TRUWinnipeg.org

I would like our fellow readers to do individual quiet meditation to create reality on two issues that will be decided on in the six months (end of February 2011), where to locate the rail depot for the Southwest Rapid Transit line and the second is which LRT vehicle manufacturer to go with.

The first issue is one that I have written about, regarding the future Portage Avenue line, which is a few years away still. When I suggested a possible location for that, I read a very few short days later that that location may be redeveloped. This time I will not put into print where I think the depot should go. Instead I will just meditate that the the EPC & Mayor will start discussions with its city planners on determining how  large a rail depot we will need – how many rail cars will serve this line several decades from now and making room for a rail car wash facility and administrative offices. This land can be found adjacent to the line and a possible land swap or just straight out expropriation must be done within the next 2 years if Winnipeg’s LRT is to be open by the summer of 2014.

The other issue is regarding the choice of LRT vehicle. When the City recently had talks with Bombardier about doing the project as a P3, the rail company said No, because two of their most recent contracts had some financial difficulty due to the recession in those cities.

That’s fine, and if Bombardier doesn’t want to, or cannot partner with the City on an LRT a P3 contract, then so be it. Maybe it was never meant to be. There are other LRT contractors in the marketplace that can and will provide Winnipeg with LRT rolling stock.

I have been to Central Park a few times in the past 5 years, including one or two Critical Mass bicycle rides.

It has the potential to be such a beautiful urban park, and decades ago the writers of the Downtown Winnipeg Plan (1969) said that its boundaries should be expanded and the park itself be upgraded.

…the extension of Central Park for at least one block to the south, as far as Ellice Avenue. These two elements are the major commitments in the public sector required by the plan, and if realized, would provide not only the physical framework within which other development would take place, but also the stimulus or catalytic action which would spark such other development.

A large central area park inevitably attracts high density development. This is demonstrated by the central parks in all of the great cities of the world; Winnipeg’s Central Park has also attracted such development. Already there are a number of major structures sited on its edges, and a new high-rise apartment block is about to be constructed there. Extension of the park southward would create the circumstances for further such projects. The most serious consideration should be given to extending Central Park as far southward as the lane immediately north of Portage Avenue. The illustrations of the plan in fact show such an extension, over the land now occupied by the Winnipeg Free Press.

There is no doubt that such a proposal will be considered prohibitively expensive, if not wildly irresponsible. Nevertheless, it should be borne in mind that all of the great cities of the world, and a large proportion of those of lesser rank, have very extensive and highly developed parks, and even who systems of parks, in or adjacent to their central area. Indeed, it is the presence and the quality of these open spaces which give these cities much of their charm and character. Winnipeg has no such central open space, apart from Central Park, and Memorial Park, both of which are small, not particularly well located, and not as successfully related to the rest of the Downtown as such open spaces should be.

The extension of Central Park as far south as the lane above Portage Avenue would create a major Downtown public open space, well related to central area activities, and an integral part of the proposed central area feature or “spine” lying between Carlton and Edmonton Streets. Such a space, apart from drawing to its borders new high density apartments, would serve as a major activity centre for the community. It could be used for large-scale outdoor assembly in the summer-time: for concerts, for rallies, for the numerous activities for which such spaces are used in other cities.

But perhaps the greatest potential for such a park lies in its winter use. It could become the focus of a great winter carnival to rival the Bonhomme Festival of Quebec City or the winter celebration of Soporo, Japan. Besides having the possibility of development into a major tourist attraction, it could provide for Winnipeggers themselves a colorful and exciting diversion to relieve the starkness and severity of the long winter. Ice sculptures, torchlight parades, snow events, outdoor dancing and barbecues, which might form part of such a festival, require large open spaces. An enlarged Central Park would serve this proposal admirably.

Now this is happening.

Before that happened though the park “housed” drug dealers and panhandlers, but not since part of it has been upgraded with an AstroTurf so that neighbourhood citizens can play soccer or other ball games like that.

