Natalie Cole Bajet

CROSSING LINES  

Winnipeg bus stops are just small spot marked by a blue sign. Some have glass enclosures and heated seats, but even then, they would be another homeless shelter. The BLUE Rapid Transit Line links Downtown and the University of Manitoba and has stations tucked away between single family housing blocks and industrial buildings. The stations are nearly identical in form and function, distinguished only by nearby Indigenous artworks. However, even these installations fail to create a true sense of place, leaving the spaces feeling generic and disconnected from their surroundings. These desolate and vandalized stations feel unsettling, with only a few souls lingering—one asleep on a heated bench with a shopping cart, another shouting profanities into the empty air.  

But why are Winnipeg’s bus stations built this way? Tucked between rows of powerlines, they hinder dense development around them, treated more like utilities than spaces for people. But bus stations aren’t just infrastructure—they don’t transport goods; they transport people, they transport life. 

Based on the Winnipeg Transit Master Plan 2050, stations along the BLUE Line are envisioned as future mobility hubs, with the transitway eventually transitioning to light rail. But how can stations transform into such hubs when they exist in no man's lands—isolated by crisscrossing roads, rail lines, and power lines? These untouchable boundaries leave little room for the current stations to grow into the envisioned future. 

What if? This question shapes the premise of this research. 

What if stations are no longer merely stops between destinations, but destinations in their own right? 
What if infrastructure—the road—evolved into architecture? 
What if the station bridged neighborhoods once divided by infrastructure—the rail line? 
What if the bus redefined how we see, move, and experience space?