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WFP Editorial: Winnipeggers on board with transit improvements (Oct22'22)
by Beth McKechnie 23 Oct '22

23 Oct '22

*Winnipeggers on board with transit improvements* https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/editorials/2022/10/21/winnipegger… THE wheels on the bus aren’t going round and round as efficiently as Winnipeggers would like. And, according to a recent poll, more than half of residents want to see more investment in transit infrastructure. Results from a recent Probe Research poll, jointly commissioned by the Free Press and CTV News, showed 52 per cent of respondents supported increased spending on things such as bus lanes, while 33 per cent were satisfied with the current budgetary allotment and 15 per cent wished for less spending. It’s a slim majority, but in this car-centric city, any endorsement of public transportation is notable — especially since the majority of residents don’t ride the bus regularly. Transit ridership declined during the pandemic and remains well below normal operating levels, creating a $15 million shortfall for the department this year. Financially, the city needs more people on buses. Practically, services need to improve in order to boost ridership. It’s a chicken-and-egg conundrum Winnipeg’s incoming mayor and council will need to unscramble. Currently, taking the bus in this city is an exercise in frustration. Stops are few and far between, routes are indirect, transfers are often required, the fare structure is confusing and busing can take considerably longer than driving to the same destination. Assuming, that is, the bus even arrives. These are a few of the sticking points identified in the Winnipeg Transit Master Plan, a 25-year planning document adopted by city council last spring that aims to make public transportation more accessible and attractive. Twenty-five years might seem like a lengthy timeline, but transit improvements here tend not to take the express route. One example is the rapid transit system, which has been a political talking point for decades and has been growing at a snail’s pace since the first phase came online in 2012. The second phase of the southwest transitway opened in 2020, and there are two more corridors proposed. While some expansion can make use of existing roadways, special lanes and stations are needed to complete the network. Based on the aforementioned poll, there’s an appetite for this kind of major infrastructure investment. Based on the aforementioned shortfall, there’s little in the coffers to support said investment. Federal and provincial funding is required to make the transit master plan a reality. Large-scale improvements, including expanded rapid transit lines, are necessary to bring Winnipeg on par with other major Canadian cities, but they’re only one piece of the people-moving puzzle. Less costly revisions to the user experience are also needed to build ridership. Earlier this year, the city released a Winnipeg Transit app that allows riders to plan trips and check route schedules. But as yet, it’s not a one-stop shop. Real-time updates are lacking, and users still need to navigate a City of Winnipeg webpage to manage their Peggo account — a frustratingly flawed online fare system that would make even the most tech-savvy commuters opt for a different mode of transportation. Just as the Peggo system is in desperate need of an overhaul, much of the city’s existing bus network requires re-imagining. The hub-and-spoke model that sees most routes converging downtown no longer makes sense. Commuters need better crosstown connections and reliable service. These are things that shouldn’t take 25 years to implement. There will undoubtedly be more bumps on the road to adequate transit service, but in order to make this city a more livable and connected place, and also one that does its part in addressing climate change, Winnipeg’s next mayor and council need to make public transportation a priority.

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WFP: Flawed to the core - City's record of urban 'planning' (Oct22'22)
by Beth McKechnie 23 Oct '22

