: Council green-lights lower speed limit on Wellington (Mar27'26)
by Beth McKechnie 27 Mar '26

27 Mar '26

Caution! This message was sent from outside the University of Manitoba. Council green-lights lower speed limit on Wellington https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/2026/03/27/council-green-lig… WINNIPEG city council has voted to lower the speed limit on a huge section of Wellington Crescent that’s popular with cyclists, but rejected the idea of installing an interim bike lane before a permanent one is built in 2027. The issue has been the focus of intense lobbying by cycling advocates since the death of Rob Jenner in May 2025. He was killed in a hit-and-run while cycling to work. The council chamber gallery was full of attendees wearing red shirts in honour of Jenner. They watched as councillors voted to lower the speed limit to 40 kilometres per hour from 50 km/h. The group was unhappy with the decision to scrap an interim bike lane this summer. “It’s very disingenuous to offer the permanent solution a year from now and then not allow some of the interim things that were very easy to implement right now,” said Marty Donkervoort. City staff had originally recommended installing temporary lanes, but the plan was scrapped by a motion from public works chair Janice Lukes (Waverley West). City staff estimated the temporary lanes would have cost about $400,000 and would have remained in place until permanent infrastructure is built. The motion by Coun. Sherri Rollins (Fort Rouge-East Fort Garry) for a number of left-turn slip lanes to be blocked from accessing Wellington Crescent was defeated. Several councillors, including Coun. Ross Eadie (Mynarski), voted against reducing the speed limit on a regional road. “(They are) the roads that really get you quicker to the places you have to be to participate in the economy,” he said. Meantime, council voted to formally ask the province to amend the Highway Traffic Act to allow the city to decrease speed limits on residential streets and minor collector roads. Gillingham said the motion was merely to open the discussion about reducing the speed limit, and nothing would be set in stone. “For some, it may be kind of splitting hairs, but it is important. By voting in favour, the recommendation to send this to the province is not automatically voting for any change in speed limit,” he said. Premier Wab Kinew has said he’s against changing provincial legislation because it would mean every municipality in Manitoba could do the same. The city can currently change speed limits on city streets, but it must be done on a case-by-case basis and the mayor said that would be too costly. “I’m not in favour of going and changing the speed limit now without the change to the Highway Traffic Act. I’m not in favour of spending $10 million-plus and putting signs up on every street that would require (the change),” Gillingham said. nicole.buffie(a)freepress.mb.ca<mailto:nicole.buffie@freepress.mb.ca>

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WFP: The rush for Wellington bike lanes is misguided (Mar26'26)
by Beth McKechnie 26 Mar '26

