Scathing report calls on council to halt public meetings about London’s Mobility Master Plan

A council-appointed committee tasked with advising municipal leaders about transportation planning wants to put the brakes on gathering more public input about London’s Master Mobility Plan (MMP) until its concerns are addressed.

The Integrated Transportation Community Advisory Committee (ITCAC) has submitted a scathing 10-page review of the MMP, which will become the guiding document for transportation infrastructure projects over the next 25 years.

The ITCAC report warns, “On reviewing the reports and presentations from the MMP team, various factual errors, contradictions, and gaps have been noted. This casts doubt on the thoroughness and competence of any analysis that has not been shared with ITCAC or the public.”

It also raises concern that the locations of public meetings favour established parts of the city over the fastest-growing neighbourhoods.

Among the other criticisms in the advisory committee’s report:

• “There is no evidence that the proposed plans will meet the CEAP (Climate Emergency Acation Plan) climate targets.
• “There is nothing in the proposed plan that specifically addresses safety beyond a guiding principle.”
• “We are concerned that mode share targets appear to have been established in a somewhat arbitrary way with insufficient modeling, analysis, or comparison to more progressive cycling cities to establish the feasibility of more ambitious targets.”

The report concludes by recommending any future public consultation be put on hold until the MMP Project Team reviews and responds to the concerns.

“We're two and a half years into this process. We need to make some decisions,” responded Deputy Mayor Shawn Lewis.

Lewis believes the current round of public input must continue as scheduled.

“It's absolutely ridiculous that an advisory committee would suggest we don't continue to do public engagement,” the deputy mayor added. “The MMP, which I've said to everybody who's asked, is a draft blueprint. This isn't the final product.”

Coun. Sam Trosow is willing to accept the feedback from the council-appointed advisory committee.

“We should be welcoming this form of citizen engagement, and if we don't like what we're hearing, we have to listen to it very, very carefully,” Trosow said. “We can't marginalize people because they've been involved in the [MMP] process”

Trosow believes the public input sessions should continue next week but urges council colleagues not to discount the advisory committee’s concerns about mode share targets and the need to be more ambitious about pedestrian, cycling, and transit infrastructure.

“Council did decide where those [mode share] numbers should fall, [but] we also made it very clear that it's open to review,” he explained. “So, these mode share numbers are not written in cement until 2050.”

Last year, Trosow was among a minority of council who argued for more ambitious active transportation targets in the master plan.

Lewis believes the advisory committee’s recommendation is out of step with public sentiment, “The public is actually pretty hesitant to make the investments that are being made in cycling infrastructure. I see some value in it. I see some value in [the bike lane] on the street where I live, but pacing matters. The percentage of [bike lane] users matters.”

Members of the public were appointed by council to sit on the Integrated Transportation Community Advisory Committee, but recently council voted to disband the ITCAC during a restructuring and streamlining of advisory committees.

That decision has led committee member Vincent Lubrano III to resign in protest.

In his letter of resignation, Lubrano writes, “Our feedback on various issues, most notably on the MMP, has been consistently ignored. It became clear that Council views this Advisory Committee as a roadblock to be removed as opposed to a valued resource to be consulted and that we no longer have the confidence of the Council.”

He also cited concerns about consultation, “While the Council professes to value public input, it has allowed the MMP Project Team to engage in a flawed consultation process which was devised and is being executed without any public input from ITCAC or its Parent Council Standing Committee.”

The remaining members have asked to be appointed to a working group that would advise council and the Mobility Master Plan Project Team until the final plan is approved.

Lewis replied, “To say that their input is more important than the public feedback that we are gathering at these information sessions and through our online surveys right now - I reject that.”

Trosow is open to hearing their feedback, “It's people that really have a lot of expertise in terms of traffic issues and engineering, and I really want to hear what they have to say.”

The Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee will consider the feedback from ITCAC on Tuesday.

Public Input sessions about the Mobility Master Plan continue next week:

• Jan. 15 at Northbrae Public School, drop in from 6:30-8:30 p.m.
• Jan. 16 at Cherryhill Village Mall, drop in from 6-8 p.m.