23 Oct '22

*FLAWED TO THE CORE * City’s record of urban ‘planning’ has long been an exercise in after-the-fact rationalization, not foresight https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/2022/10/21/flawed-to-the-core EARL Levin had big plans for downtown Winnipeg. The year was 1969, and Levin, the head of the Metropolitan Corporation of Greater Winnipeg’s planning division, laid out a bold vision for the future of the city’s historic core in a document entitled the Downtown Development Plan. The economy was booming and Winnipeg — flush with cash — hoped to improve its reputation on the national stage by transforming its decaying downtown into one befitting a cosmopolitan city in the second half of the 20th Century. It was an era of wrecking balls and construction cranes, as cities across North America were engaged in a grand, continent-wide experimentation in new development practices, with unprecedented suburbanization and car-centric transportation routes. The issues plaguing downtown Winnipeg in those years were many, if not unique. In 1941, more than 15,000 people called the downtown core home, but by 1966, that number had fallen to 8,706 — a decrease of 44 per cent in just 25 years. A third of downtown buildings were assessed as being in poor condition; 30 per cent of the area was comprised of surface parking lots; and 20 per cent of the commercial structures sat vacant. Enter Levin, with his 20-year, $161-million revitalization plan, which would have seen the construction of high-rise residential towers, new public parking facilities and recreation centres, a skywalk system, and wide swaths of open green space. The proposal was ambitious, with the far-fetched goal of attracting 75,000 new residents downtown in just two decades. But Levin’s dream was not to be, finding a vocal critic in then-mayor Stephen Juba, and was ultimately scrapped by the city within two years. Winnipeg has been trying to “renew” and “revitalize” downtown ever since. Fast-forward to 52 years later. It’s the fall of 2022 and Winnipeg is in the midst of a municipal election campaign that will set the policies and priorities of our local government for the next four years. Downtown is still plagued by many of the same issues Levin’s 1969 plan sought to address. It is still seen by many, if not most, residents as decaying and blighted. Its population sits at 16,800, according to the 2021 census — an increase of just seven per cent over 1941. Twenty per cent of downtown is comprised of surface parking lots; 50 storefronts closed permanently during the COVID-19 pandemic; and 1.5 million square-feet of office space sits vacant. The more things change, the more they stay the same. ●●● THE seeds of our current crisis were planted in the aftermath of Second World War. Across North America, residents were fleeing downtowns in favour of shiny new suburban developments. Winnipeg was no exception, exploding out in every direction, as new neighbourhoods on the outskirts of the city were built one after the other. According to The Divided Prairie City, a 2015 collection of academic essays published by the University of Winnipeg’s Institute of Urban Studies program, the city’s suburban footprint grew by 133 per cent from the early 1950s to the early 1970s. It is a phenomenon often referred to as “urban sprawl,” which is characterized by the widespread adoption of low-density, single-use (often residential) development. Then came the 1972 Unicity Amalgamation, as 12 surrounding communities were folded into the City of Winnipeg, which only deepened the trend. “With suburban resources came suburban influence over the direction of the downtown and central city,” wrote Robert Galston in One Great Suburb: Municipal Amalgamation and the Suburbanization of Winnipeg. “Suburban dominance on council led to complex urban issues being ineffectively addressed.” The development of new neighbourhoods required the construction and maintenance of an expanded network of infrastructure, resulting in further civic resources being funnelled away from the struggling downtown towards the more prosperous, middle-class suburbs. While upfront costs of development — roads, sewers and water lines — were charged to developers, the maintenance of that infrastructure was the responsibility of taxpayers. The public was also on the hook for the construction of new civic facilities in these communities, such as swimming pools, parks and libraries, as well as the provision of emergency services, street cleaning and snow removal. The fiscal consequences of such rapid growth, and the adoption of unprecedented patterns of development, would not be seen for many decades. In some cases, empty land adjacent to existing neighbourhoods and infrastructure was skipped over in favour of parcels further away from the downtown core — in large part because it was deemed more profitable by developers. In a scathing 2013 essay — Winnipeg: Aspirational Planning, Chaotic Development — Christopher Leo, a professor emeritus at the U of W, suggested the approval of such developments by municipal decision-makers was tantamount to a dereliction of civic duty. “Planning is, in reality, a clean-up operation designed to legitimize decisions that are primarily driven by developers, and that prioritize the interests of those developers, and of the residents of their new neighbourhoods, over the interests of the city as a whole,” Leo wrote. “The appearance of planning is constructed retrospectively, to conceal a reality that looks orderly, but lacks the coherence needed to permit the development of a viable and affordable network of services and system of public transportation.” In the decades after those seeds were planted, Winnipeg dutifully watered them. ●●● ELMWOOD is a historically working-class area of Winnipeg, the city’s lone pre-amalgamation neighbourhood east of the Red River. Many years ago, one of its residents, Michel Durand-Wood, had a question. He couldn’t shake the feeling he was watching his neighbourhood deteriorate, and he wanted to know why. “It’s hard not to notice the decline. Things don’t get fixed, stuff falls apart… The city is still growing, we’re still getting new residents, so why is it that… we seem to get poorer and poorer?” Durand-Wood said during a recent interview. “Every budget it’s always: What do we cut this year? It didn’t make sense to me. At a neighbourhood level, I wanted to know: how do we get more services? How do we get the city to fix stuff?” That initial question — a simple why — set Durand-Wood off on a quest to learn more about how local governments, in particular Winnipeg’s, operate. He also became increasingly active in his neighbourhood, hoping to improve things from the street-level up. Eventually, his brother-in-law told him about an organization called Strong Towns, a non-profit advocacy group founded in the United States. Given his new interest in local governance, he thought Durand-Wood might find the organization’s perspective interesting. Strong Towns grew out of a blog started in 2008 by an engineer and planner named Charles Marohn, who became convinced the development practices adopted across North America in the post-Second World War era were contributing to a growing financial disaster for municipal governments. When he read Marohn’s work, Durand-Wood had a lightbulb moment: what he was seeing in Elmwood and across Winnipeg made sense. “If you take a step back and ask yourself, can we afford what we’ve built? The inevitable conclusion is we can’t, so you have to have a completely different conversation from that point on,” Durand-Wood said. “It’s not a revenue problem, it’s not a waste problem, it’s an insolvency problem.” Durand-Wood took the Strong Town principles he’d learned, and Marohn’s call to “do the math,” and began applying them to Winnipeg. He pored over municipal financial statements and crunched the numbers. Ultimately, he determined Winnipeg was in financial crisis. The bottom line: the City of Winnipeg lacks the tax base to maintain its existing stock of infrastructure — let alone expand it. “Build, abandon, build again on the edge, abandon, build again further on the edge. That’s the paradigm of development we’ve known since we were born. That’s how the city grows, it just keeps growing to the outside, as our downtown dies, as our older neighbourhoods die,” he said. “That’s just what we’ve come to accept. We almost don’t see it, even though it’s right in front of us… We cannot afford what we have built. We shouldn’t build more, because when you’re in a hole, you don’t keep digging.” During the 2018 municipal election, the potential opening of the Portage and Main intersection to foot traffic was put to the ballot box as a plebiscite. As far as Durand-Wood was concerned, the question was a “no-brainer.” But when the vote to open the intersection failed by a significant margin, he realized just how many citizens of Winnipeg lacked an understanding of the issues — and potential solutions — we faced as a community. That’s when he decided to launch a blog — Dear Winnipeg — aimed at facilitating a better, more informed, more productive conversation about municipal governance. The blog went live in December 2018, roughly two months after the last municipal vote. The project gained wider attention during Winnipeg’s 2019 budget deliberation, when he wrote a post criticizing the city for pushing forward on the construction of a new recreation centre in Waverley West, while it was considering closing existing pools and libraries in older neighbourhoods. To Durand-Wood, it was a matter of common sense: Why build a new facility on the edge of the city when we can’t even afford to maintain our existing ones? He grew more concerned when the director of public works, Jim Berezowsky, publicly suggested the city might have to phase out more than 18,000 street lights over a three-year period due to a cap on the department’s funding. “Once again, it was all about the cuts. Everything was on the table… I was like, literally, we are not keeping the lights on!” Durand-Wood said. A decade earlier, a 2008 audit into Winnipeg’s management of capital assets came to the same conclusion Durand-Wood did many years later. “The city may be constructing capital assets that it cannot afford to maintain into the future. This can lead to a reduction in the overall level of service provided to citizens as the required maintenance is deferred to meet budget targets,” the audit report reads. In Durand-Wood’s eyes, that is exactly right. “The first people you default on are not the bond holders. The first people