Lack of meaningful Passenger Rail service outside the Quebec-Windsor Corridor

[crs1026]

The problem with Commuter Rail is it makes the false assumption that everyone works downtown. In North America this is becoming less and less common with decentralization. Instead of a hub and spoke system (with downtown being the hub) what is needed is a grid network. For example, the Skytrain extension to Langley will primarily serve those who work in Surrey.

Of course the other problem with commuter rail (at least the way GO has been implemented) is it is very car dependant, with the suburban stations having car parking cathedrals. As a result, Metrolinx has gained the dishonorable record of being the largest provider of free parking in North America. If they really cared about getting people out of cars, they would stop providing free parking stations and demolish their parkades in favour of Transit oriented development and high quality bus/LRT station transfers.

On the plus side, GO is making the transition from a bring-people-to-the-center system to a regional rail network that connects places other than downtown Toronto.

LRT's are not bad - they are a useful and affordable tool to get people to transition from an automobile built form to transit orientation. None of Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Mississauga, Hamilton, Kitchener could have justified or afforded a full subway or rail commuter network as their entry into higher order transit. Nor would that investment have stretched across all the places they need to connect. Plus, there aren't railway lines every where one might build a transit line, and LRT is much easier to fit into the existing built form

Build a network of LRT, and the next generation will figure out where it needs and wants higher order transit.

- Paul

 

[Bojaxs]

The problem with Commuter Rail is it makes the false assumption that everyone works downtown. In North America this is becoming less and less common with decentralization. Instead of a hub and spoke system (with downtown being the hub) what is needed is a grid network. For example, the Skytrain extension to Langley will primarily serve those who work in Surrey.

Of course the other problem with commuter rail (at least the way GO has been implemented) is it is very car dependant, with the suburban stations having car parking cathedrals. As a result, Metrolinx has gained the dishonorable record of being the largest provider of free parking in North America. If they really cared about getting people out of cars, they would stop providing free parking stations and demolish their parkades in favour of Transit oriented development and high quality bus/LRT station transfers.

A lot of commuter rails start out that way. It's the most logical first step when beginning a commuter rail system. Melbourne, Australia is currently constructing a "Suburban rail loop". Paris is constructing the Grand Paris to go around the downtown core.

Of course the other problem with commuter rail (at least the way GO has been implemented) is it is very car dependant, with the suburban stations having car parking cathedrals. As a result, Metrolinx has gained the dishonorable record of being the largest provider of free parking in North America. If they really cared about getting people out of cars, they would stop providing free parking stations and demolish their parkades in favour of Transit oriented development and high quality bus/LRT station transfers.

Well that's a knock on GO transit and not a knock on commuter rail. You could just as easily build a LRT station with a massive parking lot.

 

[lenaitch]

Which is chicken and which is egg? The suburban/ex-urban sprawl in regions like York and Durham started before real commuter-type service was available. Many of the communities that host stations had rudimentary transit, but they didn't serve the growing outlying areas. Even today, service outside of the community core is probably limited, if it exists at all, and certainly doesn't cover the 'catchment area'. You either provide parking or many people won't use it. In order to expand transit service, these area would either really need a hit on their taxpayers or get provincial help, which is not GO's mandate.

 

[micheal_can]

One of the big problems to Commuter rail is ownership of the actual rail.For example, the Milton GO line has not been extended in decades and has no real hope for RER. That is due to the fact that CP owns the ROW.

 

[crs1026]

Which is chicken and which is egg? The suburban/ex-urban sprawl in regions like York and Durham started before real commuter-type service was available. Many of the communities that host stations had rudimentary transit, but they didn't serve the growing outlying areas. Even today, service outside of the community core is probably limited, if it exists at all, and certainly doesn't cover the 'catchment area'. You either provide parking or many people won't use it. In order to expand transit service, these area would either really need a hit on their taxpayers or get provincial help, which is not GO's mandate.

Historical Nitpick - Barrie, Georgetown, and Stouffville lines all had CN commuter service before GO Transit. These services were absorbed into GO and built out once the Lakeshore line proved successful - the history is, no one really knew if GO would catch on and the initial build along the akeshore was deliberately flimsy in nature as there was some possibility that it might be abandoned after a trial period of a few years. All of the predecessor services were equally auto-centric.

That's mostly a function of history, and should not be a blueprint for the future, especially for other areas of the country.

The biggest obstacle is simply - there are not that many railway lines in our cities, and those that exist are not necessarily located where development is happening or is desired. Where they exist, it is possible to plan services on them, sort of, provided it does not impede freight operations..... but in many cases communities will have to create new infrastructure on new corridors. (Ottawa is a shining example of a city where the rail lines don't go where transit is most needed) Canada is woefully bad at not doing this proactively - show me a municipal or provincial land use plan that has future heavy rail corridors pencilled in.

