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Rapid transit pitch at centre of Our Winnipeg plan

By: Mary Agnes Welch

Posted: 05/26/2010 11:31 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

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Visit the new website, Speak Up Winnipeg

or download the document Our Winnipeg

WINNIPEG — City hall unveiled its blueprint for Winnipeg this morning, calling for more complete communities, better transportation networks and denser development instead of sprawl.

It’s heavy on fuzzy policy goals and light on practical how-tos. But, it’s bigger and more detailed than past plans, covering green ideas for water and waste, better bike trails, more parks, better public safety and more mixed-use neighbourhoods.

The plan, called Our Winnipeg, outlines what pockets of infill ought to be next for development, including the Fort Rouge Yards, the Public Markets in St. Boniface and Kapyong Barracks. And it details what areas on the city’s outskirts — south Charleswood, the city’s far north in Old Kildonan — ought to be next to get new suburbs.

And, it lays out what roads the city should build in the coming decade, largely to improve the inner-ring road. That includes expanding Chief Peguis Trail to Route 90 and to the east Perimeter and improving several truck routes around the airport to bolster Centreport Canada’s industrial area. The report notes, though, that is more than $2 billion in unfunded bridge, road and transit projects.

And, the plan wades into the rapid transit debate that has plagued city hall for a decade, suggesting an LRT or a BRT line ought to be built from the downtown to the University of Manitoba, to Transcona and to the airport. Other feeder legs using bus rapid transit will stretch into south St. Boniface and North Kildonan.

The plan is meant to guide the city over the next 25 years as it grows by a projected 180,000 people. It’s the culmination of a yearlong, $3.2-million process of public consultation – called SpeakUp Winnipeg – and research to overhaul the previous Plan Winnipeg.

The package of five documents — the overall plan, plus four specific strategies for transportation, environmental sustainability, water and waste and urban communities — will go to council for first reading before the summer break. Then, there will be formal public hearings and the final plan must get the provincial government’s approval before it’s official.

Before that, the city will hold six public meetings on the plan, starting tomorrow evening at Red River College’s downtown campus.

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