Considering the demands from across the GTA for relief from clogged roads
and packed buses, is a new rail line to the airport really the next best
thing for Toronto? Federal transport minister David Collenette, the
Liberal MP for Don Valley West, believes that not only will the rail link
move air travellers between downtown and Pearson airport in 20 minutes,
but its construction would also result in improved service for transit
patrons.
Earlier this year,
four private consortiums bid for the right to build and operate the line,
and although one has since dropped out, the winner may be declared in less
that two months. Collenette says, “I had originally said I’d like it
done by this fall. Hopefully we’ll be able to make an announcement soon.”
The successful bidder
would have to make arrangements with landowners near the airport, as well
as with the freight and passenger train companies that use the route now.
Pearson airport’s huge new air terminal is set to open in 2004 and the
transport minister projects that special light-rail vehicles could start
running “in the 2007-2008 timeframe.”
As for the critics
who say that Ottawa should be backing other gridlock-busting schemes in
the GTA, Collenette says that hundreds of millions of dollars of new
transit spending were announced this year by the federal, provincial and
municipal governments. Much of this money will allow GO Transit to enhance
service on all its routes, including hourly service on the Georgetown
commuter line which parallels the airport link.
Some $200 million in
taxpayer funds will aid the private consortium, but it will be spent on
shared tracks and some major work to separate two railway lines that now
cross at the same level. The transport minister says that money
associated with this project is aimed also at Union Station and the busy
Lakeshore rail line.
“The rail link will
benefit from a number of big capital projects in the GO plan... but those
projects to go ahead no matter what.” He says that critics of the plan
“overlook the fact that the rail link itself will be a privately financed
and operated venture, and will not take any capital funds away from
transportation priorities that (have already been) determined locally.”
“The federal
government’s role is not to determine what is a transportation priority as
far as municipal transit is concerned, but it is my responsibility as
Minister of Transport -- responsible for Canada’s airports -- to ensure
that we have good transit link-ups between city cores and the main
airports. You cannot build a state-of-the-art $4.5 billion terminal for
airplanes in a large metropolitan area... without having adequate rapid
transit links to the central part of the region.”
“I don’t think the
public would disagree that this is a worthy transportation project. Where
the debate comes in is when public funds are used, what are the
priorities? But in this case, public funds are not being specifically used
for the rail-air link, they are only tangentially being used, but to
fulfill a greater public priority, which is the GO Transit plan.”
What of the fact that
the majority of the GTA’s transit riders are on the TTC’s crowded buses
and streetcars, and not on GO? “We’re now working on another project under
the new infrastructure program (so) that the TTC gets more money,” says
Collenette.