Toronto Union Pearson Express | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx | MMM Group Limited

are the trains going fast or are the cars going slow? ;)

I love that stretch, also Lakeshore West from Exhibition to Mimico. It's just the satisfaction of sitting there, looking at the congestion, and saying 'yeah guys, you made the wrong choice.'

Mind you that happens to me on the TTC Weston Bus at Weston Rd and Black Creek Drive, GO train zips by.
 
I'd love to hear what travel time improvements happened with the Georgetown Corridor project. For example, how much did Kitchener to Union travel time decrease? I'd assume that with all the grade separations and track upgrades there would be some improvement in travel time & speed.
The Lakeshore East/West megaprojects (triple/quad tracking) was occuring last decade, and then they only added 30-min all day service in 2013. There was a lot of corridor tweaks and platform work. It also took a long while before the Lakeshore West timetable had reliable sub-hour trains for boonie stations like Burlington or Aldershot.

I'd say timetable speed and frequency improvements for Kitchener GO may not be huge until around ~2017+ (e.g. 30-min allday to Brampton, some allday to Kitchener, and Kitchener trains that goes express after Brampton). I think incremental improvements will occur, e.g. 8 mins off Kitchener, then 12 mins off, and.... Over time, quicker more-tolerable 1.5 hour Kitchener trains (a full half-hour savings over today) might not happen till late this decade, but who knows.

They could certainly accelerate plans, we'll have to see.
 
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I've clocked Stouffville trains topping 150km/h when on the lakeshore line making their express run into Union before.
Standing in Danforth station when a VIA trains rips through can certainly feel like that. I'm rarely there during peak.

How do you measure this, BTW?
 
145 km/h seems really fast considering the stops aren't extremely far apart.

Yeah, it doesn't make much difference for frequent-stop services like the UPX or local GO trains, but I'm sure it will be very helpful for VIA and GO express services, which run non-stop to Union from Brampton and Bramalea, respectively.

If it weren't for that annoying stop in Weston, UP would be able to make pretty full use of the 145 km/h zone, coasting through Weston at 120 km/h then flying along the straightaway until the Pearson turn off.

Some speeds from an out-of-date (roughly 2010 IIRC) speed chart I pulled from one of the electrification study appendices:

On the long stretch between Ajax and Whitby, the train regularly outpaces cars on the 401...
are the trains going fast or are the cars going slow? ;)

With an 85 mph (137 km/h) speed limit, GO trains can outpace cars in any traffic conditions, but are no match for the 95 mph (153 km/h) VIA trains on the other side.

I love that stretch, also Lakeshore West from Exhibition to Mimico. It's just the satisfaction of sitting there, looking at the congestion, and saying 'yeah guys, you made the wrong choice.'

Mind you that happens to me on the TTC Weston Bus at Weston Rd and Black Creek Drive, GO train zips by.

The Ex to Mimico speed limit is 80 mph (129 km/h). It is quite a sight when you're on the 501 at Sunnyside and the GO Train rockets past.

Standing in Danforth station when a VIA trains rips through can certainly feel like that. I'm rarely there during peak.

How do you measure this, BTW?

Danforth is in the middle of a 80 mph (129 km/h) zone flanked on either side by 90 mph (145 km/h) zones, so westbound (downhill) express trains are often doing every bit of the speed limit. Until Stouffville trains started stopping there it was quite a speedway at rush hour. The whoosh of fast trains was quite a great sound to wake up to in my opinion. Nowadays it's all obnoxious turbo spooling engine noise.

I have two methods of tracking speed. When I'm on the train I use the speedometer app on my tablet, and when I'm trackside or in my apartment I film the train and check how long it takes to pass a given point (this is accurate to 1/30 of a second).
 
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Occasionally. Normally it's 128kph peak speed but I've occasionally seen my Lakeshore West GOtrain go between 135-140kph, during moments when the train is running slightly late, on a very good sunny day. These speeds have been hit in the long straightaway sections between stations. I used an iPhone GPS speedometer app. And, yes, it did sustain for about 15 seconds, well beyond normal GPS jitter/error, and newer phones are pretty accurate.

