GO boosters navigate uncertain landscape
Niagara’s transit czar reassures council the project is still on track
Like a train in the night, Niagara Region’s GO train strategy is rolling forward.
That means some significant decisions for politicans to make are coming up quickly.
In August, Matt Robinson, director of the Region’s GO Implementation Office, will head to Niagara’s corporate services committee armed with a “multisite station development strategy” for consideration.
The plan will include improving the stations where commuters and day-trippers will board GO trains in Grimsby, St. Catharines and Niagara Falls.
Regional council set aside $40 million for the GO project.
“We are now very clearly at the ‘rubber meets the road’ point in the implementation phase of the project,” Robinson told a special committee of the whole meeting of council Thursday.
He said the three sites are all at different stages of development.
In St. Catharines, the Region and city are working together on redeveloping the train station, on St. Paul Street about one kilometre west of the Burgoyne Bridge.
Among the recent announcements were plans to build a new road to open another route to and from the station to the north.
In Niagara Falls, the plan is to expand the Bridge Street station footprint. It’s expected that will transform and bring much-needed energy to the area.
“There will be a lot of information coming forward in August,” said acting chief administrative officer Ron Tripp, before tamping down expectations about what will be released publicly.
“Much of the discussion will have to be in closed session, because much of it will be about land acquisition,” he said.
The GO office is also quietly working on plans to build a station in Lincoln for Phase 2 of the project, and has identified a potential site.
While Lincoln isn’t part of the publicly announced GO plans, he said the proposed stop is being treated as an equal partner, but one that will come on board a little later than the others.
Regarding the Grimsby station, Robinson said the change in government at Queen’s Park resulted in new priorities for Metrolinx, the Crown agency that operates GO in the Golden Horseshoe.
Metrolinx is looking for private investors to partner in new builds as it expands service across southern Ontario.
In exchange for their investment, the firms will be granted rights to develop the area in and around the transit hubs, including those in Niagara.
Robinson told councillors the Region has already spent about $6 million bringing GO to Niagara, much of it on the Grimsby site to purchase about 14 acres adjacent to the rail property.
That money came from a $40million funding commitment Niagara made in 2016 to bring full daily GO service here.
Robinson said the Region was about 10 per cent of the way through design work for the Grimsby station when the work was put on hold by the province’s announcing the funding formula for building new station was changing.
He said the announcement of the initial $40-million investment was a catalyst in getting Metrolinx to speed up implementation of daily round-trip GO service. That includes a single train running to and from Toronto that leaves Niagara Falls at 5:19 a.m.
“Other areas haven’t seen the same early implementation,” he said.
The total cost of the Niagara project, including Niagara’s $40 million, was estimated at $120 million with the province, through Metrolinx, picking up the rest of the tab.