There is not much to recommend in the reformulated bus rapid transit proposal unveiled by Coun. Reg Wyatt and his task force last week.

The new proposal says bus rapid transit is the way of the future, but that was already understood. In fact, it had been affirmed twice before by council votes on a 2000 review and again with the adoption in 2001 of Plan Winnipeg 2020, which includes a fully developed and forward-looking BRT proposal. Still it cannot be a bad thing to restate the obvious — that Winnipeg must shift emphasis to greater reliance on public transportation and away from automobiles for a variety of reasons, not the least of which are the long-term costs and the sustainability of the transportation network as the city grows.

Mr. Wyatt's proposal has the political advantage of appearing to be more inclusive of all Winnipeggers, adding BRT services that are not shown in Plan Winnipeg along such routes as McPhillips Street. But while it appears to reach out to more Winnipeggers, the facts are that it doesn't reach out to many more and development is to be staged over 20 years, which means that some portions of the city will see no advantage for a very long time. In any event, the new proposal puts emphasis on staging right back where it was before a $50-million start on the system was blocked by council in the last year — to the south and east portions of Winnipeg.

The projected price of the new proposal has come down — to $312 from $500 million — but not the cost. The price has been reduced by simply putting in deep-freeze the meat of BRT while serving up its potatoes. The meat of BRT is the dedicated, high-speed bus corridors that make rapid transit rapid. Chief among these are the corridors to south Winnipeg where Waverley West is to rise and add traffic to an already-gridlocked transportation system and to Transcona, opening the way for the next phase south where it would serve that other mega-development approved for south St. Boniface.

The potatoes emphasized in the new proposal are "diamond lanes" on existing streets for the exclusive use of buses during rush hours. Diamond lanes, to be sure, will improve the efficiency of the transit system, but the improvements are modest everywhere without the corridors and utterly problematic on streets with fewer than three lanes — St. Mary's and St. Annes' roads, for example. In addition, the diamond lanes require the reconstruction of existing curb lanes. While that is not a bad thing — many of the lanes likely need reconstruction of existing — it nevertheless amounts to declaring a street problem a transit problem with the result that the bulk of new spending will go toward improvement for automobile traffic, not transit service.

Most seriously, however, the new proposal amounts to little more than notes scribbled by amateurs on the backs of napkins — there is no cost-benefit analysis, no ridership projections, not even a reliable price tag. When the first phase of BRT was defeated this spring, one of the reasons scurilously advanced was that two favourable cost-benefit analyses might not have been reliable. And yet here were are to accept that $312 million will be well spent simply because Coun. Wyatt says so.

There is not much to recommend this reformulated proposal. There is everything to recommend the existing comprehensive BRT plan.