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MoveOntario 2020

CDL.TO said:
I envison a Queen line as being shallow cut-and-cover, completely POP with no collection areas, with separate stairs and elevators on either side of the street right to the platform and frequent stations. Built cheap, mostly a local service as it would not be built to serve the passengers coming in from the suburbs (which would be served by the DRL).
Click to expand...

Cut and Cover along Queen would eviscerate Toronto's most successful business street. Look at Cambie in Vancouver, where long-standing businesses are literally closing every week.

I'm a huge supporter of cut and cover construction, but Queen is one of the few streets where it would not be appropriate at all. The street is too narrow, and it's lined with shops which would be devastated by the closures. Sheppard, on the other hand...
 
And you know they'd want to somehow keep Queen open to traffic during the whole cut and cover operation, boosting its duration and cost.
 
One of the most useful "quick wins" for GO would be to extend the Milton line briefly to the Campbellville area, from which the GO trains already run from their yard without passengers. At that point, it's right next to the 401 so a station could be built with a massive park and ride lot connected directly to the highway. It would get cars from Waterloo Region and Guelph off the 401 sooner, alleviating traffic that now bunches up right through Milton, and it would also get a number of cars of local Milton streets trying to get to the GO station. An added benefit would be serving the commuters in the Campbellville area itself.
 
The GO Trains are no longer stored at Guelph Junction - there's a new yard by the Milton transformer.

I thought I came up with this idea a few years ago! It's otherwise a good one.
 
GO built a new yard east of Milton. They haven't been deadheading to Campbellville for a while now (maybe a year or so?). The other issue with Campbellville is that there is no logical location for the station in Campbellville/Guelph Line area without building a new interchange on the 401.

Oh Sean and unimaginative... I SO came up with that idea before either of you.
 
On the topic of Milton and the GO, looks like Milton is looking to build a university right next to the GO station (assuming they can find a university interested in being in Milton). Would be nice to see all-day, regular GO train service for the students of this new insititution.

Greg
 
Now there's a tough decision... what's the more soul-crushing location for a university? Farmfields and subdivisions north of Oshawa, or industrial parks and subdivisions of Milton?
 
I'm definitely more impressed than I even thought I would be. They've already started EAs on several projects, including all-day on the Milton, which I'm happy to say is the specific project I was pushing for, cdl.
 
That's great to hear! The Milton line is so dumbfoundingly obvious, it has the potential of being the Mississauga Metro, serving more of the city than any other single line could. It's a city of almost 700,000; it deserves it! Several of GO's busiest stations are on the Milton line, which says something for a line that only has 6 peak-direction trains a day. Toss in the hundreds of train-buses serving the corridor each day and I'd bet that an all-day train service would save money when it comes to operating costs.
 
I totally agree! And that's what I was trying to tell them... I think the "Mississauga Metro" idea is the best part of it. If the fares are integrated and it's frequent enough(obviously this will probably have to wait for a second phase, but something around every 15 minutes like the O-Train) it could be used as a local transit service that Mississauga Transit could design its routes around. I also think it has very unexplored potential for commuting from the outlying bits of Mississauga to the Mississauga Centre area, which of course leads us to the diversion project that we both came up with independently and simultaneously. Hehe.
 
LOL. Now the challenge of trying to introduce politicians and locals to an idea they have no familiarity with...

"A train, in a tunnel, that isn't a subway line?!? Cannot compute!" *head explodes*

I guess I could make a cheap political joke about giving politicians an excuse to go on a fact-finding mission to Madrid or Sydney or Paris or Munich or ...

As for the Milton line, there's the potential of bringing GTAers to MCC, but there's also the possibilites of bringing GTAers to the Meadowvale business park, untapping the potential of Streetsville, providing access to Erin Mills (including the Town Centre, Credit Valley Hospital, and UTM, and (since we're imaginaning anyway) providing direct access to the 401 at Lisgar or Trafalgar providing a reliable alternative to the 401 to destinations in Toronto AND Mississauga.
 
Regional Rail? In the GTA? Not using monster bi-levels?


I think my head exploded too.

Unfortunately, GO's definition of "all day service" might be what Georgetown will get for now - a few extra midday and evening trains as far as Erindale, but I could hope for more. The bus service is insane, but that's because GO hasn't neglected and starved this route, unlike say its appalling attitude towards Georgetown, which might finally get hourly Union service this September, after every other line got theirs.

Milton Line's problem was that it was CP, and most of it is a major freight corridor, which is why it was on the back burner. Glad to see something's being done.
 
Haha...the junket might not work since I doubt they'd venture so far from the hotel to wind up on regional rail out in the suburbs. After all, they would assume that they'd have to wait until the next morning for a train back in to the city! "They come every 20 minutes...? Wah??? But...it's not a subway..."

And I can see the politicians arguing! The suburbanites would all say "Why would we add trains after 9am when the parking lots are already full??" or perhaps "To hell with diverting GO, just turn the whole thing into a subway out to Milton!" To which the downtown Toronto types would reply "If it's not streetcar, I don't want it anywhere near my city!"

Seriously, though, I think that if they're going to make the investment into a triple-tracking of the whole route, they'll be introducing at least Lakeshore-level service.

Ahh, the Diversion. It would just be the best transit project ever. They'd have to electrify, though, which is suddenly seeming much more conceivable. they could even combine the Hurontario segment with an LRT tunnel. Unfortunately, the politicians will all say "Duh, why do we need to divert the GO train when people can just transfer to the streetcar?" completely missing the point of a central transfer point. It's like the geniuses who think that the best way to connect Scarborough Centre to North York Centre, by far the major hubs in their communities, is by going east with an RT extension all the way to Sheppard and Markham road, the middle of nowhere by any measure, and then back west again on a Sheppard streetcar.

I really think that we won't have proper regional rail, though, until GO manages to buy the corridors from the railways. That's why the prospect is probably greater on Stouffville or even Bradford than it is on Milton or Georgetown.

I love the idea of combining the diversion with the use of the Orangeville-Brampton railway. It runs right past the Meadowvale business park. If people were willing to walk a little, much of the area could be perfectly served. Alternatively, they could have a shuttle. You could even run routes (with a little trackwork) like Kitchener-Brampton-Meadowvale-Square One, which could be very popular.
 
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