Allandale25
Senior Member
I wonder when OnCorr is approved and gets underway, what the yearly rate for GO electrification will be?
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GO Transit Electrification | Metrolinx
- Thread starter innsertnamehere
- Start date
allengeorge
Senior Member
Slower than anywhere else in the world.
Allandale25
Senior Member
crs1026
Superstar
India is in the process of a huge transformation of its entire railway system - multiple reasons including modernization, fuel costs, carbon reduction, need to massively increase capacity and productivity. According to Wikipedia it's a $700B plan. Within an envelope that size, one can plan big and undertake very large projects. The plain and simple reason for the record level of electrification is - India wants this done.
India's railway system was antiquated enough to generate the desire for an end to end transformation, where we seem content to make incremental just-in-time improvements and defer wholesale change. I would see India at the opposite end of the spectrum from the folks on UT's Disruption of Transport thread.... India is designing its future logistics firstmost around rail, and not around highways full of AV's.
- Paul
allengeorge
Senior Member
This is spot-on, and can be applied to many of the challenges facing Toronto, Ontario and Canada: from transportation, to housing supply, to house prices, to...
Everyone is so invested in and afraid of disrupting the status quo that you get drawn-out consultation and implementation processes.
I’ve always ‘joked’ that Canada has a culture of “No”, when it comes to change - both in the public sector, and in business.
ssiguy2
Senior Member
It's sad but true..............Canada doesn't do bold. Part of this is due to the nature of our very fragmented federation where provinces have so much autonomy that it makes great nation building nearly impossible. This is made doubly worse by the fact that Canada is EXTREMELY regionally and politically stratified.
Canada also is increasingly taking the easy way out when it comes to it's economy. Instead of improving productivity and investing in world leading technology to advance our competitiveness and ensure our future prosperity, we have taken the easy and highly unproductive route of simply building houses and flipping them.
Canada also is increasingly taking the easy way out when it comes to it's economy. Instead of improving productivity and investing in world leading technology to advance our competitiveness and ensure our future prosperity, we have taken the easy and highly unproductive route of simply building houses and flipping them.
SFO-YYZ
Active Member
The housing problem isn't Canada specific. Every major economy (and many developing countries) are facing the same issue of high property price growth and speculative investments. An average apartment within the 3rd ring of Beijing now costs more per sqft than a flat in central London or Manhattan.
aquateam
Active Member
I think what @ssiguy2 is referring to is the extreme percentage of Canada's economy that's devoted to real estate instead of products and services compared to many other countries. All the money going into property crowds out investments in machinery and other capital improvements to productivity. Productivity growth is the only sustainable way to grow wealth, not through asset bubbles.
In terms of speculation and property price growth, not every economy is going through that. Tokyo is a prime counter-example. It seems like housing policy in the west is designed in such a way as to make unaffordable property prices inevitable.
innsertnamehere
Superstar
India is building lots of mega freeways too.
It's underinvested it's infrastructure for generations, and is finally starting to build as it's economy is taking off. It has a long, long way to go.
MisterF
Senior Member
To be fair, it could be argued that GO expansion/RER is just as transformative, if only for one small part of the country. Apart from the Lakeshore line the system was pretty antiquated until the current expansion started. Single track lines, lots of level crossings, primitive signalling, stations that could be generously described as utilitarian - the bare minimum to get a handful of diesel trains downtown in the morning and a handful back to the suburbs in the evening. GO expansion is under the radar but it's a massive project.
tayser
Active Member
You'll get there - I'm fairly certain things will change for you, especially because we've turned everything on its head post-pandemic (or more to the point: once the really bad public health risk has died down). If you want a giant (rail-focused) infrastructure laggard to point a finger at it's been Australia. Things like the Sheppard subway would never have happened (and yes I'm aware of its storied history) in Australia 10+ years ago but now? Governments are going bananas at building rail lines.
Melbourne's Airport rail link will be the first "new" line serving a new destination (the metro tunnel will come first, but it's serving the centre of town which already has rail services) in over 7 decades when they opened the Glen Waverley extension in the 50s. How long has Toronto had the UP express? MARL won't be running until 2029/2030!
