High Speed Rail: London - Kitchener-Waterloo - Pearson Airport - Toronto

[Streety McCarface]

There's a case to made to buttress your point with the present GO service to K/W off-peak, and that's the GO #30 bus, an express from Bramalea to Kitchener's main bus station, and then up the road to the GO train station. It also makes an on-road stop near the Sport's Centre.

The bus runs end-to-end in a shorter time than the GO train does during peak time one-way operation (In in the morning, out in the evening) and yet at times the bus is almost empty I'm told (I've only used it just after peak, and it's been half full all three times)...which leads one to question: "How great is the demand for AD2W commuter service, let alone HSR along that route?

In all fairness to the train's journey time for the points mentioned (Bramalea to K/W) it does make multiple station stops, and I and others would much rather ride the train than a bus, but I seriously question the busy model being touted.

Make no mistake, I fully believe AD2W train service is necessary on the K/W run, but unless shorter trainsets are used outside of peak, losses are going to be significant. Even peak loading from Brampton west is less than half capacity. Once RER begins to the Brampton area (Oh Lordy, Lordy, Lordy, if ever at this rate) AD2W GO diesel DD could use shorter trains that terminate at the beginning/end of RER outside of peak, and run-through as express to Union during peak.

I just can't see the business case being demonstrated for anything more than that at this time, save for HFR running through to London.

People in Kitchener like trains.

But there is plenty of demand. While the 30 is empty and kind of useless, the 25 is running so full that many people are left behind. We have buses better than every 5 minutes on that route during peak times (Thursday/Friday evenings and Sunday afternoons). One of the problems is that iON isn't running yet, so it's still a pain in the ass to get to the 30 and take it to the train. The 25 works for a lot of people because it takes them directly to Waterloo, where all the ridership is. Most people on that route are either heading to York University (take the TTC), or U of T (downtown). Which begs the question, why wouldn't you have high speed service to Waterloo? The existing go trains see at least 600 passengers per day each way (400+100+70+20), and the bus I imagine sees at least another 2-5K per day. If you give people the opportunity to go to the Airport, you can throw in another thousand or 2, the convenience of fast train service to KW would see a few thousand more people choose the train over driving (especially with Breslau station coming with commuter parking), and finally, any new ridership from reverse commuters (there are a lot of students in particular and people from the airport) increases the number a few more thousand. During the peak season, you can see up to 10K people from Kitchener alone traveling to or from Toronto (the absolute maximum), which is half the usage of the Northeast Corridor in the US. Factor in London, Guelph, the airport and Brampton, and you have a serious business case for HSR.

 

[steveintoronto]

While the 30 is empty and kind of useless

You're way off. I've checked usage with drivers and a supervisor. It's full during peak, and it's been half full the three times I've used it in the last month, all mid-morning runs, 9:40, 10:33 and 11:38 from Bramalea.

We have buses better than every 5 minutes on that route during peak times

Munchausen seems to travel with you a lot. Here's the 25 Eastbound:

https://www.gotransit.com/static_files/gotransit/assets/pdf/TripPlanning/FullSchedules/Table25.pdf

As for the 30, it's meant to operate in lieu of the absence of AD2W GO train service to K/W. That's why it terminates at the train station after connecting with the Bus Terminal. What's unfortunate is that it doesn't loop at Aberfoyle, but that's a whole other issue. The supervisor I discussed all of this with states it would add "somewhere around ten minutes" to the schedule to do so.

If you're going to discuss the present GO bus service to K/W as being pertinent to HSR, then at least get your facts straight. So is HSR touted to directly connect with Waterloo?

 

[TOareaFan]

Factor in London, Guelph, the airport and Brampton, and you have a serious business case for HSR.

I think, in general, your numbers suffer from irrational exuberance.....but please take Brampton out of any rationalization for HSR......those trains (by design, by politicial will, and by, it seems, popular support will not stop in Brampton).

 

[crs1026]

As for London, I am still not sure why so much attention has been afforded to London in regards to these lofty goals of promoting population growth there, when we have Hamilton right next door, which unlike London, is commuting distance to Toronto, is connected to our urban region and economy, and has excellent urban fabric downtown to potentially support the addition of a million people (should we really desire to). HSR would do nothing for Hamilton.

London already has the base for a more developed urban centre - a key university, community college, a couple major hospitals, a core business infrastructure with a skilled workforce. It is located in the right place to be the regional center for much of Southern Ontario. It is surrounded by smaller communities which are important economic drivers that benefit from having services and amenities that close by.

Putting all our chips on Hamilton and KW is a very Torontocentric view of the province, and leaves much of Southwestern Ontario out in the cold. Nothing wrong with investing in London.

