The bilateral funding agreement announced by the federal and provincial governments Monday stands to boost Winnipeg Transit significantly. At least that is the expectation of Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman.
“One of the things about the transit funding that I appreciate is it’s based on ridership, so it is predictable,” Bowman said.
Manitoba was earmarked for $1.1 billion in funding, and given Winnipeg’s size, Mayor Bowman said he wants to make sure it gets its share of the pie.
“I voiced my concerns about ensuring that Winnipeg receives its fair share of those dollars,” he said. “$1.1 billion is a lot of money coming to Manitoba. Considering we’re two thirds of the province, two thirds, minimum, of those funds should flow to the city of Winnipeg — and it should support council-directed priorities, not the political priorities of other levels of government.”
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While the mayor said he doesn’t yet know the total amount the city stands to receive, he estimates the figure at around $733 million.
“We’ll be watching those numbers very carefully,” Bowman said. “We want to make sure that those dollars don’t just flow to the City of Winnipeg but that they support council’s priorities, which are done in a very open and transparent manner, using our asset management practices, our new state of the infrastructure report, our reporting on the capital infrastructure.”
“We don’t know how other levels of government make those decisions. They’re certainly not as open and transparent as the City of Winnipeg and we want to ensure that those dollars are not only flowing to Winnipeg, but they’re flowing in a manner that is supporting the direction of city council.”
Much of that money will go to public transit, and some is allocated for green infrastructure — meaning the mayor’s vision of an electric bus fleet may be closer to being realized.
“As we grow our city to a million people, Transit’s going to play a big role in growing the city, and that means improving the service,” Bowman said, noting Transit’s operational review and the consideration of a low-income bus pass will be key going forward in boosting the service and ideally, boosting ridership.
“I’d like to see the full electrification of our bus fleet, and this may assist with that,” Bowman said.
But he said prior to the funding announcement, communication between all levels of government was lacking.
As soon as the city learned the announcement was happening on Monday, Bowman said he wanted to see a draft of the agreement.
“Our officials asked for a copy from the province,” he continued.
“They weren’t able or willing to provide us with a copy, so we asked the federal government and we got it within half an hour.”
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