26 Mar '26

Caution! This message was sent from outside the University of Manitoba. The rush for Wellington bike lanes is misguided JOHN YOUNGMAN https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/analysis/2026/03/26/the-rush-for-… I HAVE lived on or within a block of Wellington Crescent for 35 years. I drive my vehicle on the Crescent almost every day, and cycle regularly on Wellington in the summertime. Not once have I felt unsafe driving or cycling on Wellington. However, that could soon change. The city is voting on whether to approve bike lanes on Wellington Crescent, which would reduce vehicular traffic to one lane each way from Academy to Stradbrook and reduce speeds to 40 km/h. If the botched bike lanes on River and Stradbrook avenues are any indication, drivers on Wellington Crescent are in for a rough ride. The River/Stradbrook bike lanes have resulted in travel lanes so narrow that driving on them means doing everything in your power to avoid colliding with the vehicle next to you. This is not traffic calming. It is engineered danger. It gets worse. The Wellington Crescent bike lane proposal restricts drivers from making left-hand turns onto the Crescent from Dorchester and Gertrude. That means all vehicles that used to be able to access the Crescent directly would now have to cut through adjacent residential neighbourhoods in order to make left-hand turns onto the Crescent via Hugo, McMillan, Lilac, Ruskin, Palk and Kingsway — streets that lack cycling infrastructure and are ill-equipped for increased traffic volumes. Rather than improving safety, the proposed bike plan simply offloads the safety risk from Wellington Crescent onto adjacent neighbourhoods. While bike lobbyists are quick to demand things like bike lanes, reduced speeds and turning restrictions, they are silent when it comes to the downstream dangers these measures impose on nearby residential communities. In their support of bike lanes on the crescent, bike lobbyists have repeatedly invoked the death of a cyclist who was tragically killed in 2024 by an SUV travelling 159 km/h. The sad reality is that no bike lane can protect a cyclist from a maniac driving at extreme speeds. And if the dinky physical barriers (low curbs, really) on the River/Stradbrook bike lanes are any indication of what is in store for the crescent, they wouldn’t even protect a cyclist from a vehicle going the legal speed limit. This calls into question whether the push for bike lanes on the crescent is really about safety at all, or merely reactive. Coun. Russ Wyatt hit the nail on the head when he said the city would be “jumping the queue” by approving the Wellington Crescent bike lanes. In a city with limited resources, moving the Wellington Crescent bike lanes to the front of the line means other deserving active transportation projects already in the works — many designed to improve cyclist safety — would have to be delayed or scrapped altogether. That is not leadership. That is pandering to the squeaky wheel. There are other ways to make Wellington Crescent safer for cyclists without eliminating two lanes of vehicular traffic. The stretch of the crescent under consideration for bike lanes is blessed with wide boulevards on both sides. There is no reason bike lanes could not be located there, parallel to the sidewalks. It would be far less expensive and pose no disruption whatsoever to vehicular traffic. Nor would it rely on physical barriers to keep cyclists safe from traffic. Allowing left-hand turns from Grosvenor onto Wellington Crescent would also go a long way toward alleviating unsafe levels of vehicular traffic on nearby residential streets. As citizens, we should not have to tolerate poorly conceived bike lanes that fail to adequately protect cyclists, make roads more dangerous for drivers and offload arterial traffic onto unsuspecting residential communities. Expanding cycling infrastructure that actually makes streets safer for cyclists is an important goal as we move forward as a city. However, we should let sound planning, data and due process tell us where and when bike lanes should be located, not special interest groups. John Youngman has lived, walked, driven and cycled on and around Wellington Crescent for 35 years.

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WFP OpEd: Counterpoint: the new transit system is good (Mar26'26)
by Beth McKechnie 26 Mar '26

