About MTSO
Founded in 2023, More Transit Southern Ontario is a grassroots organization of transit advocates from across the GTHA and Southcentral Ontario.
“MTSO was formed from the need to build a network of transit advocates from the region to work towards more frequent, reliable, and accessible transit networks.”
Jonathan Lee How Cheong
Co-Executive Director
Our Advocacy Goals
- Support planning new communities and major developments around transit from the beginning rather than attempting to retrofit service after growth occurs.
- Advocate for the right transit mode for each corridor, balancing capacity, demand, cost, travel times, and long-term growth to deliver the greatest benefit for communities.
- Promote smarter, more cost-effective approaches to transit infrastructure delivery, using proven construction methods such as cut-and-cover, elevated structures, and surface transit solutions where appropriate to deliver projects faster and at lower cost.
- Protect existing and future transit corridors and rights-of-way, ensuring space is preserved for future rapid transit expansions before development makes projects more difficult or expensive to deliver.
- Advocate for stronger transit priority measures, including widespread implementation of active transit signal priority, dedicated lanes, and other tools that improve speed and reliability.
- Prioritize practical, efficient, and scalable transit solutions, ensuring limited public resources are used to build networks that serve more riders, more effectively.
- Ensure transit is accessible for everyone, creating a system where all riders can travel independently, safely, and with dignity regardless of age, ability, or mobility needs.
- Improve the everyday accessibility experience for riders, including accessible stations and stops, reliable elevators and ramps, clear wayfinding, audible and visual announcements, and better passenger assistance.
- Prioritize accessibility in all transit planning, design, and operations, ensuring new infrastructure is built inclusively and existing barriers are systematically removed.
- Engage with people with disabilities and accessibility advocates throughout the decision-making process, ensuring transit improvements reflect the lived experiences of riders.
- Recognize accessibility as a core measure of transit quality, ensuring that a world-class transit system is one that everyone can use comfortably, safely, and independently.
- Increase transparency and accountability in transit project planning and delivery, ensuring governments and agencies understand cost drivers and take action to prevent unnecessary overruns.
- Support reforms that allow more transit projects to be built faster and more affordably, enabling communities to receive the transit improvements they need without excessive delays, cost overruns or cancellations.
- Ensure public transit investments deliver more kilometres of service, more frequent operations, and greater benefits for riders, maximizing the impact of every dollar spent.
- Promote cost-effective approaches to transit expansion while maintaining high standards for safety, accessibility, and reliability, learning from successful transit systems around the world.
- Ensure transit remains affordable and accessible for all riders, recognizing that cost should never be a barrier to accessing employment, education, healthcare, and community services.
- Support discounted and subsidized transit fares for groups that face financial barriers, including seniors, youth, children, students, and low-income residents.
- Advocate for a permanent program for a fair and integrated regional fare system—not dependent on annual funding renewal—that allows seamless travel across transit agencies without financial penalties for transferring between services. Fares should be based on the journey, rather than the type of transit vehicle.
- Reduce the financial burden of regional travel by eliminating unnecessary fare barriers, making transit a competitive and attractive alternative to driving.
- Ensure fare policies balance affordability with sustainable transit funding, maximizing ridership while maintaining high-quality service.
- Ensure transit is fast, frequent, and reliable across the entire network, from regional rail and rapid transit services to local bus and streetcar routes.
- Expand transit priority treatments on surface routes wherever delays and congestion affect service, ensuring buses and streetcars can move efficiently and provide dependable travel times.
- Treat speed and reliability as core transit objectives to inform infrastructure and service planning decisions that help transit compete effectively with private vehicle travel.
- Use measurable metrics such as travel time, on-time performance, frequency, and service reliability to guide advocacy campaigns.
- Prioritize the day-to-day rider experience in all transit planning and decision-making, ensuring transit is comfortable, reliable, accessible, and easy to use for everyday trips.
- Advocate for clear, consistent, and intuitive wayfinding across transit networks, helping riders navigate stations, stops, transfers, and services with confidence.
- Improve the quality of transit stops, stations, and vehicles, with investments in maintenance, cleanliness, reliable heating and air conditioning, accessibility, shelter, seating, lighting, safety, and passenger amenities.
- Support station and platform design improvements that enhance safety and reliability, including platform screen doors where appropriate and other measures that improve the passenger experience.
- Advocate for consistent, predictable, and adequate funding for both transit capital projects (infrastructure, fleet renewal) and day-to-day operations (service improvements, and state-of-good-repair investments), ensuring agencies can maintain and expand service without relying on short-term funding arrangements.
- Ensure transit operating funding grows alongside ridership and service needs, enabling agencies to provide frequent, reliable, and affordable service across their networks.
- Promote sustainable transit funding models that provide certainty for long-term planning, allowing agencies to confidently invest in infrastructure, workforce development, and network expansion.
- Protect future transit rights-of-way as part of greenfield development planning, ensuring that regional rail, rapid transit, and frequent transit services can be delivered efficiently as communities grow.
- Encourage major housing and employment growth to be concentrated along higher-order transit corridors, creating complete communities with convenient access to rapid transit.
- Ensure new major destinations including employment centres, hospitals, stadiums, post-secondary institutions, are planned and developed on the higher-order transit network to maximize accessibility by public transit.
- Align urban expansion with existing and planned regional rail and rapid transit infrastructure and protecting corridors for future transit extensions from the outset of the planning process.
- Integrate land use and transportation planning so that transit investments support sustainable growth while new development generates strong ridership and vibrant, connected communities.
- Champion the expansion and modernization of GO Transit into a world-class regional rail network by advancing all-day, two-way service, electrification, improved connectivity, and better integration with local transit systems.
- Advocate for GO extensions and new stations where they can provide the greatest regional benefit, connecting underserved communities and supporting sustainable growth.
Our Mission
To advocate for more connected, affordable, frequent, and reliable transit networks for people across Southern Ontario.
Our Values
To give our best every day through impactful advocacy and campaigns that strengthen our communities.