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ROUTE-AND-BRANCH TRANSIT OVERHAUL MAPS CITY’S DEVOLUTION

By: Rebecca Chambershttps://www.winnipegfreepress.com/biographies/rebecca-chambers

https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/2025/06/27/route-and-branch-transit-...

10 Wolseley. 11 Portage. 12 William. 14 Ellice. 15 Mountain. 16 Osborne. 17 MacGregor. 18 Corydon. 19 Notre Dame. 20 Academy…

Until this week, I hadn’t realized I could recite just about the full set of Winnipeg Transit routes and numbers by memory.

Alas, this newly discovered party trick is destined to go unused as we bury these routes with the streetcar tracks they were originally designed to follow, the veins through a city that are remnants of a time when a much more closely-packed citizenry all needed the same things, and all of which were available in the heart of the city.

I have mixed feelings about this evolution.

Obviously, changes are needed to transit. Declining ridership and rising safety issues are clear indicators it’s not fulfilling its role of getting us where we need to go. But the days of jumping on the bus for all of our needs are behind us. Even if we wanted to go shopping downtown, we largely couldn’t, as there’s nowhere left to shop.

A short walk down Portage or Graham will yield empty shop front after empty shop front. The mammoth department stores of two generations ago are gone, and many of the destinations that would have drawn us are now parking lots haunted by the ghosts of Winnipeggers past and the cars of Winnipeg present.

I’m worried our transit overhaul reflects our devolution, instead of our evolution, as a city. It seems to be a reflection and acceptance of our problematic sprawl. With nothing to bump into on the outside margins of our town, we have nothing stopping us from expanding ever outward, trenching new sewer lines and paving new roads while the older ones rot and crumble, building new houses while addresses in older neighbourhoods are left as burnt skeletons or piles of rubble for months on end.

Transit has been slow to extend service into newer areas, and inhabitants have been slow to adopt transit as a way to get around.

While in some ways this redesign feels like an admission of defeat, a commitment to a future of further sprawl, it does give hope that somewhere in Winnipeg, someone involved in planning is acknowledging we cannot go on just waiting for our boomtown days to come back while more and more of our citizenry are making homes along river banks.

In a rare example of cross-sector coordination, there are a few examples of this novel forward-thinking mindset.

The city is looking at adding housing along the new “spine” routes, even incorporating residential units into transit infrastructure.

The lofty plans for Graham Avenue — a pedestrian mall and shopping district — promise to bring people downtown to socialize, shop and dine. The new routes promise quicker commutes, better coverage and short waits for transfers — all good reasons to pull someone onto the bus who hasn’t considered it in some time.

All in all, it’s a noble effort to make a rare and radical change to Winnipeg’s public services in an effort to actually serve the needs of the citizenry.

But it’s not going to work. These noble “pull” reasons to take the bus will fail if there aren’t balanced and co-ordinated “push” incentives to get people out of their cars.

We cannot simply emphasize the perks of taking the bus without also making driving more unattractive, and we are a woefully car-committed city.

The fact we’re still entertaining the thought of widening Kenaston Boulevard is clear communication from the city itself that we don’t believe in public transit to move people. No, we must make way for more cars instead. It’s cars that move people in Winnipeg. And it’s cars that occupy the ever-expanding network of surface parking lots in our downtown: cheap, plentiful spaces have made driving to work easy and comfortable. Why would anyone take the bus where there is very little advantage?

Transit is not just failing because the product itself isn’t working well. It’s failing because our city has planned for it to fail. There is no outcome for transit, in the current design of this city, that will strengthen its utility and usage, because we haven’t considered factors beyond the service itself.

It’s clear the reliability and safety of transit must be improved, and some of that will be addressed by the changes that go into effect tomorrow, but until the infrastructure surrounding car use makes it preferable, I can’t imagine I’ll be memorizing many new route numbers.

rebecca.chambers@freepress.mb.camailto:rebecca.chambers@freepress.mb.ca