Successes along the corridor!

The City’s Public Forum on March 22 was a resounding success!  It was standing room only and garnered lots of media coverage, a sample of which we have posted on the cleantrain.ca website. Thanks to all of you who came out to show your support and ask some excellent questions of the panelists, and thanks to Councillors Fletcher and Filion for hosting such an engaging discussion.

Junction residents saw a victory last week when Metrolinx decided to drop their appeal of the Canadian Transport Agency ruling that GO must use quieter pile-driving technology in the West Diamond in order to reduce noise impacts in the community. Congratulations! See the Toronto Star article: http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/transportation/article/793045–metrolinx-drops-west-diamond-appeal.

Ongoing Coalition efforts

• The Metrolinx electrification study is under way but we are worried that the airport rail service is not yet guaranteed to be included in the study, even though the air-rail link trains would make up 70% of the volume on the Georgetown South line! The Clean Train Coalition is adamant that the air-rail link be included and we will need public pressure to help support this cause.

What you can do:

• Send an email to Rob Prichard ([email protected]) to ask him to make sure that this critical piece of the corridor expansion plan is not left out of the study. (Feel free to send a copy of your email to us at [email protected].)

The Toronto municipal election is coming up  this fall and the Clean Train Coalition is meeting with the mayoral candidates to let them know about this issue and to ask them if they will support us.

What you can do:

Contact the mayoral candidates and your local candidates for councillor and let them know how you feel about the issue.

Upcoming related events

• Parkdale-High Park NDP is hosting a public forum about transportation and the environment next Tuesday, April 20, at at BishopMarroccoSchool at Dundas and Bloor. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. See http://www.phpndp.com/events#event2. Mike Sullivan will be one of the panelists at this event as well.

• The Clean Train Coalition will be hosting a Jane’s Walk on Saturday, May 1,  from 2-3:30 p.m., starting at SoraurenPark and heading up the West Toronto Railpath. We’ll be walking along part of the corridor and exploring the impacts Metrolinx’s plan will have on air quality, the environment and quality of life along the corridor. If you cannot make it on Saturday, there’ll be a Clean Train component of Doug Bennet’s Sorauren-Wabash walk the following day, Sunday, May 2, starting at 1 p.m. in SoraurenPark. To sign up for either or both walks, go to http://janeswalk.net/cities/category/toronto.

Call for Help

As you probably know, the Clean Train Coalition is made up entirely of volunteers who contribute our spare time to the fight for electrifying the airport-rail link and Georgetown South corridor rail expansion. This means we are always looking for people to help us out with everything that needs to be done. We could use help in all areas, including: economics, train technology, fundraising, outreach, flyering, and media, just to name a few.

What you can do:

If you would like to take a more active role in the coalition, please send us an email at [email protected], indicating your area(s) of interest.