you default on are the citizens of Winnipeg. And we’re already doing that. There are already implicit promises that have been made to us that aren’t being held up,” Durand-Wood said. “Implicit promises like: when there’s a road, we’re going to maintain it; when there’s a community centre, it’s going to continue to operate; when there are libraries, they’re going to be open. An implicit promise that when the city builds something, it will maintain and operate it, not for five years, but forever.” In this, Winnipeg is not alone. In an interview, Daniel Herriges, the editor- in-chief of Strong Towns, said it’s hard to underestimate just how revolutionary the changes to development patterns across North America were in the aftermath of the Second World War. For nearly all of human history, communities were centred around walking as the main method of transportation, and they were built incrementally, by many hands, with whatever resources were available at the time. They were not built to remain static, as if frozen in aspic, but to evolve. But by the early 1950s, the personal automobile was king, and it became commonplace to have large corporate developers build entire suburban neighbourhoods in one fell swoop, or to remake whole inner-city blocks as part of a single project. In Winnipeg, these trends manifested in the Lord Selkirk Park Renewal Project, which transformed the heart of the city’s Jewish community. Other examples include the construction of a large row housing project near Burrows Avenue and Keewatin Street. According to an academic article from Marc Vachon and Joshua Warkentin — The Rise and Fall of Winnipeg’s Modern Project (1958-1972) — these developments are now regarded as some of the “worst planning mistakes in the city’s history.” They were also the sorts of developments that were taking place across North America. “It was an unprecedented experiment, and part of what makes it unprecedented is we did it everywhere at once, very rapidly… It was a controlled experiment without a control group… We transformed an entire continent,” Herriges said. “It has resulted in an almost unfathomable number of places that are functionally insolvent. We have systematically not done the math for the ability of this development pattern to generate enough concentrated wealth to sustain itself.” Herriges said that for decades cities have been misallocating resources on a grand scale, building infrastructure they lack the ability to maintain long-term. The result: deferred maintenance and cutbacks to essential services. It amounts to a Ponzi scheme, according to Herriges — not in the sense that it’s a criminal conspiracy, or the brainchild of a malicious actor, but in that the development pattern needs perpetual growth to sustain itself. “There’s no Bernie Madoff in this story. But it resembles a Ponzi scheme in that the early entrants into the scheme get bailed out by the later entrants, until the whole thing collapses. And by entrants into the scheme, what I mean is development,” Herriges said. “You add new infrastructure, you’ve got growth, and you’re cash-flow positive until you reach the second life cycle and things need major repair. And the only way you can cover (those costs) is with continued growth… and when you cease to grow the whole thing falls apart. “We are on the verge of an epidemic of failing places, that are hitting that third life cycle of the growth Ponzi scheme… and it worries me.” Durand-Wood said that once you understand the central insight of Strong Towns — that we lack the tax base to support our existing infrastructure, let alone expand it — then suddenly the current state of the city of Winnipeg makes a lot more sense. “I can understand why no one thinks about it this way, because it’s been like this since before we were born. It was a paradigm shift that happened in the ’40s, so of course none of us sees these things. None of us looks at the city and think it’s abnormal or financially unproductive,” he said. “We just look at it and think: yeah, that’s the way things are, because that’s all we’ve ever known. But once you see it, you kind of see it everywhere, and it really gnaws at you.” ●●● BRENT Toderian is the former chief planner for the City of Vancouver, and an internationally recognized urbanist who now owns a private consulting firm, Toderian Urban Works. In an interview, he said that when it comes to city planning, Winnipeg’s reputation on the national and international stage is far from positive. “(Winnipeg) is a city that can’t see past its own car-addiction. It plays out in your budget, it plays out in your political decisions, it plays out in your detailed arguments about things like Main and Portage, it plays out in the conversations surrounding your elections,” Toderian said. “It’s just constant examples of Winnipeg ignoring the successes of other cities and continuing to double-down on failure, continuing to support its own addiction, its dependency on cars. And that’s the least healthy, most expensive, least sustainable way of planning your city.” Toderian characterized continued investment in car infrastructure as a “race to the bottom.” While it’s a counterintuitive insight, he said that if you want to make Winnipeg a more pleasant place to drive, the solution isn’t more investment in roads, but to invest in alternative modes of transportation, such as walking, cycling and public transit. “If you’re serious about addressing vehicle congestion, we know for certain the only two things that do that is a combination of better infrastructure for alternatives — walking, biking, transit — combined with pricing mechanisms that affect the choice to drive,” Toderian said. “Those are the only proven ways to actually reduce vehicle congestion. Everything else is just more money spent to induce more driving with the same — or worse — congestion. All of that is absolutely certain. There is no doubt at all to it.” Toderian said it’s not a question of “urbanist ideology,” but evidence-based decision making. “I’m not one of those urbanists who says: everyone should not want to drive. I’m actually much more pragmatic than that. If you want to be able to drive easier, the best thing you can hope for is that other people choose to walk, bike or take public transit,” Toderian said. “Every decision is based on a business case, and the business case is there for investing in walking, biking and transit. The business case is rock solid… As a matter of fact, it’s ideological to ignore that evidence, and this plays out all the time in Winnipeg.” The past two mayoral administrations — Sam Katz (2004-14) and Brian Bowman (2014-22) — have been primarily characterized by holding the line on property taxes (Katz) and record investment in roads (Bowman). This has resulted in a public transit system with subpar service and low ridership, and an active transportation network with significant gaps. And despite our record investment in roads, Manitoba Public Insurance says that damage claims due to potholes in Winnipeg are through the roof: in the first six months of 2022, there were more than 2,000 such claims — more than six times higher than the entirety of 2021. When it comes to repairing our existing roads, let alone constructing new ones, Winnipeg is bailing water out of a sinking ship. At our current levels of record spending, it would take approximately 48 years to repave or reconstruct all of our streets and alleys. The problem is they deteriorate at a faster rate than we can fix them. We simply can’t keep up. Toderian said that conversations about city planning often turn into “ideological debates,” and somehow the “car-based voices end up sounding practical,” while those who advocate for alternative transportation “end up sounding impractical.” “The opposite is true. When you understand the economics of city building, the most practical course of action is to invest in walking, biking and transit infrastructure, to emphasize infill development, more activity in your downtown, inner-city and early suburbs,” Toderian said. “If you want to have a conversation about avoiding future municipal tax increases, that’s the only way you can do it… Suburban sprawl is an incredible drain on municipal finances, and thank goodness you’ve got the inner-city and infill development to subsidize it.” The American-Canadian journalist Jane Jacobs, whose work had a profound impact on urban studies, suggested big cities thrive when they are composed of healthy, inter-connected micro-villages. In order to achieve that, neighbourhoods need a good mixture of frequent streets; buildings of different ages; a high concentration of people; and a combination of primary uses. She argued that unless neighbourhoods are able to attract foot traffic from surrounding areas, they will fail. “Dull, inert cities… contain the seeds of their own destruction and little else. But lively, diverse cities contain the seeds of their own regeneration, with energy enough to carry over for problems and needs outside themselves,” Jacobs wrote. According to Herriges, what’s needed now is another paradigm shift, one as revolutionary as the development pattern that was ushered in across North America in the years following the Second World War. Instead of thinking big, we need to think small. “You look for: Where are the people in this community struggling right now? What needs are they struggling to meet in a way local government can address? And then you ask: What is the next smallest thing we can do to address that struggle?” Herriges said. “You address the urgent struggles of people in the community… You launch a thousand small experiments, you take the ones that are successful and you scale them up… And that’s a really fundamental transformation from the way things are done now.” But the fact is we need a rupture from the status quo, because what we have been doing for decades isn’t working. It is insanity to keep doing the same things over and over again while hoping for different results. Poverty and homelessness are more visible and acute in downtown than ever. The tree canopy is dying. The city routinely dumps raw sewage into our rivers. Winnipeg’s infrastructure deficit is $7 billion, and there’s a $60-million shortfall in the municipal operating budget. The city is in crisis, and no one is coming to save it. It falls to the citizens of Winnipeg, and those they elect to city hall on Oct. 26, to act. Two roads lie ahead — and the one Winnipeg is currently on is rapidly approaching the point of no return. ryan.thorpe(a)freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @rk_thorpe

