The population boom is coming and the provincial government wants to prepare with the expansion of the GO train network, even if that means small things for now like improving safety at Barrie's two stations.
By 2041, Barrie's population is expected to balloon to more than 250,000 residents, primarily in the south end.
More people coming to the city means more commuters using the northern line, which ends in Barrie at the Allandale Waterfront station.
"The timing on this couldn't be any better," Barrie-Innisfil MPP Andrea Khanjin said Friday afternoon at the Barrie South GO station, located at Yonge Street and Mapleview Drive.
"We have to get all the upgrades done now, so when we do have that big population boom in this area, we need to have our case ready to run the trains more often and build up that capacity to get people moving."
Two-way, all-day transit service every 15 minutes is the end goal.
"A lot of residents want more two-way GO," the MPP said. "They want more times and they want to be able to take the trains on the weekends and have more times on the weekends."
To accommodate that growth, a second track could be added, but there's no timeline yet on when that could happen.
"The whole point here is building the capacity so we can build another track and get more people moving to where they need to go," Khanjin said.
"But there are a lot of steps we have to do to get there. We can't put the cart before the horse, or in this case, the train before the track."
In the meantime, Khanjin said the province needs to prepare for that work, which could result in ridership increasing by 60 per cent with the infrastructure upgrades.
"All of these things are going to add up so we can expand the GO train," Khanjin said.
The province, through Metrolinx and Infrastructure Ontario, is releasing requests for proposal to pre-qualified companies to design, build, finance, operate and maintain in various projects.
There's no timeline or dollar figure yet, as the work remains in the early stages.
"We need to ensure that the costs are fair and done in a competitive manner," Khanjin said.
Locally, that includes work at both GO stations within the city limits, at the Allandale Waterfront and Barrie South stations, which Khanjin said "will only improve" train use in the city.
At Allandale Waterfront, work is expected to begin December on replacing the platform edge tiles to improve safety as part of early station improvements.
At Barrie South, the station's parking lot has already been expanded with 150 additional spots. Later this year, beginning in November, the platform tiles will also be replaced.
"The importance of this is to get ready for that (network-wide) expansion in order to get people moving," Khanjin said. "The platforms are a big part of building for that capacity."
With the number of riders is steady locally, Khanjin said there are always ways to improve transit.
"We have good ridership here now, but we could obviously always do better," she said.
"We're in a bit of an interesting spot, because some people will also go to Bradford or go to Vaughan, because they want to forward and go closer to their location, not backwards, so we obviously have to get better with that."
With more people moving to Barrie who are used to riding the GO train, Khanjin expects those numbers will increase.
"This is going to be second nature to them," she added.
As it stands, the MPP said many local residents are driving to Vaughan and hopping on the TTC to get to their destination.
"That gets them seamlessly to some of their offices and to their jobs or the companies that they're working at, so that whole integrated network and connecting the dots between Barrie and the Greater Golden Horseshoe is important," Khanjin said. "We live in a global economy and we also live in a market where people are travelling farther.
"This isn't just a Toronto solution, but an all-of-Ontario solution," the MPP added.
A GO station is also expected to open in Innisfil, around the 6th Line, sometime between 2022 and 2025, Khanjin said.