26 Mar '26

Caution! This message was sent from outside the University of Manitoba. Counterpoint: the new transit system is good JOE KORNELSEN https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/analysis/2026/03/26/counterpoint-… WINNIPEG’S new transit network is actually good. It might surprise people to hear it, but the more you ride it, the more sense it makes. The old network was a cobbled-together hodgepodge of legacy routes trying to accommodate city growth by appending ever more weird routes into a system built for the city we were decades ago. Riders can remember many of these: the spaghetti-shaped No. 77 or the old No. 16 with its three radically different southern branches and the No. 29, which sometimes went southbound from the Health Sciences Centre to Pembina and sometimes southbound to… city hall. Most of us who ride had learned to live with and even thrive amid these absurdities. But they were absurdities. These routes were trying to adapt a system serving a city the size of Regina as it grew by hundreds of thousands to become the city we live in today. Those routes would have made even less sense as we grow to the size of Vancouver. Anyone who has taken transit in Vancouver, Toronto or any large city knows transit works best when the lines are easy to understand, when the service arrives often and when the system allows you to do most trips — not just commuting. The new system is getting us to that style of service with straighter rationalized routes that will make more diverse trips possible. There have been some complaints about the new network. There are new inconveniences. But there are a great many improvements that more than balance those — it just takes time to realize those as riders try new trips. Many routes have broken though barriers that the old network produced through arbitrary deviations or due to the exclusive commuter focus of the old network. The new F7 better connects St. Vital to St. Boniface by following St. Anne’s and then Des Meurons. The new F8 produces an easily understandable straight-line route connecting north and south Winnipeg following Henderson and Pembina and, even better, it deviates a couple blocks off Main Street in downtown, prioritizing a much more pedestrian-friendly part of the core districts. The new F6 has broken the old barrier at Portage where Osborne flowed up to eventually become Isabel and Salter. Where once all Osborne routes deviated in behind The Bay, they now follow a straight north-south line right along the west side of downtown. These are big barriers broken for riders. There have been other changes that are bringing major value for some of Winnipeg’s strategic priorities. The new D12 and D13 routes connect our airport directly to the Forks and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Bringing tourists directly to the destinations we’re most proud of immediately upon arriving makes a lot of sense. Another city priority has been having more people live downtown. Transit and high-density central living go hand-in-hand. One major network improvement supporting that objective is the new D14 and D15 routes, which have significantly improved service on Broadway. The D14 even travels a portion of Erin and Wall Streets — a major central area of both commercial and manufacturing jobs. These changes are extremely positive. Of course, there is more to do. But the thing to do is not network-related, it’s service-related — the system needs higher frequency service to meet its full potential. The city has done a significant amount to create the network and fund it with the resources at its disposal. Now one must ask, where is the province? About 10 years ago, the previous government ended a funding agreement that matched operating funding dollars for any municipality running a transit service. Those operating dollars are critical to having buses arrive at your stop often. The current provincial government has a tremendous opportunity to create world-class transit in Winnipeg virtually overnight by reintroducing this 50-50 funding agreement. This would go a long way to creating truly frequent service on the new network. The benefits are obvious. The entire world is staring down a potential energy crisis that demands all governments look for ways to support transportation opportunities less exposed to fuel prices. Further, it only takes a casual look around the continent to see that the biggest urban economies all have great transit systems with high ridership. We need that kind of dedication to our transit network to move workers, residents and visitors efficiently on our infrastructure as we grow to a million people and make our city competitive on the world stage. The City of Winnipeg has gone boldly where we needed to as we grow to a million people. The new network has been a positive improvement both for Winnipeggers today and for the future. It has its kinks, but all major changes will have those. All that’s needed now is the provincial backing to make it as convenient to use as the major systems many of us know and love in the economic powerhouse cities around the continent. Joe Kornelsen was a founder of Functional Transit Winnipeg and has advocated for higher frequency transit service since 2014.

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WFP OpEd: Seniors and families deserve better (Mar25'26)
by Beth McKechnie 25 Mar '26