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WFP: Pedestrian injured in latest hit-and-run (Oct23'22)
by Beth McKechnie 23 Oct '22

23 Oct '22

*Pedestrian injured in latest hit-and-run* https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/2022/10/22/pedestrian-injure… A woman in her 40s was rushed to hospital after she was found lying in a busy St. Boniface intersection Friday afternoon — the third hit-and-run on city streets in a week. The victim was found in the intersection of Marion Avenue and Archibald Street at approximately 3 p.m. Friday, the Winnipeg Police Service said in a news release Saturday morning. She was rushed to hospital and is now in stable condition. Police said the woman was the victim of a hit-and-run. No arrests have been made, police said Saturday. Friday’s crash is the third hit-and-run on city streets in a week — and the third involving a pedestrian this month. On Oct. 16, Shannon Joan Marie Romaniuk, 24, was killed after she was struck at the intersection of Portage Avenue and Berry Street around 11:30 p.m. Emergency crews found Romaniuk lying in the road, but the vehicle that struck her had fled, police said. No arrests have been made in the case, police confirmed Saturday. “Rest easy Shannon, you were such a good friend to those around you…,” read a comment posted to Facebook last week. On the same day, just 18 hours earlier, a hitand- run at Sargent Avenue and Empress Street claimed the life of an 81-year-old woman. Corazon Manguerra and a 45-year-old man were found trapped in their SUV after their vehicle was hit by an older model Dodge Caravan, which fled the scene, police said. Manguerra was rushed to hospital, where she died. The man was taken to hospital and treated for his injuries. Police said no arrests have been made. “Along with the incident that occurred (Friday), we continue to actively investigate other recent hit-and-runs,” police said in an email statement Saturday. “There are no updates to provide regarding those investigations.” Jim Aitkenhead, 78, also died after he was hit on Osborne Street outside of his retirement home, Fred Tipping Place, just before 10 p.m. on Oct. 9. Officers met with the vehicle’s driver, a woman in her 80s, who remained at the scene, police said. No charges have been announced in the case. So far this year, 10 pedestrians have been killed in collisions, compared with a total of six in 2021, according to police data. Anyone with information about the hit-and-runs is asked to call police at 204-986-7085. Information can also be provided anonymously to Winnipeg Crime Stoppers at 204-786-8477 or winnipegcrimestoppers.org. fpcity(a)freepress.mb.ca

