Hamilton: General Service Discussion

[mdrejhon]

For those wondering what the heck is happening at West Harbour GO, it is shaping up, and the plaza is open. Getting nicer, and hopefully the public sculpture arrives this year, along with better landscaping.

- Plaza now open (some more landscaping/installs still yet to come)
- Macnab access almost done
- Kiss N Ride complete
- Part of parking complete
- South platform nearly complete

Car access ramp appears to be open! Nothing prevents me from driving into the Kiss-N-Ride, although I am not yet sure if I can now access the station stairway from there yet.

A few parking spots seem even available now with no signage telling me not to park. No parking restriction signs I can see. Has anyone parked at West Harbour park-n-ride yet? Or is this a construction company oversight on an early soft-opening of West Habour free parking?

The HSR bus shelter is now open too. There is no wind protection (boo!) but I notice a similar shelter at the GO bus bays that is getting a sloping glass wall along its rear. Maybe this will happen here later too, as the design of the bus shelter seems darn near identical.

Some of the old Union Station Bay Concourse seating have been repainted neon green and permanently bolted into this plaza too. They look rather new and nice, and a good cameo for the fond/bad memories of 1970s Union, remixed into a 21st century plaza. (Hopefully they survive outdoors for a long time)

On my next visit, I will dare to venture with my car down the ramp, with the lack of "No Trespassing" or "Construction Vehicles Only" signage. This will give me lots of new vantage photography never before posted. This weekend, methinks. Keep tuned.

Wintertime isn't doing the plaza appearance justice but it should look really nice (relatively speaking, GO-station-wise network wide) with greenery and the family friendly art sculpture they chose to commission. I look forward to the springtime and seeing what hopefully proper care they put in the new larger landscaping pits (where the temporary asphalt was last year, in the midst of the panic-induced quick fixes along with temporary accessibility ramps and planters, for the rushed PanAm opening). The temporary trees are needing permanent spots, etc. The temp ramp is long gone, replaced by the now-open Kiss-N-ride access ramp.

Very few other GO stations are getting such plaza "treatment" and with Ontario enthusiasm to Niagara Falls yearround service in the near future, it is now in Ontario Budget 2016 (And VIA eventual interest) -- we could soon see perhaps an order of magnitude more commuters go through this station as the decade rolls around (Or shortly after). Hopefully. There are a lot of Niagara computers itching to disembark here, according to Niagara-area mayors and the @NiagaraGO Twitter account. The new "big infrastructure" station is literally screaming loud for a BIG ramp up of train service.

It certainly isn't a station designed for only 200 commuters a day, and isn't supposed to be destined to stay that way, anyway -- taxpayers will not stand for this except as an early soft-opening before 2017 completion -- from my visits there are clearly active shovels at four different Hamilton area construction sites designed to increase train throughput through Hamilton. We are seeing Hamilton Junction Expansion, West Harbour, Centennial Parkway bridge expansion (prior to Stoney Creek GO station beginning construction next year), and Lewis Layover Facility, all photographed with active construction. We are witnessing the clearly loud signals of upcoming year-round Niagara GO commuter service (including the recently successfully negotiated Welland Canal GO priority over boats). Clearly, this indicate a big ramp up, of some form, is well in momentum on its way. Let's hope nothing derails that this time around.

 

[drum118]

When I was there a few weeks ago, park the car in the normal parking spot and had no issues even talking to the project manger.

Hard to say if any of the other cars belong to riders.

Never check the upper level on this trip.

Central Parkway bridge is only a double track and that is all that is needed at this time.

Ran out of time to check out Lewis Layover site.

 

[mdrejhon]

Ugh, this thread got moved to skyrisecities and no longer visible on the urbantoronto forums.

Edward/Sean/Ed/etc, there seems a severe performance problem in some web browsers with a translucent stationary top bar (especially during fast upwards scrolling of image-heavy pages, e.g. PC version of Google Chrome running on nVidia graphics cards, seems to be tripped up in performance for some reason at this time).

