Vote on studying Portage & Main reopening postponed until fall

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This article was published 08/05/2023 (858 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The City of Winnipeg won’t explore the impact of opening a street-level pedestrian crossing at Portage Avenue and Main Street just yet.

On Monday, council’s public works committee postponed a vote until October on ordering city staff to study the option.

Coun. Janice Lukes, the committee’s chairwoman, said she believes council should wait until public consultation is completed on a consultant’s recently released options to revamp the intersection, which propose everything from basic pavement enhancements to a sixth-floor-level circular walkway.

“Right now, we’ve got this public consultation going on. We don’t want to cloud the waters,” said Lukes.

While the consultant’s ideas don’t include an option to reopen Winnipeg’s most famous intersection to surface-level pedestrian traffic, Lukes said she expects many people who support that change will share their views.

Lukes said she expects foot traffic will one day be allowed at street level and she is personally open to the idea.

Coun. Sherri Rollins, who raised the motion to study that option now, noted a street-level crossing is notably absent from the “fanciful” designs the city is seeking public feedback on.

“We don’t have the basics of costs and impacts for the option of opening up the intersection and that seems to me, through the course of time, to be a big omission that I’d like you to fix today,” Rollins told the public works committee.

She suggested the new study should offer details on construction requirements, accessibility improvements, navigation, traffic impact, cost and other aspects of street-level access.

Rollins, whose ward stretches close to Portage and Main but doesn’t include the intersection, said downtown residents deserve to have easy access to cross the street near their homes, as many folks in other parts of the city do.

joyanne.pursaga@freepress.mb.ca