Residents in the community of Simcoe must have been surprised and pleased to learn they were getting GO service according to a splashy ad by Metrolinx that ran in their local paper, the Simcoe Reformer.
Too bad the regional transportation agency mixed up Simcoe and Simcoe County.
“About 300 kilometres, I think, separates the two,” PC MPP Michael Harris said Friday. “It is embarrassing that our government frankly can’t distinguish the town of Simcoe in Norfolk County and Simcoe County. These are the folks that are actually tasked with planning, building and operating billions of dollars (of transportation projects) on behalf of Ontarians.”
The Metrolinx ad promises: “More trains. More often. Because Simcoe deserves nothing less.”
But the ad ran in the Simcoe Reformer, a Postmedia paper, which represents the Norfolk region, including Simcoe, near Lake Erie.
Simcoe County is an area across the north of the GTA, and is actually the recipient of all-day GO trains.
“I come from a community in Kitchener-Waterloo where we’re desperate for more GO Train service, and we feel like often we’re completely left out,” Harris said. “And this just reinforces the fact that when it comes to geography, and where things are on a map, that the people that are tasked with planning the investments of GO Train or GO Transit service are completely ignorant to where things actually are.”
Harris said the Metrolinx staff need “to get out of downtown Toronto” to appreciate the realities of other parts of the province.
Metrolinx spokesperson Anne Marie Aikins said the ad which was the responsibility of the marketing department would be pulled, and “apologies for any excitement built.”