In the past month I have not seen any panhandlers or drunks around during the day. Don’t know about the evening, but this article in the Free Press says that the AstroTurf field is used into the late hours of the evening, totally transforming the park from one of fear to one of safety and fun.

The other project that is transforming downtown Winnipeg is the new Plug-In Gallery that is going up at 460 Portage Avenue, at the former location of Army Navy Surplus store. Plug-In’s moving from their current location on McDermot Avenue.

With a Winnipeg subway, both would be easily accessible from the Memorial/University of Winnipeg hub station.

Check ‘em both out.

See also:

CTV Winnipeg story on Central Park makeover

Here at TRU Winnipeg, we’ve found that critiquing the local discussion on urban issues is rather like playing a never-ending game of whac-a-mole—each time we smack down the clueless assertions of one ostensible academic, instantly pops up another.

The most recent bit of disingenuous drivel comes from University of Winnipeg professor Christopher Leo, who claims “expertise” in urban planning, “inner city development,” and “urban issues.” As putative proof of such qualifications, Prof. Leo touts his accreditations from the University of Toronto. Funny, then, that this man—who was educated in a truly transit-oriented city—consistently and persistently self-promotes with a blog that reliably proffers on his purported subjects of expertise statements ranging from the outright false to the downright absurd.

Let’s take his latest: “Does rapid transit fight sprawl? Not necessarily so,” in which he claims that “it looks as if Winnipeg will finally get the first leg of a rapid transit system.” Really? If I can be forgiven for using so un-academic a source as Wikipedia, “A rapid transit, metro, subway, underground, or elevated railway system is an electric passenger railway in an urban area with high capacity and frequency, and which is grade separated from other traffic.” What it looks like to us is that Winnipeg is building a buses-only road. That’s not rapid transit, but don’t try telling that to Prof. Leo, to whom I’ve tried to make clear the difference each time he spams my personal email with his latest self-indulgent blog update. In true 2+2=5 fashion, he continues to misuse the term “rapid transit” presumably in a belief that if one wills something to be true, so it becomes. Nice try, Chris.

Bad enough it would be if this were the only whopper to emanate from his keyboard into the blogosphere, but Prof. Leo won’t stop there. Incredibly, he claims, “[t]he system’s most significant long-term benefit has been largely neglected in discussions leading to the decision to develop rapid transit [sic]….” What? How? Oh, he says, it “paves the way for new kinds of neighbourhoods that will be less dependent on automobiles around the clock, not just on the daily commute. That’s because the existence of the transit line creates new incentives for the development of such neighbourhoods.”

Is this a joke? Just follow the road (for buses only, running parallel to Pembina Highway leading to well outside of the city grid) and in just a few years’ time you’ll find, where today there’s only farmland, a veritable high-density utopia of walkability! To illustrate his point, Prof. Leo provides a picture of a postmodern, New Urbanist development in suburban Portland, OR, The Crossings at Gresham Station, that appears to be a little slice of Europe right here in North America! What Prof. Leo doesn’t mention is that, Gresham, OR is at the terminus of a light rail line that’s part of Portland’s 85km LRT system. What’s that in the foreground, Chris? It’s not a bus, and if you think that some bus-only road is going to replicate that kind of “transit-oriented development” you must’ve done a lot of LSD at U of T.

Prof. Leo’s academic hallucinations don’t end there. He envisions this bus-only road “opens up possibilities for a more urban style of development, a market that is generally under-served in Winnipeg: A denser neighbourhood consisting of a mix of homes, apartments, local shopping and public facilities, all within walking distance of the transit stop.” It’s difficult to believe that someone so deluded is actually employed as an instructor at an institution of higher learning.

