[drum118]

How does stopping improvements on other lines help the Milton line? From what I can tell, CP is the main reason the Milton line has such inadequate service. At least electrification and its' associated capacity and speed increases would make the Lakeshore West and Georgetown lines more viable alternatives, to compensate for the poor service.

I will ask next week where the EA stands for the Milton Line as it supposed to go to the public this year.

Until there are 4 tracks on this line, it going to be hard to get all day bidirectional because of CP. I know the City keeps saying 2012 for work to start, but taking no bets on that one.

Lakeshore is 20 years behind schedule for electrification because the clowns at GO don't understand that you can provide the same service with less equipment at a lower cost.

The clowns are in bed with Thunder Bay, since they provide everything these days for GO.

The time line for this electrification should be haft the time if Metrolinx budget $300-$500 million yearly, not the $100 M for it as plan. The government would get a faster return on its money by getting more cars off the road sooner than later by providing more funding for this project.

Just think what 10 or 15 minute service will do for the Lakeshore line today using smaller trains.

Milton will provide more bang for the buck than Georgetown or KW.

 

[EnviroTO]

Lakeshore is 20 years behind schedule for electrification because the clowns at GO don't understand that you can provide the same service with less equipment at a lower cost.

I'm pretty sure GO understands they can provide the same service with less equipment at a lower cost. That is their whole model. Very large trains which therefore limit the costs. I think you are trying to cross the benefits of speed with the benefits of electrification. The speed increases on the line attributed to electrification alone weren't very spectacular. I'm not sure if it was due to the corridor alignment or condition but the projections in speed increases wouldn't matter much unless the number of trains on the line was much higher than the number now.

Just think what 10 or 15 minute service will do for the Lakeshore line today using smaller trains.

Wait a minute... weren't you just complaining that GO doesn't know how to do more with less? If you go to a model of smaller trains you are decreasing capacity per train and increasing the number of staff and equipment. The A380 has the lowest cost per seat of all the airliners.

 

[doady]

How does stopping improvements on other lines help the Milton line? From what I can tell, CP is the main reason the Milton line has such inadequate service. At least electrification and its' associated capacity and speed increases would make the Lakeshore West and Georgetown lines more viable alternatives, to compensate for the poor service.

More trains can't be added to the Milton line because of lack of capacity in the corridor; it needs more tracks. On the other hand, GO can add more trains to both the Georgetown and Lakeshore lines right now even without electrification. So why is electrification the first priority right now?

 

[Dan416]

How does stopping improvements on other lines help the Milton line? From what I can tell, CP is the main reason the Milton line has such inadequate service. At least electrification and its' associated capacity and speed increases would make the Lakeshore West and Georgetown lines more viable alternatives, to compensate for the poor service.

You must not know Mississauga very well to think that Lakeshore and Georgetown can provide alternatives to those on the Milton line.

 

[doady]

Honestly, I seriously doubt any of us will ever see frequent all-day service on any GO Train line in our lifetimes. GO has been providing this service for many decades now. If they were really interested in upgrading it, they would have done it already, a long time ago. But I think they want to preserve the status quo. Even hourly off-peak service on the Milton Line seems like many, many decades away and I'll probably be dead by then. I think we should trust to local transit improvements only - subways, LRT, BRT - and just forget about GO.

 

[EnviroTO]

I think we should trust to local transit improvements only - subways, LRT, BRT - and just forget about GO.

Because the subway, LRT, and BRT enhancements have progressed at a much higher rate and have been focused on the most important routes?

 

[Mapleson]

Honestly, I seriously doubt any of us will ever see frequent all-day service on any GO Train line in our lifetimes. GO has been providing this service for many decades now. If they were really interested in upgrading it, they would have done it already, a long time ago. But I think they want to preserve the status quo. Even hourly off-peak service on the Milton Line seems like many, many decades away and I'll probably be dead by then. I think we should trust to local transit improvements only - subways, LRT, BRT - and just forget about GO.

GO is subject to the whims of politics like every other crown corporation. They cut the Barrie line in the 90s because of Harris-government cuts. They've brought it back and have expanded service (espically bus) where they could. Unless you are in your 60s, you'll see all-day service on most GO train lines, but just over the next two decades, not the next five years.

 

[reaperexpress]

More trains can't be added to the Milton line because of lack of capacity in the corridor; it needs more tracks. On the other hand, GO can add more trains to both the Georgetown and Lakeshore lines right now even without electrification. So why is electrification the first priority right now?

I agree with you on the Georgetown Line, but I disagree about the Lakeshore line. True, GO could add more trains than they currently run, but given the regional importance and potential population growth in the corridor, the track capacity is not likely to be able to fulfill demand for very long. Keep in mind that the Lakeshore line is also host to VIA trains from Niagara Falls, London, Windsor, Ottawa and Montreal as well as Amtrak trains from New York. Although none of these services are currently very frequent, the number of non-GO trains will rise significantly as population grows and the governments invest in rail travel.

So to answer your question, electrification is a priority right now because the Lakeshore will have severe capacity issues fairly soon in the future, even if it doesn't currently.

 

[Platform 27]

More trains can't be added to the Milton line because of lack of capacity in the corridor; it needs more tracks. On the other hand, GO can add more trains to both the Georgetown and Lakeshore lines right now even without electrification. So why is electrification the first priority right now?

