GO Transit Electrification | Metrolinx

[Haydenpoon]

The detail on LSE is bizarre. On Page 55 they specify 95 revenue diesel hauled trains per weekday, plus 70 non-revenue diesel hauled trains. That's almost one non-revenue move for every revenue move.

But then, Barrie (pg 52) specifies 232 revenue electric trains and 130 non-revenue electric trains. Won't the folks around the Davenport Diamond be thrilled to learn that a third of the trains traversing the new flyover will be empty!

I was going to respond about the Stouffville number with a sarcastic "Must be Smart Track". But maybe that's the reality?

- Paul

If you look at the Appendix G -Noise and Vibration Modelling Reports in here, you will find the ultimate capacity schedule. A large portion of non-revenue trains in the barrier line are to and from Bradford GO and Bradford layover, and between Union station and Bathurst layover.

 

[crs1026]

^ I didn’t see any mention of VIA other than on LSE (via Oshawa) and Kitchener (4 trains only). The report claims to be consulting VIA regularly but there is no provision for HFR in the Stouffville line, and the Kitchener number is downright pessimistic. If ML has any inside info on HFR they aren’t saying.... routing HFR via Kennedy would make a material difference to the noise/air quality data on that line.

- Paul

 

[ARG1]

^ I didn’t see any mention of VIA other than on LSE (via Oshawa) and Kitchener (4 trains only). The report claims to be consulting VIA regularly but there is no provision for HFR in the Stouffville line, and the Kitchener number is downright pessimistic. If ML has any inside info on HFR they aren’t saying.... routing HFR via Kennedy would make a material difference to the noise/air quality data on that line.

- Paul

From what I understand, the HFR is supposed to be routed through the Don Valley bridge and the CP rail corridor. The problem there then lies in the fact that with the Don Layover Facility, GO is basically planning to park trains in front of that bridge. Ultimately we don't know the route HFR will take, and it can go either way.

 

[crs1026]

From what I understand, the HFR is supposed to be routed through the Don Valley bridge and the CP rail corridor. The problem there then lies in the fact that with the Don Layover Facility, GO is basically planning to park trains in front of that bridge. Ultimately we don't know the route HFR will take, and it can go either way.

I don’t know either - certainly the announcement of the Don Valley layover yard is a bit of a poke in the eye to VIA - I do believe that the agencies talk more than we may give them credit for, so I’m sure they were forewarned.
Either way, an EA is supposed to rough in alternatives so these can be advanced when the time is right ML’s giving VIA no planning credit on its EAs on the Stouffville line, while taking away the Don Valley option, is not exactly leaving any doors open.
Possibly ML was giving VIA a prod, or they are sick of Ottawa dithering on the HFR decision and will let VIA do additional study at their own expense
when they are ready. Either way, this is hardly good integrated transportation planning.

- Paul

 

[Allandale25]

From what I understand, the HFR is supposed to be routed through the Don Valley bridge and the CP rail corridor. The problem there then lies in the fact that with the Don Layover Facility, GO is basically planning to park trains in front of that bridge. Ultimately we don't know the route HFR will take, and it can go either way.

There's also been speculation that HFR would use the Stouffville Line. Could have some benefits over the Don Valley option.

If you look in the 798-page addendum, there are references to meeting with VIA Rail.

 

[ssiguy2]

^Doubledecker, I imagine. I can already imagine the complaints and memes arising from people being in the wrong part of the train and missing their stop lol

DD double decker..................................................d'oh!! Why I didn't figure that out is beyond me. Anyway, that is where drum118 and I REALLY part company. I think DD would be a huge mistake for RER.

People keep trying to compare Paris RER with Toronto's stating that it uses DD but that is a false analogy. In Paris, RER really is regional and only used for that reason because Parisians themselves enjoy a huge Metro system that is triple the size of Toronto's. RER in Toronto is going to be much more akin to an extended subway because it will offer rapid transit to million who don't have any access to it now. This means a lot more people will be getting on/off at each station and DD trains have the worse passenger flow.