Chris, do you even live in Winnipeg? We’re talking the actual city of Winnipeg as per the pre-1972 boundaries. There are in existence today a number of pre-1920 neighbourhoods consisting of tightly-packed two-and-a-half-storey houses, three-storey walkup apartment buildings, and there even remains a smattering of mixed-use storefront buildings that could comprise local shopping. Many, at least on the residential side, offer a sufficient density to be considered walkable, even as they suffer from a lack of commercial amenities for want of a decent transit service that would make their compactness advantageous vis-à-vis the spaciousness of suburbia. This explains their being undervalued, and it also explains why TRU Winnipeg has, for the past half decade, been advocating tirelessly for the implementation of the Norman D. Wilson subway plan that would regenerate old neighborhoods, adding value and the attendant densities that come with a boom in infill development.

Unfortunately—but unsurprisingly for a tired hack who is in fact a closet sprawl apologist—Prof. Leo uses his position to sabotage the would-be renaissance by lending his voice to the perpetuation of myth and the defense of the indefensible when he writes of this miraculous bus-only road, “Appropriately for a blue-collar town with a deeply-rooted culture of caution and frugality, it will be a low-budget diesel bus system, rather than a more expensive, classier and more environmentally friendly rail system.”

Winnipeg might be “blue collar” but we’re hardly third world. Buying into a non-solution to a longstanding problem—Winnipeg’s transition from a micro Chicago to a mini Detroit—only compounds the issue. What’s more, Prof. Leo is ignoring Winnipeg’s pioneering legacy in the realm of electric rail that began with the 1891 introduction of streetcars that by the 1930s would grow into a network with some 200km of lines.

With a chorus of hackademics, politicos, and “business improvement” drones continually popping up to spout ignorant balderdash supporting a failed status quo under a deceptive cloak of progressive urbanism, we TRU urbanists are obliged to be indefatigable in swinging our rhetorical hammer at such sprawl-apologist moles embedded within the garden of New Urbanist advocacy.

-DALLAS HANSEN

Chickens for WinnipEGGers, an advocacy group led by St. Boniface resident Darby Jones, had been seeking a reconsideration of a bylaw banning the farm animals from city property. And why not? Urban agriculture is on the rise, with more civilized Midwestern cities such as Minneapolis and Chicago permitting an unlimited number of hens so long as they’re penned.

Concerns about the quality of factory-farm eggs and an increasing interest in self-sufficiency are driving this growing trend toward backyard chickens, but the City’s recent refusal to consider the idea demonstrates that, once again, Winnipeg is decidedly behind the times.

Not only is this arbitrary ban—founded upon myth and falsehood—an egregious violation of individual property rights, it’s a nonsensical rejection of the very industry on which this city was founded and which continues to be a mainstay of our economy: yes, agriculture.

With demand for locally grown, organically raised food on the rise, the city will, sooner or later, have to rescind its prohibition on urban hen-raising. Think there’s any chance Winnipeg—for once—will be ahead of the curve? Don’t bet the farm on it.

-Dallas Hansen

An example of what can be done to make living in the big city more enjoyable, a subway art program. This one is in :

More photos…

Robert Galston, The Rise and Sprawl

[Editor's note:Where the hell is Heritage Winnipeg? Let Sport Manitoba know how you feel about their disregard for our city's history by phoning them at (204) 925-5907.]

Point Douglas is going to look great in two years…

…from my rearview mirror. I can’t wait to move out and leave the renewal to the professionals.

Sport Manitoba is getting their wish, and will make the neighborhood north of the Manitoba Museum a little more boring, dangerous, and windswept. The City of Winnipeg has issued a demolition permit for them for the old portion of the Smart Bag Building on Alexander Avenue. All without a public hearing (not even one announced 30 hours before it begins), too. Instead, permission to demolish was granted in principle a year ago, when the original demolition request was withdrawn until Sport Manitoba could find the money to go ahead with the demolition.

On command, fire officials have also declared the structure unsafe, which is a lie.

Dating back to 1884, it is one of the oldest warehouses in the Exchange District. Not that it matters to any of the philistines involved in this farce.

Robert Galston, The Rise and Sprawl

Manitoba is, according to Prof. Allen Mills’s piece in the Free Press today, under “soft despotism,” and governed by bureaucracy.

