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We are not talking ideal scheduling. We are talking about schedules with massive amounts of schedule padding to accommodate the inevitable delays. We are talking about 8 more minutes of schedule padding to every single trip, on top of all the schedule padding they already have, which is quite a lot.

If we want to reduce visual clutter the more important change would be to use black signal housings for pedestrian signals rather than yellow ones. The yellow housings are not even visible from the front anyway, only the sides and rear of Toronto's pedestrian signals are high-visibility yellow...

I meant that it's not required from a capacity perspective. There's plenty of spare capacity to accommodate 1 train per hour. It is indeed very beneficial from a reliability perspective, hence why I quoted the 8 minutes of additional schedule padding that Metrolinx estimates they would need in...

My impression of this announcement is bad news for the short term but good news for the long term. Saying that the work "will allow for 60-minute AD2W service to Kitchener" is effectively announcing that hourly service will be delayed by about a decade compared to its originally-planned start...

Via's on-time performance is currently 85%, which is the highest I've seen since the start of CN speed restrictions. Maybe freight traffic is reduced on the long weekend? 22/

Totally agree. Stavebank especially makes no sense for a motor vehicle grade separation. On top of being several times more expensive than an AT-only grade separation, maintaining car traffic at that crossing would undermine Missisauga's ability to affordably create safe, efficient and...

I see that Scarborough Golf Club Road is number 3 - I've long had a fantasy of Metrolinx realigning that portion of the line along with the grade separation to eliminate the current 75 mph (121 km/h) speed restriction, raising the speed to the 95 mph (153 km/h) limit along the rest of the line...

Metrolinx has been planning to triple-track through Rouge Hill for years, if not decades. In fact it's still on their list of corridor upgrades for Lakeshore East, though based on their recent cuts to GO Expansion I think it's safe to say it won't happen anytime in the forseeable future.

Crazy that they're only building a single track and platform on a line where construction is currently underway to continuously double-track the line from Union to Aurora.

No. Just the Kingston subdivision: https://ontariotrafficman.wordpress.com/2023/05/07/cn-kingston-subdivision-track-map/

Whether or not a given train stops in Guildwood has almost nothing to do with demand. Guildwood is in a triple-tracked segment so skipping it allows Via trains to overtake whichever GO train they're stuck behind. If they serve Guildwood, they usually won't be fast enough to reach the end of the...

Yes I'm aware the station is deferred. But we can still look at the progression of the designs as examples of Metrolinx indecision on track allocations.

Because Metrolinx is incapable of making decisions. They keep changing their mind about service levels and track configurations, so the infill stations along the Kitchener corridor had to be redesigned several times when they changed their minds about the track allocations. You'll also notice...

The St. Clair - Old Weston station is only intended to be served by local trains, so it only needs platforms on 2 of the 4 tracks. Last I heard was to use the 2 south/west tracks for local trains and the 2 north/east tracks as express, so the station only needs one island platform between the...

Diesel trains can also be multiple units, and yet they also accelerate much more slowly than EMUs. The limiting factor seems to be the inferior power-to-weight ratio, and lower total power. Nederlandse Spoorwegen and OC Transpo both operate 4-car Stadler FLIRT trains with 2000kW of power. The...

I don't care if the trains are electric or diesel. What I care about is that they accelerate quickly and are affordable to operate at high frequencies. The only battery trains I'm interested in for mainline use are the ones that match the acceleration of conventional electric trains (i.e. the...

The existing UP platforms have a 16 km/h speed limit for UP trains, presumably due to the low clearance between the permanently-affixed gap fillers and the platform. (There is no speed restriction for GO or Via rolling stock). It's possible they deliberately postponed installing the platform...

Here's the blog post where I talk about Metrolinx's false claims that express service on LSE is impossible. Like Northern Light said, there seems to be capacity to add another train per hour despite the construction, with 6 trains per hour instead of the current 5. (9 trains per hour including...

It's a good start but it still doesn't tell us much. What was CN's concern? As an aside, I'm disappointed with the quality of reporting as usual. They mentioned the opposition from Eastern Ontario cities but fail to give context of what the effect actually is on those cities. They say 4 trips...

Keep in mind that Metrolinx picks and choses whether to report "trips" or "round trips" depending on whichever sounds better. Note that they report the travel time savings at West Harbour per round trip (because 7.5 min per trip sounds less impressive), yet they report the number of new trips...