The following comments are…

The following comments are provided on behalf of the City of Vaughan:
- Due to timeline constraints, these comments have not been reviewed by Vaughan Council and we would request the ability to submit additional comments as may be brought forward by Council in September 2021.
- The City is supportive of the Greater Golden Horseshoe Transportation Plan and the overall vision, goals and objectives. We wish to bring MTO’s attention to our concerns and issues as they relate to on-the-ground implementation of some of the proposed actions. Local and Regional municipalities are often tasked with providing critical connections, implementing regulations, and directing development in ways that support provincial transportation initiatives. As a result, the City looks forward to continuing to work with MTO at the implementation stage to best reach the vision and goals of the GGH Transportation Plan.

Getting People Moving on a Connected Transit System
- There appears to be a concentration of higher order transit planned in the 407 corridor near Vaughan (the proposed Burlington to Oshawa and Orbital Line). Assuming this higher order transit will eventually use the established 407 Transitway corridor, municipalities should be given greater ability to plan for new active transportation links across the Parkway Belt lands / Highway 407. In Vaughan’s case, our major intensification areas are located north of Highway 407 and the Parkway Belt / Highway 407 lands represent a major barrier to active transportation connections to and from the future transitway.
- There are proposed higher order transit lines identified in Metrolinx’s 2041 Regional Transportation Plan located within Vaughan which are not identified on the mapping, including proposed bus rapid transit on Major Mackenzie Drive and proposed Bolton Rail Service. Vaughan continues to plan for and support the implementation of these higher order transit lines as confirmed through previous Council decisions and the Vaughan Official Plan, and would encourage MTO to consider these important components of the future transit system, especially as they are identified in the 2041 Regional Transportation Plan.

Enhancing Capacity and Performance on Congested Roads
- Though the options identified for this pillar propose infrastructure, services and policies, typically for long-range planning, infrastructure projects (partially due to size and complexity) tend to dominate the available resources during implementation. An equal focus must be placed on the services and policies, because simply providing infrastructure will not accomplish the objectives of the Transportation Plan. Users of the transportation system have decision “inertia” towards their current preferred travel method that will need to be overcome to result in a significant shift towards more sustainable modes of travel.
- The proposed policy: “Exploring options to manage passenger travel demand and congestion” should include stronger policy language. Simply exploring options will likely not be enough to manage travel demand, options must be implemented. In addition, both incentives (e.g. flexible work hours) and disincentives (e.g. pricing) should be considered equally.
- Please note that Vaughan Council withdrew endorsement of the GTA West Corridor on March 10, 2021. Given that the GTA West Corridor is shown as a “new planned and conceptual corridor”, MTO may wish to consider sensitivity analysis which does not include the GTA West Corridor in it’s analysis to determine the impacts in the event that the GTA West Corridor does not move forward.

Goal 1: Improve Transit Connectivity
- Please note that transit connectivity should go beyond just “providing connections”. In a transit context, frequency of service is equally important to providing service, so if a new service / connection is provided without concurrent increase in the frequency of service, or concurrent increase in frequency of feeder service, the new connection is unlikely to substantially draw users towards transit.
- For the proposed action: “Developing a best practices guideline document to support updates to the e-bikes framework” – The BPG and e-bikes framework should aim to unify regulations at a provincial level - different regulations for different municipalities (in the GGH specifically) will result in non-compliance and confusion by the public and will significantly hamper efforts to apply different regulations to the various classes.