Projects need a road map — and a timeline

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/10/2024 (394 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The September 1948 issue of Popular Mechanics had odd cover art. It showed a Second World War-style U.S. army truck, stuck in the mud, but being extricated by rockets attached to its sides and bumpers.

I collect these kinds of books and magazines, often finding them discarded at rummage sales, because I am fascinated by what past generations thought the future would be like.

These “jet assisted take-off” rockets (JATO for short) offered a snazzy solution to the muddy dilemma that many Allied soldiers had faced while slogging through the battlefields of Europe. It was a high tech (or at least new tech) solution for a low-tech, back-breaking, and persistent problem.

Perhaps with the advantage of hindsight, I understand this cover art and its accompanying story somewhat differently than that 1948 reader. The artist (and the author) are predicting where new technology will take us, based on where we are now. But instead they should have been rethinking where we could go with these new tools, working with new technologies that opened up new possibilities, not doing more of the same old thing.

Developing a jet-powered truck did have many practical advantages, however. We understand the problem (getting stuck in the mud); we understand both the system within which we are working (transporting things over bad roads) and the technology involved (trucks, with both diesel and gasoline engines). The JATO rockets therefore become cool new icing on a familiar cake.

Somehow, no one ever asks whether it is a good idea to make (or eat) that cake in the first place, or whether that new kind of icing is really worth the effort.

All of this leads to my response to the Plan 20-50 for the Winnipeg Metropolitan Region (WMR), which is now moving through the processes involved in its potential implementation. Predictably, it is accumulating opposition from individuals (and municipalities) that prefer to just stay stuck in their own local mud, blaming either the truck driver or the poor condition of provincial roads, or both, but not offering any alternatives.

I think the WMR idea has great potential value. Anyone who doesn’t think in terms of watershed problems in Manitoba has not been paying attention. (Perhaps a paddle down the Floodway in springtime might give them a few ideas about the importance of working together on such regional issues!)

Yet anyone who thinks their municipality hoes its own row, independent of everyone else, is also unplugged from the social, ecological and economic realities of life in the 21st century.

So, the idea of Winnipeg Metropolitan Region is long overdue. But what it means, and what a plan for its future might be, are fish of a different colour.

Unfortunately, as it is set out right now, I cannot support Plan 20-50.

It is awash with good intentions, and reflects a sincere desire to make life better for all Manitobans. But, while I have no use for public events that stoke municipal paranoia or spawn conspiracy theories, it also does not fit either the circumstances or the timelines required to work toward a sustainable future.

My objections begin with the name. First of all, a plan needs details and a timeline, if it is to be implemented. Otherwise, it is merely aspirational — it wants good things to happen, but is not sure how to get there from here. Motherhood and apple pie, but not a plan.

Second, is the date. In a world facing multiple planetary crises, the idea that anyone can predict 25 years ahead and create such a plan makes those JATO-powered trucks look brilliant.

The current plan involves predictions based on where we are now, offered by people who will either be gone by 2050, or who will be wondering about the lunch menu in their personal care homes.

We do need a collective regional vision for the future, but it must be dynamic in its goals, practical and immediate in the steps we take right now, and generate new possibilities for young people. For example, started in 1962 and opened in 1968, Duff Roblin’s floodway (“Duff’s Ditch”) was the second largest earth-moving project ever, behind the Panama Canal. He did not predict what Winnipeg would look like 60 years later, but he made it possible.

So, we debate the Arlington Bridge and ponder Kenaston when we should be moving the railyards outside the city, creating an electric light rail system (streetcars and trains) matched with electric buses. It would be our version of “Duff’s Ditch,” making more of the Winnipeg Metropolitan Region accessible (and affordable) to younger generations that can’t — or won’t — buy a large house in the suburbs and commute two hours a day.

It would transform everything, and we could do it inside five years. Call it Plan 20-30 and put shovels in the ground by spring.

Otherwise, I don’t think any new-fangled rockets, whatever their promotion, will be able to get our trucks out of that Manitoba gumbo.

Peter Denton writes from his home in a rural part of the Winnipeg Metropolitan Region.