News   Oct 11, 2024
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GO Transit: Construction Projects (Metrolinx, various)

I'm a little lost. …………….will RER and all day/each way 15 minute service go all the way to Barrie? I knew that the whole Barrie line was going to be electrified but I thought the actual RER service would terminate at Aurora?
 
^ We can only rely on what's published on the website now. Anything of course is subject to change of course.

Keep in mind that On Corridor procurement is still happening and the decision on the consortium to run the service for 30 years (Edit: slide 17 in the presentation below says it's a 35-year contract) won't be made until probably the late Spring or Summer, and it requires Queen's Park give Metrolinx the money. Also, they now call it "GO Expansion" instead of "RER". On Corridor is another term for GO Expansion (aka RER) but it's the more formal term for the actual procurement, from my reading of the materials.

The main GO Expansion page is here: http://www.metrolinx.com/en/greaterregion/projects/go-expansion.aspx

The full business case is here: http://www.metrolinx.com/en/regiona...nefitscases/benefits_case_analyses.aspx#gorer (and yes, the URL still has "RER" in it).

The presentation to the Board associated with the business case shows on slide 8 the below which answers your question. Edit: note that on slide 17 it says the Project Company will be responsible for "service design".

Open to corrections from anyone.

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Some pictures of Bayview Junction in Hamilton from today. Work is really coming along, and most of the new switches are tied in and have switching mechanisms installed. Very exciting to see progress on this vital project.

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Wouldn't this GO Transit project provide more passengers for the Hamilton LRT, if it wasn't for Doug Ford's backward thinking?
 
Metrolinx is finally being honest about Caledonia GO station, as this page must have been updated in the past week or so. Unless the Crosstown opening date is delayed to 2023, Caledonia GO won't be opening in time for it. It's truly bizarre why Metrolinx waited for so long to tender. They've had 8 years since construction on the Crosstown started.

Progress

"Great news! Caledonia GO Station is moving ahead!
The new station will be directly integrated with connections to the Eglinton Crosstown LRT and will have heated platform shelters, bicycle parking, pedestrian connections to Bowie Avenue, Carnarvan Street, and complete accessibility enhancements.

Customers will experience a seamless transition between GO Transit services on the Barrie GO Line and the Crosstown, giving them more options for getting around.

Caledonia GO Station is currently in the design phase, the tender process will be initiated in spring 2020, with construction scheduled to begin in spring 2021 and completed by approximately spring 2023."
 
^I meant to do some photography along Eglinton to document all the places where the “coming in Sept 2021” message is posted. The hoarding at Caledonia is one I noticed just a couple weeks ago. . I wonder how much quick paintwork is going on up there.

- Paul
 
Metrolinx is finally being honest about Caledonia GO station, as this page must have been updated in the past week or so. Unless the Crosstown opening date is delayed to 2023, Caledonia GO won't be opening in time for it. It's truly bizarre why Metrolinx waited for so long to tender. They've had 8 years since construction on the Crosstown started.

I suspect it got caught up in Fords order to look for commercial partners for all station projects. They probably found dozens of interested partners but none with a timeline they wanted; they'd still be designing/zoning their condo project in 2022.
 
I suspect it got caught up in Fords order to look for commercial partners for all station projects. They probably found dozens of interested partners, but none with a timeline they wanted; they'd still be designing/zoning their condo project in 2022.
Then they should've been honest about it. They kept saying the GO station will open at the same time as the Crosstown.
 
Then they should've been honest about it. They kept saying the GO station will open at the same time as the Crosstown.

Agreed. I've yet to figure out if Metrolinx is purposefully misleading or if internal communication is so terrible that the media/public facing people believe what they say is accurate.
 
Agreed. I've yet to figure out if Metrolinx is purposefully misleading or if internal communication is so terrible that the media/public facing people believe what they say is accurate.

From what I can tell, it’s both. The side that manages the work (and sees the progress tracking) has been trained to not admit any problems, so the communications side isn’t lying when they announce that everything is fine - don’t ask, don’t tell.

- Paul
 
RER exists not to serve people living by the subway commuting throughout Toronto, it mainly exists to bring people from the suburban cities into urbanized Toronto.
No, RER exists to serve both the suburbs and the city itself and will attract a lot of passengers who currently ride the subway. The fact that most new GO stations will be in Toronto rather than the 905 reflects that.
 
Metrolinx is finally being honest about Caledonia GO station, as this page must have been updated in the past week or so. Unless the Crosstown opening date is delayed to 2023, Caledonia GO won't be opening in time for it. It's truly bizarre why Metrolinx waited for so long to tender. They've had 8 years since construction on the Crosstown started.
given that Ben Spurr is reporting a delay of Crosstown to mid 2022, and the likelihood of further slippage, I doubt that gap will be material.
 
Note the word "Mainly"
Even that I'd disagree with. But I was responding more to the first part of the statement, "RER exists not to serve people living by the subway commuting throughout Toronto", which, even taking into account the second part, is a pretty strong and inaccurate statement.

Of the 12 new stations being built (13 if you count Park Lawn), only 4 are outside Toronto. Yes, that story is almost two years old now but the point is the same. GO has historically been suburb-focused but one of the main reasons for its expansion is to vastly increase its relevance to Toronto itself.
 
^That 12 station plan is now defunct. Only stations that attract private development money are going ahead.

Metrolinx is adrift in terms of station planning, which is a huge abdication. It is certainly true that RER is premised on two-way people flows and seats that turn over, versus seats that fill as trains approach the center. That doesn’t diminish the role of bringing riders in from the 905, it just adds a second dimension, both in the central city and outside of it.

The tension between the longer distance service and very local service is looming, and it remains to be seen whether adding more stops will downgrade the quality of GO as a region wide carrier. Electrification can only bridge so much of the gap. One person’s “virtual subway” is another person’s milk run. And, while supplanting TTC service is attractive, falling back on RER as an alternative to building a proper TTC higher order transit network is not prudent. #SmartTrack

- Paul
 
Even that I'd disagree with. But I was responding more to the first part of the statement, "RER exists not to serve people living by the subway commuting throughout Toronto", which, even taking into account the second part, is a pretty strong and inaccurate statement.

Of the 12 new stations being built (13 if you count Park Lawn), only 4 are outside Toronto. Yes, that story is almost two years old now but the point is the same. GO has historically been suburb-focused but one of the main reasons for its expansion is to vastly increase its relevance to Toronto itself.
"Living by the subway"

The vast majority of those stations exist to either serve people from suburban stations, or people who do not already live near a subway station. Oddly enough, that does include liberty village, since the nearest subway station is still a good 20-30 minutes away depending on the route and traffic.
 

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