Winnipeg’s streets are getting some major investments. There are plans to revitalize downtown and Osborne Village, as well as widen Route 90 to improve traffic flow.
However, Jino Distasio, professor of geography and urban studies at the University of Winnipeg, says when planning to improve the roads, we need to consider more than just vehicles.
“Along some of our main arteries, we’ve got to figure out a better way to share the road. And we have to move past ‘the road is only for cars,’” says Distasio.
Experts say active transportation, like biking, walking, or rollerblading, sometimes feels like an afterthought in city planning. Even the new CentrePlan 2050, which aims to transform how people get around downtown, only has six streets being studied for potential new bike lanes.
That’s disappointing to Mark Cohoe, executive director of Bike Winnipeg, who says the routes displayed feel disjointed. He also says it’s not enough simply to build more active transportation infrastructure. The city needs ensure people actually use it, he adds.
“We don’t actually encourage people to get out there, we don’t work at actively getting them out and promoting that transit use, that bike use,” says Cohoe. “So, people maybe aren’t aware of what the benefits are.”
Cohoe says rather than continuously expanding the major routes, like Route 90, the city should aim to better balance multiple transportation systems. But Distasio says making that shift isn’t easy.
“Others will say, maybe it’s time we get people out of their cars and onto bikes or through a rapid transit corridor, but we haven’t really caught up with that, either.”
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Distasio says Winnipeg is decades behind other major Canadian cities when it comes to transit and active infrastructure. While there are positive steps being taken, including the proposed pedestrian scramble in Osborne Village, which would calm traffic, both Distasio and Cohoe agree that catching up is going to take a long time.
“At the current pace, it will probably take about a hundred years, and everything will have to be rebuilt three or four times,” says Cohoe. “We know we don’t have a hundred years.”
Distasio adds, with the city’s population increasing every year, soon Winnipeggers will need to find better ways of getting around.
“It’s only going to get more congested if we don’t think more long term and more strategic with our decreasing infrastructure dollars,” says Distasio.
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