The whole reason why Toronto is building subways is so they can tunnel below the existing build form and not take land away from present or future uses. Toronto is lucky to have that web of rail lines (and the foresight dating back to the late 1950's to see its rail lines as a future transit network). That's lucky for Toronto, but planning ought to be a matter of design and not luck.

- Paul

 

[micheal_can]

Historical Nitpick - Barrie, Georgetown, and Stouffville lines all had CN commuter service before GO Transit. These services were absorbed into GO and built out once the Lakeshore line proved successful - the history is, no one really knew if GO would catch on and the initial build along the akeshore was deliberately flimsy in nature as there was some possibility that it might be abandoned after a trial period of a few years. All of the predecessor services were equally auto-centric.

That's mostly a function of history, and should not be a blueprint for the future, especially for other areas of the country.

The biggest obstacle is simply - there are not that many railway lines in our cities, and those that exist are not necessarily located where development is happening or is desired. Where they exist, it is possible to plan services on them, sort of, provided it does not impede freight operations..... but in many cases communities will have to create new infrastructure on new corridors. (Ottawa is a shining example of a city where the rail lines don't go where transit is most needed) Canada is woefully bad at not doing this proactively - show me a municipal or provincial land use plan that has future heavy rail corridors pencilled in.

The whole reason why Toronto is building subways is so they can tunnel below the existing build form and not take land away from present or future uses. Toronto is lucky to have that web of rail lines (and the foresight dating back to the late 1950's to see its rail lines as a future transit network). That's lucky for Toronto, but planning ought to be a matter of design and not luck.

- Paul

Another problem we have is that there is too much freight traffic for the number of tracks in a given ROW. All mainlines should be 2 tracks minimum across Canada. All commuter lines should be a minimum of 3 tracks if freight uses it.

And then there is track maintenance. We allow companies to let their tracks get worse and worse, and then if we want a commuter line to roll across it, we are spending a lot of money.

This dilemma is highlighted by the West Coast Express that has not been extended or added to since it's inception in the 1990s. If they were to have done the same as EXO and GO, they could have about 5 lines covering the Lower Mainland.

 

[lrt's friend]

There is role for regional rail which is designed to serve areas beyond the reasonable reach of LRT or subways. At some distance, LRT and subways are too slow as the number of stations grows higher and higher the further out you go. The challenge is that our traditional railways are privately operated and freight operations are so important not just to the railway companies themselves but also to the overall economy. In Europe, passenger service is more important to rail operations compared to freight, which is totally different from North America. Freight has to move further in North America and a lot is natural resource based. Because of this, it is very difficult to implement regional rail in Canada without enormous investment, which is likely not justifiable for the number of passengers that will be carried. Toronto has the best chance to implement regional rail because of the enormous size of the city and because GO owns a lot of the track. No other city has the population base or the ability to invest sufficient amounts of money necessary to implement Regional rail at a level that will encourage enough people to use the service.

 

[lenaitch]

Historical Nitpick - Barrie, Georgetown, and Stouffville lines all had CN commuter service before GO Transit. These services were absorbed into GO and built out once the Lakeshore line proved successful - the history is, no one really knew if GO would catch on and the initial build along the akeshore was deliberately flimsy in nature as there was some possibility that it might be abandoned after a trial period of a few years. All of the predecessor services were equally auto-centric.

That's mostly a function of history, and should not be a blueprint for the future, especially for other areas of the country.

The biggest obstacle is simply - there are not that many railway lines in our cities, and those that exist are not necessarily located where development is happening or is desired. Where they exist, it is possible to plan services on them, sort of, provided it does not impede freight operations..... but in many cases communities will have to create new infrastructure on new corridors. (Ottawa is a shining example of a city where the rail lines don't go where transit is most needed) Canada is woefully bad at not doing this proactively - show me a municipal or provincial land use plan that has future heavy rail corridors pencilled in.

The whole reason why Toronto is building subways is so they can tunnel below the existing build form and not take land away from present or future uses. Toronto is lucky to have that web of rail lines (and the foresight dating back to the late 1950's to see its rail lines as a future transit network). That's lucky for Toronto, but planning ought to be a matter of design and not luck.

- Paul

I forgot about the VIA services, and don't recall when they ceased (was it VIA on one day and GO the next?) and don't recall the frequencies. When we lived between Stouffville and Uxbridge, I would often take the train, but Stouffville was only a couple of trains a day, and I could often run the risk of missing the last train, so I drove to Pickering. Hence - the parking lot.

 

[Urban Sky]

As refreshing as it is to discuss here about something else than Sudbury-centric services, I believe the current discussion would be more appropriate in our General railway discussions thread:

General railway discussions

Happy new year, everyone! Given that the number of posts in the VIA Rail thread has exploded recently (680 posts in December 2020, i.e. almost 22 posts per day!) and that the creation of a thread dedicated to transport policy discussions did fail to reduce the volume of discussions which relate...

urbantoronto.ca

 

[crs1026]

I forgot about the VIA services, and don't recall when they ceased (was it VIA on one day and GO the next?) and don't recall the frequencies. When we lived between Stouffville and Uxbridge, I would often take the train, but Stouffville was only a couple of trains a day, and I could often run the risk of missing the last train, so I drove to Pickering. Hence - the parking lot.

