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GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)
- Thread starter drum118
- Start date
kamira51
Active Member
Fantastic graph, the detail is quite nice.Just to provide a comparison with the other Subdivisions VIA owns (I'm deliberately ignoring the small sections in Quebec City and Niagara Falls), the Chatham Subdivision supports twice as many trains and 2.3 times as many passengers per route-km and the Ottawa branch supports 3-5 times as many trains and 3.5 times as many passengers per route-km:
Subdivisions Length Passengers at Stations dependent on this Subdivision (2018 figures provided by VIA) Passengers per route-km Trains per day (pre-Covid) Alexandria
Beachburg
Smiths Falls
Brockville187.4 km (116.43 miles) 1,481,105
- OTTW: 1,195,495 [3rd Rank in Corridor]
- FALL: 233,893 [8th]
- SMTF: 29,870 [27th]
- ALEX: 18,608 [31st]
- CSLM: 3,239 [40th]
7,904 6 (MTRL-OTTW)
10 (OTTW-TRTO)Chatham (Bloomfield to Windsor) 67.1 km (41.7 miles) 343,586
- WDON: 268,543 [7th]
- CHAT: 70,472 [16th]
- GLNC: 4,751 [37th]
5,120 4 (TRTO-WDON) Guelph (Kitchener to London Jct.) 88.2 km (54.8 miles) 196,496
- KITC: 80,980 [15th]
- GUEL: 47,951 [21st]
- STRF: 40,196 [25th]
- BRMP: 15,008 [33rd]
- SMYS: 6,623 [35th]
- GEOG: 4,762 [36th]
- MALT: 976 [48th]
2,228 2 (TRTO-LNDN/SARN)
But more importantly: the VIA-owned section of the Chatham Subdivision no longer appears in CN's Three Year Rail Network Plan, which suggests that CN had announced its intention to discontinue that segment, which forced VIA to buy it, in order to preserve this final piece of the Quebec-Windsor Corridor. Conversely, I struggle to imagine that CN would have terminated its lease with the GEXR (thus ending a stream of lease payments) if it intended to discontinue the Western half of the Guelph Sub...
Let's just take a break for a second: are you telling me that you really believe that Metrolinx would have ever received the funds to purchase almost a hundred kilometers of CN mainline without having operated a single revenue train over it? This is not to deny that Metrolinx would have taken less avoidable risks if they had at least waited until some (not even: additional, but: any) sidings were added between Kitchener and Georgetown, but in the end, there can only be one criterion on which we can judge the wisdom of the decision to go ahead now, even if that means (for now) a 5:20 departure out of London: if it indeed fails (as you seem to suggest) to survive the trial period, it would have been a reckless suicidal mission, but if it becomes permanent, won't you join me in applauding their bold decision?
If you had been within the country this year, you could have enjoyed the entire CN freight bypass around Toronto while taking VIA trains, thanks to various diversions of the Toronto-Kitchener-London/Sarnia service (via Newmarket Sub and York/Halton Sub), Toronto-Brantford-London/Windsor service (via Weston/Halton Sub) and Toronto-Kingston/Ottawa/Montreal (via Bala and York Sub). I struggle to believe that you don't know what happens when extensive infrastructure work is required for speed upgrades: trains get diverted or cancelled so that construction work can be performed unimpeded by passenger rail movements, as it's no different in the Netherlands: for a change of scenery between Utrecht and Cologne, just hop on any ICE train either next week, on weekends between February 19th and April 3rd, on weekdays between March 7th and 18th or any day between August 27th and September 9th and you will be able to enjoy the back country lines via s'-Hertogenbosh-Eindhoven-Venlo-Mönchengladbach rather than Arnhem-Oberhausen-Duisburg-Düsseldorf:
View attachment 367549
Source: Fernbusliniennetz.de
The problem is not that Toronto-London isn't a commutable distance: Thousands of Germans commute daily or multiple days per week to Frankfurt from similar distances as London-Toronto; however, they of course chose intercity trains and definitely not regional trains:
City Distance (Euclidean distance) from Frankfurt Typical travel time: Inter-City train Typical travel time: regional trains Kassel 145 km 1:23h (e.g. dep. 07:37, arr. 09:00) 2:26h (e.g. dep. 06:13, arr. 08:39) Köln (Cologne) 152 km 1:08h (e.g. dep. 08:23, arr. 09:31) 3:40h (e.g. dep. 04:55, arr. 08:36, with change in Koblenz [06:34/52]) Stuttgart 152 km 1:18h (e.g. dep. 06:50, arr. 08:08) 3:16h (e.g. dep. 05:29, arr. 08:45, with changes in Karlsruhe-Durlach [06:20/28] and Mannheim Hbf [07:29/35]) Saarbrücken 154 km 2:28h (e.g. dep. 06:28, arr. 08:56) 3:04h (e.g. dep. 05:45, arr. 08:49) London, ON 168 km from Toronto 2:10h (dep. 06:30, arr. 08:40) 3:53h (dep. 05:20, arr. 09:13) Nürnberg (Nuremberg) 189 km 2:02h (e.g. dep. 07:02, arr. 09:04) 3:59h (e.g. dep. 04:28, arr. 08:27, with change in Würzburg [05:48/06:37])
Yep, commuting with regional trains from Cologne is even slower than from London to Toronto (41.5 km/h vs. 43.3 km/h, when using Euclidean distance)...