You can see this in Mel/Syd where Melbourne has the single levels subway-type trains. One would think it has lower capacity than Sydney's DD but such is not the case. This is because the dwell station times are far shorter on Melbourne's system allowing the trains to run much more frequently and offering a faster service to boot. DD trains not only have longer dwell times but also do not serve people with mobility issues well. They are crammed at the front doors and this will become more acute as our population ages.

Cities are also trying to create an environment of active mobility and DD are the anti-thesis of this. There is a reason why new buses and subways now have areas for bikes, people are using them more for part of their daily commute. Now can you imagine 5 bikes and 2 wheelchairs fighting for the small areas in front of the doors?

Also, due to this being a more subway-type system, people will be using it for shorter journeys and hence will stick around the door area if only going a couple stops. This is much like in buses and streetcars where there maybe seats available but people won't use them if they are only going a short distance and will stand right at the doors blocking everyone else. DD trains are ideal for commuter rail type service where, in the morning for instance, there is very little on/off passenger flow but rather just people getting on and then everyone getting off at one terminus station ie Union pr for something like UPX with Person as the terminus.

On a more simplistic note, but certainly not an irrelevant one, having single levels for RER and DD for GO commuter would also make it much easier to differentiate the two services for the travelling public.

 

[MrGoose]

Cities are also trying to create an environment of active mobility and DD are the anti-thesis of this. There is a reason why new buses and subways now have areas for bikes, people are using them more for part of their daily commute. Now can you imagine 5 bikes and 2 wheelchairs fighting for the small areas in front of the doors?

Well Caltrain has bike cars, where the bottom level has the seats removed for bike racks. And in a single level train carriage, where do you think that bikes and wheelchairs are going to go? They are also going to go right in front of the doors, blocking everyone else.

 

[robmausser]

DD double decker..................................................d'oh!! Why I didn't figure that out is beyond me. Anyway, that is where drum118 and I REALLY part company. I think DD would be a huge mistake for RER.

People keep trying to compare Paris RER with Toronto's stating that it uses DD but that is a false analogy. In Paris, RER really is regional and only used for that reason because Parisians themselves enjoy a huge Metro system that is triple the size of Toronto's. RER in Toronto is going to be much more akin to an extended subway because it will offer rapid transit to million who don't have any access to it now. This means a lot more people will be getting on/off at each station and DD trains have the worse passenger flow.

You can see this in Mel/Syd where Melbourne has the single levels subway-type trains. One would think it has lower capacity than Sydney's DD but such is not the case. This is because the dwell station times are far shorter on Melbourne's system allowing the trains to run much more frequently and offering a faster service to boot. DD trains not only have longer dwell times but also do not serve people with mobility issues well. They are crammed at the front doors and this will become more acute as our population ages.

Cities are also trying to create an environment of active mobility and DD are the anti-thesis of this. There is a reason why new buses and subways now have areas for bikes, people are using them more for part of their daily commute. Now can you imagine 5 bikes and 2 wheelchairs fighting for the small areas in front of the doors?

Also, due to this being a more subway-type system, people will be using it for shorter journeys and hence will stick around the door area if only going a couple stops. This is much like in buses and streetcars where there maybe seats available but people won't use them if they are only going a short distance and will stand right at the doors blocking everyone else. DD trains are ideal for commuter rail type service where, in the morning for instance, there is very little on/off passenger flow but rather just people getting on and then everyone getting off at one terminus station ie Union pr for something like UPX with Person as the terminus.

On a more simplistic note, but certainly not an irrelevant one, having single levels for RER and DD for GO commuter would also make it much easier to differentiate the two services for the travelling public.

While some of the system of the GO-RER will be more subway-like in distance and what not, a lot of it will still be into the 905 area. As well, they might end up using the EMU's all the way to Barrie and Stouffville, for example, or all the way along the Lakeshore lines.