COVID's been good to us in respect of governments of the left and right have thrown off the old neo-liberal adage that debt is bad and budgets should be run in surplus to pay for the nice new shiny things. Everyone's splurging in Australia now. In fact, I think our level crossing removal programme will be the last of big projects that were financed à la neo-lib - i.e not using debt to finance infrastructure investment (the original list of 50 was through normal budgets when gov was running surpluses, the next 25 which came as an election commitment and were going to be paid through the sale of the Port of Melbourne lease over 50 years (très neo-liberal) but with another election next year, many people are tipping the list will be expanded again [because it's so electorally popular] and will be financed through debt like the Suburban Rail Loop and Melbourne Airport Rail Link will be).
Australian states and Canadian provinces, surprisingly, talk to/observe from afar/follow one another a fair bit and it just so happens we've been able to deal with the pandemic quicker - and although the pipelines of projects were there/known about before the pandemic, COVID basically was the reason many govs here (especially at the state level) went, yep - we're going to borrow to build and properly finance it all on a monumental scale.
(If provincial governments remain timid after the pandemic dies down over there, get out on the streets with your pitchforks!).
Melbourne's Airport rail link will be the first "new" line serving a new destination (the metro tunnel will come first, but it's serving the centre of town which already has rail services) in over 7 decades when they opened the Glen Waverley extension in the 50s. How long has Toronto had the UP express? MARL won't be running until 2029/2030!
COVID's been good to us in respect of governments of the left and right have thrown off the old neo-liberal adage that debt is bad and budgets should be run in surplus to pay for the nice new shiny things. Everyone's splurging in Australia now. In fact, I think our level crossing removal programme will be the last of big projects that were financed à la neo-lib - i.e not using debt to finance infrastructure investment (the original list of 50 was through normal budgets when gov was running surpluses, the next 25 which came as an election commitment and were going to be paid through the sale of the Port of Melbourne lease over 50 years (très neo-liberal) but with another election next year, many people are tipping the list will be expanded again [because it's so electorally popular] and will be financed through debt like the Suburban Rail Loop and Melbourne Airport Rail Link will be).
Australian states and Canadian provinces, surprisingly, talk to/observe from afar/follow one another a fair bit and it just so happens we've been able to deal with the pandemic quicker - and although the pipelines of projects were there/known about before the pandemic, COVID basically was the reason many govs here (especially at the state level) went, yep - we're going to borrow to build and properly finance it all on a monumental scale.
(If provincial governments remain timid after the pandemic dies down over there, get out on the streets with your pitchforks!).
Undead
Senior Member
Adding more and more debt, what could go wrong lol
I know not all debt is bad as long as it's used to build something useful. For example, taking on debt to build infrastructure or increase productive capacity. Certainly better than plowing borrowed money into stocks or real estate. But this "we can pay for anything by expanding monetary supply" newfangled dogma needs to go away.
ssiguy2
Senior Member
RER does have the ability to be a truly transformative transit project and more so than the OL, subway expansions, and new LRT lines combined. The system could fundamentally change how Torontonians {and everyone in the Golden Horseshoe for that matter} move across the region.
The one thing that will hold it back however is a whopper...............fares. Unless they create a whole new fare structure and complete fare integration a la Board of Trade proposal, it will be nothing more than a hyper expensive project that in the end will make little difference to most and be nothing more than a somewhat better service that they have now but WAY short of transformative. GO could, within 20 years, surpass all subway ridership including the OL and extensions. In many cities in the world with newer and/or limited subway system like Toronto, suburban rail having higher ridership than their respective subway/Metro systems is the norm not the exception.
If GO doesn't, at a bare minimum, triple it's current ridership by 2030 and double it again by 2040, then it will be the fault of Metrolinx and poor fare integration and low frequency and not due to no latent demand for the service.
Undead
Senior Member
I don't think that's accurate. Most current TTC (and obviously GO) riders have access to a car. If you have a car, you can probably afford to take GO.
It's the last mile bus integration that will make or break RER. Just like the TTC subway relies heavily on bus transfers, so will any future RER scheme--if we want it to have meaningful ridership beyond park and ride.
I think you're way overemphasizing the effect of fares. Sure, there should be substantial discounts when transferring between GO and TTC. But that bus connection not existing or being inconvenient will be a greater detriment to RER ridership than fares in my humble view.
Rainforest
Senior Member
It should be easy to adjust the bus routes and provide convenient connections to nearly every GO station within 416.