One probably doesn’t even need to enjoy the fantastic quality of life and affordability of Montreal, while receiving a Toronto-salary funded by all of you wonderful Ontarian taxpayers to still believe you…
lenaitch
Senior Member
Fair points. The distance/travel time might be "commutable" but the current numbers - which some have jumped on - don't suggest great numbers are currently doing it. Maybe be more will with improved service (rail-induced demand?). Are the London-Toronto VIA trains packed?Just to provide a comparison with the other Subdivisions VIA owns (I'm deliberately ignoring the small sections in Quebec City and Niagara Falls), the Chatham Subdivision supports twice as many trains and 2.3 times as many passengers per route-km and the Ottawa branch supports 3-5 times as many trains and 3.5 times as many passengers per route-km:
Subdivisions Length Passengers at Stations dependent on this Subdivision (2018 figures provided by VIA) Passengers per route-km Trains per day (pre-Covid) Alexandria
Beachburg
Smiths Falls
Brockville187.4 km (116.43 miles) 1,481,105
- OTTW: 1,195,495 [3rd Rank in Corridor]
- FALL: 233,893 [8th]
- SMTF: 29,870 [27th]
- ALEX: 18,608 [31st]
- CSLM: 3,239 [40th]
7,904 6 (MTRL-OTTW)
10 (OTTW-TRTO)Chatham (Bloomfield to Windsor) 67.1 km (41.7 miles) 343,586
- WDON: 268,543 [7th]
- CHAT: 70,472 [16th]
- GLNC: 4,751 [37th]
5,120 4 (TRTO-WDON) Guelph (Kitchener to London Jct.) 88.2 km (54.8 miles) 196,496
- KITC: 80,980 [15th]
- GUEL: 47,951 [21st]
- STRF: 40,196 [25th]
- BRMP: 15,008 [33rd]
- SMYS: 6,623 [35th]
- GEOG: 4,762 [36th]
- MALT: 976 [48th]
2,228 2 (TRTO-LNDN/SARN)
But more importantly: the VIA-owned section of the Chatham Subdivision no longer appears in CN's Three Year Rail Network Plan, which suggests that CN had announced its intention to discontinue that segment, which forced VIA to buy it, in order to preserve this final piece of the Quebec-Windsor Corridor. Conversely, I struggle to imagine that CN would have terminated its lease with the GEXR (thus ending a stream of lease payments) if it intended to discontinue the Western half of the Guelph Sub...
Let's just take a break for a second: are you telling me that you really believe that Metrolinx would have ever received the funds to purchase almost a hundred kilometers of CN mainline without having operated a single revenue train over it? This is not to deny that Metrolinx would have taken less avoidable risks if they had at least waited until some (not even: additional, but: any) sidings were built between Kitchener and Georgetown, but in the end, there can only be one criterion on which we can judge the wisdom of the decision to go ahead now, even if that means (for now) a 5:20 departure out of London: if it indeed fails (as you seem to suggest) to survive the trial period, it would have been a reckless suicidal mission, but if it becomes permanent, won't you join me in applauding their bold decision?
