Winnipeg Transit accelerates plan for network overhaul, including more frequent service
City hopes safety improvement efforts like shields, naloxone kits help driver recruitment, retention efforts
More frequent bus service could arrive sooner than expected in Winnipeg after the city's public works committee passed a proposal to speed up plans to transform the transit system.
A report says the city can bring its new primary transit network into service beginning in June 2025, instead of the original target of 2026, at no extra cost.
"That's what we're hearing from the public, is they want high-frequency transit … [and] they want it fast," public works chair Coun. Janice Lukes (Waverley West) told CBC.
Released in 2021, Winnipeg Transit's master plan lays out a 25-year vision that aims to nearly triple the number of households living within walking distance of a frequent bus route — meaning a bus coming every 10 minutes during rush hour and 15 minutes the rest of the day — from the current 21 per cent to 58 per cent.
The new network will be based on a primary transit network composed of a series of "spines" along major corridors, with smaller feeder routes to connect them.
"This service change will be the largest in Winnipeg Transit's history," manager of transit service development Bjorn Radstrom wrote in the report presented to the public works committee.
"This accelerated timeline for this component of the [transit master plan] is the earliest feasible date for implementation."
The public works committee unanimously approved the acceleration plan.
However, increasing transit frequency could prove difficult as long as the city faces a shortage of drivers. In September, transit director Greg Ewankiw said the service needed 95 more drivers to reach its full complement of 1,002 drivers needed for its fall schedule.
The city has tried to streamline its hiring process as part of efforts to step up recruitment. So far this year, the city has hired 118 drivers. But the transit service has also lost 100 drivers so far in 2023 due to retirements, resignations and terminations, according to a separate report delivered to the public works committee on Tuesday.
Currently, about 28 per cent of staff members represented by the Amalgamated Transit Union (388 of 1,374) are eligible for retirement.
Within five years, that will jump to 44 per cent (608 staff members).
"We can redesign the routes all we want, but the service levels needed to serve the demand of the public can't be met without those employees," said ATU Local 1505 president Chris Scott.
Union members are currently voting on a new contract with the city. Results will be announced on Friday, Scott said.
Shields, Narcan spray coming
Concerns about driver safety have also plagued the transit service, leading to problems with recruitment and retention.
The city has put forward two potential designs for shields to protect drivers. One shield needed to be replaced after it was broken during testing, when a transit operator punched it, Lukes said.
At the meeting, transit operations manager Richard Young said both options are being tested in buses on the road.
A decision on the final design will be made some time in spring of next year.
The city also has a plan to equip transit supervisors with the overdose prevention drug naloxone, something harm reduction advocates have called for.
"It normalizes naloxone use. But it also has people talking about substance use in more productive, kind of healthy ways," said Levi Foy, executive director of the harm reduction organization Sunshine House.
Initially, the city had proposed giving Narcan — a nasal spray version of naloxone — to transit drivers, but decided instead to give it to supervisors after consulting with the transit advisory committee, partly due to temperature control issues involved with storing the kits on buses.
Scott says drivers prefer supervisors take on the responsibility of administering naloxone.
"To have to step out of their seat, off the bus to attend to a matter puts their safety at risk," the union president said.
"The inspectors do have some protections — they have a vest, they have other training that an operator doesn't have."
The transit acceleration and naloxone plans still need approval from city council's executive policy committee and from full council.
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