Slurpees & Murder

Neighbourhood kerfuffles over development proposals are nothing unheard of around here; you can’t open your newspaper or turn on your radio these days without finding residents of one area or another banding together to fight something planned nearby. Condominium and apartment projects, addiction and detox centres, group homes for the developmentally disabled, 7-Elevens (seriously, Island Lakes, what the hell?) — whatever and wherever the proposal may be, you’ll find nervous white people there to insist that chaos and misery will follow.
   
Such is the case right now in South St. Vital, where residents have mobilized in opposition to a city proposal for a pedestrian crossing, a footbridge across the Red River running to the University of Manitoba. And, in classic Winnipeggian fashion, one of their primary concerns is parking; with the new stadium (allegedly) opening this year, homeowners fear their streets will be clogged with outsiders parking there and crossing the bridge to Blue Bombers games. (Temporary driver inconvenience 12 to 14 days per year? Scandal! Outrage! Calamity!)
   
In the interest of fairness, the City of Winnipeg is not itself blameless in St. Vital folk (St. Vitalers? St. Vitalese? St. Vitalians?) getting their dander up. You may recall, two years ago, that Wolseley-area citizens shouted down a proposed footbridge because the City insisted it absolutely had to run straight through the beloved Omand’s Creek Park; a similar scenario is in play here, with several of the proposed routes for the bridge set to chew up popular nearby greenspace. So perhaps — and this is purely conjecture — it would be easier to build support for pedestrian bridges if our decision makers stopped trying to ram them directly through neighbourhood landmarks.
   
I know I ask this question a lot, but how hard does this have to be? Pedestrian bridges are something that we should have been doing a long time ago, in great numbers, all across the city; there are countless places in town where you can see right across the river to where you need to be, but getting there will require at least 20 minutes of driving. (God help you if you’re getting there by bus, you poor bastard.)
   
The really frustrating thing is that we all know full well how much we enjoy and appreciate these bridges once they’re built; the Esplanade Riel, gaudy Salisbury House logo and all, is probably the most prominent local example. We the people alternated between laughing at it and resenting it when it was initially proposed, because what the hell is this dead-fishfly-lookin’ thing they want to spend our hard-earned tax dollars on? But fast-forward a few years past its completion and it’s one of our primary civic symbols, plastered on postcards and promotional materials and anything else we can put it on. And smaller pedestrian bridges around town are no less popular; in all of the years that I’ve frequented the Bridge Drive-In along Jubilee, never once have I overheard anybody say, "You know, this is nice and all, but it would be so much better if it weren’t for that stupid bridge."
   
So I say we should be building as many of these things as we can, all over the place, anywhere they’ll fit. It doesn’t need to be complicated, and it doesn’t need to be expensive. If we decided we wanted to get really fancy with them — let’s go nuts and say $4 million for each bridge, four times the cost of the rejected Omand’s Creek Park proposal — we could build 25 of the damn things and still have spent less than it cost us to extend the Chief Peguis trail by four kilometres last year. I’m just saying.
   
James Hope Howard can’t walk on water, at least not until it freezes first.
   
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