I should know: I live in North Point Douglas. Here, as in the North End (where between Selkirk and Redwood, conditions are becoming so deplorable that they would make villages in the third-world blush with embarrassment), there is no representation at either the Municipal and Provincial level. This is because the Councillor and MLA for the area, Harry Lazarenko and George Hickes, are both speakers of their respective government assemblies. And also because they both happen to be disconnected dinosaurs.

Of course, Manitoba’s despotism isn’t so soft everywhere, as anyone would quickly learn if they chose to engage in trade of bottles of scotch, automobile insurance, or hydroelectricity, or dared to set their own price on cheese and milk. Or, if their sanctioned, more “socially responsible” activities got in the way of the plans of the Province and their subsidiary City of Winnipeg, such as owning property.

This is happening to Mike Gobiel , who last week told the Free Press he heard from PCL Construction that he was losing the building that he moved his hobby shop business into recently, to make way for a curve to the northeast in Waterfront Drive at Higgins. (This is to make way for the new span which will rise alongside the existing Disraeli, but also to prepare for the enhanced Higgins Avenue and Louise Bridge project later in the decade. Pleasant waterfront roadway to commuter artery in less than 20 years. Way to go, Winnipeg.)

Anyway, the City eventually did get around to contacting Mr. Gobiel about the expropriation of his property–by email. And this only some three months after twice saying he could could go ahead and renovate the place, go ahead and occupy it, because the building would not be affected.

As Mr. Gobiel wrote in a letter sent April 1: “We bought this building in Dec 2009 and got occupancy. When we did our due diligence in November I was told 120 Higgins [Gobiel's business] was not affected at all by this Disraeli project by city planning so we proceeded to buy and was allowed to start renovations inside. We applied for occupancy in December 09 and again asked about the bridge and was again told no worries not affected and was given occupancy on the 24th of Dec 09.

The offer the city has made in the letter we finally had emailed to us [is] peanuts to what we invested.”

Well, whaddaya gonna do? Who is John Galt, right? It’s not like the rest of us have businesses on Higgins Avenue or bought houses in Elmwood.

But for those who are concious enough, there are two open houses hosted by the City and Plenary Road consortium next week, one on Tuesday, April 13, 2010 at Bronx Park Community Centre (131 Chelsea Pl.), 4 – 7 p.m. The second is Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at Norquay Community Centre (65 Granville St.), 4 – 7 p.m.

These “Information Open Houses” are billed as having detailed information on “one of Winnipeg’s most attractive and innovative engineering projects.” Representitives from the City and Plenary will be on hand to offer spin and calmly direct your concerns to computer-generated pictures of cyclists and flowers.

I’ve been to about five or six City open houses in my life, but that’s enough to tell me they are a joke: a pointless excerise in manipulation; not a consultation, just a con.

And that’s exactly why people need to go.

David de Rothschild, Agenda21, and the plan to depopulate the earth through Sustainable Development. You may have heard of sustainable development, through OurWinnipeg regional plan. They just won’t tell you the whole story on what SD is all about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7-fSHPWeZg

A Google search on the keywords “Speak Up Winnipeg Sustainable Development” will result in these links:

http://www.google.ca/#hl=en&source=hp&q=Speak+Up+Winnipeg+Sustainable+Development&btnG=Google+Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=Speak+Up+Winnipeg+Sustainable+Development&fp=b40b83f8bae2b677

I highly doubt there exists another form of “Sustainable Development”

Jim

Robert Galston, The Rise and Sprawl

Comparisons to residential schools are out of line…

…this is more like a maximum security prison.

If architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was right when he said “God is in the details,” then the conceptual drawing for Youth For Christ’s recreation centre renders a Godless box.

This is architecture formless and void, employing all the brutal inhumanity of Modernism and none of its dedication to simplicity; setting the bar for horrendousness on Main Street (no easy feat). The winding coils that make up the “feature” entrance comes off like a pathetic whimper. For cheapness, ugliness, and architectural depravity, it is superlative. To build this on the industrial backroads of North Transcona would be a manifestation of society’s declining values. To build this on a prominent intersection at the centre of Winnipeg would be tragic.

