Rail revival campaign takes on steam: Northeast passenger rail advocates craft proposal for election year release.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: Transportation

Eric Boutilier knows it's an uphill climb to restore passenger rail service in the northeast.

Five years after Queen's Park axed the Northlander train running between Cochrane and Toronto, the founder of a grassroots group seeking its return is taking his message to provincial politicians who will be vying for votes next year.

In early 2018, All Aboard Northern Ontario will be releasing a proposal that Boutilier insists will be a credible, viable and sellable plan to all the mainstream parties.

A series of regional town hall meetings will follow.

"The idea is to present this to the public and the politicians that are running for office in 2018."

The unexpected cancellation of the Northlander by Queen's Park in 2012 "left a sour taste in many people's mouths," said Boutilier, a North Bay resident who began spearheading the campaign two years ago.

While Premier Kathleen Wynne is keen on delivering high-speed passenger rail to southwestern Ontario, Boutilier said it's been difficult to pin down MPPs on a similar commitment for the northeast.

"We're not sure why they're choosing not to address this issue."

Boutilier launched the All Aboard website last October to tie in with simillary named citizen rail advocacy groups in the province.

The base of support has steadily grown from a "handful" of members to include municipal leaders, tourism organizations, and rail advocates across the region and Ontario.

Boutilier realized his past appeals to government ministries were producing only boilerplate policy responses. And meetings with smiling, note-taking bureaucrats were going nowhere.

"It amounted to very little in terms of getting this issue front and centre."

It convinced him that a well-researched approach designed to bend the ears of the decision-makers was in order.

When the Northlander was cancelled at part of the government's divestment strategy of the Ontario Northland Transportation Com mission (ONTC), it was attributed to "stagnant ridership" combined with an "unsustainable financial path."

The resulting regional outcry and a damning provincial auditor general's report prompted Queen's Park to kill the process and recommit the ONTC to find efficiencies and grow the business.

Documents, since obtained by Boutilier's group through Freedom of Information, indicated that ridership over the last three years of the Northlander's operation had actually increased from 31,000 to 39,000.

In drawing from a regional base of 200,000, those numbers...