kar0ling

  “We’ve increased support for municipalities year after year because we know strong communities depend on reliable, stable and predictable funding increases,” Municipal and Northern Relations Minister Glen Simard said in an emailed statement to the Free Press Tuesday. https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/2026/06/23/winnipeg-transit-needs-funding-boost-additional-staff-to-follow-new-provincial-accessibility-regulations-city-report This in answer to City of Winnipeg chair of Public Works Janice Lukes plea for the province to cough up money for the needed upgrades. Listen carefully because these are words I won't often say: I gotta agree with Lukes on this one. If the province is handing down new standards, given their higher capacity for raising revenues, they ought to help the city fund meeting said standards. What Simard fails to acknowledge is that those "year after year" funding increases started at the bottom basement after Conservative cuts and likely h...

A letter to the FreeP. ( They didn't publish it. ) Re: Mayor turns on lights, sirens in urgent call to province for more ambulances, paramedics Winnipeg had 22 homicides in 2025. MPI reports 21 roadway fatalities in the same year. Maybe if you (mayor & council) followed the multitude of recommendations to slow down traffic and add bike lanes, the firefighters and paramedics wouldn’t have to spend so much time scraping humans off the road and as a result wouldn’t be stretched so thin for all the other demands on their time. 7,375 collision victims. 156 pedestrians hit. 130 cyclists hit. 165 serious injuries. 932 minor injuries. 5,995 minimal injuries. Slowing all the traffic down a few kms/hr, adding mere additional seconds to car commutes: how many millions more minutes might we recoup in lives not lost?

Manitoba's budget dropped last week. The premier pasted that huge smile on his face and hauled out some prevaricating hyperbolisms. One of the much touted "gifts" of the budget was free transit for youths aged 12-18 in Winnipeg.* “We have money set aside in the budget to work with municipalities to cover the cost of transit for high school-aged youth,” a spokesperson for the province said Monday. https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/2026/03/23/provincial-budget-includes-free-transit-passes-for-youths-in-winnipeg-four-other-cities  Let's think about this. Young people are *already* riding the bus because they aren't even allowed to have a driver's license until 16 and not everyone gets one right away or at all. So this doesn't provide any new ridership. And the province promises some money to cover the resulting shortfall. We just gotta hope and trust their math/predictions are right. So how is this a gift? It's nice for the teens an...

In June of 2024, a man was just riding his bike to work. Early in the morning when traffic should be low to nonexistent. Wearing a helmet and a reflective vest.  A racing driver lost control and plowed him over.  Anyone who bikes in this city was grieved and outraged.  This stretch of roadway is designated as a bike route. There's a little green sign with a bicycle icon to tell you that. The wide road that invites speeding certainly doesn't. How does a person even drive 159 km/hr on a sleepy residential street within city limits? (Because the street is too damn wide.) For about as long as it has existed, the cycling advocacy organization has identified this stretch of roadway as a route in critical need of remediation to make it safer.  So, within a week, temporary safety measures had been rolled out. Reduced speed limit signs were erected, poly posts narrowed the roadway and speed cameras made sure folks took it seriously.  Ha ha ha ha ha ha. No. 20, 40,...

The fact that governments and respectable news organizations continue to use the social media app formerly known as Twitter has rankled for a while. When news of the AI bot's new feature of sexualizing images nonconsensually came to my attention, I couldn't just rant to friends anymore.  It was time for a letter: Dear Mayor and city councillors This message is addressed to the members who have a listing for Twitter on either their CoW page or their websites.  Please stop. For more than a year, many major organizations have been officially deciding that the reach offered by the social media platform formerly known as Twitter is not worth supporting an almost-trillionaire who is completely comfortable with white supremacist rhetoric, spreading disinformation, displacing human labour with low-quality AI products, and, in only his most recent egregious act, allowing the platform to do non-consensual sexual violence through image manipulation.  https://www.wired.com/story/...

Just move that little blue box off the park and onto the yawningly large and empty parking lot. Everyone is happy! :) A letter to CoW councillors, riffing off a Right to Housing Coalition letter campaign: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/in-support-of-supportive-housing-rezoning on this proposal: https://www.winnipeg.ca/building-development/housing/housing-accelerator-fund/city-sites-supportive-housing  Why do we make parks fight with housing while parking lots get a free pass? There's a lot of horrific “not in my backyard” rhetoric about the proposed supportive housing sites, so I am writing to support supportive housing. Yes, I support rezoning of City-owned properties to support the construction of supportive housing. I also strongly support the sale or long-term lease of these properties to non-profit housing providers at nominal rates. The City has a key role to play in addressing the housing needs of Winnipeg residents and this is an important way to support to our nei...

A response to Winnipeg's Executive Policy Committee regarding their endless delays on making modifications to Wellington Crescent after a cyclist was killed 6 June 2024.  A piece of context that is needed is that this stretch of roadway was identified by the bike advocacy organization as a crucial stretch with inadequate protections for more than a decade before the vehicular murder occurred. Every day, I open the news in the morning, and the frequency of times death due to road violence is one of the items is shocking. What's even more shocking is how blasé this carnage is treated.  Why do we accept these deaths without question? But folks like to focus on the positive, so I'm coming here to be positive. And I'm writing to you from the Netherlands, where I'm feeling really positive about riding bike. To address the road carnage, you're recommending a bike lane on Wellington. I support the recommendation to fund a bike lane. I support reducing the speed l...

Dear Winnipeg elected officials  The North East ride of the Bike to the Future series was supposed to be today, but it was  cancelled because of unsafe air quality.  These rides are meant to raise awareness about the climate crisis, yet the crisis itself has shut these rides down twice this year. If the air isn’t even safe to bike in, how can we keep ignoring the need for urgent change? We can't keep making things worse.  Cancelled bike rides may not seem like a reason to install more lanes but in fact it is: we must reduce car dependency. We must have alternatives. There must be safe and easy walking, biking, and transit choices.  This is a time for courage, not compromise.  Instead of delaying plans for one crucial bike lane, we should be roaring ahead on implementation of multiple active transit projects, no matter how much drivers complain.  When will the elected representatives of Winnipeg make decisions appropriate to the level of crisis we ...

— Presented to CoW’s Executive Policy Committee — I’m a downtown resident and have used a bicycle as my primary mode of transportation year round since 2009. I’m here in support of Item No. 4 Speed Limit Reduction on Wellington Crescent . Full stop. From where it starts to where it ends. And on Kingsway. And Grosvenor. And Stella. And Flora. And Manitoba. And Magnus. And… and... and.... Many previous delegates have demonstrated how such a change is both in compliance with City of Winnipeg’s own documents, plans and policies and how, overall, making changes to both laws and infrastructure to prioritize human life over commuter convenience serves a building more livable city for all residents. Frankly, I’m offended that I need to be here. And I’m offended that all this effort is being expended over merely reducing the speed limit, not even spending money to adjust the infrastructure yet. I’m offended that all this effort is being expended over just one street in a privileged nei...