The endless flip-flopping transit saga has played out before us all, year after year - on the pages of local newspapers, by hands raised (or not raised) at city council meetings and in the bitter words of impatient bus stop acquaintances.

It has unquestionably become a profound aspect of Winnipeg’s collective identity.

And while the long-awaited transit revolution may not have arrived in the heart of the continent just yet, it’s certainly been a year of relatively substantial progress for Winnipeg’s municipal transportation systems.

Dr. Jino Distasio, director of the University of Winnipeg’s Institute for Urban Studies, expressed cautious optimism about the city’s recent transit developments.

“We have finally moved - inched - ourselves forward into starting a rapid transit network,” he said. “We do not have a rapid transit system as of today. We have the first phase of the first leg of a rapid transit line.”

Winnipeg Transit, however, has taken a significantly less restrained tone in its recent public relations blitz.

Its apparent brand overhaul has included the plastering of a new “RT” logo and zippy advertising slogan (“Your city in fast-forward”) on many of the service’s buses and stops.

Paul Hesse, co-founder and member of the Winnipeg Rapid Transit Coalition, commented on the need for a more serious commitment to extending the project.

“We all know about potholes, we all know about bad sidewalks,” he said. “But rapid
transit and moving Winnipeg forward as a city - and helping us catch up to other cities - is important too.”

Catch up to other cities indeed.

Over the past three decades, Ottawa (with a population of 1.2 million) has successfully implemented a BRT transitway network, at the cost of about $440 million. The network weaves through the city’s entire metropolitan area in conjunction with its single O-Train line - a system that has been hailed as one of the best of its kind the world over.

“There really isn’t a Canadian city that we can compare ourselves to that makes Winnipeg rapid transit look good,” Hesse said, citing Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Halifax, Quebec City and Regina as other examples of centres that have successfully prioritized rapid transit in recent years.

Development is still development, though, and Winnipeggers do have some concrete reasons to feel better about their public transportation system starting this spring.

The $138 million first phase of the southwest rapid transit corridor - a 3.6 kilometre stretch of dedicated busway connecting the Pembina-Jubilee overpass, Confusion Corner and Queen Elizabeth Way near The Forks - is set to open April 8.

In the meantime, Winnipeggers are more than welcome to admire the impressive-looking terminal looming above the Osborne underpass, or its still cool-looking, but comparatively less impressive little siblings, Harkness and Fort Rouge stations.

Aside from the fact that riders will soon be enjoying the brief sensation of breezing along the mid-town shortcut at an unimpeded 80 km/h - at one point through a tunnel! - cyclists will also be able to take advantage of new “bike lockers” installed at the three aforementioned transit terminals.

These free-to-use bicycle storage compartments - which, according to Transit, can be secured with regular bicycle locks - promise to compliment the nearly completed “active transportation pathway” running alongside the corridor’s first phase quite nicely.

However, for every transit development, there are about 10 transit “developments.”

Over the past year, Winnipeggers have witnessed controversies related to the planning and funding of the proposed southwest transitway’s second phase (unresolved) a long-view, city-released Transportation Master Plan (generally accused of being too vague and speculative to be useful) and a council-approved fare hike proposal (shot down in a public backlash).

Winnipeg’s proven tendency to continually debate rapid transit-related decisions, seemingly without ever committing to action, is one that puzzles Distasio.

“There has been money for rapid transit since the ‘70s,” he said. “It has been talked about, and talked about, and talked about, and we just have not been able to push that rock over the hill.”

Distasio also expressed frustration over the latest stalemate in Winnipeg’s rapid transit planning battle: the question of how to proceed with routing the southwest corridor’s second phase, which, eventually, will connect the University of Manitoba to the newly built transitway.

“We’ve yet again decided to stall and use the same old tired debates,” said Distasio, who argues that going forward with the decadesold plan to build along CN’s underused Letellier Line, which runs parallel to Pembina Highway, is the obvious next step for the city.

“We do not need to think about this anymore.”

Funding for this second phase - projected at around $275 million for BRT or around $700 million for LRT - also remains woefully uncertain, as city, provincial and federal governments continue to play tug-of-war over costs.

“The answer is for the province to allow the city to be a grown-up level of government,” said Hesse, suggesting that revenue for transit could be generated via a gas tax dedicated to infrastructure funding, for example.

While it’s difficult to speculate as to when Winnipeg officials will overcome their transit indecisiveness (the ancient BRT versus LRT debate, by the way, remains to be officially settled, with the city’s transportation plan suggesting that both are technically still possibilities), most rapid transit advocates agree that the city as a whole will benefit in a variety of indirect ways when the day finally comes.

Hesse pointed out the Fort Rouge Yards, a proposed housing complex slated for construction along the Lord Roberts community segment of the corridor, is but one manifestation of rapid transit’s potential as a catalyst for
overall urban development.

“Transit is great for urban living and people who are living in urban environments want good transit,” he added. “These things all reinforce each other.”

Published in Volume 66, Number 26 of The Uniter (April 5, 2012)