Allandale25
Senior Member
When would the TPA be finished?
By "heavy rail" do you mean traditional Toronto subway stock?
Yes.
Same route, stations, at grade, trench, tunnel, elevated section..................everything exactly the same except use standard TTC/Metro cars.
How many track have been estimated for hourly service on Barrie, Richmond Hill, Brampton and half hourly service on lakeshore and milton/markham?two tracks aren't enough though, GO needs 7 or 8 once you get down to union. 2 tracks would not be enough to run 30 minute service on kitchener, an eventual bolton line, freight, and VIA. nevermind upgrading it to heavy rail probably jumping the price to $2 or $3 billion from $500 million currently.
Also freight safety regulations mean that the flexity can't run under mixed rail conditions.
You'd need to completely isolate two sets of infrastructure from one another (very tricky, considering Milton and Barrie trains are merging from both sides and then you'd somehow need to get the airport subway tracks through the Union Station approach), have the future airport subway trade sides of the corridor with the mainline tracks at some point along the route (Union's airport lounge is on the north side of the corridor while the Pearson spur is on the south), and likely space the two sets of different-technology tracks apart by several extra metres per safety regs.
That last consideration means that instead of the corridor being wide enough for 4 tracks at its pinch points, you would have 2 subway tracks and 1 track for all the mainline trains --- GO, Via and freight. Having two airport subway tracks would likely be horribly overbuilt if intended just for daily Pearson demand and those tracks couldn't really be used in the future to support expanded regional service to places like Brampton, where it's really needed. Instead, regional service would be permanently limited to more or less the level of service GO operates today.