afransen
Senior Member
On no planet can you describe GO RER/Expansion as 'not taking very long'. The pace of implementation is glacial.
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GO Transit Electrification | Metrolinx
- Thread starter innsertnamehere
- Start date
daniel_kryz
Active Member
Are you talking about since the Business Case was released or since actual construction began?
afransen
Senior Member
It's been 10 years since McGuinty promised 2WAD on all corridors. It will be another 10 before we see it.
daniel_kryz
Active Member
Of course, the Liberals promised and did nothing. But once funding was finally approved, we're going full steam ahead.
afransen
Senior Member
You can't just blame the Liberals. The OPC haven't really accelerated things. I don't know if that is the province, Metrolinx, or just general ossified, complacent, self-satisfied Canadian-ness.
daniel_kryz
Active Member
It has more to do with funding, which comes from the provincial government. I'm not a fan of Doug Ford, but at least they funded the project.
allengeorge
Senior Member
I wouldn’t count my chickens until the electrification contract is signed (supposedly March 2022).
Northern Light
Superstar
While we can all agree the rate at which the Liberals funded 'RER' did not align with the timelines they promised to deliver same...........its not reasonable to suggest they didn't spend money.
During their time substantial additional track was added on both LSE and LSW; and service went from hourly off-peak to 30 minutes and even 15 for a limited period outside rush hours (Lakeshore).
They also delivered the Georgetown South Project in the now Kitchener corridor which gave us UPX, and some material improvements in off-peak service in that corridor.
Barrie also saw some investments as a corridor and saw service go to to 2WMD (2 way, Most-of-the-day).
The Strachan Avenue grade separation was a very large project.
There were significant fleet expansions too.
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None of the above is to defend the Liberals insofar as the funding they delivered was well below what was required to deliver what they promised, by the timeline they announced.
But it certainly wasn't nothing.
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In terms of what has actually been done during the PC years to date....
A lot of work you see today dates from that last set of contracts tendered under the previous government.
More certainly seems to be en route.
But we shall have to see.
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daniel_kryz
Active Member
Hats off to you for explaining in such a detailed and fair way. The only quarrel I have with this government's approach to RER is the cancellation of new/rebuilt stations, as they've chosen a private-sector approach where developers build the station in exchange for free land for development. Integrating transit & development is a good idea in principle, but this will delay the delivery of better stations across the network.
crs1026
Senior Member
One could add to that list - the Whitby maintenance base, enlargement of other outlying maintenance bases and layover yards, some initial improvements at Union, Stouffville double tracking.
I might quibble about the GTS project execution with the Strachan, Weston, and West Toronto underpasses and UPE. But that work was in fact completed, albeit with some smoke and mirrors around budget and deliverables. Still, easily $1.5B in funding was released.
The Liberals' problem was their inability to restrain the urge to promise more, and more, and more. In actual fact, they spent about what one would think was available and fiscally prudent - but their promise list was never really credible.
- Paul
rbt
Senior Member
One of the more important steps was to purchase the railway corridors. These cannot be expropriated and negotiations were likely a massive time-sink.
Many unnecessary delays occurred (having to expand/redo the EAs, time lost attempting to tender a massive single P3 contract, station overhaul distractions, Union shed construction delays, Union signalling project, etc.) but I think the Wynne government moved with some sense of purpose on this project.
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ssiguy2
Senior Member
If there is blame to go around then it should be placed squarely at the foot of Metrolinx.
Not having the money is a complete cop-out. If they didn't have the money to already electrify the system then where the hell did they get the money to put up mega-parking structures?
Not having the money is a complete cop-out. If they didn't have the money to already electrify the system then where the hell did they get the money to put up mega-parking structures?
MrGoose
Active Member
Thats unfair.
A. Those don't come out of the same budget
B. Bloomington GO station and similar parking structures cost about 82 million each, lets round that up to 100 million. Electrification of the system is at least an order of magnitude more expensive than that, probably closer to two orders of magnitude more expensive than that, 1-10 billion dollars.
Thats not to say that it isn't wasteful that large parking structures are being constructed in the middle of nowhere, but this is a false equivalency.
kEiThZ
Superstar
He sounds like my ageing parents who will argue that subways would get built if only TTC execs didn't get paid as much....
robmausser
Senior Member
Its a combination of things.
Ontario funds projects piecemeal versus one lump sum like Quebec is doing with REM.
It means you can cook the books so to speak and make it look like deficits arent as bad as they are etc. Its like how people don't care to donate $1 a week to a charity but would never give $52 in a single payment.
At the same time the lines are complicated, and currently still have to be in operation while they are being upgraded. Its actually easier/faster to build a project from scratch than to upgrade an existing one. Old work is discovered that is not to current code or even done improperly back when it was done, requiring more work for underpinning, new foundation, etc. Its like renovating a house, it takes much longer than building a new one. Your fixing the last guys mistakes as well as building the new stuff ontop.
Couple that with the typical incompetence we see with transit building in Ontario
Also, when things are done piecemeal like this, people forget about past work that was already done during the last 10-15 years.
Georgetown South was a huge undertaking thats been done for a while now for example, which is part of the RER project, even though its other purpose was for UPX.