It doesn't have to be 4 trips per day. I'd think day 1 it would be one or two trips per day. I'm sure for the right price, CP would make it happen, and give it priority. The question is, would GO and/or Cambridge meet their price. Perhaps the Mayor of Cambridge would like to put his money where his mouth is.
Just to clarify, one run in a single direction is considered a trip. So by 4 trips, I mean 4 train movements over the length of the line; 2 in the morning and 2 returning in the evening.
As for the service, there's multiple issues at hand here.
GO has to pay CP a wheelage fee to use their track, but track time has to be negotiated first. I have no idea how they negotiate these agreements but they might not be so easy to modify. Even if GO/Cambridge was willing to pay a kings ransom for track usage, if CP say track time isn't available there's nothing they can do. Which knowing CP & Hunter, I'd suggest is very likely even if its not actually the case i.e. build us a second track please! Also, the price they might demand might not make much sense from a purely financially point of view considering the projected ridership.
From an operational point of view its even less likely. In the 15 miles between Cambridge & Guelph jct. there's but a single siding(Puslinch). What do you think are the chances Hunter '
hater of passenger trains' Harrison would let a
GO train hold the mainline and instead put one of his precious freights into the hole(railway term for a siding) at Puslinch(for those that could even fit in there; it has 6256ft of usable space) or wait on the 2nd track at Guelph Jct? Don't forget(or for those who didn't know), this is the man who decided CN wasn't going to play nice with the gov' anymore to provide crewing for GO trains. Largely because they could make something like 10 times as much(rumored) using the same man power running freights instead.
(Coincidentally also the man I have to
thank for my current position because of that specific move. But that's neither here nor there in regards to this matter
)
Anyhow, its something less than
zero.
Thus every time there's a possibility of a meet, the GO train would be stuck waiting to leave Cambridge and/or it would be going into the hole at Puslinch. As we all should know, freights don't operate on an exact schedule like passenger trains. I mentioned that the GO train might be delayed 15 minutes waiting for a freight(s) to pass, that was a conservative estimate. But really still the only one that matters since as we all know, any trip delayed by 15 minutes or more will result in passengers being given a full refund(train meets aren't an exception) and decease service reliability to thousands of people waiting at other stations further down. I can't possibly see GO implementing an unreliable service like that on the Milton line, a line that's highly congested and probably already has the lowest level of customer satisfaction.
In addition, there is no agreement for Bombardier crews to operate on the Milton line and none of our personal are currently qualified on that territory. CP is the only one that's contracted by GO to provide the operating crews for that line, which might be yet another reason for CP to balk, preferring to allocated their crews for use in the far more profitable freight service.
No, there's a reason why GO originally project this service to begin in 15 to 25 years. And the people that made that determination did so for very good reasons. The only way this happens any sooner is if there's a strong political motivation for it and at a much higher level than municipal.
