Restoring Transit: My Bring the Bus Back Plan

A senior with a cane should not have to walk an extra ten minutes in January to reach a stop that used to be on the corner. A nurse finishing a late shift at the Grace should not be standing on Portage hoping a ride home still exists. And if you need to get to a hospital in this city, a bus should take you there.

That is not a radical idea. It used to be how Winnipeg Transit worked.

On June 29, 2025, the city launched a new network and cut the system from about 5,100 stops to about 3,800. A Free Press and Narwhal analysis of the city’s own data found the old network’s 87 routes were stripped to 71. Late-night access collapsed with them. Before the overhaul, more than half of all stops still had a bus after 11 p.m. Today about one-third do. The proportion of stops served by late-night routes fell from 55 percent to 32 percent.

The cuts were not spread evenly. Downtown and the North End lost up to three times as many stops as the rest of the city. Those are the neighbourhoods where a car is not sitting in the driveway, and where a longer walk after dark is not a minor inconvenience. Councillors heard it within weeks. On Selkirk and Mountain, service ended after 10:30 p.m., and people were left walking through parts of the North End where that walk is a risk.

Hospitals were treated as an afterthought. At the Grace, feeder routes still reach the front door on Booth Drive, but they do not run on weekends and they stop in the early evening on weekdays. The frequent bus is on Sturgeon Road, a walk that is too far for a patient with a walker and worse in January. More than 1,300 people signed a petition asking for the old front-door service back. The city’s answer, a year later, was a partial extension of one connector route, at about $250,000 a year, that petitioners called half a solution because it still does not serve people coming from downtown and the West End. At Victoria, riders lost the hospital loop and were sent across Pembina. Getting to a clinic should not mean three buses, a taxi you cannot afford, or a phone call to 311 to beg for a stop.

I was the only member of council who voted against the Transit Master Plan. The vote was 15 to 1, on April 29, 2021. I said then that the plan did not deal with safety and did not give council the numbers it needed. I take no satisfaction in being right.

I am not promising to tear the system up. Straighter routes and a bus every few minutes on the main lines are worth keeping. Frequency on the spines went up, and where that is working, I will leave it alone. What I will not leave alone is a network that saved minutes on a spreadsheet and spent them out of a senior’s winter.

Bring the Bus Back does four things.

First, the stops come back where riders need them. Within 120 days of taking office, I will direct Winnipeg Transit to review every stop removed in 2025 against public criteria: hospitals and clinics, seniors’ residences and care homes, schools, and the neighbourhoods that lost the most service. Restorations start with the highest need. The first 150 stops are back in service by the fall 2027 service change.

Second, the hours match the shifts. On routes that serve hospitals and the neighbourhoods that lost late-night buses, the last bus will run after the evening hospital shift change and the first bus will arrive before the morning one. Shift workers and patients should not be the people left stranded.

Third, a Hospital Access Guarantee. Health Sciences Centre, St. Boniface, the Grace, Victoria, Seven Oaks and Concordia will each have a stop at or near the main entrance, seven days a week, from before the morning shift until after the late-evening one. No more moving a hospital stop away from the front door and calling the walk reasonable.

Fourth, a quarterly scorecard. Every stop restored and every hour added, by neighbourhood, published so the promise can be checked.

The city has said restoring a stop on a frequent route costs nearly $22,000 a year. On that figure, Bring the Bus Back costs about $6.6 million a year at full rollout, in a range of $5 million to $7.7 million depending on the final number of stops and routes. No new buses are required. The added hours run outside the rush-hour peak, when buses are already sitting in the garage. City Hall spent years saying the new network would be better, then said putting a stop back was too expensive. Transit is already quietly adding some stops back. I will do it on purpose, openly, starting with the people who need it most.

This sits with the safety plan I have already released, including panic buttons connected directly to police dispatch on every bus within two years. A bus you can reach, and a bus you can ride without fear, are the same promise.

Better days are ahead for Winnipeg with change that makes sense.

Kevin