GO service for Durham LONG TIME COMING

By Geordie Gordon

With a provincial commitment finally in place to expand GO Transit service on the and add four new stations, achieving increased densities and employment in areas around the stations has much greater certainty. However, with service not slated to start until 2023, it will still be some time before the full effects of the increased service are felt in and Clarington.

Monday, the province announced it will be extending the Lakeshore East line through to Clarington, with four stations being added: at Thornton and Ritson roads in Oshawa and and Martin roads in Clarington.

Oshawa John Henry told NRU that the announcement is “incredibly exciting” and supports a number of different projects. Those include dLAB, a partnership between Durham College, the University of Institute of Technology, Trent University Durham, River Oaks Group and Halloway Developments to build additional campus space next to Durham College. That initiative will benefit from the Thornton Road station. Henry said the planned GO Station in downtown Oshawa at Ritson Road is within a five-minute walk of one “27 acres...that will be turned into high-density residential that is adjacent to our downtown,” he said.

Clarington planning services director David Crome told NRU that the municipality has planned for the possibility of extending passenger rail service to Clarington since its 1996 official plan, which included a site for a GO station as part of the new town centre in .

“We’ve been planning for this for a long time,” he said. Crome said that staff would be reviewing the plans for the areas around the two new stations. However, he noted the review is partially driven by proposed to amendments to the Growth Plan that will increase the municipality’s intensification rate. He said the station at Martin Road in Bowmanville has been planned as a minor transit hub to accommodate increased densities. “We’ve been ramping up the densities... in that area we have a large number of medium-density apartments, and we also have high-density units proposed, but not built at the present time,” he said.

Crome said it’s estimated that there is the potential for an additional 3,200 residential units within 800 m of the Martin Road station in Bowmanville. That is on top of the 1,700 existing units and 110 under construction.

Staff has been reviewing development proposals in the area around the Bowmanville station in light of the future transit hub. However, because there was no provincial commitment to expand service, it was difficult to persuade the development community that there is a market for higher densities in Clarington.

“We’ve been very concerned that we’ve had some squandered opportunities where there have been some medium-density development where there could have been higher-density development around the site,” he said.

Oshawa development services commissioner Paul Ralph told NRU that a recent economic impact analysis on the Lakeshore East extension commissioned by stakeholders such as Oshawa and Clarington sent a resounding message to the province. In part, he said, it triggered Monday’s announcement. The analysis, undertaken by Altus Group and Arup, concluded in part that the Ritson Road site in Central Oshawa is important for both the future Metrolinx Mobility hub and the Downtown Oshawa Urban Growth Centre. “That’s the way we tried to sell it to the province, [by saying] that we need you to invest in this infrastructure in order to meet your employment and population growth projections that you’ve targeted for Durham Region and Oshawa and Clarington in particular,” Ralph said.

The economic impact analysis found that there are 63 vacant or underutilized sites within one kilometre of each of the four stations, and there is the potential to add 6,000 residential units within the one kilometre radius of the Martin and Ritson stations. The Thornton and Courtice stations were highlighted for their non-residential development potential. Most of the nearly 725,000 m2 of non- residential development potential around the four stations, identified in the economic impact analysis, is centred around these two stations.

Durham Region planning and economic development commissioner Brian Bridgeman told NRU that the announced expansion has long been a priority for the region, which dates back to the 1991 regional official plan. Bridgeman said that it helps the region with its economic development goals especially for sites along the corridor that he says will inevitably be subject to development or redevelopment opportunities. While GO service is still a number of years away, he will be looking to see if the planned stations attract investment in the shorter term. Although it’s too soon to speculate what that level of investment might be.

Durham regional chair Roger Anderson echoed Bridgeman’s sentiment that the expanded GO service will help the region achieve a number of its goals. “It meets all of our official plan objectives, growth objectives, and job growth objectives, so for us it’s very welcome news,” he said.

Anderson acknowledged that it was a big undertaking for the province, and hopes that the construction, which will include a rail bridge over Highway 401, moves ahead in a timely fashion. The expanded rail service is expected to begin by 2023-2024.