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GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

It's not looking good today, in any case:
View attachment 400039

I had also noticed the 10 mph operation west of Kitchener station. I think your hypothesis is correct: new slow orders west of London have decimated the on-time performance of the London GO train and VIA 84 (Sarnia-Toronto).
Via 87 (Toronto-Sarnia) was hopeless regardless, but at the very least they should shift its departure time from Kitchener about 8 minutes earlier to account for the Metrolinx track upgrades between Georgetown and Kitchener, and give a bit more time to tiptoe from Kitchener to London.

Also, it is occuring to me that the London train departs for a more practical time for me (11:33 Central European Time) than the for the people in London Ontario.

I'm wondering if we could make a program to automatically estimate the current track speed profile summarize using the GO and VIA GPS traces. If you plotted speed over distance for all trains in a month, then traced the maximum speed for any train for each given segment of track, you would have a "maximum speed profile" for the line which could be compared from one month to the next to identify new or lifted slow zones.

I personally am not tech savvy enough to do it, but it seems like it would be quite doable for someone who has worked with GTFS data before.
Today trip 3710 got stopped by cp freight at buck diamond. The westbound trip was consistently arriving 5 minutes early to Stratford until they added the 10 mph speed restriction...
 
PCs promising to spend $160 million to upgrade London GO service:

 
PCs promising to spend $160 million to upgrade London GO service:


I probably won't vote PC but I do like some of the things they are proposing, AND I like some of the things the Liberals are proposing. Can I vote for both? lol.
 
I probably won't vote PC but I do like some of the things they are proposing, AND I like some of the things the Liberals are proposing. Can I vote for both? lol.
I'd remind folks that one of the first things Ford did, when he came to power, was cancel the rail bypass of Brampton and Georgetown and the proposed high-speed-rail service between London & Toronto. A fast TO-Airport-Guelph-Kitchener-London would have brought London into the Tech corridor, one slow GO Train each way per day does nothing for jobs in London & the SW.
 
PCs promising to spend $160 million to upgrade London GO service:


That's probably an adequate capital investment, I would defer to those more expert than I on the subject...........but it doesn't sound like it includes the purchase price from CN; and if it does, then there would be a
question as to how much $$ remains for necessary works.
 
That's probably an adequate capital investment, I would defer to those more expert than I on the subject...........but it doesn't sound like it includes the purchase price from CN; and if it does, then there would be a
question as to how much $$ remains for necessary works.
How much did they spend on the Silver-kitchener section?
 
That's probably an adequate capital investment, I would defer to those more expert than I on the subject...........but it doesn't sound like it includes the purchase price from CN; and if it does, then there would be a
question as to how much $$ remains for necessary works.
I doubt they are purchasing the corridor at this time. The price for the 53-km section of the CN Guelph Subdivision when purchased in 2014 was $76M. My guess is that the $160M is going to mostly go to track improvements in the slowest, most decrepit sections of track so they can speed the service up, making it more viable for people to use. I could also maybe see them trying to purchase smaller sections of the track at the ends of the corridor, but not the entire corridor just yet.
 
I doubt they are purchasing the corridor at this time. The price for the 53-km section of the CN Guelph Subdivision when purchased in 2014 was $76M. My guess is that the $160M is going to mostly go to track improvements in the slowest, most decrepit sections of track so they can speed the service up, making it more viable for people to use. I could also maybe see them trying to purchase smaller sections of the track at the ends of the corridor, but not the entire corridor just yet.

I'm not clear on why one would spend money to upgrade someone else's corridor, and potentially increase its ultimate sale price, if one is also in the market to ultimately buy it.

Cheaper to buy it in the devalued state.
 
I'm not clear on why one would spend money to upgrade someone else's corridor, and potentially increase its ultimate sale price, if one is also in the market to ultimately buy it.

Cheaper to buy it in the devalued state.
That's a good point. I was initially thinking that CN would not want to part with the entire Guelph Subdivision and this would be the only real way to get better service on the line, but then I saw this article from 2020 that says CN is actually trying to sell its low-density rail lines in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ontario. CN Guelph is a low density line so they are actively looking to get rid of it.

I'd say it's roughly twice the length of Metrolinx's purchase in 2014 and probably in terrible condition so $160M actually isn't too outrageous of a number to value that section of the line at.
 
I'd remind folks that one of the first things Ford did, when he came to power, was cancel the rail bypass of Brampton and Georgetown and the proposed high-speed-rail service between London & Toronto. A fast TO-Airport-Guelph-Kitchener-London would have brought London into the Tech corridor, one slow GO Train each way per day does nothing for jobs in London & the SW.

