k10ery
Senior Member
20 to 30 minute headways, and a 30-minute trip to the centre (about 30 kph I think). Not bad.
Toronto Union Pearson Express | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx | MMM Group Limited
BurlOak
Senior Member
Give the $20 service a bit of time and it will most likely fail. Then the extra stops can be added. Maybe this could happen at the same time as electrification.
vegeta_skyline
Senior Member
The opposite is more likely, stops will be removed to make it more desirable to the target market. They are not going to add stops, not when we already have regular GO trains that make all stops, what would be the point of creating a duplicate service?
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nfitz
Superstar
I'd guess that Bloor-Dundas West would remain, and that after opening the Weston station in 2015 it will be so under-used that it will be moved to Eglinton by the time it opens in 2020.
Is the comment in the Layton/Nunziata piece that there is no longer a plan to integrate Bloor and Dundas West stations? Metrolinx has talked it up a lot, and still has a prominent webpage on the project - http://www.metrolinx.com/en/projectsandprograms/mobilityhubs/mobility_hubs_Dundas_West_Bloor.aspx
TOareaFan
Superstar
The stop at Weston was simply to appease the ever-reaching community opposition there. I can't imagine anyone is going to take a $20 train from Weston to the Airport and, eventually, this will be realized and the stop will be phased out. The Dundas West/Bloor GO stop makes perfect sense as it allows people to connect from the B-D subway if they choose to.
rbt
Senior Member
There are 7 tracks in most of that corridor.
You don't need to stop the ARL in order to start a different service. There will also be a couple dozen gotrains per day which could be doubled or tripled for a minimal additional investment.
Toronto requires a business class train from the airport to downtown. If it isn't profitable at $20 then charge $40 for the trip. The people coming in on a business trip for the day (or two) really don't care about the cost. They need something reliable. These tend to be the people who will drop half a million in a trip on a new investment; very useful people to have visiting your city.
Frankly, best feature of these trains is the ability to checkin and get rid of your luggage when bording the train.
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ShonTron
Moderator
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rbt
Senior Member
Not Chicago. Yes for San Francisco. Vancouver is really clumsy if you have any materials with you (say product samples and a briefcase) due to crowding at certain times of the day.
I commuted to Chicago on a daily basis for a few weeks and learned very very quickly that the Blue Line was useless.
Highways in Chicago are much more free-flowing than Toronto, so I tended to take a sedan.
If I had extra time or congestion was bad, Metra was alright for heading out to the airport.
For New York the JFK Express (now A train) needs help, something actually express; but Newark's Amtrak service is alright despite the very slow people mover. The subway from JFK takes as long as the flight from Toronto. Q33 to 7th line can be a shorter trip depending on where the office is but not a trip I would do in a suit with an important meeting coming up.
Heathrow has great service.
Paris is alright if you buy your tickets in advance. The lines at the ticket machines can be 90 minutes long at certain times of the day.
I have no idea what you're referring to for LAX. Two transfers (bus, light rail, light rail) with a suit case isn't fun nor is the 90 minute trip (including waiting time). Sedan all the way here and Toronto highway congestion is definitely less predictable than LA.
If you're early, fly into San Diego and take Amtrak to downtown LA instead. I hate LAX that much.
I've never performed a commute to Seattle and Portland and only visit those cities as a tourist once or twice a year and tend to arrive by Amtrak. Zephyr for the win for tourists in these cities.
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Hipster Duck
Senior Member
There certainly are classes of cities that can support a premium express train to the airport as well as a regular rapid transit line, but I'm not sure Toronto is in that class yet.
A place like London can support this, because the tube to Heathrow is relatively slow, and because London is the second largest financial centre in the world. Tokyo can support both regional rail to Narita and an express, but then again, Narita is way out there and Tokyo has the population of Canada.
Toronto would be a hard sell for simultaneously having both systems. I would prefer to have an electrified regional rail GO train, but I know that the ARL has some powerful friends and I suspect that vegeta is right: they'll sacrifice stops to make the ARL more appealing rather than build a more equitable electrified GO line.
rbt
Senior Member
We will see.
Regular electrified GO service will not go to the airport unless we build a tunnel to make it a through line. There are far far more riders coming from beyond Pearson than Pearson itself. It's possible to provide high-volume access to both with an extension, and possibly technology change, of the airports people mover.
That doesn't remove the target market which is the guys currently using airport sedans at $60 a trip and cursing congestion on Gardiner. For Torontonians, the downtowners using the Uber cab service are the target market ($65 flat).
