Toronto Union Pearson Express | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx | MMM Group Limited

I've been on the Orangeville-Brampton train. It's a windy, slow (but very scenic) ride. There's no need nor any economic sense in sending GO trains up to Orangeville. Let's try for Bolton first.
 
Airport Rail link photos

7720640148_e205547ed6_b.jpg


7720683098_96ba260460_b.jpg
 
I took the Gatwick Express train from the Airport to Victoria Station while in London for the Olympics last week.

Trains ran every 15 minutes - journey was just short of 30 minutes - and the cost was $47 for a "anytime return ticket"
 
Gatwick is on a pretty busy rail corridor. If you're an international traveller arriving at Gatwick then it's hard to buy anything but an Express ticket. The machines make it difficult. If you're in the UK it's easier to get a, say, London to Gatwick return ticket valid on most services for much less. It's not like Heathrow (or Pearson) where the line is on a purpose-built spur—although even there you can take the cheaper Heathrow Connect stopping service rather than the expensive Express.
 
ChesterCopperpot said:
I took the Gatwick Express train from the Airport to Victoria Station while in London for the Olympics last week.

Trains ran every 15 minutes - journey was just short of 30 minutes - and the cost was $47 for a "anytime return ticket"
Click to expand...
When I landed in Gatwick, I booked my ticket (which could be used anytime) on the Southern Rail website for $30 roundtrip. It took 5 minutes longer than the Gatwick Express.
 
Outside of London, all systems run regular trains/S-Bahn service to the airports.

I have been to Glasgow, Edinburgh, London, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Nice, Milan, Rome, Venice, Zurich, Geneva, Amsterdam, and Copenhagen to date.

All have service to the airport using standard service making regular stops at the various station alone the line.

Glasgow, Edinburgh and Venice don't have rail service and use buses to the airport.

In 2014, Edinburgh will have a tram line to the airport and it will be making all kinds of stops along the way. Final plans for service is still to be done, but expect to see no express service since there is no room for passing tracks and the line will run in the city street in the city centre.

The tube for London takes 55 minutes and requires a zone 6 pass that cost me $85 for the week.

You can take the subway or the S-Bahn trains for Madrid airport.

Never support the ARL plan and still don't. Adding a few more stops will better service the line and the city as a whole, not a few people.

As for diesel trains, just watch a number of them heading to Copenhagen airport that are duel cab engines. Not the first city I seen with diesel or DMU's that is also electrify.

The LondonMidland run a number of types of service from the north side to Gatwick, but no one stop train.

You can buy your London trains tickets on line in Canada and they can be cheaper than buying them in the UK. I did this for a number of cities including London.

Metrolinx needs to look at adding service to the western section of the line from the airport, not just to the core.
 
gweed123 said:
*facepalm*

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...el-train-plan-for-pan-am-games/article4468840
Click to expand...

We really have come full circle to the point where neighbourhood activism and 'grassroots democracy' is a bigger menace to societal well-being than large-scale, technocratic planning.

I kind of wish that, in her final years, Jane Jacobs would have disavowed a phenomenon which she rightfully started. It just shows that movements have their time and place, whether it's Greenwich Village ca. 1959 or Palestine ca. 0 AD, and after a while they grow stale, maybe even dangerous.
 
Hipster Duck said:
We really have come full circle to the point where neighbourhood activism and 'grassroots democracy' is a bigger menace to societal well-being than large-scale, technocratic planning.

I kind of wish that, in her final years, Jane Jacobs would have disavowed a phenomenon which she rightfully started. It just shows that movements have their time and place, whether it's Greenwich Village ca. 1959 or Palestine ca. 0 AD, and after a while they grow stale, maybe even dangerous.
Click to expand...

I agree. There is definitely a place for community-based activism, but I think the pendulum of power has swung too far from authoritarian planning towards NIMBY activism.

Metrolinx has already been pretty accommodating to the Weston community when it comes to their designs. At this point, they're just holding the rest of the city hostage to their own wants (not needs, wants).

Yes, diesel isn't as good as electric. But hell, it'll only be a few years before the line is electrified, and there is an immediate need for this line. Suck it up, princesses. Unless you're the 3rd generation in that same home, the rail line has been there longer than you have.

You're no better than the people living along Queens Quay protesting the bridge and/or tunnel to the island airport. That airport was there long before you decided to buy a condo there.

If they were putting in a 6 lane highway right behind your house, I'd say you have a point. But that's not the case.
 
^^I live a few houses from the tracks and frankly am not overly concerned about the line. Hopefully I do not have my head too much in the sand. But it is simply false to suggest (1) Metrolinx has been accommodating (the noise the neighbourhood north to me went through was nuts); (2) electrification will come in a few years; or (3) there is an immediate need for the line.

Apparently Metrolinx is looking at putting up a big soundwall along Georgetown South because of the diesel trains. This would not be required for electrification, and I suspect would not be built if there was a serious plan to electrify in any reasonable period of time (and will likely be worse to the community than any diesel trains). Based on nothing but my own skepticism, I'm going to predict 20 years to electrification. 2035.

Moreover, there just isn't any need for this air-rail link. Traffic downtown from the airport is fine except for about 3 hours 5 days a week. It appears the air-rail link will cost more than a taxi if you're travelling in a pair. I don't disagree that it is nice to have, but would be far far better to integrate it with a DRL type commuter transport and be reasonably priced. It appears this is not going to happen because of the Pan Am games, which is remarkably short sighted. This line was designed by private interests to be profit making. It likely won't be, but it makes little sense in the grand scheme of Toronto's transit and commuter needs.
 
