Piecing together the infrastructure puzzle

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/10/2014 (4041 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For Winnipeg voters, fixing infrastructure is the No. 1 priority, eclipsing even the need to clean up an ethically suspect city hall.

How to do that is no easy answer for a city starved of funds and burdened with a massive backlog of existing fixes and new projects.

How Winnipeggers vote may hinge upon the candidates’ plans.

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

 

IN the 1960s and ’70s, the baby boom sparked a building spree. Cities across Canada built roads, sewers, water mains, libraries and community centres serving thousands of new homes in new residential neighbourhoods. Now, much of this infrastructure has reached the end of its natural life and needs to be replaced or repaired.

As the building boom ended and the debt piled up, Winnipeg scaled back its borrowing and deferred a lot of the upkeep on existing infrastructure in order to get its finances back in order.

For roughly a decade starting in 1997, spending on basic road maintenance stalled. At about the same time, construction costs skyrocketed. From 2000 to 2008, Winnipeg’s overall construction inflation was estimated at 68 per cent while the cost of living rose just 18 per cent. So even if the city had poured money into street renewal, it probably couldn’t have done much but slow the decline rather than make things noticeably better.

In the meantime, the city’s population began to grow more quickly, increasing the demand on city services. In 2003, the province mandated billions in new waste-water upgrades to help clean up Lake Winnipeg, and the city has continued to build new infrastructure, including the Chief Peguis Trail extension and the Waverley West arterial roads.

During the last two years of Mayor Sam Katz’s administration, the city more than doubled spending on local and regional roads, thanks in part to a tax increase earmarked for paving. Winnipeggers noticed a summer of dramatically more roadwork, with dozens of projects tying up commuters across the city. But even if that $84 million a year in spending is sustained by the next mayor, it’s still not enough to bring the city’s roads up to an acceptable state.

 

PAVEMENT VS. PLANNING

 

While mayoral candidates spoke about fixing Winnipeg’s roads, the city was busy opening new ones. A new Kenaston Boulevard overpass opened in September as part of a series of new arteries built to serve Waverley West.

Many urban planners say this is emblematic of a deeper problem. Winnipeg’s tendency to build out and not up threatens to cement the city’s infrastructure deficit as a permanent and damaging feature. A slow-growth economy and city hall’s inability to find new sources of revenue have hobbled the city’s ability to maintain existing infrastructure, let alone build new.

Winnipeg and its surrounding areas are among the least dense in Canada. Many parts of what Torontonians consider nightmarish sprawl is denser than Winnipeg. Kichener-Waterloo, St. Catharines, Guelph and Hamilton all have more people per square kilometre than Winnipeg, as does Calgary.

Research by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives shows Winnipeg has expanded its area by 80 per cent since 1970, while its population only grew by 33 per cent.

Some local planners, including Landmark’s Donovan Toews, argue the city can’t strangle sprawl and instead needs to do two things better — densification in the middle and smarter growth on the edges.

That means creating precinct plans that lay out what new and existing neighbourhoods ought to look like, redeveloping vacant brownfields and building mixed-use projects along major commercial routes such as Pembina Highway and Portage Avenue, where transit routes, shops and jobs already exist.

Planners say it’s naive to expect a city, especially one without an established condo culture, to strangle the development of single-family neighbourhoods and hope to force buyers back into the core. They also note new suburbs have made huge strides.

Gone are the days of Linden Woods or Whyte Ridge, with their cookie-cutter houses on huge lots, bounded by few sidewalks with no land set aside for multi-family condos or apartments.

New developments in Sage Creek and Waverley West are overlaid with bike and walking paths. They’re denser, largely because of townhouses or three-storey condos. They’re far more walkable and offer a wider variety of homes and better access to retail stores. But they still hold the bulk of new homes built in Winnipeg and may place a financial burden on the city in the coming years, even when increased property-tax revenue is taken into account.

Winnipeg is starting to do some modest infill, but the pace is sluggish, despite the well-intentioned words embedded in city planning blueprints.

Infill development in Winnipeg faces NIMBYist and council opposition, which is why so few developers bother with it. The city also imposes rules about height and balcony placement and exterior finishes that shrink a builder’s profit margin and are seen as obstructionist. It’s easier and more lucrative to build the same old houses in River Park South.

