NOTHING, say free-market fanatics, stimulates an economy like tax cuts. And business downtown is sufficiently bad that our city's latest budget sports a business tax reduction — from 9.75 per cent to 7.75 per cent — for firms so woefully located in the city centre. This is keeping with the city's "downtown first" platform designed to resurrect it to its former glory.

When I show people historical photos of Winnipeg, the commonest reaction is, "It looks so busy!" No wonder — in 1946 Metro Transit provided 290,000 rides daily. Almost every streetcar and bus route went downtown — a lot of transfers, a lot of feet on the street.

By 1982, the streetcars were decades gone, our buses carrying 164,000 daily. By 2003, just 104,000. Transit fares are a transportation tax; taxes stifle growth. Thus, the new budget's 25 per cent fare reduction for riders over 65 is commendable. But it doesn't go far nor wide enough. "It costs me $20 a week to drive downtown and back every day," says Judy, 48, an office assistant who works in the Exchange District and commutes from Transcona. "A bus pass is 70 bucks. There's not a lot of motivation for taking transit."

Downtown's decades-long decline has been in tandem with transit's — both became avoidable for an increasingly suburban and automotive population quickly embracing the shopping mall. Through the 1960s and '70s, the wholesale demolition of Victorian and Edwardian buildings for parking scarred our city centre, making it still more unattractive.

By 1993, transit had been cut lean, but through the Thompson administration it would be butchered still further. By 1998, during the off-peak hours you could no longer stand at a stop confident the bus will come before hypothermia does; you must call TeleBus. Her Worship Mayor Thompson also oversaw the removal of warm, wood bus shelters for the construction of freezing glass-and-steel shacks with uninviting aluminum benches. Against even the worst winter vehicles, the bus looks thus unglamourous.

What would better benefit a Portage Avenue merchant — a few hundred dollars' annual tax savings, or the trebling of customer traffic? Downtowns depend upon pedestrians. For a true economic stimulus, city hall must look at improving transit's prestige and value.

While others have suggested "bus rapid transit" and light rail, previously in these pages I've backed the 40-km subway that Norman D. Wilson proposed in 1959 — a project I still believe could be financed by aggregate tax revenues from increased assessed land values. But great improvements to our existing system could come from nominal or no additional spending.

Crosstown and downtown routes should stay within the dense inner city and run more frequently, while more infrequent suburban feeder routes connect to properly heated terminuses. Rather than ending just before the nightclubs close, major routes might operate all night, every half-hour. This wouldn't only keep many intoxicated drivers off the road; it would offer inner-city residents greater confidence in choosing not to own an automobile.

Another concept sacred to free marketers is equilibrium price — that perfect point where supply and demand meet, proving maximum possible revenue. When I last visited San Francisco in 2001, I was delighted to find that fares for the bus and MUNI LRT were just a dollar, the reduced fare only 35 cents. Not including rapid-transit or commuter trains, that city sees 750,000 daily transit trips — nearly one for every San Franciscan. Transit is essential to a healthy heart for our city. The service must be user-friendly (warm places to wait), speedy (frequent and fast service), and, most importantly, a good value. Greater service in Winnipeg would prompt greater demand, and a price cut would drive up the quantity demanded further still. A long-standing annual custom has been to raise transit fares a nickel, the accompanying annual ridership drop proves the system is overpriced.

To have our sidewalks bustling like 1946, our transit system needs a 278 per cent increase in ridership. Sales of bus passes would surely surge if they were cut to a mere $20. Single fares should be a dollar.