The London Transit Commission is one step closer to a new headquarters.
At Thursday’s meeting, the commission voted to approve a plan to build a new HQ at the existing Highbury Avenue location. City staff have now been asked to report back with budget and planning information.
The preliminary idea is to build the multi-million-dollar project in several phases so that the building can remain in operation while construction is underway.
Commission member Coun. Phil Squire believes it’s not a matter of if a new LTC headquarters should be built, but when and how.
“The issue will be, over the next few years, can we put aside as a city council? Are we committed to putting enough money aside to build a new transit facility that will service what we plan to do in the future?” said Squire on Thursday’s London Live with Mike Stubbs.
“I don’t think there is a reasonable argument to just say the building, as is, is fine because it just isn’t, and I know that from being out there.”
He also added that the current building originally housed a manufacturing facility and was later converted into a transit hub.
“If you go out to London Transit and go through the building, I think you would be surprised. I think you would be thinking that you were in a building from the 1950s, quite frankly. All the infrastructure there is really dated and doesn’t have the facilities that a modern transit system would have,” he explained.
“And frankly, I think London could do a lot better.”
Squire added that plans to grow public transit, regardless of whether bus rapid transit moves forward, would require a new facility.
“If we expand transit, which we want to do in some way to have a better system, we can’t fit enough buses in there, even with the other facility we have,” he said, referring to a satellite location on Wonderland Road South.