GO Transit: Construction Projects (Metrolinx, various)

[Guido]

A thought occurred to me this morning with the CP Rail strike having begun. Maybe this will help speed up construction on the Toronto West Diamond grade separation? I mean they'll have fewer trains coming through while the work is progressing... any idea?

 

[smallspy]

A thought occurred to me this morning with the CP Rail strike having begun. Maybe this will help speed up construction on the Toronto West Diamond grade separation? I mean they'll have fewer trains coming through while the work is progressing... any idea?

Only slightly. They are just about set up for excavation right now, and have the temporary bridges in place under the CP tracks that allow them to excavate underneath them. The only way that the CP strike will have a positive impact is that they will be able to bring more dump trucks in and out of the construction site and over the CP tracks if routed that way.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.

 

[Red October]

Living in London has shown me how beneficial it would be to have more than one main station for trains to leave from (Victoria/King's Cross/St. Pancras/Waterloo/Paddington/etc..), and that for example Summerhill should definitely re-open as a train station, and there should be a north station and a west station. Transportation between them would obviously be necessary, but a problem seeing how much of a hassle it is to build a couple LRT lines and a DRL in Toronto.

 

[mpd618]

Living in London has shown me how beneficial it would be to have more than one main station for trains to leave from (Victoria/King's Cross/St. Pancras/Waterloo/Paddington/etc..), and that for example Summerhill should definitely re-open as a train station, and there should be a north station and a west station.

What's the benefit? In big cities, private railway companies started off with their own individual stations both because of competition and the difficulty of running trains to the centre of the city. Some, probably smaller, cities were able to made the life of passengers easier by building Union Stations for all the railways to replace the proliferation of terminals.

Now, having trains stop at multiple stations in the city is not the same as having them terminate at a non-central station, if that's what you're suggesting.

 

[Red October]

What's the benefit? In big cities, private railway companies started off with their own individual stations both because of competition and the difficulty of running trains to the centre of the city. Some, probably smaller, cities were able to made the life of passengers easier by building Union Stations for all the railways to replace the proliferation of terminals.

Now, having trains stop at multiple stations in the city is not the same as having them terminate at a non-central station, if that's what you're suggesting.

It's the benefit of not having to travel from North York to Union if you want to take a Via train somewhere, or a GO Train somewhere, and it's the same as having a grid transit system as opposed to a very centralized one. Say you live in Richmond Hill and take the GO Train into Toronto to work up at St. Clair or Bloor, what's the point of going past where you work to Union, only to double back on the subway? Opening a station like Summerhill would make this much easier. Instead of having tracks cut through and divide parts of the city, the central area of the city remains relatively untouched, and it also keeps Union from be absurdly busy like it is.

 

[CDL.TO]

It's the benefit of not having to travel from North York to Union if you want to take a Via train somewhere, or a GO Train somewhere, and it's the same as having a grid transit system as opposed to a very centralized one. Say you live in Richmond Hill and take the GO Train into Toronto to work up at St. Clair or Bloor, what's the point of going past where you work to Union, only to double back on the subway? Opening a station like Summerhill would make this much easier. Instead of having tracks cut through and divide parts of the city, the central area of the city remains relatively untouched, and it also keeps Union from be absurdly busy like it is.

Different termini in London generally serve different destinations. If you need to get from the City to Bristol you can't catch a train from Liverpool Street, you have to go to Paddington and that's your only option.

Multiple termini make transfers difficult and slow. Have fun getting from Southend to Oxford with luggage!

Rather than using London as a model, where things are the same as they were 113 years ago and were built that way due to competing railway companies, why not look to Germany who has worked to centralize the stations in their major cities? Transfers are centralized and easy!

If someone from Richmond Hill wants to get to Yonge and St. Clair, a better solution would be to have a transfer station for the Eglinton LRT.

 

[k10ery]

Living in London has shown me how beneficial it would be to have more than one main station for trains to leave from (Victoria/King's Cross/St. Pancras/Waterloo/Paddington/etc..), and that for example Summerhill should definitely re-open as a train station, and there should be a north station and a west station. Transportation between them would obviously be necessary, but a problem seeing how much of a hassle it is to build a couple LRT lines and a DRL in Toronto.

