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On October 15, the Ontario Minister of Transportation announced another major improvement to GO train service, as well as the framework for even more significant improvements down the road. Starting in November, two trains per day on the Kitchener line will actually go all the way to and from Kitchener, not dissimilar to the off-peak service that Kitchener receives on weekdays. This is a big deal because all-day two-way service to Waterloo region along the “innovation corridor” has been a huge priority for the community for years, and the buses that operate between Brampton and the region are not only slower and less reliable, but often so crowded that passengers get left behind. At the same time, benefits are not just limited to the end of the line, as Bramalea station in Brampton will be going from hourly off-peak service on weekends to the same half-hourly service it already receives on weekdays, important because trains on the Kitchener line are very busy (though unfortunately Metrolinx no longer reports regular detailed ridership statistics).
These service improvements are so exciting because they continue the pattern of ratcheting up service that we’ve seen over the past fifteen years or so across GO’s various lines. Back in 2013, the Lakeshore line went from an hourly schedule to operating half hourly off-peak, and in the time since, we’ve seen the Barrie, Stouffville, and Kitchener corridors all move to that hourly base frequency that Lakeshore had 'graduated' from. Now, the Kitchener line's inner sections are finally at a consistent week-long, half-hourly takt, and the Stouffville line seems like it might get there in the next few years.
Takt is a term that originates from the German word meaning "beat" or "pulse," and refers to the time required to meet customer demand. It is a crucial metric for aligning service or production rates with demand in various industries. In the railway and transit context, takt refers to the recurring scheduled pulses service runs on. The Swiss nationally integrated timetable for trains and local transit is referred to as the Taktfahrplan.
Meanwhile, for the longer distance destinations like Niagara, Barrie, and now Kitchener, they all now get a handful of bidirectional trips throughout the day — perhaps not quite up to the standard imagined for 'all-day two-way' service, but certainly a big improvement from the zero service they had previously. Wrapping all these improvements up was the every 15-minute service operated on the Lakeshore line back in 2019, and which has partially returned on weekends, with a broader return probably pending construction completion of the Ontario line through the 'joint corridor' section through South Riverdale.
Fortunately, Metrolinx has also announced an agreement with CN that will enable further service improvements to continue the Kitchener line along this ratcheting path. The fundamentals of the agreement are not dissimilar to what we’ve seen in the past, but are that CN will work to allow far more service over their infrastructure — which forms the central section of the Kitchener line between the Metrolinx-owned portions extending from Toronto and Waterloo region, as well as sell land to Metrolinx to build new infrastructure to separate its operations from CN. Ideally in the long term, GO train service could run at relatively high frequencies, in parallel but almost entirely separate to “intensive” CN freight operations, specifically by building a third, and ideally fourth track through Brampton, essentially adding new capacity for the more or less exclusive use of passenger trains, and “giving back” CN’s double-track line for its use, as well as building a flyover west of Brampton so that GO trains and new dedicated tracks for them can cross CN without either operator needing to schedule trains around the other. This amounts to a big chunk of what will be 40 kilometres of new track for Metrolinx that will also include finishing quadruplication of the inner Kitchener corridor from Downtown Toronto to near Pearson Airport — work that's already ongoing — and building additional passing sidings on the outer section of the line where lower frequency trains can intersect. All of this work is, according to Metrolinx, sufficient for a long-term goal of hourly trains to Kitchener, half hourly to Mt Pleasant at the edge of Brampton, and 'two-way all-day' to Bramalea.
The question then is where we go from here, and if the plans fall short (spoiler: I think they do). While it’s great that Metrolinx is making deals (even if they seem to progress very slowly), it sometimes feels as though we take two steps forward and one step back. If it is indeed the case that the enabling works for Kitchener include a flyover, that would be a step above the current situation with the Lakeshore West line where trains must cross freight tracks at grade to serve Hamilton and other communities on the way to Niagara; however, it does feel like once again Metrolinx might be making a deal that will leave us in a bind just a decade or two down the road.