All the same, 100 mph on the existing corridor, double tracked, is all anyone needs. Service every second hour all day would be a huge increase in marketability for rail over what we have. We need to get incremental improvement going quickly, so we have something to sell, rather than pushing uphill to HSR with all the sticker shock and skepticism it attracts.

- Paul

 

[Urban Sky]

But there is plenty of demand. [...] Factor in London, Guelph, the airport and Brampton, and you have a serious business case for HSR.

As you apparently missed it, this is the intercity passenger rail standard offerred in Germany before High-Speed Rail was introduced (Note that until this day, only 248 km or 40% of the distance between Mannheim and Hamburg is actually covered by HSR infrastructure, the balance being legacy rail lines):

Similarly, this is the intercity passenger rail standard which was offered in the Northeast Corridor before the Acela Express was introduced (not even talking about any HSR infrastructure here):

Now have a look at the intercity passenger rail service offered on the Kitchener Corridor currently:

Even when throwing in regional rail services (which are excluded from the timetable extracts provided for Germany and the NEC, but can be assumed to be hourly), we are only talking about this kind of service level and travel speeds:

Is it that difficult for you to accept that there might be a few shades of gray between what we got now and full-scale Japanese Shinkansen service levels, which would still represent a dramatic improvement over the Status Quo...?

All the same, 100 mph on the existing corridor, double tracked, is all anyone needs. Service every second hour all day would be a huge increase in marketability for rail over what we have. We need to get incremental improvement going quickly, so we have something to sell, rather than pushing uphill to HSR with all the sticker shock and skepticism it attracts.

Amen.

 

[Allandale25]

Tweeted from the AMO conference.

 

[Streety McCarface]

You're way off. I've checked usage with drivers and a supervisor. It's full during peak, and it's been half full the three times I've used it in the last month, all mid-morning runs, 9:40, 10:33 and 11:38 from Bramalea.
Munchausen seems to travel with you a lot. Here's the 25 Eastbound:
View attachment 153993
https://www.gotransit.com/static_files/gotransit/assets/pdf/TripPlanning/FullSchedules/Table25.pdf

As for the 30, it's meant to operate in lieu of the absence of AD2W GO train service to K/W. That's why it terminates at the train station after connecting with the Bus Terminal. What's unfortunate is that it doesn't loop at Aberfoyle, but that's a whole other issue. The supervisor I discussed all of this with states it would add "somewhere around ten minutes" to the schedule to do so.

If you're going to discuss the present GO bus service to K/W as being pertinent to HSR, then at least get your facts straight. So is HSR touted to directly connect with Waterloo save in your rhetorical world?

The schedule you're quoting Is the summer schedule, when classes aren't happening.

While I don't have a copy of the winter/Fall schedule, I can assure you that frequencies are much higher (I live here dammit )

I said that part of the issue is that iON is not running. With the LRT to come in a few months, you'll have a better ability to access the 30 from Waterloo.

To everyone else, I'm not saying full high speed rail is necessary (For 10 billion, it's not), but @steveintoronto was questioning the legitimacy of a business case for RER to Kitchener, I'm simply refuting that by giving information about the commute situation to Toronto and from Toronto.

 

[WislaHD]

London already has the base for a more developed urban centre - a key university, community college, a couple major hospitals, a core business infrastructure with a skilled workforce. It is located in the right place to be the regional center for much of Southern Ontario. It is surrounded by smaller communities which are important economic drivers that benefit from having services and amenities that close by.

Putting all our chips on Hamilton and KW is a very Torontocentric view of the province, and leaves much of Southwestern Ontario out in the cold. Nothing wrong with investing in London.

All the same, 100 mph on the existing corridor, double tracked, is all anyone needs. Service every second hour all day would be a huge increase in marketability for rail over what we have. We need to get incremental improvement going quickly, so we have something to sell, rather than pushing uphill to HSR with all the sticker shock and skepticism it attracts.

- Paul

I don't want to knock on London, I see it as an excellent place to promote growth. I just fail to connect the dots as to why connecting it to Toronto with HSR is so essential for promoting growth there. The distance is too great for people to commute back and forth daily, and the first/last mile problem results in loss of competitiveness of rail compared to the car. All it would facilitate are one-off trips such as Western University students coming home for the weekend, and the occasional day-trip. I don't think those one-off trips would generate enough ridership to warrant investing heavily into HSR, nor would it be the catalyst for growth in London.

I agree that the region should be connected, but it does not need to be connected by HSR. Higher frequency rail to London like you layed out could be more appropriate and way cheaper (even if the ridership for that would remain questionable).

