HALIFAX — Mayor Peter Kelly is back from Ottawa, optimistic that Halifax may one day have its own commuter rail service, the Halifax Daily News reported.
While attending a mayors’ conference in the capital city last week, Kelly took the opportunity to check out the city’s new commuter rail service with Mayor Bob Chiarelli.
Kelly said he was somewhat comforted to learn Ottawa went through much the same angst with CN to get the rail service off the ground as Halifax.
“CN always is a challenge to deal with, but they overcame that challenge … and cleared the track, so to speak, and were able to implement it for a two-year test,” Kelly said.
The two years will be up in April, with an option to renew for two more, but the service is already seeing more passengers than the city envisioned, with 6,450 a day.
“There appears to be a successful buy-in,” Kelly said.
He said the rail service also helped increase the city’s bus ridership, because commuters embraced it as an integrated transit system.
Expansion considered Kelly said because of its popularity, Ottawa is considering expanding what has been up until now a north-south commuter rail to include east-west routes over the next two years.
“So once it starts, it just goes from there, so you have to be open to that,” Kelly said.
Kelly said CN wants the city to pay $6.7 million for an advanced signal system that will help ensure a commuter rail won’t affect the rail company’s lucrative freight lines to and from metro’s container piers, which operate 24 hours a day. In the meantime, Kelly said, he’ll keep after Transport Canada to get involved in the project, and hope for the best.
“I am the eternal optimist when it comes to rail,” he said. Kelly, who been fighting for the service for about 12 years, envisions the rail line to downtown Halifax servicing areas such as Beaver Bank, Ragged Lake and Dartmouth.
“There must be a way to make this work, and that’s what we must try and do,” he said.