For the Georgetown corridor, the station spacing is similiar. The UPX trainset should be able to accelerate faster, being an MMU. However, speed limits will clearly be the limiting factor (including factors such as vertical curvature, etc). UPX should easily be able to accelerate to 140-145kph north of Weston, after the curve. It probably won't happen all the time, and probably only if a train is running late and the track is all-clear, but if MY Lakeshore West GOtrain has occasionally hit almost 140kph between stations, then UPX most certainly can do so north of Weston after the curve. There's more straight railway over there between the Weston curve and the Perason spur, than the moments my Lakeshore West train manages to hit 128kph with less acceleration than the UPX.

The express trains on Lakeshore West and East get up to 140km/h as they dont have to stop at as many stations.
 
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The junction may not have any bearing on the capacity given the planned operation, but the planned operation has a negative impact on capacity both along the line and especially in the USRC.

Operating two pairs of double-tracked lines rather than a single quad-tracked line chews up capacity because we want the flexibility to run services at a variety of speeds, from local GO Trains, to express GO trains, to VIA trains. Having these different services sharing tracks means that they will catch up to one another, and therefore must be scheduled very far apart.

Alternatively, some of those services could use the "UP" pair of tracks, in which case there is in fact a conflict at Pearson junction.

In the USRC, UP trains in both directions must cross the Kitchener Line services to get to the platform on the north side of the corridor, whereas if there were a westbound to southbound flyover at Pearson junction, there would only be conflict for eastbound UP trains.

It is one corridor, with full-width interlockings. Regardless of how they arrange the tracks for the different services - and don't kid yourself, just because they are planning on running something in a particular manner doesn't mean that it will always operate that way - it is one large corridor. While the UPX trains main use the south-west tracks in the corridor, they won't have those tracks exclusively.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
 
It is one corridor, with full-width interlockings. Regardless of how they arrange the tracks for the different services - and don't kid yourself, just because they are planning on running something in a particular manner doesn't mean that it will always operate that way - it is one large corridor. While the UPX trains main use the south-west tracks in the corridor, they won't have those tracks exclusively.

I'm not kidding myself any more than you are, given that we're both saying pretty much the same thing.
 
I have two methods of tracking speed. When I'm on the train I use the speedometer app on my tablet, and when I'm trackside or in my apartment I film the train and check how long it takes to pass a given point (this is accurate to 1/30 of a second).
Accuracy can be improved by using the 60fps or 120fps/240fps video mode of a camera, as accuracy is the time period of a single frame (1/framerate). Most cameras, however, film at only 30fps by default in high definition, though. I also have a cheap Casio EX-ZR200 camera, which has a 1000fps mode for under $200 (albet at a low 224x64 resolution).

However, 1/30sec is extremely good accuracy (yields sub-1kph accuracy) since you already know the length of a 12 car GO train, and it takes a few seconds for the entire length of a train to pass a specific point even at maximum speed.
 
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Accuracy can be improved by using the 60fps or 120fps/240fps video mode of a camera, as accuracy is the time period of a single frame (1/framerate). Most cameras, however, film at only 30fps by default in high definition, though. I also have a cheap Casio EX-ZR200 camera, which has a 1000fps mode for under $200 (albet at a low 224x64 resolution).

However, 1/30sec is extremely good accuracy (yields sub-1kph accuracy) since you already know the length of a 12 car GO train, and it takes a few seconds for the entire length of a train to pass a specific point even at maximum speed.

If you really want to get technical, I'd also mention that we're talking about precision, not accuracy.

My 1/30 second precision is simply because my camera doesn't go any higher than 30 fps, it's quite old. But like you said, it takes several seconds for a train to go by so it's already a tiny level of error. If precision actually mattered I could interpolate based on looking at two consecutive frames.
 
TTC was able to take the Lawrence buses off detour at 9:30 am today after the one piece corten bridge was in place over Lawrence Ave.

Unless there a major push to get the flashing done at both Weston and Bloor Station, this will delay the running of full service since you need the scissor lifts on the track to install it.

Work still taking place on the Weston Elevator.

Ceiling work taking place at both stations for the UPX platform.

May is not looking that good based on what I saw today unless some fires are lit.

Concrete was being pour for Bloor UPX Centre platform.

Track 2(1) has about 300m of rail removed at Dundas with all existing ballast being remove.
 
vegata, thanks for the educational info. Seems consistent with my speedometer app observations on my iPad. 85mph is 136kph, which I've certainly seen on express trains running slightly late. Also, the 80 Exhibition exactly matches the 128kph I've seen.

What is the fastest you have been entering a GO station (under normal allowed conditions)? I
Sometimes they enter a suburban station pretty quickly.
 
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