If it's such a great idea, why are they spending $30 billion on Crossrail?

 

[CDL.TO]

If it's such a great idea, why are they spending $30 billion on Crossrail?

And another $10 billion on the Thameslink Programme!

 

[mpd618]

It's the benefit of not having to travel from North York to Union if you want to take a Via train somewhere, or a GO Train somewhere, and it's the same as having a grid transit system as opposed to a very centralized one. Say you live in Richmond Hill and take the GO Train into Toronto to work up at St. Clair or Bloor, what's the point of going past where you work to Union, only to double back on the subway? Opening a station like Summerhill would make this much easier. Instead of having tracks cut through and divide parts of the city, the central area of the city remains relatively untouched, and it also keeps Union from be absurdly busy like it is.

Right, so you are not suggesting a system like London's where trains terminate at a peripheral location. You are suggesting that trains make stops not only at Union, but also at peripheral locations within Toronto. That is an eminently sensible suggestion, and one that makes even more sense when paired with electric trains that can accelerate quickly.

 

[Platform 27]

^Except you can't very easily have trains stopping at Union AND at Summerhill. It's one or the other. And one has the City's richest collection of trip generating destinations in walking distance, and the other has little by way of trip generators in walking distance and would rely on squeezing thousands of people onto a jammed subway basically at its peak load point in order to get them to their final destination. Reactivating North Toronto is a lovely idea from a railfanning perspective but an awful one from a network planning one.

Additional GO offload serving the CBD separate from Union is probably inevitable (hence the various recent explorations of a DRL-linked Bathurst yard station or underground S-bahn tunnels), but Summerhill is pretty much the worst possible place to try and accomplish it. Getting people easily between GO and various non-CBD locations in Toronto is a separate question, and that's where fare integration and better connections with lines like Eglinton would come in.

 

[andrewpmk]

As for a GO station at Summerhill, two points:

1. Most people in Toronto do not work downtown. Many people getting off the GO line at this station would be going to destinations north of Summerhill.

2. The purpose of putting GO service on the CP line through Summerhill is for crosstown trips that avoid downtown, as this would be a line that links Milton, Meadowvale, Cooksville, Kipling, Summerhill, Agincourt and Malvern. The purpose of this line is really to get people off the 401, not to get people downtown. Although it is true that some people from Scarborough would use this line to get downtown, people coming from Milton/Mississauga would have a choice: use the Milton line that goes to Union Station or use the crosstown line that goes to Summerhill and Malvern. My guess is that we would see alternating trains from Milton/Mississauga going to Summerhill/Malvern and Union Station.

 

[Hipster Duck]

^Except you can't very easily have trains stopping at Union AND at Summerhill. It's one or the other. And one has the City's richest collection of trip generating destinations in walking distance, and the other has little by way of trip generators in walking distance and would rely on squeezing thousands of people onto a jammed subway basically at its peak load point in order to get them to their final destination. Reactivating North Toronto is a lovely idea from a railfanning perspective but an awful one from a network planning one.

Yes, this gets at all the major points as to why Summerhill is a terrible transfer station: neighbourhood of million dollar NIMBYs living in beautiful single-detached Victorian rowhousing = zero redevelopment and intensification potential + Yonge line completely saturated at this point.

Actually, while it appears convenient because it runs through midtown and is almost completely grade separated, the CP corridor never struck me as this diamond in the rough that people were always hyping it up to be. There's the Summerhill transfer complications you've mentioned, plus the fact that the area it traverses between Yonge and the Junction never seemed to be really transit deficient; they were established residential neighbourhoods with very few trip generators en route that were, at most, 1 km away from the Bloor-Danforth line in all places. I don't see why there's a pressing need to connect these parts of town to the rest of the region.

It's true that the CP corridor has significantly more potential east of, say, Bayview, but why not just reroute those trains from Agincourt onto the Richmond Hill line to Union Station in the Don Valley, instead of running it to Summerhill? If you want to make an uptown connection, make a transfer station at Eglinton and Leslie to the LRT.

