Province promises peak period Kitchener GO trains every 30 minutes
Improved service to offered during peak periods on weekdays
The Ontario government announced Friday that GO service will be upgraded to offer rides between Kitchener and Toronto's Union Station every 30 minutes on the Kitchener line during peak periods and in "peak direction" by 2025.
Kitchener-Centre Liberal MPP Daiene Vernile says peak direction is the time of day when GO sees most people moving in a particular direction. In Waterloo Region's case, the peak direction in the morning is from Kitchener to Toronto, and the peak direction in the afternoon is the return trip to Kitchener from Toronto.
The current schedule has two trains leaving Kitchener in the morning for Toronto, and two trains leaving Toronto and returning to Kitchener in the evening.
However, Vernile says she has told Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca that there people in Waterloo Region have been asking for a morning train to leave Toronto and come to Kitchener and vice versa for the afternoon commute.
"We have a number of stakeholders in our community who are asking for at least one of those trains to be going in the opposite direction," said Vernile. "We see many people now who are commuting in the reverse direction because of our tech sector."
Vernile also added some more details as to the timeline of GO expansion on the Kitchener Line.
- By 2016, the current two morning to Toronto and two afternoon trains back to Kitchener will be expanded to four.
- By 2020, there will be another train added, making it five trains for the morning and afternoon commutes.
- By 2025, all-day, two-way service will be implemented, and the entire line will be electrified.
She added the cost of upgrades on the Kitchener Line alone will be about $2.1 billion.
The Kitchener line will also see a 15-minute electrified service running weekdays, evenings and weekends between Bramalea and Union Station, as well as a 15-minute peak period weekday service between Mount Pleasant and Union Station.
The province says it has moved ahead with a plan to unlock the value of certain public assets, which will provide Ontario with about $4 billion, which will go to Trillium Trust.
The province says it has increased the funding to its Moving Ontario Forward program, which governs transit expansion and other infrastructure projects, from $29 billion to $31.5 billion.
Over the next 10 years, the province also plans to expand weekly trips across the entire GO rail network from about 1,500 trips to nearly 6,000.