Prometheus, Sisyphus... and Transit Tom

At the dawn of a new year, Winnipeggers can be forgiven if they feel like Bill Murray in bed on Groundhog Day, Prometheus bound to his rock or Sisyphus at the bottom of his hated hill.

All three of these mythic characters were doomed to endure the same day over and over again as they completed despised tasks.

For Murray's obnoxious TV weatherman Phil Connors, it was covering Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney, Penn. For the Greek demigod Prometheus, it was writhing in agony as eagles devoured a newly generated liver. For the Hellenic trickster-king Sisyphus, it was rolling a heavy boulder up a slope, only to watch it slide to the bottom.

All three of these characters were punished for acts of selfishness, hubris and arrogance. Winnipeggers have committed no such heinous sins.

Nonetheless, we begin every year with the torturous knowledge our municipal leaders may never stop screwing up the development of a rapid-transit system first envisioned in the 1950s but only now becoming a semblance of a reality.

On April 8, first phase of Southwest Rapid Transit Corridor is finally slated to open. The 3.6-kilometre busway, built over the past three years at a cost of $138 million, will allow buses travelling between downtown and Fort Garry to bypass congestion in Osborne Village and at Confusion Corner.

Eighteen separate bus routes will utilize all or part of the dedicated busway, which may eventually be upgraded into a light-rail transit corridor. The final piece of the job, the construction of Osborne Station, is well underway.

Normally, the completion of an expensive piece of public infrastructure would be accompanied by some sense of accomplishment. But the fact is, the year is 2012 and Winnipeg now has a piddly 3.6 kilometres of rapid-transit anything to its name.

Back in the 1950s, we dreamed of a rapid-transit system. But we spent the next five decades expanding roads in the apparent absence of any transit planning.

Finally, about a decade ago, former mayor Glen Murray secured federal funding for a busway that was not fully costed out and soon cancelled by his successor, Sam Katz.

The new mayor, expressing a preference for light rail, struck a rapid-transit task force that concluded the city should stick to conventional bus-transit improvements in the short term. Then in 2008, the availability of federal money led to the construction on the first phase of the Southwest Rapid Transit Corridor as a busway.

Plans for the second phase soon wound up in limbo at the hands of a city-provincial infrastructure-funding dispute as well as former chief administrative officer Glen Laubenstein's ill-fated investigation of both monorail technology and an allegedly cheap form of light-rail transit.

In the midst all this dilly-dallying, the city commissioned studies that determined there were no financial or technical obstacles in the way of building the corridor as a busway at first and then upgrading to light rail at a later date.

But senior city officials cherry-picked facts from the consultants' findings to declare light rail the end all and be all -- a piece of political interventionism Katz finally rectified last fall, when Winnipeg's Transportation Master Plan made it quite clear light rail will not be cheap at all.

Now, Katz and Premier Greg Selinger may very well be able to reach a deal to build the second phase of the southwest corridor. While the two leaders still need to agree how to divy up the cost, there is now a council commitment to attempt to complete the second phase by 2016.

Unfortunately, the city still has the potential to screw up the entire plan, as there remains two potential routes for the second phase of the corridor. One makes sense, while the other may very well be insane.

The first option is a fairly straightforward line that would run alongside Pembina Highway, from Jubilee Avenue to Bison Drive. This route has the benefit of serving the largest number of existing apartments residents and businesses in Fort Garry.

The downside is a relatively high cost for land acquisition. As well, the potential for new developments -- that is, apartment towers capable of generating new property-tax revenue -- is relatively low alongside Pembina Highway.

As a result, current city chief administrative officer Phil Sheegl has spent three years pushing a second option: an L-shaped detour around the Parker, Beaumont and Maybank neighbourhoods. Theoretically, the potential for new development is greater on this L-shaped detour, which would utilize a mostly vacant Manitoba Hydro corridor.

The problem is, this route would place a transit corridor as much as a kilometre away from Pembina Highway. If the city goes with this option, it would be placing the potential for generating future revenue ahead of meeting the real-world transportation needs of existing Fort Garry residents and businesses.

This is a risky idea, when you consider the city and province have already borrowed $90 million to pay for the first phase of the southwest corridor, under the expectation they'll recoup the cash from future developments along this line. So far, no new tax dollars have flowed from the plan.

Leading rapid-transit experts believe it's even riskier to run a line through an undeveloped area. But the L-shaped detour is nonetheless pencilled into the Transportation Master Plan.

Senior city officials grumble Laubenstein's monorail investigation and the false promise of cheaper light rail set back rapid-transit development in this city 18 months.

His successor Sheegl would be well advised to heed the lessons of the recent past and start listening to what the long-suffering administrators at Winnipeg Transit have to say about the southwest corridor.

That is, it would be prudent to bite the financial bullet and build the second phase of the busway in a location that does not isolate existing businesses and residents alongside Pembina Highway.

Chasing developmental dreams is not Winnipeg Transit's mandate. That may be Sheegl's modus operandi, in his former life as a property developer, but these are taxpayer dollars at stake -- not private capital.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 8, 2012 A8