"you will never need to sit at a light turing left more then one cycle anywhere in winnipeg"
Obviously a lie, there are places in
Thunder Bay where it can take more than five cycles to clear an intersection.
Winnipeg wasn't really "designed" in any way, much of it predates comprehensive urban planning. The French settlers laid out long lots running perpendicular to the rivers and the city simply maintained that because it is easier than removing entire rural road networks like Calgary does. Windsor is the same way, many of their new suburbs actually maintain the grid. The simple fact is to build a freeway in Winnipeg, because it got so big so early, would require the demolition of thousands of structures and the expropriation of thousands of properties to make it possible. Probably why the ring road is so far outside of the city, instead of bisecting it like the ring roads in Regina, Dartmouth and Thunder Bay. The only place where ours runs through the middle of an urban area is through a neighbourhood that, at the time, was sparsely populated.