As the province moves ahead with plans to connect seven cities via a new high-speed rail line, people living in-between those communities hope their voices won’t be ignored.

The plans for the high-speed line call for trains to start running along part of the route – with stops at Union Station in Toronto, Pearson International Airport, Guelph Central Station, a new transit hub in Kitchener and a station in London – by 2025. It would then be extended to Chatham-Kent and Windsor by 2031.

Between London and Kitchener, the plan calls for the trains to run on new tracks to be built along an existing hydro corridor.

A group called InterCityRail has formed in opposition to this plan, asking the province to consider alternative routes and technologies.

“Right now, the province isn’t wavering,” Kelly Elliott, a Thames Centre councillor and a member of InterCityRail, said Wednesday.

InterCityRail has held public meetings about the issue in New Hamburg and Tavistock this week. Another meeting takes place Thursday night in Thorndale.

Elliott says many of the people at those meetings have expressed concerns about the high-speed line eliminating current farmland, as well as dead-ending – severing existing farms by putting a virtually impassable rail line in the middle of them.

The high-speed rail line comes with an estimated cost of $21 billion.