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Peterborough Commuter Rail

Exactly. If VIA runs the service, then this is not a provincial/GTTA matter, it is strictly a federal one. That has nothing to do with the deds refusing to fund transit, so the anger isn't that Peterborough is getting a train, it's that nothing else is being done transit-wise, while Peterborough is getting a train.

Peterborough is a swing riding provincially and federally, it being a Conservative pick-up in 2006. So the politics are certainly there.

The Conservatives have also been unlikely beneficiaries of VIA, at least with the car and locomotive refurbishments originally promised by the Chretien-era Liberals and some promised track improvements. I'd like to hope that Peterborough is one part of a line of corridor improvements, particularly the Goderich-Exeter owned track of the VIA North (Kitchener) Mainline.
 
Hipster Duck said:
My preferred service would be two inbound morning trips at 5:30 and 7:30 from Peterborough to Toronto and two outbound services at 4:00 and 6:00.

Talents or Trainbuses would be the preferred rolling stock, and the stops would simply be:

Agincourt (renamed to Sheppard/Brimley), Locust Hill, Baldwin*, Pontypool**, Peterborough.

*Baldwin station is on Hwy 12 and has a bus link-up to Port Perry and Brooklin
** Pontypool has a bus link to Lindsay
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Talents would be awesome, but they allowed on railway-lines in North America?
 
ssk said:
Talents would be awesome, but they allowed on railway-lines in North America?
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Only when freight trains are not operating on the same line and the same time.

The only reason Talents are allowed in Europe but not here is because the European regulations on structural strength are lower, probably due the fact that their railways are alot safer than North America's. So, Bombardier built them lighter and saved money.

A North American version would have to be stiffer, heavier and more powerful, but it could be done very easily... for a price, of course.
 
RedRocket191 said:
The only reason Talents are allowed in Europe but not here is because the European regulations on structural strength are lower, probably due the fact that their railways are alot safer than North America's.
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Are you bashing CN Derail and Canadian Pacific Derailways? I'm surprised how poorly the tracks are maintained actually. Railway ties are allowed to remain in use well past their time. In Chatham last summer I was watching trains go by and the railway ties were falling apart had way too much give in them. I should have caught a video of it.... it was scary to me to think that VIA trains are running over that stuff.
 
Not bashing anyone today.

Just stating fact (why talents aren't allowed to mix it up with other trains) and speculation (why European regulations are lower).

CN and CP need to improve their accident rates, but so does the population of drivers in Toronto.
 
If this is merely about restoring the VIA service to Peterborough that the Tories had cut, what about restoring the 5 trains a day to Kitchener that the Tories cut the same day? The same arguments about population growth and mode shift apply to that line. What about restoring the Sherbrooke service (though not as well used as Kitchener - which was often packed).
 
^I would be elated if rail service was restored to pre-1990 levels to Kitchener or Sherbrooke. I don't think anyone is arguing that Peterborough deserves rail any more than those communities do. Our skeletal passenger railway system is, as James Howard Kunstler once put it, something the Bulgarians would be ashamed of. Any service, equipment or infrastructure improvements anywhere on any line is a cause for celebration. I don't think there's a passenger rail line in the country with anything more than inadequate service.
 
I too like trains and would love to go to Peterborough by train but it strikes me as crazy to treat each transit project as though it can stand alone. We should be building NETWORKS. The Peterborough train will eventually get to the GTA and presumably pick up passengers en route - it makes little sense to start this with no consultation with Metrolinx. It will also presumably go to Union Station, which is run by GO Transit so they too need to be involved. There is also the problem of an ongoing subsidy as it seems unlikely that this line will break even, at least initially. Is VIA going to get more $$ or will subsidising this train mean another route is cut? The question is surely "How do we offer better transit options to residents of Peterborough and other cities?" This MAY be achieved by a new train, it may be achieved with better bus links to existing trains or it may need more/better bus service. All options need to be examined, costed and evaluated.
 
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scarberiankhatru said:
Agincourt station should go between Kennedy and Midland, where it would connect with the Stouffville GO line and the Sheppard subway :)
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For me the best option (if we're going to do this at all) is to build a few kms of new track from Claremont to north of Mount Joy (with ownership assigned to GO as part of their line) and operate it as a branch of the Stouffville line, with passing loops between Mount Joy and Scarborough Station where the alignment permits which will benefit the existing Stouffville service and might speed the extension to Uxbridge and/or all-day service.

This bypasses any congestion at the CP Toronto yard, removes the need for stations at Agincourt, Leaside and Locust Hill and also the need to build a $50m fly-under. It might also be useful down the line to have essentially started a northern bypass route if CN's at Steeles becomes gridlocked. The question is whether CP's agreement for all this is actually predicated on the feds paying for the fly-under which advances their business somehow.

The only question mark might be slots on the Lakeshore East beyond Scarborough. I would get around that by running all Stouffvilles with Colorado double deck DMUs and splitting the train at Mount Joy just as VIA does at Brockville for Ottawa/Montreal, essentially using only about the same number of slots into Union - I wouldn't foreclose building the extra track loops though just in case problems on either line demanded that the trains remain split heading back into Union.
 
dowlingm said:
As for Sherbrooke I thought I read something over the weekend that that might be on the list too.
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Interesting - when I used it in the 1980s, I was shocked at how empty the train was (which I think was only 2 carriages). It's been a while, but I think the train wasn't that much slower than the bus - but the bus gets them right to campus, while the train station is downtown. Though traffic into Montreal is so much worse than it was 20 years ago, that the train might have a bit of an advantage now, if they got a faster service
 
I would like to see rail service to Niagara Falls. Does anyone know if there's any rail location near downtown NF that a GO train continuing on from Hamilton could reach?
 
Service too Sherbrooke was mentioned actually mentioned almost a year ago. I will try to dig up the article on it. If I remember right the line had 5 stops including the stop at Sherbrooke. Sherbrooke and Peterborough would be excellent additions to the rail network and it seems likely they will open in only a few years time. I agree that Niagara Falls also makes sense, and somehow I would not be surprised if an announcement is made on it in the not too distant future. It is not much, but at least these improvments are a start and any increase in VIA ridership numbers and the ability to attract more people to rail travel is a good thing.

I also agree that this would be a perfect time to start using a new generation of rolling stock such as Talents or other DMU's. But as long as the lines are rebuilt too allow for appropriate service, I wouldn't complain if they started them off with existing VIA stock since that part of the rail service is relatively easy to change.
 
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