Winnipeg Construction X

[pspeid]

Originally Posted by zalf

It's also hard to think about infrastructure, in the broad sense, when it's working well. Someone could drive all week on smooth roads, then hit one pothole and now "the roads are shit!"

No one thinks about roads until they strike a pothole. No pays any attention to plumbing until the toilet backs up. No one appreciates public health until there's a pandemic.

So true.

[H2man]

I’ve definitely noticed the road conditions getting better over the last several years. I’ve heard this from normally crotchety people as well, meaning the extra money is working. It’s fair to have been frustrated with crumbling infrastructure, and while it’s not ideal to have to sacrifice other public goods, it is the price we are paying for past transgressions. There exists a number associated with the cost to keep road infrastructure at baseline, like it or not, and it is somewhere between what we were paying five years ago and what we are budgeting now.

Fixing the roads aren’t a bad thing. Fixing the roads at the expense of public transit is.

[WinCitySparky]

Yeah I live in the West End west of Arlington and let me say, over the last 4 years, the difference is extreme. Tons of road reconstruction around here has made life miles better for driving and makes the neighbourhoods feel way less dumpy. I’d vote to support road money until the city’s caught up, at which point it’s going to the Arlington bridge replacement anyway. I’d also vote for another 1% property tax increase if it meant helping the city stay solvent and keep this infrastructure deficit from ever happening again.

[Wigglez]

Originally Posted by rrskylar

Off topic I know, but how is what China is doing right now in Africa any better than the colonization of Africa by Europeans centuries ago? Certain African countries are basically owned by China right now!

Oh it's the same thing for sure lol. Don't get me wrong here, I wasn't suggesting fancy roads paid for by China are a good thing - it's just the modern day way of colonizing. You don't need to send citizens there to live and displace the locals anymore, you can just have them mine the resources and ship it out.

[trueviking]

Originally Posted by Winnipegger

To be absolutely clear, despite what most people seem to think, in recent years Winnipeg's massive local and regional street renewal budget has significantly improved the conditions of our roads. In fact, according to the Municipal Benchmarking Network in Canada, based on engineering assessments Winnipeg had the second highest percentage of roads that were in good or very good condition, at 71% of the network. This puts us in second place, behind Thunder Bay. Source on page 185 of this PDF.

People who still complain about potholes and the state of our roads have clearly never been to other Canadian cities and have no frame of reference. The whole "fix the potholes!" mentality in this city is rooted in the 2000s and early 2010s when mayors slashed the roads budget in order to freeze and decrease property taxes. It's taken about 7 years to undo the failures of past elected officials on this particular portfolio.

I don’t disagree. The amount of money spent on roads was adequate and say what you want about the Mayor’s vision, fewer potholes is definitely his legacy. So if $95 million per year was working, why do we suddenly need a dramatic increase to $152 million? If we suddenly had lots more money, ok. But we needed the other two governments to bail us out and we still gave roads a 50% raise. We still cut funding to almost everything else to pay for this unprecedented increase. My question is why suddenly was this so much more of a priority than everything else, when the previous funding level was adequate?

I think they got drunk on their own pothole success. That $50 million could have done wonders for transit, community centres, affordable housing. You name it. There’s a list a mile long of priorities more important than filling 50% more potholes. A budget is a balance. The previous amount was working, so just leave it and fix other things. It makes no sense to me.

[dmacc]

I was under the impression the added road spending was due to federal dollars that was applied for a 2-3 years ago. There are likely strings attached as to what it can be spent on and require a certain amount of municipal dollars attached to every dollar the feds kick in. I believe this is very common practice.

[Winnipegger]

Originally Posted by trueviking

I don’t disagree. The amount of money spent on roads was adequate and say what you want about the Mayor’s vision, fewer potholes is definitely his legacy. So if $95 million per year was working, why do we suddenly need a dramatic increase to $152 million? If we suddenly had lots more money, ok. But we needed the other two governments to bail us out and we still gave roads a 50% raise. We still cut funding to almost everything else to pay for this unprecedented increase. My question is why suddenly was this so much more of a priority than everything else, when the previous funding level was adequate?

I think they got drunk on their own pothole success. That $50 million could have done wonders for transit, community centers, affordable housing. You name it. There’s a list a mile long of priorities more important than filling 50% more potholes. A budget is a balance. The previous amount was working, so just leave it and fix other things. It makes no sense to me.

