Not bad for a rainy Monday. It was standing room only March 22 when concerned residents, many wearing pale blue Clean Train Ts, converged on City Hall council chambers for a public meeting on the McGuinty Liberals’ flawed diesel train expansion along the Georgetown rail corridor.[rssbreak]
And while these kinds of meetings usually raise more questions than they answer, this one was different. With key politicos of all stripes in attendance, from Ontario Transportation Minister Kathleen Wynne to Metrolinx chief Rob Prichard and mayoral contender Joe Pantalone, no one could have left with any doubt about where this debate has deadlocked. Government wants diesel. Residents want electric. Full stop.
Toronto’s medical officer of health, Dr. David McKeown – one of three panelists along with Metrolinx VP Gary McNeil and transportation expert and prof Christopher Kennedy – summed up the state of play, saying, “No one should be asked to trade public health for public transit.”
Well, it’s actually worse than that, because we’re being asked to choke back more diesel in the name of privatized transit.
Indeed, while McNeil allowed that Metrolinx wasn’t planning to run 460 diesel trains a day for GO Transit up the west end of the city, as it had originally suggested, the regional transit authority is planning 200. That’s still about a 300 per cent increase over what’s on the track today and a huge added dose of pollution in a city where asthma inhalers are an everyday childhood accessory.
But here’s the kicker: 140 of those trains will run from Pearson Airport to Union Station on infrastructure paid for by our tax money but operated for private profit by SNC-Lavalin. That’s why tickets are expected to go for between 20 and 30 bucks. This train ain’t bound for glory, and it ain’t built for you and me, folks. The fact that it’s diesel and not electric just puts a period at the end of a sentence the gist of which goes something like this: Piss off, folks.
So it’s noteworthy that while some audience members get testy, the tone of the Q&A is quite civil and respectful. Residents want to know things like why the ticket price is so high for the air-rail link and why is Metrolinx spending $4 mil on an electrification study when most of the data proving its benefits are already in.
West-end resident Elizabeth Littlejohn tells me she prefers to research and blog about the issue rather than speak at meetings, because she gets too emotional.
Living in the transportation corridors, she says, carries an additional pollution risk. “We’re dealing with the Island Airport, the Gardiner, freight trains on the CN and CP lines, GO’s commuter trains as well as the air-rail link (ARL) to Pearson,” she says. “This is a social justice issue as well as an environmental one. People living along the corridor are generally poorer.”
Activists insist that Metrolinx floated the preposterously high number of 460 trains a day as a cover for the expansion needed for the private part of the line.
“In order to justify using public funds to build infrastructure for a private, for-profit air-rail link, Metrolinx says it must do this massive expansion of GO service,” says Clean Train Coalition head Mike Sullivan.
“But the Georgetown line is nowhere near capacity right now. The number of trains they are talking about would empty out Brampton a couple of times over.”
Pantalone asks McNeil whether the consensus among residents will have an impact on Metrolinx. The VP, who, it must be said, demonstrates a lot of respect for the audience and tries to keep his answers to most of the questions as free of spin and slippery syntax as his job description allows, says he doesn’t know.
He says Metrolinx is moving ahead with tier-4 diesel technology, which he says is cleaner than regular diesel and that electrification is very expensive.
“There is clearly a consensus in Toronto that electrification is the way to go,” says Pantalone afterwards.
“The province needs to listen or we all will suffer the consequences.”
As one resident puts it to me, Metrolinx is like a dad busy watching sports on TV while his kids are trying to get his attention to no avail. McNeil, however, insists he is 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 to downtown in its winning bid, it’s clearly not just residents he’s listening to.
“It would be very tough to go electric to Pearson by 2015,” he says.
Sullivan sees it differently. “He said ‘tough,’ not impossible. If this is only going as far as the airport right now, let’s build it right the first time. There is time.”
The Clean Train Coalition has been trying to get a meeting with Transportation Minister Kathleen Wynne to plead its case. My guess is she jotted them into her daytimer before the meeting even ended.
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