If you had been within the country this year, you could have enjoyed the entire CN freight bypass around Toronto while taking VIA trains, thanks to various diversions of the Toronto-Kitchener-London/Sarnia service (via Newmarket Sub and York/Halton Sub), Toronto-Brantford-London/Windsor service (via Weston/Halton Sub) and Toronto-Kingston/Ottawa/Montreal (via Bala and York Sub). I struggle to believe that you don't know what happens when extensive infrastructure work is required for speed upgrades: trains get diverted or cancelled so that construction work can be performed unimpeded by passenger rail movements, as it's no different in the Netherlands: for a change of scenery between Utrecht and Cologne, just hop on any ICE train either next week, on weekends between February 19th and April 3rd, on weekdays between March 7th and 18th or any day between August 27th and September 9th and you will be able to enjoy the back country lines via s'-Hertogenbosh-Eindhoven-Venlo-Mönchengladbach rather than Arnhem-Oberhausen-Duisburg-Düsseldorf:
View attachment 367549
Source: Fernbusliniennetz.de
The problem is not that Toronto-London isn't a commutable distance: Thousands of Germans commute daily or multiple days per week to Frankfurt from similar distances as London-Toronto; however, they of course chose intercity trains and definitely not regional trains:
City Distance (Euclidean distance) from Frankfurt Typical travel time: intercity train Typical travel time: regional trains Kassel 145 km 1:23h (e.g. dep. 07:37, arr. 09:00) 2:26h (e.g. dep. 06:13, arr. 08:39) Köln (Cologne) 152 km 1:08h (e.g. dep. 08:23, arr. 09:31) 3:40h (e.g. dep. 04:55, arr. 08:36, with change in Koblenz [06:34/52]) Stuttgart 152 km 1:18h (e.g. dep. 06:50, arr. 08:08) 3:16h (e.g. dep. 05:29, arr. 08:45, with changes in Karlsruhe-Durlach [06:20/28] and Mannheim Hbf [07:29/35]) Saarbrücken 154 km 2:28h (e.g. dep. 06:28, arr. 08:56) 3:04h (e.g. dep. 05:45, arr. 08:49) London, ON 168 km from Toronto 2:10h (dep. 06:30, arr. 08:40) 3:53h (dep. 05:20, arr. 09:13) Nürnberg (Nuremberg) 189 km 2:02h (e.g. dep. 07:02, arr. 09:04) 3:59h (e.g. dep. 04:28, arr. 08:27, with change in Würzburg [05:48/06:37])
Yep, commuting with regional trains from Cologne is even slower than from London to Toronto (41.5 km/h vs. 43.3 km/h, when using Euclidean distance)...
One probably doesn’t even need to enjoy the fantastic quality of life and affordability of Montreal, while receiving a Toronto-salary funded by all of you wonderful Ontarian taxpayers, to still believe you…
Urban Sky
Senior Member
Trains 82 and 83 (i.e. the 8:35 arrival into Toronto and the 16:35 departure back to London) often operated with a second Business car pre-Covid…
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smallspy
Senior Member
CN is only allowed 4 freight movements per day over the GO-owned section of the Guelph Sub. Because of this, they only run a daily roadswitcher overnight from Toronto to Kitchener and back.
The rest of the line is served from the London end.
Dan
reaperexpress
Senior Member
It's not unthinkable that a railway purchase be approved without first operating revenue service.
In 1988 GO opened a brand new railway which they had built at a cost of $106 Million, extending the Lakeshore East Line to Whitby, where they had never operated trains before.
In 2001 GO purchased the entire CN Uxbridge subdivision as far as Uxbridge, just in case they might want to operate there in the future.
Also in 2001, GO purchased the CN Newmarket subdivision up to Barrie, though at the time they only operated as far as Bradford. They fixed up the line to high standards before extending service to Barrie South in 2007. (Yes I know they operated briefly to Allandale in the 90's).
In 2021 the State of Virginia purchased all of the CSXT-owned (but out of service) right-of-way between Petersburg and Ridgeway, N.C. (known as the S-Line), and all of the CSXT-owned right-of-way between Doswell and Clifton, Forge, never having run any trains on either.
The last 3 are somewhat different in that they were saving lines from abandonment, but the point is that you don't necessarily need to run a revenue passenger service as a "test drive" before buying a railway. A well-used bus service can be just as useful as a precedent. See also: every subway extension ever.
