'Transit worsened for me,' Vaughan woman tells Newmarket Metrolinx group
Georgina man urges regional transit hubs

Yorkregion.com
Lisa Queen
Nov. 14, 2017

Maple resident Cesira Ciroli was almost 30 minutes late to an evening Metrolinx meeting in Newmarket last week.

But you’ll have to forgive her. Living without a car for eight years, Ciroli relies on public transit to get around.

On Nov. 8, she left work in the area of Hwy. 7 and Hwy. 27 at 4:30 p.m. trying to make the 7 p.m. meeting at the Newmarket Community Centre near Main and Water streets. She arrived at 7:20 p.m.

“I made all my connections. I wanted to be here, it was important,” she said of the meeting that invited residents to discuss Metrolinx’s draft plan of transit and transportation solutions for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, whose population will jump by about 50 per cent between 2011 and 2041.

“I have choices on different ways to get here but the route I took this evening was the best choice and there weren’t any delays.”

And the situation is not getting any better, Ciroli said.

“In the last five years, it has worsened for me. In the last 18 months, with my new job at Hwy. 27 and 7 from (home in the area of) Jane and Major Mack, it has got progressively worse,” she said.

Her initial 40-minute commute has grown to 90 minutes in the morning and almost two hours in the afternoon.

Ciroli began working closer to home after seeing the commute to her former job near Wilson Avenue and Bathurst Street increase to two hours in the morning and 2-1/2 hours in the evening.

While she said there are many good points about taking public transit, her eyes were opened to the possibility of how good transit could be when she visited Edinburgh, Scotland in the summer.

“I was able to combine their rail system with their local bus system with their national bus system,” she said.

Luke Morrison now lives in Pefferlaw and has done his share of commuting downtown from different areas.

He too expressed concerns with navigating around the GTA. Living in eastern Georgina means having to drive long distances before making it feasible to catch public transit.

Keswick’s housing boom has added more cars to the roads and has made him change his commuting habits from catching the GO train in Aurora to jumping on-board in East Gwillimbury instead.

Rather than having GO trains directed to Union station in Toronto, Morrison wants to see regional transit hubs built in other communities such as Markham.

As a new Uber driver who was recently hired by a student willing to pay $14 for a ride rather than take public transit, Morrison stressed the need to make public transit convenient because people value their time.

About three dozen people attended the meeting and urged Metrolinx to focus on a number of priorities such as integrated fares, extending the Yonge subway to Richmond Hill and ensuring freight trains carrying potentially dangerous goods aren’t rerouted to York Region from the Milton rail line to accommodate more commuter rail traffic.