 

[innsertnamehere]

If HSR delivers on it's 73 minute travel time - you very well may see people starting to take advantage of it to commute. Likely not in huge numbers - but the improved connections mean that London would suddenly be a lot more attractive for businesses to locate a back office, or for other reasons.

what the HSR plan does too is make Guelph and Waterloo true commuting options. Right now Guelph is over 1:40 on GO - if that was cut to say, 40 minutes, the whole city can become one giant commuter town to downtown.

The three cities are all home to affordable real estate and high quality of life - the only problem is that the job pool is rather limited. Opening up connections to Toronto opens up a whole realm of possibilities.

 

[hw621]

If HSR delivers on it's 73 minute travel time - you very well may see people starting to take advantage of it to commute. Likely not in huge numbers - but the improved connections mean that London would suddenly be a lot more attractive for businesses to locate a back office, or for other reasons.

what the HSR plan does too is make Guelph and Waterloo true commuting options. Right now Guelph is over 1:40 on GO - if that was cut to say, 40 minutes, the whole city can become one giant commuter town to downtown.

The three cities are all home to affordable real estate and high quality of life - the only problem is that the job pool is rather limited. Opening up connections to Toronto opens up a whole realm of possibilities.

How much do you plan to spend on daily commute with HSR?

 

[Streety McCarface]

How much do you plan to spend on daily commute with HSR?

Current GO train is 30$ roundtrip. 40$ isn't too far fetched, especially when via is 60$ and a lot of people use that to commute.

They could have commuter passes which cost say 800$ a month (about the price of owning a car with parking) but you're only allowed to use non-reserved coaches, while people who fork up to 60$ a trip get guaranteed seating.

 

[TOareaFan]

what the HSR plan does too is make Guelph and Waterloo true commuting options. Right now Guelph is over 1:40 on GO - if that was cut to say, 40 minutes, the whole city can become one giant commuter town to downtown.

Using provincial funds raised from the entire province to promote one city over others is not good public policy to me. Turning Guelph into a 40 minute commute (10 minutes less than the commute from Brampton) is doing that....and,in effect, using money raised from Brampton taxpayers to ghetoize Brampton.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Using provincial funds raised from the entire province to promote one city over others is not good public policy to me. Turning Guelph into a 40 minute commute (10 minutes less than the commute from Brampton) is doing that....and,in effect, using money raised from Brampton taxpayers to ghetoize Brampton.

Extreme much? Just because one piece of infrastructure doesn't improve the entire province doesn't mean that it isn't worthwhile infrastructure. By that measure the widening of the 410 should not have moved ahead since it improved Brampton commute times while Whitby went without a highway widening.. "Ghettoizing" it.

Guelph gets money for HSR, Brampton gets money for LRT / BRT / whatever. It's a circle of life / infrastructure funding, not "find the one project that benefits literally all 14 million residents of this province".

Brampton would effectively have a stop with the planned malton stop anyway.

 

[TOareaFan]

Extreme much? Just because one piece of infrastructure doesn't improve the entire province doesn't mean that it isn't worthwhile infrastructure. By that measure the widening of the 410 should not have moved ahead since it improved Brampton commute times while Whitby went without a highway widening.. "Ghettoizing" it.

Intentionally misinterpret much? Money being spent in the exact same corridor to to shorten the commute from the station that is 44.1 miles from Union to 40 minutes while leaving the commute from the station that is 19.6 miles from Union at 50 minutes with the goal of making the further community a better commuter town is inappropriate use of provincial funds.

Guelph gets money for HSR, Brampton gets money for LRT / BRT / whatever. It's a circle of life / infrastructure funding, not "find the one project that benefits literally all 14 million residents of this province".

Yes, cities get different provincial funds at different times for different projects. That is not what is happening here at all.....this is a project that goes through both municipalities.....but is being structured/designed to greatly improve the quality of life of only one of them. Businesses and residents will be skewed away from Brampton.....and only those that can't afford to get out will remain...there is a name for that.

Brampton would effectively have a stop with the planned malton stop anyway.

Aside from the obvious that Malton is not in Brampton....I will refer you back a few (well a lot) pages when explained why the Malton stop is not going to be used by Brampton people.....because it would make no sense for them to do so.

 

[Allandale25]

Guelph gets money for HSR, Brampton gets money for LRT / BRT / whatever. It's a circle of life / infrastructure funding, not "find the one project that benefits literally all 14 million residents of this province".

In my mind it's a little more complicated than simply Guelph/London etc get HSR and Brampton gets LRT/BRT money. HSR would need the freight bypass to be constructed in my view. That could benefit Brampton because two additional Brampton GO Stations could receive more service. However the risk is that HSR could cannibalize the track capacity for Brampton and more GO service. That's what I think the author of this blog post meant by "it would be a shame if the HSR plans pushed aside regional and local needs."

I just don't think it's realistic that the new Ford gov will want to touch the HSR issue given the price tag.