Talk Is Cheap: How One City Hid Its True Intentions in the Fine Print

This article was originally published, in slightly different form, on Strong Towns member Michel Durand-Wood’s blog, Dear Winnipeg. It is shared here with permission. In-line images were provided by the writer.

The city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, just released the final draft of Transportation 2050: Reimagined Mobility, which is the master plan for transportation policy in Winnipeg for the next 25 years.

According to the website for the project, the plan aims to create a transportation system where “half of trips are made using sustainable mobility options,” “sustainable transportation is the most desirable option for everyday travel,” and people of all ages and abilities can “safely move around without experiencing death or serious injury.”

It says that to reach these targets, the city will do the following:

• Prioritize maintaining existing infrastructure over building new infrastructure.

• Make strategic investments to move more people and goods using the roads they have.

• Support the development of complete communities where people can access their daily needs within a short distance.

• Empower people to travel by their preferred mode.

Currently, over 80% of trips are taken in a car, and the plan’s goal is to reduce that to 50% by 2050. Why?

It’s actually pretty simple. As the Public Works Committee's chair has said, the main reason is financial:

It’s very expensive to design a city and operate a city all around personal vehicles.

— Councilor Janice Lukes, Chair of Council’s Public Works Committee, Winnipeg Free Press, July 15, 2024.

And, like the plan summary says on page seven, “Winnipeg is in a lean financial position.”

So I should be pretty happy then, right? After all, I’ve been writing about the need for this since 2018.

I mean, just look at all these choice quotes in this report:

Space on Winnipeg’s roadways is a finite resource and that we must focus on effective and efficient utilization to continue to move people and goods reliably throughout the city and beyond.

— "Transportation 2050: Reimagining Mobility," page 33

Making more efficient use of what we’ve already built? Zing!

It is not possible to build our way out of traffic congestion; adding more automobile capacity to address congestion leads to more automobile use, which in turn leads to more traffic congestion.

— "Transportation 2050: Reimagining Mobility," page 55

Some city official has read up on induced demand…. I must be dreaming!

It’s increasingly evident Winnipeg cannot afford to continue building outwards and expanding infrastructure while trying to maintain existing infrastructure within the built-up area.

— "Transportation 2050: Reimagining Mobility," page 70

It’s “evident” that we can’t continue to expand infrastructure? Quick, someone tell the mayor and twelve councilors who recently voted in favor of the widening of Kenaston Boulevard! They’ll be so relieved!

And then this ol’ beauty, which almost sounds like I could have written it myself (if my writing style was “boring bureaucrat,” that is):

Once infrastructure is built, it requires ongoing maintenance and regular rehabilitation for it to operate safely and efficiently and reach the expected service life. The requirement for ongoing maintenance is a very important consideration for both existing infrastructure and potential new infrastructure. By maximizing the use of existing infrastructure, the need for new infrastructure is minimized, thereby reducing future maintenance costs. This supports a more financially sustainable transportation system as more people can meet their transportation needs by using a smaller amount of infrastructure and services to its highest potential. This also means that more financial resources can be put towards rehabilitating existing assets, helping to shrink Winnipeg’s infrastructure deficit.

— "Transportation 2050: Reimagining Mobility," page 70

The best part is that they will achieve this by making sure that “going forward, the transportation system will prioritize sustainable mobility options by providing Winnipeggers with more choice” (page 3).

Not clear enough? They’ll do it by “prioritizing sustainable transportation as the mobility options of choice” (page 12).

Missed it? I said they’ll do it by “prioritizing sustainable transportation as the mobility options of choice” (page 46).

But do they really get it? Sure seems like it, because they say that “sustainable modes will have to prioritized so that they can become more competitive with vehicular travel before many Winnipeggers will view them as the mobility option of choice” (page 46).

But maybe they only mean to make a bit of space for them, not to actually prioritize them? Not true! They even clarify that this requires “a shift from accommodating sustainable modes within the right-of-way to prioritizing them so that they can be competitive with personal vehicles” (page 50, my emphasis).

Yeah, but that’s only five times in a 255-page document. Maybe they don’t really mean it.

Except some variation of the concept of “prioritizing sustainable transportation as the mobility options of choice” appears at least 11 more times (on pages 53, 62, 66, 77, 80, 83, 87, 90, 91, 111 and 245, in case you want to check for yourself).

And just so there’s absolutely no confusion, the master plan wants you to know that “prioritizing car-oriented solutions and adding capacity for vehicles often leads to increased car use and dependency, making it more challenging to achieve the city’s goal of attaining a 50 percent sustainable mode share” (page 85).

That goes nicely with “The City should prioritize maintenance of existing roadways before expanding, extending, and adding new roads and bridges” (page 23).

Cool. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.

So, color me shocked when I came across this key objective in the plan:

“Strategically enhancing the road network: While Winnipeg’s efforts must focus on maintaining and transforming our existing infrastructure, we shouldn’t stop all investment in new roads. We must just be more strategic” (page 85).

What the flying flock of seagulls?!? Written like someone who has never even heard of money….

Okay, so just how much are we talking about here?

Oh, you know, it’s only $2.2 billion dollars for building new roads and widening existing ones (page 114), or 42% of the entire spending called for in the plan. That’s 62% of all new spending if you exclude the funds already earmarked for Rapid Transit from the 2021 Winnipeg Transit Master Plan.

So much for prioritizing sustainable transportation.

And fully $979 million of that money is for widening and extension projects before 2033. Compare that to the $987 million in road repairs planned for in the latest six-year capital budget (page 36).

So much for prioritizing maintenance over building new.

Obviously, they must have really made a strong case for the need to expand roads, right?