Traffic between the airport and DT is not that bad? It's only 3 hrs per workday? What world is this happening in? The 427 is RAMMED from roughly 7 am to at least 9 am if not 10 am in the morning and from roughly 4 pm to roughly 7 pm. As an example, if I did not leave my job in Mississauga before 4:30 pm the traffic would be so bad that you basically crawling from the 401 all the way North to the end at hwy 7. The Gardiner is busy at almost every hour of the day!

I'd like to know:
1) How much more accomodating should Metrolinx be? They have made modifications to the route, the profile, and the grades of the lines. They have moved stations. Short of "Electric only" what more shall be done?
What noises were made in said neighbourhood? Were they related to the grade separation of the West Toronto Diamond? I was under the impression that was settled and Metrolinx was suitably reprimanded.
2) Electrification was NOWHERE on the map before the ARL came along. That is not to say that the ARL is the great white knight that 'can' bring electrification, but that the line has rail traffic and said rail traffic had been steadily increasing over the past 10 - 20 yrs with little or no complaint. If diesel trains are harmful to health than ONE diesel train should have been protested to be moved to electric. Why are a couple hundred trains such a travesty and a few dozen not, pollution is pollution.
3) These line upgrades will allow service increases to the Milton, Georgetown/Kitchener, and future Bolton lines, which have a NEED.
 
When one looks at the amount of money being spent on the Georgetown/Kitchener line because of the Weston Group and CTC as well an MP, we can see why there is no money for Metrolinx to spend on other lines.

Electrification should been on the books years ago, but GO refused to deal with it when it should and this is one good thing the Weston Group take credit for.

From the first meeting years ago for the first EA, it was clear I was wasting my time being part of the group as neither side was going to move and the Weston Group was asking far too much. The 2nd meeting was my last one.

High Sound Barriers are going up in Europe only on the high speed lines, but lower ones can be found in many places due to the amount of traffic and only where houses are next to the line. Then there are many places where the tracks are 25' from residential buildings that have no barriers at all.

The City of Toronto has stuck Metrolinx with a few costly projects on this line and that takes money away from other projects.

Come 2015, Metrolinx will or should have its money issue in order if the government doesn't kill things to allow the current backlog of project to be place on the table for construction or expansion.

If Europe can run diesel freight trains as well passenger trains on Electrify lines because not all lines are Electrify due to lack of funding, lack of service and the high cost to do so, then Weston and other areas can do it also. There is so much money in the pot and no one should have all or most of it in the first place.

Yes we need Electrification, but only where it will have the highest return on the investment first and then proceed down the ladder for others, but not all lines will be 100% Electrify due to length and service.
 
Last edited:
Grimace said:
^^I live a few houses from the tracks and frankly am not overly concerned about the line. Hopefully I do not have my head too much in the sand. But it is simply false to suggest (1) Metrolinx has been accommodating (the noise the neighbourhood north to me went through was nuts); (2) electrification will come in a few years; or (3) there is an immediate need for the line.
Click to expand...

1) As someone who has been watching this project since the beginning in 2002, I'm going to call bullshit. They certainly messed up with the way that they handled West Toronto Junction, but have bent over backwards for the community of Weston. Making bigger and bigger sound walls, covering up the trench, turning Weston into an ARL stop, spending more and more on "beautifying" the corridor, spending millions on making equipment "Tier 4" complaint when it doesn't need to be....and those are only the things I can think of off of the top of my head. I'm sure that there are lots more.

2) Just like everything else, it ultimately comes down to money, doesn't it?

3) There is an immediate need for expansion of the capacity on the line. It's false to claim that if there was no ARL that the construction wouldn't have occurred - GO simply couldn't jam more trains onto the existing tracks. Have you not noticed the work that has gone on north of the 427?

Grimace said:
Apparently Metrolinx is looking at putting up a big soundwall along Georgetown South because of the diesel trains. This would not be required for electrification, and I suspect would not be built if there was a serious plan to electrify in any reasonable period of time (and will likely be worse to the community than any diesel trains). Based on nothing but my own skepticism, I'm going to predict 20 years to electrification. 2035.
Click to expand...

You've never heard an electric train, have you? They are almost as loud as a diesel, as most of the noise is NOT the diesel engine. It is ancillaries such as air compressors, radiator fans, traction motors and gearboxes, and even the wheels on the rails - all things that exist regardless of the power source.

As for your skepticism about a timeline, it is well-founded. GO first talked about electrification in 1979, before the GO-ALRT was conceived. It has long been thought of and even planned, but the funding has never been there.

Grimace said:
Moreover, there just isn't any need for this air-rail link. Traffic downtown from the airport is fine except for about 3 hours 5 days a week. It appears the air-rail link will cost more than a taxi if you're travelling in a pair. I don't disagree that it is nice to have, but would be far far better to integrate it with a DRL type commuter transport and be reasonably priced. It appears this is not going to happen because of the Pan Am games, which is remarkably short sighted. This line was designed by private interests to be profit making. It likely won't be, but it makes little sense in the grand scheme of Toronto's transit and commuter needs.
Click to expand...

On this part, I agree. I have long said that a far better and more elegant solution would be to build a proper people mover out to the rail corridor and have a station which could then be served by both GO and VIA. Alas, that ship has long since sailed, and we're stuck with this one.

As for pricing, since Metrolinx has never said boo about what the cost to ride will be (beyond a very vague range), it's a bit premature to say things like "...it will cost more than a taxi...", don't you think?

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top