Integrated Mobility Plan

Burlington’s rural area is host to a mix of uses, from agricultural and industrial to residential communities, and ecological areas. The escarpment running
through the area provides for a unique, hilly landscape. Not only do people in the area want to get around and explore their area, people from Burlington and
the Greater Toronto Area all want to be able to access and enjoy the landscape and opportunities that the area provides. Access to and through the area is not
always easy as existing roads are designed primarily to support car traffic. The Burlington Rural Active Transportation Plan is intended to provide a
framework for how the City can support people accessing and moving through the rural area by walking and cycling. The COVID-19 pandemic saw more people
than ever looking for opportunities to explore the areas around them, and a bike boom where people are cycling more and more. Improving access for people
using active transportation will help to reduce dependence on cars, providing a more equitable transportation system.

During the planning process, the public was engaged on if and how they use active transportation in the rural area, and what kinds of improvements they want to see. The plan builds on this feedback by supporting people taking their dog for a walk, to people getting exercise, and people wanting to be able to more easily get to the Bruce Trail and Greenbelt routes. Feedback from people all across Burlington showed support for the plan recommendations and interest in the City taking initiative to support active transportation users.

The plan considers the different types of users who use active transportation in the rural area, including people of all ages and abilities as well as recreational users, to develop recommendations to suite both kinds of users. This will enable new opportunities for people who may not currently feel safe or comfortable to access the rural area. It will also support and improve conditions for the people who are already using the area.

The recommendations from this plan will be used along with the Cycling Plan to inform the City’s Integrated Mobility Plan which will provide a strategic, coordinated approach for planning and designing the City’s transportation systems.

The Future State of Transportation White Paper is intended to provide the City of Burlington staff, Council, and public with information on new and emerging forms of mobility. While the Integrated Mobility Plan (IMP) speaks to the growing role that transit will play in the city, transit is not the subject for this paper. The key topics in this paper are:

• E-Bicycles and Other Electric Micromobility Devices

• Shared Micromobility (Bike and Scooter Share)

• Car Share

• Ride Share and Ride Hailing

The paper includes a summary of each topic and relevant considerations and challenges, with a focus on how other cities have implemented or developed policies and other identified best practices. Finally, each topic includes recommendations and directions for the role that the City of Burlington can take related to each topic. The paper also considers other emerging subjects for the City to continue to monitor.

Read the White Paper

Read the Integrated Mobility Plan update report presented to the Community Planning, Regulation and Mobility Committee.

Visit the calendar to watch the workshop. All documents are in this document library on this page.

We are at the final stages of creating the City of Burlington’s first Integrated Mobility Plan (IMP). The plan will guide how people and goods move in and through our community for years to come. Through technical analysis and feedback from our engagement process, our team has created a Preferred Solution that will shape Burlington’s future transportation network.

The proposed Preferred Network Solution is a combination of priority networks - networks of streets that prioritize each mode of travel: walking, cycling, transit, cars and trucks. The priorities of each street are dependent on that street’s location within our city, the connections it offers, and the surrounding land uses that each street passes through. Some streets may also be part of more than one priority network.

Visit and explore the recommendations presented in the StoryMap.

Share your feedback now using an interactive mapping survey to tell us what you think about the Proposed Network Solution.

• Two rounds of engagement were completed in the Summer of 2021
• Feedback received from the I’m Walking Here campaign was used to identify key pedestrian connections that are to be contemplated in the development of the Pedestrian Mode Plan
• Feedback received on the StoryMap and Lived Experience Papers has been used by the project team to inform the development of the Integrated Mobility Network Concept

Next Steps

• The project team has developed an Integrated Mobility Network Concept and are in the process of conducting internal and external stakeholder reviews.
• The Story Map and accompanying Network Concept will be released to the public on October 21, 2021
• We will be engaging with the public on the Problem and Opportunity Statements and Network Concept via a survey
• Staff will consolidate internal stakeholder, external stakeholder and public feedback on the Network Concept and present a Recommended Network Concept to City Council at the Special Meeting of CPRM to be held on December 13, 2021.
• Staff will be seeking endorsement of the Recommended Network Concept and direction to proceed with the balance of the IMP Workplan

The City of Burlington is creating its first Integrated Mobility Plan (IMP) to guide how people and goods move in and through our community for years to come. Anyone who lives in Burlington, or travels to or through Burlington, is invited to read any or all five ‘Lived Experience Papers’. The five papers are available here for review and the survey for comments is open until Sept. 7, 2021.

In previous stages of the project, staff has used resident feedback to confirm the IMP vision, values and goal statements. Those concepts generally define the desired transportation system for the Burlington of the future. The next steps of the project include identifying what aspects of our current transportation systems are not in line with where we want to end up in the future. The project page features an interactive story map outlining the project so far, including how residents in Burlington navigate the city and the transportation issues that affect their lives, every day.

Each of the five papers is part of a series of background case studies that explore transportation issues that will affect Burlingtonians in the future as the city grows and develops. Each paper’s fictional character and transportation story is inspired by feedback the City has heard from real Burlington residents over the years. Their stories cover key transportation issues affecting Burlington residents with similar experiences and identifies the challenges and opportunities of each issue.

