Well, it all makes sense so long as your assumptions are valid - and they aren't.
Whoa, let's consider this:
(A) Stoufville can be made as fast as today (EMUs will be fast enough to make up for extra stops)
(B) Governments may consider SmartTrack 5-minute frequency ASAP more important than providing Stoufville expresses,
automatically necessitating what I said
Then it's a compromise. See?
Plus...
(C) It doesn't preclude further widenings of Stoufville in the future, to enable express/allstop passing to become possible beyond Scarborough.
ST and RER won't make the same stops. (If they did, they would indeed be one and the same)
I think you keep misunderstanding. Yet again.
ST and RER is still the same service but makes different stops
Don't understand what I mean?
See RER B timetable.
Different Paris RER trains makes different stops. Some stations get serviced 3 minutes, some stations get serviced 6 minutes, some stations 12 minutes, some trains are expresses, some trains are all stops, but there's more than 2.
It's more than a "ST" and a "RER". If you looked at the Paris RER B timetable, you will se Paris RER B looks more like 20 services instead of 2 ("GO RER" and "ST"), if you keep thinking the way you do, instead of thinking the way I'm temporarily asking you to think....
The one Paris service called "Paris RER B" does the timetable equivalent of:
- A train equivalent to SmartTrack
- A train equivalent to mostly SmartTrack
- A train equivalent to half SmartTrack, half GO
- A train equivalent to mostly GO, with a few SmartTrack behaviors
- A train that's fully GO
- A train that resembles SmartTrack in the east, but resembles GO in the west
- A train that resembles GO in the east, but resembles SmartTrack in the west
- Etc (something like 15, 20 or 30 different variants... it's not important to keep count)
Yet it's all considered one service. Same trainset. Same branding.
And do you know where GO got their "RER" inspiration from?
BINGO.
(Paris avoids making it confusing by using those simplified electronic boards. GO will definitely need to have new videoboard software to prevent it becoming confusing to users)
That's what Paris RER B is doing, if you view the
Paris RER B timetable. It is as if they run 20-30 different services (stopping schemes) on a single route. It's fantastically complex. It's not simply "ST" and "RER" (two things), it's many, many, many versions that is run as one single unified service. It's one service where each train has its own unique stopping sequence, and they fantastically intersperse the trains very efficiently (it's so complex that they computer to slot the trains reliably).
Under the Paris RER thinking mentality, what is called "SmartTrack" becomes just simply one of many RER stopping plans. Under Paris RER definitions, SmartTrack is interpreted as an allstop timetable for the electric RER train.
The move to GO RER is introducing additional multilayered stopping plans already today. Just look at the increases in LSW layering, thanks to the two now-active Hamilton spurs. Lakeshore West evening commuters already know, we've tried to figure out the LSW Burlington shortturn, LSW Oakville shortturn, LSW Aldershot shortturn, LSW express, LSW allstop, LSW West Harbour spur, LSW Hamilton Downtown spur... Paris RER is like the GO LSW multilayering, but on steriods, done 2-way, for the whole route, at ultra-high 3-minute frequencies, and frequent all day long instead of just GO LSW evening peak.
What I am saying, is if Toronto urgently prioritizes introduces 5-minute SmartTrack
before Stoufville expansion to 4-tracks, that Unionville/Stoufville leg will simply end up having to temporarily be allstop (for now) once they go past Scarborough, whether that specific train was express/allstop/random/hybrid before Scarborough. for the 2-track Stoufville spur and won't be slower (status quo) thanks to the faster EMU acceleration making up. One can continue incremental expansions to introduce another layer to the RER/ST unified service by introducing express Stoufville legs to some trains.
Once you've electrified the whole network and resignalled into small-blocks, you gain the flexibility to customize a lot of stopping plans with interspersing. Introducing a new service (e.g. we now want a Weston Express, or a faster Airport Express, or discontinue an unprofitable Danforth short-turn train, etc) -- along the electrified corridor simply becomes a twice-a-year timetable change, rather than a multibillion dollar electorate/government initiative -- assuming there's corridor room to reslot/rearrange the trains.
There is really no reason for GO+GORER(what many think it is)+UPX+ST to be monolithic, it can be virtualized into a timetable matter in a unified RER system, to gain the maximum train-slotting efficiencies absolutely needed for 5-minute frequencies within our existing GO corridor widths.
Using a "RER" system (using definition from Paris RER -- the Mother Of All RERs) combined with tiny blocks (that 5-minute requires) you gain a hell a lot more flexibility. Once you've got that, it is possible to invent new stopping plans that are total hybrids between what you consider "GO RER" and what you consider "SmartTrack". (And if UPX is merged in too, hybrids bewteen what you consider "UPX" and what you consider "GO RER". And between what you consider "UPX" and what you consider "SmartTrack"). Obviously it would all have to switch over to a fare zone system (with a TTC fare for 416) for consistency, but it'd be considered a unified service under Paris RER definition.
It becomes the once-a-year or twice-a-year timetable change to introduce/remove stopping plans. This fit constantly changing urban/suburban/seasonal demand profiles. And accomodates constantly changing/expanding corrodor space that increases flexibility over time (like later adding a track to Stoufville). Network expansions simply increase RER flexibility to introduce new stopping plans like additional expresses, etc.
Back to Paris -- they have upgraded incrementally over time such as adding extra tracks and other enhancements to specific RER routes. To continually "enhance" their timetables like added expresses to bypass allstops, etc. On this side of the pond, same thing could happen on the Scarborough-Stoufville section for the unified GO+GORER+ST+UPX electric service running Paris RER style. So for example -- yesterday there might be, say, 14 d ifferent variants of stopping plans but tomorrow's new RER schedule may have 17 different variants of stopping plans, in whatever interspersing necessary to achieve high frequencies in the core segment, while achieving all-day express and/or longer-haul capability for certain trains, etc.
From the Paris viewpoint, GO-RER and ST isn't two services. It's just two (or more!) different stopping plans assigned to each passing train... In all practicality, there could be trains that are assigned hybid between ST-ish and GO-RER-ish, as I've described above.
It is important to understand how
The Mother Of All RERs operate, where GO/Metrolinx got the "RER" acronym from.
