I was at the Public Information Centre 3 tonight in Baden about the new proposed layover site. All I can say is:
Holy NIMBY! 
Residents of Baden and Wilmot Township in general sent a message loud and clear that they do not want GO to locate its new layover site anywhere near residential areas. Wilmot Township mayor Wayne Roth basically got swarmed with angry citizens, who kept saying that he wasn't protecting the their concerns and interests at all, and they were skeptical when he claimed that he couldn't do anything more special than they could at the provincial level. Absolutely no one there supported the idea of the new layover site, and all of the approximately 175 people in attendance were flaming mad about getting the rotten end of the GO deal for Waterloo Region.
Here is a good article from the New Hamburg Independent on the whole proposal:
GO Transit layover station on the move again
By Doug Coxson, New Hamburg Independent, March 18, 2009
Baden
GO Transit will wrap up its yearlong study to expand service between Georgetown and Kitchener next month, but not before going back to the public with a new location for a train layover station.
The commuter rail service is now proposing a layover facility just north of the Wilmot Recreation Complex on Nafziger Road.
A public information centre has been scheduled at the WRC on Tuesday, March 24 from 6 p. m. to 9 p. m. for residents to drop in, see plans and voice an opinion.
Previous layover station sites were proposed in Petersburg and on Sandhills Road in Baden, but both those ideas are now off the table, said GO Transit’s manager of infrastructure expansion planning Greg Ashbee.
Ashbee said GO Transit became convinced the new site fits in better with their plans because of it lies within the township’s designated industrial area,
the site is easily accessed from Nafziger Road and there are no immediate neighbours of the facility. (Duke - not really, there is a new residential subdivision in Baden almost right across the street!)
Alpine Plant Foods Corp is directly across Nafziger. A home and barn is about 300 metres to the north of the tracks.
“It fits in with with overall plans of the township and the region,” he said.
Layover stations provide a compound and shelter where trains are parked and fueled overnight, and on weekends.
The compounds typically feature an above-ground fuel tank and pumps, electrical hook ups for the trains, as well as floodlights, several cameras and alarms to deter vandalism.
Trains are set to idle about an hour before the train goes into service in order to bring it up to operational speed. (Duke- these issues highlighted in red is what the Baden/New Hamburg residents are unhappy about)
In light of the possibility of adding a future boarding station on the west side of Kitchener, Ashbee said GO Transit would likely want to reserve the right to expand the layover facility to build service bays and a below-ground walkway, allowing workers to move underneath the trains to perform regular maintenance and repairs.
Ashbee said potential issues for neighbours of the facility are the noise impact from idling trains in the morning and light pollution from the yard at night.
Despite hearing concerns throughout the EA process, positive response to the expansion plan has come from various members of the community.
Wilmot Township’s director of development services Harold O’Krafka was one of the first to endorse GO Transit’s initiative last June,
urging the transit service provider to consider building a station in Wilmot to serve the growing community while catering to residents living on the west side of the cities.
“A Go Transit station in the vicinity of Nafziger Road would provide significant opportunity to reduce vehicle traffic on both Highway 7 and 8 and also the 401 corridor by improving access to public transit without having to drive to downtown Kitchener or Stratford to access those stations,” O’Krafka wrote in his report to council.
Although he’s still concerned that GO’s plans not to build a station on the west side of Kitchener will prevent local commuters from using the service, he’s
hopeful the new location of the layover facility will increase the potential for a west-side station in the future.
It could also mean a future passenger boarding station in Wilmot.
“It has the potential to be a really important thing for the community,” he said.
For the most part, Ashbee agrees.
“If Kitchener develops the way I think it will, a few years from now we’ll probably be adding another station on the west side of Kitchener,” Ashbee said. “But the way I like to think of it is — it’s a big leap for us to get to Kitchener, let’s get there first.”
The possibility of one day converting the layover station into a passenger boarding station is not in the forecast, but Ashbee doesn’t want to rule the idea out.
GO Transit does have what layover yards next to stations but it requires much more space and track infrastructure. He said it’s also preferable to provide layover facilities beyond the last passenger station because of potential impacts to train schedules in relation to the time it takes to switch controls as train directions change.
The Baden layover station does provide potential for other stations to come online between Wilmot Township and downtown Kitchener, Ashbee said.
The current service model for GO Transit has the majority of riders from outlying cities traveling to Toronto and back with very few getting off at stops in between.
But previous public information centres throughout the EA study made it clear to GO Transit officials that local riders will be making more trips between Kitchener and Guelph than anticipated.
“For GO that’s a new market,” said Ashbee. “A local commuter market is something we haven’t really satisfied before.
I think it’s going to be a real success story but time will tell.”
Ashbee said the proposed expansion is still dependent on Ministry of Transportation approval and provincial funding.
The optimistic timeline for that to fall into place is 2011.
http://www.newhamburgindependent.ca/news/article/167298
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actually a lot of people were concerned that the pharmacy campus would lead to an increase of student housing around downtown kitchener... I went to one of the open houses on housing in the area. People can be very disparaging about students, as if all students are drunk party animals.
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