By Staff

November 15th, 2023

BURLINGTON, ON

Burlington has created its first Integrated Mobility Plan (IMP) to guide how people and goods move in and through the city for the next 30 years. The Integrated Mobility Plan Final Report was presented and approved by Burlington City Council on Nov. 14 and approved unanimously.

Several delegations spoke at the Community Planning, Regulation & Mobility (CPRM) Committee in support of the IMP on Tuesday, Oct. 31.

The Integrated Mobility Plan

The IMP is a balance of innovative policies, active programs and capital projects that will guide how Burlington builds and operates a sustainable transportation system city-wide. Together, these initiatives will make getting around Burlington safe, accessible, sustainable, balanced and liveable.

The plan has three key areas for action:

1. 1. Implement transportation network improvements through capital planning and budget,
   2. Guide future studies, plans and capital projects to meet the goals of the IMP and
   3. Enhance and develop innovative programs to support the implementation of the plan.

Key elements of the integrated network approach include:

• • Only widening streets if it improves walking, cycling, transit or safety.
  • Giving the right-of-way to pedestrians, cyclists, transit users or for safety.
  • Focusing multi-modal corridors, like sidewalks, bike lanes and cut throughs, in growth areas.
  • Developing transit infrastructure to improve bus service and reduce transit delays.
  • Developing high-quality cycling lanes and pathways for cyclists of all ages and abilities.
  • Improving walkability in employment, future growth and rural areas.
  • Create new connections for pedestrians and cyclists across the QEW and rail lines.

The IMP provides the vision for the City’s future transportation network and outlines the policy, programs and capital projects needed to meet long-term mobility goals for the next three decades. Council will set and manage how the plan is implemented through the City’s annual capital and operating budgets, and as part of the Multi-year Community Investment Plan (MCIP).

The IMP will be reviewed and refreshed on a 5-year cycle, incorporating updated population and employment forecasts, refining the strategic transportation demand model, and reporting on actual mode share usage and refining targets, where necessary. The IMP provides valuable guidance and input into the 5-year Transit Business Plan and will complement the transit planning.

Anyone who lives in Burlington, or travels to or through Burlington, was encouraged to get involved in the numerous stages of the project on getinvolvedburlington.ca/imp. Resident feedback was used to confirm the IMP vision, values and goal statements. Those concepts generally define the desired transportation system for the Burlington of the future. Staff has also used public feedback to help identify what aspects of our current transportation systems are not in line with where we want to end up in the future. The project page outlines the key dates from the past three years.

When a traffic barrier is put in place on Lakeshore traffic is worse than at a crawl. It just isn’t possible to reduce traffic on this road and with the projected population growth – someone is going to have to find a solution.

Burlington City Council has recognized that relying on a car-centric plan where streets are widened to add more room for cars is not the solution to solve traffic congestion. This creates a transportation network that does not offer other ways to get around, does not support the City’s growth strategy and has negative impacts on the environment and climate by adding to greenhouse gas levels.

In 2019, Council directed staff to form the IMP so that there could be no new road widenings for cars. Instead, the City chose to adopt a sustainable and integrated approach to offer its residents choices in how they get around Burlington.

For more information about Burlington’s Integrated Mobility Plan, please visit burlington.ca/IMP.

Kaylan Edgcumbe listening to a resident.

Kaylan Edgcumbe, Manager, Integrated Mobility:  “The Integrated Mobility Plan represents an innovative approach to integrated mobility planning and provides a framework for responding to future travel demand associated with intensification. It has been designed to meet the 2015-2040 Strategic Plan goals to enable ‘people and goods move through the city more efficiently and safely’ and provide ‘more mobility choice within the city and region through improved public transportation, active transportation and community-responsive growth management to allow more residents to get where they need to go more efficiently.’

“The plan sets a framework to re-balance the existing transportation network through adding people-carrying capacity by offering additional travel options to existing streets and replacing the traditional strategy of creating new auto capacity through road widenings. From conceptualization to implementation and operation, the IMP provides the city with a strategy for transforming mobility to 2051 and beyond.”

The document that sets out the why of an Integrated Mobility Plan was 250 pages long.  Did every member of Council read the report from end to end?  How many residnets read the report?

It is complex – and no matter what is done – there is only so much road space and the city can’t add any more

Not much traffic on the streets – this was before the Brant Museum underwent a major change. With 29,000 new resident expected by 2031 traffic will be much heavier.