Opinion: Bradford GO Station needs a makeover

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and holiday season, and your New Year is off to a great start. 

Over the holidays, I wrote a series of columns outlining New Year’s resolutions for our town, from fighting climate change to getting going on revitalizing the old community centre. 

Here’s a final New Year’s resolution meant particularly for our MPP, Caroline Mulroney. 

Yes, Minister Mulroney needs to keep up the pace on delivering the Bradford Bypass. But she can also make some immediate, practical improvements to commuters’ lives in town. 

She can fix up the GO train station.

And, no, I’m not simply speaking about increasing service from morning and evening rush-hour trains, although that needs to happen, too. 

I’m talking about the infrastructure of the station itself; our local GO station is, simply put, not good. 

The first railway service to Bradford began in 1853, and our current station was erected around 1900, and significantly restored in recent years. 

That said, there are two obvious flaws to the station, and then some more minor improvements that need doing. 

The first is parking. We need more of it, with better coordinated entrances and exists onto the streets. 

The second issue is the fact that passengers need to cross the tracks to reach the platform. If you’ve used the GO station, you’ve seen people running to catch the train, literally placing themselves in front of the incoming train. That is a huge safety no-no, which can be fixed by actually fixing the platform. 

Furthermore, given that most of the service in the daytime is by bus, and the station is typically closed during the day, there needs to be a proper bus shelter built to accommodate queuing passengers where the bus pulls into the station. 

Then, of course, there’s room for experimentation. I’m someone who believes that running an “efficient” government does not necessarily need to involve “cuts”. I’m obsessed with the idea of government real-estate assets generating passive revenue. The GO station is a perfect example of this principle; right now, it does not generate any revenue other than the fare box, and perhaps one or two small advertising billboards. 

Due diligence would have to be done, but am I wrong in thinking a Tim Horton’s kiosk or other small coffee stand would make some serious coin in the mornings? It would certainly help the user experience and frankly the environment, especially in the winter, to allow bleary-eyed commuters get a coffee at the station, rather than having to hop out into a nearby Tim’s or idle in the drive-thru. 

Anyway, there you have it: our GO train station needs the equivalent of some simple, practical renovations. And our local MPP is the Minister of Transport. Seems like a problem with a built-in solution.