Well, here’s the thing. The whole “new roads” angle really reads like someone wrote a good plan and then someone else came up behind them with a red marker to insert road expansions as a key priority in order to justify what they already want to do.

It’s completely incoherent in the context of the rest of the plan. To make its case for new roads (and widenings), the report outright contradicts itself, sometimes within the space of a single paragraph.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Contradiction #1: There Won’t Be More Cars, but There Will Be More Cars.

“[R]eliance on personal automobiles is expected to decrease in the future” (page 56) and “[to achieve the mode shift target], the total number of auto driver trips cannot increase above 2019 levels” (page 120)

versus

“in 2050, Winnipeg’s transportation system will need to move slightly more cars than today” (page 85).

Bottom Line

Eighty percent of today’s population of 820,474 people is much higher than 50% of the projected 1,000,000 residents in 2050. Total car trips should decrease.

Contradiction #2: Roads per Person Is Up. No, Wait, It’s Down.

“Winnipeg has continued to build new roadways — today, Winnipeg has approximately 5.2 road-lane kilometers [3.2 miles] per 1,000 residents, which is an increase from the 2010 ratio of 4.5 [2.7 miles] per 1,000” (page 70)

versus

“[a]pproximately 9.3 road-lane kilometers [5.7 miles] serve every 1,000 residents; this marks a decrease from the 2010 ratio of 9.9 km [6.1 miles] per 1,000” (page 36).

Bottom Line

Not only do these statements contradict each other, but they also contradict previously published figures. The 2011 Transportation Master Plan said we had 9.7 km [6 miles] per 1,000 at the time (page 14). You can do your own math for today with the figures on page 33: Taking 8,300 road-lane kilometers divided by 776,000 people makes 10.7 km [6.6 miles] per 1,000 people. So the length of roads per capita has gone up since 2010 by over 10%.

Misinformation #1: The Infrastructure Deficit Is Getting Better.

“[There are] two contributing factors to the decreasing roads and bridges infrastructure funding gap” (page 112, editor's emphasis).

Bottom Line

The city’s infrastructure deficit is up to $8 billion, from about $6 billion five years ago, despite record spending in those years. That info is available on the city’s website. It was also in the news a few months ago. To be crystal clear, the total infrastructure deficit went up by nearly four times what was spent on road repair in the same timeframe. That’s not progress; it’s crisis.

Misinformation #2: Road Conditions Are Getting Better.

“[Reserve funds and a (now expired) multi-level government funding stream] have enabled the Public Service to increase investment in street renewals, leading to steady improvements in the overall condition of roads in Winnipeg” (page 112).

Bottom Line

Less than 30 words later, the report says that the only measure of pavement condition we have actually shows that it’s decreasing, but that we should pay no attention to it (trust us!): “note that Public Works changed the way it measures overall pavement condition in 2019. The decrease in pavement condition from 2019 to 2022 can largely be attributed to this new way of measuring rather than an actual decrease in pavement condition” (page 112).

But maybe we can trust our own eyes. As of July 1, this year saw more potholes on our streets than in any of the last five years. Plus, a Canadian Automobile Association Manitoba survey this year found that 54% of its members had vehicle damage from poor roads. Heck, just two weeks ago the Public Works Committee's chair likened our roads to “rotten teeth.”

Don’t Worry; It’s Strategic!

Now, even the report’s authors probably recognized that their case for road expansion is pretty weak sauce at this point. Nothing a little rebranding can’t fix! Simply call it the Strategic Roads Network, and you can sell anyone on the need to invest in it!

Why do only road expansions get branded as strategic? For the same reason the Kenaston widening is called an “improvement": So people don’t question the need for it — if it’s strategic, it must be necessary!

And yet we don’t find a Strategic Transit Network, a Strategic Cycling Network or a Strategic Sidewalk Network in the plan….

In case you’re wondering which new roads are in the Strategic Roads Network, you can find a map on page 107. If you’re old enough to remember (you probably aren’t), you’ll see a striking similarity with the proposed freeways and suburban beltway from the 1968 Winnipeg Area Transportation Study. The proposed suburban beltway was later rebranded “inner ring road,” so it’s twice recycled now!

Fun fact: That same report also proposed an 11-station subway line from Elmwood to Polo Park. And a different report in the 1960s called for a monorail on Portage Avenue! But we’ve long since forgotten about doing those.

So if you’re wondering why we’re still clinging to road expansion proposals from a study done 56 years ago, don’t question it. It’s “strategic” to build our grandparents’ infrastructure using our grandchildren’s money — how forward-looking!

Why is all this important? Because money.

The goal to have 50% of trips being taken by sustainable modes was originally put forward in the city’s Climate Action Plan, which was adopted by the council (unanimously) in 2018. Except the target date to achieve it was 2030.

Seeing as how the city has made no progress on this goal (this plan still uses the 2019 mode share as the “today” value), it proposes to achieve it by 2050 instead, in large part because of money: “Implementing these networks and services by 2030 instead of 2050 would require a significant increase in spending over the next eight years that would have otherwise been spread over nearly 30 years” (page 124).

In other words, we can’t afford to spend the $1 billion that is planned for sustainable transportation over 30 years in the next eight years because we’re already planning to spend $1 billion in that time to widen roads.

If they’re going to choose one, you already know which one it is. Despite all the nice words in it, this plan is just a license to continue doing the same things that brought us to these problems in the first place.

---

Understanding what your city’s plans and budgets are really saying is important for every advocate. Learn how to cut through the “boring bureaucrat” and find the facts in this session of the Local-Motive Tour 2024: "Parsing Through Your Local Budget to Find Some Real Answers."

---

---

RELATED STORIES