The mayors of Toronto and Kitchener got together Thursday to talk up the budding ‘innovation corridor’ between their cities – and to call for more transportation links across that corridor.

Kitchener Mayor Berry Vrbanovic described the relationship between Toronto and Waterloo Region as similar to the one between San Francisco and Silicon Valley in California, or between London and Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

“What they have that we do not is more efficient, effective transit,” he said.

“Transit drives innovation, and innovation drives economic growth.”

Politicians have spent years lobbying for ‘two-way, all-day’ GO Transit service between the two cities.

Provincial transportation officials have said that the biggest hurdle to clear before that can happen is finding a way to acquire or bypass the 30 kilometres of the existing rail line currently owned by CN Rail.

Speaking to reporters Thursday, Toronto Mayor John Tory said that he was also looking at “short-term” ways to improve connectivity between the cities, as he feels it will be a long time before the rail issues are resolved.

Tory also talked up the importance of having a “partnership” between Toronto and Waterloo Region, to better advertise the entire tech cluster on a global scale.

“We can either decide we’re in competition with each other, which would be silly and nonsensical, or we can do what we’re going to do,” he said.

“We’re going to go to the world and we’re going to say that this region, this corridor … can do better in terms of convincing the rest of the world to come here.”

It’s estimated that 61,000 people travel between Toronto and Waterloo Region for work every day.

Nearly all of them use Highway 401 for their commute – which, according to one University of Waterloo professor, is far from ideal.

“Whenever you have a transportation network that is dependent on a single facility … that’s problematic,” Jeff Casello, a civil and environmental engineering professor, said in an interview.

One possible solution to that problem, Casello says, is high-speed rail.

“It won’t be for everybody, but it certainly provides much more reliability in the network,” he said.

The province has pledged to create a high-speed rail line linking Windsor, London, Waterloo Region, Pearson International Airport and Union Station in Toronto.

Casello says he’d like to see the idea expanded to encompass Ottawa and Montreal.