The city should limit the number of parkades in the downtown so that more commuters are forced to ride the bus, the head of the city's transit system said yesterday.

"You should keep the amount of long-term parking lots controlled," Winnipeg Transit head Rick Borland told the city's public works committee.

Borland made his comments during a briefing on Transit's three year plan, which includes other incentives to get more people riding the bus.

He said one of the major problems Transit has is attracting downtown riders. That's because of the high number of surface parking lots in the downtown. With so much cheap, available parking, there's no incentive to take the bus.

He added under Plan Winnipeg, the city's blueprint for development, decision makers at city hall should be more proactive in bringing more people downtown — not cars.

The four councillors on the committee accepted Borland's position, but wondered whether restricting day-long and monthly parking downtown might drive people and business away.

Annita Stenning, head of CentreVenture Development Corp. — the public agency charged with reinvigorating Winnipeg's downtown — said yesterday discussions are already underway to address the overabundance of surface or grade parking lots in the downtown.

She said that 27 per cent of available land in the downtown is surface parking lots.

"We have to look at creative solutions and Transit has to be a part of the solution," Stenning said. "The solution is not more surface parking lots."

She added the big reason there are so many lots is money. It costs about $5,000 a stall to develop a surface lot, compared to $12,000 a stall to build a multi-level parkade and $20,000 a stall to build an underground parkade.

Stenning said with more leases being signed for downtown premises, and recent announcements of new office building and hotel construction in the downtown, the pressure is on to find a better way to move people quickly so they don't use their cars.

One idea is a park-and-ride program, where commuters park their vehicles at a lot outside the downtown and take a rapid shuttle bus the rest of the way.

Borland added Transit has a more immediate plan to get more downtown workers riding the bus — the employer-sponsored bus pass program.

Borland added in the next two years Transit wants to continue to replace its older buses with newer low-floor ones and upgrade many of its shelters, as well as install automated stop announcement systems on city buses.

Transit also wants to beef up its Internet Web site to allow people to plan out automated trips; automatically finding out what buses to take to a particular destination and what times.

He added transit fares should be frozen for the immediate future. Transit adult fares go up from $1.60 to $1.65 Jan. 1, partly due to unforeseen diesel fuel costs.

Another incentive, Borland said, is continuing discussions with the Doer government to increase its share of funding for transit and Handi-Transit so that both services are on a better financial footing.