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GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

The GO Parking Authority

This is such a ridiculous waste of money.

I'm all in favour of more money for GO.

But right now they can't squeeze more people onto the trains anyway.

Even if they get around their long promised 1/2 hour off-peak service, they need not 1 or 2, but a dozen new rush-hours trains to meet demand in the Lakeshore Corridor alone.

Purely as captial dollars, there were many better ways to spend the funds.

There are several more useful grade separations to be done.

Rail to Rail: Richmond Hill/CN York
Rail to Rail: Lakeshore/Stouffville GO
Rail to Road: Morningside Ave. - Lakeshore line
Rail to Road: Finch Avenue - Stouffville Line

In addition to need for more track in several places.

Further, they need to get more people to come to GO by transit or other means.

That means more buses and service for BRT, MT, BT, Oakville Transit etc.

More parking can be justified only AFTER all of the above and some sort of charging for parking as well.
 
Northern Light said:
Someone asked what this is.

A Rail to Rail grade separation refers to altering a junction where 2 different trains lines cross each other, so that they no longer do so at grade.

To put this in other words, they will make an east-west line pass underneath or over a north-south line or vice versa.

The intention of this is so that trains that go in one direction do not hold up trains going in the other.

There has been a recent grade separation on the Barrie GO line at the CN York Subdivision, where the two cross.

They have just started on massive separation at the West Toronto Diamond which will separate CN and CP tracks (north-south and East-West) respectively, from each other.

**

As to Hamilton Junction, its part of the WYE of tracks on the western edge of Burlington.
Click to expand...

Thanks! Should be interesting since the tracks are already underground so perhaps another track even further down underground? Or dig to widen the underground tunnel?
 
Kiwi said:
Thanks! Should be interesting since the tracks are already underground so perhaps another track even further down underground? Or dig to widen the underground tunnel?
Click to expand...

The tunnel through downtown hamilton is still quite a fair ways away from the CP station known as Hamilton Junction. I'll see if I can get a map of the area together.

Of course, the tunnel is the real problem here.
 
ShonTron said:
Yea! More parking! That's what's needed to improve GO Transit!
Click to expand...

They claim that they want to move towards being a regional all-day transit agency, but do they even understand what that entails? That means attracting people who want to travel to the suburbs, not just suburb-to-downtown. The parking model doesn't work for that, unless you expect someone to buy a car to drive to Oakville GO Station, then another one to drive from, say, Oshawa GO Station to their final destination. Metrolinx really dropped the ball on this one, because they haven't addressed local transit needs at all.
 
I can't wait to see overloaded GO Trains and constant traffic jams in 905 suburbs as you try to fit 3,000 cars at a station without major service improvements.

GO Parking Authority indeed. I had seen some signs of light at GO (the Kitchener extension, the bike shelters, the enthusiastic support for Allandale, plans to become a regional rail system) but this is old-GO cabbagehead thinking.

"Cabbageheads." It's been a while since I used that one (as GO did start to get better).
 
threnody said:
The parking model doesn't work for that, unless you expect someone to buy a car to drive to Oakville GO Station, then another one to drive from, say, Oshawa GO Station to their final destination. Metrolinx really dropped the ball on this one, because they haven't addressed local transit needs at all.
Click to expand...

I've heard of people in LA doing just that: buying a shitbox and keeping it at a commuter rail station close to their work. The most natural step Toronto business parks could do would be to operate a shuttle service to and from the GO stations. For example, an airport parking shuttle type minibus could run between Meadowvale GO station and the various offices in the Mississauga and Derry road areas.
 
Hamilton Junction Project... What a waste

Doing anything with the Hamilton Junction right now when a Hunter Tunnel widening is not planned yet and when the future of GO operations to a platform near the old CN station in Hamilton haven't yet been determined is pointless. If GO slowly migrates to the CN line in order to provide Niagara services what will use this grade separation unless the point is to get from a CN water-side track to a CN land-side track.
 
$175 million in parking structures?!?? WTF?

Imagine the sort of improvements they could make to the lines for $175 million: extra tracks, grade separations, etc.

This is really the problem with systems like TTC and GO: they are successful and therefore they rather maintain the status quo than make real improvements.
 
I'm generally supportive of this, with a few provisions.

Firstly, I have no idea what the parking structures will look like. Given that the current set up of most GO stations is a shack surrounded by parking lots, building higher density parking structures could allow for development on former parking lots. I don't know if that is part of that is part of the plan, but it would be a good idea.

Secondly, Parking structures shouldn't be free. It costs money to provide, and GO could probably boost its revenue by implementing even minor parking fees. This isn't Monopoly damnit, no more free parking.

Third, I didn't catch anything else than the parking structures and the Hamilton grade separation project. Surely 500m has got to buy more than that... Is there nothing in here about electrification or frequency increases? Where are all of these new park-n-ride GO users supposed to GO?
 
Whoaccio said:
I'm generally supportive of this, with a few provisions.

Firstly, I have no idea what the parking structures will look like. Given that the current set up of most GO stations is a shack surrounded by parking lots, building higher density parking structures could allow for development on former parking lots. I don't know if that is part of that is part of the plan, but it would be a good idea.

Secondly, Parking structures shouldn't be free. It costs money to provide, and GO could probably boost its revenue by implementing even minor parking fees. This isn't Monopoly damnit, no more free parking.

Third, I didn't catch anything else than the parking structures and the Hamilton grade separation project. Surely 500m has got to buy more than that... Is there nothing in here about electrification or frequency increases? Where are all of these new park-n-ride GO users supposed to GO?
Click to expand...

Good post.
 
drum118 said:
Here a shot of Burlington that has 850 spots.

Here some photo's
Click to expand...

It can take longer to drive out of Burlington station than to drive to Toronto.
I think some GO riders could be olympic sprinters given how fast they run to their cars to avoid the 20 minute parking lot gridlock.
 
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