Transit was on the table Tuesday as Waterloo Region’s top elected officials met with Premier Kathleen Wynne – and while all involved called the meeting a positive, no firm commitments were announced.
Regional chair Ken Seiling for the meeting – which included Wynne, Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca, and the region’s seven mayors – after learning that Wynne had met with local politicians elsewhere in the province.
Part of the rationale, he said, was in response to news that the province would fully fund a light rail transit line for Hamilton – even though the city hadn’t explicitly been asking for that.
“Here was a community that hadn’t even approved a project, hadn’t set aside any money for it, and they were being funded for it,” he said.
“I think that raised peoples’ concerns here.”
The province is funding about one-third of Waterloo Region’s under-construction LRT line, with federal and municipal governments handling the rest.
That’s in contrast to not only Hamilton’s system, but also a line connecting Mississauga and Brampton which Wynne previously announced full provincial funding for.
“When you look at the price tags attached to the ones that are being approved right now, they’re far in excess of anything that we’re doing here,” Seiling said.
Tuesday’s meeting actually spent very little time on LRT – Wynne said there was no “explicit discussion” of a proposed expansion to Cambridge.
“We haven’t entered into a conversation about that at all,” she said.
Instead, the mayors focused their attention on other transportation initiatives, such as GO Transit service between Milton and Cambridge, the oft-promised “all-day, two-way” GO service between the region and Toronto, a proposed express rail line and the new Highway 7.
On the first two points, Del Duca said ownership of the rail corridors necessary for those services remains an issue.
“We will continue to have very direct conversations with both CN and CP – CP regarding the Milton corridor, which would potentially feed into Cambridge.”
Overall, Wynne called the meeting a “very productive discussion” and said she understood the importance of transportation issues to the region.
“If communities are going to grow, they need the support of the province to make those investments,” she said.
The province has said it will fund $16 billion worth of transportation projects in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton area over the next 10 years, with the rest of the province getting a separate $15-billion fund.
