TRUWinnipeg.org

Here’s a YouTube video done by a blue collar man named Gary, who laments the poor quality of public transit in Winnipeg.

http://www.livevideo.com/video/soho/1AA9DAB417E1472B8B0EF82E77DEFE62/no-transit.aspx

He takes a bit to get started on his rant, but it’s excellent once he does. Gary shows TRUWinnipegger Jeff Lowe’s recent OP-ED piece entitled Time To Grow Up, which refers to the power of rail based rapid transit to build density and ridership rather than allowing buses to cause more sprawl and stagnant ridership in a city.

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Gary: In Winnipeg we don’t even have rapid transit. Here’s a guy called Jeff Lowe, an expert in urban transport.This is what he says, “it’s time to grow up“. He means that Winnipeg should have a rapid transit system.

We got a no transit system. A bus that takes hours and hours and hours to get from one place to another, mainly because of the connections and you freeze your ass off in the Winter time.

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And so in the big city, how do you get from point A to point B if you don’t have rapid transit and you have to be somewhere in the morning to go to work if the people in their cars insist on passing the people on the bikes leaving one zillionth of an inch clearance.

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So the thing is we got a mayor who is anti-rapid transit. He killed the tiny plan they had for a bus rapid transit system.

So we got no transit.

Because, guess what, the mayor doesn’t need it. He has a nice car to ride around in. But for everybody else it’s a royal pain.

Guess what, putting cars before people that’s what I don’t like about it.

Aren’t cities built for people? There you can go to the suburbs where I am, where it’s nice, but the rotten, rotten centre of the city is just like a traffic nightmare.

They should put up big fences and say “Cars prohibited from this area, use your legs buddy”. Or rollerblades. You’ve got zillions and zillions of miles of sidewalks and nothing for bicycles or rollerblades or anything else. And why build for the least efficient mode of transportation.

Walking.

When bikes are cheap, rollerblades are cheap. People can share pathways.
Think creatively. Why are we so far behind Europe?

I don’t get it. Well, anyways so that’s my rapid transit rant. I’m just getting fed up.

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Stop talking Kyoto and all that shit. Just use fewer cars.

I hope that gas goes up to $50/millilitre. And that’ll kill car transportation PDQ.

Maybe people will think of some other way of getting around.

Hmmm, let’s see. So much electricity here in Manitoba. We export it to the United States. We have electricity up the ying yang.

Hmmm electric trains. Something like that anyway. Never mind, never mind.

Stumble! for WP