On the campaign trail, every candidate has paid lip service to creating complete, walkable communities and the principles of the city’s long-term planning documents. There’s been plenty of talk about more downtown residents, but far less about densifying other older neighbourhoods. No one has talked about building up along Pembina Highway or Portage Avenue. Virtually no one has talked about creating density targets or nodes like the ones slated for new highrise developments in Toronto’s suburbs. Few have spoken about making infill easier.

The word “sprawl” has barely been uttered.

 

THE PROMISES

 

Brian Bowman

Roads: Trim expenses at city hall by two per cent to find $10 million each year for infrastructure. Ask Broadway for a bigger share of the $154 million the city creates in provincial PST revenue. Tender projects earlier.

Growth: Create a partnership to develop, co-ordinate and deliver a 10-year plan to repair and build the city’s roads, public transit and active-transportation networks, using the current transportation master plan. Boost the downtown population by 33 per cent in four years, upping the number of residents to 20,000. Crack down on surface parking lots by taxing them at their highest and best use and offering temporary tax freezes on any new residential or mixed-used developments built on them. Set density targets for new suburban developments.

Reality check: An extra $10 million a year won’t make a dent in the roads backlog — if that cash can even be found. On the plus side, Bowman repeatedly mentions sustainable suburbs and is the only candidate to suggest measurable density targets such as the ones in Calgary and Toronto.

 

Michel Fillion

Roads: Raise property taxes by 10 per cent over two years to fund road work. That would net about $50 million.

Reality check: An additional $50 million, on top of the city’s existing tax increases, would significantly reduce the roads backlog.

 

Paula Havixbeck

Roads: Free up money by tendering projects earlier. Draft a 20-year plan to solve the backlog of maintenance on residential streets. The plan would use the existing local-improvement process and more public-private partnerships.

Reality check: The local-improvement process allows neighbourhoods some say in what roads get fixed, but it’s slow and piecemeal.

 

Robert-Falcon Ouellette

Roads: Create a dedicated, $250-million fund for core infrastructure: streets, sewers, water. Interest rates are at historic lows so the city should borrow the $250 million as part of a 30-year bond. That would incur $12-million annual interest costs.

Growth: Respect city planning documents, allow planners free range and ensure more communities with a variety of people of all income types. The redevelopment of the CPR Winnipeg Yards presents a huge opportunity.

Reality check: The capacity of the construction industry would be tested by so much work; the cash infusion could create its own construction inflation. As well, the city is at or near the limits of what it can borrow against revenue before suffering from a credit-rating downgrade.

 

David Sanders

Roads: Review the city’s policies on materials and technologies related to road construction. He said more money is needed, but offered few details.

Growth: Work more collaboratively with the capital region to deal with sprawl. Mandate independent cost-benefit analyses on new suburban developments to “lay bare the real impact of allowing development on the periphery.”

Reality check: Winnipeg has traditionally been a lukewarm participant in capital region planning.

 

Gord Steeves

Roads: Spend $150 million a year on road renewal, an increase of 45 per cent, freeing up funds by cancelling the completion of the Southwest Transitway and selling city-owned golf courses. Speed up construction by allowing crews to work 24 hours, seven days a week. Earmark 0.5 per cent of the regional street budget for a two-week spring blitz to fix potholes.

Growth: Two per cent of the property taxes from new developments will be placed in reserve to cover future maintenance and renewal. Enact a five-year freeze on new infrastructure, except for projects funded by developers or other governments.

Reality check: It’s not clear whether Steeves could raise the promised cash from the sale of city assets. Previous councils have tried and failed to extend construction hours. On the plus side, Steeves offered a plan to prevent NIMBYism from threatening infill development.

 

Judy Wasylycia-Leis

Roads: Invest an extra $60 million in local and regional roads over four years using revenue and extra borrowing capacity from an annual two per cent property tax hike. Reform the design, management and approval of all capital projects.

Growth: Identify and map all city-owned land that could be used for infill.

Reality check: An additional $15 million a year is a drop in the bucket for infrastructure.

 

maryagnes.welch@freepress.mb.ca

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca