Northumberland County, residents call on Via Rail to reinstate commuter link to Toronto | Canadian

It was a popular commuter link between Kingston and Toronto, including stops in Cobourg and Port Hope, but it hasn’t been on the rails for a while now.

Via Rail cancelled Train 651, which would pick up commuters in Cobourg and Port Hope around 7 a.m. weekdays, due to a drop in ridership during the pandemic.

“We moved from Toronto out here (to Cobourg) a year ago. We did a lot of investigation and looked at all of the transportation infrastructure to support us and we knew about Train 651 before we came out here, because a lot of people relied on it pre-COVID,” said Cindy Krysmanski, a Cobourg resident and commuter to Toronto.

Krysmanski is now back in the office a few days a week after working from home earlier in the pandemic, but instead of being able to take Train 651, which picks up at the station near her home, she now has to commute down the 401 by car to the Oshawa GO station to catch the GO train to Union Station.

Krysmanski says her husband also commutes to Toronto and her daughter is attending college in Toronto and may need to move to the city if the service isn’t restored.

“She’s really hoping for that train to get up and running in the fall because she needs that train to continue her studies or we’ll have to look at other options about her renting and living in the city, which is not an affordable market at this point,” she said.

Northumberland County is now stepping into the fight to get the train back on the tracks.

It and neighbouring municipalities, including the City of Belleville and City of Kingston, are asking community members to weigh in on an online survey about Train 651.

And according to county warden Bob Crate, in its first day online, the survey received more than 1,000 responses.

“Eastern Ontario is growing. Northumberland is growing. We’re getting a lot of people moving out here who commute and they need reliable transportation options; 651 is the train that everyone took,” he said.

“The commuters that normally took the train, they estimate 500 riders used this train every day.”

The online survey closes Aug. 5.

Northumberland-Peterborough South MPP David Piccini has sent two letters to Via Rail Canada asking the service be restored.

He tells Global News Peterborough he hasn’t received a response to either letter.

“I don’t know what’s going on over there at that organization, but they can’t seem to get anything right,” Piccini said.

“It’s unacceptable they’ve let down the people of this community that rely on this train for commuter services to get to work and school.”

Piccini says he has asked Via Rail Canada officials to schedule a meeting with him this month to discuss the issue.

In an email late Tuesday afternoon, VIA Rail stated it was in the process of reviewing the future of train 651.

“Our objective has always been the safe resumption of services when conditions allowed it and we are pleased to offer our passengers more options this summer with the return of most of our services across the country by the end of June 2022.

“VIA Rail is constantly evaluating its services, and after two years of pandemic we are looking at the impact of the changes in travel habits on our operations, for example, the new work from home reality.

“We are planning to complete the impact evaluation of 12 other frequencies not slated to return in June in the coming weeks, including train 651.”