The Champion:
Town’s draft official plan up for feedback next week
New roads not immediate in draft official plan
Milton residents hoping for new roads heading east out of town would have to wait years longer than originally considered under the Town’s proposed update to its official plan.
The draft official plan also doesn’t identify two pedestrian bridges over railroad tracks that were included in the council-approved update to the municipality’s Trails Master Plan of 2007. It does however identify future bike lanes for many of the town’s collector roads as included in the master plan.
The Town will receive feedback on the draft official plan at a special council meeting this coming Monday at 6:30 p.m. at the Town Hall on Mary Street.
Maps included in the draft official plan now identify extensions of both Main Street and Louis St. Laurent Avenue east to Trafalgar Road as only potential routes, perhaps to accommodate growth in the 2021-2031 timeframe.
That’s a downgrade from the draft secondary plan for the future ‘Derry Green Corporate Business Park’ east of James Snow Parkway released to the public for comment last fall. That secondary plan, a final version of which goes to council for approval June 14, had identified both those corridor extensions as “key planned improvements to the transportation system.”
The Town designated Derry Green, also known as Business Park II, in its 1997 Official Plan and staff expect the area to be developed for office and industrial uses starting in less than five years.
Regional Councillor Colin Best had previously expressed hope to Town staff that the extension of Main from Fifth Line to Trafalgar could precede or coincide with Derry Green development. Best saw the extension as a way to ease the traffic bottleneck at the intersection of Main and James Snow, where drivers turn left so they can access the eastbound Hwy. 401.
“At this point, there isn’t appropriate justification for that extension based on the growth that’s happening in the Derry Green,” Barb Koopmans, the Town’s senior manager of planning policy, said following an open house on the draft official plan last week.
Koopmans said the Town has however identified the extensions as potential corridors in the draft official plan to protect the rights-of-way in case future transportation studies determine they’re needed as more growth comes online in those areas.
The Town and Halton Region are planning for approximately 80,000 residents to move into future urban areas east and south of Derry Green between 2021 and 2031.
However, the Region estimates Milton’s population will already be at 147,000 by 2021, due to the three phases of residential growth approved in the 1997 Official Plan. The first two phases, the Bristol and Sherwood Surveys respectively, have been under construction for the past decade. The Town is currently finalizing its secondary plan for the third phase, the Boyne Survey.
Koopmans said the transportation studies did account for cumulative traffic requirements from all those residents and not simply what would be generated by the Derry Green employment area. However, the studies didn’t determine there was a need for the extensions.
Without that backing by independent consultants, the Town wouldn’t be able to recoup the costs of the extensions from developers and taxes would have to pay for much of the cost, which is an expensive proposition, she said.
Maps of the town’s trails system included in the draft official plan also don’t include two connectors across railway lines. The Town’s trails master plan had identified a pedestrian bridge over the CP railway line between Thompson Road and James Snow Parkway as well as one over the CN railway corridor along the Union Gas easement south of Derry Road.
The CP bridge was planned to connect an existing creek-based trail running parallel to Fourth Line in southeast Milton with the insitutional centre north of the railroad tracks, including Bishop Reding Secondary School, the Milton Leisure Centre, Lions Sports Park and the soon to be constructed arts and entertainment centre and central library.
Council deferred the project in December, 2008 when it balked at the $2.5 million price tag. Town planning staff haven’t included the idea in the official plan update, due to the cost and size of structure required.
“In order for us to design a pedestrian bridge that crossed those tracks, it would have to be over two containers high and it would have to span four sets of tracks,” said Bill Mann, the Town’s chief planner.
“So when we revisited it, we felt it was more appropriate people use the roadway system including the Thompson underpass.”
The CN pedestrian bridge was to have connected the planned trails on the Union Gas easement, allowing residents west of the tracks to use the trail to connect to schools, the Milton Sports Centre and the new Community Park east of the railway.
Councillor Best said he still supports the bridge as long as it can be built cheaper than the scrapped CP bridge.
Ward 8 council candidate Zeeshan Hamid said recently he also supports the bridge concept.
The full draft official plan can be found at
www.milton.ca/townhall/projects/lrp/opr.htm.
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(missing the h and an additional slash).
The additional slash though seems to work, that's how the URL looked originally on the town's website, and it loads correctly in both IE or Firefox with either 1 slash or 2 so I left it with the 2.
