Caledon is being passed by again when it comes to transit and transportation
We’re small fry to the masters of Metrolinx who spout promises, writes Tayler Parnaby

CaledonEnterprise.com
Feb. 11, 2019
Taylor Parnaby

Two weeks ago, an organization known as Link427 published its latest report about the $616-million construction project to expand and extend Highway 427.

The project involves adding four additional lanes for traffic between Finch Avenue in Toronto and Highway 7, eight new controlled access lanes between Highway 7 and Rutherford Road and six new lanes of the 427 between Rutherford and Major Mackenzie. The project is expected to be completed by 2021. The 162-page report contains no mention to any extension of the 427 to the borders of Caledon.

Three weeks before the Link report landed with a thud, Metrolinx began weekday Go Transit rail service between Toronto, St. Catharines and Niagara Falls, a trip of about 130 kilometres.

“I can work on the train and I don’t have to worry about the weather. It’s just a lot more relaxing of a commute,” said one of the first passengers on that early January morning.

Metrolinx suggests it may be 2040 before a commuter rail service is returned to Bolton. There was a time when you could catch a morning train at the long-gone Bolton station at 7:06 and arrive in Toronto’s Union Station by 8:10, a distance of about 40 kilometres. Then too, you could work on the train and not worry about the weather ... or the traffic.

Four years ago, the Town of Caledon completed the Bolton Transportation Master Plan. Highlights included a new GO Transit railway station located “within the Bolton residential expansion area,” producing an estimated 530 passengers during “peak hours.” That area is north and west of King and Humber Station Road but subject to disagreement with Peel Region.

It will be a decade before the differences are sorted out, before planning is completed and approved and before the first new homes are ready for occupancy somewhere in the Bolton area.

GO Bus and vehicular traffic was supposed to connect to the GTA with a full interchange between Coleraine Drive and "GTA West Highway” which presumably would cross paths with an extended 427. Apparently, there will not be a Highway 427 extension to Caledon and even with new leaders in charge at Queen's Park, it could be into the 2030s before any GTA West Highway was ready for traffic ... if ever!

I suspect you get the point. 400-series highways end before or at the Caledon border. We’re a small fry to the masters of Metrolinx who spout promises of an express bus service between Bolton and the extended TTC subway system now reaching into Vaughan but prefer the headlines that come with GO Transit rail extensions to St. Catharines, Niagara Falls and Kitchener.

In the greater scheme of things, Caledon is being passed by again!