Okay ... for the blind. Here are some of the articles from the Free Press.
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City spending $3M on bike paths
New lanes to serve cyclists, pedestrians
By: Bartley Kives
Updated: April 26 at 10:04 AM CDT
Winnipeg will spend more than $3 million this year to create 70 kilometres of new bike-and-pedestrian paths and bike lanes in an effort to make the city easier to navigate for commuters who don't use cars.
Asphalt and limestone-covered trails will be completed in North Kildonan, Charleswood, St. Vital, Fort Garry and Fort Rouge, new bike lanes will appear downtown and bike corridors will be created on inner-city streets in 2008, according to a trail-creation plan presented to city councillors on Friday.
Two years of grassroots activism by organized cycling groups -- as well as the rising price of gasoline and the high cost of maintaining conventional roadways -- helped convince politicians of the need to beef up the city's trail-creation budget.
"I'm not one to go 'rah-rah city,' but this is great," said Janice Lukes, executive director of the Winnipeg Trails Association. "People are speaking up and elected officials-- who like to get elected -- are listening."
In 2006, Winnipeg devoted $200,000 to trail creation. The trail-building budget increased to $1.5 million in 2007 and now stands at $2.56 million for dedicated paths for bikes and pedestrians, plus $600,000 for shared spaces for bikes and cars on existing roads.
By the end of the year, Winnipeg will have 190 kilometres of dedicated paths and shared bike corridors. The city's existing trail network of 120 kilometres has long been derided as inadequate by commuter and recreational cyclists alike.
"This is long overdue. We're still behind other cities, but we're starting to catch up," said Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz.
All new city roads and bridges will include lanes for cyclists and pedestrians, the mayor said.
But the greater challenge lies in connecting Winnipeg's existing patchwork of trails, especially in older neighbourhoods where it's difficult to acquire land, said Kevin Nixon, the city's active-transportation co-ordinator.
To that end, Nixon said, this year's Active Transportation plan is primarily aimed at eliminating commuter-cycling "choke points" such as the Osborne Street underpass south of Confusion Corner, which can soon be avoided by a new 1.5-kilometre connection to the Red River.
New signs funded by the city and the Winnipeg Trails Association will help cyclists find the new routes, he said.
The trail-creation plan was hammered out over six months at dozens of meetings involving hundreds of volunteers who belong to trail-building organizations as well as lobby groups such as Bike To The Future and the Manitoba Cycling Association.
"The city is going in the right direction," said Kevin Miller, Bike To The Future's co-chair. "We hope to see the momentum carried through in following years, until Winnipeg reaches the level of bicycle infrastructure that other Canadian cities already have."
The Active Transportation plan does not, however, address the largest issue looming in Winnipeg's transportation future: The need to develop some form of rapid-transit corridor parallel to Pembina Highway.
The volunteers who hammered out the trail-creation plan actually listed the southwest Winnipeg corridor as the city's top trail priority, but the city has neither the money to create the busway that would make it possible -- or the land-use deals in place with CN Rail.
The first leg of that busway, from downtown to Jubilee Avenue, would cost $70 million. The city and the province are still deciding whether to devote $17.9 million of new federal transportation dollars toward the corridor.
"If there is a busway, there will be a bike path," said Katz, who personally prefers light-rail transit but does not believe Winnipeg can afford it.
A decision about how to spend the federal transportation kitty will be made before the end of July, the mayor said.
bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca
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