At the end of the day, you and I have the same underlying goal: we want the line to see improved passenger rail service. My intuition, based on my experience dealing with municipal governments, is just that the greater ridership which would be attracted by a faster and more frequent bus service would be a stronger political motivator than a train service which nobody uses. However, I recognize that you probably have some experience (or have heard about colleagues' experience) dealing with the federal government so your intuition may well be more relevant than mine.
If it does turn out that this pilot service kickstarted a move to purchase and fix up the rails between London and Kitchener, then I will absolutely join you in applauding their bold decision!
I am well aware of the regular diversions between Utrecht and Düsseldorf. I have gone down to 's Hertogenbosch to see ICE's running where they normally don't, and when I went to Vienna I made sure to plan dates where the NightJet was operating over the normal route via Arnhem.
I don't quite see your point here. Are you saying that we should run train services prior to upgrading the railway so that we can have the enjoyment of long and inconvenient diversions during construction? Or are you saying that we should not upgrade railways because doing so requires inconvenient diversions and cancellations?
It seems better to consistently have a bus service until the tracks are ready than to start a train service which then needs to be frequently cancelled and replaced by buses to enable track upgrades.
IRT_BMT_IND
Active Member
There's a lot of commuter demand between Western University and the GTA. It may not be daily 9-5 but it exists.
If this service ran on the Dundas sub it would likely be more successful, but I don't think there's enough track time unless GO replaces all/some of the existing VIA service.
crs1026
Superstar
Despite giving this argument some time to digest, I still have trouble with it… because I can see it applying equally well, if not better, to portions of HFR, especially Quebec-Montreal.
Would we expect VIA to mount a single weekday Quebec-Montreal round trip via Trois-Rivieres, using the existing track in whatever condition G&W currently maintains it, with less than best available railcars, in order to validate the potential of HFR? If that were done, with the likely poor ridership response, would you consider it as compelling data on which to build the case (or not) for HFR?
I think it’s quite fair to suggest that there is a minimum threshold for a trial service offering, below which the trial has no utility. Some minimum standard for trip frequency, time of day, trip time, and price point are all mandatory elements of that minimum starting point.
I’m very much a believer in both Quebec HFR and GO to London. And while I can’t decypher whatever the motives and interests of CN, Ontario, and Ottawa might be, I’m eager to see this become win-win-win for all. But I have to believe that launching the test train, without a forward strategy of some sort, is not sound decisionmaking. It ignores much known fact, lacks common sense, and it reeks of pure politics.
I would be interested in what in your mind differentiates the end vision of service on these routes, and why the strategy for getting to yes would be the opposite between these two proposed services.
- Paul
Urban Sky
Senior Member
GO to London is about expanding the current service area (centered on Toronto) to a city which is almost twice as far from its central node than any other point it previously served. HFR via Trois-Rivières or Peterborough is about diverting existing services which are already among VIA’s busiest routes.
Nobody needs to validate the ridership potential in Trois-Rivières and Peterborough because it’s absolutely peripheral to the business case for HFR…
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Krypto98
Active Member
This is probably why Friday nights are much busier than other nights. Likely UW students going back home to London for the weekend.
nfitz
Superstar
Could probably just look at what the previous ridership was. My recollection the last time I took it, it was a 2-car train, and more empty than full. Though I think half of one was baggage.
Of course, now that they've finished A-40 all the way to Quebec City, ridership wouldn't be as high.
They certainly were less-than-best available. You could see the wooden floor in places.
Urban Sky
Senior Member
I appreciate your anecdotal evidence from a time where I probably wasn’t even born, but historic ridership figures for the North Shore service are pretty irrelevant for validating the business case for HFR as the South Shore route via Drummondville has absorbed most of the rail traffic between Montreal and Quebec (i.e. the dominating O-D for any service between these two cities) since at least the re-opening of the Gare du Palais, if not: the restoration of CN service into Quebec City…
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Urban Sky
Senior Member
I think the point I wanted to make is less that you absolutely have to run a service first before you buy the tracks (in which case, @crs1026 would be right to ask if VIA has to start a pop-up intercity service to Trois-Rivières and Peterborough as a pre-requisite for HFR), but how central that purchase would be to fulfilling its mandate:
- For VIA, Toronto-London(-Sarnia) is probably the worst Corridor route (only the Maple Leaf might be worse, but that service has at least some strategic significance) and I'm not optimistic about its medium-term prospects as Sarnia might eventually get rerouted, whereas improved GO service will continue to eat into its KITC-TRTO and GUEL-KITC markets (as the two largest markets along that route).
