Excellent virtual meeting last night concerning the Metrolinx GO train Oshawa east to Bowmanville presented by Durham Riding MPP LINDSEY PARK, with Metrolinx President & CEO PHIL VERSTER and 2 of his team, SPENCER GIBBENS VP Head Sponsor & MEGHAN WONG, VP Land Development
OVER 100 joined the meeting hosted by MPP Lindsey Park, with many great questions. ROGERS TV local programing will be playing the hour long meeting at various times in the coming weeks.
One big bit of news was the announcement that METROLINX now plans to build a 2nd bridge, parallel and to the west of the GM Spur over Hwy 401. Phil Verster explained the original plan for a coproduction with CP Rail is out.
He admitted the co-production bridge plan between CP & Metrolinx would be cheaper, "however the Right-of-Way is owned by CP". He went on to say "CP quite rightly priorities their service to their customers and have been very helpful". He complimented CP and its President, Keith Creels, and that building a bridge right next to the CP bridge is the right investment to make.
According to Verster, METROLINX spent a good part of the past on trying "to resolve the commercial agreement with CP, the freight operator. because we had to get their consent to build a railway on their property and that corridor. Where we build the railway all the way to Bowmanville belongs to CP...the agreement we had to reach with them was going to affect our deign and vice versa a lot of energy went this year into progressing that and getting ready for approval."
Although it seems they have worked out much with CP it is still not clear if they have reached a final agreement with CP.
But Verster did go on to say "clearly CP has been superb and I just want to give credit to their President and CEO Keith Creel.. He is very engaged and thinks about the communities all along the CP urban lands. He has been extremely helpful.to work with on this and finding a way forward."
"We don’t want to bring our trains to crash with freight trains in service and delay their operations or our operations and that’s why the second bridge is the right way forward. So, we are very excited about this and that is what it is going to look like".
To the question about the impact of COVID on the plan, Verster said it is important Metrolinx ensures that they are delivering is the right thing. They are massively invested in transportation. Last year Metrolinx spent $4 Billion and this year it will be $5 Billion on new expansion, with 5 or 6 big projects that they had in the production line being rolled out or opened...he mentioned Coxwell and a new station at Bloomington and that "the Union bus terminal is brand new and fantastic with a multi-model hub".
He is convinced that what they "are doing with the GO expansion to Bowmanville is the right thing". He believes the post COVID world is "going to have less huge morning peaks closing to the downtown area of Toronto and less huge evening closing out". He said he talks to many businesses in the City downtown and in different cities and hears "their offices are going to become smaller offices. Instead of having one head office, they are going to have smaller head offices and probably 4 smaller regional offices".
He said "people are going to Zoom, Teams and Webinar with each other and there are going to be head offices in Pickering and up in York and another in Mississauga. That's the way organizations are going to organize - instead of everyone traveling 5 days a week to work in an office job they can probably go the office jobs 3 times a week and their office job is probably going to be in Pickering and they are going to have people traveling out of the City to go to a meeting at 10 o'clock in the morning rather than 7 o'clock in the office as normal."
What they are doing with the GO expansion is "to create more capacity and flexibility on their lines to allow for more to travel bidirectionally, by shorter trains throughout the day for people to travel wherever they want to go in whatever direction, that is what is necessary in the post COVID world."
I will try and post more later:
· about how the plan involves 3rd party developer and land owner interests and alliances for developing the new stations and areas, now called 'transit oriented communities'
· also will try and summarize what was said about parking (not much, called a wasted asset) and timeline, costs.
Btw yes, there will be costs to the municipalities, both Clarington and Oshawa for infrastructure improvements to their local roads.
Here are two video clips I recorded of the meeting:
OVER 100 joined the meeting hosted by MPP Lindsey Park, with many great questions. ROGERS TV local programing will be playing the hour long meeting at various times in the coming weeks.
One big bit of news was the announcement that METROLINX now plans to build a 2nd bridge, parallel and to the west of the GM Spur over Hwy 401. Phil Verster explained the original plan for a coproduction with CP Rail is out.
He admitted the co-production bridge plan between CP & Metrolinx would be cheaper, "however the Right-of-Way is owned by CP". He went on to say "CP quite rightly priorities their service to their customers and have been very helpful". He complimented CP and its President, Keith Creels, and that building a bridge right next to the CP bridge is the right investment to make.
According to Verster, METROLINX spent a good part of the past on trying "to resolve the commercial agreement with CP, the freight operator. because we had to get their consent to build a railway on their property and that corridor. Where we build the railway all the way to Bowmanville belongs to CP...the agreement we had to reach with them was going to affect our deign and vice versa a lot of energy went this year into progressing that and getting ready for approval."
Although it seems they have worked out much with CP it is still not clear if they have reached a final agreement with CP.
But Verster did go on to say "clearly CP has been superb and I just want to give credit to their President and CEO Keith Creel.. He is very engaged and thinks about the communities all along the CP urban lands. He has been extremely helpful.to work with on this and finding a way forward."
"We don’t want to bring our trains to crash with freight trains in service and delay their operations or our operations and that’s why the second bridge is the right way forward. So, we are very excited about this and that is what it is going to look like".
To the question about the impact of COVID on the plan, Verster said it is important Metrolinx ensures that they are delivering is the right thing. They are massively invested in transportation. Last year Metrolinx spent $4 Billion and this year it will be $5 Billion on new expansion, with 5 or 6 big projects that they had in the production line being rolled out or opened...he mentioned Coxwell and a new station at Bloomington and that "the Union bus terminal is brand new and fantastic with a multi-model hub".
He is convinced that what they "are doing with the GO expansion to Bowmanville is the right thing". He believes the post COVID world is "going to have less huge morning peaks closing to the downtown area of Toronto and less huge evening closing out". He said he talks to many businesses in the City downtown and in different cities and hears "their offices are going to become smaller offices. Instead of having one head office, they are going to have smaller head offices and probably 4 smaller regional offices".
He said "people are going to Zoom, Teams and Webinar with each other and there are going to be head offices in Pickering and up in York and another in Mississauga. That's the way organizations are going to organize - instead of everyone traveling 5 days a week to work in an office job they can probably go the office jobs 3 times a week and their office job is probably going to be in Pickering and they are going to have people traveling out of the City to go to a meeting at 10 o'clock in the morning rather than 7 o'clock in the office as normal."
What they are doing with the GO expansion is "to create more capacity and flexibility on their lines to allow for more to travel bidirectionally, by shorter trains throughout the day for people to travel wherever they want to go in whatever direction, that is what is necessary in the post COVID world."
I will try and post more later:
· about how the plan involves 3rd party developer and land owner interests and alliances for developing the new stations and areas, now called 'transit oriented communities'
· also will try and summarize what was said about parking (not much, called a wasted asset) and timeline, costs.
Btw yes, there will be costs to the municipalities, both Clarington and Oshawa for infrastructure improvements to their local roads.
Here are two video clips I recorded of the meeting:
