Mississauga should have made transit a bigger priority: McCallion

ABOVE: Hurricane Hazel enters her last year as mayor. Laura Zilke reports. 

TORONTO – Hazel McCallion is just under a year away from retiring as the longest-serving mayor in Canadian history. One of her major regrets? Not paying enough attention to transportation solutions.

In a sit-down interview with Global News Wednesday, the 92-year-old mayor said Mississauga’s rapid development began when gridlock and wasn’t a serious issue.

Governments in the region have started to tackle gridlock, which economists estimate costs billions annually. Toronto city council recently voted to extend the Bloor-Danforth line into Scarborough. The Ontario government is looking at new ways to fund major transit expansion and Mississauga will soon be opening up a bus rapid transit system in 2014. McCallion said the city is also looking at installing Metrolinx-funded light rail transit along Hurontario Street.

“Transit is our major priority at this point,” she said. “Because of all of the economic development we have, it’s very important that we have transit and get people to and from work.”

But sprawling Mississauga presents a challenge for transit planners, McCallion said. To combat that problem, she said, the city’s focusing on building high-density residential areas in the city’s core.

Mississauga has only been a city since 1970. McCallion has been mayor since 1978 and presided over huge growth and large development including the civic centre, the Hershey Centre and the Marilyn Monroe condo towers.

“When you think 40 years ago the city core was a hayfield, pretty well, cows and horses grazing when I was elected mayor in 1978  – and to see what’s happened in our city core is just amazing.”

What does she have planned for her retirement? More work. She plans to lobby the provincial and federal governments for a bigger share of the funding generated by the region, as well as increased power for municipal governments.

“I’m going to continue that fight on behalf of the municipalities of Canada. I’m going to see what I can do to encourage both the provincial and federal government for municipalities to have sustainable funding and more authority to do things that we’ve been prohibited from doing in the past.”