So, Admins, please modify the CSS so skyrisecities perform as fast as urbantoronto. Not sure if it's the stationary or the translucency that's causing the issue, but this needs a CSS HTML tweak...

 

[DC83]

^ I'm also not a fan of this site. It doesn't work well on my mobile and the search function doesn't work half the time.
It's also very slow!

I'll be visiting UT and this site a lot less now.

 

[mdrejhon]

OK, good news...this thread is back on UrbanToronto, at my request.

 

[mdrejhon]

Update...

-- First free parking spots at West Harbour GO is OPEN. More will follow later this year.
-- South side stairs and elevator is OPEN in the west pedestrian overpass.

Now any disabled driver can park and use West Harbour GO, and catch the morning 6:15 or 6:45 to Toronto! Pix below (all mine).

Actual commuters have begun parking at West Harbour GO:

Interesting ironwork art along sidewalk.

The north entrance to the pedestrian overpass is open.

I was able to get inside, no problem.

The elevator works!

 

[mdrejhon]

Bay structure is progressing along well, but not open yet:

Also, for the main Macnab structure, here's several never-before-posted vantage photography of West Harbour GO.

This last one is the additional "underground" parking that will open later this year.
(I held the camera down near the floor and photographed with the camera peeking under the bottom edge of the safety railing)

Either way, Hamilton, you now have free parking at a downtown GO station. Unannounced of course, as there's only about three dozen parking spots open (out of 300). Plenty of disabled parking too, with active elevator access to the pedestrian bridge (at Macnab, not Bay).

 

[doady]

There is probably not a "transit agency" in North America more obsessed with parking than GO. Building parking in the downtown of Hamilton, beside the second and third busiest bus corridors in the city (Barton and James, respectively), pretty much describes what GO is all about.

 

[mdrejhon]

There is probably not a "transit agency" in North America more obsessed with parking than GO. Building parking in the downtown of Hamilton, beside the second and third busiest bus corridors in the city (Barton and James, respectively), pretty much describes what GO is all about.

To be fair, they are going much more intermodal now with the Hub stations. The station has a flagship kiosked bike share hub (The SoBi Hamilton bikeshare was funded by them, to boot!), two bike shelters instead of the usual one, and designed to have good public transit connections.

Eventually all the spots will become paid, similar to the encroachment of Mimico becoming almost all Reserved Parking, so I expect the same to happen to Hamilton as a stealth transition away from free parking.

GO is one of North America's biggest commuter train services, but most North American commuter train services have quite similar parking ratios, just that their whole systems are much smaller...save for the New York City commuter train system (Long Island, etc).

And the Hamilton LRT is coming!

 

[mdrejhon]

Electrification all the way to Hamilton is discussed in the newly released Appendix A!

This is (probably) 2030s stuff, but it's good to see this "option" finally mentioned officially in the current GO RER umbrella.

It would replace Hamilton 16 because Burlington expresses are significantly faster. Approximately ~40-minutes or ~45-minutes Hamilton-Union. I know that express trains between Union-Burlington takes only 30 minutes (that's a diesel GO train) as that happened to one late-running PanAm express train.

For this to be likely to happen sooner, we can't let Metrolinx trunctate electrification Burlington-Aldershot.

 

[gweed123]

Electrification all the way to Hamilton is discussed in the newly released Appendix A!

This is 2030s stuff, but it's good to see this "option" finally mentioned officially in the current GO RER umbrella.

It would replace Hamilton 16 because Burlington expresses are significantly faster. Approximately ~40-minutes Hamilton-Union. I know that express trains between Union-Burlington takes only 30 minutes (that's a diesel GO train) as that happened to one late-running PanAm express train.

That would be awesome! I usually take the 16 bus in off-peak times, because it's much faster than driving to Aldershot and taking the train from there.

