Winnipeg James Armstrong Richardson International Airport

[YYCguys]

Originally Posted by Only The Lonely..

Intercity bus depot might go to airport
Greyhound explores move from downtown
Wed Dec 13 2006

By Nick Martin and Joe Paraskevas | Winnipeg Free Press



GREYHOUND Canada is talking with Winnipeg airport officials about moving the city's downtown bus depot to the airport.
"Their lease is coming up for renewal and they're looking for a new spot. We'd love to have them out here," Christine Alongi, spokeswoman for the Winnipeg Airports Authority, said Tuesday.

She said Greyhound's lease for the Portage Avenue bus depot expires in 2009.

"Greyhound definitely needs to find a new location. They've had discussions with the airport authority," Alongi said. "It's definitely something I know they've explored."

She was unaware whether Greyhound and the WAA have looked at specific pieces of land and road access at the airport, or whether there have been talks about connecting a bus depot to the airport terminal.

"We have lots of land," she pointed out.
It's up to Greyhound to come back to the airports authority with a business proposal, she said. "We're looking for Greyhound to come back and see if it's viable. There hasn't been any talk of design," Alongi said.

But she said Winnipeg Airports Authority CEO Barry Rempel has a vision of the airport as a passenger hub.

"Barry Rempel's vision of creating an airport campus reflects a bus depot, planes, trains, automobiles," she said.

Meanwhile, University of Winnipeg president Lloyd Axworthy said Tuesday he hopes to acquire the city's downtown bus terminal and expand onto the site.

"We're working on it," Axworthy said.

He pointed out that the bus depot has a lease, and emphasized that there is nothing happening imminently. But it is beyond a casual wish list for the university, he conceded.

"There's been lots of talking about them moving out to the airport. It's (the current depot) a great location for us," Axworthy said.

The bus depot is a block east of the U of W's main campus. Axworthy said the U of W has no concrete plans should it eventually acquire the bus depot site.

But he said the university is always interested in expanding its continuing education and community programs, especially for residents of the core area.

MP Pat Martin (NDP-Winnipeg Centre) said from Ottawa he's thrilled that rumours he's heard of the bus depot's move to the airport may be coming true.

"Having the bus depot where it is, is an eyesore, a nuisance, a headache, an absolute disaster. It's so inappropriate for it to be where it is," Martin said.

Having the bus depot at the airport links major transportation services, he said, adding that Winnipeg Transit could extend routes so that lower-income bus passengers would not have to cab it downtown.

Passengers at the downtown terminal Tuesday evening were largely critical of any plan that would have them arriving and departing far from the city's core.

"I don't like that idea," said Torontonian Dave Neron, 22, passing through the city on his way to Kamloops, B.C. Neron said security could be much tighter in a combined airport-bus terminal, a drawback for bus travellers with little to declare.

"People going in-country shouldn't have the inconvenience of going through that," Neron said.

For Bob Lyons, the inconvenience of a bus terminal far from downtown meant the need for extra time and money to go to the hospital. Lyons, who said he was "over 55," comes to Winnipeg from Lynn Lake about eight times a year for medical treatment after having "an arterial bypass." "For me, it's not going to work out," Lyons said, before catching a ride back to his hometown. "This place is central."

Such an attitude would be widely held among northern Manitobans, said a woman who didn't want to give her name, but who said she had lived in Thompson and Lynn Lake.

The woman, now a Winnipeg social worker, said many northern bus users would have difficulty paying for a taxi or downtown shuttle. She said she knew friends who would come to Winnipeg for baseball or hockey games who would give an airport-based bus terminal a thumbs down.

Even the prospect of a brand-new bus terminal at the airport couldn't sway her.

"Have you gone there lately?" the woman said of the airport. "You need a road map. Right now, it's like an obstacle course."
nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca

Hahaha! Winnipeg airport? An obstacle course? Very unlikely! It's such a simple and convenient layout! One road in, one road out! Now, Toronto Pearson airport, there's where you need a road map to get around!

I think a main bus terminal at the airport would be a great idea and to appease the naysayer, have a satellite terminal or a stop where customers can buy tix from a machine somewhere near the present location or in the core; similar to Edmonton where they have 2 terminals, one is the main and the other a small satellite terminal.

[Smron]

Vagrants? How so? What would they be doing at the extremity of the city?

[h0twired]

Originally Posted by Smron

Vagrants? How so? What would they be doing at the extremity of the city?

Hopefully leaving.

