Commuters have bevy of choices
News
Posted 1 month ago
When commuter trains came to Barrie almost three years ago, something else had to go.
Kathleen Wynne, Ontario's transportation minister, has
verified that motorists can no longer expect a widened Highway 400 or Highway 427 to be extended to reduce traffic on the 400.
That's what GO trains are supposed to do.
With four trains out of Barrie every weekday morning, and four more back in the evening, commuters have an option to simply joining the Highway 400 gridlock twice a day.
The province even has a plan to increase that to eight trains out, eight trains back, in the distant future -- if the demand is there.
But all that talk about increasing the 400 to eight or even 10 lanes, between Barrie and Toronto's outskirts, has turned out to be just that. Many people expected as much, given the hundreds of millions of dollars this would have cost.
The same goes for extending the 427, which would have benefited Barrie by returning Bayfield Street to its status as a city road, rather than the quasi-highway it has become.
Too many plans, not enough money.
Wynne also basically quashed reports of toll highways, which would be an extremely unpopular move by the Liberals a year away from the next provincial election.
The Toronto City Summit Alliance had suggested highway tolls in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, that they could generate $1-$2 billion and help pay for the long list of transportation projects on the books.
But making people pay again to use highways they have already, as taxpayers, paid for is a political disaster waiting to happen.
It doesn't solve the problem, however, of more roadwork than money to pay for it. Municipalities like Barrie have that problem too.
There are other solutions to solving transportation problems.
Barrie residents commute between this city and the GTA because that's where they work. Despite the best efforts of city councils and other community leaders, this is still a bedroom community for many Barrie residents. All they do here on weekdays is sleep.
Which is why the provincial planning policy, 'Places to Grow', wants complete communities in Ontario. It wants places where people not only live, but can work and play as well.
Because if you live and work in Barrie, you won't be on the 400 every morning and evening from Monday to Friday. That highway won't need more lanes because there won't be more vehicles on it.
That's why, in part, the province decided to push Barrie's boundaries 5,664 acres into Innisfil on Jan. 1. There's room for residential growth, but also for the industrial type -- which could create jobs for area residents, so they don't have to get on the highway anymore.
The province is gambling that in the corridor between Barrie and Toronto, GO Transit service and better municipal planning will make widening Highway 400 and extending the 427 unnecessary.
And this isn't a short-term gamble, but one which has played out during the last decade and will probably need another 10 years before the results are known.
But choices are becoming more available to area residents, whether that means taking commuter trains or seeking local employment.
That, at least, has changed during the last decade.
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