FIFTY YEARS AGO, even residents of this part of Ontario had reasonably good public transit available.

Although Orangeville had no municipal transit system, the town had a population of about 5,000 – close to Shelburne’s current population – and everybody was within a reasonable walking distance of the Broadway shopping district, which had a full range of retail outlets.

More significantly, anyone who lacked a car could choose between Gray Coach Lines buses that plied Highway 10 at least four times a day and CPR Dayliners that made as many daily trips to and from Toronto on a schedule that called for them to do the roughly 120 miles in three hours. Trips between Orangeville and Toronto’s Union Station took well under 90 minutes.

Today, the only public transit in Dufferin consists of a few Greyhound buses that travel at strange times and cost more than most potential travellers can afford, GO Transit buses with far more reasonable fares but no service on evenings or weekends, and Orangeville’s municipal transit system which also operates only about 12 hours a day six days a week, with no Sunday or holiday service.

Farther south, Brampton and Mississauga have fairly impressive transit systems that both offer links with the Toronto Transit Commission, Mississauga’s even taking riders as far as the TTC’s Bloor-Danforth subway line, but neither city has any form of rapid transit, let alone any that would be competitive with the private car in terms of speed and convenience.

And, as we see it, even Toronto has no public transit that approaches the quality found in most parts of Europe, where cities like Paris and Vienna have splendid subway and streetcar services that put Toronto’s to shame.

In the circumstances, it will be interesting to see whether those seeking office in next month’s municipal elections will address the situation and propose realistic ways of filling the gaps in local public transit services.

That’s already the case in Toronto, where each of the major mayoral candidates has come up with proposals to improve the TTC and the fight being mainly over whether the city needs more subway lines rather than less expensive light rail transit (streetcars operating on their own right-of-way) or Ottawa-style “busways”.

Perhaps because it’s a provincial operation, GO Transit has been getting relatively little attention. Whatever the case, it’s not because of any lack of serious gaps in GO services.

There, the biggest gap is in the type of service currently offered and planned for the near future. Despite the growing presence of gridlocks in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), GO currently has just two forms of service, the huge, double-decker trains that are packed in rush hours and run almost empty along the Lakeshore line in the off-peak hours, and GO buses that spend much of their time competing with local transit services.

We wonder how long it will be until the GO Transit brain trust awakens to the fact that self-powered rail coaches offer enormous potential advantages, both as superior vehicles to buses in outlying areas and as replacements for the double-decker trains in the off-peak hours.

Modern versions of the Dayliner (which could operate at speeds of up to about 110 km/h) could provide commuter service from places like Brantford, Guelph, Orangeville, Alliston, Barrie, Uxbridge, Peterborough and Cobourg (none of which now has any GO train service and all of which are now within the ‘Toronto commutershed) and do the Lakeshore runs in off-peak hours at enormous savings in energy and other costs.

Of course, a similar problem exists at Via Rail, where the only service of any consequence now being offered consists of ordinary passenger trains. Incredibly, the only remaining ‘Budd car’ (Dayliner) services are on Vancouver Island and between Sudbury and White River. And it’s not as if 21st Century versions of the now half-century old equipment weren’t available, since manufacturers of such coaches include Canada’s Bombardier.

Locally, what we’d like to see our politicians at least consider is a Dufferin Transit Authority that would provide some local transit service in Shelburne and shuttle service between Orangeville and Shelburne, Grand Valley and Caledon village.

As for the Town of Caledon, its population of nearly 60,000 should permit something more than limited bus service in the Bolton area. Ideally, it would include a shuttle service on Highway 10 between Brampton and Orangeville.

Obviously, such services would have to be fairly heavily subsidized and would start out with low ridership. But in the long run they would start to pay off and provide much-needed mobility, both for those who now don’t have a car of their own and for others who, in their advancing years, face the prospect of no longer being able to drive.

Eventually, any healthy regional transit system would produce environmental benefits, with a full transit vehicle producing far less ‘greenhouse gas’ per traveller than the private car.