- For GO, expanding rail service to anything West of Kitchener breaks with their model of providing Commuter Rail service centered onto Toronto, as I would consider 2 hours one-way as the absolute upper limit of commutability. If you look at the distance covered to London, it's three times further than any other existing GO Train termini except Kitchener, Barrie and Niagara Falls (see table below).
| Distance (route-km) from Toronto | Stations along Kitchener(-London) Corridor | Terminal Stations along other GO Corridors |
|---|---|---|
| 6 | Bloor | |
| 13 | Weston | |
| 17 | Etobicoke North | |
| 23 | Malton | |
| 28 | Bramalea | |
| 34 | Brampton | |
| 39 | Mount Pleasant | |
| 47 | Georgetown | Bloomington (46 km), Lincolnville (49 km), Milton (50 km), Oshawa (51 km) |
| 57 | Acton | Aldershot (55 km), Hamilton (65 km) |
| 78 | Guelph | |
| 101 | Kitchener | Barrie (101 km) |
| 143 | Stratford | Niagara Falls (134 km) |
| 161 | St. Marys | |
| 195 | London |
Based on the above, I find it difficult to justify investing into the Kitchener-London infrastructure for either railroad (note that GO's expansion to Niagara Falls required very little capital expenditure), but that of course doesn't answer why no bus feeder service was trialed first.
No worries, I didn't really doubt any of that!
Koodos for the railfanning! I actually travelled both routes on the same day when I visited the NHTV in Breda when I was considering to study there (in which case I would have never met my wife or ended up commenting in a Canadian rail forum!): with the ICE Wiesbaden to Cologne* and the next day with regional trains via Mönchengladbach and the single-tracked line to Venlo and further to Breda, from which I returned in the afternoon with an InterCity to Arnhem and then an ICE back to Frankfurt....
*using Europe's most-underutilized HSR segment, a 13 km long double-tracked segment which sees a pathetic 2 train pairs operating Mondays-to-Friday only!
I might have also expressed myself poorly here, as the more relevant example would have been how GO operates a bus bridge during major construction work, as on the Lakeshore West and East lines on several weekends this year (and didn't they cancel mid-day service to Bramalea for multiple years while they were upgrading the Weston Sub?). However, my point remains that track upgrades which might only take place in a few years' time are a poor reason to delay the launch of a passenger service, but the ridiculously poor achievable speeds and timings would have certainly a much more compelling reason to pull the plug before the departure of the first train. Nevertheless, as a fait accompli, we can only hope that it will be remembered as the moment Metrolinx started to transform itself towards a more regional rather than metropolitan network rather than a vanity stunt…
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crs1026
Superstar
It’s a bit like a fluke goal in hockey…. nobody who scored one ever says, hey that one doesn’t count, you can take it off the scoreboard. So if this is what it took to get a regional rail movement launched, then despite all my griping, I will take it.
I don’t buy into the conspiracy theory that this service was launched with a desire to fail…. but I think the fears that it will sour the political will to go further are valid. We can’t discount the possibility that the political level is so badly informed that it believes this service can succeed in its present form. If it fails to please, they may just give up on the whole idea and look elsewhere to score points with voters. I just hope that some ML staffer is actually burning the midnight oil writing some sort of proposal that can be rolled out before the provincial election.
I am hopeful that this may actually open the door for policymakers to begin writing and exchanging ideas about regional rail service. I cringe at how long and how disfunctional those policy exercises can be… especially if province and federal levels are trying to throw the hot potato to each other. But one has to start somewhere, I guess.
- Paul
PS - You may be close to the mark by noting that actually buying a rail line is somehow a political third rail …. even if it is sensible and has precedent. I wonder if Ontario got sick of waiting for Ottawa to launch HFR so that the purchase of the Stratford segment either fell off the radar screen or used HFR as precedent…. while Ottawa hoped Ontario would move first so that they didn’t have to commit to,anything west of Toronto. Just a theory, but there seems to be a lot of odd volleying between the two levels.
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ssiguy2
Senior Member
Not helped by the fact that SWO has absolutely no representation at the Cabinet.