Local officials are calling for more GO trains running between Waterloo Region and Toronto, and Ontario’s premier says she’s on board with the idea.
“I think getting full-day, two-way GO service … has to be a priority for us. We’ve said that’s the kind of investment that we are going to make,” Kathleen Wynne said during a Monday interview with CTV News.
Wynne did caution that while she wanted to see improved service running “as soon as we can make it happen,” nothing is imminently in the works – and won’t be until the province finds a way to pay for it.
“We need to make sure that we have the capacity to fund those kinds of increases,” she said.
Currently, two GO trains depart downtown Kitchener for Union Station in Toronto on weekday mornings, and return to Kitchener in the evening.
That’s not enough for the liking of [oliticians from Waterloo Region and Guelph, who have banded together to call for more service.
The City of Kitchener has completed a business case for the project, which has been sent to provincial transportation officials.
“We have to be prepared, looking well into the future,” Kitchener Mayor Carl Zehr tells CTV News.
“There’s a cluster here, an innovation cluster that is rivalled perhaps only by Silicon Valley. We have to make sure that we’re taking full advantage of that.”
Zehr says the proposal is about making it easier for people to travel between the two centres without relying on their cars – particularly tech employees who may choose to work in one city and live in the other.
Communitech CEO Iain Klugman agrees, saying more frequent two-way service would be the “backbone” to draw tech workers out of downtown Toronto.
“Really what we need is to have something that’s going to take a lot of the stress off the 401 and move in a more civilized fashion between the two cities,” he says.
Although new trains are coming to GO Transit’s Kitchener line in January, they will only travel between Toronto and Georgetown.
