Two areas of concern – one minor, one major – from the Standard article:
Construction of the first station — at Casablanca Boulevard and the QEW in Grimsby — will start in June, with service to St. Catharines and possibly two locations in Niagara Falls by September, said Peter Smith, GO Transit’s chairman.
This seems a little optimistic, don’t you think? Planning for the Grimsby station has been underway for some time now; certainly more than the five months expected to plan and construct something in St. Catharines.
The locations of the new GO stations in St. Catharines and Niagara Falls still have to be determined, said Bradley, the provincial transportation minister, but GO always wants its stations to be close to a major highway, so they will be somewhere along the QEW corridor.
A GO station at Lake and the QEW (or whatever interchange they choose) would squander some of the potential of the GO connection. I recognize that GO tends to favour the park-and-ride model, but it doesn’t need to be that way and it puts the people who cannot afford to drive in the first place at a disadvantage. Downtown is highly accessible by public transportation and it is right on highway 406. Having a comfortable, regular, public connection to Burlington and points beyond would have a far greater positive impact on downtown than the north end. (And its a designated urban growth centre, which ought to settle the matter without question.)
