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

[innsertnamehere]

a transfer in London would still be quick and easy, especially if trains run every 30 minutes. take a diesel train to London, transfer to the HSR.

 

[mpd618]

The only reason we're seeing these theatrics is for their own political fortunes.

I don't see why this is such a bad thing. Yes, it's clearly political. The Liberals are staking their political future to a large extent on the promise of massive improvements to rail service in Southwestern Ontario and the GTHA. If they take it into an election and stay in power, they will have a mandate to implement it - rather than do endless study.

 

[TOareaFan]

I don't see why this is such a bad thing. Yes, it's clearly political. The Liberals are staking their political future to a large extent on the promise of massive improvements to rail service in Southwestern Ontario and the GTHA (and $11B of hospital expansions, and funding IVF treatments, and higher minimum wages, and $4 raises for PSW, and higher wages for ECE workers, and creation of another state sponsored pension plan). If they take it into an election and stay in power, they will have a mandate to implement it - rather than do endless study.

fixed your post...because this is not, by far, the only area where they are announcing very large spending increases over the past weeks....and telling us they will explain how it all gets paid for later.....it is all pre-budget electioneering and, frankly, it is a mid-70s NDP style platform that is geared to do one of two things:

1. Force the NDP to support the budget
2. Force the NDP to explain during the election why their traditional base should vote for them after defeating a budget that contains a lot of that stuff.

 

[diminutive]

I don't see why this is such a bad thing. Yes, it's clearly political. The Liberals are staking their political future to a large extent on the promise of massive improvements to rail service in Southwestern Ontario and the GTHA. If they take it into an election and stay in power, they will have a mandate to implement it - rather than do endless study.

It's not specifically an issue that it's political (everything is political...)

The issue is how it's being politicized. It comes across as just jumping towards the shiniest, loudest political statement with almost no concern for how practical it will be to implement or how beneficial it would be. As a result, even if they did take this to election and did win a mandate, it's almost impossible to imagine them actually implementing it since it's so hairbrained.

I mean, for the love of god, the Liberals already commissioned an HSR study in 2009; it's not that long ago! This seems like the most nakedly opportunistic attempt to repackage that, like Sony "rebooting" Spiderman less than a decade after it came out to milk whatever they can out of the franchise.

 

[MisterF]

I really didn't expect so much hostility to this. Some of you seem to be convinced that hardly anybody goes to Kitchener and London. Let's look at some numbers:

Between Greyhound and GO Transit, between 102 and 122 buses and a handful of trains go between Kitchener and Toronto every day, both directions, depending on the day. For London it's 14 trains and 26-36 buses, again depending on the day. Plus whatever other bus routes in the corridor I haven't looked up. Even if we're conservative and assume 30 riders for each bus and 100 for each train, that's well over 3 million existing annual transit riders between the three cities already.

Plus 16 daily flights between London and Pearson (8 each way), a market that tends to be decimated by high speed rail over short distances.

And of course the 401 has an AADT of 100,000 all the way to Kitchener, then 50,000 to London and after that it drops way off. Plus 403 traffic. Add in induced traffic and suddenly 6 million annual riders doesn't seem so farfetched.

So, in your estimation, this line will take a number approaching 100% of the London - Toronto or KW - Toronto trips when built?

Modal share of high speed rail is generally very high, in the 50-70% range from numbers I've seen. Even if this line gets less than that, it would easily be a significant percentage of a busy corridor. It wouldn't need anywhere near 100%.

By the way, if HSR gets a modal share anywhere near other HSR corridors, the government would be able to save money from highway expansions that are no longer needed.

In the last HSR study, the Toronto-Windsor segment was expected to generate 2.3M riders and half the revenue Murray is talking about. There's no way on earth that the addition of KW, over and above the "GTA West" station on the other route, makes up for the differences here.

The last HSR study was incredibly flawed. It almost seemed designed to fail. Despite a higher population and better transit in each city, it somehow managed to predict lower ridership than the study that was done back in the 90s. It had a lot of assumptions and conclusions that would lower potential ridership and increase costs. Just to name a couple that I remember (I haven't looked at it since it came out), it didn't recommend serving Pearson and it assumed that every minor concession road would have an overpass... instead of just giving them dead ends like is routine with freeways.

So we now can confirm that Glen Murray / Liberals do transit planning by drawing cool looking lines on Google maps.

I think some of you are putting too much emphasis on details like the route on the map or the $40 price. The route is conceptual and will be finalized through the EA process. The price is preliminary and could include lower prices and higher prices. If it's airline style, there would be a whole range of prices like when you book a flight. By the way, $40 isn't far from what Greyhound charges and in some cases less.

 

[TOareaFan]

^the problem some (at least I) have is that it is all so ad hoc.

