All aboard the Union-Pearson express

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(Updated) There will soon be a much quicker way to get to Pearson Airport from Toronto’s Union Station.

Premier Kathleen Wynne was a passenger on the dedicated express train today for its first trip starting at Union Station and ending at Pearson. The UP Express will officially launch on June 6th, just in time for the 2015 Pan Am games.

The premier says it will give people a fast reliable option to travel between the airport and the Toronto core. The train is forecast to carry over 2 million passengers a year by 2018 and is expected to remove 1.2 million car trips from the GTA in the first year alone.

Wynne says the government is investing more than $130 billion in public infrastructure over the next 10 years and this is just one of the projects underway. The investment will support over 20,000 jobs.

“Pearson Airport and Union Station are already Canada’s two busiest transportation hubs. But we haven’t seen anything yet. By 2031, they are forecast to be serving 190 million travellers a year – almost twice as many as today.”

“We’ve designed the UP Express with the capacity to handle this enormous growth, so this is very much is a future-looking piece of infrastructure.”

The new airport trains have been undergoing testing for several months.

The express train will take passengers between downtown Toronto and the airport in 25 minutes and will depart every 15 minutes during airport hours.

A one-way fare will cost $27.50 or $19 with the multi-transit system Presto card.