25 Mar '26

Caution! This message was sent from outside the University of Manitoba. Seniors and families deserve better MICHAEL ABON https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/analysis/2026/03/25/seniors-and-f… “WE’RE making these decisions not for the 60, 70-year-olds. No disrespect, because a lot of them do use these facilities, but we’re trying to make the decisions what infrastructure is needed for the 30-year-olds, the 25-year-olds, and that future generation.” That was Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham at the executive policy committee on March 17, defending the decision to cancel the Wellington Crescent bike lane pilot project. My parents downsized to a condo on Wellington Crescent. My wife, our three-year-old daughter, and I walk or bike along Wellington Crescent to visit them at least once a week… or we used to. Since a driver going, at minimum, 159 km/h killed Rob Jenner on this street nearly two years ago, we take a longer route to avoid Wellington entirely. We shouldn’t have to be afraid just to visit my parents. Our daughter is learning to cross streets. We teach her to look left and right. But she’s three. She can’t judge the speed of a car. She’s too short to see around parked vehicles; she has to step into the lane just to know if anything is coming. She’s starting to ride her own bicycle, but I’m not going to let her ride to grandma and grandpa’s. Not on this street. When we do walk there, cyclists pass us on the sidewalk (technically illegal, but the only option that feels safe for them). I don’t begrudge them that. I wish they had a protected lane on Wellington. Wednesday night, a collision at Wellington Crescent and Hugo Street North (an F-150 and a small sedan, airbags deployed, emergency vehicles on scene) reminded the neighbourhood what’s at stake. That dangerous slip lane would have been closed had the pilot gone ahead on schedule. Instead, it has been delayed for over a year, and council is cancelling it. The mayor said he’s not building for seniors. But this stretch of Wellington between Academy Road and Stradbrook Avenue is condo after condo. The majority of residents are seniors. They struggle to cross streets engineered for speed, not for the people who live on them. Rob Jenner was 62, exactly the kind of person the mayor dismissed. My parents heard his words. So did their neighbours. And here is the irony: the mayor claims to be building for 25-year-olds, but Canadian adults under 30 are increasingly going without a vehicle, whether by choice or because they’ve been priced out. The infrastructure young people are actually asking for (safe cycling routes, walkable streets, connected transit) is exactly what council is cancelling. The mayor isn’t building for seniors. He isn’t building for families. And he isn’t building for the generation he claims to be championing. So who is he building for? Eighty-three per cent of respondents in the city’s own engagement supported safety improvements on this corridor. One hundred and fifteen community members have taken time away from work to speak at committee meetings about this stretch of road over the past 16 months. The public service recommended the pilot. The equipment sits in a warehouse. In November 2024, Coun. Janice Lukes said the pilot could be in the ground as soon as the snow melts. That was two winters ago. Council votes on whether to cancel it March 26. The mayor said “no disrespect.” Rob Jenner should still be alive. My parents deserve to feel safe on their own street. And my daughter deserves a city that builds for her, not one that can’t decide who it’s building for at all. Michael Abon is an Earl Grey resident and a board director of Bike Winnipeg.

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WFP: Free transit for youth: NDP (Mar24'26)
by Beth McKechnie 24 Mar '26

