'Martians' brainstorm to improve area transit
Apr 07, 2008 04:30 AM
Joanna Smith
Staff Reporter
A group of concerned citizens – some wearing Martian antennae – gathered in downtown Toronto Saturday to brainstorm ways to improve life on public transit across the region.
"The goals are really to inform, engage and potentially activate a community of citizens into coming up with solutions in close parallel with the planners," said Mark Kuznicki from Metronauts.
The community group held the first of three "transit camp" events at the MaRS Centre at College St. and University Ave. yesterday to get people talking about solutions to common complaints they have with public transit across the Greater Toronto Area and Hamilton.
While citizens were talking about road tolls, bus-only lanes, longer transfer periods, regional fares and better accessibility, Metrolinx – formerly known as the Greater Toronto Transportation Authority – was listening.
"Today was an unconventional way of reaching out to people here in Toronto and across the region to get their ideas about what should be in our regional transportation plan," said Metrolinx chair Rob MacIsaac, who attended the event. "There were a lot of really passionate people with some very interesting ideas who came."
MacIsaac said the ideas will be taken into account as Metrolinx puts together a draft of its regional transportation plan, which will be released in June.
"We're hopeful that this will be a process that will help to inform our regional transportation plan in a way that we couldn't get from a conventional public meeting where people show up to a microphone and simply state their complaints with the system," he said.
Today was about people showing up with solutions in mind and proposing them, MacIsaac added.
Metronauts has posted several discussion papers on its website as part of an online public consultation.
Kuznicki, who wore red antennae to complement the "Metronauts" theme, said solutions ranged from controversial road tolls to the idea of public transit as a "third space" between home and work.
"We're not just transporting packages," he said. "These are people and people spend a lot of time getting from A to B, and if that is wasted time, then we're wasting our lives."