Winnipeg Transit redesign leaves the North End behind

Opinion

I have fond memories of my first bus pass. The sense of freedom was unparalleled, and I’m sure my mother appreciated not having to drive me to work anymore.

Here in Winnipeg, we pride ourselves on raising hardy kids. It’s the kind of grit you need to survive. But even the hardiest among us shouldn’t have to walk six blocks to a bus stop in the pitch dark while the wind cuts through like a knife.

If the people who designed the new Winnipeg Transit system had ever waited for a bus at Redwood and Main in January, they might have thought twice.

The new Primary Transit Network has been framed as an efficiency upgrade. For those of us living in the North End, it feels like something else entirely, something more akin to abandonment.

Transit service has been cut or reduced in many of the areas where it is most needed. The 17, 38, and 71 routes, among others, were either eliminated or significantly rerouted.

Dozens of stops were removed from Main Street alone, with the FX2 and FX3 replacing frequent local service with limited-stop express buses that often bypass residential pockets entirely.

Transfers are now unavoidable. For those with options, this might be inconvenient. For many of us, it’s disruptive. For some, it’s disabling.

In some North End neighbourhoods, over 30 per cent of households don’t own a vehicle. Walking long distances to transfer points, especially in winter, isn’t just difficult, it can be dangerous.

The city removed approximately 1,700 bus stops during the redesign, and while officials have not released a public breakdown by neighbourhood, riders in the North End have reported a disproportionate loss of coverage.

Main Street alone lost numerous stops, and key transfer points like Redwood and Main were eliminated without alternatives nearby. Riders have noted having to walk multiple blocks further, often in areas without sidewalks or shelters.

Meanwhile, the new network prioritizes high-frequency routes along major corridors, many of which run through the south and southwest.

The Blue Line, Winnipeg’s flagship rapid transit spine, cuts through Fort Garry and south Pembina, areas with stronger economic growth and higher rates of car ownership. The network now extends all the way to St. Norbert.

The expansion of service into new suburban areas raises a serious and uncomfortable question: how many stops were eliminated in the inner city and North End to make that possible?

What did we sacrifice to serve sprawl?

City officials point out that the network redesign was service-hour neutral, meaning the total hours of service citywide remain roughly the same.

But equity isn’t measured in aggregate hours. It’s not about giving everyone the same thing. It’s about giving people what they need.

Equality would give every neighbourhood a bus. Equity recognizes that some neighbourhoods need more buses because they have fewer cars, fewer alternatives, and more people depending on public transit to survive.

Winnipeg Transit’s weekday ridership reached an average of 225,400 in early 2025, and the system recorded 47.8 million rides in 2024, nearly back to pre-pandemic levels. But that “recovery” hides real disparity.

While Rapid Transit routes in the south grow and thrive, riders in the North End are watching their service evaporate. And when ridership drops in these communities, as it inevitably does when stops vanish and routes are broken, they’ll be blamed for it.

We also need to talk about the role of political leadership in all this. Mayor Scott Gillingham, during his time as chair of the finance committee under then-mayor Brian Bowman, supported multi-year budgets that effectively froze or reduced transit funding when adjusted for inflation. These budget decisions constrained Winnipeg Transit’s ability to hire operators, replace aging buses, or expand service.

Fast forward a few years, and Gillingham now expresses concern over declining ridership and system gaps, as if he hadn’t played a central role in underfunding the system in the first place. You can’t gut a service and then act surprised when it fails to meet public need.

I keep coming back to the question, why did our city councillors allow this to move forward? Especially those representing wards like Point Douglas, Mynarski, and Elmwood-East Kildonan. Did they not see what this would do to their constituents?

The Winnipeg Transit Master Plan was approved in 2021, and revised in early 2025 after feedback. Yet many residents say they were never informed or consulted meaningfully.

Public meetings were held, but largely online, and mostly attended by more affluent users. Those most affected had the least opportunity to shape the outcome.

There is currently no publicly available data showing how stop removals were distributed across neighbourhoods. If the city is confident this plan serves all of Winnipeg fairly, they should release stop-level data and let the public see for themselves.

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Until then, it falls to community members and advocates to track what was lost. A simple overlay of the old and new network maps, if allowed through GIS data, would quickly reveal where access was cut, and ultimately, who paid the price.

This isn’t about nostalgia for an older system. It’s about whether a public service still serves the public. The Transit Master Plan talks about building a “resilient and equitable” system.

But in execution, the city has privileged efficiency over access, and growth corridors over existing communities. If equity was ever on the table, it didn’t survive implementation.

Transit can be modern. It can be fast and efficient. But if it isn’t fair, it isn’t working. And right now, it’s not working for the North End.

MJ Jonasson is a Winnipeg-based thinker and advocate for community-driven change. With a background in advocacy, Indigenous social innovation, and social entrepreneurship, she collaborates with communities to develop meaningful solutions that challenge systemic inequities.