That would lend credence to ultimately a 3-tiered service plan then:

• Hamilton-Burlington->>> Union
• Burlington-Clarkson->>> Union
• Clarkson-Union

Each would have their own defined "local area", running express for the rest of the trip, with a one station overlap. Overall, much faster trips for everybody except the people who are really close in, who have pretty short trips already.

 

[mdrejhon]

The Lewis Rd Layover Facility (near Grimsby) is complete, fully secured, manned with security even on a Sunday evening, and just awaiting final connection to the CN sub.

I walked away just as a security SUV approached the gate, obviously saw me via camera poles that are at all corners of the yard, as I walked streetside outside. You certainly now need an official invitation to walk on that formerly unwalled unsecured property.

I'll have to see if I can get invited to a media event, for my article.

 

[mdrejhon]

The south bridge abutment of the Hamilton Rail Junction expansion is now complete.

Obviously, there'll still be need for crossover across freight tracks (no rail-to-rail grade separation), but will eliminate the vast majority of freight conflicts once all current construction completes through 2017.

Based on a Metrolinx document that mathed-out the freight conflicts, and the construction needed to solve them.... What I'm seeing is all the CN-side pre-requisites are being knocked off one by one, rather rapidly this decade. From my photography of construction co-relating to this Metrolinx document of requirements for successfully achieving hourly GO -- this apparently appears to make West Harbour GO mathematically ready for all-day 2-way hourly service by sometime during 2017. Even though introducing all-day 2-way is not planned this early (at this time).

Current official annouced. Ontario plan is make Hamilton Downtown GO the all-day 2-way GO service terminus. Hogwash! The evidence -- construction AND money trail -- is currently pointing to West Harbour. Possibly there might be CP-side expansions coming instead (2017-2024) to change this. But right now all indications are CN-side on the "show me the money" -- is showing all-day hourly trains pointed squarely at West Harbour GO.

Combined with the positivity from Niagara side, and Niagara seasonals finally being able to stop in Hamilton (my earlier article), 2017 is probably the year of the beginnings of massive GO train expansions to Hamilton even if not hourly all-day 2-way service (yet).

Even 2016 Metrolinx documents leaves the hourly all-day role somewhat ambigious (WH GO versus Hunter GO). Clearly.

A-Line Hamilton LRT becomes even more important with West Harbour GO being the only station mathematically capable (as of 2017) of successfully getting hourly 2-way GO service already.

 

[crs1026]

The south bridge abutment of the Hamilton Rail Junction expansion is now complete.

Obviously, there'll still be need for crossover across freight tracks (no rail-to-rail grade separation), but will eliminate the vast majority of freight conflicts once all current construction completes through 2017.
View attachment 76603
Current official announced. Ontario plan is make Hamilton Downtown GO the all-day 2-way GO service terminus. Hogwash! The evidence -- construction AND money trail -- is currently pointing to West Harbour. Possibly there might be CP-side expansions coming instead (2017-2024) to change this. But right now all indications are CN-side on the "show me the money" -- is showing all-day hourly trains pointed squarely at West Harbour GO.

It's interesting that the final build design adds even more trackage than that 2011 study. In that study, the third tracking of the bridge wasn't contemplated. The new mainline will extend further towards Bayview than originally studied.

The RER BCA Appendix (which is the most up to date source I would look to) hints at one change to the CP trackage - that is, reduction of the connecting tracks (visible in your picture) from double to single. Perhaps one shouldn't read those charts too literally, but they were drawn with some care in other respects. That change would likely not impact the potential for hourly service to Hunter St, but it would certainly limit more frequent 2-way service.

It does seem that the money is flowing towards James Street.

In the meanwhile, CN recently cancelled two of its freight trains on the Grimsby Sub, although that may reverse itself eventually. The two remaining freights on this line, 421/422, are super-long trains now.

- Paul

 

[mdrejhon]

I counted 160 cars on two freight trains. What is the current maximum allowed length in these parts?