Draft Recommendations and Comments – Wolseley to Downtown Walk/Bike Project Preliminary Designs

The Pedestrian and Cycling strategies call for bikeways along Westminster/Young/Balmoral/Granite Way from Dominion to Osborne, and along Wolseley from Omands Creek to Furby. The Wolseley neighbourhood has embraced some of the highest levels of sustainable transportation seen in the city. Residents of the West Broadway neighbourhood have some of the lowest car ownership rates in the city. The residents of these neighbourhoods, and the thousands of Winnipeggers who travel through these neighbourhoods have displayed a strong demand to create a complete, connected, and dense bicycle network as directed in the Pedestrian and Cycling Strategies. This project needs to deliver on that demand.

The Wolseley to Downtown Walk Bike Project provides an opportunity to turn this vision into reality. If we truly want to embrace the city’s strategic goal of providing “a transportation system that supports active, accessible and healthy lifestyle options”, then we must use this opportunity to reshape the transportation system in Wolseley and West Broadway from one centered on travel by car to one that provides quality options to people on foot, bike, or riding on transit.

Bike Winnipeg has put together a draft set of recommendations/comments on the preliminary designs that have been released as part of the Wolseley to Downtown Walk/Bike Project.

The recommendations that follow (and in the linked document) are conceptual only, and represent our best effort to meet the desire for improved walking and cycling called for through the first phase of public engagement under this project. Widths and treatments may need to be modified as information becomes available. We are open to dialogue and suggestions that improve the designs that this project will provide., but our goal is to provide safe transportation options…, we feel that the final designs chosen for the neighbourhoods need  to meet legitimate, well expressed demands for improved  safety, better bike network connections, and cycling comfort throughout the areas covered by this report.

Recommendations on Wolseley/West Broadway Bikeways

Essentially we make the following recommendations:

1. Choose option 1 on the east portion (
   1. Convert Westminster/Young/Balmoral to a north/east bound one way from Langside to Granite Way
   2. Convert Granite Way into a one-way from Balmoral to the Building Blocks parking lot entrance (or possibly as far east as Colony
   3. Convert Balmoral to a northbound one-way between Granite Way and the Broadway back lane
   4. Convert Langside to a southbound one-way between Broadway and Westminster, and move the southbound #10 bus from Balmoral to Langside
   5. Utilize Transit Priority Signal Activation to manage left turns off of Broadway onto Langside
   6. Move the proposed north/south neighbourhood greenway hrough West Broadway from Langside to Young
      1. Coordinate planning for this project with the upcoming study looking into bikeway connections to the southern end of the U of W.
   7. Remove parking on Westminster/Young/Balmoral from Arlington to Granite Way to allow for the installation of Protected bike lanes
   8. Add a two way cycle track on the west side of Young to provide northbound access to the proposed Young St Neighbourhood Greenway
      1. This would be in addition to a one-way southbound cycle track on this section of Young
      2. Access to the northbound two-way would need to be facilitated at the stop sign on Westminster at the Young/Balmoral Hall intersection.
   9. Use raised bike lanes to maximize the balance between bike lane width and separation from traffic in constrained areas
   10. Add a one-way southbound protected bike lane along Furby from Broadway to Cornish
       1. This will provide the connection from Westminster to Wolseley for people biking west on Westminster towards Wolseley and Raglan Road
       2. This will hopefully cut down on counter flow bike traffic in the Sherbrook protected bike lane between Broadway and Wolseley
2. Choose West option – Traffic calming along Wolseley and raised bike lanes along Westminster
3. Add protected bike lanes along Wolseley between Sherbrook and Maryland
4. Add raised bike lanes along Westminster between Sherbrook and Maryland
5. Upgrade the Sherbook Intersections of Westminster and Wolseley to protected intersections to facilitate left turns off of Sherbroo
6. Add bike boxes at the intersections of Wolseley and Westminster at Maryland to facilitate left turns onto Maryland.

Detailed Recommendations (again conceptual, and in draft format)

Your Voice Needs to be Heard

Please read through these recommendations and take the online survey for the project to provide your feedback on the preliminary designs that have been put forward. Your Voice Needs to be heard.

Wolseley to Downtown Walk/Bike Project (City of Winnipeg) – Link to Online Survey.

This is a draft. Please feel free to comment with your thoughts and ideas, we will be finalizing our recommendations next week and then sending them through to the design team. Your input is welcome.

We are working on uploading a gallery of conceptual cross sections based on our recommendations.