The missing link in Metrolinx
Metrolinx, an agency of the Government of Ontario under the Metrolinx Act, 2006, was created to improve the coordination and integration of all modes of transportation in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area.
The organization’s mission is to champion, develop and implement an integrated transportation system for the region that enhances prosperity, sustainability and quality of life. Metrolinx launched The Big Move, a Regional Transportation Plan, in September 2008.
According to the agency’s website, its mission today is “To champion and deliver mobility solutions for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area.â€
To this end, it boasts that it is “developing a world-class transportation system alongside the work of the Greenbelt, which protects more than 1.8 million acres of environmentally sensitive and agricultural land in the heart of the region, and the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe, a plan that coordinates population and job growth.
“Crucial to Metrolinx’s success was the development of a Regional Transportation Plan for a seamless, integrated transportation network throughout this region, which is Canada’s largest and among North America’s most rapidly growing. The plan – named The Big Move – identified that the province’s transit and transportation problems are regional in nature and cross municipal boundaries. The solution requires the coordination and integration of transit and transportation systems in order to allow growth to happen and help people and businesses move more easily throughout the region.â€
Said to cost about $50 billion and to be paid for by an as-yet-unapproved funding model, the plan includes a combination of new subways, light rail transit lines and busways in just about everywhere in the region save for Caledon.
In the circumstances, we think this is the perfect time for the Town of Orangeville, as owner of the Orangeville-Brampton Railway, to propose a small experiment designed to fill the missing link.
As matters stand, everything in the Big Move is predicated on mass transit, the model being exemplified by the provision of rail service to the Barrie area, which involved spending $25 million to improve the former CN trackage between Bradford and Barrie so it could deal with GO’s double-decker trains.
As a result, the two Barrie stations (Barrie South and Allendale) have apparently been attracting about 500 riders each weekday morning on a line that carries about 7,500 daily.
Impressive as that sounds, it leaves us wondering whether the loads out of Barrie couldn’t have been handled by three four-unit “Budd cars†– the self-propelled diesel coaches that used to run between Owen Sound and Toronto.
Today, those coaches are about 60 years old but are being refurbished and sold for about $250,000 each.
We would love to hear Metrolinx’s response to a call from Orangeville Council (likely supported by Dufferin and Caledon) for a test involving the purchase of four Budd cars that would provide weekday service between Orangeville and Streetsville with stops at Alton, Inglewood and Brampton and allow passengers to reach Toronto via transfers to GO’s Kitchener and Milton lines.
No one knows how popular such a service would be, but everyone knows that even if it attracted a couple of hundred riders daily that would take some pressure off Highways 410 and 401 at a cost that would be a tiny fraction of the projects Metrolinx is planning.
It would also establish the viability (or otherwise) of the $150-million commitment by the federal and provincial governments to upgrade the CP Rail line to Peterborough and permit a resumption of commuter service in about 2016 on trackage now in such bad shape that freight trains are limited to 10 miles an hour.
