Track meet
Brampton council debates future of $1.6B LRT,
It was a night of drama in Brampton, in the fitting setting of the Rose Theatre, where residents packed the house Tuesday night to plead with councillors for and against a provincially approved LRT route up the city’s centre.
“It’s baffling to me that we are actually considering saying no,” said Nikita Brown, referring to the $300 million to $400 million committed by the province to Brampton’s share of the $1.6-billion HurontarioMain LRT project.
Almost 500 people turned out for the debate, which was held at the city’s downtown theatre to accommodate a crowd that couldn’t fit into Brampton City Hall’s council chamber.
Brampton Board of Trade chair Jaipaul Massey-Singh said he does not want the city to have “the moniker of the only municipality in Ontario to turn down transit funding.” Meanwhile, NDP MPP Jagmeet Singh said the LRT plan “is good for the city,” and it’s not just the Liberal government that supports it.
Almost 60 people were scheduled to address council on an issue that has divided Brampton over the past five months.
Some opponents of the Main St. route, such as Gloria Berger, repeated the contention of several councillors that the route simply doesn’t have the potential ridership to support an LRT.
“The studies we have commissioned do not support an LRT through downtown Brampton,” Berger said, questioning why the city wasn’t demanding that Queen’s Park support a route that better suits the city.
She suggested Mayor Linda Jeffrey, a former provincial Liberal cabinet minister, has been doing the bidding of the government she used to be a part of.
Jeffrey supports the route and has warned repeatedly that turning down the Metrolinx-approved plan for the project might mean also leaving $300 million in provincial funds on the table.
“Whose agenda is this?” Berger asked, adding that council should demand that the committed funds “be used for an alternative route.”
Jeffrey herself left an opening for alternatives during a break in the debate.
She told reporters who asked whether she’d be willing to work with councillors on an alternative if they rejected the route: “I’m flexible.”
The experience of Toronto and other municipalities that have turned their backs on Metrolinx plans is that the province has proved willing to transfer funding to alternative projects, albeit with extra costs being borne by the municipality.
That was the case with Toronto’s Scarborough subway project, which replaced an LRT plan that the province had promised to fund fully.
Paul Brennan, vice-president of Coca-Cola Refreshments Canada, a company that has a large presence in Brampton, told the meeting he supports the Main St. route.
“Gridlock makes us less productive and efficient,” he said, adding that the Main St. LRT will help get cars off the road and make the movement of goods through the increasingly gridlocked city much more cost-effective.
Many residents told councillors their decision on this would be the biggest they would ever make.
Tuesday’s debate, with a decision not reached at press time, was the culmination of months of fighting between Jeffrey and the majority of her council, as well as adversarial community groups that had lined up on both sides of the debate.
Only 5.6 kilometres of the proposed 23.2-kilometre Hurontario-Main route would be in Brampton, while Mississauga (where council has approved that city’s leg of the project) is guaranteed 17.6 kilometres.
The LRT would connect to several GO train stations as part of Metrolinx’s larger plan for a transit network throughout the region.
Those objecting to the Main St. route did so in part because it would take the LRT through a heritage area of the city.
Opponents proposed a variety of other options that would wind through Brampton, potentially in- creasing the length and cost of the line and increasing commute times to the GO hubs.
The project, if voted down entirely by Brampton council, would run north-south through Mississauga along the city’s Hurontario spine, with light rail trains turning around at Steeles Ave., just across Brampton’s border.
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