Toronto St Clair-Old Weston GO Station | 9.13m | 1s | City of Toronto | Hatch

I can (sort of) buy a rough-in of a GO platform, but building the superstructure of roof and enclosed waiting areas seems a waste. Ditto for snow melt which can be retrofitted some day if the plan changed.
There isn’t clear logic to the atopping platform so fiddling with bits in isolation seems unwise. There seem to be three tiers now - Mount Pleasant local, Pearson local, and Kitchener expreas ?
- Paul
 
crs1026 said:
I can (sort of) buy a rough-in of a GO platform, but building the superstructure of roof and enclosed waiting areas seems a waste. Ditto for snow melt which can be retrofitted some day if the plan changed.
There isn’t clear logic to the atopping platform so fiddling with bits in isolation seems unwise. There seem to be three tiers now - Mount Pleasant local, Pearson local, and Kitchener expreas ?
- Paul
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As far as I can tell, GO just wants two tiers:
Airport Line (all stops Pearson to Union)
Kitchener Line (all stops to Woodbine, express to Union).

Each tier has a dedicated pair of tracks (west pair for Airport line, east pair for Kitchener line)

I don't think this is fiddling in isolation, I think it's GO finally stepping in and making a decision about track allocation. The west pair of tracks will be local and the east pair will be express, and since the Pearson branch diverges to the west/south, it will be the local service. Most of Metrolinx's track allocation decisions can be explained by an irrational fear of building rail-to-rail grade separations. In this case, an aversion to building any kind of flyover near Wice to enable express and local services to both operate to Bramalea. We saw the same thing on the Lakeshore East line where they deleted the grade separation, thereby creating new operational constraints and forcing the Lakeshore line to run all-express, and Stouffville line to run all-local.
 
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(Probably need to move this back to the GO Service thread, it's drifting a bit off topic for the Buildings side of things)

Personally I would hope the Kitchener trains would skip the Peel-Halton Region stops and there would be a Georgetown/Mount Pleasant tier to the service. Bramalea strikes me as a very poor terminus as it doesn't do Halton justice, but Kitchener would save more time if it went from Guelph/Acton directly to Brampton, Pearson, and then Bloor (OK maybe Mt Dennis). Twenty minute Pearson interleaved with twenty minute Mount Pleasant would be awesome, and would leave the other two tracks for express to KW and (I hope) beyond.

- Paul
 
vic said:
I really hope they get the fare integration sorted out by then. Would be a downgrade to anyone using that service if they have to pay for any connections to it.
I pretty much exclusively use GO from Bloor now since I transfer to other trains almost every time.

Also, UP is a worse transfer to anything else at Union. And no bikes allowed, unless folded or boxed. ☹️
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Yes, we're talking about a massive downgrade in service without fare integration. Bikes should be allowed as well.
 
As someone who lives in this area, I sort of like this change. Basically guarantees rapid local transit for our area every 15-minutes all day, as opposed to the pipe-dream service on the Kitchener Line, which I still an skeptical will ever get built for 15-minute all-day two-way service. I think their recent announcements made it clear that its 15-minutes only during Rush hour, then every hour thereafter.

They better not get rid of the Bloor station though (as they were planning to to) because that will make the UP Express less useful for local transit. Keeping that connection to the bloor subway will be super important to have it as a good network addition. I hope this is a recognition by the province that the UP Express is actually regional transit, not an airport shuttle.
 
sebajun said:
As someone who lives in this area, I sort of like this change. Basically guarantees rapid local transit for our area every 15-minutes all day, as opposed to the pipe-dream service on the Kitchener Line, which I still an skeptical will ever get built for 15-minute all-day two-way service. I think their recent announcements made it clear that its 15-minutes only during Rush hour, then every hour thereafter.

They better not get rid of the Bloor station though (as they were planning to to) because that will make the UP Express less useful for local transit. Keeping that connection to the bloor subway will be super important to have it as a good network addition. I hope this is a recognition by the province that the UP Express is actually regional transit, not an airport shuttle.
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There was never a plan to "get rid" of Bloor Station.
 
sebajun said:
I think their recent announcements made it clear that its 15-minutes only during Rush hour, then every hour thereafter.
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The Kitchener Line already has service every 30 minutes outside of rush hour, and later this month on weekends too
 
reaperexpress said:
As far as I can tell, GO just wants two tiers:
Airport Line (all stops Pearson to Union)
Kitchener Line (all stops to Woodbine, express to Union).

Each tier has a dedicated pair of tracks (west pair for Airport line, east pair for Kitchener line)

I don't think this is fiddling in isolation, I think it's GO finally stepping in and making a decision about track allocation. The west pair of tracks will be local and the east pair will be express, and since the Pearson branch diverges to the west/south, it will be the local service. Most of Metrolinx's track allocation decisions can be explained if you imagine that they have an irrational fear of building rail-to-rail grade separations. In this case, an aversion to building any kind of flyover near Wice to enable express and local services to both operate to Bramalea. We saw the same thing on the Lakeshore East line where they deleted the grade separation, thereby creating new operational constraints and forcing the Lakeshore line to run all-express, and Stouffville line to run all-local.
Click to expand...
do you mean "limited stop" where you say "express" for Kitchener line or do you mean "non-stop"?

Surely it would be madness for KI line to bypass Bloor and Mount Dennis? (I declare an interest as I may have need to use Line 5 and KI for certain work trips)
 
dowlingm said:
do you mean "limited stop" where you say "express" for Kitchener line or do you mean "non-stop"?
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https://assets.metrolinx.com/image/...ner-Mid-Term-Service-Expansion-PDBC-FINAL.pdf
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dowlingm said:
Surely it would be madness for KI line to bypass Bloor and Mount Dennis? (I declare an interest as I may have need to use Line 5 and KI for certain work trips)
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Capture4.PNG
 
goodcitywhenfinished said:
Maybe it’s time Union Pearson got its own metrolinx line number? The line is starting to resemble an express metro more than an airport shuttle.
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Given that GO Operations is apparently unwilling to adopt modern railway operations practices we could take the airport local service out of their control by extending the Ontario line up the UPX tracks to the airport.Then GO would only need to operate the relatively infrequent express services to Kitchener, which is a service where it's less problematic that they want to keep using big lumbering diesel trains with slow acceleration, no level boarding, and 3 employees per train.
capture-jpg.385355
 
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