October 21, 2021 

GTTC is pleased to announce the appointment of Michelle Berquist to the Board of Directors.

" It’s a honour to become a co-host of this forum where the GTA's most powerful transportation authorities expand their minds and deepen their relationships to strengthen our collective ability to serve."

Michelle joined the City of Toronto in 2019 to initiate and manage a planning unit within the Transportation Services division. Her new and growing team plans for neighbourhoods and precincts where we all have 'freedom to move' – a vision she became committed to during her time at City of Mississauga while leading the development of the City's first Transportation Master Plan.

Michelle teaches the art of planning studies as the instructor of the capstone project course in the University of Toronto Master of Science in Planning program. She always welcomes opportunities to facilitate lifelong learning in the field of 'plangineering', and looks forward to animating this forum of learning and bond-building for the GTA's transportation authorities and leaders as a Board Member at GTTC.

2020 has been a year like no other. Coronavirus has affected our lives in ways we couldn’t have imaged. We had no idea back in February that Smart Cities, Managing Public Digital Infrastructure, would be our last in-person luncheon for the year.

Fortunately, with the help of technology, we held four successful virtual luncheon meetings this year. We were even able to include some out-of-town guests that would not normally be able to attend in-person luncheons.

We finally launched our new website this year, to provide a better and more collaborative experience for our members, and make registration and payment easier. Our website URL, gttconline.com (which we considered updating earlier this year), has now taken on more relevance.

We encourage you to keep the discussions going on our forum page.

For all our current members who paid the full membership in 2020, we will be extending your membership for 2021 and waiving the membership fees for the year.

As we move into a new, and hopefully better year, I would like to thank the Board, our loyal members, and guests, for keeping alive the dialogue of topical issues relating to transportation policy, planning, operation and service provision across the GTA (a 94-year-old tradition).

On behalf of the Board, I wish you all a very Safe and Happy Holiday Season.

We look forward to seeing you online in 2021.

Sincerely,

Michael Chiu
GTTC Chair

GTTC is pleased to announce the appointment of Chris Spiering to the Board of Directors.

Chris is currently with PRESTO as Manager, Scheme Governance & Oversight. He started his career in the private sector in a variety of consulting roles. He joined Metrolinx in 2014 working on the launch of UP Express and subsequently regional fare integration.

Chris is a certified Project Manager and graduate from the Western Ivey Business School.

Recent months have certainly been challenging as we all navigate through a new normal amid the coronavirus pandemic. Unfortunately, there is no telling when things will be "back to normal" in any sense. 

Health and safety is our highest priority, and due to the current safety precautions that prohibit us from hosting in-person meetings, we are in the process of planning a virtual meeting to be held, tentatively, later this month. Details will be provided in the upcoming weeks.

I hope that you are all well and safe.

As the Coronavirus continues to impact all of us, I wanted to reach out to you directly to provide an update on GTTC meetings. 

All future meetings will be postponed until further notice. We will update you once new dates can be confirmed. 

Our original line up for April, would have been the City of Mississauga speaking on rapid transit corridors. We look forward to hearing from them in the near future. 

In the meantime, please take care of yourselves and your loved ones during these uncertain times.

Sincerely,

Michael Chiu
GTTC Chair