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Diesel decision

The pro-electric train movement finally got a chance to grill diesel enemy number one.

The council chambers at city hall was full of folks with pale blue clean train t-shirts on Monday night, there to hear a panel of Metrolinx vp Gary McNeil, Toronto medical officer of health Dr. David McKeown and transportation expert prof Christopher Kennedy. Watching the proceedings from the audience was minister of transportation Kathleen Wynne.

It was McNeill who was clearly on the spot and the focus of the multitude of passionate speeches from the gallery.

But though the confab resulted in more questions than answers, most participants left in the rain with one clear message: the residents of Toronto, particularly those living close to the west end tracks, don’t want the already overly polluted air of this city intensified by a major increase in diesel train traffic on the Georgetown line.

“There is clearly a consensus in Toronto that electrification is the way to go,” mayoralty candidate Joe Pantalone told me afterwards. “The province needs to listen or we all will suffer the consequences.”

As one resident explained it: Metrolinx is like a parent busy watching sports on TV while their kids are trying to get their attention to no avail.

McNeil isn’t buying. The Metrolinx vp tells me he’s listening and is trying to balance residents’ concerns. But with the Pan Am games looming and the Province having promised a rail link from Pearson airport to downtown in its winning bid, it isn’t just residents he’s listening to. “It would be very tough to go electric to Pearson by 2015,” he says.

However, it was medical officer of health, McKeown, a critic of the diesel plan, who expressed the will of the crowd when he told the meeting that “no one should be asked to trade public health for public transit.”

Read the full story in this Thursday’s print edition.[rssbreak]

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