Packed House for High Speed Rail Meeting

Wednesday, 18 April 2018 at 13:42

The Tavistock Memorial Hall was packed with about 350 concerned residents at a public information meeting regarding high speed rail.

TAVISTOCK - The first of three public high speed rail meeting got underway last night in Tavistock in front of a full house.

Deputy Mayor of East Zorra Tavistock, Maureen Ralph talks about the turnout.

"We believe there were approximately 350 people in attendance and we were able to obtain over 400 letters of support signed to be forwarded to the Ministry."

The reason for these meetings lies behind the Provincial Government's re-announcement of a high speed rail corridor that would run directly from London to Kitchener. This would require thousands of acres of agriculture land, residential land and possibly community separations.

There will still be two more meetings. The first meeting tomorrow at the New Hamburg arena and the second on Friday at the Purple Hill County Hall in Thorndale. Both meetings will be from 7:00pm to 9:00pm.

Ralph explains the purpose of these meetings and the letters.

"The public meetings are to be able to inform the general public of the intents of the Government to proceed with this high speed rail initiative and what we are simply looking for the Government to be able to expand the Environmental Assessment, the EA process, to include looking at alternatives. By signing the letters of support, these letters will be forwarded to the Government to encourage them to give us a simple ask of please open up the EA and allow us to look at alternatives."

Residents are worried about the loss of prime agricultural land and what the rail lines will do to their community. Right now the proposed lines would separate communities which could have a major impact on Emergency Services and even some rural farm businesses.

The meetings are organized by the intercityrail.org group has been meeting formally every two weeks to address some of these concerns.