Businesses can weigh in on municipal transit plan

Photo Source: Ontario Growth Secretariat, Ministry of Municipal Affairs

The City of Peterborough is talking transit and reaching out to the community to hear how we would like our transit system to evolve in the future.

There is a demand from within our community to be operating on all cylinders in order to take advantage of the opportunity of an expected increase in population growth.  The backbone of that economic utopia of jobs, business growth, and sustainability, is a coherent transportation network that allows for the effective movement of goods and people.  One piece of that strategy is the City’s transit network.

As a part of a review to update the Peterborough 2012 Comprehensive Transportation Strategy, the City is conducting three concurrent studies:

• The Transit Route Review
• Long-Term Growth Strategy
• Downtown Transit Hub Plan

According to the study website, the Transit Route Review will assess how transit services and the route network should change in the near term to improve travel times and provide better connections to destinations.

The route review will:

• Assess the performance of Peterborough Transit based on a peer review of other similar communities;
• Analyze the travel patterns and needs of the community to re-structure the route network;
• Critically analyze the transit system and each route in detail to identify service gaps, unmet needs and opportunities for improvement;
• Develop and evaluate route network alternatives designed to improve connectivity and respond to unmet needs and travel patterns; and
• Recommend the most appropriate transit route network together with a service plan and multi-year estimate of resource and financial requirements.

Regarding the Long-Term Growth Strategy:

• The Peterborough 2012 Comprehensive Transportation Strategy identified a vision and long-term goals for the city’s transportation system. One major goal for the transit system was to increase the share of trips being made by transit from 4.3% to 6%.
• The long-term transit growth strategy will identify key actions that the City can take to achieve its goals for transit. It will include long-term route network recommendations, required investment, and a recommended phasing plan. To identify the capital investments and operating improvements needed, the long-term transit growth strategy will test a variety of route network scenarios to identify the best options for meeting the City’s long-term transit goals.

And the Downtown Transit Hub Plan:

• The downtown transit terminal was constructed in 1974, and was initially designed for smaller buses serving fewer transit trips than the system carries today. The terminal in its current configuration is not suited to today’s operating environment.
• The Downtown Transit Hub Plan will review and evaluate candidate sites for the hub along with concept plans and identify the most suitable location and design for a downtown terminal.

The Peterborough Chamber membership has been very clear that, as employers looking for employees they want their community to have a transit system that is efficient, timely and reliable.  This transit system should also connect all economic nodes in a community such as the Peterborough airport, as it currently does the post-secondary, industrial parks, shopping nodes and downtown core.    

There is also great value seen in a plan that has the ability to be regionally integrated. This idea was discussed at a committee convened by MP Maryam Monsef.  City transit solutions should include hubs that can accept connections from more rural routes and rural options should use outer edge city
connections to move people in and around the city.   

We encourage our Chamber members to offer their thoughts on a new transportation strategy.
There are several ways we’d like to see you engage:

1. Email your comments to our Policy Analyst, Sandra Dueck at sandra@peterboroughchamber.ca
2. Go to www.ptstudy.ca and complete the survey.