Talk about a city coming together, at least from a transit perspective.
City and provincial officials gathered for a groundbreaking on Friday morning for the new Barrie Allandale Transit Terminal (BATT), which will be located in the area of Essa Road and Gowan Street, adjacent to the Allandale Waterfront GO station.
"When you consider how the City of Barrie has grown, where the centre is, how to get around the City of Barrie, we are now standing in the new geographic centre of the city," said Barrie Mayor Alex Nuttall.
He also said there was a historical context to the new terminal's location.
"I don't think it should be lost on us at this time that we are actually coming back to where transit began in our area a couple of hundred years ago."
BATT will be an inter-regional transit hub with adjacency to the existing rail corridor. The city has said it will host seamless transit services and connections between Simcoe County, Muskoka, and the Greater Toronto area.
Nuttall was joined at the groundbreaking by the construction team working on the project as well as Andrea Khanjin, Barrie-Innisfil MPP, and Doug Downey, Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte MPP.
"Not only do we need to diversify our economy, we need to fundamentally diversify how people work, live and play, and the GO train network and Barrie Transit is very much a life vehicle of that."
Downey said BATT was being built on the historical heart of Barrie.
"This is Allandale," he stated. "It's where the railway was centred."
The $23.5 million project is being funded 40 per cent by the federal government, 33.3 per cent from the province and the rest from the city.
The current bus terminal at 24 Maple Avenue is expected to wind down operations when BATT opens in late 2025,but there will remain a Downtown Mini Hub that the city says will include bus stops and sheltered waiting areas to maintain downtown transit service levels.
"Reducing the footprint of the current transit terminal within the downtown while preserving route coverage will support downtown revitalization objectives and provide continued access to Barrie's busiest destination," according to City of Barrie website.
The city's vision is to replace the current transit terminal with a year-round permanent market, though project details have not been finalized.
