Subway For City Urged

An immediate start on subway construction has been advocated in a report to the Greater Winnipeg Transit Commission.

The report, prepared by transit expert Norman D. Wilson of Toronto, calls for 23 miles of subway to be built by the year 1981 — or roughly one mile a year.

The total cost for the entire project (on the basis of present prices) would be $265,190,000.

The first stage of subway construction would be a line running under Portage Avenue and Main Street from Queen St. in St. James to Redwood Avenue in Winnipeg. This line — 4.55 miles — would cost approximately $52,000,000, excluding maintenance facilities.

The subway report declares decisively that Greater Winnipeg traffic in the next 25 years will make it imperative to build either a network of expressways, or a rapid transit system.

The report spurns expressways as a totally inadequate solution to the problem of moving traffic. It says expressways cost almost the same as subways, carry one-fifth the volume of traffic, and create extensive damage to valuable downtown property.

Mr. Wilson's report is a repudiation of the huge Wilbur Smith traffic report which called for construction of a tremendous network of expressways into and around downtown Winnipeg.

Mr. Wilson — who played a prominent role in the engineering of the Toronto subway system — does not foresee any outstanding engineering difficulties for a Greater Winnipeg subway.

It could, he says, be tunneled or constructed by what is called the "cut and cover" method. This means digging out the subway from the surface , then resurfacing the road.

The subway track would be 25 to 35 feet below ground level, "or at best 30 feet above river level at low water."

The roof of the subway would be at least eight feet below surface to avoid utility services, and preferably 13 feet below to go under the majority of sewer lines.

Passenger stations would be spaced about 1,650 feet apart (or five sixteenths of a mile). Station platforms would be 500 feet long.

The entire subway system would be constructed in nine stages, and all surface bus routes would be dovetailed to feed to and from the subway lines.

To service this system, Mr. Wilson says, the transit commission would need a main car yard and maintenance shop. The best site for this, he suggests, would be the area now occupied by the Canadian National Railways Fort Rouge shops, but soon to be vacated.

Here is a summary of the nine stages of construction suggested in the report:

• Portage-North Main Line — 4.55 miles — Queen Street. (St. James) to Redwood Avenue
• Osborne line — 2.5 miles — Arnold Avenue to Notre Dame Avenue.
• Osborne line — 2.4 miles — Notre Dame to Kelvin Street
• Osborne line — 1.8 miles — Arnold Avenue to St. Anne's Road
• Osborne line — 1.7 miles — Kelvin Street to Nairn Avenue
• Portage-North Main — 2.45 miles — from Main under Redwood Avenue (or St. John's Avenue) to McPhillips Street
• Pembina-William line — 3.75 miles — Arnold Avenue and Daly Street to Isabel Street
• Pembina-William line — 1.85 miles — Daly Street to McGillivray Boulevard
• Pembina-William line — 2.13 miles — Isabel Street to Keewatin Street (Elgin Avenue).

Some changes in the later stages might be made depending on existing needs at that time.