In his first installment of this series, Jeff Lowe describes some of the recommendations found in the final report of TransPlan 2010. This report was commissioned to set priorities for transportation infrastructure in the City of Winnipeg from 2000 to 2010, and was conceived as a companion document to the City's master land-use guidebook, Plan Winnipeg: Toward 2010. The current article suggests how the final report could deliver recommendations so at odds with the consensus developed by the participant groups in TransPlan's community consultation workshops.

Very early on (pages 23-24) in the TransPlan final report, the policy and funding priorities enunciated by all participant groups in the four rounds of community workshops are recounted as follows:

That this proved to be the consensus attests to Canadians' awareness of the manner in which overuse of fossil fuels and over-reliance on automobiles have contributed to the severity of the impact of the "greenhouse effect" on the planet's atmospheric regulatory mechanisms.

That it was disconcerting to read on and find that the list of recommendations as to specific project preferences and expenditure allocations formulated by the Steering Committee pointedly fails to follow suit — leaving one to ask how it was possible (in an environmentally-enlightened age) for an official policy document to be produced that is so exuberantly defiant of our obligation to act even-handedly in our provision of transportation facilities?

The sanctity of the car

The source of the resistance is invariably to be found in the mentality of the highway engineers who have ensconed themselves as the real "power behind the throne" in Winnipeg. While the same situation prevails in moot North American cites, few any longer find their citizenry subjected to the degree of oppressiveness and entrenchment evidenced here. In fact, one might venture to observe that these convictions concerning the sanctity of the central role played by the car in the everyday affairs of the community are held with such fierce single-mindedness as to imitate religious fanaticism.

The assumption by Winnipeg's traffic engineers of discretion to deploy a virtual veto over any development they judged would adversely affect automotive interests dates from 1955. That year was a turning point in the power-struggle for control over the city's streets — because (as also happened around that time in almost every North American locality populous enough to be termed an urban area) the last of the street railway routes that had occupied the centre of the right-of-way on Winnipeg's major arteries for seven decades saw its termination.

The event had significance in a very literal sense as a harbinger of the future of urban form. When traffic engineers succeeded in ousting streetcars, transit's position as a user of vehicular thoroughfares was downgraded from preferred to inferior status. That was because streetcars running on tracks set into the middle of the roadbed by dint of that arrangement exercised priority of way over all other forms of traffic. Traction companies were granted that privilege largely in recognition of the utility of promoting mass forms of people-movement over individual ones.

The buses that Winnipeg Transit substituted for streetcars since the latter were banished enjoy no operational advantage over any other form of vehicle with which they share the road. Buses transporting in excess of 60 passengers at once are no longer afforded any greater ease of mobility than private cars or trucks carrying only their drivers.

Having vanquished streetcars, Winnipeg's traffic engineers sought to ensure that that triumph would never be diluted or overturned. They have done their utmost to lay pre-emptive siege to any initiative that would tilt public preferences away from reflexive automobile usage for any conceivable purpose — or, physically or statutorily enhance the profile of non-automotive modes of transport (whether on- or off-street).

Sabotaging rapid transit

Since the first plan was drawn up to create a subway system in 1959, their opposition has been instrumental in sabotaging all attempts to win political consent for rapid transit. Aside from a very few short lengths of rush-hour, bus-only lanes and curbside bicycle markings on bridges and at underpass locations, they have staved off efforts to set aside portions of main traffic arteries that would enable public transit and cyclists to function under conditions of improved safety and trip-times. They continue to fight the implementation of an idea to bring back vintage streetcars on a comparatively selective basis as a means of providing an expanded and more effective version of circulator system for Downtown and inner-city shopping and residential districts than exists at present.

These aggressively protectionist tactics have lately been inflamed by a political orthodoxy that fosters an expectation of ever-declining dollars for expenditures on public assets. Mindful of this, highway engineers have come to approach the budgetary approval process as a version of "zero-sum" game. With the size of the funding "pie" consistently failing to keep pace with inflation, any increase in appropriations for other modes of transport implies there will consequently be less money available for building, expanding, or maintaining roads. That possibility in turn spurs the engineers to connive all the more to neutralize whatever inroads upstarts in the realm of non-automotive transport might achieve.

