Premier’s flip-flop shows value of UPX
What a week for the UP Express. It ought to be considered a rollercoaster rather than the useful commuter train it is.
However, the brief but intense eruption of public opposition to proposed service changes to its schedule is vindication for the UP Express’s very existence and should be seen as a call — a plea, even — for better service.
Last Monday, Premier Doug Ford was in Milton to announce a number of welcome improvements to GO Train service, including 300 new train trips a week across the GTA. Buried in the announcement was a landmine the provincial government and Metrolinx laid and then stepped on: reducing UP Express service at the Bloor and Weston stops. By Tuesday, Minister of Transportation Prabmeet Sarkaria announced he was cancelling the UPX changes.
The UP Express has been on a political roller-coaster since its inception, so this is just another hump. There’s a lot of history here.
The route the train follows has been incredibly important for GTA and Ontario growth. It’s practically ancient by Canadian standards. In 1856, the Grand Trunk Railway completed construction on the leg between Toronto and Sarnia, a route the UP Express follows from central Toronto, crossing the original bridge high above the Humber river and valley, to where a short spur line takes it to Terminal One at Pearson Airport.
An airport rail link was long a big city dream in Toronto, though debated by many, and the old Grand Trunk corridor was a natural route. First proposed as the “Blue 22,” the UP Express ultimately opened in time for the 2015 Pan Am Games but was immediately controversial because of the high ticket prices, on par with other fast airport routes like the Heathrow Express. Riding it back then felt exclusive as it was never crowded. Exclusive, but underused.
Once the price was lowered to a more reasonable rate commuters started using it as the quickest way to get downtown from the west side, for an event or just work, and the Union, Bloor and Weston stops became frequented by non-airport travellers. Pearson is also a major employment zone, at the airport itself and the surrounding hinterland, so many of those workers now found the train a more economical choice. In short: it became useful and crucial for a lot of people.
Last week the UP Express was not exactly a victim of its own success but perhaps punished for it, and commuters of all sorts weren’t having it. Though the service cuts were reversed the next day, it’s a reminder of how important this corridor is and why service needs to increase, not decrease.
Consider the stops that almost had their service reduced.
The area around Bloor Station is one of the most connected transportation nodes in Canada, with the UP and GO trains as well as the Dundas West subway, streetcar and bus station adjacent. Metrolinx says the contract for construction of the underground connection between the two stations was finally, after many years of waiting, awarded last August.
Throw in the Bloor bike lane and West Toronto Rail Path too and it’s a node for all.
There’s considerable “transit oriented development” occurring around the station too, including down into the Sterling Road area, some of it displacing a substantial arts and culture community living or working there. A sign of the incoherence of this government’s transit and housing policies is how easily it undermines those goals by suggesting a service reduction, making all the effort to build, and pain felt by those displaced, for naught.
Farther north at Weston Station there’s also much growth. Walks I’ve taken along Weston Road between Eglinton and Lawrence avenues over the past few years reveal older properties being bought up and readied for denser development projects. If you build it, they will come.
When the Eglinton Crosstown LRT eventually opens, it will terminate at Mount Dennis Station by Weston Road where GO and UP Express trains will stop. Largescale housing projects are proposed here too. All of this will rival Bloor in its connectivity, and the eventual western extension of the Crosstown will only bring more.
Currently the Kitchener Line, as the old Grand Trunk corridor is known, is undergoing a big expansion, with new track and preparation for electrification. The UP Express trains are aging quickly and they are unique in the system, oneoffs. Long-term plans, though vague, are for the UP to be better integrated into the GO network, using similar or the same trains and platforms, but that will require station rearrangements, even rebuilds, at Union and Pearson.
All fine and good, but a reason why this week’s incoherence is cause to worry and keep a vigilant eye on both the provincial government and Metrolinx plans, and to raise our voices occasionally.
The UP Express has been on a political roller-coaster since its inception, so this is just another hump