The reader is invited to answer a series of questions and share their input on the key issues that need to be considered in developing the IMP, and how we can lay the foundation for a safe, accessible, sustainable, balanced and livable future of transportation in Burlington.

The City has recently updated the Cycling Master Plan. It will be presented at the virtual Community Planning, Regulation and Mobility Committee Meeting on Tuesday, March 9, 2021 at 6:30 p.m.

This updated plan is inspired by cycling route planning and design across Canada and focuses on making it easier to cycle around Burlington for everyday trips. To do this, the City needs to build proper cycling structure where people like you live, work and play.

We asked what you thought about cycling, now and in the future in Burlington. You gave us some great feedback and we used that information to refine the recommended cycling network.

The updated Cycling Plan is an important part of the Integrated Mobility Plan (IMP) and will be prioritized, as part of its direction, recommendations and implementation plan.

For more information on how we are shaping the future of cycling in the City of Burlington, visit www.burlington.ca/cyclingplan

Thank you to everyone who added to the map and gave us valuable feedback. You told us:

• what is working well right now
• where there are gaps and
• what and where there are opportunities to improve transportation in Burlington

Your feedback will be grouped to see where there are shared areas that matter to you and common themes that we need to look at and resolve through the IMP.

If you dropped a pin to let us know about a service requests, like pot holes, traffic sign issues or requests for traffic calming please email city@burlington.ca. The Integrated Mobility Plan is a long-term planning project that is not looking at immediate service requests that the City already fixes through service requests.

We will be reaching out to you for feedback again this May, 2021. At this time, you will see Lived Experience Papers. These papers will tell you about the challenges and opportunities of the City’s transportation system by looking at the different needs of you, our residents. We hope these papers will start conversations with you about what we, the City, needs to do to improve the way we all get around Burlington over the next few decades. We will engage with you to understand:

• What frustrates you – what is your biggest transportation challenge?
• How do we fix this – what can we do to help you get around Burlington?

Your feedback will help us when looking the IMP directions and final recommendations we make to Council.

Thank you again for sharing your experiences, thoughts and ideas to make it easier for everyone to get around our city!

Thanks for your feedback! Thank you to everyone who tuned in for the virtual project launch event and participated in the first round of public engagement in November to share what matters most about the future of mobility.

Through the online engagement, we confirmed community values when it comes to transportation and finalized a vision statement for the future of mobility:

Mobility in Burlington will be safe, accessible, sustainable, balanced and livable.

Safe - The movement of people and goods in Burlington will be safe for users of all modes. Special attention will be paid to ensuring the safety of vulnerable users - pedestrians and cyclists – as they are most likely to get seriously injured or killed in an incident. We will not accept transportation-related deaths and serious injuries as a normal part of our daily lives; our transportation system will be designed to minimize the risk of transportation-related deaths and serious injuries from occurring on our streets.

Accessible - Getting around Burlington will be accessible to people of all ages and abilities. There will be no infrastructure or service gaps in the networks of any mode, so each traveller can make a comfortable trip from point A to point B in Burlington, when they want, by their travel mode of choice. Our transportation system will allow our community members to travel comfortably within Burlington and to nearby communities to make sure that all residents of Burlington can fully participate in society, by the travel mode of their choice.

Sustainable - The transportation network will prioritize efforts to encourage transit, cycling, walking, and other non-car modes in order to encourage their use. By doing this, we will prioritize our community’s health, improve the vibrancy of our city, and reduce pollution. We will also electrify our transportation network to reduce the emissions of all vehicles and to make modes like scooters or bikes more accessible for people with reduced mobility.

Balanced - We will prioritize travel by non-car modes. Our streets will allow comfortable travel for users of every mode.

Liveable - Streets in Burlington will be designed to fit within their surroundings. The design of our streets will support the environment and character we want to create in surrounding neighbourhoods and communities.

Some things we heard from the online engagement were:

• Overall, the draft Vision and Values for the IMP were supported.
• Street design should match the surrounding context and character.
• The City should prioritize infrastructure for transit, cycling and walking from the onset of construction in new neighbourhoods.
• The City should protect vulnerable users through improved street and intersection design, plowing snow on sidewalks and bike lanes and designing complete streets.
• The City should improve the connectivity of the transportation network by completing more projects that “fill in the gaps” in our transportation system and give pedestrians and cyclists more direct routes.
• The City should have the infrastructure to make each trip possible by any mode of transportation.
• There was less support for redirecting the budget toward sustainable transportation options, implementing parking fees in congested areas to reduce emissions and taking away space for cars.
• Additional comments received expressed a desire for smart traffic control and traffic demand management to improve the efficient movement of vehicles, along with improved regional connectivity and connections to the GO system.

Feedback received through the survey was used to refine and finalize the draft Vision and Values that will shape the direction and form the foundation of the Integrated Mobility Plan. Your feedback was an important part of this initial phase of the process.

The next round of public engagement, Map your Feedback, is launching on Dec. 15, 2020 and will run until Jan. 22, 2021. We want you to tell us what is working well, where gaps exist and what the opportunities for improvement are for transportation in Burlington. This information will help us to understand the current experience of residents, and identify opportunities and barriers to achieving the Vision for the IMP.

Thank you again for your participation.