Transportation critic: Commuters need transit relief now
Posted May 20, 2017 06:24:11 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The Progressive Conservative transportation critic thinks the province’s high speed rail project is pushing the needs of local commuters even further down the road.
Premier Kathleen Wynne was in Kitchener yesterday, to announce a $15 million environmental assessment for a rail line along the Toronto-London corridor in 2025, with bids being issued this fall.
Michael Harris says commuters can’t wait eight years to see if high-speed trains will pull into the station.
“We’ll wait to see the details. This is just the planning phase, but we can’t take our eye off the ball — two-way all day GO,” he says. “We can’t take our eye off that ball that will deliver more immediate transit options for people in the region of Waterloo. That is what they’re desperate for.
Harris says, while he supports any initiative to get better rail access to and from Toronto, he’s worried establishing a public entity to oversee the project might derail plans to bring two-way all-day GO service to Kitchener-Waterloo as soon as possible.
“I’m fearful that this announcement, and to create a new bureaucracy to be in charge of this, will act as a distraction on clear timelines for two-way all-day GO. That is what we truly need here in this community.” says Harris.
He calls the announcement a re-election ploy.
“We’re a year out from the provincial campaign, and if we remember back to 2014, the promises that we heard about two-way all-day GO. In fact, we were told five years,” Harris says, “but it looks like at least 2024 before we’ll ever see a train coming into the region in the morning.