I understand your frustration, but if you dig into the 2021 preliminary capital budget, you will see that the local and regional street reserves still only account for around $86 million of the "pothole" program. I'm pretty sure the Feds upped the amount of Gas Tax the city received this year which generally needs to be used for road infrastructure, and you will see additional funds from the province for strategic infrastructure funding. You can find this year's capital funding sources on page 277 of this PDF.

We don't know what sorts of strings were attached to the new federal and provincial funding, especially considering the fact that this the new funds were likely "stimulus" funds to help kickstart more construction during an economic downturn. It could be that the province and feds wanted these funds ploughed into shovel-ready transportation infrastructure, so that's what the city used the cash for.

Often times it's not like other levels of government hand the city a cheque and say "Hey, spend this wherever you like!". Generally they have strict requirements on where and what the funds should be used for, so when the city receives a windfall, its not like they can use it to plug other holes (such as recreation centers) unless specially marked for it. Similarly, if the city received funding from other levels specifically for roads, I'm pretty sure the bylaw surrounding the local and regional street reserve prevents elected officials from taking money from those reserves and using it elsewhere temporarily. But you are correct in that the end result is the only thing that has improved in Winnipeg over the last 10 years (from a municipal policy perspective) is the road network at the cost of nearly everything else.

[thurmas]

Road quality is what most voters see and deal with daily and the road quality in the city was so abysmal during the murray and Katz years that Bowman had to get it resolved. Transit ridership library usage ect are not things the majority of joe tax payer suburban voters use very often for better or worse. Look how painfully costly and slow it has been just to build the sw rapid transit lane. It should not cost $600 million for what we got which is just a dedicated lane for a bus you could have built 2 IG fields for that. I don't know why light rail could not have been done and on a cheaper line network setup to the uofm ?

[trueviking]

@winnipegger.

Good info. Thanks. The increase was set in place two years ago when the four year budget was first drawn up, so it isn’t stimulus money.

If there were strings attached, they should have just redirected their own money to better things.

Is what it is. Pothole filling buys votes. Sadly.

[Wigglez]

Random question for the group here:

Do you think Winnipeg's attitude towards our streets is the result of our closest/easiest driving destination being America and its (formerly) well funded highway systems?

I've driven in a number of Canadian cities and I can't say Winnipeg was much worse or better than any of them. But "back in the day" (90's) going down to Grand Forks for some shopping, the American highways were night and day compared to Canadian highways.

If the bulk of Winnipeggers out of town driving experience was to the states then our roads may seem pretty bad overall.

[kattiff]

Originally Posted by Wigglez

Random question for the group here:

Do you think Winnipeg's attitude towards our streets is the result of our closest/easiest driving destination being America and its (formerly) well funded highway systems?

I've driven in a number of Canadian cities and I can't say Winnipeg was much worse or better than any of them. But "back in the day" (90's) going down to Grand Forks for some shopping, the American highways were night and day compared to Canadian highways.

If the bulk of Winnipeggers out of town driving experience was to the states then our roads may seem pretty bad overall.

When you look at cities of Regina and Saskatoon where they now have freeways and interchanges
And their province like puts money for streets or the city puts money for streets .... Winnipeg is pretty bad.
Yes our weather thaw freeze etc doesn’t help but common world!
I still think Winnipeg lacks good signage in the city for places and routes but that’s my opinion even though I kno we are moving to more technology based map guides

[pspeid]

Originally Posted by kattiff

When you look at cities of Regina and Saskatoon where they now have freeways and interchanges
And their province like puts money for streets or the city puts money for streets .... Winnipeg is pretty bad.
Yes our weather thaw freeze etc doesn’t help but common world!
I still think Winnipeg lacks good signage in the city for places and routes but that’s my opinion even though I kno we are moving to more technology based map guides

Sorry, that's a superficial comparison. I can tell you from personal experience many of Regina's major streets are in excellent shape, but many of the residential streets have been ignored for years, and are in just as bad, or worse shape, than some in Winnipeg. It all depends on where you drive. Can't speak for Saskatoon.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Wigglez

Random question for the group here:

Do you think Winnipeg's attitude towards our streets is the result of our closest/easiest driving destination being America and its (formerly) well funded highway systems?

