smallspy
Senior Member
Toronto does not have a current plan for a CP rail disaster which is disheartening.
Sorry?
Dan
Toronto, Ont.
Toronto does not have a current plan for a CP rail disaster which is disheartening.
All regional municipalities have to go through the exercise of deciding what services are offered at the regional level and which ones are offered at the city/town level......I really don't know why York, for example, went the way of regional transportation but in Peel a couple of factors probably played into leaving it at the city level.....for one, Caledon has expressed absolutely zero interest in having local public transit and, as a Brampton resident, it would appear that Brampton is more interested in a filling out routes with higher frequencies to grow ridership than Mississauga is........I have said it many times.....if Peel transit existed I don't think I would be walking 5 minutes in the morning from my very suburban home to a bus route that runs every 7 minutes.I'm just basing this off of feel (with not much experience), but one might be the lack of Peel Transit and Mississauga wanting to leave Peel Region.
This is very true. As sprawled out as Brampton is, it's so easy to get around for the most part.All regional municipalities have to go through the exercise of deciding what services are offered at the regional level and which ones are offered at the city/town level......I really don't know why York, for example, went the way of regional transportation but in Peel a couple of factors probably played into leaving it at the city level.....for one, Caledon has expressed absolutely zero interest in having local public transit and, as a Brampton resident, it would appear that Brampton is more interested in a filling out routes with higher frequencies to grow ridership than Mississauga is........I have said it many times.....if Peel transit existed I don't think I would be walking 5 minutes in the morning from my very suburban home to a bus route that runs every 7 minutes.
That said, the region in all other aspects is very coherent and, as someone else pointed out, the fact the two transit systems exist has not stopped them from working together....they have had fare integration (acceptance of each other's transfers) for a very long time, each have several routes that cross into the other's "territory" and there are a couple of routes that they operate in partnership. Look a little deeper before you declare a lack of coherence.
Sorry?
Dan
Toronto, Ont.
I used to live backing right onto the tracks. And not once was I given a letter or a briefing on the strategy. To have a successful strategy the residents around the area should know what to do (and what the alarm is).
I was young and dumb back then so I don't know if there was one...but a key part of an evacuation strategy is telling everyone how to evacuate. (e.g. fire drills, fire wardens, etc at the office)
I used to live backing right onto the tracks. And not once was I given a letter or a briefing on the strategy. To have a successful strategy the residents around the area should know what to do (and what the alarm is).
I was young and dumb back then so I don't know if there was one...but a key part of an evacuation strategy is telling everyone how to evacuate. (e.g. fire drills, fire wardens, etc at the office)
While Gormick has great admiration for MPP Vic Fedeli, he is wary of many others on the PC team and within the opposition parties. He dealt with Premier-Designate Ford on the GO Transit rail electrification issue at Toronto City Hall in 2011 and he recently had a brush with the incoming government through an assignment he undertook on behalf of newly-elected Milton MPP Parm Gill.
“The assignment was not just revealing, it was chilling,” says Gormick. “One of Gill’s supporters commissioned me to produce two backgrounders for public circulation during the election campaign regarding the constantly-delayed expansion of GO Milton rail service and the CN proposal to destroy valuable Milton agricultural land for an intermodal freight terminal.
“These backgrounders were quashed on orders from unknown officials in the PC Central Party Office; they never saw the light of day. One has to wonder why.”
More trains, all day, all lines. That the (previous) Liberal provincial government enabled ML to get some new additional service moving is ok, but many instances & opportunities have been and continue to be ignored in favour of more home run improvements. They should be 4 tracking Milton as we speak. More track should have been laid on the Barrie Line to mitigate freight conflicts. Trains should be running to Malton right now, instead of just trying to wait for Bramalea or farther. Richmond Hill should be running more as long as it’s technically feasible. Trains idling at Unionville for over 50 minutes during the midday have enough time to get to Mount Joy and back. The continued foot dragging on all of these seemingly simple improvements (among others) continues to be very frustrating as trackage sits empty and plans are not being implemented in a timely fashion.
It was an odd study indeed and even more odd is the reaction of the Toronto media....no one, it seems, has bothered to read it but they all want to talk about it!Oddly, quad tracking Milton would likely make the Toronto results even worse within that study.
Key components included distance, time, and cost. Putting more people on GO trains (without other changes) increases average distance, time (travelling further), and average cost. Roadway congestion would be reduced BUT that particular study did not consider private vehicle commutes in their rankings. To improve our score we could terminate all long-distance GO service and the longer TTC routes and force them to drive instead.
I'm strongly in favour of added GO service; and personally rank it higher than anything else we could do (including the DRL) but that particular study rewarded short lines with very frequent service.
Original study:
https://www.expertmarket.co.uk/focus/best-and-worst-cities-for-commuting
Breakdown:
https://stevemunro.ca/2018/06/23/the-sixth-worst-city-myth/
Gormick argues the Missing Link isn't worth it because adding two tracks to the Milton Corridor is cheaper, as it would be to add tracks to the Kitchener Line. He puts a lot of blame on the government and political footdraging. He also implies that CP was supportive of adding the tracks ("The answer to this classic example of political foot dragging is what CP and the highly-qualified GO management teams of the past proposed: Build two more tracks on the existing right-of-way all the way from West Toronto to Milton." emphasis added)
...
Look forward to reading any and all comments on Gormick's analysis.
The conclusion from this initial feasibility analysis is that the Missing Link can be constructed without major impacts on the urban fabric. A cost analysis indicates that, within the margin of error of a planning level study, adding the Missing Link would incur approximately the same cost as the present plan to add trackage and widen the Milton and Kitchener lines to implement the Regional Express Rail (RER) concept on these lines.
So expert consultants, likely with more informatio behind them, say that the costs are equal within a margin of error, and then your analysis says one option is cheaper. How much of that conclusion was not accounting or ignoring certain costs?
They should be 4 tracking Milton as we speak. More track should have been laid on the Barrie Line to mitigate freight conflicts.