Harper: Sammy, great news. We've got buckets of money to spend on infrastructure.

Katz: Steve, that's awesome! We could sure use some help.

Harper: Well my aids tell me you folks in Winnipeg don't even have a rapid transit system yet. That's hilarious! But seriously, you know what you want to build, right? You just need the money.

Katz: Ummm.

Harper: Sammy? You've got the thing designed, right?

Katz: Well ...

Harper: Do the voters know even where this thing is going to go? Are they excited about it? We have 18 months to get shovels in the ground -- no messing around.

Katz: We've ... got ... one ... line ... laid ... out ... Phase 2 even goes to the university.

*click*

---

OK, so this conversation might or might not have taken place over the holiday season.

Transit studies since the 1950s have highlighted the need to move people across the city efficiently and affordably. In 1959, Norman Wilson already pointed out that "public transportation will have to be made more competitive with the private automobile if it is to become an attractive mode of intra-city travel."

Despite many lacklustre efforts since then, we still haven't solved that one. Instead, we have $170 a month parking downtown and gridlock at major shopping areas like Polo Park on evenings, weekends and throughout December.

Aside from high school students, people below the poverty line and a few intrepid business commuters, most Winnipeggers don't even consider transit as a viable way to get around.

To its credit, city hall has made great strides in slowing traffic so that driving still takes almost as long as taking the bus. Winnipeg, after all, still embraces "traffic softening" as inspired public policy. The brilliant minds behind Waverley West have even transformed one of the city's last efficient corridors -- Bison Drive to the Perimeter -- into a meandering, two-lane, 60 km/h Sunday drive. But instead of making the Winnipeg driving experience worse, wouldn't it be great to make our transit system better?

Every major city on the planet has implemented transit systems that get people around efficiently and by more affordable means.

Some of those planners even managed this in cities that are hundreds of years old, with cobblestone streets. Why haven't we been able to even design a rapid transit system worth getting excited about? Instead, we've barely managed to map out the route from downtown to Osborne Village.

Besides a sketchy plan to reach the University of Manitoba, we don't even have a hot clue what to do next. And now that there is enough money bubbling out of Ottawa to build rapid transit three times over, we're stuck on the sidelines once again sucking our thumb.

Perhaps if we spent a little less time winging about what kinds of hot dogs they'll sell at the stations and a little more time actually putting plans on the table, we would be ready the next time opportunity knocks.