Council concerned high speed rail will never make it to Windsor

City council is worried that the province plans to leave Windsor out of the proposed high speed rail line.

Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkenspointedto reports from the provincial government that show the London to Windsor portion of the project with a dotted line.

He believes itshows Windsor is being left out of future plans.

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"This document I submit to you says that high speed rail will never come to Windsor," said Dilkens.

"You need to know that all of this conversation is going to exclude our community."

High speed rail proposal

Dilkens said that the power point shows that high speed rail is not planned for the city. He said he knows some may have a different understanding of the document, but he wanted to go public with his concerns.

"To me, that's codespeak for, 'This will never happen,'" he said.

"We know the section between Windsor and London is a section that will not be highly profitable on the high speed rail line, but it's a critical portion to make sure that all of Ontario is connected."

"I just can't believe once again Ontario stops in London. We're getting excluded from the regional idea of development," said Coun. Paul Borelli, who called the possible exclusiona travesty.

"We can not be excluded."

Borelli said that he thinks the high speed rail line will stop in London.

"There's 15 million people that high speed rail would make accessible to us," he said, adding that he believes ending the rail line in London would bea mistake."We're always going to be the left out area."

Dilkens wants people to push politicians to make high-speed rail an election issue.

"We want to make sure that if there is high-speed rail moving forward in the province of Ontario that we're not a Phase 2 dotted line afterthought, that this is actually a commitment on the table from the government."