Winnipeg Subway proposal, 1959

Even by today's Canadian standards, Winnipeg is not a particularly large city.  This has always been true: at the 1951 Census, Winnipeg counted 235,000 inhabitants - not a particularly suitable candidate for a three-line subway system.  But Winnipeg's leaders in the 1950s were enamored of Toronto's subway and so they commissioned engineer Norman Wilson, lead designer of the Toronto Subway, to design a system for Winnipeg.  It got as far as the planning stages, but the proposed investment never quite panned out.  The elephant in the room was cost.  Most cities of 235,000, Winnipeg included, simply don't have enough people or population density to justify the cost of a subway.  The closest comparable city is Rochester, New York, population 300,000, which built a single subway line in the 1920s.  Winnipeg wanted three times as many lines, with no comparable right of way available. The design of this map is based on an old New York City Subway map from 1959.  It was an interesting design