Rural communities surrounding London will have a chance to talk about the province’s proposed high-speed rail line Tuesday night.
InterCityRail, a non-partisan ad-hoc group that promotes only part of the infrastructure project, is hosting an information meeting in Tavistock at 7 p.m., at the Tavistock Memorial Hall.
“What we want to do is educate the people about the province’s announcement about high speed rail,” said one of the group’s coordinators, Ken Westcar.
Westcar said the information meeting will start with a roughly 30-minute presentation by the group’s steering committee, followed up by a question and answer period.
“There are a lot of technical and commercial, social and economic issues that have not been divulged,” Westcar explained.
Although their prime goal is to educate people, Westcar said they’ll also shed light on some of their own concerns, specifically with the line between Kitchener to London.
On top of that, Westcar said the high-speed rail line will sever farm properties and about 50 roads that will either turn into dead-ends, or need overpasses.
“We feel that there are other options, including the improvement of services currently offered by VIA rail both on the north mainline through Stratford, and the south one through Brantford and Woodstock to London.”
InterCityRail is hosting another meeting at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the New Hamburg Arena in New Hamburg, and a third meeting at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Purple Hill Hall in Thorndale.
During a stop in London earlier this month, Premier Kathleen Wynne committed $11 billion in provincial funds to the project.
She says it’ll connect between London and Toronto in just 73 minutes.
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