I take the UP Express train into the office every day (here in Toronto). This is a rail service that we have spoken about many times over the years on this blog.

It started as an airport link that was too expensive, but was then repriced so that more people would use it, and use it locally. It is now widely used by people like me. I don’t know the exact split, but in the mornings, it feels like majority commuters.

Then on Monday of this week, the province announced that local service would be reduced from every 15 minutes to every 30 minutes. Supposedly this was in order to improve service between downtown and Pearson airport.

Commuters immediately reacted. In fact, while riding the train on Tuesday morning, there was quite literally a guy beside me on the phone trying to complain to his local city councillor and MPP. A petition was also started on Monday that, at the time of writing this post, had close to 6,000 supporters.

And then — some 24 hours after the initial announcement — the Minister of Transportation announced that the province would be walking back this service change and that he had “directed Metrolinx to not proceed.” Boom.

As a daily rider, this selfishly makes me happy. But more importantly, I think it, once again, shows how quickly voices can get amplified in today’s world and how important good regional express rail is to our city. Clearly we need more of this!

Sadly, it probably also shows that some people have no idea how lines like these are actually getting used. I have to believe that if anyone had looked closely at ridership and the split between local/airport, that this decision wouldn’t have been made in the first place.