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GO Transit Electrification | Metrolinx

Urban Sky said:
It would have taken maybe 6 months to replan the REM in a way which would have accommodated transportation priorities which had already been known since decades and should have been treated as base requirements.

The same people which laughed VIA out of the negotiations about tunnel access negotiations with the words „You don‘t have a project! Come back when you have a project…“ (CDPQ infra‘s CEO) now being truseted with that same project and with building a new $10+ billion tunnel only necessary because of their ignorance really adds a staggering anount of insult to a grave injury…
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Pardon my ignorance, would those 6 months have allowed the relevant parties to leave passive provision for a wider Mont-Royal tunnel shared with future HSR? Without that provision, the only choice is to dig a completely separate tunnel, potentially using a TBM? That's unfortunate, but not unexpected given what appears to be a chronic lack of corridor safeguarding in Canadian infrastructure planning.
 
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urbanclient said:
Pardon my ignorance, would those 6 months have allowed the relevant parties to leave passive provision for a wider Mont-Royal tunnel shared with future HSR? Without that provision, the only choice is to dig a completely separate tunnel, potentially using a TBM? That's unfortunate, but not unexpected given what appears to be a chronic lack of corridor safeguarding in Canadian infrastructure planning.
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Listen, if the promoters of the REM had made their minimum diligence, they would have reached out to exo and VIA Rail well before the grand reveal of the project to the public on April 22, 2016, to enquire their requirements to not preclude their future plans. It should have never become the problem of exo and VIA that the CDPQinfra has zero competencies in strategic transportation planning and should never be trusted with making such decisions which could (and in the case of regional and intercity rail radiating around Montreal: have) upend known and pressing transportation infrastructure priorities.

Regardless of this, the CDPQinfra even refused to participate in an assessment of what minimum modifications would need to be made to the planned designs to include future provisions so that at least one intercity train per hour and direction can be inserted, which would have of course needed to be built within a reduced vehicle width and the same electrification system (1500V DC) and CBTC version chosen by the CBTC, which would have probably forced a tiny speciality fleet for MTRL-QBEC HFR/HSR services.

Given that the same secrecy and reluctance to share the infrastructure seems to exist within ALTO and Cadence, I fear the worst for the pending grand reveal of the ALTO route. The hinted decision to enter Montreal via Laval from Quebec City (of course!), but also from Ottawa (rather than via Dorval) seems to be the next extremely short-sighted decision made by the CDPQinfra without any public discussions amd will effectively preclude that ALTO can serve as a replacement of feeder planes into YUL. A puzzling and, as with the seizure of the Mont-Royal tunnel completely anachronistic decision which only seems to benefit Cadence-member Air Canada (how have they not been blacklisted from this entire procurement?!?) and virtually nobody else…

Canada (and the Montreal-region in particular) really is the only developped country which has not just outsourced individual projects to private partners, but also the entire process of strategic infrastructure planning, letting unaccountable and rogue players like the CDPQinfra decide how our transportation network will look like in 50 or 100 years…
 
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ownthesky said:
www.railwaygazette.com

Škoda to supply BEMUs to Latvia

LATVIA: National transport authority Autotransporta Direkcija has awarded Škoda Group a €89·4m contract to supply nine battery-electric multiple-units.
www.railwaygazette.com www.railwaygazette.com

Beating ssiguy to the BEMU news
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Yes, but can we just go back to this being the GO Electrification thread and not the Battery Trains Anywhere thread?
 
ownthesky said:
www.railwaygazette.com

Škoda to supply BEMUs to Latvia

LATVIA: National transport authority Autotransporta Direkcija has awarded Škoda Group a €89·4m contract to supply nine battery-electric multiple-units.
www.railwaygazette.com www.railwaygazette.com

Beating ssiguy to the BEMU news
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Big deal as its a 2 car train that is single level while GO needs at least 5/6 bilevel sets or not longer.
 
on a more serious note, GO hauls some serious amount of passengers during rush hour with comedically long bi-level trains and despite that can still hit standing sometimes, in the near term i can't see GO handling peak ridership with single-level trains unless they're also comedically long and every 5 minutes at peak.
 
lastcommodore said:
on a more serious note, GO hauls some serious amount of passengers during rush hour with comedically long bi-level trains
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As does NJT, MBTA, and plenty of others.

Rush hour (and that's not just 8 AM or 17:00. it also includes when Skydome lets out at night) is a maximum capacity situation and long trains are perfectly reasonable in that situation.

Off-peak, where ridership is less, and headway argues for more but smaller trains, does not have the same need. Some properties have separate fleets for that, parking their long trains off peak and bringing out different consists. ML tends to use the 12-car trainsets for everything. It's a spreadsheet exercise to decide if that's prudent or wasteful, but there isn't a lot of siding space for having a more diverse fleet.

- Paul
 
afransen said:
Why does GO need bilevel EMUs? Frequency please...
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Simple, ridership. GO is the only NA system that offer 12 car sets vs 3-8 in the US. Some US systems offer a mixture of single and bilevel sets.

In Europe some systems offer single levels withe rest offering 8 bilevels sets.

I have stared in the past, GO will need 3-6 bilevel EMU to meet the increase of ridership down the road even at every 5 minutes and that also go for battery power.
 
More good news............
Czech has just ordered 120 new battery-electric trains from Skoda. They were already using some BEMUs and found them reliable and cost efficient enough to greatly expand the fleet.

Seeing Go's current "plans" of electrification are going precisely no where there is an alternative to both catenary and battery...........electro-diesel battery power. These EDMUs are not as a clean or efficient as pure catenary but are a good stepping stone to reach pure electric power but at a lower cost, much faster implementation, and still many of the benefits of pure electric power. They do not have to be EMUs as can also be applied to locomotives. They are a good option for a system like GO with a massive loco & carriage rolling stock.

Essentially they are a more modern form of a DEMU. They still have a diesel engine BUT have a large battery pack. Most of the power used on trains is stopping and starting just like cars & planes. The trains run on diesel during the stretches BETWEEN stations but when slowing down/accelerating into stations, the battery power kicks in. They can be configured to the amount of battery/diesel power they want. So, for example, as the train arrives/departs from a station as soon as the trains reduces/increases their speed to 70-80 km an hour, the train is a battery one and exceeding that speed, the diesel engine kicks in not only running the train but also recharging the batteries while it's doing it.

This setup has several advantages. These EDMUs enjoys much better performance on de/acceleration, are quieter and smoother near stations, reduce emissions very significantly and particulate matter even more so, they require far fewer batteries to weigh down the train and much of the weight of the batteries are offset by having to carry far less fuel, the batteries last longer, they require almost no new recharging facilities except usually at terminus stations, they consume vastly less fuel, are a great transition technology especially for large fleets like Toronto, they are remarkably easy and affordable to implement and the cost of the new batteries is is quickly paid off by reduced fuel costs, and do not need new training for staff as they are still, at their core, ICE vehicles. Essentially, all locos have batteries and these are just adding more of them.
 
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These EDMUs still use the advantages of diesel engines such as no "range anxiety", little needed infrastructure {and Toronto's case none}, are easily expandable to service new areas, and are not susceptible to extreme weather events. At the same time they reduce the disadvantages of diesel such as slow de/acceleration, GHG & particulate matter, high diesel costs, noise, vibration, and yet due to being still ICE engines, do not require specialized training nor maintenance facilities. As battery technology advances at a dizzying rate, the batteries will last longer, become cheaper, weigh less, recharge quicker, and go further, the amount of diesel power required will continue to decline.
 
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