VIA Rail

[TOareaFan]

Because there's a sign at the train station that those who live in Burlington can't use it ... oh wait, the main station for Hamilton on the old CN line from Toronto to Brantford is in Burlington ...

Let's not get sidetracked on what was being discussed....I made a reference to a city of 600k growing to 750k not having a stop on the KW-Tor HSR....someone thought the reference was to Hamilton and pointed out it was not on the route anyway....I corrected the thought and instead of just saying Brampton not Hamilton, I pointed out that Brampton would grow to 750k Hamilton not....you point out that Hamilton CMA is near that number already....I say I was referencing City pops....you think I was, somehow saying people from Burlington can't use the train?

Come on.

So let's ignore the last few posts and let me answer this

I assume that you're talking about Hamilton? Seeing as the primary purpose of the province's HSR plan is to improve the connections between Toronto, Pearson, and the Kitchener-Waterloo tech sector, service to Hamilton is a bit of a red herring.

With, "no, I was not talking about Hamilton, I was talking about Brampton."

 

[nfitz]

That makes no sense. Brampton would be on the route to Kitchener, and there would of course be service there.

I haven't read most of the huge overly-long waffling posts ...

 

[MisterF]

Indeed Brampton would be served. As with pretty much any rail line, there would be overlapping levels of service, from milk runs to express trains. Even the express that Glen Murray introduced would have a station in Toronto's western suburbs, at Pearson, which combined with regional trains would serve Brampton quite well. Municipal boundaries are irrelevant; what matters is that there's a high speed station in the western suburbs and regional trains that stop more frequently.

 

[TOareaFan]

^and I disagree (and did at the time Murray announced his HSR "plan") that any signficant number of people in Brampton would use/be served by this HSR

At the time, he was proposing the HSR would actually go to a new station on the grounds of Pearson but the KW line would not....that was absurd but let's assume that, both, the KW GO line and the HSR between KW and Union would go to the same station.

What are the frequencies of the HSR? Hourly? Let's assume 1/2 hourly.
What is the trip time from Pearson to London? 2 hours? Let's assume 1 1/2 hours.

So to get a significant number of people to abandon their cars from the 2 hour trip between Brampton and London....you would be asking them to take 16 minute GO ride to an average transfer/wait time of 15 minutes to then take a 90 minute trip.....and pay for the privilage of that longer trip and still have to deal with the last mile issue when they get there.

you might have a bit more success telling them there is no local station and suggest they take a 1 hour and 11 minute GO train ride to KW and then whisk themselves to London on the high speed leg....but that part of the trip would take how long? at what cost? and is it worth it?

Decisions get made, and that is fine, but to suggest that Brampton is served by the Pearson stop is stretching logic....and the fact that a decision is made to bypass a city right on the line with 3 stations already existing that will be close to 750k by then....well that is also fine but to then suggest "commuters matter to HSR"....well that is the part I take excpetion to.

 

[Euphoria]

It would be absurd to bypass Brampton on an HSR line that runs through it. All of the major suburbs and satellite cities of Toronto and Montreal should be accessible by HSR. You really want to revitalize rust belt cities like Hamilton and Oshawa? Build bullet train lines to them. If Toronto workers knew they could have that 3-storey Victorian semi in Hamilton at a third of it would cost in Toronto, and they could make the trek in 30 minutes, Hamilton's growth would explode.

 

[nfitz]

It would be absurd to bypass Brampton on an HSR line that runs through it.

It would - I don't think anyone is suggesting that.

 

[ShonTron]

One REALLY important element is transit at the train stations themselves.
Toronto and Montreal is good, but Kingston currently isn't.
Ottawa, Kitchener-Waterloo and soon London, will all have good LRT/RT connections.

Due to lack of public transit at any stations between Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal, I do think that Toronto-Kitchener-Pearson(WoodbineGO)-London will be the first HSR segment that is cost-effective.

Uh, Kingston Transit runs three bus routes from the VIA station to Downtown, Cataraqui Centre, St. Lawrence College, and Queen's University. I've used it to get to/from that VIA station. It's not bad at all. Other cities and towns, like Belleville, run bus routes that goes by their VIA station, though I can't vouch for any of them.

But would agree with @1overcosc that VIA should move its station, and even a station right at Princess Street would be superior - just because Kingston Transit has to take buses out of their way - or even run special routes - to serve the station.

 

[TOareaFan]

It would - I don't think anyone is suggesting that.

Unless "anyone" does not include the Ontario government Have their plans changed from their KW-Pearson-Union initial plans?

 

[nfitz]

Unless "anyone" does not include the Ontario government Have their plans changed from their KW-Pearson-Union initial plans?

They've hardly got to the level of detail to say where there will and won't be stops.

But what high speed service anywhere has run through the middle of 1.5 million person suburb (2021 forecast population of Peel region) without a stop?

 

[TOareaFan]

They've hardly got to the level of detail to say where there will and won't be stops.

Sure they did....right at the start of the thing they said there would be limited stops. He actually announced this service at a NAIOP breakfast that I was at.....and it was KW-Pearson-Union at that time....he followed it up (the next day, I believe) with an appearance on Metromorning and told that audience where there were going to be stops. One of the very first posts in the thread here dedicated to the service was a cut and paste of a twitter conversation he had with a member here where he confirmed it again.

http://urbantoronto.ca/forum/thread...oo-pearson-airport-toronto.20558/#post-851773

So, that is why I asked

Have their plans changed from their KW-Pearson-Union initial plans?