[Greco Roman]

Originally Posted by h0twired

Hopefully leaving.

..................to Calgary

[newflyer]

Vagrants? How so? What would they be doing at the extremity of the city?

Hopefully leaving.

..................to Calgary

.... now theres a social program I could really get behind..

[1ajs]

Originally Posted by newflyer

.... now theres a social program I could really get behind..

ya put them to work in the jobs no body wants like tim hortans, seven 11, ect ect ect

[1ajs]

newflyer you ever taken the bus... and never seen vagrants at the bus depo so uhh wtf you going on about

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by 1ajs

newflyer you ever taken the bus... and never seen vagrants at the bus depo so uhh wtf you going on about

You've truly, honestly never seem the local bums who hang out at the bus depot? You must not go there very often, or maybe our definition of the word "vagrant" differs somewhat.

Either way, the more colorful locals hang out there because it's downtown, not because it's the bus depot. Moving it to the airport won't bring them out that way, there's simply nothing there for them. What you will start seeing is an increase of people from northern communities at the airport, but I'm pretty sure that's not what was meant by "vagrants".

It's about time the city starts getting serious about cleaning up the area around the UofW. It's a shame to have such a large urban campus in an area that many students are afraid to walk around at night.

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by freeweed

It's about time the city starts getting serious about cleaning up the area around the UofW. It's a shame to have such a large urban campus in an area that many students are afraid to walk around at night.

Yes, it's another opportunity missed. Maybe Lloyd Axworthy's ego will prove to be the massive force that is required to get some change going in the area.

[Smron]

I don't think you would necessarily see actual vagrants and criminals lounging around at the relocated bus depot, which is what I thought you were getting at. You could expect to see anybody who takes the Greyhound, and that is people from all walks of life.

If this was in fact a problem, I still don't like the idea of trying to plan our airport/bus depot so that middle and upper class people don't see the poor... I'd rather work to fix the "vagrant" problem than try and hide it from the world.

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by Smron

If this was in fact a problem, I still don't like the idea of trying to plan our airport/bus depot so that middle and upper class people don't see the poor... I'd rather work to fix the "vagrant" problem than try and hide it from the world.

Hiding it is probably the best we can do. Obviously the reason for this is to get rid of the sort of people who hang around the bus depot in order to allow for the further gentrification of Portage around the Bay and U of W. I don't really think that bums and drunks have some inherent right to have bus terminals located in places where they can be "visible" and thereby do the greatst possible damage to efforts to reclaim downtown for everyone else.

[rgalston]

Bus depot belongs downtown

In the absence of the quality passenger rail service that once linked Canadian towns and cities, inter-urban bus lines serve travellers without the means or desire to go by airline or automobile.

As a teenager growing up in Portage la Prairie in the late ‘90s, attracted to nearby Winnipeg’s cultural amenities and dusty urban charms, the Greyhound bus was my conveyance. For the hour-and-some ride, I would sit with my walkmen and read, or simply stare out the window and watch farmland turn into suburb, and suburb to city, until the bus finally arrived at the terminal at Portage and Balmoral. For the occasional passengers destined for the airport, the bus would detour to Winnipeg International. It would do the same if anyone wanted off at Polo Park. The rest of us were headed downtown.

In Winnipeg, like in any other city, the bus terminal was a dreary and underwhelming place, devoid of the jet-setting sleekness of an airport concourse, or the soaring grandiosity of a train station. It was cavernous and dull, thanks to neon lights and low ceilings--two characteristics of ‘60s-era design. The bathrooms were perpetually dirty, and the news stand clerks usually ornery.

But it was from this terminal that Winnipeg was at my fingertips. Coming from a small city where the tallest building was a grain elevator, it was always with a sense of wonder that I stepped out onto the street and walked down the canyonesque Portage Avenue. A ten-minute walk would take me to Osborne Village, the Exchange District, or Music Baron on Portage--a popular rendezvous point which to my friends and I what the Eaton’s clock was to past generations. If my destination was beyond downtown, every major transit route stopped at The Bay.

Now, as a new airport terminal is constructed, and the University of Winnipeg announces a flurry of campus expansion projects, the Greyhound’s downtown location is being questioned. While buses aren’t as loud as jet engines, or need a runway for take off, there is talk of moving all the way out to the newly-christened James A. Richardson International Airport.

