The Toronto subway is celebrating its 10th anniversary, and although it has not been completed as yet, its achievements already are a source of justifiable pride. Only 12 per cent of the public transportation passengers now use the subway, but it moves at peak times 32,000 passengers an hour, thus keeping at least 12,000 automobiles off the streets. To move the same number of people by surface transport as is moved underground by the Toronto subway would require 20 lanes of modern highway. The trains are clean and comfortable, and Toronto may be one of the few North American cities where the number of transit passengers is on the increase, rather than the other way around.
It would be futile to pretend that the transit problems of Winnipeg are comparable with those of Toronto, but the problems exist here, and are growing worse each year. Anybody commuting by car into the centre of Winnipeg from the residential districts, even from those as closely situated to the downtown area as River Heights and Fort Garry, must have found that year by year driving becomes slower and more nerve-wracking as more and more cars clog the few arterial roads and bridges. Downtown parking is becoming more and more of a problem while our harsh climate often renders winter starting, after the car had been left sitting all day on an open lot, into an evening nightmare.
It is obvious that within the foreseeable future there will be more cars streaming from the residential districts into the centre of Winnipeg than there are parking lots available there, and the day will inevitably come when the multitude of cars will bring city life to a grinding halt.
Five years ago, in March of 1959, Norman Wilson, a consulting engineer of Toronto, published a report on the future development of the Greater Winnipeg transit system. In his report Mr. Wilson strongly advocated the building of a subway to cure Winnipeg's transit ills. He argued that a subway has capacity to provide for increasing traffic many years ahead, necessitates no permanent disturbance to the areas traversed, and tends to stabilize use and assessable values in its vicinity. Also, a subway moves persons, not cars, and thus relieves traffic congestion. Mr. Wilson then proposed a subway with three lines (Portage-Main; Fort Garry-St. Boniface-Notre Dame; Osborne-Chalmers) that would cover the principal transit needs of metropolitan Winnipeg.
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Five years have gone past and very little appears to have been done to begin implementing the Wilson report. Both land values and construction costs have gone up considerably since the report was published, but there is still time. Portage has not been built up yet, and Main Street, with the new city hall rising there and the arts centre scheduled to be built in time for the centennial celebrations, obviously cannot remain much longer in its present disreputable state. It has long been overdue for a thorough urban renewal and this is the time to do it, and to obtain rights of way for the subway at the same time.
The Toronto example shows that within the past 10 years in areas contiguous to the subway, property assessment rose by 58 per cent. Thus any expenditure on the subway would certainly pay for itself in the long run in increased revenues as more modern buildings would rise along Main street and along Portage avenue beside the new subway — as they did in Toronto — replacing the ugly shacks now now disgracing the heart of the city. It would also pay for itself in better health of the population saved the nerve-wracking car journeys on slippery roads in the winter and in clouds of exhaust fumes in the summer. Above all, it would be an important step towards making Winnipeg into a more pleasant city.
The fact that we do not have as yet — outside of blizzard days — hour-long traffic jams on our main arteries should not detract from the urgency of the matter. Now is the time to act, and the sooner Metro begins implementing the Wilson report, the better for the future of our city.