Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced this week, in the Conservative Government’s 2008 budget, the re-istitution of passenger rail service between Peterborough and Toronto. It’s almost two decades since the line, owned by CP Rail, saw passenger service. The day following the budget, CP revealed it had no prior knowledge of the plan, had no idea the cost of re-opening the line or even how it would be routed since there is no longer any connection between the line to Peterborough and the rails into Union Station.
Ontario’s very successful GO Transit, operator of the existing commuter rail and bus service serving the Greater Toronto Area, has no plans to expand to Peterborough but believes bus service, ideally with reserved transit lanes on the Don Valley Parkway, would be more cost effective and provide better service to passengers. That said, neither Go Transit nor any of the other bodies planning and operating transportation services in the GTA have rail service to Peterborough on their priority lists.
The federal finance department has revealed it has no information on the cost of re-opening train service to Peterborough, how many passengers the train would carry, when it might commence service or who would operate it. The Ontario Ministry of Transportation was not consulted.
The train will (would?) traverse Flaherty’s Whitby-Oshawa constituency, however, and provide an alternative to driving to Toronto; maybe even driving on the expensive toll highway the Ontario government, of which Flaherty was a member, built, in part, to meet the same area’s commuting needs. Whether it fits into any rational plan or anyone else’s priorities is immaterial to Flaherty. It’s his decidedly non-naitonal dream showing how easily all politics can become local.
Flaherty’s motives may be quite transparent, but more important is the statement the announcement makes about the Conservative government’s respect for other levels of government. Co-operation, joint-planning, shared priorities? No way! All that matters is securing what few safe-seats there are for Conservatives in Ontario. Talk about the small men of confederation.