I've driven in a number of Canadian cities and I can't say Winnipeg was much worse or better than any of them. But "back in the day" (90's) going down to Grand Forks for some shopping, the American highways were night and day compared to Canadian highways.

If the bulk of Winnipeggers out of town driving experience was to the states then our roads may seem pretty bad overall.

I think people understand it is what it is when it comes to highways... North Dakota benefitted from lavish federal interstate highway spending during the 50s and 60s boom era in the USA. Canada never had such a program, so our highways are not as great, especially in rural areas.

As far as the cities go though, it really did seem as though our roads were in bad shape for quite a few years. Some areas were really notorious... the streets around Polo Park were in horrendous shape, to name one example. There has been a noticeable improvement over the past decade. But part of the problem is that we're on a bit of a road improvement treadmill... as soon as you fix one stretch of road, another one starts crumbling. And we've added a lot of new streets to look after over the last 20 years, which leads us into the current situation where it's hard to do all the new things you want to do because road maintenance is eating up so much of the budget.

[bomberjet]

Regina spent 1.8 billion on a highway that most people there never use.

[Wigglez]

Originally Posted by esquire

I think people understand it is what it is when it comes to highways... North Dakota benefitted from lavish federal interstate highway spending during the 50s and 60s boom era in the USA. Canada never had such a program, so our highways are not as great, especially in rural areas.

As far as the cities go though, it really did seem as though our roads were in bad shape for quite a few years. Some areas were really notorious... the streets around Polo Park were in horrendous shape, to name one example. There has been a noticeable improvement over the past decade. But part of the problem is that we're on a bit of a road improvement treadmill... as soon as you fix one stretch of road, another one starts crumbling. And we've added a lot of new streets to look after over the last 20 years, which leads us into the current situation where it's hard to do all the new things you want to do because road maintenance is eating up so much of the budget.

I'm afraid I don't share your faith in common sense. I've heard a number of times over the years "why cant our roads be as good as North Dakotas!"

Note: I'm not saying NO ONE can understand budgets, but there's for sure a lot of people that seemed to think if America can fund and maintain highways in NoDak then Canada should be able to do that in Manitoba.
Note2: And yes, infrastructure funding in America is no longer what it used to be given the current state of their country. So over the next decades we should see the quality of their highways match ours (a lil rough).

One major problem with Winnipeg's streets was a number of major/well used streets were in rough shape. While Winnipeg expanded outwards an built new suburban infrastructure and streets, main arteries (like Pembina) were left to rot. A major street tens of thousands take every day falling apart would contribute to the thought that Winnipeg's streets are the worst. However, a lot of less used new streets (like Waverley) were in great condition at the time.

I think one of Winnipeg's major downfalls is our 'quick fixes' are either lacking or non-existent. Anyone remember that piece of rebar sticking out INTO the left lane on Pembina right by Point Road in Fort Garry? That was there for a SHOCKINGLY long time a few years back lol...

[kattiff]

Originally Posted by bomberjet

Regina spent 1.8 billion on a highway that most people there never use.

They don’t now but was built for the future when the city eventually expands... future, something our city seems to lack hence why we still in the 1950s here

[pspeid]

Originally Posted by kattiff

They don’t now but was built for the future when the city eventually expands... future, something our city seems to lack hence why we still in the 1950s here

The bypass is still a bone of contention for a LOT of people in Regina, not just the huge cost but the usefulness. I don't want to go into details here, as this is not a thread about the Regina bypass, but one can easily look up media reports on-line that will show the scope of the debate. It's not the example of "they're so forward looking/we're so backward" that this poster appears to want to suggest.

[ywgwalk]

Originally Posted by kattiff

They don’t now but was built for the future when the city eventually expands... future, something our city seems to lack hence why we still in the 1950s here

Giant freeways and highways is the 1950s

[rrskylar]

Originally Posted by bomberjet

Regina spent 1.8 billion on a highway that most people there never use.

Did the rest of Canada a favour in helping to get through SK a lot sooner!

[bomberjet]

I'll see you in 500 years when regina expands that far out. It is a pretty nice highway from the looks of it.

Is it actually faster to use the bypass or just stay on the old highway when going through on #1?