24 Mar '26

Caution! This message was sent from outside the University of Manitoba. Free transit for youth: NDP Plan to help students get to school, work in today’s budget https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/2026/03/23/provincial-budget… MANITOBA’S NDP government will make it more affordable for youths as young as 12 to get to school, jobs and activities with free transit passes. The details will be announced in today’s budget. “We have money set aside in the budget to work with municipalities to cover the cost of transit for high school-aged youth,” a spokesperson for the province said Monday. Winnipeg and four other municipalities in the province — Brandon, Selkirk, Flin Flon and Thompson — offer fixed-route public transit. “The rollout and delivery will look different depending on the city,” the spokesperson said. The plan is expected to cost $10 million. A single Winnipeg Transit youth fare — riders 16 and under and high school students 17-21 with a GoCARD and photo ID shown to the driver when boarding — is $2.95 and a monthly bus pass is $88.55. An adult fare is $3.45 and a monthly adult pass is $119.35. Children aged 11 and under are able to ride free when accompanied by a fare-paying customer. “I think it’s a great idea,” said Bram Strain, president and CEO of the Manitoba Business Council and co-chair of the Premier’s Business and Jobs Council’s green committee. “It creates a bus-riding culture for youth, which, hopefully, will continue on as they move into commuting to work. It should help increase the amount of riders, which obviously adds to security — a full bus is a secure bus.” Winnipeg Transit data shows ridership remains below 2019 pre-pandemic levels. Strain said he expects the province may announce more funding for transit security in Tuesday’s budget. “I think it will also help youth enter the workforce because it gives them an ability to get to and from their employment with a system that they know, trust and understand,” he said. In January, Manitoba’s youth (aged 15 to 24) unemployment rate was 14.1 per cent, a 2.5 per cent increase from December, the province’s labour force survey said. Strain said he will be watching for an uptick in ridership, workforce participation and school attendance. Fewer cars means less wear and tear on the roads and benefits the environment, he said. Winnipeg School Division superintendent Matt Henderson welcomed the news, which he hopes will make it easier for students to attend class. “One of the obstacles that we constantly hear ... is always around transportation. Transportation is a significant barrier and does contribute to kids missing school,” Henderson said. High schools in the city sometimes provide transit tokens for teens in need, but the economic burden of doing that for every student would be too much for the division to bear, Henderson said. The change will reduce the strain on families, particularly those with multiple children who rely on the transit service, he added. Henderson said he was not aware of the new transit funding before the Free Press contacted him for comment Monday. “If this is the case that the province has put some funds away for this, that would be very much welcome by the division, but also our families,” he said. Providing free transit for youth is timely, University of Winnipeg economics professor Philippe Cyrenne said. “Households are under lots of stress right now. Lots of people are struggling,” Cyrenne said. Families are dealing with rising food costs, Manitoba Hydro rates and education property taxes, he noted. The province has two ways of dealing with affordability challenges — by providing tax relief, usually at the lower end of the income spectrum, or by increasing services, he said. “What would the average person prefer — more money in their pocket, or more services? This government seems interested in providing services and spending,” he said. On Friday, Finance Minister Adrien Sala announced more funding for child care, and Justice Minister Matt Wiebe announced $14 million more for Manitoba Justice correctional services. The province has also pledged more money for cardiac care and affordability measures. Cyrenne said he sees an “intergenerational tension” right now that’s influencing policy. Older, more established Manitobans are on firmer financial ground than younger people struggling with high housing and living costs, trying to gain an economic foothold. “We have to start thinking, how can policy be directed toward helping young people getting started?” said Cyrenne, who considers himself an “older” Manitoban. Helping high school-aged youth with transit may fit the bill, he said. “My sense is probably high school students are still dependent on family.” It’s also a way of helping transit systems that have been underfunded, said Cyrenne. Spending on transit systems isn’t popular with taxpayers who don’t use it and don’t see it as a way to reduce traffic congestion and greenhouse gases, he said. “With better transit you take traffic off the road, and it’s better social policy.” Covering transit fares for high school-aged kids comes at a time when Manitoba is projecting a $1.6 billion deficit — more than double what the 2025 budget expected. Premier Wab Kinew has signalled recently that Manitoba’s deficit will be less than $1.6 billion and that the province is on track to balance its books by the next election, due to take place by Oct. 5, 2027. “Presumably their revenues are pretty flat and expenses haven’t been cut. In terms of the projection of a lower deficit — either expenditures are lower or revenues are higher,” Cyrenne said. “Canada’s economy has not grown in any substantive sense. We’re close to — if not in — a recession.” carol.sanders(a)freepress.mb.ca<mailto:carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca>

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WFP: Up to Province for speed change (Mar18'26)
by Beth McKechnie 18 Mar '26

18 Mar '26

Caution! This message was sent from outside the University of Manitoba. UP TO PROVINCE FOR SPEED CHANGE https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/2026/03/17/around-city-hall-… A PROPOSAL to reduce Winnipeg’s default driving speed to 40 kilometres per hour from 50 km/h will move forward to a council vote next year, provided the province gets on board. Council’s executive policy committee voted Tuesday in favour of asking the provincial government to change the Highway Traffic Act to give the city the power to change the default speed limit in the city. With that approval, city staff recommend council reduce the default speed limit to 40 km/h for residential streets and “minor collector” streets. The public service will be asked to report back in one year with an update on the request to the province. While the proposal moved forward, councillors were mixed on the possibility of reducing speeds on Winnipeg streets at Tuesday’s meeting. “I don’t believe the province will support this, but prove me wrong,” Coun. Evan Duncan (Charleswood-Tuxedo-Westwood) said.