The rail bypass was a mistake. It looks good on paper but its infeasible. Unless it was done by the federal government and forced on CN, they would never agree to it. Plus the project could take decades to come to fruition. A third track through the CN region of the Kitchener Line is a much more feasible thing.

The High Speed Rail project was a mistake too. We should have HSR between Toronto and Montreal, but anywhere else is overkill. There simply isn't the population in London for HSR.
 
The numbers add up quickly. I actually did a back of envelope fantasy scribble about the London route a while back. Here's the product.

It's hard to know exact prices for anything - for obvious reasons contractors and buyers keep their prices under wraps. But one can use this template to insert whatever figures one wishes. I did do a Streetview tour of the route and counted crossings.

The good thing about past VIA investment is, most crossings have fairly modern protection with gates. I wondered however if upgrading and raising speed limits would require consistent installation of overhead gantries with more lights.

The condition of the crossings themselves however, is not great and crossings are a fairly significant source of slow orders.... so I assumed that most would have to be renewed with the modern concrete shoulders and removable road plates (to allow automated surfacing).

Again, just something to kick the tires with, using an "err on the side of more" approach.

PS - In the context of Ontario's transit investment budget, even under the most stingy of the three parties.... this is chickenfeed. Let's just get on with it.

- Paul

Screen Shot 2022-05-13 at 1.24.40 PM.png
 
That's a good point. I was initially thinking that CN would not want to part with the entire Guelph Subdivision and this would be the only real way to get better service on the line, but then I saw this article from 2020 that says CN is actually trying to sell its low-density rail lines in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ontario. CN Guelph is a low density line so they are actively looking to get rid of it.

I'd say it's roughly twice the length of Metrolinx's purchase in 2014 and probably in terrible condition so $160M actually isn't too outrageous of a number to value that section of the line at.
As far as I know they only run 1 local on that line, maybe 2 if I'm mistaken.
 
I'm not clear on why one would spend money to upgrade someone else's corridor, and potentially increase its ultimate sale price, if one is also in the market to ultimately buy it.

Cheaper to buy it in the devalued state.
This. CN has been negligent on their maintenance and now the Conservatives want to give them 160 million dollars for the maintenance they should have been doing for the past twenty years.

Instead of giving handouts to one of the richest companies in the country, we should offer to buy the line at a price which takes into account the backlog of work the line needs.
 
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It's not looking good today, in any case:
View attachment 400039

I had also noticed the 10 mph operation west of Kitchener station. I think your hypothesis is correct: new slow orders west of London have decimated the on-time performance of the London GO train and VIA 84 (Sarnia-Toronto).
Via 87 (Toronto-Sarnia) was hopeless regardless, but at the very least they should shift its departure time from Kitchener about 8 minutes earlier to account for the Metrolinx track upgrades between Georgetown and Kitchener, and give a bit more time to tiptoe from Kitchener to London.

Also, it is occuring to me that the London train departs for a more practical time for me (11:33 Central European Time) than the for the people in London Ontario.

I'm wondering if we could make a program to automatically estimate the current track speed profile summarize using the GO and VIA GPS traces. If you plotted speed over distance for all trains in a month, then traced the maximum speed for any train for each given segment of track, you would have a "maximum speed profile" for the line which could be compared from one month to the next to identify new or lifted slow zones.

I personally am not tech savvy enough to do it, but it seems like it would be quite doable for someone who has worked with GTFS data before.
More than 15 minute delay=free ride. As long as I'm not in a rush, I kinda hope I get delayed. Probably not sustainable if it keeps happening though...
 
It's not looking good today, in any case:
View attachment 400039

I had also noticed the 10 mph operation west of Kitchener station. I think your hypothesis is correct: new slow orders west of London have decimated the on-time performance of the London GO train and VIA 84 (Sarnia-Toronto).
Via 87 (Toronto-Sarnia) was hopeless regardless, but at the very least they should shift its departure time from Kitchener about 8 minutes earlier to account for the Metrolinx track upgrades between Georgetown and Kitchener, and give a bit more time to tiptoe from Kitchener to London.

Also, it is occuring to me that the London train departs for a more practical time for me (11:33 Central European Time) than the for the people in London Ontario.

I'm wondering if we could make a program to automatically estimate the current track speed profile summarize using the GO and VIA GPS traces. If you plotted speed over distance for all trains in a month, then traced the maximum speed for any train for each given segment of track, you would have a "maximum speed profile" for the line which could be compared from one month to the next to identify new or lifted slow zones.

I personally am not tech savvy enough to do it, but it seems like it would be quite doable for someone who has worked with GTFS data before.

What's the length of this new 10 mph slow order?
 

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