GO bus schedule, rates ‘soon’: minister
http://www.thepeterboroughexaminer.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1707220
Posted By BRENDAN WEDLEY/Examiner Staff Writer
Posted 1 hour ago
A schedule and fare rates for GO Transit bus service to Oshawa from Peterborough that will begin Sept. 5 will be released “soon,” Transportation Minister Jim Bradley told The Examiner on Wednesday.
The transportation minister was vague when he answered questions about the service as he walked into a provincial cabinet meeting at Fleming College.
“Very soon,” Bradley said.
Bradley added that Peterborough MPP Jeff Leal would likely be the person to release the information on the schedule and fare rates when it’s made available to the public.
“Stay tuned,” Bradley and Leal said as they walked away.
GO Transit spokeswoman Gillian Riddel also said the bus schedule and fare rates would be released “soon.”
Premier Dalton McGuinty and his cabinet ministers met in the computer engineering lab at the college shortly after 1 p.m.
McGuinty held a press conference at the city public works facility on Townsend St. at 10:30 a.m. to announce a $23-million project to widen a stretch of Highway 7 east of Peterborough and improve another section of the highway in the City of Kawartha Lakes.
Leal mentioned the upcoming introduction of GO bus service to this area following the press conference.
“It will be a seamless service,” he said.
“You will buy your ticket in Peterborough, go to the GO train station in Oshawa (and) you won’t have to wait in another line because with the ticket you purchased in Peterborough you hop on a train and get to Toronto, and vice versa for those wonderful people in the GTA area who want to get into the City of Kawartha Lakes and then into Peterborough.”
In addition to the GO bus service and the planned extension of Highway 407 to Highway 35/115, the provincial government has partnered with the federal government to study the potential of creating a commuter rail service between Peterborough and Toronto.
The study, expected to be done in the fall, is looking at issues such as the viability of a rail service to Peterborough and the considerable amount of capital work that would need to be done, Bradley said.
The study will “point to what would be needed to have a rail service here,” he said.
“The results of that study will be made public.”
Local politicians, including Mayor Paul Ayotte and Peterborough MP Dean Del Mastro, heard a presentation from Transport Canada officials on their review of the proposed commuter rail service earlier this week at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference in Ottawa.
Ayotte told The Examiner on Tuesday that he learned from the presentation that the work on the rail line could begin in the spring and train service could begin, hopefully, by 2012.