Last weekend, my family and I drove from our home in Kitchener to Toronto’s east end. We took the Gardiner Expressway. Recent estimates suggest that, like us, 40 per cent of drivers on it live outside of the city. This is why good train service to places like Waterloo Region matters to Toronto; it would enable us to leave our cars at home, freeing up space on your roads.

While driving on the Gardiner, I’ve encountered signs saying “Tired of congestion, try transit.” I would very much like use transit instead of my car. But there’s one simple problem that keeps me driving every time my family and I come to Toronto: WE HAVE NO ALTERNATIVE!

The ironic thing is that while we crawl along the Gardiner on a Saturday afternoon, massive parking lots at GO stations along the 401 corridor sit empty. Simply tearing down the Gardiner can’t magically allow us to switch to trains.

It’s not that we’re lazy, or that these trains are inconvenient. Apart from a handful of GO trains leaving Kitchener weekday mornings between 5:15 and 7:10, they literally don’t exist. No trains leave Kitchener during the midday, though there is an hourly GO bus that connects with a train at Bramalea. There is no train service on the entire line evening and weekends.

Sure, there’s the VIA train. But there is one round trip each day and for our family of four, this would cost a whopping $160. Weekend GO buses take upwards of three hours, involve multiple transfers and they, like the infrequent Greyhound, sit in the same traffic jams.

In a bid of desperation, I’ve tried driving an hour to Aldershot, where there are frequent trains to Toronto. But why get on the 401, drive 30 mins away from your destination just to then pay to get on the train?

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Think about the absurdity of living in a prosperous region of more than half a million people, 100 km from Toronto, and having no good transit between them. Along this corridor there’s also Guelph, a city of more than 130,000, Brampton, Canada’s ninth largest city and other growing communities, none of which have any fast, frequent and reliable transit to Toronto. No wonder the 401 is one of the busiest highways in the world — it has a monopoly on our mobility.

I used to be one of you. Growing up at Yonge and Eglinton, I never concerned myself with how to drive and park downtown. But, like so many, I followed my career to a rapidly growing Waterloo Region. Now I search for cheap parking lots within metres of Gardiner off-ramps and I’m the sucker stuck in traffic on the Allen Expressway while subway trains rush by.

It’s very easy to blame congestion downtown on those who do not live there. It’s also easy to frame as a lifestyle choice. But as neighbourhoods with good transit in Toronto become increasingly expensive, people have no choice but to live outside the city.

To afford a home, you simply keep driving further out along the 401 until there’s one within budget. With no good transit to get back into the city, you drive. This combination of soaring prices in the urban core and few transit options outside it condemns millions to a life stuck in cars.

I’m not asking for the nine trains per-hour I’ve enjoyed while living abroad, but to start, how about a train every two hours off-peak and on weekends. Maybe also offer some discounted tickets for families or groups to make it financially viable to travel by train; on GO, two adults and two children over the age of five pay $70 for a day trip to Toronto.

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An easy solution that could be implemented today would extend the midday Kitchener-Bramalea bus to Pearson to connect with the airport, UP Express and TTC. But even if this also ran evenings and weekends, it would not be a game changer. But it would be something.

I’m sorry that I have to constantly drive into Toronto; given the choice, I would gladly take the train. But right now, all we have is our cars that end up clogging your roads. And that is why we all sit in endless traffic on the Gardiner.

Brian Doucet is a Canada Research Chair in cities at the University of Waterloo.

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