I could imagine a double decker EMU being setup in such a fashion that the lower deck is very minimalistic with seats, more meant for standing room and bikes, etc, as well as wheelchair accessible areas, and the second decker be more like a traditional commuter train seating with the Quiet Zones etc.

 

[ARG1]

DD double decker..................................................d'oh!! Why I didn't figure that out is beyond me. Anyway, that is where drum118 and I REALLY part company. I think DD would be a huge mistake for RER.

People keep trying to compare Paris RER with Toronto's stating that it uses DD but that is a false analogy. In Paris, RER really is regional and only used for that reason because Parisians themselves enjoy a huge Metro system that is triple the size of Toronto's. RER in Toronto is going to be much more akin to an extended subway because it will offer rapid transit to million who don't have any access to it now. This means a lot more people will be getting on/off at each station and DD trains have the worse passenger flow.

You can see this in Mel/Syd where Melbourne has the single levels subway-type trains. One would think it has lower capacity than Sydney's DD but such is not the case. This is because the dwell station times are far shorter on Melbourne's system allowing the trains to run much more frequently and offering a faster service to boot. DD trains not only have longer dwell times but also do not serve people with mobility issues well. They are crammed at the front doors and this will become more acute as our population ages.

Cities are also trying to create an environment of active mobility and DD are the anti-thesis of this. There is a reason why new buses and subways now have areas for bikes, people are using them more for part of their daily commute. Now can you imagine 5 bikes and 2 wheelchairs fighting for the small areas in front of the doors?

Also, due to this being a more subway-type system, people will be using it for shorter journeys and hence will stick around the door area if only going a couple stops. This is much like in buses and streetcars where there maybe seats available but people won't use them if they are only going a short distance and will stand right at the doors blocking everyone else. DD trains are ideal for commuter rail type service where, in the morning for instance, there is very little on/off passenger flow but rather just people getting on and then everyone getting off at one terminus station ie Union pr for something like UPX with Person as the terminus.

On a more simplistic note, but certainly not an irrelevant one, having single levels for RER and DD for GO commuter would also make it much easier to differentiate the two services for the travelling public.

The difference really isn't as major as you claim it to be. You can easily have single level type of door placements on a dual level train, just have it all on the lower part of the train. Sydney's issue is that the door are placed on the mid level section near the end of each train so you have to crowd at these exits which can only exist in the mid level sections. A low floor door placement doesn't have these constraints. Also Melbourne has similar to capacity to Sydney because it runs far longer trains with way more cars. Most Sydney services run 4 car trains while Melbourne trains run 7 car sets.

The issue with using single level trains is that unless you want to run low floor trains (would absolutely be awful for GO RER), you have to rebuild all of the platforms to high floor standards, but doing so would make all of the stations incompatible with the old coaches, which Metrolinx still wants to use in conjunction with the new EMUs since we have a ton of them and they have plenty of life left in them.

 

[sacred]

The difference really isn't as major as you claim it to be. You can easily have single level type of door placements on a dual level train, just have it all on the lower part of the train. Sydney's issue is that the door are placed on the mid level section near the end of each train so you have to crowd at these exits which can only exist in the mid level sections. A low floor door placement doesn't have these constraints. Also Melbourne has similar to capacity to Sydney because it runs far longer trains with way more cars. Most Sydney services run 4 car trains while Melbourne trains run 7 car sets.

The issue with using single level trains is that unless you want to run low floor trains (would absolutely be awful for GO RER), you have to rebuild all of the platforms to high floor standards, but doing so would make all of the stations incompatible with the old coaches, which Metrolinx still wants to use in conjunction with the new EMUs since we have a ton of them and they have plenty of life left in them.

I'm missing something here, I understand that low-floor single-level trains would have bad performance but would dual-level trains not have the same performance issues?

 

[afransen]

The issue with using single level trains is that unless you want to run low floor trains (would absolutely be awful for GO RER), you have to rebuild all of the platforms to high floor standards, but doing so would make all of the stations incompatible with the old coaches, which Metrolinx still wants to use in conjunction with the new EMUs since we have a ton of them and they have plenty of life left in them.

