Ridership on the Barrie GO train line has doubled in three years, according to officials who gathered at the Barrie South GO Station Monday morning for a transit announcement.
Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca outlined the numbers at a news conference regarding two-way train service in Barrie by 2025.
“In 2014, the Barrie GO Line served 17,000 passengers per day up from just 7,500 passengers per day back in 2012. That’s incredible growth in such a short period of time,” said Del Duca.
The Minister was accompanied by Barrie MPP Ann Hoggarth, Gerry Chaput from Metrolinx and Barrie Mayor Jeff Lehman.
Del Duca announced a ‘significant step’ toward all-day, two-way GO trains to Barrie with a Request for Qualifications issued last week to find builders and financiers for rail upgrades.
It will take eight years to make the required changes.
“We can’t, with the existing infrastructure, deliver all day service. There needs to be second track, upgrades to the existing stations. There are physical restrictions on the existing corridor,” Del Duca said.
The work being done includes track and signal upgrades, retaining walls and bridge expansions in the GTA. A new layover facility is being built along with modifications to Barrie’s two existing GO stations. Nearly 140 new parking spots will added the Barrie South GO station and the Mayor said the city was working with Metrolinx to add more parking at the Allandale Waterfront station.
All trains will be electric, making them faster.
Mayor Lehman said the city has already seen a boost in tourism on weekends due to weekend GO service.
He predicts additional GO service should ease traffic on area highways.
“We have 30,000 people that go out of Barrie every morning to go to work somewhere south of here. We also, by the way, have 30,000 people who commute in. Nobody believes me when I say that. It’s just that the 30,000 that come in are regional. They tend to be from Simcoe County or Northern York Region. The 30,000 that go south are going long distances - Vaughan and Markham and Toronto.”
The new GO Regional Express Rail, which the Barrie upgrades are part of, will connect GO riders with other destinations in addition to downtown Toronto.
“Commuters will be able to connect to the Eglinton Crosstown LRT and the at Downsview to the Spadina subway,” said Lehman.
“What’s so significant is the ability to access jobs in other areas. Then you’re not just taking a few hundred people off the road you’re potentially taking thousands and thousands of people off the road.”
Gerry Chaput of Metrolinx noted Barrie’s population has grown by 5.4 percent during the last five years which is faster than the national average.
Equally, he said the Barrie corridor is one of the fastest growing transit routes coming into and out of Toronto in the downtown core.
”One of the biggest challenges we have is performing all this work while maintaining full operations on GO Lines,” Chaput said. “But the public should not be seeing any impact. We will be maintaining full operational service.”
Del Duca says he can't confirm costs for the upgrades but they're part of a ten year, 13.5 billion dollar transformational project for the entire GO network.
It's the largest commuter rail project in Canada and will double peak period service and quadruple off peak service increasing the number of weekly train trips from the current across the network of approximately 1,500 up to 6,000 by 2025.
By 2025, service levels the Barrie GO Line are expected to include two-way service every 15 minutes between Union Station an Aurora Station.
Two-way service will be every 60 minutes between Union Station and Allandale Waterfront Station during the midday and evening periods of weekdays as well as on weekends and peak-period, peak directions service on weekdays at frequencies of every 30 minutes between Union Station and Allandale Waterfront Station.
