innsertnamehere
Superstar
Not that easy.... there is several km of subdivisions between the two haha.
The 21 is the busiest GO bus route from Union Station Bus Terminal though. Sure the traffic on the Gardiner is often bad, but the Bloor-Danforth subway and the 26 or 109 is really slow. I can't see ever getting rid of that unless there is direct rail service to Square One on a spur from the Milton line, and trains every 15 minutes.
Can we get all day service to the rest of the GTA first?
Why does the entirety of the GTA need to come before improvements to Toronto-Kitchener service? And why is everything considered so zero sum?
Why does the entirety of the GTA need to come before improvements to Toronto-Kitchener service? And why is everything considered so zero sum?
So I guess an infrastructure project that makes sense is vote pandering now? That DRL is just to siphon votes away from the Downtown core after all...
sarcasm aside, This is probably one of the few projects in the GGH that might actually have a noticeable impact on highway traffic, especially if it gets sped up to around 1:30 travel time total.
Funding could easily come from Kitchener-Waterloo and Guelphs portion of the transit taxes if they get implemented province wide.
Funding can easily come from a scaled-back highway 7.
It depends on what "quality" service you want, whether it is simply at the current speed but with dual tracks or if you want semi-express service once you get into Brampton and want upgraded speeds along the route.
Getting rid of the slow spot in Geulph alone will probably cost a couple hundred million. Dual tracking the route and buying more trains to serve it is probably all that is qouted in the $400 million cost, you are probably looking at closer to $1 billion if you do track upgrades to reduce travel time. (which is a worthy investment IMO)
I also agree that the speed improvements are definitely worthwhile, not just due to their potential for increased ridership but also because they will reduce operating costs by reducing equipment demand.
With our current 2+ hour schedule, a round trip would probably take 5 hours (including layover), so 5 trainsets would be required to maintain hourly service. But if the travel time is dropped to 1h45 or less, we would only need 4 trainsets - a very significant reduction in fuel/operator/maintenance costs.
Express service from Brampton to Toronto will already be possible in 2015 thanks to the Georgetown south project. The GTS easily gives us all the track capacity and speed that we would need in the foreseeable future, so the only focus of investment is the two other segments of line (GEXR and CN). The lowest capacity of the two is the GEXR segment, so that's where we need to invest. My impression is that the CN segment can already support hourly GO service despite the level of freight traffic (it is mostly triple-tracked) so all this project needs to improve is Georgetown-Kitchener.
Improving speeds significantly increases line capacity for single-track lines, which could actually reduce costs by reducing the need for double tracking. For example, if we reduced the Kitchener-Guelph travel time to 20 minutes, a single-track line west of Guelph would have enough capacity for hourly service, including a 20 minute layover in Kitchener (during which time other trains can use the single-tracked segment). I think reducing the KW-Guelph travel time by 8 minutes is fairly achievable, given that the Guelph slow zone costs nearly 6 minutes on its own.
Upgrade the GEXR segment (particularly through Guelph), and build the freight bypass along the 407 ROW to free up room on the Georgetown corridor through Brampton, as well as free up the Milton line for a greater intensity of service, maybe even the Midtown line too.
Pay for the upgrade of 1 corridor and the construction of another, get improvements on 3 corridors. Seems like a pretty good bang for the buck to me.
I'm sure that any upgrades to the line would also see some degree of investment from VIA Rail, as they too would benefit from increased speeds.It depends on what "quality" service you want, whether it is simply at the current speed but with dual tracks or if you want semi-express service once you get into Brampton and want upgraded speeds along the route. Getting rid of the slow spot in Geulph alone will probably cost a couple hundred million. Dual tracking the route and buying more trains to serve it is probably all that is qouted in the $400 million cost, you are probably looking at closer to $1 billion if you do track upgrades to reduce travel time. (which is a worthy investment IMO)