 

[Platform 27]

As for a GO station at Summerhill, two points:

1. Most people in Toronto do not work downtown. Many people getting off the GO line at this station would be going to destinations north of Summerhill.

2. The purpose of putting GO service on the CP line through Summerhill is for crosstown trips that avoid downtown, as this would be a line that links Milton, Meadowvale, Cooksville, Kipling, Summerhill, Agincourt and Malvern. The purpose of this line is really to get people off the 401, not to get people downtown. Although it is true that some people from Scarborough would use this line to get downtown, people coming from Milton/Mississauga would have a choice: use the Milton line that goes to Union Station or use the crosstown line that goes to Summerhill and Malvern. My guess is that we would see alternating trains from Milton/Mississauga going to Summerhill/Malvern and Union Station.

Um, have a look at which side of the Yonge line has the Tokyo-grade crowds every morning at Bloor station. Hint: not the side leading to the "most jobs" direction. Most people in Toronto whose work can be competitively accessed by rapid transit work south of Summerhill.

If you're currently driving from a home at Morningside and Finch to an office park on the south edge of the airport, there's little chance in the medium term that a trip door-to-door using a crosstown GO line and other connecting transit would be faster and more reliable than driving. And enough other people would come to that conclusion that the train frequency would be pretty anemic, which keeps the service unattractive, and so on and so forth through the usual negative feedback loops. You can schedule alternating trains equally going to each line all you want, but it's never going to be matched by actual demand patterns.

Now, build the entire Big Move, and then build a second Big Move's worth of rapid transit lines filling out the grid, and start building a third one, and you might start getting a feeder network of rapid transit lines reaching out towards all those low-density office parks that those GO trips using the North Toronto corridor might start being car-competitive. But that's, shall we say, a bit down the road...

(Anyway, I think we're all well off-topic here...)

 

[kEiThZ]

I think North Toronto/Summerhill is essentially useless unless you go whole hog. That means full fare and service integration between GO and TTC (at least as far as rail services are concerned), electrification of the GO network, all-day GO service.

To be honest, I personally think $8 billion on the above plan might well have achieved more for the region at large(and even road congestion) than Transit City. Not as much of a benefit for the 416. But from a regional perspective? If you're a Malvernite commuting to downtown, I fail to see what the Sheppard LRT or Scarborough RT extension has over a bus to a GO station in the community, followed by a train ride to Summerhill and then a short subway ride to the core. Two transfers, 1 hr max vs. 3 transfers and 1.5 hours of travel. In my opinion, the biggest gap in the GTA has been the lack of a real S-Bahn type suburban rail service.

 

[Platform 27]

I think North Toronto/Summerhill is essentially useless unless you go whole hog. That means full fare and service integration between GO and TTC (at least as far as rail services are concerned), electrification of the GO network, all-day GO service.

...and a DRL or some other major subway infrastructure to clear some space so Summerhill doesn't obliterate any pickup capacity at Bloor-Yonge.

And assuming you want high-frequency all-day service along the North Toronto line alongside CP, there's no way you're getting that without adding multiple tracks to the corridor. Best case, GO drops piles of money expropriating property from some of the richest and most politically-powerful people in the country. Less-good case, they are forced to build tunnels and trenches and so on, Weston-style, adding even more cost. Worst case, the NIMBY factor stops it dead.

To be honest, I personally think $8 billion on the above plan...

Well, toss in the DRL and we're suddenly talking $12 billion

...might well have achieved more for the region at large(and even road congestion) than Transit City. {snip} In my opinion, the biggest gap in the GTA has been the lack of a real S-Bahn type suburban rail service.

Oh, I think a lot of us would like to see that. But in most (all?) European applications, S-bahns/RER/Crossrail/what-have-you go through the CBD and out the other side; they don't bypass it and rely on radial metro transfers Summerhill-style. And if you're into the many-billions territory anyway, why not just tunnel through the CBD from the get-go?

Aside to the mods: this issue was hashed out previously in this thread, so perhaps everything from The Architect's post on down could get transferred over.