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WFP OpEd: Putting the cart before the planning horse (Mar18'26)
by Beth McKechnie 18 Mar '26

18 Mar '26

Caution! This message was sent from outside the University of Manitoba. Putting the cart before the planning horse RICHARD MILGROM, SARAH COOPER AND JOE CURNOW https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/analysis/2026/03/18/putting-the-c… IT is rare to find a planning project in Winnipeg that generates as much passionate support as the proposal for infrastructure improvements for pedestrians, cyclists and drivers on Wellington Crescent. The consistent public participation over the course of the Wellington consultation makes it particularly disappointing to witness committees of city council undervalue public input and ignore the advice of planners in the public service. At the March 4 meeting of the public works committee, the chair, Coun. Janice Lukes, said, “Until you put the bulldozer out on the street, there is so much noise in the world that it is really hard for people to grasp what is going on.” In this, she is right; it is difficult for the city to generate interest and communicate the impacts of changes to the general public. This makes the decision of the committee to move ahead with unrealistic timelines to design and construct the permanent installations, while cancelling the pilot that would have increased awareness, all the more baffling. Lukes introduced the call for “enhanced” awareness as part of the consultation process, but her suggestion that the city post more signs, for example, falls short on any proven enhancement — most people don’t read signs about planning proposals. On the other hand, the pilot project would directly engage road users, and much like Lukes’s bulldozers, make people very aware that something is happening. It would be, by design, an “enhanced” awareness tool. Nevertheless, the committee is unwilling to recommend its implementation. The original report from the public service in the spring of 2025 recommended the installation of the relatively inexpensive temporary project from Academy to Stradbrook. It would address immediate safety concerns and, importantly, allow the city to gather more detailed input about the street’s design from the local community and commuters who use the corridor. Had this recommendation been followed, the city would now be ready to evaluate the performance of the pilot project, and make plans for more permanent changes to the street. But in July 2025, the public works committee, against the advice from planners, instead directed the public service to engage in a consultation process before installing the pilot project. Some argued that the city wouldn’t want to get it wrong and have to rip it out later. The point of a pilot project, though, is that it will be removed or changed — after lessons have been learned from its successes and shortcomings. The relative low cost of a pilot project greatly increases the chance of success for the much more expensive permanent installation — which we truly wouldn’t want to rip out. This atypical pre-pilot consultation process has delayed the possibility of any intervention on Wellington by at least nine months. However, the consultation did gather significant feedback and lead to minor alterations to the design, which the public service brought to this month’s public works meeting. The engagement team gathered feedback based on an online simulation of the proposed installation. The response numbers were strong — there were more than 8,500 visits to the website and almost 2,700 people took the time to respond to the survey. More than 50 per cent of the responses came from people who lived on or near Wellington Crescent. After processing the feedback, active transportation planners have recommended, again, installation of the pilot project. However, members of the public works committee argue there was not enough response to the pilot project survey. For comparison, the immediately adjacent River/Stradbrook bike lanes were installed after 312 survey responses, 29 attendees at an open house, and stakeholder meetings with just four responding property owners out of 104 invited. For the Wellington pilot project, though, nearly nine times that response rate is still deemed insufficient. As city planning and community development researchers, we regularly see what a lay person might interpret as low levels of participation, but in fact the Wellington engagement has been well above the norm of what we would expect, certainly enough to provide valuable input to the public service. We would also expect more and better-informed engagement in response to a pilot project. Simply gathering feedback again, immediately following a consultation where public input was ignored, is unlikely to result in higher levels of engagement. Part of the reason why public engagement often struggles with low participation is that people have lost faith that governments will meaningfully consider their feedback. From a city planning perspective, there is a good tool to enhance awareness — a pilot project. If city council wants to pursue a strategy for Wellington that can engage in robust discussion about what the community wants, the best way to do that is by reinstating the pilot which has taken feedback into account, and not rushing a new round of consultation that they have already undermined. Richard Milgrom and Sarah Cooper are associate professors in the department of city planning at the University of Manitoba. Joe Curnow is an associate professor in the faculty of education at the University of Manitoba.

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The Wolseley Leaf: Why we aren’t getting there… on buses, bikes, or sidewalks
by Beth McKechnie 17 Mar '26

17 Mar '26

Caution! This message was sent from outside the University of Manitoba. Nice article in The Leaf featuring highlights from the Todd Litman presentation held at The Forks on Feb 25th. https://theleafnews.ca/2026/multimodal-transportation-explained/

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