High Speed Rail Information Meetings

Tuesday, 17 April 2018 14:14

Three public meetings over the next couple of days will look at some of the concerns around the proposed High Speed Rail line.

TAVISTOCK - Everyone is invited to attend three High Speed Rail information meetings happening this week.

The first one is tonight from 7-9 pm at the Tavistock Memorial Hall. The next meeting is on Wednesday night at the New Hamburg arena and then again on Thursday night in Thorndale at the Purple Hill Country Hall from 7-9 p.m. Township of Zorra Councillor Marcus Ryan will be sitting on the panel at the meeting in Thorndale.

He says a lot of people have concerns with the proposed line.

"The main issues that we are hearing about in Zorra, in Oxford, in the rural areas is the loss of prime agricultural land, hundreds of acres of land that will be ripped up to facilitate high speed rail and once that land is gone it is gone forever. In addition to that there is the issues around dead ended roads, which will result in longer emergency response times, longer school bus rides, some communities will be cut off from one another. Some farm businesses could become non viable if the high speed rail line puts the barn on one side and the manure storage on the either side, a lot of agriculture operations today are thousands of acres, not hundreds of acres, they could be cut in half and become not viable."

Previous meetings on the High Speed Rail Line have been very well attended. Ryan also sits on a intercityrail.org steering committee who is meeting every two weeks to try and work on some of these issues. Ryan says they wanted to have the meetings to keep people informed of what is going on and a place to share some of their concerns.

"The meetings give people a chance to hear from this steering comity and tell people heresy what we're doing, here's what our strategy is, here's how we think we can get something better done because we want better rail transit for South Western Ontario, but this plan is not the best plan we can get and give people a chance to get up and ask their questions of the steering comity and make their concerns heard and hopefully get answers that satisfy them."