Urban Affairs Minister Gerry Ducharme has taken the prudent and logical next step toward a rapid transit system for Winnipeg. In ordering study of the matter by a committee of city and provincial officials, he committed the government to nothing but he started laying the groundwork that must support a great undertaking.

The provincial and city officials were asked to find out what money might be available from the federal government and to study Winnipeg's transit needs and the system it should adopt. These are excellent questions to begin with.

City councillors' thinking about rapid transit sometimes begins with the offer of federal help for Winnipeg Transit in 1983, when Pierre Trudeau was prime minister and Lloyd Axworthy was minister of transport. Councillors generally start also from the land corridor that runs alongside the Canadian National tracks parallel to Pembina Highway. The council has secured land in that corridor for a rapid transit service between the CN East Yard and south Fort Garry.

The 1983 agreement related to inventing new transit systems and trying them out on Winnipeggers. The southwest transit corridor or parts of it may one day prove useful. Winnipeg needs a transit system to serve its people, however, and not to serve a federal-provincial spending agreement or to find a use for a land corridor. The city-provincial joint committee will quickly find that it must start from the people and their mobility needs. The financing and the land are vital ingredients, but they must fit the people's needs.

Mr. Ducharme has the advantage of belonging to a government that believes in market-driven programs. The market for rapid transit in Winnipeg is not found in federal-provincial agreements, nor is it found in the one convenient land corridor the city has prepared. It is found in Winnipeggers' patterns of travel and their willingness to pay for quicker and more comfortable transit.

Close study of origin-destination data and other information about mobility in Winnipeg may prove that a connection between south Fort Garry and the CN East Yard is the first rapid transit line Winnipeg should build. It seems unlikely, however, because the East Yard is still a windswept urban desert which is slowly becoming a park and a small grocery shopping centre. It will not for many years be an important commuter destination.

A rapid transit system should begin by helping people go where they want to go. Polo Park shopping centre is one favorite destination. Portage and Main is another. The Health Sciences Centre is another. A rapid transit network for Winnipeg must directly serve those destinations, and the sooner the better.

Public transit in North American cities carried on too long on the theory that the engineers would put the service where it suited them and the passengers would just have to accept what they were given. That approach is one of the reasons why transit lost ground to the private automobile in recent decades. Transit planners have found more recently that they must start from the needs and wishes of the people who are supposed to pay the fares and fill the seats. Few people, in this automobile age, have to use public transit. If the transit service is not tailored to the needs and wishes of the people, it will run empty and lose money hand over fist.

Mr. Ducharme's committee is likely to find that there is no money on offer from the federal government for a hypothetical transit system. It rarely works that way. Once the city and the province are in motion, however — once Winnipeg clearly intends to build itself a transit system and requires federal help — the feds will not want to be left out.