$40 for the train still leaves $25 for the Uber cab to Yorkville and would be a more reliable trip.
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TOareaFan
Superstar
Here is the problem (in the minds of "non-transit" folks) with those headways. I travel a decent amount and I am always trying to convince co-workers/friends/associates to seek out the transit link from the airport to the city. Most people look at numbers like you present like this "so, if I miss the train by 1 minute it is 29 minutes til the next one and then I am 30 minutes from the city and "X" minutes from there to my hotel...assuming I can figure out how to get from the station to the hotel"
"in the 59 minutes I have used up getting from the airport to the train station in the city, how close to my hotel could a cab/car from the airport get me?"
"So, if I am likely to end up in a cab from the station to the hotel....why not just skip the middle bits and take a cab the whole way".
That is the biggest battle that the ARL will have to combat....not price. If the ARL has 15 minute frequencies and a 20 minute ride time to Union and is reliable....that 35 minutes will be compared to the anticipated travel time in a cab (which varies greatly).....only then will price come in to it (within the targeted user market that is).
CDL.TO
Moderator
For the talk of Heathrow, there is not just the Heathrow Express, but the Heathrow Connect service to Paddington that makes 5 intermediate stops at half the price. Unfortunately, it seems impossible to find ridership numbers.
If we look at the "21 most competitive cities*" (according to the Economist), 18 have rail links to their primary international airport, but only 5 have "premium express" rail links. Only one has a "premium express" rail link without a cheaper, local train alternative (Hong Kong).
Premium rail links are the exception, not the rule.
*(20th place was a tie, hence 21)
If we look at the "21 most competitive cities*" (according to the Economist), 18 have rail links to their primary international airport, but only 5 have "premium express" rail links. Only one has a "premium express" rail link without a cheaper, local train alternative (Hong Kong).
Premium rail links are the exception, not the rule.
*(20th place was a tie, hence 21)
k10ery
Senior Member
Good point. But ARL was conceived back when Heathrow Express was the cool new thing, and the business model has not been updated to reflect the development of cheap, accessible rail to airports in London and around North America.
Living on the west side of downtown, a limo ride to the airport is $55, and a bad ride in the afternoon rush takes 35 minutes door to door, even when the Jameson ramp is closed. The normal trip is 25 minutes. I don't see how ARL can compete with that, except for a small group of tourists who don't know any better.
When the ARL is in place and it becomes clear that nobody is taking it, what will happen? Some people here think they will add stops, and others they they will eliminate stops. I think they will do nothing for a long, long time. Governments are not great at shutting down money-losing propositions. (Just look at Ontario Northland.) I predict that, if we don't fix this broken business model now, we will still have a money-losing, space-wasting express ARL come 2025 at least.
The one other possibility is that the push for a DRL heats up before then. A government that is looking at a $2-3 billion subway tunnel from Union to Dundas West might just figure out it would be better to slash the ARL fare, add more stations, and get a near-DRL for a fraction of the cost. One can always hope.
Living on the west side of downtown, a limo ride to the airport is $55, and a bad ride in the afternoon rush takes 35 minutes door to door, even when the Jameson ramp is closed. The normal trip is 25 minutes. I don't see how ARL can compete with that, except for a small group of tourists who don't know any better.
When the ARL is in place and it becomes clear that nobody is taking it, what will happen? Some people here think they will add stops, and others they they will eliminate stops. I think they will do nothing for a long, long time. Governments are not great at shutting down money-losing propositions. (Just look at Ontario Northland.) I predict that, if we don't fix this broken business model now, we will still have a money-losing, space-wasting express ARL come 2025 at least.
The one other possibility is that the push for a DRL heats up before then. A government that is looking at a $2-3 billion subway tunnel from Union to Dundas West might just figure out it would be better to slash the ARL fare, add more stations, and get a near-DRL for a fraction of the cost. One can always hope.
k10ery
Senior Member
So true! A couple of months ago, I tried to connect on Amtrak from Newark International to Philadelphia, but I missed my train because of that damn slow people mover! (That, and the good people at US Border Protection.) The backup plan turned out to be 3+ hours on a New Jersey commuter train plus SEPTA.
All in all, I prefer to take the PATH train to Manhattan. Cheaper, more reliable, (and it goes to Manhattan).
k10ery
Senior Member
True (though average waiting time would be 7.5 minutes not 15).
But we can do headways much better on a S-bahn type service. The ENTIRE Maryland LRT network carries fewer riders than the Sheppard subway. Slash the fare, increase the ridership, and in Toronto you could justify headways like the Eglinton LRT, or thereabouts.