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WFP: Nearly double amount of pedestrians have died this year compared to last (Oct18'22)
by Beth McKechnie 18 Oct '22

18 Oct '22

*Nearly double amount of pedestrians have died this year compared to last * https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/2022/10/17/police-hunting-fo… The number of pedestrians killed on Winnipeg streets has nearly doubled this year over last, as police ask for help in investigating the latest incident that claimed the life of a 24-year-old woman. Police and fire paramedic crews raced to the intersection of Portage Avenue and Berry Street at about 11:30 p.m. Sunday, where they found the seriously injured woman lying in the road, the Winnipeg Police Service said Monday. Police identified the victim as Shannon Joan Marie Romaniuk of Winnipeg. Just 18 hours earlier, an 81-year-old woman was killed after the vehicle she was in was struck in a hit-and-run at Sargent Avenue and Empress Street. In 2022 to date, 10 pedestrians have been killed in collisions, compared with a total of six in 2021, WPS data provided to the Free Press show. The total number of vehicle-collision deaths, including both pedestrians and vehicle occupants — is also up; 20 people have died thus far in 2022, compared to nine last year. In 2021, two people were charged for failing to remain at the scene of a collision in which a pedestrian was killed. Three have been charged so far this year. “It’s extremely sad and unfortunate, and it’s happening all hours of the day,” police spokeswoman Const. Dani McKinnon said. Investigators have determined Romaniuk was crossing Portage Avenue when she was struck. The driver and occupants, if any, fled in the vehicle, which was a silver or grey late-model SUV. Police have not yet located the SUV or its driver. Officers completed their investigation and left the scene Monday morning, but spatters of what appeared to be blood remained on the road at the intersection just west of Route 90. On the south side of Portage Avenue, apartment buildings overlook the eightlane thoroughfare with a 60 kilometre- an-hour speed limit, which has controlled pedestrian crossings on the east and west sides of Berry Street. The collision was the second fatal hit-and-run in less than 24 hours. Investigators have identified the 81-year-old woman who died in hospital after a two-vehicle collision at Sargent Avenue and Empress Street as Corazon Manguerra. Officers rushed to the intersection at 4:30 a.m. after receiving multiple 911 calls. They found the woman and a 45-year-old man trapped in their SUV, police said Sunday. Manguerra was in unstable condition and had to be extricated from the wreck. She was rushed to hospital, where she died. The man was taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. The occupants of the other vehicle, a late-model, dark-coloured Dodge Caravan, ran away from the scene before police arrived. On Sunday, the wrecked Dodge van sat abandoned along Omand’s Creek on the east side of Empress. A traffic-light was on the ground nearby. The other vehicle, a Toyota RAV4, was on Empress Street’s west sidewalk, north of the intersection. Investigators said witnesses reported the Dodge Caravan driving at a high speed before the collision. They are asking anyone with information about the two collisions, including dash-camera footage, to call the traffic division at 204-986-7085 or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 204-786-8477. “So many people have their own personal dash-cams now,” McKinnon said. “They can record make, model and licence plate number… the hope really is anyone in this area, from the public, may have seen the collisions or perhaps the manner in which the suspect vehicle was driving — before or after.” McKinnon confirmed police have not yet made any arrests in either incident. The two deaths occurred a week after a 78-year-old man died after he was struck on Osborne Street. Jim Aitkenhead was hit by a vehicle crossing the 50 km/h, four-lane street outside of his retirement home, Fred Tipping Place, a few minutes before 10 p.m. on Oct. 9. Aitkenhead — who was affectionately called “Jimmy” and “Gentleman Jim,” by friends, neighbours and family — was taken to hospital in unstable condition, and later died. Officers met with the vehicle’s driver, a woman in her 80s, who remained at the scene, police said at the time. No charges have been announced in the case. erik.pindera(a)freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @erik_pindera

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WFP: Path to car-free living challenging, rewarding (Oct17'22)
by Beth McKechnie 17 Oct '22

