GO Transit: Construction Projects (Metrolinx, various)

[DonValleyRainbow]

Mx plans to upgrade Weston to 90mph? Wasn't aware of that - that is good news.

Does anyone know if GO trains can do 100mph? I don't believe they operate on any track that allows that speed.

I believe GO trains can hit 90 mph between Lisgar and Milton. The thing to point out here is that's a rare case; trains barely reach that echelon of speed before they have to slow down for the next station, a track switch, or general traffic ahead.

The only beneficiary of high speeds on the Weston sub would be the UPX, and then only if they actually made it a frickin express train and skipped Bloor and Weston.

 

[innsertnamehere]

I remember stouffville trains reaching 90mph on the Lakeshore East corridor in my days of GO commuting. It happens mostly on express routes from my understanding.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

clearly from this thread the, the powers that be need to move ahead with expansion as frustration is building.

 

[hw621]

^results of disappointment in last service changes as little of the long anticipated improvements crystalized...

 

[robmausser]

Mx plans to upgrade Weston to 90mph? Wasn't aware of that - that is good news.

Does anyone know if GO trains can do 100mph? I don't believe they operate on any track that allows that speed.

The Bi-Level coaches have a max speed of 95mph

 

[reaperexpress]

You definitely have cherry picked examples, so I will do the same.

Kitchener Line after the CN ownership area (Brampton to Kitchener), Stouffvile Line and Barrie Line.

All 3 owned by Metrolinx and all 3 are slow, in terrible shape and mostly single track.

Can it really be cherry-picking when the list includes the half of all passenger-owned rail lines in Ontario? There are only 14 passenger subdivisions and between our two lists we've named pretty much all of them. Here's the comprehensive listing:

Fast passenger railways:
Metrolinx Oakville Sub - Burlingon-Union (95 mph / 153 km/h)
Metrolinx Galt Sub - West Toronto-Union (?? mph)
Metrolinx Guelph Sub - Kitchener-Georgetown (70 mph / 112 km/h)
Metrolinx Weston Sub - Bramalea-Union (80 mph / 129 km/h)
Metrolinx Newmarket Sub - Barrie-Union (75 mph / 121 km/h; 80 mph between Barrie and Bradford)
Metrolinx Kingston Sub - Union-Pickering (95 mph / 153 km/h)
Metrolinx GO Sub - Pickering-Oshawa (85 mph / 137 km/h)
VIA Chatham Sub - Windsor-Chatham (100 mph / 161 km/h)
VIA Brockville Sub - Brockville-Smiths Falls (95 mph / 153 km/h) - not sure of speed limit but I've seen trains reach 95 mph, so it's either 95 or 100
VIA Smiths Falls Sub - Smiths Falls-Ottawa (100 mph / 161 km/h)
VIA Alexandria Sub - Ottawa-Coteau (100 mph / 161 km/h)

Slow passenger railways:
Metrolinx Bala Sub - Doncaster-Union (?? mph)
Metrolinx Uxbridge Sub - Uxbridge-Scarborough (50 mph / 80 km/h)
VIA Beachburg Sub - within Ottawa (?? mph)

The Kingston Sub has many, many, many miles of 100mph track. Likely more than the rest of the VIA network in the Corridor combined.

I know it has tons of 100mph 'LRC' zones, but I've haven't seen any trains top 95mph on it recently. Meanwhile I see plenty of trains hitting 100mph on the VIA lines:

I believe GO trains can hit 90 mph between Lisgar and Milton. The thing to point out here is that's a rare case; trains barely reach that echelon of speed before they have to slow down for the next station, a track switch, or general traffic ahead.

Local trains tend to be limited by station stops but express trains do reach track speed. For example here's a trip on the Lakeshore West Niagara service:

The only beneficiary of high speeds on the Weston sub would be the UPX, and then only if they actually made it a frickin express train and skipped Bloor and Weston.

