DirectionNorth
Active Member
Let's have a separate thread for London Commuter Rail.
CN owns the track from London to Chatham station, so to upgrade it to 100mph running you would need to pay for those upgrades.There are 55,000 workers in downtown London so it's not inconsequential. The other 3 big ones are Western, Fanshawe, and LHSC which is the biggest hospital in SWO.
London, more than any other city in Southern Ontario has the ability to support commuter rail. London is very centrally located with excellent rail connections in every direction. What's more they all go right downtown to the VIA station making them very convenient and just a single block from the new downtown bus loop which gives them access to every downtown bus in the city including the new BRT and current express buses.
Added to this, London, unlike every other city in Ontario, doesn't have an urban freeway. Even the regular routes are overwhelmed and disconnected. Anyone who has ever tried to get a cross London in rush hour knows that it could try the patience of a saint. It m not only makes driving hell but conversely make commuter rail potentially much faster. As an example the slow, unreliable VIA train takes just 23 minutes to downtown London from Strathroy with 16,000 and a big commuter town. In rush hour it's at least 45 minutes and even at 3:00AM on a Sunday morning it would still take you at least 25.
It's a shame that railway commuter service expansion is always hampered by CN and CP
Well more Express service from Kitchener would be required to compete with VIA plus it's not competing since It serves a different market. Plus GO doesnt have any morning departures from Union.What I found interesting is how it was repeated that Metrolinx is working with VIA. Needless to say that as the London GO service expands {which is certainly implied}, it is nothing but bad news for VIA. VIA has already lost a lot of once KW riders as GO has expanded rendering VIA almost useless between Union & KW. It's not as lucrative a route as it once was and this will continually be the case with new GO London.
I think this "discussion" with VIA is more of a way for VIA to completely abandon the route altogether and put all it's resources towards strictly the southern London/Aldershot route and really improve that service to London and thru to Windsor/Sarnia.