17 Oct '22

*Path to car-free living challenging, rewarding * https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/2022/10/17/road-to-car-free-… JUST a few years ago, Sharee Hochman wouldn’t have called herself an advocate for making car culture a thing of the past in Winnipeg. The 23-year-old lifelong Winnipegger used a vehicle to get around and only cycled recreationally for years, but found herself slowly drawn to use her bike more and more. Eventually, she realized even when she felt forced to drive, she didn’t enjoy it. She got rid of her car in January, and picked up a winter-use bicycle. “When I began to understand the different benefits cycling for transportation had on me, the environment, the community, even for businesses and my mental health, I began to prioritize it,” said Hochman. “And then I began to just really fall into it.” She’s part of a growing community of Winnipeggers who have foregone personal vehicles for bikes, buses and car co-ops. Some have adapted their lives around sustainable transport. Hochman moved to River Heights, a more central area with better access to bus routes and bike lanes, from Garden City, and found herself investing in warm clothing for winter bike travels. Hochman found the benefits so meaningful she ended up becoming the Green Action Centre’s sustainable transport program co-ordinator in August. She now works to shift mindsets away from car culture and toward other options. It hasn’t always been an easy sell. The hardest push-back, she said, hasn’t been winter winds while cycling home with groceries — it’s been from other people. “I think a lot of people don’t expect my answer to be that the most hard thing has just been the resistance from folks who can’t imagine a city without having to rely on a vehicle,” she said. “And with that comes hostility and even some harassment, sometimes.” Kyle Cavell, too, is taking the leap. Last week, he changed his vehicle insurance to leisure coverage, and has decided to give winter cycling a shot. “I spent over a decade living in the north suburbs of the city, and when I moved to West Broadway (in 2019), I realized that this was the lifestyle that I wanted,” he said. “I don’t want to spend hours a day in traffic and in a vehicle, I’d like to commute by bike or walk, just live in a more walkable, dense neighbourhood.” It even influenced his decision to purchase a condo in Osborne Village with no parking spot but three Peg City Car Co-Op vehicles available nearby. Peg City carsharing service began in 2011 with just three cars, but now has 90 vehicles and more than 2,500 members. In the 2 1/2 years Ian Walker has sat on its board, the co-op doubled its number of vehicles to meet a growing need after an explosion of interest during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Every month, I see our usage numbers are higher than we’ve expected, so it’s allowing us to keep thinking forward to how we’re going to grow,” Walker said. Walker and his wife accessed the service before he got involved with the board. They plan to sell their car in the spring to become full-time users. Walker said he’s heard of growing exhaustion among car owners, both in using and maintaining vehicles and what it would take to switch to more sustainable options. “Winnipeg tries really, really, really hard to be good at moving people around in cars, but what we end up with is a city where nobody can really get around with any mode,” he said. Meantime, Cavell is excited to get biking this winter but not sure how it’ll go. It’s a short ride, but his experience with the city’s piecemeal cycling infrastructure has left him concerned about snow clearing and accessibility. “I think that Winnipeg has got a lot of good cycling infrastructure, just the connections are missing,” he said. Hochman called it an issue of citywide inequity. “It’s really challenging and difficult to watch, because from my perspective, I know how an increase of infrastructure in certain areas of the city would help alleviate a lot of different other issues for many different identities,” she said. Bridging that gap through building more compact communities with easy access to public transit and resources is the challenge, urban planner Jason Syvixay said. City planners often have grand aspirations of walkable, connected cities that will inspire people to ditch their cars overnight, but on the flip side, the equity issue means car ownership and use is a must for many families, especially from lower-income neighbourhoods, to be able to maintain day-to-day operations. “We have these big aspirations, but how do you implement them in a way that doesn’t unintentionally create these impacts to these other marginalized groups who might use it?” Syvixay said. He pointed to the “15-minute city” initiative popularized in Paris during the pandemic as an example of how cities can use zoning and planning to create a more equitable transport solution. The residential urban concept reworks cities with the goal of having as many of its residents’ daily activities — groceries, recreation, gathering spaces — be within a 15-minute walk or bike ride away. In Paris, Mayor Anne Hidalgo has promised to implement this vision by converting main roads into communal spaces blocked off to cars, installing bike lanes on every street by 2024, and using schools as community gathering spots on holidays and weekends. “It seems like such a simple concept, right? This idea that you should be able to live in a neighbourhood that gives you the things that you need,” Syvixay said. “But we know that, historically, the way that we’ve planned our city with zoning and our policies, they’ve actually deterred those things.” Syvixay said getting Winnipeg on board would require sweeping changes to zoning rules and mindsets. “Things like the suburbs, for example, the zoning was built in a way that wouldn’t allow for mixing of a grocery store or for a school to be built in the residential neighbourhoods. So you start to see over time, because of zoning, these neighbourhoods only being allowed… to build single-family homes,” he said. Syvixay was born and raised in Winnipeg, and has worked with Downtown Winnipeg Business Improvement Zone and as an urban planner in the private sector. He moved to Edmonton in 2018, in part because there were more opportunities for city planning and development. Winnipeg is behind its Prairie peer in investing in progressive city development, he said. Along with changes such as abolishing single-family zoning in Edmonton, the Alberta capital has invested in walking people through these changes and making it apparent how they benefit everyone. “Change and community support takes a lot of time, and we need to be, I think, compassionate and empathetic that people have staked their lives and their future and their money in communities,” Syvixay said. “We need to work through the change with them so that they know what’s happening, what’s coming.” Syvixay remains optimistic. Interest is growing in Winnipeg, he said, and it’s a matter of when municipal leadership decides to get on board. “It might take some public infrastructure or investments or catalyst projects that can sort of show the development industry where the city wants to go, and the city can make statements in their investments, and what they put in the infrastructure, and the development industry might follow,” he said. “It could be symbolic gestures like that, or funding gestures like that, that can see some cascading impacts.” malak.abas(a)freepress.mb.ca

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WFP: Majority willing to pay for faster, more reliable transit (Oct14'22)
by Beth McKechnie 14 Oct '22

