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GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

andrewpmk said:
The 21 is the busiest GO bus route from Union Station Bus Terminal though. Sure the traffic on the Gardiner is often bad, but the Bloor-Danforth subway and the 26 or 109 is really slow. I can't see ever getting rid of that unless there is direct rail service to Square One on a spur from the Milton line, and trains every 15 minutes.
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109 will remain slow until 2017/18 until the full transitway is in place including the new Kipling Station.

26/76 will be slow due to the fact they service the route on Burnhamthorpe more than going to Islington from Sq One. These routes will never disappear even if the BD and GO Rail ran to Sq One.

The numbers I have are for all the routes, not just 21.

As for moving Cooksville to Sq One. it shows people have no idea what is around that station and who use it in the first place. Then they don't understand how people travel in the first place as well why.

A Milton Spur will cut 10-15 minutes of the travel time by transit from the Cooksville Station to Sq One, depending on the time of day and day of the week. This includes walking time from the GO station to the transit stop. Again, not everyone is coming from Sq One to Cooksville for the Milton line to the point the 103 north of Sq One is carrying 2-3 time more riders than it did after the stop was put in for it.
 
mpd618 said:
Why does the entirety of the GTA need to come before improvements to Toronto-Kitchener service? And why is everything considered so zero sum?
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Exactly. And it could be especially attractive if the GO improvements from Mt. Pleasant/Georgetown are paid for by KWC/Guelph residents. If the money is coming from a separate pot compared to GTA GO improvements, the two don't need to be mutually exclusive at all.
 
mpd618 said:
Why does the entirety of the GTA need to come before improvements to Toronto-Kitchener service? And why is everything considered so zero sum?
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I agree. The GTHA is obviously very divided in its mentality, whereby your region can't get service before my region gets service because we've been waiting longer than you.
 
innsertnamehere said:
So I guess an infrastructure project that makes sense is vote pandering now? That DRL is just to siphon votes away from the Downtown core after all...

sarcasm aside, This is probably one of the few projects in the GGH that might actually have a noticeable impact on highway traffic, especially if it gets sped up to around 1:30 travel time total.

Funding could easily come from Kitchener-Waterloo and Guelphs portion of the transit taxes if they get implemented province wide.
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Funding can easily come from a scaled-back highway 7.
 
It depends on what "quality" service you want, whether it is simply at the current speed but with dual tracks or if you want semi-express service once you get into Brampton and want upgraded speeds along the route. Getting rid of the slow spot in Geulph alone will probably cost a couple hundred million. Dual tracking the route and buying more trains to serve it is probably all that is qouted in the $400 million cost, you are probably looking at closer to $1 billion if you do track upgrades to reduce travel time. (which is a worthy investment IMO)
 
innsertnamehere said:
It depends on what "quality" service you want, whether it is simply at the current speed but with dual tracks or if you want semi-express service once you get into Brampton and want upgraded speeds along the route.
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I also agree that the speed improvements are definitely worthwhile, not just due to their potential for increased ridership but also because they will reduce operating costs by reducing equipment demand.
With our current 2+ hour schedule, a round trip would probably take 5 hours (including layover), so 5 trainsets would be required to maintain hourly service. But if the travel time is dropped to 1h45 or less, we would only need 4 trainsets - a very significant reduction in fuel/operator/maintenance costs.

Express service from Brampton to Toronto will already be possible in 2015 thanks to the Georgetown south project. The GTS easily gives us all the track capacity and speed that we would need in the foreseeable future, so the only focus of investment is the two other segments of line (GEXR and CN). The lowest capacity of the two is the GEXR segment, so that's where we need to invest. My impression is that the CN segment can already support hourly GO service despite the level of freight traffic (it is mostly triple-tracked) so all this project needs to improve is Georgetown-Kitchener.

Improving speeds significantly increases line capacity for single-track lines, which could actually reduce costs by reducing the need for double tracking. For example, if we reduced the Kitchener-Guelph travel time to 20 minutes, a single-track line west of Guelph would have enough capacity for hourly service, including a 20 minute layover in Kitchener (during which time other trains can use the single-tracked segment). I think reducing the KW-Guelph travel time by 8 minutes is fairly achievable, given that the Guelph slow zone costs nearly 6 minutes on its own.

Getting rid of the slow spot in Geulph alone will probably cost a couple hundred million. Dual tracking the route and buying more trains to serve it is probably all that is qouted in the $400 million cost, you are probably looking at closer to $1 billion if you do track upgrades to reduce travel time. (which is a worthy investment IMO)
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Working from Dunkalunk's map, the rail upgrade project would only need to eliminate the two crossings on Kent Street (Glasgow and Dublin). Grade separating other roads would be nice for Guelph residents, but is not necessary for faster train service so it could be funded independently and on a different time scale.