 

[nfitz]

If you were to take everything former transportation minister Glen Murray ever tweeted seriously, you'd be living in Wonderland.

There's no indication what he means by "fast RER". In the UK, Southeastern runs at least 4 trains an hour off-peak (mid-day, evenings, weekends) between London St. Pancras and Ebbsfleet - about the same distance as from Union to Brampton. You could all this fast RER.

 

[mdrejhon]

There are several stopping plans of multiple HSR lines worldwide often as a quid-pro-quo.

Most of the trains could be express
A small portion of the the trains would have a stop or two added, to accomodate cities. Sometimes different stopping plans are added for different sets of cities, to prevent slowing down HSR. So one stop per direction per day for Brampton, but for a different train one stop per day for Guelph, etc. It depends on how it's all formatted, how much passing tracks there are, and how much pad there are between the trains, etc.

As long as the economics work out and the stop doesn't damage the economic viability, it can mean the difference between Brampton letting HSR go through their city or not. It wouldn't be VIA milkrun level, but something fair. In some countries there are also the slower high speed trains that have lower fares because they run at say, 250kph max during their sprints rather than 300kph, and have more stops added. Those trains can often fill up because of the lower fares (sometimes the fares are not too much low).

Not saying, this is what makes sense here -- but this really needs to be said that there are often compromises that need to be made. The speed limit through Brampton would probably be limited, so the stopping-and-resuming won't too severely delay, say, one, two or three trains per day.

There are HSR lines that makes one or two stop per direction per day (peaks) within a smaller city, as a way of throwing a bone to these cities to let them have half-hourly HSR zoom through. (give or take).

That's a tiny bone, but that can tip the scale to letting HSR happen.

"limited stops" is correct.
Small market is correct.
But neither means Brampton gets 0 stops 365 days a year!

 

[TOareaFan]

If you were to take everything former transportation minister Glen Murray ever tweeted seriously, you'd be living in Wonderland.

Precisely why I asked if in the intervening 2 years (+/-) since he announced this plan has there been any statements from the government and his successor in the portfolio that the HSR between London (it was extended to London and possibly Windsor since initial announcements but have not heard any change on the GTA plans/stops).

 

[dowlingm]

The train station in Kingston is in a bad location. There's really no way for Kingston Transit to effectively serve it. The train station is badly set back from nearby roadways meaning any bus route going there has to either waste a huge amount of time double backing into it, or be a bus route designed solely for train station traffic.

If VIA moved the station a few hundred metres to the west, it would be directly underneath Princess Street which would automatically give the train station 6-8 buses per hour within a few years. Alternatively, it could be moved a few kms to the east to be at Division St; that would place it at the crossroads of a bunch of transit routes.

Cab companies will hate this idea.

If the station did move, a high platform would be nice, if not mandated by CTA.

 

[MisterF]

^and I disagree (and did at the time Murray announced his HSR "plan") that any signficant number of people in Brampton would use/be served by this HSR

At the time, he was proposing the HSR would actually go to a new station on the grounds of Pearson but the KW line would not....that was absurd but let's assume that, both, the KW GO line and the HSR between KW and Union would go to the same station.

What are the frequencies of the HSR? Hourly? Let's assume 1/2 hourly.
What is the trip time from Pearson to London? 2 hours? Let's assume 1 1/2 hours.

So to get a significant number of people to abandon their cars from the 2 hour trip between Brampton and London....you would be asking them to take 16 minute GO ride to an average transfer/wait time of 15 minutes to then take a 90 minute trip.....and pay for the privilage of that longer trip and still have to deal with the last mile issue when they get there.

you might have a bit more success telling them there is no local station and suggest they take a 1 hour and 11 minute GO train ride to KW and then whisk themselves to London on the high speed leg....but that part of the trip would take how long? at what cost? and is it worth it?

Decisions get made, and that is fine, but to suggest that Brampton is served by the Pearson stop is stretching logic....and the fact that a decision is made to bypass a city right on the line with 3 stations already existing that will be close to 750k by then....well that is also fine but to then suggest "commuters matter to HSR"....well that is the part I take excpetion to.

Well the travel time from Toronto to London was estimated at 1 hour 11 minutes, and that's without a Guelph bypass. So from Pearson to London would be well under an hour. The feasibility study suggested that high speed trains would run every half hour and regional trains would run hourly to Kitchener. And since we know that the tracks to Kitchener are being upgraded regardless, the current GO train travel time from Brampton to Kitchener will drop. Much like they do in other parts of the world, regional trains would undoubtedly use high speed tracks for at least part of the trip at significantly faster speeds than they travel now. England's High Speed 1 carries commuter trains at 225 km/h for example. So either of your scenarios would be perfectly doable for someone living in Brampton. I imagine that cabs to the airport station will be common too.

If we accept the station spacing that was announced for the HSR project, Brampton will still have hourly trains to Kitchener at a speed that's much faster than the current service and certainly faster than driving. It's only the fastest express trains that wouldn't stop in Brampton proper. Of course, none of this is set in stone and schedules and stations can change during design and construction and after the line opens. But if the fastest train stops at the airport and then again 12 km down the line, then it's not much of a high speed train anymore.