14 Oct '22

*Majority willing to pay for faster, more reliable transit* / CTV Winnipeg PROBE RESEARCH https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/2022/10/13/majority-willing-… IMAGINE a city where the buses run on time and efficiently get you where you need to go. Or imagine a city where you can safely commute on a bicycle each day. You can probably imagine that city isn’t Winnipeg — at least not yet — but not only are most mayoral candidates talking about transit and active transportation, a new poll suggests a majority of residents are willing to pay for them. In the Free Press- CTV News poll conducted by Probe Research, 52 per cent of respondents said the city should spend more money on new public-transit infrastructure, including creating dedicated lanes for buses. Another 33 per cent are satisfied with the money currently being spent, and 15 per cent think there should be less funding. As well, when Winnipeggers were asked how they would feel if the city spent money to build a light-rail transit line, more than half, at 52 per cent, said it would make them more likely to support spending on transit, while 28 per cent said it makes no difference to them, nine per cent said it would make them less likely to support spending on public transit and 11 per cent said they were unsure. Curtis Brown, a principal at Probe Research, said the results are a clear indication there is an appetite to buy improvements. “People are starting to see the need for it,” Brown said. “Issues of climate change, gridlock… people want to see more investment.” Brown said residents are more inclined to support light-rail than rapid-transit buses but, “We haven’t really heard any of the candidates talk about it or promise it.” Idris Adelakun is the only mayoral candidate among the 11 on the ballot talking about a transit system using something other than buses and, according to a Free Press- CTV News poll released last month, he likely won’t get many votes. Adelakun is proposing a solar-powered, 20-passenger overhead rail-car system. “It will attract visitors to our city,” Adelakun says in his platform. “Also, it will reduce traffic congestion and pollution.” The top five candidates have more conventional ideas in their platforms. Glen Murray wants to see a citywide system that provides frequent service using electric buses within eight years. Scott Gillingham would add 11 new buses to the city’s busiest routes over three years. Shaun Loney would implement the city’s transit master plan in 10 years instead of 25. Kevin Klein would push for all new buses to be electric. Robert-Falcon Ouellette would set adult fares at $1; youths 17 and under would ride free. Kyle Owens, president and chairman of Functional Transit Winnipeg, said he is pleased to see the poll numbers in favour of injecting more money into Winnipeg Transit’s infrastructure. “I think these numbers reflect that most Winnipeggers see the benefits of investing public transit,” Owens said. “Winnipeggers who use the system regularly know how slow and unreliable it is. Because of the lack of funding, people can’t use it to get to work on time.” Owens said his group advocates that even people who never take the bus will get a bang for their bucks that go into public transit infrastructure. “It benefits the city,” he said. It gets more people out of their cars. And, with the master transit plan passed last year, we were very glad to see it passed and we want to accelerate that funding because 25 years is too long.” As well, he said when the plan is in place, the number of households within 500 metres of frequent transit service will go to 58 per cent from 21 per cent. Owens said Winnipeg has fallen behind other cities in the country. “Winnipeg is the largest city of its land size in Canada without light-rail,” he said. “The others have all realized the benefits to get people where they are going.” The poll was taken while Winnipeg Transit continues to experience lower ridership numbers, in part due to the pandemic. In 2012, annual ridership hovered above 48 million. It plunged to 24.8 million in 2020 and 21.5 million in 2021, during the pandemic. A transit spokeswoman said weekday boardings are now up to approximately 80 per cent, the highest since the beginning of the pandemic in spring 2020. Winnipeg Transit continues work on the multi-year master transit plan city councillors approved last year. Bjorn Radstrom, Winnipeg Transit’s manager of service development, said the plan was moved forward because, “We really heard that transit wasn’t working.” “The transit system we had then, and still mostly have now, reflects Winnipeg as it was with people coming downtown in the morning and then going back in the afternoon. It doesn’t offer that many cross-city trips. We’ve tried to redraw the map to make it a grid system and not spokes going downtown.” Radstrom said transit users will soon see the changes, with a series of fast bus routes taking passengers to transfer locations where they can board other buses to take them to where they want to go. He said the system is already in place in southwest Winnipeg, with feeder routes not going downtown, but instead only taking passengers from subdivisions directly to and from the Blue Line, much of which is the Southwest Rapid Transit Corridor. “Buses will be so frequent on major routes you don’t have to check the schedule — you just show up,” he said. “Just missed the bus? Who cares? Another one will come in five minutes… that type of change is really what would get more people to be on the bus. “Downtown will always be the biggest destination, but it is not like it was in the 1940s and 1950s.” As to the demographics of Winnipeggers who support — or don’t — spending more on public transit, the poll shows a lot depends on a resident’s political ideology, age, education level and neighbourhood. Sixty-four per cent of the people who identify as NDP supporters and 60 per cent of Liberal voters indicated they favour spending more, while only 28 per cent of people who back the Progressive Conservatives did the same. A larger percentage of Tories — 42 per cent — suggested they support funding for light-rail, behind Liberal supporters at 59 per cent and NDP at 56 per cent. There was a stark age breakdown in the results; 71 per cent of people between the ages of 18 and 34 support spending more, while only 39 per cent of people 55 and older feel the same way. About 57 per cent of university graduates agree more should be spent on public transit, compared to 41 per cent with high school or less education. And, while residents who live in the core area give 62 per cent support to spending more, other areas of the city range from 47 to 53 per cent. Meanwhile, when it comes to putting more dollars into active transportation and building more bike lanes, 45 per cent of Winnipeggers are in favour of spending more, but a majority of respondents believe the city is spending enough (31 per cent) or should spend less (24 per cent). The executive director of Bike Winnipeg, an advocacy organization, said support for active transportation has continuously grown through the years; 45 per cent of Winnipeggers now want the city to spend more on bike lanes. “This is very positive,” Mark Cohoe said. “I think it is a pretty clear indication people are ready to spend more. They are linking walking, cycling and transit to climate. There is value with active transportation. “Getting people out of their vehicles is critical to meeting our climate- change goals.” Cohoe said many changed their driving habits during the pandemic, so the time is right to enhance the active transportation network. “People are travelling less (and) we’ve found we can reduce the number of vehicles on the road. Numerous studies show people are driving more than they want to. But if we just blindly plan for the same number of cars on the road, that’s what we’ll get. “If you plan for fewer vehicles and have more options for biking, walking and buses, you’ll get there.” Among the five leading mayoral candidates, Murray said he wants to see aligned and integrated city and transportation planning to encourage cycling and walking. Gillingham would increase active transportation funding by $13 million and use a $1.50-per-foot frontage levy hike to partially pay for bike-route investment. Loney would inject an additional $20 million into funding, Klein would ensure active transportation is reviewed before roads are built and Ouellette wants to include safe family cycling in active-transportation plans. The poll of 600 Winnipeg adults was conducted Sept. 8-18. The results are — with 95 per cent certainty — within plus or minus four per cent if the city’s adult population had been surveyed because of the size of the polling sample. kevin.rollason(a)freepress.mb.ca

