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GO Transit: Construction Projects (Metrolinx, various)

They do clear the snow during the day with shovels or snow blowers, and push it onto the tracks too, I saw both happening at multiple stations last Sunday.
Because of their location, platforms are now only allowed to be serviced by the regular corridor maintenance crews. So platform clearing efforts are not happening nearly as fast as they should.

They are not supposed to push the snow onto the tracks as the operating crews are told to be cautious when they can't see the railhead, but it does indeed happen.

Dan
 
Impressive for Metrolinx to construct 5km of double tracking in 7 years. With these speeds, if we put Metrolinx in charge of Alto construction in Ontario, we could even see HSR from Toronto to Ottawa in just 935 years!
This entirely. I don't buy the woe-is-me or they're-trying-their-very-best narratives like double tracking or triple-tracking an existing rail ROW is some groundbreaking concept never done on this Earth. Metrolinx already owns the roughly 260 km of ROW earmarked for GO Expansion on 5 lines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GO_Transit_rail_services#History

This isn't them being hamstrung by freight companies rationing out trackage-rights agreements. This is some combination of lack of initiative, expertise, capacity, and funding.
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When I bring up how fast greenfield projects are done in comparison, I never get a proper answer along the lines of economic, political & labour differences.

This may be another Stuttgart 21 or Brandenburg Airport: literally the slowest rail and airport projects in human history---that were never formally paused, suspended, or cancelled---bar none. Only difference is that GO Expansion might actually be slower than Stuttgart just to reach minimum viable product, and might be further descoped into oblivion.

Whereas Berlin actually got a consolidated transport hub, and Stuttgart will benefit the southern half of Germany and more. At least we'll set a world record by the 2040 Lakeshore launch.
 
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On first thought, double tracked so ~664km, but on second thought knowing Metrolinx they'd probably descope it and construct most of it single tracked and say that we won't need more than bi-hourly service.
And leave some half built platforms, fire the HSR expert vendor, and then get stuck in the snow.
 
And leave some half built platforms, fire the HSR expert vendor, and then get stuck in the snow.
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Impressive for Metrolinx to construct 5km of double tracking in 7 years. With these speeds, if we put Metrolinx in charge of Alto construction in Ontario, we could even see HSR from Toronto to Ottawa in just 935 years!
I guess it's worth noting that it's a lot more difficult to do corridor works like double tracking on actively used lines, vs something mostly/fully greenfield like Alto. Even on a line that only has hourly service might only be able to have 20m worth of meaningful work done every hour due to safety procedures. Theoretically if Metrolinx decided to just completely shutdown the GO train for a few years GO Expansion could come along far quicker.

Note that I'm not trying to completely exonerate MX here, even with that caveat the pace is frankly way too glacial. However it's just worth bringing up that Alto is naturally going to have a much easier time getting work done.
 

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