Time to get on the bus, Mr. Katz

After years of carefully reaching nowhere, rapid transit in Winnipeg remains uncertain: BRT, LRT or some 21st century trolley car? Instead of moving forward, Mayor Katz has funded yet another study to review the options.

It may be good election-year posturing to insist that Winnipeg should have big-city, rapid transit. The reality is that Winnipeg does not need LRT to serve its transit demand even in the busiest Pembina Corridor. Moreover, the high costs of an LRT in south Winnipeg will delay rapid transit service extension to riders in other parts of the city until who knows when.

Credible studies show that BRT has lower costs than LRT for ridership up to 6,000 passengers each way. The current peak bus traffic on the Pembina Corridor is below 1,500 passengers each way. Even with significant promotion and investment around the stations to generate traffic, the Pembina Corridor is unlikely to exceed 6,000 riders in peak hours for decades to come.

LRT versus BRT is by no means an either-or decision. A BRT can be designed for easy conversion to LRT when the ridership numbers warrant. Some benefits of not starting with an LRT system in Winnipeg are obvious. LRT systems have high capital costs for track, signalling, maintenance facilities and rolling stock.

This makes LRT very expensive to operate, per passenger, until the demand for the service increases substantially. A busway is much less expensive to build and capacity can be added in conjunction with the growth in demand. Consequently, at low volumes of ridership, as we have now, BRT is the place to start.

LRT is promoted as more comfortable to ride than buses, but BRT is superior in terms of service frequency and system connectivity. A BRT service can be more frequent than LRT because its units are small and can be dispatched often to match the available demand. A 60-seat bus can be added to the fleet for $400,000, while an LRT train set, with 180 to 200 seats, costs about $4 million.

Electric streetcars are somewhere in between buses and LRT, with 100 to 150 passenger seats and a $1.8 million cost. The cost of acquiring vehicles has a direct impact on the frequency of service.

The dispatch of LRT depends on the number of trains and the track configuration. A single track has a lower frequency of service because the cars have to wait in the station for oncoming trains to pass. It is much less expensive to add capacity to a busway to meet surge demand, such as a sports event at the stadium.

For special events, regular buses can be pulled in from other routes on a temporary basis. An LRT system would need to have this idle capacity in storage.

Mayor Katz may be right that an LRT or modern streetcar system would make Winnipeg appear more progressive to visitors, but it is the people who live here who are going to use the service and pay for it.

Unless the streets are rebuilt to accommodate rails, LRT passengers would have to transfer. Whenever transfers are required, ridership drops, especially in "winter cities" like Winnipeg.

Local buses can use busways to extend their routes, say, to bring university students directly from the Maples to the University of Manitoba. Dedicated busways enhance the efficiency and flexibility of the entire bus fleet.

A money-losing LRT could siphon resources from the transit budget and reduce existing bus service to other parts of the city.

Perhaps if the City of Winnipeg had built a busway in the Pembina Corridor in the 1970s when it was first proposed, rapid transit passenger numbers would be large enough today to warrant an LRT system. This did not happen because of shortsighted urban planning by previous city administrations.

After 37 years of planning a Southwest Transit Corridor, all we have is a short BRT stub under construction from Jubilee Avenue to the downtown. We should be working on the creation of a citywide rapid transit system.

For the full costs of an LRT from downtown to the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg could have BRT lines connecting the campuses, the airport, Transcona and the North End to the city centre. Yes, transit passengers have to trade off some comfort for better frequency and connectivity, but only people who never ride rapid transit would choose a short LRT line over a metropolitan BRT network.

It is time for Mayor Katz to get on the bus with the travelling public.

Barry Prentice is a professor of supply chain management at the University of Manitoba.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 5, 2010 A11