Mayors announce Innovation Corridor partnership
The Monday to Friday reality for more than 10,000 people who commute from Toronto to Kitchener for work is an exhausting one. These road warriors hit the Gardiner Expressway at 6:30 a.m., and hope for the best – that barring weather disasters or traffic accidents, the remainder of their drive on the 401 takes less than 90 minutes. Constrained by infrequent schedules in GO train services between the two regions, these financial and tech workers, among others, spend hours a day stuck on the 401.
But the cities along the Toronto-Waterloo Region innovation corridor are hoping to change that experience, connecting the innovation clusters by trains or high-speed rail service – getting people out of their cars and replacing lost commuting time with productive working time.
Together, the cities along the Toronto -Waterloo Region corridor have the potential to compete on a global scale with the world’s most innovative centres like Silicon Valley and the London-Cambridge corridor in the UK. Currently, the biggest barrier to unlocking this opportunity is the lack of effective and timely transit between the two regions. What many people don’t know is the distance between Toronto and Waterloo Region is the same distance between San Francisco and San Jose in Silicon Valley, but they have an efficient transit system.
Waterloo Region is a community of 550,000 people in three cities and four townships with a collaborative spirit and entrepreneurial history that has built a strong startup ecosystem, with world-leading post-secondary institutions. Canadian entrepreneurs have repeatedly shown they can build game-changing technology right here at home. In the last five years alone, Waterloo Region produced 1,845 new start-ups, attracting $650 million dollars in investment.
An investment in two-way, all-day GO trains or high-speed rail service between Toronto and Waterloo Region is the single most impactful way to advance the Toronto-Waterloo Region corridor as a global leader in innovation.
Waterloo Region has been advocating to provincial and federal governments for this investment for some time. In February, Mayor Berry Vrbanovic joined Mayor John Tory in Toronto to announce their collaborative promotion of a Waterloo Region - Toronto innovation corridor. With Toronto at the table, there is a stronger voice on this issue than ever before. The collaboration includes a visit to Waterloo Region by Mayor Tory in March, followed by a dual mission to San Francisco in April where together Vrbanovic and Tory will be promoting opportunities in Waterloo Region and Toronto for talented tech workers, technology companies looking to expand or relocate, and for potential investors.
For the region’s talented workforce, an efficient transit system will drastically improve the quality of life for the thousands of commuters that make the journey every day. It will improve the productivity, efficiency and competitiveness of the financial and tech sectors that are driving the economic success of our country, and give our academic institutions better opportunities for collaboration. Talented ex-pats will feel confident returning home to Canada where they can take advantage of a high quality of life, with a lower cost of living.
Moving people matters (opens in new window). Transit drives innovation and innovation drives economic growth. Without strong infrastructure to connect the two regions, growth potential will be limited. Two way, all day GO and improved high-speed rail service between Toronto and Waterloo Region will create an innovation corridor in this country that will deliver unparalleled economic opportunity.