Those new diesel locomotives sound impressive, but I still find it hard to understand why not electrify now. Why procrastinate?
It's a matter of affordability and holistic continual improvement. It does make sense to electrify now, but it also makes sense to have say all day service on the Milton line or entend Georgetown to Kitchener. Electrifying Georgetown now means a higher relative level of pollution production from GO Transit.
What are the benefits of using diesel trains for another generation?
It means trains will continue to be more environmentally friendly than cars and allows transit expansion to remove the most cars from the roads as soon as possible. Thereby having the largest positive environmental impact.
It's not adhoc electrification, it's electrification where demand and built-form make it appropriate. I don't see how lower emissions diesel locomotives will provide better air quality than electric trains and I doubt they will be less noisy.
Electric trains still create emssions, just not spread out over the corridor, so they just shift the problem elsewhere. I believe funds should be spent to have the largest impact over the largest area first.
If noise is the concern, electrification won't fix it (except by reducing duration) as it's the same rail/wheel interface causing the noise. Noise problems should be addressed with noise pollution legistation of permissible levels. That would allow alternative design solutions such as sound barrier walls to compete for the most efficient solution.
If it's not an ad hoc basis, which corridor gives the highest rate of return? What trainsets are we going to use? What cantenary poles or third rail configuration? What RoW width? What substation spacing? What track seperation between freight and passenger tracks? Those are the questions being asked by the System Electrification Study that is coming out in December. Electrification is going to happen, it's a matter of when is best.
We are not providing enough funding to meet all transit/environmental needs, so we must prioritize. GO's operational model has been based on their infrastructure capacity limits. A centralized service area running on excess capacity track space in mixed traffic. To get to electrification, you need a huge amount of enabling works, which jacks up the incremental price from current infrastructure.
(1) 3/4 Track corridors to allow two-way full-day service
This will open the possibility to smaller EMU/DMU trains running on tighter headways as GO will have access to tracks 24 hours a day rather than 4-6 hours.
(2) Decentralized Servicing
Willowbrook is at/over capacity and GO is looking to start having regional service stations at the end of the line for overnight servicing rather than near Union Station for daytime servicing. They are planning to build one with the Lakeshore East expansion to Bowmanville and another with the Milton line expansion. This will allow full-day service rather than just peak-service.
(3) Grade Seperations
West Toronto Diamond is a big one, but almost every intersection in Toronto or Mississauga needs doing now and the surrounding Cities not far behind. Other big ones are the Davenport Diamond and Humber River Bridge and Fly-under. These will allow electric trains to take advantage of their lower mass
ower ratio and maximize average operational speed.
(4) Electrification
Once you have all those works done, the price tag on electrification is much easier to swallow and environmental regulation of other sectors (phasing coal-burning plans out by 2015, no incandesent bulbs by 2013, new car standards by 2016) means it's necessary to stay ahead of the green curve. Electrification with zero-source emissions should be our target.
The ARL part of the Georgetown expansion will be completed by July 2015. Using that as the starting point of 'the next generation' of transit expansion, I would expect Lakeshore (West and East) to be fully electrified, Milton/Georgetown/Barrie to run mixed dual fuel or two trainsets, and Stouffville/Richmond Hill to run tier 4 (or 5?) diesel within 10 years. I'd expect full electrification (of the existing service area) within 20 years.
I also expect GO's annual ridership levels to break 150m by 2020 and 300m by 2030.
