Voltz
Senior Member
Single or double tracked?
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GO Transit: Construction Projects (Metrolinx, various)
- Thread starter drum118
- Start date
lastcommodore
New Member
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.
smallspy
Senior Member
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
urbanclient
Active Member
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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Voltz
Senior Member
And leave some half built platforms, fire the HSR expert vendor, and then get stuck in the snow.
urbanclient
Active Member
ARG1
Senior Member
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.
lastcommodore
New Member
Fair point.
There are probably reasons I am unaware of and someone will explain how its not so simple (Thank you in advance to anyone who educates me), but I have always found it interesting how able road crews are capable of working on live roads and highways, expecting probably 10s of ks of motorists of all abilities and sanities to not crash into them, but with the tightly managed rail controls and experienced engineers live rail work on is nigh on impossible / discouraged.
urbanclient
Active Member
You make a good point regarding GO vs. Alto.
Not that you are the one saying this, but I have heard the narrative that working on active lines is not only more difficult, but more expensive than building from scratch. This makes no sense. It is more difficult on active lines in some ways, sure. But it's still cheaper to electrify an existing rail corridor than build a new one. Otherwise, why not just build new lines?
As an aside, I misused 'greenfield' earlier. What I actually meant were projects largely built from scratch like the Grand Paris Express, Sydney Metro, and regional rail networks in China and South Korea. These projects had expropriation and even wholesale redevelopment, much moreso than GO Expansion.
There is a big difference between building hundreds of kilometres of metros and elevated regional rail in dense urban areas than double-tracking 13 km of Lakeshore East and electrifying 100 km of Lakeshore East&West by 2040. See photo below.
Lakeshore doesn't run for 5 hours at night, ample time to get work done. The problem IMO is A. the province doesn't want to spend more money, because B. Metrolinx blew all the money as usual, on things like consultants, some of whom were essentially fresh grads: https://www.thetrillium.ca/news/the...=England presented the minimum viable product
Linkedin is open source information. Apparently Metrolinx was/is handing out internal VP titles to external consultants.