A closely related (and particularly spiteful) device they have wielded with devastating impact in keeping the upper hand in this bruising competition for public largesse has been to push for the construcution of new road- and bridge-building projects that are purposefully designed to be massively overblown in relation to any reasonable expectation of maximum traffic levels they will be called upon to handle. This practice appears to be followed on the assumption that the more money lavished on automobile infrastructure, the less that will remain to be dedicated to environmentally-friendly alternatives to it.

Highway lobby dreads the impact

The highway lobby particularly dreads the potential impact of rapid transit on its own livelihood. With rapid transit corridors moving large volumes of people en masse, the need for the design and construction of new roads (as well as the expansion of the capacity of existing ones) is greatly lessened. Since rapid transit infrastructure on average doesn't require overhaul or replacement for a period of twenty-five to forty years, much less work is generated for engineers and contractors than if roads are built exclusively to handle the same projected demand.

Another key tactical element reinforcing the skewed emphasis on private automobile usage is the series of standards in place to keep traffic moving through built-up areas at a near-breakneck pace. Speed limits of 60 kilometres/hour and upwards on primary arteries are the norm. The proliferation of signalized intersections is explicitly discouraged. Modifications to prevent traffic flow from being interrupted (such as right-hand turning ramps that bypass traffic signals or stop signs) are frequently encountered.

These steps help keep the car-owning public onside. By preventing congestion-induced delay from becoming a hindrance to driving, agitation on behalf of potential competitors (like rapid transit) is averted. Their success undermines traffic safety and tranquility in residential neighbourhoods, however.

That the traffic engineers feel so assured and justified in taking such an unyielding stance reflects their feeling that the status quo represents an optimal ordering of affairs. if a disproportionate amount of attention and resources is given to automotive issues and facilities, that's simply because it is (in their jaundiced view) "normal" and "natural" for anyone who can afford to own and operate a car ordinarily to always do so: only meddling by social interventionists interferes with that impulse.

It follows this that other modes of travel would normally be disdained or overlooked by a "well-adjusted" person. Public transit is strictly for those whose inability or failure to purchase or have access to a car labels them, "losers". Cyclists and pedestrians are branded, "fitness nuts". Especial scorn is reserved for "oddballs" who — although they own (or have sufficient income to buy) a car — still opt voluntarily to bike, walk, or ride transit.

The needs of cyclists and pedestrians, furthermore, barely even enter into the traffic engineer's planning calculations. Because the former are few in number compared to the automobile and transit contingent, they tend to be looked upon purely as "hobbyists" — not as a legitimate factor in the commuter scene.

Transit performing in a subservient role

A lamentable by-product of the length of time this "auto-centric" regime has held sway is the extent to which even our transit officials have been worn down. While they are certainly desirous of seeing substantial improvements made to the transit system in Winnipeg, their aspirations as to the extent of what public transit can or ought to attempt to achieve are decidedly limited. They do not envision transit as capable of ever engaging the automobile in a vigorous, head-to-head competition for the lion's share of the commuter market. They concur in the notion that circumstances and human nature decree that transit "realistically" is suited only to performing in a subservient role.

What is scariest by far to contemplate about this whole scenario, though, is that many traffic engineers have actually succeeded in convincing themselves that their insular and twisted world-view represents an unsullied expression of the popular wisdom and will. In truth, the machinations and deceptions they engage in are just a self-aggrandizing and cynical means of perpetuating the hegemony that is most responsible for bestowing the blighted, unrelievedly traffic-ridden landscape of present-day Winnipeg upon us.

I realize it is a harsh portrayal I have drawn. But the frustration it betrays is gleaned from years of first-hand exposure (conversations included) to these individuals and their blinkered (and at times, even deranged) attitudes; and it explains how such an incredibly elaborate, costly, and damaging hoax as TransPlan can have been perpetrated.

It is sad that in the end, people get the government they deserve. Winnipeggers don't deserve this; neither does anybody else.

Plan Winnipeg Priorities and TransPlan Funding Recommendations (millions of $)
Major street maintenance in Winnipeg 300
Major bridge maintenance in Winnipeg 228
Provincial Highways & bridges in Winnipeg 228
Regional street improvements 274
Transit maintenance & improvements 0