UP Express does benefit from the upgraded line speeds, given that it consistently reaches the new 80 mph limit:

In addition to UP Express, there are other express trains on the Kitchener corridor, namely GO express trains and VIA trains. In fact, every train service in the corridor benefits from the increased line speeds except for the GO local service.

While they recently increased the zone speed from 75 to 80mph there are no current plans to increase it beyond that.

In one of the Georgetown South planning reports they had shown the speed increasing to 90mph between Pearson Jct and Weston, maybe they're since decided not to go through with that.

 

[reaperexpress]

Yeah 5km, out of like 76km.

Whoop dee doo.

At this rate it will be double tracked in 2050.

Why are you making up numbers? Just look it up. I get enough 'alternative facts' from our politicians at the moment, I don't need more here.

The Barrie line is 101 km long.
There are currently 2 segments of double track: 6.8 km between York University and Rutherford and 3.3 km between Maple and King City.

Furthermore, there is active construction at Maple and Rutherford stations to add second platforms and pedestrian tunnels, which is the hard part of double-tracking. Once that's done, laying the second track is relatively easy.

 

[raptor]

Why are you making up numbers? Just look it up. I get enough 'alternative facts' from our politicians at the moment, I don't need more here.

The Barrie line is 101 km long.
There are currently 2 segments of double track: 6.8 km between York University and Rutherford and 3.3 km between Maple and King City.

Furthermore, there is active construction at Maple and Rutherford stations to add second platforms and pedestrian tunnels, which is the hard part of double-tracking. Once that's done, laying the second track is relatively easy.

Sorry this is false. There is no active construction at neither station. Rutherford station project was supposed to start by the end of the year, however the RFP hasn't been awarded yet. Maple station work is supposed to start in 2019, but there is hardly any info on that.

 

[robmausser]

Why are you making up numbers? Just look it up. I get enough 'alternative facts' from our politicians at the moment, I don't need more here.

The Barrie line is 101 km long.
There are currently 2 segments of double track: 6.8 km between York University and Rutherford and 3.3 km between Maple and King City.

Furthermore, there is active construction at Maple and Rutherford stations to add second platforms and pedestrian tunnels, which is the hard part of double-tracking. Once that's done, laying the second track is relatively easy.

Thank you for supporting my argument. Basically 9% of the track.

Wikipedia has two lengths for the Barrie Line, so I averaged the two of them.

 

[reaperexpress]

Thank you for supporting my argument. Basically 9% of the track.

You're welcome. I really have no problem with your argument, I have a problem with your fabricated numbers. Indeed my intent was exactly to restate your argument, but using actual numbers.

Wikipedia has two lengths for the Barrie Line, so I averaged the two of them.

Ah okay, I see what happened here. If you look down three lines below that erroneous Line Length in the infobox, you can see the distance to each station. My guess is that the 63.0 km was what the infobox said before the line was extended from Bradford to Barrie (I'm assuming the discrepancy is rounding or measurement related):

The 63.0 km can also very quickly be discounted using a free online mapping tool:

If the straight line distance is 86 km, then there's no way the path distance can be 63 km or 76 km. Tracing the railway does confirm that 101 km is correct.

 

[reaperexpress]

Sorry this is false. There is no active construction at neither station. Rutherford station project was supposed to start by the end of the year, however the RFP hasn't been awarded yet. Maple station work is supposed to start in 2019, but there is hardly any info on that.

The core contract has not yet begun, but preliminary work has already begun for the station expansions.

At Maple Station, the two pedestrian tunnels were installed in April and May 2017 (source)

At Rutherford Station they installed underground drainage in late 2017, replacing the previous open ditch. I assumed that was in preparation for the upcoming station reconstruction.

 

[crs1026]

Ok sure but are they just re-laying the old, crappy track that already exists there or replacing it with new track and ties?

They should be doing this right from the get-go.

