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Station at Mount Pleasant will be ready to GO Monday
Feb. 2, 2005
- Brampton Guardian
The new GO Train station in the west end of Brampton will open Monday, ahead of schedule, but still not quite complete.
The Mount Pleasant station is on Creditview Road at Bovaird Drive and it is the city's third station. It has 600 parking spaces and a temporary trailer set up where tickets will be sold and washroom facilities offered. The station building won't be complete until some time next year, city councillors heard Monday at a council meeting. The station will also have a nine-bay bus loop and a Kiss and Ride drop-off.
The early opening caught city officials off-guard. When GO Transit officials told city staff that they planned to open the station early, last-minute meetings had to be scheduled to deal with unresolved issues including the running of buses to the new station and the absence of one inbound traffic lane from Bovaird that the city required GO to construct.
The issues are being resolved, according to a city staff report.
Brampton Transit service was not scheduled for the station until May, but because the station is opening earlier, the city has arranged for interim shuttle service from the Heart Lake terminal to meet morning and afternoon trains. GO Transit bus service from Guelph/Georgetown was supposed to start in April, so as of Monday the service may include stops on Bovaird Drive beside the station, as long as there is a safe spot to let out passengers, according to the report.
GO was required to build two inbound traffic lanes from Bovaird Drive, but only one was built, according to city staff. City staff have inspected the one inbound and two outbound lanes and determined the inbound lane does have a wider paved shoulder which might help with inbound traffic until the issue is resolved.
Also, access to the train platform for the physically disabled won't be available from the GO station parking lot and bus loop until elevators are installed in 2006. In the interim, two parking spaces for the physically disabled will be provided on city-owned land on Pleasant Road to allow for access to the platform. City staff had to make arrangements for an encroachment agreement to provide the spaces.
Brampton Mayor Susan Fennell called the addition of a third station "good news", noting Bovaird is undergoing a six-lane widening from Hwy. 410 in the east to Creditview where the station is located. Region of Peel officials are responsible for that road work, and they were contacted by the city and confirmed all road work at Creditview, signalization and directional line painting would be done in time for Monday's opening.
Ontario Transportation Minister Harinder Takhar is expected to be out for the official opening of the station at 6:30 a.m. Monday, greeting commuters as they arrive.
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