Greater Winnipeg Transit Commission wants to start within five years construction of a cross-town subway system which would see citizens travelling in trains deep under Portage Ave. and Main St.

The commission says going underground would help cure Greater Winnipeg's failing transit system and growing traffic confusion.

Commission members have adopted a future development report by Toronto transit authority Norman Wilson. He recommended a three-route, 23 miles long and costing roughly $449 million, based on costs for the Toronto subway.

Mr. Wilson assured the commission such as subway was both practical and desirable for Winnipeg. He recommended its construction after considering:

Present and likely future traffic movements; anticipated community growth; natural and man-made geography; climate; underground utilities; soil conditions; engineering problems and economic operation.

Need of a subway is based on an estimated population of 765,000 in the metropolitan area — an increase of more than 354,000 persons — by 1981.

Traffic and transit facilities on Portage Ave. are expected to be over-taxed within 10 years. To have the Portage-North Main underground route in operation by that time, the commission thinks construction should start in five years.

This part of the subway, 4.5 miles long, would extend from Queen St., in St. James, up Portage and then Main, to Redwood Ave.

Completed, the subway would see the downtown area as the body of a spider-like system of six concrete tube lines with a radius of almost four miles from Portage and Main.

These would be linked to form three cross-town lines totalling 23.15 miles, with two-way traffic.

Commission members say the vast project practically hinges on formation of a metropolitan government. That way, heavy capital costs cold be handled more easily.

They say a subway would serve much the same purpose as surface expressways through the city's heart. Such thoroughfares normally get provincial and federal aid.

If such aid were granted, total cost to citizens might be reduced by as much as 75 percent.

Final authorization for the project must come from whatever local government is in power at the time — possible the metro-type system suggested recently. It would seek aid from the province and also, likely, from the federal government.

Of the subway's $449 million cost, more than half would involve construction costs paid for by the public — at $11.5 million a mile, or $265 million. With government aid this cost to the public could fall to around $66 million.

Another $184 million would be needed for cars, shops, car yards, track, signals and other equipment. This would be charged to transit riders "or some other similar division of costs," says commission members.

They say that when a subway began operation, fares would be no more than those charged on surface vehicles at the time.

Peak capacity of the six-branch system would be 240,000 passengers per hour or, the equivalent of 30 radial, six-lane surface expressways, says Mr. Wilson.

Although the commission has accepted the principles in Mr. Wilson's report, it has a lot of study to do on its own.

Members have to go over costs, benefits, engineering and construction details and the impact of such a major transportation facility on growth and development of the metropolitan area, land use and other related factors.

Completion of the subway is recommended in nine stages. Finished, it would replace to the maximum degree possible, surface transit in the congested downtown zone.

It would operate as an integral part of the whole transit system. There would be full transfer privileges between underground cars being fed from surface bus lines leading outside the subway area.

Subway travellers, says Mr. Wilson, could move at twice the present transit speed. Operating costs would be lower.

Travel time from Queen St., St. James to Memorial Blvd., would be nine minutes; to Lombard, 11.5 minutes; to Redwood Ave., 16.5 minutes and to McPhillips, 23.5 minutes.

Average speed at all hours, including stop time, would be 18 to 20 miles an hour.

Although a subway would carry five times as many passengers as an expressway, construction costs are almost the same, says Mr. Wilson. In Toronto, subway cost was $11.5 million a mile; crosstown expressway cost was $10.9 million.

The 1957 Wilbur Smith report on Greater Winnipeg traffic and transit problems suggested expressways but made no mention of a subway.

The Norman Wilson report drew heavily on the Smith report for statistics, particularly on traffic volumes, but decided a subway was the only answer.

"An expressway is filled to capacity almost from the day it is opened. A subway has the capacity to provide for increasing traffic for many years ahead."

There is no permanent disturbance of the areas over a subway, says Mr. Wilson, and their use and values area stabilized. But an expressway demands demolition of buildings and disorganization of use and values; it creates new barriers to cross traffic.

Rapid transit subways permanently improve transit conditions, doubling or tripling speed. "They ease surface street congestion" and all without defacing or scattering the city, or destroying assessable values, but rather stabilizing the city and directing growth."

The transit report blames failing business on the private car. More cars (6,000 new registrations a year) mean less transit passengers. And service suffers as street congestion worsens.

There is an insatiable need for parking space. The street system inherited from the past is now used up. Mr. Wilson says improved traffic conditions and new parking space just bring more cars into the downtown area, with little real improvement over previous conditions.

These conditions, say commission officials, "have combined to make it more difficult to provide acceptable standards of public transit service with the conventional methods and equipment which the commission now has at its disposal."

Since the end of the Second World War, private automobiles have become numerous, transit riding has dropped off from 105 million in 1946 to just 71 million in 1956.

Officials estimate that severe traffic disruptions, such as occurred during last winter's blizzards, cost city business and industry thousands, maybe millions of dollars a day. A subway would not be affected by the elements.