Not surprisingly, bus passengers are dismayed by this speculatory move. The airport is too far from much more than industrial warehouses, trucking lots and snow drifts. Visitors to Winnipeg--or with a few hours of layover to kill--searching for a hotel, a pub, a coffee shop, or anything remotely interesting, would be in for a disappointment.

It seems the only people that do favour the terminal’s move likely never take the bus themselves. Winnipeg Centre MP Pat Martin, for one, seems happy the Greyhound terminal, along with its jobs and visitors, may soon be leaving his riding. Its current location is “a nuisance, a headache, an absolute disaster,” and “so inappropriate”, he told reporters. Clearly, any pretenses of social justice are lost on the NDP MP of one of Canada’s poorest federal ridings, as Mr. Martin--who travels by air at taxpayer’s expense--seems indifferent to the concerns of financially limited travellers.

For people who actually travel by Greyhound, the current location offers convenience. Downtown has the highest concentration of hotels and attractions, and is equal distance from everywhere else; no matter where in the city you’re headed from the terminal, transit service will be good, and cab fares will be low.

But this is an era of big press conferences, flashy conceptual drawings, and exciting ribbon-cuttings, and pragmatics sometimes get left out in the rapture. Dreary as the bus terminal is, it works fine. It isn’t great, but neither is travelling by bus. What matters is that fares are reasonably priced, and the terminal is central. A facelift would certainly be in order, or perhaps a new downtown location, but it should always remain in the centre of the city.

Recognizing the inconvenience a move to the airport would be for travellers, a shuttle service to downtown is also being pondered. While this may seem like an exercize in redundancy--the shuttle would just take everyone where the bus used to take them at no extra hassle, wait time, or expense--unveiling the new service would make for a great press conference.

Airports, because of their noise and demand for space, have every reason to be at the edge of a city. Bus terminals, like train stations, have every reason to be at the centre.

[Biff]

A new Bus Depot would definately not be a part of the new Air Terminal Building. There is a ton of available land at the airport. At worst it could be located at the south end of the existing terminal. The Museum would most likely occupy the northern end of the terminal with an addition. There is a plan to build some form of office building on the northern fringe of the existing terminal to close the gap between the new terminal and the old terminal and hotel.

I really don't think that the added congestion of buses in and around the Air terminal would be feasable. They would most likely build close to the new retention pond near the Sargent exit. Easy for bus movements.

[harls]

maybe with the Depot there this might open up plans for a direct road connection to the Perimeter?

[Greco Roman]

Originally Posted by harls

maybe with the Depot there this might open up plans for a direct road connection to the Perimeter?

This was in the Plan 2020 (is that what it's called?) which calls for the "Airport Expressway" to connect it to the Perimeter.

[Andy6]

There's no particular reason that some buses couldn't stop both closer to downtown, or right downtown, and at a terminal by the airport. Buses coming into Toronto often stop at Yorkdale first and then at the grimy downtown terminus.

[flatlander]

I just gotta share my favourite bus depot story.

It was the late seventies, I was about 6 or 7, and my dad took me to the bus depot to pick up my Grandma who took the bus into town. While waiting I had to go to the bathroom. My dad was upset because he made me pee about 4 times before we left in order to avoid this scenario. My dad's checking out the stalls, banging on a few doors. They were coin operated back in the day. Dad pops in a nickel or whatever, the door swings open, and there's two guys, one kneeling in front of the other. My dad slams the door shut, takes me home, and makes a return trip for grannie. It took me many many years to figure out what was going on.

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by flatlander

I just gotta share my favourite bus depot story.

It was the late seventies, I was about 6 or 7, and my dad took me to the bus depot to pick up my Grandma who took the bus into town. While waiting I had to go to the bathroom. My dad was upset because he made me pee about 4 times before we left in order to avoid this scenario. My dad's checking out the stalls, banging on a few doors. They were coin operated back in the day. Dad pops in a nickel or whatever, the door swings open, and there's two guys, one kneeling in front of the other. My dad slams the door shut, takes me home, and makes a return trip for grannie. It took me many many years to figure out what was going on.

Winnipeg had pay toilets in the 70s? Seriously?

I don't think I've ever seen a pay toilet anywhere; I've always felt like I was missing out on something fun.

[1ajs]

Originally Posted by freeweed

Winnipeg had pay toilets in the 70s? Seriously?

I don't think I've ever seen a pay toilet anywhere; I've always felt like I was missing out on something fun.

we had public washrooms under the streets in many places that had a set of stairs right in the midle of the sidewalk to get down to...

[harls]

give me a good ol' alley anyday..