OPINION: City tries to pull a fast one with Transportation 2050 plan

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The City of Winnipeg has had a hard time getting public consultation right. That’s because for 15 years City planning treats people who take part in the democratic process as a mighty inconvenience to their master plans.

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In January 2012, the City auditor released a report on the Assiniboine bike lane fiasco, which concluded that businesses south of Broadway were not honestly consulted about the installation of a protected bike lane or about changes to traffic flow.

“We noted that the public notifications contained very limited commentary to suggest there could be any impact to vehicular traffic and parking … by excluding the full potential impact that the transportation route could have on vehicle traffic, businesses and residents, the interest to participate in the process was limited to those most interested in active transportation.”

In other words, the bike lobby got the heads up, while the rest of us got the shaft.

Council (including four current members) accepted the audit, which laid out how future public consultations were to be done — use plain language that explains what’s at stake, provide proper notice to residents and businesses, and not favour special interest groups.

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Those rules would make sure that bad ideas about urban transportation can be flagged by the people most affected and either refined or discarded.

But since then, the City public engagement process has continually violated the rules council accepted, to rig public consultation results and suppress opposition.

One example is the “Moving on Marion” plan for St. Boniface where the meeting notice said nothing about bike lanes, impact on traffic or losing parking.

Besieged officials at an Open House claimed they had no idea how many parking spots would be removed (as I uncovered, 99 spaces or almost 45% of customer parking), stated the area Biz supported the plan (which was news to the more than 35 businesses I canvassed afterwards), and insisted no bike lanes were being installed until after a council vote (but were built four months later in a Goulet Street resurfacing).

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The latest example of trying to slip a bad idea past the public arose last Monday when the City released the “TRANSPORTATION 2050 – Reimagined Mobility” report.

The pie-in-the-sky strategy is based on wildly unrealistic goals including that “Winnipeggers make 50% of trips by walking, cycling, transit and ride sharing by 2050.”

Sensible people know that try as they might, City Hall can’t change the weather. And in the coldest days of winter and the hottest days of summer, no one with a vehicle is riding a bike or waiting for a bus.

Yet planners envision achieving their “mode shift” target by throttling roadways, making private gas car ownership inconvenient, adding more bike lanes, and launching pilot projects in your neighbourhood to test their schemes on your commute times.

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You’d expect average Winnipeggers would have significant interest to find out more and have their say. Which is exactly what City Hall doesn’t want.

So the same day as the 30-year plan was released, the City announced that “pop-up public events” to gather reaction were being held — starting the next day at St. Vital Centre.

That’s right, less than one day’s notice for people to “be engaged” in Southeast Winnipeg.

Every event except the final one (at the Forks) are at suburban shopping malls, none start before 2 p.m., none are on weekends.

So if you have a 9-5 job, do your mall runs in the morning, live in the inner city, the message is clear — the City staff do not want to see you, hear from you, or answer your questions.

I sent an inquiry asking if the City has a written policy about how much notice is to be given for public consultations, and did not get an answer before deadline. Of course not.

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It’s just a formality, so they can claim that public input was asked for and received, then they completely ignore any public input and go about it exactly the way they had planned all along.

Want more proof? The City Twitter account did not advertise the pop-ups, nor did Mayor Scott Gillingham or Public Works chair Janice Lukes or any other councillor. None of the councillors did as far as I can tell.

Two who voted for the audit recommendations in 2012 told me they weren’t informed about the pop-ups. If they don’t know, they can’t urge residents to take part.

Want even more proof? The pop-up sessions overlap with the city’s downtown bike lane pop-ups and with a public hearing on the Winnipeg Metropolitan Region (Metro) transportation bylaw. This is a deliberate attempt to confuse the public and discourage opposition rising against the plan for our roads and neighbourhoods, some of which is to conform with the broader regional plan of the unaccountable WMR board, of which Gillingham is a longtime member.

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Pretending to gauge public acceptance of a 30-year transportation plan with rushed hush-hushed weekday mall events in the summertime is the complete opposite of the fair and democratic consultation practices Council unanimously promised to uphold.

When the general public finds out they’re being rooked, there’s going to be an outcry that this plan is ”a war on cars” to advance “15-minute cities.”

Instead of dismissing the complaints as a “conspiracy theory”, councillors should explain, why is the 30-year plan being rushed towards approval?

— Marty Gold is a Winnipeg journalist. You can find more of his work at The Great Canadian Talk Show.

Have thoughts on what’s going on in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada or across the world? Send us a letter to the editor at wpgsun.letters@kleinmedia.ca

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