| Guelph Central GO Station Via Rail and GO Transit Station |
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Guelph Central Station |
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| Station statistics | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Address | 79 Carden Street, Guelph, ON | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Parking | No | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Other information | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Accessible | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Code | GO Transit: GUEP | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Owned by | City of Guelph | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Fare zone | 39 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Services | |||||||||||||||||||||
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Guelph Central GO Station, fully opening in May 2012, is the community's main inter-modal transportation terminal connecting together Guelph Transit, Via Rail, GO Transit, Greyhound Canada and Aboutown Bus Service.
It is located at 79 Carden St where the current Via Rail railway station is and running along Carden Street to where the former Guelph Bus Terminal was at 141 Macdonnell Street. The name was chosen with input from the community and all the transit service providers using the new station.[1]
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Built in 1911, the Guelph railway station is a classic example of early 20th Century Canadian railway station design and has been designated as a heritage structure per the Heritage Railway Stations Protection Act.[2] The station is staffed and wheelchair-accessible. Renovations inside the railway station building to accommodate Greyhound and GO Transit are expected to be completed by mid-2012.[3]
The Inter-modal Transit Terminal was first proposed in 2002 [4] as part of the Guelph-Wellington Transportation Study.[5]
The construction of the inter-modal transit terminal began in June 2010, and is scheduled to be completed by November 2011. The project will cost $8 million dollars for which $5.3 million was from the Provincial and Federal Infrastructure Stimulus Funds.[6]
The opening of the bus portion of the station was delayed from October 2011 to May 2012 to allow time for the renovations of the railway station building to be completed.[7] Due to this delay, the Greyhound and GO Bus services, which were temporally relocated to Lower Wyndham Stand Fountain Street, will remain there until at least the summer of 2012.[8]
Starting January 1, 2012, all Guelph Transit routes will be changed.[9] While it was originally planned to have the new bus routes meeting at the new station on the same date, this change has been delayed until the spring of 2012.[10]
Via Rail offers six trains daily (three in each direction) running between London and Toronto.
In the past, Guelph was in the also served by GO Transit trains (starting in 1990 as the terminus of the Georgetown line), but provincial cutbacks in 1993 led GO to pull back the railway service to Georgetown. In the fall of 2007, GO Transit announced it was starting an environmental assessment on track upgrades required to resume rail service to Guelph.[11] GO Train service was resumed on December 19, 2011, with two trains in the morning from Kitchener to Toronto, and two trains returning in the evening.[12] $18 million was spent to get this first stage operational, with further upgrades to come.[13] GO buses still serve Guelph, departing from the temporary Guelph Bus Terminal and from the University of Guelph. The GO buses will move to the new station upon completion.
The University of Guelph has created a transit hub within the entrance mall area in front of the University Centre to accommodate increased GO Bus service. Guelph Transit, Aboutown Northlink and Greyhound Canada also added more bus services to campus.[17]
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