Ontario Minister of the Environment Laurel Broten has approved a new Class Environmental Assessment (EA) process that is supposed to help the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) make major transit improvements sooner rather than later. The new process will streamline the approval process for municipal transit projects. Projects like those recently announced as part of the Toronto Transit City Light Rail Plan originally followed a more-comprehensive Individual EA process. That process required that, at the beginning of an EA study, a detailed Terms of Reference be developed, reviewed with the public and then approved by the Minister of the Environment. Then the Ministry had to review and approve the EA study once it was completed.
The new Transit Class EA process cuts out both of these approvals and is expected to make the process up to a year faster.
The committee that developed this new Transit Class EA was led by the Municipal Engineers Association (MEA) and included representatives of the Ontario Ministries of the Environment, Public Infrastructure Renewal, and Municipal Affairs and Housing, the Regions of York and Waterloo, the Cities of Toronto, Ottawa, Mississauga, Hamilton, and the TTC. Together they developed changes to the current Municipal Class EA process that already governs three classes of municipal projects—roads, water, and wastewater—adding a section specific to transit. Details at toronto.ca/ttc
