Walking the talk for rapid transit

Shoes and boots were walking on Saturday where bus tires soon will roll.

About two dozen Winnipeggers learned about the first leg of the city's rapid-transit corridor by walking along the route during the annual Jane's Walk.

Paul Hesse and Thomas Novak, members of the Winnipeg Rapid Transit Coalition, a volunteer citizens group advocating for rapid transit, were the hosts for one of 11 themed walks taking place around Winnipeg Saturday and today. The transit walk began at 10 a.m. at Union Station and was to end about noon at Jubilee Avenue and Pembina Highway.

"We started here (Union Station) because there's coffee here, but also because it's part of the rapid-transit system," Novak said.

"(The rapid-transit route) will start at the University of Winnipeg, where they will make the former Greyhound station into the first rapid-transit station where all the buses will terminate, but after that they go through the Graham Transit Mall to here.

"This will become a major station for rapid transit."

The crowd chuckled when Novak reminded them rapid transit -- which, in Winnipeg, currently means a dedicated route for express buses -- was first talked about in Winnipeg in 1959 as a subway. Then-mayor Steve Juba talked about constructing monorails in the city, before the idea appeared to disappear. But Novak said the idea never died. When the city restricted a portion of Graham Avenue to buses to create the Graham Transit Mall, it was part of the rapid-transit plan.

Heading out on the sidewalk under grey skies and walking south on Main Street, the pair pointed out where a bridge for buses will someday be built -- over the railway tracks south of Union Station -- to meet with the corridor, which then parallels Stradbrook Avenue and Donald Street to the Confusion Corner area.

They also demonstrated where two transit stations will be constructed: one at Harkness, behind the Winnipeg Winter Club, the other spanning Osborne Street, right beside the current rail overpass.

The Harkness station will be open-air, but covered, Hesse said, while the Osborne station will be glass-enclosed with both passengers and buses on view to motorists.

Crossing Osborne and going on a short walk behind a hydro station, the participants saw a massive hole in the ground, the beginning of a 350-metre-long tunnel being constructed underneath the railway tracks to allow the buses to zip underneath.

"The big advantage of taking buses off the street is there are no stop signs or lights," Novak said.

"They'll be able to go 80 kilometres per hour. And when it is completed, you'll be able to go from the University of Manitoba to the downtown without having to transfer."

The seven walks being held today include one through Old St. Vital, starting at the St. Vital Museum at 3 p.m., one in downtown, beginning at 426 Portage Ave., at noon, and one discussing churches in an urban neighbourhood, starting at All Saints Anglican Church at Broadway and Osborne Street at 2 p.m.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca

Who's Jane?

Jane Jacobs was an author and activist who supported local neighbourhood efforts against urban-renewal projects that could destroy them.

Jacobs, born in the United States and a longtime Torontonian, wrote several books, but is best-known for 1961's The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which examined the ways cities work ---- and the ways they fail.

Jacobs was a leading force in killing both the Lower Manhattan Expressway in New York City and the Spadina Expressway in Toronto. And, about a decade ago, she agreed with the Save Eaton's Coalition that lobbied to stop to demolition of the downtown Winnipeg Eaton's building to construct the MTS Centre.

Jacobs died at age 89 in 2006.

why a walk?

"No one can find what will work for our cities by looking at... suburban garden cities, manipulating scale models or inventing dream cities. You've got to get out and walk."

-- Jane Jacobs in Downtown is for People, 1957

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 2, 2010 A6