Waterloo region aboard high speed rail
Posted May 21, 2017 08:10:11 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Municipal officials are pleased high-speed rail along the Toronto-Windsor corridor is finally picking up steam.
Speaking in Kitchener on Friday, Premier Kathleen Wynne said the province is on track to move ahead with a $15 million environmental assessment for the 250 km/h train service, which will cut travel times between the region and downtown Toronto’s Union Station to a minimum of 48 minutes.
Regional Chair Ken Seiling says linking Ontario’s busiest city with the Waterloo region’s booming tech sector has always been a problem.
“One of our major issues in this region is the ability to move workers back and forth between the Toronto area and this region, and our local tech sector has been suffering because of that,” says Seiling. “So this will allow a lot of two-way traffic, and a lot of business to go back and forth.”
He says the benefits of having easier access to the GTA go far beyond a faster commute. It’s exactly what Kitchener-Waterloo needs to stay competitive, Seiling says.
“[Thursday] I was travelling to Toronto and it took me three-and-a-half hours to go in, two-and-a-half hours to come out in the middle of the afternoon. That’s really a damper on the provincial economy, on our ability to do things here and people to do business in Toronto,” he says. “This is really quite a step forward if it ever materializes.”
