mdrejhon
Senior Member
Have you been to Europe or Japan and used their high speed and semi-high-speed commuter services?
There's often express HSR (similar to London-Kitchener-Toronto) and semi-express HSR (similiar to London-Guelph-Kitchener-Pearson-Brampton-Toronto), running on express passing track, while allstops (like today's Kitchener GO) run on the allstop track. They pull it high speed services interspersed with allstop services on 3-track and 4-track corridors today. With at least 4 track already in Georgetown Corridor (UPX EMUs/semiexpresses/HSR to the passing track, and SmartTrack/GO RER/slow-accelerating bilevels/etc allstops to the allstop track -- 2 per direction), and the suggested Guelph bypass, this provides a way to run limited-stop expresses concurrently with allstops. Then there would be the double-track straight arrow between London and Kitchener, which zero stops on it. Remember GO RER stands for Regional Express Rail, and GO has been building passing tracks incrementally over the years.
Some of european rail infrastructure that combines allstops and express high speed, often uses 3-track or 4-tracks, with an allstop track, express track, for the various directions of service. There are many decades of Georgetown Corridor optimizations to come.
One of the many examples of Georgetown Corridor optimizations is that a highly-successful UPX is already running for 20-25 years before high speed starts operating; consider it is already time to upgrade/replace UPX infrastructure; and they did mention a Pearson stop for high speed trains: If UPX is a problem for getting in the way of high speed trains (e.g. UPX service getting in the way), remember that the high speed rail also announced a Pearson stop. A future upgraded LINK train can over the UPX spur to Woodbine Racetrack GO station(the "Pearson" high speed train stop) which service semi-express high speed trains (coming from both directions). Discontinue direct service for Weston/Bloor, let them use GO RER on the adjacent allstop track instead to Woodbine Racetrack. Torontoians would have a true express from downtown Toronto reduced to 15-20 minutes rather than 25 minutes when two tracks in Georgetown corridor becomes reassigned to completely nonstop express services (frequent high speed limited stops and highspeed expresses). It does mean the Pearson (Woodbine) stop requires transferring to a future upgraded LINK train (service every 3-4 minute, extended over UPX spur to Woodbine and serving all Pearson terminals), but this solves some major Georgetown corridor congestion contention problems after 20-25 years, and let's remember France runs high speed blievel commuter trains with as little a 3-minute headway. There are a lot of French and Japanese who do 100-150km daily commutes to work for fares similar to today's GO fares and certain routes are profitable at these fares. Remember, we're talking dates similiar to "2035" -- twenty years of further population expansion -- the era where unpowered BiLevel coaches is probably discontinued from the Kitchener route and reassigned for service expansion of other routes. It's not like Ontario is guaranteed to suddenly stop expanding GO after GO RER is finished -- what if a new 10-year 10-billon cycle happens? Such 10-billon expansions routinely happen in other countries at higher-per-capita-per-year, than if Ontario was theoretically repeats all the megaplan of the last ten years, for every subsequent 10 years. Now you see, where I am getting at -- at this continued budget, this fully covers Kitchener/London HSR by 2030s-2040s. This concludes the example (reassignment of Georgetown corridor trackage to the express-allstop architecture, fully compatible with high-speed trains & fully compatible with the current promises except stretching the 10 year timeline to a 20-25 year "start of operation" delay).
For years, Metrolinx has been incrementally widening corridors to add passing tracks, and they're even considering building brand new corridors too -- which may solve high speed rating issues (e.g. Guelph bypass, London-Kitchener, complete grade separation on entire corridor including Guelph and Brampton). The purchase of unexpected corridors (Don Valley Branch) and talk of the Eglinton GO corridor (spurred by SmartTrack talk) also show Metrolinx is open minded to brand new GO corridors, plus the Ontario deciding to go ahead with HSR feasibility study that knowingly includes purchasing high speed corridor -- so there is no current Ontario precedent (at the moment) that they will suddenly stop being interested in building new corridors.
You're not looking deep enough into the crystal ball.
It may be only X% or XX% chance, but it is definitely not a 0% percent chance. see this post for why.
Last edited:
