'Urgent need' to improve transit options in Cambridge, mayor tells province

Cambridge Mayor Jan Liggett has told the province there's an "urgent need for improved transportation alternatives" to and from her city and Waterloo region as a whole.

In a letter to Minister of Transportation Prabmeet Sarkaria last month, Liggett said "the high level of congestion and the ongoing collisions on Highway 401 around Cambridge" are having a "major impact" on people getting to and from her city.

She said it's deterring people from visiting Cambridge for meetings and pleasure.

"This, in turn, is having a major economic impact," Liggett said in the letter.

"Improved inter-municipal transit options as well as the much-needed expanded rail service would help mitigate this situation," Liggett's letter said.

Liggett asks the province to look at extending GO train service on the Milton line to Cambridge and, because that wouldn't happen immediately, to provide direct Cambridge-to-Toronto GO bus service in the interim.

"There is a current multi-stop 2.5 hour route you can take to get to Toronto, which is not ideal for commuting," Liggett said, adding when Greyhound stopped operating buses in the area in 2021, it meant people who rely on buses had no other alternative but to take the lengthy GO bus rides to get to Toronto.

This isn't the first time GO train service has been raised with the province. Previous mayor Doug Craig also advocated for GO train service to Cambridge. In a 2017 interview, Craig told CBC News he was "very discouraged" that the city had been advocating for GO trains for 15 years "and right now, we're on nobody's radar."

It's an issue local author and historian Paul Langan recently looked at in a self-published report on his website. Langan has used GO trains to go into Toronto but says he has to drive to the Aldershot station to catch one. His report looked at the last 40 years of GO train advocacy in the city.

Cambridge is "one of the largest cities in Ontario," he said, and "we're the only one with no transit into Toronto, let alone rail transit."

"It's just gotten to almost a ludicrous point," he said.

Langan says after reviewing past studies into the issue, he thinks it's a lack of political will.

"It didn't matter who our elected members of [provincial] parliament was or who the premier of the province was, it hasn't happened," he said.

"What's most frustrating now is we have a government that's a majority. They can just announce it … and say let's do it. But now there's more silence than ever."