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Audi demonstrates C-V2X technology in California that could help reduce cyclist injuries and fatalities - Green Car Congress
by Terry Zdan 12 Oct '22

12 Oct '22

https://www.greencarcongress.com/2022/10/20221012-audicv2x.html

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TRB releases new report identifying deficiencies impacting e-scooter rider safety - Green Car Congress
by Terry Zdan 09 Oct '22

09 Oct '22

https://www.greencarcongress.com/2022/10/20221007-trb.html

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WFP Analysis: We’re living beyond our infrastructure means (Sep30'22)
by Beth McKechnie 30 Sep '22

30 Sep '22

*We’re living beyond our infrastructure means* MICHEL DURAND-WOOD https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/analysis/2022/09/30/were-living-b… WITH next month’s election spurring big-picture discussions about the City of Winnipeg’s finances, roads are as hot an issue as ever. This has led to many roads-related campaign promises that leave Winnipeggers hopeful for a future with fewer potholes. But the uncomfortable reality we need to face is that we can’t afford to maintain all the roads we already have, much less add any more. And we never will. As we’ve already heard many times, the city spent $152.2 million on road repair and replacement last year. This is a record amount, after many consecutive years of record amounts. And according to some measures, this debt-fuelled spending spree looks like it may have made a dent — for instance, city reports show our infrastructure deficit went down to $6.9 billion in 2018, from $9.9 billion in 2009 (in 2018 dollars). But looks can be deceiving. And that’s because of the way the infrastructure deficit is calculated. This deficit is just a snapshot in time, taken in 2018, projecting our annual infrastructure spending needs to 2027. But because every road eventually needs to be replaced, and since their life cycle extends beyond that 10-year snapshot, it means that, by definition, we’re leaving stuff out of the calculation. And that can lead to shocking surprises down the road. What’s waiting for us outside of the current infrastructure deficit projection, in 2028? Or 2029? Beyond? Take Waverley West, for example. That entire area is new enough that none of the roads has needed reconstruction yet. But they will eventually. The entire road network for a “city the size of Brandon,” as Coun. Janice Lukes is fond of saying, will soon be added to the maintenance queue. Turns out all those free roads weren’t free after all. And just so you don’t think I’m picking on Waverley West, it gets even worse. Assuming that a road needs to be completely replaced every 50 years or so means any road built after 1977 does not have its reconstruction cost factored into the current infrastructure deficit, since its reconstruction would be scheduled for after 2027. If we assume a 60-year lifespan, then it excludes every road in every development built after 1967. And since the majority of our roads were built after 1971 — by some estimates nearly 57 per cent — that’s a lot of roads left out of the calculation. And a lot of money. What’s it all going to cost? According to city reports, we own about 8,300 lane-kilometres of roads in total, all of which need periodic maintenance and, eventually, complete replacement. The money spent last year allowed us to maintain 113.8 lane-km of roads, and to replace 32.8 lane-km of them. At that rate, every road will get maintenance once every 73 years, and a full replacement once every 253 years. To bring that into alignment with the actual lifespan of pavement, maintenance every 10 years and replacement every 50 to 60 would require spending about $600 million more per year than we did in 2021. Some people think we have a spending problem. But trimming that much from the budget would require the complete elimination of the police department and the entire fire and paramedic department, plus shutting down the community services department (that’s the one in charge of libraries, pools and rec centres). Others think instead that we have a revenue problem. But funding an extra $600 million per year would require roughly a 100 per cent property tax increase. Double our taxes. Just for the roads. What about the province, or the feds? At the provincial level, we’d need a PST increase of approximately 3.5 per cent for our per-capita share of it to equal $600 million. The cold, hard reality is that no matter which order of government pays for it, that money is ultimately coming from us. Getting real about this means facing that this is not a spending problem, nor is it a revenue problem. It’s an insolvency problem: we own way more pavement than we can afford. So then, how do we get on top of this road repair issue? First, when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. If we can’t afford the roads we already have, we shouldn’t add more. Second, we must do everything we can to get more people using fewer roads, in order to maximize the lifespan of our existing investments. Getting there will mean shifting more people into active transportation and transit, planting street trees, slowing traffic wherever people are walking and putting more people and destinations closer together with mixed-use infill. Where we find ourselves in the coming years will depend on whether we double down on the same path we’ve been on, or whether we choose a more productive way forward. The choice is ours this October. *Michel Durand-Wood lives in Elmwood and has been writing about municipal issues since 2018. He blogs at DearWinnipeg.com, and is a contributor to AnatomyOfAPothole.ca, a local campaign to raise awareness about the city’s infrastructure and finance issues leading up to the election.*

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CBC: Oklahoma City's downtown made a major comeback after a long slump. What Winnipeg can learn from it
by Beth McKechnie 27 Sep '22

27 Sep '22

Focus city on pedestrians, not cars Cornett says one of the key lessons he learned as mayor was shaping the city around active transportation. "We went through a period where we recognized that the health of the community was suffering, and from a wellness standpoint, we weren't set up to succeed," he said. City leadership redesigned the entire downtown grid to be more walkable and more pedestrian-friendly, and then started building sidewalks and jogging and biking paths out into the suburban areas. "Over time, we started to realize that the health of the community is really based on the social infrastructure and the physical infrastructure combined," Cornett said. "If you build a city around cars, you're not going to have as healthy a community as you would [otherwise]." Full story: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/oklahoma-city-winnipeg-state-of-the…

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