Signeth Not!
If you receive a friendly e-mail from Paul Hesse, asking you to sign a petition from the Winnipeg “Rapid Transit Coalition”, please do not sign it.
The petition, which can be found here, states in item #2:
“The construction of a rapid transit system for Winnipeg, using dedicated transit ways…”
Of course we all know “transit ways” is just another term for busway.
A busway like Ottawa’s Transitway.
A busway that has not seen spectacular increases in ridership since opening in 1983. One need only look at the Friends of O-Train website to see that OC Transpo is having a hard time managing its buses and therefore keeping its paying customers happy.
Signing this petition means that you don’t quite understand how negatively a bus rapid transit system would have an effect on the growth of Winnipeg.
As fellow TRUWinnipegger Jeff Lowe has written in the piece Hail Rail: The Transit Debate Is Over , since their inception in the early 20th century, motor buses were designed to service sprawl, and a busway in Winnipeg does exactly the same thing.
Mr. Hesse attended McGill University in Montreal. The Montreal Metro has a subway stop that serves the campus. Perhaps he did get to ride the Montreal Metro over there at least once. But maybe he didn’t ride it enough to convince him that the areas around subway stations are economic developers, as former Mayor of Winnipeg Glen Murray said in 2006.
This portion of the $500 million that is being offered to various Canadian cities by the Federal government, Winnipeg would only see anywhere from $694,000 to $5 million. You cannot build any kind of of rapid transit system with that, busway, LRT, or subway for that matter.
TRUWinnipeg has our own petition, that we’d eventually like to host on the petiononline.com site. It’s just a matter of getting all that we want said in petition and having a link to it from this website.
The subway for Winnipeg idea seems to be gaining momentum, ever since the Wilson plan was transcribed four years ago, and as it does this, more and more Winnipeggers will back the plan, and see how a busway will not carry the better future of central Winnipeg along with it.
So please, to borrow the words of former First Lady Nancy Reagan. Just say NO to the Winnipeg Rapid Transit Coalition petiton by not signing it.
Instead, we encourage you. No, we implore you … to join our Facebook site titled Winnipeg has a subway plan—so let’s get digging!
Because we are backing the better plan that’ll put Winnipeg onto a brighter future.
Future generations of Winnipeggers will thank you for the gesture.
Posted: March 6th, 2008 under Transit, Urban Sprawl.
Comments: 2
Comments
Comment from Justin Hartnell
Time: March 10, 2008, 10:47 pm
You write:
“A busway that instead of increasing numbers of passengers, has decreased it.”
Oh? Care to source that?
Last I remember reading, Ottawa’s got the third-highest transit ridership in the country after Montreal and Toronto, and the highest on the continent among cities of comparable size.
Comment from JimJ
Time: April 18, 2008, 12:15 am
Yes, I can point to another website that has shown that BRT causes reductions in ridership figures:
1986-2002 – Ottawa, despite vigorous busway development, has lost over ten percent of its transit system riders despite the $450 million “BRT” investment. Fares initially were raised over $2.00, but have since been reduced in an effort to gain riders – but at the cost of a significant loss of revenue.
[Source: OC Transpo data; analysis by EL Tennyson, PE]
The above is from “BRT” - You Can Build it … But Will They Come?
and the cash fare for OC Transpo is now $3.00. So now because Ottawa has finally realized that BRT is a complete failure, they are now planning for LRT or subway.
Winnipeg would do best to not even repeat the mistakes of Ottawa and go with a subway straight off — http://www.friendsoftheotrain.org/
Write a comment