Transit set for transformative route overhaul just over a year from now

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/06/2024 (493 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If you hop on a Winnipeg Transit bus a little more than a year from now, you’d better double-check to see where it is going.

That’s because June 29, 2025 is the date the service has circled for the most dramatic transformation since it began 140 years ago — changing almost every route in the city.

“This is exciting because this will improve transit service,” public works committee chairwoman Coun. Janice Lukes said Tuesday.

“Virtually every busy route in the city will be changing next June. Never in the history of transit has there been such a major change.”

All told, there will be 142 changes to bus routes throughout the city.

Senior transit planner Kevin Sturgeon said the service is switching, subject to city council’s final approval, to what’s known as “a spine-feeder model.”

Instead of every bus in the city ending up downtown at some point, there will be two different bus route classes — primary and feeder networks.

The primary — major — network will include the rapid-transit line to the University of Manitoba and other routes including Portage Avenue, McPhillips Street and Nairn Avenue.

Feeder-route buses will deliver riders to main routes, provide service in smaller areas and take people to community amenities.

“We really did take the approach of starting it from scratch,” Sturgeon said Tuesday.

“Today’s (routes) are good if you want to go downtown, and at peak time, but there is more of a challenge to go elsewhere… now the change people will see is the level of flexibility and being able to get anywhere they want to go.”

Maps of Winnipeg’s proposed new transit routes

The proposed changes, which have been in the works since 2018, go before next week’s public works committee, followed by executive policy committee and then city council.

The proposal also includes a recommendation to spend $1.05 million to add traffic signals and roadway improvements at St. Mary’s Road and Carriere Avenue, Main Street and Sutherland Avenue and Sutherland Avenue and Higgins Avenue.

Sturgeon said the only routes that won’t change are a few in the southwest area of the city because, with the rapid-transit corridor to the University of Manitoba and Pembina Highway, they already are on a spine-feeder system.

He said other changes would see only city council having the power to delete or change primary transit network routes. The public works committee would continue to amend feeder routes.

“We want them to be considered a permanent fixture of Winnipeg,” Sturgeon said. “So, if people want to choose where to live or to open a business (near a primary transit network route), you want that to be permanent.”

Other changes include ending the route through River Heights on Grosvenor Avenue, putting more buses on nearby Academy Road and Corydon Avenues and removing buses from most of what has been the downtown Graham Avenue transit mall for a few decades.

Winnipeg Free Press | Newsletter

Sunday Passages

Sundays

Kevin Rollason’s Sunday newsletter honouring and remembering lives well-lived in Manitoba.

Sign up for Sunday Passages

Sign Up

I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

“On weekends now, you can take a Corydon bus to the zoo, but not on weekdays,” Sturgeon said. “So we have an inconsistent service. There are buses that go past (the zoo), but these could be three different routes. Now we will have a bus which ends at the zoo.”

He said the buses that currently travel north-south across the Osborne and Midtown Bridges will continue to go north-south with one major change.

“Right now, every bus which goes through downtown, even the ones north-south, go in an east to west direction through Portage or Graham, at some point. You don’t want to spend 10 to 15 minutes going through congestion downtown so, in future, north-south buses will keep going north-south.”

Winnipeggers will see another change when they board a bus on Portage Avenue downtown.

“If you’re on Portage waiting for a bus, out of 50 people, two or three people will get on the bus and the same for the next one,” Sturgeon said.

“In future, just about everyone gets on. Every bus will be the right bus instead of a bunch of wrong ones before the right one.

“So people get moving faster.”

— with files from Joyanne Pursaga

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca

Kevin Rollason
Reporter

Kevin Rollason is a general assignment reporter at the Free Press. He graduated from Western University with a Masters of Journalism in 1985 and worked at the Winnipeg Sun until 1988, when he joined the Free Press. He has served as the Free Press’s city hall and law courts reporter and has won several awards, including a National Newspaper Award. Read more about Kevin.

Every piece of reporting Kevin produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.