GO can't add more trains to Georgetown until, um, it finishes spending a billion dollars to make room for them.

 

[Hipster Duck]

Because the subway, LRT, and BRT enhancements have progressed at a much higher rate and have been focused on the most important routes?

To be fair, I get what Doady is complaining about. It's not about the amount of projects that have been built, but the mentality that pervades the organizations that run public transit.

In that sense, agencies like YRT or Brampton Transit have undergone a sea change in mentality from even just 10 years ago when they were focused on running hub and spoke half-hourly suburban operations from mall transit terminals. To go from something like this to a relatively frequent, grid-based operation with service differentiation (local service and premium service) is actually pretty impressive.

GO, on the other hand, still runs its operations like it was 1967. Its train service operates under the assumption that workers live in the suburbs and commute into the core in the morning and out in the evening. If demand grows, just make the trains longer and the parking lots bigger; forget about adding more trains, or including the possibility of reverse commutes or even considering new train routes. In fairness, GO is successful in attracting ridership, so maybe the people at its helm have little incentive to change. Still, its success owes to the fact that downtown Toronto still holds a large enough proportion of the region's jobs, and there are few alternatives for getting into the core from the outer suburbs that are cheaper or quicker. Of course, in the nearly 50 years since GO was created, suburb to downtown commuting has grown but suburb to suburb, or downtown to suburb commuting has exploded. I wonder how much bigger a role GO could play if their service was more in tune with the realities of regional travel in 2011.

 

[reaperexpress]

GO, on the other hand, still runs its operations like it was 1967. Its train service operates under the assumption that workers live in the suburbs and commute into the core in the morning and out in the evening. If demand grows, just make the trains longer and the parking lots bigger; forget about adding more trains, or including the possibility of reverse commutes or even considering new train routes. In fairness, GO is successful in attracting ridership, so maybe the people at its helm have little incentive to change. Still, its success owes to the fact that downtown Toronto still holds a large enough proportion of the region's jobs, and there are few alternatives for getting into the core from the outer suburbs that are cheaper or quicker. Of course, in the nearly 50 years since GO was created, suburb to downtown commuting has grown but suburb to suburb, or downtown to suburb commuting has exploded. I wonder how much bigger a role GO could play if their service was more in tune with the realities of regional travel in 2011.

I agree that GO is really sending mixed messages about whether it is a commuter rail system or a regional rail system. On one hand, extensions to downtown Barrie, Kitchener-Waterloo/Guelph and Niagara Falls/St.Catharines indicate that they want to run a more intercity-type service, but their schedules indicate more of a commuter-based service. For example, there are only 4 trains per day (peak direction only) on the Barrie line, so although Barrie Waterfront station is set to open within a year, it won't really provide any regional-rail service. Similarly, most express trains on the Lakeshore lines are sectional express, which doesn't really serve regional demand very well either.

I think that GO should change their fare system a bit to encourage non-Union-bound-commuter trips. For example, one should be able to go from Markham station to Unionville station with a YRT fare. That would make the Stouffville something of a subway for Markham, which would really increase transit modal share and encourage higher-density development. Because of the current fare system, I highly doubt that any such trips are being made, so although the cost of that trip would be reduced, GO wouldn't see any loss in revenue. There wouldn't be any increase in operating costs either, because the new riders would be simply be filling the train when it would otherwise be relatively empty, so no new runs would be required to satisfy demand.

 

[TOareaFan]

http://www.thestar.com/news/article...ard-with-electric-airport-trains?bn=1#article

Looks like electric is on the way!

 

[DavidJamesTO]

The clowns are in bed with Thunder Bay, since they provide everything these days for GO.

Bombardier isn't a factor; they could retool Thunder Bay and supply a fleet of Electrostars just as easily as bilevels as long as Transport Canada approves them for Canadian use.

 

[EnviroTO]

The results of the electrification study are being announced with a bit of surprise that Metrolinx could be so forward thinking. But when I read the Big Move which came out in 2008 (3 years ago) their 15 year plan had Express Rail on the Georgetown and Lakeshore lines. When you look up the definition of Express Rail in the same document it says "high-speed trains, typically electric". The Electrification Study has electrification coming to these corridors in 23 years (25 years from 2008). Basically, in 25 years they plan on delivering the Big Move 15 year plan. Hooray. Can't wait until 40 years from now when they deliver the Big Move 25 year plan.

 

[reaperexpress]

The results of the electrification study are being announced with a bit of surprise that Metrolinx could be so forward thinking. But when I read the Big Move which came out in 2008 (3 years ago) their 15 year plan had Express Rail on the Georgetown and Lakeshore lines. When you look up the definition of Express Rail in the same document it says "high-speed trains, typically electric".

High speed trains? That would be nice. The Lakeshore west line is straight enough to probably allow for up to 200km/h operation, though that would mainly benefit VIA and Amtrak rather than GO. I seem to recall that the Georgetown South project was aiming to increase the track speed to 90mph, but I doubt they will raise the speed on the Lakeshore line (currently 95mph) when they electrify it.

If they did want to operate faster trains, they would need to upgrade the signaling, something that might be worthwhile anyway because it would increase line capacity.