https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/editorials/2025/12/11/the-traffic-disaster-that-failed-to-arrive
FOR pedestrians and motorists who have traversed Winnipeg’s most iconic intersection during the past six months, a quick upward glance would
have confirmed what proponents of reopening the windy interchange to foot traffic have predicted all along: The sky has not fallen at Portage and Main. After years — perhaps decades — of doomsaying by those opposed to reintroducing aboveground pedestrian activity
to the intersection, data collected since the June 27 reopening show the controversial change has actually had negligible impact on vehicular traffic flow.
Adherents to the keep-it-closed school of thought had long argued that allowing foot traffic across Portage and Main would create varying degrees of gridlock-induced chaos and regrettable vehicle/pedestrian
carnage. Instead, the transition back to a pedestrian-accessible intersection has been seamless and without any incidents of note.
The study, undertaken by the City of Winnipeg, involved data collected from GPS-enabled vehicles travelling on four specified routes leading in and out of the Portage and Main interchange during peak traffic
times in November. That information was then compared to data collected in November 2024, before pedestrian traffic was reintroduced.
Morning travel on two of the routes was unchanged, while traffic on the other two experienced a delay of less than one minute. Afternoon travel time on three of the routes increased by less than two minutes,
while the fourth actually experienced a one-minute decrease.
The analysis did not account for nearby construction or other factors that might have affected traffic flow during the data-collection periods. Meanwhile, the analysis also showed that an average of 3,750
pedestrians have crossed Portage and Main daily since Sept. 1.
Mayor Scott Gillingham summed it up this way: “Everybody heard the doomsday predictions about gridlock and accidents that would happen, and the data proves that those predictions were wrong. Ultimately,
I don’t have a good answer as to why this was debated for so long.”
He doesn’t have a good answer because there isn’t — and wasn’t — one. The recent wrangling over Portage and Main dates back more than a decade, to when then-mayoral candidate Brian Bowman made reopening
the intersection one of his key campaign promises. After encountering resistance to his pledge, Bowman relented and said he would abide by the result of a plebiscite on the issue — which in 2018 ultimately showed a majority of Winnipeggers opposed reopening
Portage and Main to pedestrians.
A breakdown of that vote, however, showed the strongest opposition came from outlying suburban areas of the city, meaning most of the people who voted on the “no” side had likely never actually travelled
through the intersection in question.
But the politicization of the Portage and Main question by a few naysaying councillors kept the intersection closed, and it likely would have remained inaccessible to
pedestrians had not the looming failure of the waterproof membrane protecting the underground concourse — the repair of which would have cost almost $60 million and created four to five years of traffic disruption — forced city council to reconsider the issue
as a practical matter, rather than a political one.