GO’s plan to add 700 trips a week ‘a culture shift’

Premier Wynne lauds train service enhancements

BARRIE— GO Transit will add about 700 train trips a week — mostly in the off-peak hours and on weekends — within five years as the regional transit agency works toward its $13.5-billion “transformational,” 10year regional express rail plan.

GO offers about 1,500 trips a week on its regional rails. That will increase to about 2,200 in five years, and the provincial Liberal government is promising that by the time its electrification program is built out in about 2024, there will be 6,000 weekly trains.

Premier Kathleen Wynne went to the Barrie South GO station on Friday to announce the service enhancements that will follow from the Liberal government’s plan to sell off shares of Hydro One to pay for transportation infrastructure.

“We’re talking about a culture shift in terms of the way people move in this region. If we look at other parts of the world where people know it’s more convenient to get on the train, get on public transit, than it is to get in the car, what we see is people doing just that,” she said.

“There’s such an appetite for increased service. That’s what’s driving this shift,” said Wynne.

Regional express rail will provide 15-minute frequencies on electrified core sections of the GO Transit train system, including all day on the Lakeshore East and West lines between Burlington and Oshawa; Barrie between Union Station and Aurora; Kitchener between Bramalea and Union; Stouffville between Unionville and Union Station.

The Stouffville and Kitchener corridors are key to Mayor John Tory’s plan to run SmartTrack commuter trains on electrified GO tracks.

But the GO electrification timeline released Friday suggests that Tory’s SmartTrack plan won’t be built within seven years as he promised. The Kitchener and Stouffville lines won’t be electrified until 2022-23.

There will also be 15-minute peak service on the Kitchener line between Mount Pleasant Union Station; between Lincolnville and Union on the Stouffville line and between Hamilton and Union Station.

The Barrie line is on track for the biggest expansion in the next five years. Its current 70 train trips a week will increase to more than 200. GO will add 24 weekend trips by 2017 and 20 off-peak weekday trips by 2018.

“I can’t overstate how transformative regional express rail will be for this line,” said the premier.

There were no specifics on electrification timelines promised for the Milton and Richmond Hill lines, but the government is committing to 25 more trips between them.

Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca said there will be more specifics on those sections as the government negotiates more commuter service on tracks used and owned by freight giants CN and CP. The Milton line is a CP mainline, CN owns the Kitchener line from Brampton to Georgetown and the Lakeshore West line west of Burlington.

“Until we are in a position to go forward with a freight rail rationalization plan, which we are working on, we will continue to face those challenges. That doesn’t mean the Milton and Kitchener line won’t be seeing more service. They will be but we have to continue to have those conversations,” he said.

The Richmond Hill line needs $1 billion in flood mitigation and a grade separation in the Doncaster area.

A delighted Barrie Mayor Jeff Lehman said his city’s local transit service has seen a 10-per-cent increase in ridership over the past year and it serves the GO stations more directly.

“Because of this announcement today we are going to have to think about how we provide more transit service to Allendale (station) and this location because very clearly there is going to be all-day service and Barrie Transit needs to be closely integrated with that to get people here so they can get to Toronto,” he said.

Lehman called regional express rail “an essential piece” in tackling regional gridlock and noted that Tory agrees with the rail solution.

Del Duca would not say how the government plans to fund other regional projects such as the downtown relief subway and the Hurontario LRT given that the GO expansion is expected to eat up all but about $3 billion of the $16 billion earmarked for transit over the next decade.

Those projects are in various states of readiness, he said.