Light rail transit out of Winnipeg’s reach: city official

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This article was published 21/03/2023 (940 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Light rail transit would cost far more than the city’s current plan to expand bus rapid transit and wouldn’t be the most convenient option until ridership grows enough to require it, city officials say.

In a verbal report Tuesday, the project manager for the Winnipeg Transit Master Plan said it could cost about $2 billion to $5 billion to create a 20-kilometre light rail transit route. The rough cost estimate is based on what other cities have spent for such services.

“The total cost for the citywide (bus rapid transit) infrastructure would be less than the cost of a single LRT line,” Kevin Sturgeon told the Riel community committee on Tuesday.

Sturgeon said any fully separated transitway infrastructure will be designed with enough space to convert to light rail. Curbs, bridges and tunnels would be able to accommodate trains at a later date. Other infrastructure would need to be rebuilt, if council funds the change.

He said the decision on whether to add LRT should be based on ridership.

“The main driver for conversion to light rail should be demand and capacity. When there are simply too many people to fit on buses… then we really need trains,” said Sturgeon.

The city’s current ridership projections predict increasingly frequent bus service will be needed to meet demand by 2050, but the demand still won’t be high enough to require rail service, he said.

Sturgeon cautioned the projections will be refined as the city gradually implements its Winnipeg Transit Master Plan.

Meanwhile, he said research indicates adding LRT alone doesn’t cause an increase in public transit ridership.

The master plan calls for design work to start in 2025 on the St. Mary’s Road section of rapid transit, from Tache Avenue to and across the Norwood Bridge.

“It makes sense to launch rapid transit service on St. Mary’s Road as soon as we can and then work on the infrastructure we need to support that service in whatever way we can afford over the next several years, until we need a train,” said Sturgeon.

Council should also consider that it could be easier to meet the initial growth in demand with more frequent buses than light rail vehicles that seat many more people, said Bjorn Radstrom, Winnipeg Transit’s manager of service development, in an interview.

“You want to make sure that you’re actually going to have the demand that you can run it frequently enough that it’ll be convenient. And if you introduce light rail too soon, you’re either wasting money on excess capacity or you’re having service that’s not very frequent,” said Radstrom.

The presentation came in response to Coun. Brian Mayes’ motion to have city staff study how buses or light rail would affect service on the future Main Street to St. Mary’s rapid transit line.

Mayes doesn’t expect there’s enough council interest to pursue a light rail option now.

“It is a massive cost and I don’t think there is the political will to do it here this term… But I do think it should still be part of our thinking about where… we want to go with mass transit over the next 20 years,” he said.

The councillor said he expects the idea will gain traction as Winnipeg’s population grows and bus rapid transit becomes the more dated option.

“Let’s not build infrastructure that’s outdated the day it opens. If we’re building BRT lines in 2040, maybe we can just say ‘OK, we missed that phase… let’s just go straight to LRT,” he said.

Council has debated light rail transit since at least the 1970s and eventually settled on bus rapid transit. The city completed the $556-million southwest rapid transitway corridor in 2020.

In 2021, city council approved a 25-year master plan, which aims to create a network of six bus rapid transit corridors, redraw nearly all bus routes and add electric buses. At the time, that was expected to cost up to $1.5 billion.

joyanne.pursaga@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @joyanne_pursaga