Yeah, this is going to be tricky to navigate. I imagine eventually we're headed for 100% high floor, but that might be decades away.

 

[crs1026]

If you look at the Appendix G -Noise and Vibration Modelling Reports in here, you will find the ultimate capacity schedule. A large portion of non-revenue trains in the barrier line are to and from Bradford GO and Bradford layover, and between Union station and Bathurst layover.

View attachment 301320

Ah....Looks like trains turning back at Bradford will spend time in a layover track, rather than just reversing from the station platform. That layover counts as a non-revenue move in each direction.

Both the Barrie and the Stouffville charts identify both "regular" and "express" trains. I wonder how that will work.

- Paul

 

[tayser]

The difference really isn't as major as you claim it to be. You can easily have single level type of door placements on a dual level train, just have it all on the lower part of the train. Sydney's issue is that the door are placed on the mid level section near the end of each train so you have to crowd at these exits which can only exist in the mid level sections. A low floor door placement doesn't have these constraints. Also Melbourne has similar to capacity to Sydney because it runs far longer trains with way more cars. Most Sydney services run 4 car trains while Melbourne trains run 7 car sets.

The issue with using single level trains is that unless you want to run low floor trains (would absolutely be awful for GO RER), you have to rebuild all of the platforms to high floor standards, but doing so would make all of the stations incompatible with the old coaches, which Metrolinx still wants to use in conjunction with the new EMUs since we have a ton of them and they have plenty of life left in them.

Sydney trains are either 4-car sets near-permanently arranged in pairs or straight-up 8-car trains outright. There's no old-school folksy chopping and changing marshaling of off-peak/peak services in Sydney (this might happen with regional New South Wales services like it does in Victoria - but not for the urban/metropolitan services). Broadly speaking Sydney's DD cars are about 20m long - 8 x 20 = ~160m trains.

Melbourne's trains, before the HCMT, were 3-car trains near permanently arranged in pairs (we moved to 6 cars on every service 15-20 years ago), some later sets of the X'trapolis (Alstom) are 6 car trains (i.e 2 motors and 4 trailers versus 4 motors and 2 trailers in all other consists). The physical dimensions of the trains are pretty close to Toronto subway trains. Carriages are generally 23-24m long so 6 x 23-24 = ~140m.

HCMT is the latest addition to the Melbourne fleet and stays around the 22-24m per-car length but everything's moving to 7 cars or around 160m (or same length as a Sydney DD).

HCMT capacity: 502 seated capacity, 1,380 gross capacity, 1,800 crush. Weight of train: 316.9 tonnes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Capacity_Metro_Trains
Sydney Trains A & B Set: 896 seated capacity (no publicly available data on gross/standing + crush capacity but at a guess, I'd say it'd be similar to the HCMT). Weight of train: 404 tonnes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Trains_A_&_B_sets

 

[ARG1]

I'm missing something here, I understand that low-floor single-level trains would have bad performance but would dual-level trains not have the same performance issues?

Its not necessarily that they have bad performance but more of a question of what's the point? A low floor single level train has all of the same restrictions that a bilevel train would have except less capacity. Add to that you're unnecessarily dealing with an extra type of rolling stock that you have to train mechanics to repair and maintain. Since the entire network is built around bilevel trains, there is no reason to go for a 70% low floor EMU fleet.

 

[smallspy]

Both the Barrie and the Stouffville charts identify both "regular" and "express" trains. I wonder how that will work.

- Paul

On Barrie there are long-term plans for limited three-track sections. Perhaps those long-term plans are no longer so long-term.

With some not-so-careful planning it is not difficult to mix all-stops and limited-stops trains on the same line with no overtaking sections. Whether Metrolinx has the wherewithal to pull it off successfully, however, is another question. They can't seem to operate a mixed service with UPX and the Kitchener line on 3 tracks, and there are no overtaking moves there.

Dan