Thursday (5/14) I attended the last of the 17 public meetings conducted to get input from citizens for the review of the 4 Provincial Plans (Niagara Escarpment, Oak Ridges Moraine, Greenbelt and Growth Plan).  This was the second one I attended; the other one being an earlier one in Caledon.  We heard last evening that ~3,000 people in total have attended; and my personal experience was that it was attended by very engaged, thoughtful persons. It was good use of my time; and I was delighted to see King Township residents at the sessions.

By participating in this I had the opportunity to hear from people outside my usual sphere; often we were aligned but different motivations were expressed.  e.g. For me maintaining current urban boundaries is critical; last evening I heard someone tying this to having a diversity of housing in terms of price i.e. affordable. And I met some people who were adamant that additional lands were required for development; they had to listen to me asking how they proposed to fund public transit to this new sprawl.

Invariably people talked about public transit:  the need for it, the lack of it, the frustration of how it is lagging behind development.  An insight about human nature was really demonstrated for me last evening: even when one is very positively inclined to the value of public transit one’s inclination is to be stuck in the way of the world today.  Namely, one talks about public  transit as being layered on top of our current normal means of moving from A to B.  Last evening someone was saying that people will never give up their cars and take transit because transit is too expensive.  When I pointed out the cost for a family to maintain 3+ cars and the opportunity to eliminate a couple of them if one of the income earners could use public transit and if one of the teenagers could use public transit to get to the gym the person was shocked.  Even though we claim to be planning for the next generation(s) we are usually thinking of ourselves today.

If you wish to provide your own written feedback it must be submitted by 5/29; in an earlier post I summarized how you can do so.