Ottawa Ontario - Discussions are ongoing in Ottawa over a multi billion dollar proposal from VIA Rail to offer a new passenger train service between Quebec City and Toronto, with a stop in Peterborough.
 
Federal Transport Minister Marc Garneau recently discussed the high frequency line project's next steps with Canada Infrastructure Bank board chair Michael Sabia, according to a new statement from the office of Women and Gender Equality Minister Maryam Monsef.
 
Monsef, who is also the rural economic development minister and the Peterborough-Kawartha MP, was not available for comment on Friday, but a statement from her office explains that key players Sabia and Garneau have been in discussions.
 
Sabia is the chair of the Infrastructure Bank, which has invested along with Transport Canada $71.1 million for detailed planning work ahead of a federal cabinet decision on whether to back the project, which is expected to cost $4 billion.
 
Garneau was tasked in his mandate letter from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to work toward making the new train service a reality.
 
Part of the detailed studies being undertaken now include determining an exact route and locations for railway stations.
 
Although a rail station for Peterborough is planned, its exact location is yet to be determined.
 
While the project is expected to use existing corridors and rights-of-way, it's still unclear whether there may be a railway station in Havelock where rail lines already exist.
 
Havelock-Belmont-Methuen Mayor Jim Martin could not be reached for comment about it Friday.
 
A transportation advocacy group said the risks for the project are lower now that VIA has focused on existing rail lines, the Canadian Press reported, meaning planning could be done by 2022.
 
In the meantime consultations with the public and with indigenous communities are expected soon, wrote VIA spokesperson Karl-Philip Marchand Giguere in an email to The Examiner earlier this week.
 
He wrote that further details on those consultations will be released when available.
 
Meanwhile Infrastructure Bank chief investment officer John Casola was quoted in The Globe and Mail this week as saying that tremendous progress is being made on developing a route, and he hopes to have good advice for the federal government on the project by the end of 2020.
 
The new VIA plan comes years after the formation of the Shining Waters Railway proposal, which aimed to have passenger trains running between Peterborough and Toronto by 2013, for the first time since the 1990s.
 
That plan stalled, however, with the new VIA proposal emerging in 2019.
 
Joelle Kovach.

  Oh ye of little vision... where's the Windsor-Toronto-Montreal high-speed rail?