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On November 3rd, Infrastructure Ontario (IO) and Metrolinx awarded a fixed price contract of $128.4 million to EllisDon Infrastructure CGS RER Inc. to design, build and finance the Cooksville GO Station Redevelopment project. Construction is scheduled to begin immediately, and be complete by summer 2020. The team includes WalterFedy, Brodie & Associates Landscape Architects, WSP/MMM, and EllisDon.
This project was initially reported on by UrbanToronto in January, when the RFP was first issued. That same article also featured a background on the $1.4 billion Hurontario LRT project, which is due to begin construction in 2018 and be complete by 2022. Under this plan, Cooksville GO Station is slated to become a major intermodal hub, being one of two LRT-GO transfer points along the LRT line, the other being Port Credit GO on the Lakeshore West line.
The redevelopment project is being delivered through Infrastructure Ontario's Alternative Financing and Procurement model, includes a new station building with a large public plaza, upgrades to the existing rail platform access tunnel, a new six-storey parking structure, redevelopment of the existing parking area, a bus loop with a minimum of eight bus bays for GO and MiWay bus service, and an extension of John Street.
While the Milton Line is technically part of Metrolinx's RER program, the line will be receiving significantly fewer upgrades than other lines in the GO system, with service still being peak-period-only for at least the next 5 years. Metrolinx estimates that the line will receive approximately 30% more trips over that time period, all of them during peak periods. This pales in comparison to a line like Stouffville, which until recently had similar frequencies and operating hours to the Milton Line, but which is due to receive electrified all-day two-way GO service in that same timeframe, with a limited form of all-day two-way already having been implemented earlier this year.
The comparatively few proposed improvements for the Milton Line primarily stem from the fact that it operates on tracks that form part of CP Rail's mainline. With these tracks forming the backbone of CP's freight operations, only limited track time is available to be allocated to GO services. To increase GO service along this corridor, there are generally considered to be two options. The first is to add a minimum of one extra track along the entire corridor which could be used exclusively for GO service. Such a project would require either the construction or the reconstruction of multiple underpasses and potentially range into the billions of dollars.
The second, as was detailed in a previous UrbanToronto article, would be to build the Missing Link, a new freight-only rail corridor that would allow both CN and CP, if built out to its full configuration, to shift their freight operations off of the Kitchener Line corridor though Downtown Brampton (CN), and off the Milton Line corridor though Mississauga and Milton (CP). While this proposal would also likely range into the billions of dollars, it would eliminate the need for expensive widening projects on both of those corridors, which would be required to increase service.
UrbanToronto will keep you updated on the construction at Cooksville GO, as well as progress on the Hurontario LRT and GO RER. More renderings of the Cooksville GO Station Redevelopment can be found in our database file, linked below. If you would like to join the conversation on any of these topics, you can do so in our associated forum threads, or by leaving a comment in the space provided on this page.
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