What the heck is Sam Katz doing?

Ever wonder why our illustrious mayor is suddenly big on light rail transit? Don't forget, one of the first things he did on assuming office was to cancel his predecessor's rapid transit plans, and then he grudgingly went ahead with BRT. Now, with BRT half-built, he wants to change gears again and move towards light rail. It seems the Free Press is confused by this too:

If city council endorses Mayor Sam Katz's bizarre insistence that it's light rail or nothing for Winnipeg, there will still be time and opportunity for everyone to come to their senses and reverse course. Unfortunately, however, there is no evidence the mayor and his inner circle are interested in listening to reason. It's damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead -- to where, nobody knows.

The mayor is hanging his hat on a consultant's report that claims light rail is not nearly as expensive as previously thought, and that it offers additional benefits in terms of the environment, community development and mobility. He also has faith the private sector will help finance the project, with aid from a special fund in Ottawa, but it's all just a hope and a prayer at this point.

If history teaches us anything, it's that cost projections for large projects in a faraway future are always wrong; but that's not really the point Mr. Katz and his crew are missing. The issue before council next week, when it votes on the mayor's program, is whether the city is needlessly and foolishly losing time and possibly money for a perfectly good plan for a southwest rapid transit corridor.

Source. Either Katz is a colossal idiot, or he's diabolically clever and is trying to sabotage rapid transit entirely so as to focus on stuff like this. I'll leave it to the reader to decide which.

For what it's worth, I'd love to see light rail transit here, but it seems a lot more realistic to build BRT first (especially since it's partially finished now) and use it as a stepping stone. It seems to be working well in similarly-sized Ottawa.

Transit cuts drive Americans back to cars

It couldn't come at a worse time, yet governments are slashing budgets for public transportation:

Just at the moment when the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill has generated two months of non-stop headlines about the dangers of oil dependency and the federal government in America finally has something of a platform to call for Americans to wean themselves off oil dependency, cities, counties and states across the US are decimating their public transit systems and forcing people, willy-nilly, to return to their cars.

In most countries, one might expect fiscal collapse to lead to more people taking public transport. After all, while buses, trams, light rail, and underground systems are less convenient than private vehicle usage, and while using such systems oftentimes involves sharing one's environs with too many people and too many competing body odours, at least it's cheaper than filling up one's car with gas and driving miles each day. Utilising public transport is a sensible, relatively painless way to penny pinch.

But, in America, at least in part because public transport has not, in recent years, won the hearts and minds of the politically influential classes in many regions of the country, these systems are peculiarly vulnerable to cuts during the down-times. In fact, a poll released in early April by the Economist indicated that, faced with declining government revenues, more than twice as many Americans would want federal public transit subsidies cut versus reductions to highways expenditures. At a local level, too, many Americans' relationship to public transit systems is tendentious at best. And hence the tragic irony: as local governments continue to haemorrhage revenues, and thus have to look for evermore ways to tighten their belts, so public transit systems suffer.

From the Guardian. I suppose this may change as gas prices increase, but it's remarkable how resistant Americans seem to be to this sort of change.

Does the idea of a public bus company have legs (er... wheels)?

In a recent post I suggested that the province should let Greyhound go and provide the service itself. Is this crazy? Don't know, but someone has written a letter to the editor advocating the idea. And it's not unheard of, even in Western Canada; STC was created by order-in-council in 1946 and has rendered yeoman service for Saskatchewan's rural residents ever since. This in a province that has far more roads, per capita, than Manitoba. Here, you'd just need a few main lines (the Trans-Canada, Yellowhead, one through the Interlake to Thompson, one from Brandon to Flin Flon, and one up to Pine Falls or Bissett might do the trick), with branch lines to other centres as needed. Of course, the initial outlay would be more than the $15 million Greyhound is demanding so that they'll continue taking people from isolated communities to their medical appointments, but I think it might be worth it, at least until we can start building up the province's railways again.