There are people in Brantford that commute on VIA right now to Toronto. I would expect that any new trains should service this group (plus offer commuting options to Hamilton).
Used to be one. Depends how much of a curve they are willing to accept.
Given that there is already, GO Bus service every 30 minutes from Aldershot to downtown Hamilton if you extend some of the Aldersho trains west to Brantford, , and delay the bus by a couple of minutes, you could have a decent service. Ultimately those from Brantford can change trains at Aldershot for Hamilton Centre or West Harbour (or however far that line goes).It appears most potential Brantford customers for a GO service want to go to Hamilton (50%). We really ought to try a GO bus service for a couple years (connect to both West Harbour and downtown GO stations) to see what ridership is picked up. Estimates are around 300 trips per day in 2021.
http://www.brantford.ca/Transit Publications Documents/TZS_Brantford_GO_ presentation 2014-02-21.pdf
Not really worth another branch of service. It is, however, worth running hourly frequency buses to West Harbour.
I wonder how many GO trains could actually be put through Bayview Junction from that direction before serious coin needs to be dropped.Given that there is already, GO Bus service every 30 minutes from Aldershot to downtown Hamilton if you extend some of the Aldersho trains west to Brantford, , and delay the bus by a couple of minutes, you could have a decent service. Ultimately those from Brantford can change trains at Aldershot for Hamilton Centre or West Harbour (or however far that line goes).
Mighty serious.I wonder how many GO trains could actually be put through Bayview Junction from that direction before serious coin needs to be dropped.
If Brantford people want to go to Hamilton, instead of triggering the Bayview Jct upgrade let's reinstate the Hamilton-Port Dover line, ripping out the Escarpment Rail Trail, connecting to CP east of Hunter Street
The (former) CN.The TH+B line that runs down city streets in Dundas? And is curvy as heck?
Or the CN line through Caledonia and the Six Nations ?
- Paul
The TH+B line that runs down city streets in Dundas? And is curvy as heck?
Or the CN line through Caledonia and the Six Nations ?
- Paul
There's a pending city motion that might be tantamount to this, to the best of my knowledge (Sigh...)If Brantford people want to go to Hamilton, instead of triggering the Bayview Jct upgrade let's reinstate the Hamilton-Port Dover line, ripping out the Escarpment Rail Trail, connecting to CP east of Hunter Street
---EDIT---
Update, I've found out that this is a GO bus station.
That GO train photo on 900CHML confused the heck out of us, and didn't say whether it was a bus or train station.
Disregard the above post.
More direct, sure, but presumably would still need to access GO Hunter Street via the Hunter St tunnel? I was (entirely futilely, but anyway) thinking about services which would either turn back at GO Hunter Street or run through the tunnel as continuation services without using additional slots. For the $ required to reinstate I daresay you could probably just rebuild/widen the Hunter St. tunnelThe TH&B Hamilton-Brantford Line would be a more direct route than via the CN Dunnville and Caledonia Subs. The route is also a trail all the way from central Brantford to CP's Hamilton Yards, interrupted only by a supermarket parking lot in West Hamilton. You'd have to build an overpass on the 403 east of Brantford. The winding route on city streets in Dundas is the former Hamilton and Dundas radial railway, later absorbed by the TH&B as an industrial spur.
I don't know why you assume that a transfer would be necessary at Union. Union is a through station, not a terminus. A train going to Pearson could stop there and then keep going, getting from downtown Montreal to Pearson in around 2:40. That's well within the travel times of air-rail partnership connections in other countries. As for frequencies, hourly or better trains (33 per day in the case of Ottawa) is what was projected in the 1995 feasibility study. If only a third of them go directly to Pearson, that would, again, be consistent with the frequencies offered by other air-rail partnership trips. There's no way that airlines could keep hourly flights going with so many people switching to trains. In the 90s Air Canada themselves estimated that they'd lose close to half their Corridor business to HSR.
Yes, high speed rail would mean billions in government investments. But as I said before, it also means less money put into highway expansion, decreased congestion costs, savings for policing and collisions, less pollution, and increased economic activity from induced trips and increased interconnection between cities.
Actually the private sector did say that they'd sign up for that, proposing to partially pay for the capital cost. That's what the Lynx proposal was looking to do 25 years ago, which had the backing of half a dozen corporations plus the banks. It was the government that didn't pursue it, not the private sector. The private sector would be part of VIA's proposal as well. Yes, VIA is now pushing an incremental approach out of pragmatism. And with Trudeau in power it actually seems somewhat likely to happen. But VIA was advocating for full HSR until fairly recently.
You might want to ask the authors of the feasibility studies that have all shown that HSR in the corridor is viable.
If that happens I'd be all in favour of it. Realistically, a more modest rail expansion is much more likely to happen in the near term. The only true high speed rail option that's looking remotely likely right now is the one to London. Both the VIA proposal and the London HSR, along with GO RER, would build momentum for HSR to Montreal at some point in the future.