I had time to read through the other presentations for the next ML Board meeting. Lesley Woo’s presentation shed a tiny bit more light on where things stand. There is a comment about the tender for study of the Kitchener Line which alludes to “options for journey time and service frequency”. Also a comment which says “some of these options anticipate the construction of a freight bypass....”
This could be read as backsliding to “we might build a bypass” rather than “we will build a bypass”.
Personally, I don’t take this as bad news. It may mean that someone in the Ford government asked the hard question “do we really need such an extreme and costly solution?” .... or ... someone in Legal pointed out that it’s bad form (and presents all sorts of room for legal challenge) if one enters an EA appearing to hold a predetermined planned outcome. Either way, it will take the hard data that a full study will deliver - so IMHO it is time well spent, and hopefully a transition away from the smoke, mirrors, and puffery of the Wynne era to putting real data on the table.
But yeah, no shovels in the ground for a while longer.
- Paul