The equipment demands are not necessarily very high, because the service increase in question is off-peak, when we have surplus trainsets anyway.
 
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reaperexpress said:
I also agree that the speed improvements are definitely worthwhile, not just due to their potential for increased ridership but also because they will reduce operating costs by reducing equipment demand.
With our current 2+ hour schedule, a round trip would probably take 5 hours (including layover), so 5 trainsets would be required to maintain hourly service. But if the travel time is dropped to 1h45 or less, we would only need 4 trainsets - a very significant reduction in fuel/operator/maintenance costs.

Express service from Brampton to Toronto will already be possible in 2015 thanks to the Georgetown south project. The GTS easily gives us all the track capacity and speed that we would need in the foreseeable future, so the only focus of investment is the two other segments of line (GEXR and CN). The lowest capacity of the two is the GEXR segment, so that's where we need to invest. My impression is that the CN segment can already support hourly GO service despite the level of freight traffic (it is mostly triple-tracked) so all this project needs to improve is Georgetown-Kitchener.

Improving speeds significantly increases line capacity for single-track lines, which could actually reduce costs by reducing the need for double tracking. For example, if we reduced the Kitchener-Guelph travel time to 20 minutes, a single-track line west of Guelph would have enough capacity for hourly service, including a 20 minute layover in Kitchener (during which time other trains can use the single-tracked segment). I think reducing the KW-Guelph travel time by 8 minutes is fairly achievable, given that the Guelph slow zone costs nearly 6 minutes on its own.
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Upgrade the GEXR segment (particularly through Guelph), and build the freight bypass along the 407 ROW to free up room on the Georgetown corridor through Brampton, as well as free up the Milton line for a greater intensity of service, maybe even the Midtown line too.

Pay for the upgrade of 1 corridor and the construction of another, get improvements on 3 corridors. Seems like a pretty good bang for the buck to me.
 
gweed123 said:
Upgrade the GEXR segment (particularly through Guelph), and build the freight bypass along the 407 ROW to free up room on the Georgetown corridor through Brampton, as well as free up the Milton line for a greater intensity of service, maybe even the Midtown line too.

Pay for the upgrade of 1 corridor and the construction of another, get improvements on 3 corridors. Seems like a pretty good bang for the buck to me.
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Yes, that is what we need to do and it is good bang for the buck.
But is it what we need to do right now?

If we can keep the costs under a few hundred million, the funds could be diverted from the two relevant highway projects (KW-Guelph expressway, and 401 widening Kitchener-Mississauga), which would probably help get the project off the ground by eliminating the budget issue. I think we could get pretty substantial improvements in the 51km Georgetown-Kitchener segment for, say, $500M, based on the costs of other recent investments in southern Ontario passenger railways:

Kingston Subdivision: $300M:
- 72 km of third track
- "Signal upgrades"
(4.2M / km)

Chatham Subidvision: $17M - 56km
Increased line speed from 80mph to 100mph:
- new passing siding
- introducing CTC
- welding/destressing 18km of rail
- replacing 18 000 ties
- upgrading crossings and building 29km of fence
(0.3M / km)

Alexandria Subdivision: $12.5M,
- New Passing track and storage siding
- introducing CTC
- 64 km of continuously-welded rail
- Purchase 16 km of railways from CN and CP
- 1 Bridge rehabilitation

Smiths Falls Subdivision: $10M
Supposedly increases line speed to 100mph (I thought it was already)
- Sidings
- Introducing CTC
- Upgrade crossings
- Track/Tie replacements

Guelph Subdivision: $?
- Introducing CTC
- Upgrading passing sidings
- Upgrading crossings
 
innsertnamehere said:
It depends on what "quality" service you want, whether it is simply at the current speed but with dual tracks or if you want semi-express service once you get into Brampton and want upgraded speeds along the route. Getting rid of the slow spot in Geulph alone will probably cost a couple hundred million. Dual tracking the route and buying more trains to serve it is probably all that is qouted in the $400 million cost, you are probably looking at closer to $1 billion if you do track upgrades to reduce travel time. (which is a worthy investment IMO)
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I'm sure that any upgrades to the line would also see some degree of investment from VIA Rail, as they too would benefit from increased speeds.
 
VIA had to fight for over a decade for the upgrades it got a couple years ago, no way Harper will be willing to sink more money into it.
 
Here's a random question: I was looking at the Lakeshore East line travel times, and it appears that the schedule travel time from Danforth to Union varies between 10 and 15 minutes depending on the direction and time of day. Is it normal to have such a huge swing? Even 10 minutes seems awfully slow given the distance is about 10km. What gives?
 
The GEXR lease on the CN North Mainline expires in 2017...
Here's hoping for a Metrolinx purchase. Investment is possible.
 
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