Couple of examples:

The $40 you mention is clearly stated as an average fare so I doubt that is the fare from London to Union (the longest possible trip) and certainly not for any specific class....but the overall average taking into account the various trip lengths and classes of tickets.

Then this very bright (not meant sarcastically...I think he is) manages to make a statement that a service which he says will have 6 million passengers at an average fare of $40 will somehow generate $500 million in revenue.....it is all just made up on the fly.

 

[CuriousOnlooker]

I really like the idea being examined here. The route described offers to create a great window of connectivity between some of the largest urban areas in Southern Ontario. The ability for us to move people around between them will open new oppourtunties for growth and investment and in the long run even help to spread the huge demand for real estate out to these other centres

 

[TOareaFan]

Glen Murray ‏@Glen4ONT 38s
Proposed high speed rail line to miss Woodstock | Woodstock Sentinel Review http://www.woodstocksentinelreview....o-toronto-high-speed-rail-line-moving-forward …


Glen Murray ‏@Glen4ONT 59s
High speed rail moving forward | The London Free Press http://www.lfpress.com/2014/04/30/e...between-london-and-toronto-to-start-this-year …


Glen Murray ‏@Glen4ONT 1m
Kitchener to Toronto in 48 minutes by train? That’s the plan, transportation minister says http://www.therecord.com/news-story...that-s-the-plan-transportation-minister-says/ … via @wr_record

 

[dunkalunk]

I'm aware it's still ridiculously preliminary, but since we're criticizing alignment anyways, I thought it would be good to present some HSR alignments between Kitchener and London that actually made sense from a cost perspective:

You have your northern alignment which largely follows parallel concessions in Oxford County, or you have your southern alignment which snakes its way down to the CP Line west of Woodstock. I would imagine both of these would be significantly less expensive than a completely greenfield option, and at speeds around 5km/minute, an extra 2-3 km would hardly make a dent in travel times.

 

[nfitz]

I'm aware it's still ridiculously preliminary, but since we're criticizing alignment anyways, I thought it would be good to present some HSR alignments between Kitchener and London that actually made sense from a cost perspective.

From a cost perspective?? Following those alignments? Are you forgetting about grade requirements?

 

[ehlow]

http://twitdoc.com/2W7J

https://twitter.com/Glen4ONT/status/461718258719404032

Glen Murray
‏@Glen4ONT
Slides from my presentation today. All data and projections come from FCP’s Pre-Feasibility Study on High Speed Rail: http://twitdoc.com/2W7J

 

[dunkalunk]

From a cost perspective?? Following those alignments? Are you forgetting about grade requirements?

I somehow think grade won't be much of an issue. Past the Waterloo Moraine, Ontario's countryside is very flat.

 

[rbt]

The suggestion was that every other train on this combined service would continue on from Pearson to London.....would there not be an expectation of the UPE customers that the stop would be at Pearson rather than "near Pearson"?

Not really. They expect there to be a moving sidewalk, or airport people mover. Few airports these days even have high amounts of parking at the airport terminal with many involving a long walk or a people mover.

They do expect the trains to run to the same place. If there is a plan for a public transit terminal (HSR, regular GO, GO Express/UPX, ...) then that is where both UPX and HSR will go and the airport tram will get you to your terminal. This fabled `Terminal 2` seems a likely place for Eglinton and Finch service to terminate as well, should they be built.

Whatever....if the plan/thought is that every other train would be longer than the UPE trains then a new station at Pearson would have to be built for the combined services and that is going to impact that capital cost/outlay significantly.

Right. Nothing requires the use of the under construction UPX platform at Terminal 1, though a heavier airport tram will likely find use for some pieces.

Integration of the regular non-express Georgetown GO service is going to determine most of the restrictions and probably have the highest number of Pearson bound passengers of all 3 Metrolinx based services. Allowing easy transfers between HSR and GO local service is also going to be extremely important to the success of both services based on observations of HSR in Europe. Actual airport bound customers are used to long walks/trams.

Short of moving the corridor, there are few ways of doing this other than to build a multi-track station near Pearson with an airport tram to the terminals. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if the station was built at Goreway Drive with the UPX track used for the tram.

 

[Adjei]

This project is currently on life support.

 

[DonValleyRainbow]

This project is currently on life support.

That is an understatement.

I have been working on a comprehensive strategy for two years now, that involves improvements to Via services, and implementation of regular GO services along existing corridors in southwestern Ontario and Niagara. The long term vision is to eventually have high speed rail service that connects to the US via Detroit and Buffalo. It is based on existing infrastructure, making Via operations profitable, keeping prices low for lower income individuals, and implementing the system in stages. Instead, Glen Murray goes drawing (what I consider) arbitrary lines without any consultation on how the EA should be scoped. That's why I'm pissed off.

I'll be writing the mayors of the affected municipalities soon to try and get something moving.