It was even worse. The Agincourt/Markham service was a CP train on the Havelock line inbound in the morning, and a CN train on the Uxbridge Sub outbound in the evening. People did in fact get dropped off at CP Agincourt and picked up at CN Agincourt at night - how's that for autocentric. Around 1973ish the Transport Commission ordered CN to add a morning train to allow a normal in-and-out commuting service, and to extend the service to Stouffville.

Guelph originally had a single daily commuter train, but it ceased running when GO Georgetown service commenced in 1974. Hamilton had two commuter trains To Toronto on weekdays, replaced by GO Transit in 1967.

Barrie only got commuter service in April 1974, as a result of public pressure and lobbying. In October 1969 somebody actually chartered a train for a day and sold tickets, to prove the demand was there, contrary to Ottawa's and CN's position.

The Barrie and Stouffville trains were assumed by VIA and lasted until the Pepin cuts of 1981, when GO agreed to pick up the service. Ottawa allowed an extra year's delay in abandonment to give GO time to take over. The CP Havelock train was cancelled by Pepin, later was restored and then cancelled when GO declined to assume it.

Of further note, back in the day Niagara Falls, London, and Stratford all had RDC service which included (and bettered) a commuter format. VIA has certainly curtailed those services.

- Paul

 

[micheal_can]

One thing about the Barrie GO is it doesn't really have a natural spot to extend to outside of Collingwood. A natural spot would be Orillia, but the ROW is not continuous. This is another problem as to why there is a challenge for commuter rail.

 

[T3G]

Part of the reason commuter rail is lacking in Canada is this obsession Canadian cities have with LRTs. Did EXO scrap its most valuable line for the REM? Why is B.C. seriously considering extending the sky train all the way to Langley?

Can you expand on this point? I'm struggling to comprehend what the relationship is between LRT and commuter rail. They serve completely different markets. LRT is supposed to be a replacement for local bus service, and is basically just a streetcar, but with a private right of way - neither the REM nor the Sky Train seem very much to be in that vein. A much closer comparison would be the Toronto subway, which Ontarian transit planners seem to be using to do the job of the GO train.

If there was no metro extension, I would suspect the alternative is to have no, or poor, commuter rail instead. Look at Milton. No one's extending an LRT there, but the quality of GO service is abominable, and will be indefinitely, because there is no mechanism to force CP's hand and offer a quasi acceptable service. Where the passenger provider owns the trackage, they do OK, like the Lakeshore lines.

 

[micheal_can]

Can you expand on this point? I'm struggling to comprehend what the relationship is between LRT and commuter rail. They serve completely different markets. LRT is supposed to be a replacement for local bus service, and is basically just a streetcar, but with a private right of way - neither the REM nor the Sky Train seem very much to be in that vein. A much closer comparison would be the Toronto subway, which Ontarian transit planners seem to be using to do the job of the GO train.

If there was no metro extension, I would suspect the alternative is to have no, or poor, commuter rail instead. Look at Milton. No one's extending an LRT there, but the quality of GO service is abominable, and will be indefinitely, because there is no mechanism to force CP's hand and offer a quasi acceptable service. Where the passenger provider owns the trackage, they do OK, like the Lakeshore lines.

Vancouver's Skytrain is a good example of what they mean.

 

[micheal_can]

Another really good example of a lack of Commuter rail - Ottawa. In simplest terms, anything meaningful there is into the fantasy area as much of the lines and locations you would want are long gone. A good example, where the Senate sits is the old Ottawa Union station and if it were a real station it would be a prime location for a downtown station.

 

[Bojaxs]

Can you expand on this point? I'm struggling to comprehend what the relationship is between LRT and commuter rail. They serve completely different markets. LRT is supposed to be a replacement for local bus service, and is basically just a streetcar, but with a private right of way - neither the REM nor the Sky Train seem very much to be in that vein. A much closer comparison would be the Toronto subway, which Ontarian transit planners seem to be using to do the job of the GO train.

If there was no metro extension, I would suspect the alternative is to have no, or poor, commuter rail instead. Look at Milton. No one's extending an LRT there, but the quality of GO service is abominable, and will be indefinitely, because there is no mechanism to force CP's hand and offer a quasi acceptable service. Where the passenger provider owns the trackage, they do OK, like the Lakeshore lines.

My concern is that what ever route they decide for the Langley extension, the stations and tracks will probably take up prime real estate that would have been most optimal for commuter rail. Making future construction of a commuter rail line to Abbotsford more difficult.

Google map says the distance between Waterfront Station and the center of Langley is 37kms (as the crow flies). That would be similar to Union station to the center of Oakville. That's a very long metro ride.

In Montreal, there were plans to expand Grande Central's capacity for more EXO trains by constructing tunnels under the station. But the REM line has now made that impossible.