To set your mind at ease - the area through Guelph now has new 136 lb CWR and plenty of new ties - I could smell the creosote the moment I stepped out of my car today. In addition to renewing the switches around Edinburgh Ave, which are used by freight but were pretty worn, the switch at the west end of the former siding at the Guelph depot was replaced with the new one also being 136 lb rail. Crossings still have segments of 115 lb rail, presumably because they are about to be renewed. Much grubbing to improve sightlines. No fencing yet - this will be interesting because the community makes extensive use of the ROW for pedestrian shortcuts and dogwalking. Wonder when an enforcement canpaign will start.

- Paul

 

[crs1026]

Furthermore, there is active construction at Maple and Rutherford stations to add second platforms and pedestrian tunnels, which is the hard part of double-tracking. Once that's done, laying the second track is relatively easy.

I wouldn’t go that far. Locating and dealing with buried cables and utilities, extending culverts, and embankments/ grade separations, and level crossings take a lot of work. Couple tunnels in a small number of locations don’t constitue major impediments, even if the station project in total itself is a lot of work.

Even if the RFPs are awarded soon, the doubletracking will take 3-4 years from groundbreaking.
- Paul

 

[mdrejhon]

I believe GO trains can hit 90 mph between Lisgar and Milton.

And the Lakeshore West expresses. My GPS speedometer routinely hits 90mph somewhere before Clarkson.

If they're ahead of schedule or the corridor is congested, it won't happen. But if they're 2-3 minutes late, I've always seen 143kph/90mph on my iPhone GPS-speedometer app (you can download a GPS speedometer app for your phone).

In 2015, I also was on that unusually fast PanAm express train (47-minute nonstop to Hamilton) which went 90mph most of the way and whooshed past Burlington only 30 minutes after leaving Union on a very late departure.

Given more tracks, we can have train speeds to Hamilton that matches the offpeak Hamilton 16 Express gobus while making all stops Burlington and beyond -- on existing track speed limits today.

Seeing 90mph continuously past more than half the stations, with the stations whooshing by every 3 minutes.

It's a bit of a big infrastructure spend though, possibly resignalling the corridor to be as dense as the Georgetown Corridor, maybe more grade separations (Burloak, etc), one more extra track -- and a lot of wrangling with CN -- who owns the trackage beyond Burlington.

But it's doable to have a sub-hour train to Hamilton on existing rail speed limit. I was actually 47 minutes Union-Hamilton on a 12 coach bilevel if all the blocks are continuously clear the whole way! That is now the GOtrain of lore for me.

Alas, that particular train was poorly advertised with unclear departure signage, there were very few on the train with me -- so it will be a long time before I'm on another GO train that has a figurative Presto Log thrown into its boiler (hitting Back To The Future speeds of 88mph+).

With a faster USRC upgrade, and a faster post-Aldershot, I suspect 40-minutes Union-Hamilton is doable.

The GO train I rode was 30 minutes Union-Burlington, but 17 minutes to West Harbour. This maybe can be 26-27 minutes to Burlington with a faster Union-Exhibition section and maybe 13-14 minutes to West Harbour.

Add in Burlington and Aldershot stopping time for a "express to Burlington, allstop to Niagara", and you've got the makings of a regularly scheduled 45-minute hourly train to Hamilton if the corridor is expanded to reliably accomodate express trains.

Never seen continuously sustained 90mph since, but I still consistently see bursts to 90mph for a few minutes on many Lakeshore West "express-to-Clarkson" trains.

 

[robmausser]

I wouldn’t go that far. Locating and dealing with buried cables and utilities, extending culverts, and embankments/ grade separations, and level crossings take a lot of work. Couple tunnels in a small number of locations don’t constitue major impediments, even if the station project in total itself is a lot of work.

Even if the RFPs are awarded soon, the doubletracking will take 3-4 years from groundbreaking.
- Paul

This glacial pace I have 0 hope of electrification before 2040