For one, the frequencies being considered seem… low. While hourly service to Waterloo Region is certainly a big upgrade and will be well-used, there seems to be no good reason why service shouldn’t be even more frequent. The region is large and growing, and assuming rapid transit expansion and transit-oriented development continues there as well as in Toronto, there's no reason to think even half-hourly service wouldn’t be justified especially since Metrolinx owns so much of the corridor.
At the same time, as we know, the demand for a service is in a circular way dependent on that service’s quality, so while thirty-minute service calls for somewhat higher demand (though we could just run a six-car train twice as often as a twelve-car train, providing the same capacity), higher demand would also be spurred by the convenience offered by half-hourly service.
It’s closer to the centre of the region that the frequencies make even less sense though. Thirty-minute service to Mt Pleasant is only a little more than that station already receives, and there isn’t a good land use justification for terminating frequent service at the eastern edge of Brampton at Bramalea rather than running it through the city. Equivalent locations in the major European and Asian cities we want to emulate with enhanced suburban rail would easily have every 15 minute, 10 minute or even better service — which is only natural if we want the GO network to operate like rapid transit, and not just decent regional rail, especially in a place like Brampton that has excellent feeder bus service, and soon also light rail. The situation with Bramalea where Metrolinx doesn’t seem to be committing to any real service level at all feels like fallout from the GO Expansion program being in disarray, but not being able to commit to even every 10-minute service to the terminus of a major rail line that Metrolinx already owns and will have fully double-tracked is very disappointing.
Painting a picture of what I’d like to see, Metrolinx should be able to at least say that they are aiming for a train every five minutes or so to the end of the portion of the Kitchener line they already own at Bramalea; beyond that, with additional track through Brampton, that five-minute service should really be able to continue right to the end of the developed urban area at Mt Pleasant, meaning we should really expect at least about ten-minute frequency there. Part of my concern is that Metrolinx’ rather unambitious stated service targets may be related to similarly unambitious track expansion plans in Brampton, perhaps only targetting the addition of a third track instead of full quadruplication. While three tracks is a fine medium term goal, with Brampton’s downtown changing and developing, if Metrolinx and the city are not sensible and don’t protect the space for four tracks today, building them may become much more costly in the future, or in frequently-used Toronto parlance 'impossible.' Beyond Brampton, the limits to frequency should mostly just be demand. As long as a flyover is built west of Brampton, even very frequent GO trains would have insignificant impact on freight operations, and so as infrastructure was slowly expanded from single track with passing loops to full double track, service could bounded only by the levels possible closer to Toronto.
The long and short of it is, Metrolinx is moving in the right direction, but it’s critical they don’t make decisions today, especially regarding not protecting for two freight tracks and two passenger tracks all the way through Brampton, that would seriously hinder future, more sensible service expansion targets. Of course, moving more quickly (or, let’s be honest, making any firm public commitment at all) on modernizing the train fleet, ideally with lighter, multiple-unit trains, ideally mostly of the electric variety, could make much of this work simpler, allowing that flyover structure to be shorter and less expensive, and perhaps even reducing the track work needed a bit, since better performing trains could adhere to a more aggressive schedule.
It should also go without saying that increasing speeds should remain a priority. A big part of the ONxpress plans — which are in limbo — appears to have been increasing speeds throughout the GO network, and long journeys such as the one to Kitchener would benefit disproportionately from such speedups. To Metrolinx’ credit, speeds on the Kitchener line have already improved in the last decade, and with track upgrades, grade crossing removals, and the like, they could improve further. Establishing a sensible service pattern within Toronto, where all trains to distant points on the line like Kitchener operate an express pattern, stopping only once to allow transfers onto local trains, will also help speeds.
To wrap things up, it’s hugely positive that the Kitchener line is finally seeing the big service improvements that it clearly should have had some years ago, and that additional suburban service is also being introduced to meet the huge demand in west Toronto and Brampton. However, Metrolinx needs to make sure that it doesn’t just build for a future where we have more frequent GO trains, but where a true transformation of the GO network is once again possible.
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Reece Martin is a well-known advocate for good transit, worldwide. He is based in Toronto and blogs at nextmetro.substack.
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