If there is any sense at the City (Council, Property, Planning & Development), any attempt to build according to this will be promptly sent back to whatever drawing board it crawled off of.

Talia Joundi, The Manitoban

Major cities across Canada are witnessing technological developments within their transit systems. Transit riders in Calgary, Edmonton, Kingston, Saskatoon and other cities have adjusted to a new “smart” method of payment, which allows passengers to swipe reloadable cards in place of bus tickets.

Winnipeg is also joining the trend, expecting to have buses equipped with Smartcard technologies by early 2012.

According to Tammy Melasko, communications officer with the City of Winnipeg, a technology study has been underway since last year.

“Right now the city is reviewing the technology that’s available, and they’re basically trying to find what the best solution is to fit what the city needs,” said Melasko. “The next step from here on would be to start working on setting up the processes and the infrastructure to support the system,” she said.

The Smartcards have an embedded microprocessor that is detected when the card is brought within the proximity of a card reader on the bus.

“The Smartcard is in a sense like a gift card. It stores a monetary value and then a cost is deducted from it once it is used [ . . . ] — eventually it runs out,” said Melasko.

The Smartcard component is part of a larger, more complex project, explained Melasko. The city estimates a cost of about $15.3 million for completion, with the final step being installation and marketing. Melasko said that the cards would make it easier for riders, sparing them from carrying cash.

According to Melasko, the way the smart pass will be introduced into the system is still under review. “It’s not quite determined yet in terms of how its going to be implemented [ . . . ] [Winnipeg Transit] is looking at a number of options,” Melasko continued.

On Feb. 1, Saskatoon implemented the new technology at a cost of $2.8 million, after having first discussed the issue seven years ago.

According to Russ Dixon, Saskatoon Transit’s special projects coordinator, the system will provide a lot of benefits for the transit and ridership in Saskatoon.

“The biggest benefit for the transit system is the ability to have updated and accurate data as to where your customers are arriving, particularly what routes and what stops they’re getting on. [ . . . ]

New routes and schedules will rely on this data to tweak the system to meet the demands of the ridership,” said Dixon.

Dixon said they are excited about the project, despite some difficulties, “Any time you implement new technology, there’s going to be a few hiccups.”

He said sometimes the system may not read information of a route number correctly, and since the system includes an automatic transfer button, this may lead to a transfer coming up as “invalid.”

“We also have some cards not working and a couple of card readers that we’re having some challenges with as well,” he said.

Many Winnipeg riders remain skeptical of the actual advantages of the Smartcard. Dallas Hansen, co-founder of TRUWinnipeg and former Winnipeg Free Press columnist, has been writing on the topic of urbanism for a decade. Hansen doesn’t think the new technology is necessary.

“I’m not really a champion of Smartcards. I don’t see how cash is inconvenient.” Hansen also mentions concerns regarding civil liberties implications.

“Movement on and off buses can be tracked. They’ve already spent a bundle putting surveillance cameras and microphones on the buses, and as a civil libertarian I find all that deeply disturbing,” he said.

Mark Stewart, a first-year student who rides the bus to the U of M on a daily basis, has no doubt that Winnipeg’s transit system is flawed.

“It’s a gamble,” said Stewart. “The transit system is obviously broken, but how you pay for it isn’t the problem of the system.”

Stewart feels that the money could be invested more effectively.

“You could instead be buying more buses, improving routes, improving infrastructure [ . . . ] It’s a minor convenience for a waste of a lot of cash,” he said.

Hansen would agree on both fronts.

“The transit situation in Winnipeg is pretty dire.”

“Winnipeg has a traditional city grid with a lot of medium- to high-density neighborhoods [. . . ],” said Hansen. “The city is much better situated compared to Edmonton or Calgary to have high transit ridership — but the transit alternative has to be adequate.”

“I think $15 million could buy a lot of toasty bus shelters.”