News   Mar 28, 2024
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VIA Rail

The idea used to be much more outlandish, and the siloing of "VIA is the one that should do high speed trains, if someone does something".

But today, we've got jaw-dropping proposed Metrolinx megaprojects and Ontario train infrastructure budgets that massively out-funds VIA nation-wide by at least a full order of magnitude. We see the electricifation officially funded by Ontario, and this electricifation is going to cover several hundred kilometers of GO corridor -- almost enough electricified track to reach Ottawa! Including roughly 100 kilometers of the corridor (Bramalea to Oshawa) that high speed trains will need to go over to go between Kingston and Kitchener. Now once this is done, even without owning any high speed trainsets, any compatible high speed trainset can now thusly simply least taxi into Toronto at fairly brisk faster-than-VIA speeds (until tracks get upgraded a bit more and curves eventually straightened out). The more we electricify and prepare Ontario, the lower the barrier to high speed trains. We see the aspirations for Metrolinx to speed up GO service over time, even if lots of deadlines are bumped out or jiggled politically (e.g. UPX versus improved Georgetown corridor service). And Ontario has funded the high speed EA. The vaporware environmental assessments of yesteryear on high speed trains, has turned into a more hopefully relatively more-serious environmental assessment that is now a bit harder to gamble against happening. The announced budgets includes many millions of dollars towards the cost of just this mere EA that is being started this year and will take a few years to complete, perhaps before the next election to make it a new political promise. It may all still be vaporware in a massive cancellation or postponement, but if even merely half of the now-funded train infrastructure gets built (including electricifation of some of the GO system), we've made very massive step towards opening the door to high speed trains.

Ontario is spending multiple tens of billion of dollars on rail infrastructure all over Ontario (GO & LRT) in just the next ten years alone, and at these budget numbers, HSR becomes just a lineitem bullet in a future cycle of funding as the economy improves and the deficit is actually eliminated. This is of course, assuming Ontario manages to stay solvent (which is doable, given we've got a relatively flexible economy far better than Greece and others).

So.... The idea is no longer outlandish anymore.

Urbantoronto members are no longer laughing at this theoretical concept anymore, unlike 5 years ago.
 
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It's interesting that after a while of trying to convince GO Transit that they should use Stratford as a layover site, they have (I assume) convinced VIA Rail to do just that.
 
Good to see! As a tiny aside, is there any hope that a rail service could be activated going along Highway 7 terminating in Goderich?
 
75 km to Goderich population 7,500 with nothing worth mentioning in between. Probably not a hope in hell. I'd think a simple bus would be cheaper to operate.
 
Good to see! As a tiny aside, is there any hope that a rail service could be activated going along Highway 7 terminating in Goderich?

Nope. CN passenger service to Goderich ended in the 1960s; the track is still suited to occasional freight traffic, but it is restricted in speed. Buses would be faster and cheaper to operate. Clinton and Mitchell are reasonable population centres that would offer some passenger demand, but they'd be best served by bus stops on Highway 8.

Really, I'd like to see bus service brought back to serve places like Goderich. That there isn't even a bus service between London and St. Thomas is sad; every town in Ontario of at least 7500 should have a daily bus service.
 
St. Thomas is pushing 40,000 people, and less than 20 km to the edge of the suburbs of London. I can't comprehend why the City of St. Thomas doesn't simply add a route to London to it's bus network.
 
St. Thomas is pushing 40,000 people, and less than 20 km to the edge of the suburbs of London. I can't comprehend why the City of St. Thomas doesn't simply add a route to London to it's bus network.

If you want to run transit between municipalities in Ontario, you need to get a license from the Ontario Highway Transport Board, which will require you to demonstrate that a new service would serve a public need and convenience. Such an application could be disputed by a current license holder, who in this case may be Aboutown Northlink. (GO Transit is exempt from this licensing requirement, and can run any service it pleases.)

The bigger issue in this case would be who would pay for it. Presumably it requires some subsidy, which needs to be borne by St. Thomas, London, or both. The politics of that are a mess, and are one reason why Waterloo Region and Guelph keep talking about wanting local transit connections but never do anything more than talk.
 
Assuming that St. Thomas could figure out how to pay for it (with 5 bus routes already, it's not like it's a massive undertaking), I'd assume they could move forward. I don't see how that Aboutown is in a position to dispute this, given they are in receivership and not providing any service. Sure, local politics is an issue. But the lack of this of all services baffles me.

Yes ... mostly a local politics failure.
 
Is there still no municipal transit between Kitchener and Guelph? I guess the GO buses and trains provide the transit connection but it's far from ideal. It's not unheard of for cities in different counties to run municipal buses between each other - Collingwood transit has a route to Blue Mountain for example.
 
(GO Transit is exempt from this licensing requirement, and can run any service it pleases.)

That's not entirely true - GO is not allowed to compete directly with private coach lines on routes.

This is why, for instance, GO's Kitchener service ends at Square One, rather than Yorkdale. And why there is no private company running a Hamilton-Toronto direct service anymore.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
 
Didn't GO inherit some routes operated by Grey Coach, like the Hamilton-Toronto buses, and Toronto-Guelph via Brampton? (I remember when GO also had a local bus along Highway 2/Lakeshore Road)

There are some bus services that cross municipal boundaries - OC Transpo and Clarence-Rockland's commuter buses are able to cross into Quebec; Transit Windsor operates a bus service across an international border - though this was a route taken over from the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel Authority.

Outside the GTHA, about a dozen other agencies' buses cross municipal boundaries (not counting regional systems like Niagara or Grand River Transit). I'm actually impressed that Colltrans runs an hourly bus route to Wasaga Beach and some service to Blue Mountain. But it took Niagara Region to do what the local agencies couldn't/wouldn't - run regular bus services between St. Catharines, Niagara Falls and Welland. Meanwhile, both Quinte West (Trenton) and Belleville have transit systems, there isn't a bus between them either. Port Hope has an hourly bus to the mall, the big boxes and hospital in Cobourg as well, connecting to that town's tiny bus system as well.

Trenton-Belleville, Guelph-Cambridge/Kitchener and London-St. Thomas should be no-brainers for regional transit links, but there's little will, and Greyhound is still hanging on to the Guelph-Kitchener franchise. With Abouttown gone (it tried to resurrect Guelph-Hamilton service too), it's time for a local transit solution between St. Thomas and White Oaks Mall, and for GO to start a bus route between Hamilton (or Aldershot) and Guelph.
 
The Port Stanley Terminal Railway trains start and stop only in Port Stanley. St. Thomas built a new downtown station on that route, but the PSTR isn't serving it, at least not yet.
 

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