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407 Rail Freight Bypass/The Missing Link

Mostly I'm left with "ARGGGHHH, they've done it again". They keep adding trips, they keep being told Kitchener needs reverse trips and yet they never even warrant discussion when trips actually get added.

One or two reverse trains IS NOT something that needs to wait for full day service, but somehowis another thing on Metrolinx' ever growing list of "things we don't do, and won't talk about if you ask".
 
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Just to keep one’s eye on the whole package.....

No bypass for CN likely means no shifting CP to the Halton/York corridor...which means no easy solution to better service on the Milton line, and possibly little or no prospect of a mid Toronto transit corridor on the North Toronto line.

I’m not sure that CN would ever have agreed to sharing their corridor with CP - certainly, it would have taken much more than expediting the South Halton terminal to get their agreement to that. So maybe that was never to be.. But I know that some on this forum have argued for that entire package. Even if the Kitchener line improvements start happening, don’t hold your breath for the Milton line to get 2WAD anytime soon.

- Paul
If all of the 3rd track was built on the Milton Line as plan by 2011, you could have hourly service. The 3rd track was built around the Humber area to 427 and from Confederation to 403. A new 3rd track bridge was built at Cawthra, but no track. There is a 3rd storage track between Cawthra and Hurontario.

If Wynne fulfill her 2014 election platform plan to 4 track the Milton corridor, it was to be completed by 2021 to allow 30 minute service 7 days a week.

Don't know the reason why the 3rd track die and raised a number of time by Mississauga council over the years, with no real answer.

There is strong opposition to having CP and CN run in the same corridor and no benefit to CP to do it, unless CP builds a new yard to the east that been talk about. Even then, a hard call to say if CP is willing to do so. Unless there 4 tracks on CN tracks around Toronto, CN will say no.
 
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If all of the 3rd track was built on the Milton Line as plan by 2011, you could have hourly service. The 3rd track was built around the Humber area to 427 and from Confederation to 403. A new 3rd track bridge was built at Cawthra, but no track. There is a 3rd storage track between Cawthra and Hurontario.

If Wynne fulfill her 2014 election platform plan to 4 track the Milton corridor, it was to be completed by 2021 to allow 30 minute service 7 days a week.

Don't know the reason why the 3rd track die and raised a number of time by Mississauga council over the years, with no real answer.

There is strong opposition to having CP and CN run in the same corridor and no benefit to CP to do it, unless CP builds a new yard to the east that been talk about. Even then, a hard call to say if CP is willing to do so. Unless there 4 tracks on CN tracks around Toronto, CN will say no.

I think the death is from the fact that when tracks are built in CP and CN corridors, like the 3rd Milton track, and the extra track planned through Brampton instead of the Bypass, CN and CP have to build the track. And they continually screw over Metrolinx.

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/12/18/metrolinx-under-fire-for-cn-cp-deals.html
 
Very brief reference to the bypass in this column on TVO's website.

The cuts the government has already implemented may have hefty-sounding price tags, but they’ll have a surprisingly small impact. Many of the big infrastructure cuts — the cancelled university campuses, the freight-rail bypass the Tories recently announced they’d be bypassing — promise billion-dollar savings, but that spending would, in many cases, have been spread over years or even decades, meaning that the effect on the public accounts will be more modest than the headlines suggest. (Accountants! They rule the world, and nobody notices.)
 
Honestly I have no civil commentary on any of this. The railways need a boot up the arse about electrification, York needs to mind it's own business and this premier need to just go away.

How any of this is controversial is just baffling.
 
How any of this is controversial is just baffling.
Ultimately, it's a population themselves that 'just don't get it', and we get the political will we collectively deserve. This is indicated on a municipal level by the vast majority of Torontonians polling against a tax increase to provide the transit they so desperately need. So be it, stab your kids in the eyes so that you can watch Netflix in peace.

Let me put it this way, in other nations where they readily push ahead on matters like these, there's a much higher social conscious on what's necessary to do it. Canada is about to take a big tumble in terms of "Quality of Life" indices, standard of living, and average income per person, and ultimately, they have no-one to blame but themselves.

In giving some slack to this nation, it is a trend in other nations too, but still, the Nords and other Europeans, parts of Asia and Australasia are now well ahead of us, and leaving us in the dust.

Go Leafs Go! Hey...

I'll add a small note of optimism for this nation, especially Ontario: There is a way forward, and in the vacuum left by mindless consumer/voters and thus leadership, Private Enterprise will grab the reins. For better or worse! At least they're driven by the principle of "Business Case"...a term alien to the likes of the clowns now at QP, and predecessors. "Business Case" for the likes of the Fords of this world means a case you label to put your business in. More labels, more business for the simple mind.

There is an aspect that could be argued in the European Court. This nation is based on the Westminster Model, and 'Brexit' is in the vocabulary. It translates in a number of European languages to "suicide"....and "Lemming Pie" in others. Hold the Worcestershire sauce...
The railways need a boot up the arse about electrification
On "electrification" I digress, that's for Metrolinx owned tracks, and Metrolinx needs more than a boot up there, but the FEDS! need a boot or two, since they have the legislation, they have the financial resources and they have the *legal precedent* to mandate this...or as per my prior "Private Enterprise" reference, they have the power to 'tender' the project to an independent third party/consortium to build it, and then mandate the use of it. Whether CN, CP or Fred's Federally Regulated mining road like it or not. It's covered in detail in the Transportation Act and the Relocations Act and others.

But that would take a backbone...
 
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Honestly I have no civil commentary on any of this. The railways need a boot up the arse about electrification, York needs to mind it's own business and this premier need to just go away.

How any of this is controversial is just baffling.

I'm not an NDP guy but we need a far left federal government to come in and change the regulations around rail in Canada.

True priority for passenger rail and a softening of the FRA/TC regulations around European style trains.

Unfortunately the NDP is anti-pipeline, and oil wont ship itself, it will only increase freight traffic.
 
I'm not an NDP guy but we need a far left federal government to come in and change the regulations around rail in Canada.

True priority for passenger rail and a softening of the FRA/TC regulations around European style trains.

Unfortunately the NDP is anti-pipeline, and oil wont ship itself, it will only increase freight traffic.

I basically am that far left, but my concern is that a left wing Minister pursuing regulatory changes will just get reversed by the next government. We need changes, but if they're to be serious regulatory reform I suspect it will have to go through Transport Canada... What it takes to get them out of their myopia I really don't know, but the FRA shows signs of recognizing the real world so there would seem to be hope.
 
Phil repeated at the town hall yesterday why Metrolinx moved away from the bypass. Basically it would have taken too long to build and been too complicated. He also claimed that the new infrastructure that can be added to the CN Halton Sub to give the same outcome that the bypass would have. The part that wasn't mentioned was whether CN would allow electrification west of Bramalea.
 
Phil repeated at the town hall yesterday why Metrolinx moved away from the bypass. Basically it would have taken too long to build and been too complicated. He also claimed that the new infrastructure that can be added to the CN Halton Sub to give the same outcome that the bypass would have. The part that wasn't mentioned was whether CN would allow electrification west of Bramalea.

I'd say battery trains. catenary from Union to Bramalea, then battery powered from there to Georgetown, and back onto catenary once the Metrolinx section to Kitchener is reached.
 
Phil repeated at the town hall yesterday why Metrolinx moved away from the bypass. Basically it would have taken too long to build and been too complicated. He also claimed that the new infrastructure that can be added to the CN Halton Sub to give the same outcome that the bypass would have. The part that wasn't mentioned was whether CN would allow electrification west of Bramalea.

So then what's their plan to bring AD2W service on the Milton line?
 

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