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They are in the process of doing that. Should be done by 2021 hopefully. Will cost 1.5 billion dollars.

Right. It's a work in progress but not guaranteed enough to make a political promised based on it.

The promise is to complete everything else and put effort into Milton.


The real question is, when will Weston start protesting?
 
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They are in the process of doing that. Should be done by 2021 hopefully. Will cost 1.5 billion dollars.

Hopefully contained in this announcement is some pre-widening work to be done in order to speed up that 2021 timeline. I'm thinking specifically things like new underpasses/underpass widenings, the odd expropriation, etc. Basically making sure that whenever the time does come to lay down those extra 2 tracks, all the associated work is already completed. But that may just be wishful thinking on my part.

Re the HSR thing: That struck me as very interesting as well. I touched on this a bit earlier, but hopefully this is the Province's way of strong-arming the Federal government into building HSR. This section of track can be built with really only Ontario managing it, but it may put pressure on the Feds to build a new HSR route from Kingston to Ottawa, and upgrade the existing VIA route west of Kingston and between Ottawa and Montreal.

Also, this may hint at the Federal Liberal 2015 election platform. Ontario handles Toronto to London (and eventually Windsor). The Feds handle Toronto to Montreal via Ottawa, and Quebec handles Montreal to Quebec City. This piece may look out of the blue now because the Federal Liberals haven't tipped their hand yet, and the recent Quebec election hardly talked about anything other than separation and invading Ontario students.
 
it either owns them or they have discussed how they will be buying it and building it anyway. There may be 15 minute rail coming to Milton, but that would be a major project as you would have some very, very expensive conversations with CP. At this point GO only doesn't own a chunk of the Georgetown / Kitchener line and a small portion of the lakeshore west line in Burlington. Murray has specifically stated that they will be bringing the rail to Hamilton and Kitchener / London anyway so those two can be disregarded. This leaves the only stretch of track not owned by Metrolinx to be a small portion of the Richmond Hill line and Milton, but given the small scale of non ownership on Richmond Hill I presumed that it would be able to be worked out and put in. Milton seems like the entire reason they put "On all lines we own" as I presume CP has been a complete arse to them about it. Its likely the same reason there isn't any rail to Cambridge, CP won't co-operate.

Sadly, I don't really see Milton ever going beyond a large amount of peak trains. I would just love to be proven wrong of course, but I just wouldn't be surprised.

Your argument sounds like a lot of cherry-picking of facts to me. Not saying it's wrong, but I very much hope you're wrong.

It just aggravates me that the most used line after Lakeshore always gets the short end of the stick.
 
Glen Murray will be on CBC's Metro Morning shortly, to talk about yesterday's big announcement.
 
Your argument sounds like a lot of cherry-picking of facts to me. Not saying it's wrong, but I very much hope you're wrong.

It just aggravates me that the most used line after Lakeshore always gets the short end of the stick.

That's not GO's fault though. What are they supposed to do other than blow big money for new track and build them, which takes time.
 
Glen Murray will be on CBC's Metro Morning shortly, to talk about yesterday's big announcement.

Either he is saying something different than the Premier or the "all GO lines that we own" was a very casual "slip" by Ms Wynne.....Minister Murray was very clearly saying 15 minute express service on all GO lines. He also said it is now the top priority of the government and ML.

EDIT: there were a couple of other comments by the Minister that I found interesting.

1. when he was asked about why the Premier would state that no one in Sudbury or London was going to pay for transit in Toronto (considering that in other areas there is pooling of provincial funds and, for example, Torontonians contribute to hospitals in those places) he did not really deny that it was a purely political statement and that it arises from the perception that there are particular types of infrastructure that are unique to Toronto and people around the province resent paying for those.

2. when asked about the TTC's criticism of yesterday's announcement because it is all capital and does not address the operating shortfall....he got a bit aggressive and reminded that Toronto had been given a whole host of tools available to them that they are not using and that these can be used for this. "Use those tools" was something he said....frankly it came off as a bit of "we have promised to not raise the taxes on the middle class.....but we encourage the city to do that".
 
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I would've thought Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal would be the first high speed rail line, not London-KW-Toronto

I would imagine this is about track ownership and potential abandonment. If GO buys the corridor from Stratford (or close to it) to Silver, then CN is faced with how to deal with the less used London-Stratford section and the Goderich-Stratford section. I would imagine that if GEXR is able to make the economics work the Goderich to Stratford section is the piece of interest to them plus the freight rights on potentially GO owned Stratford to Silver sections. GEXR wouldn't have much use for London to Stratford, only VIA / passenger rail gets much benefit. So Metrolinx ends up buying London to Stratford or dealing with potential abandonment. VIA has been cutting service to Kitchener and Niagara, so GO is the most likely service to save the day. I think the talk of London and likely Niagara plus 15 minute service means that finally GO will have a fleet a little more variety than the bi-level rush hour commuters.
 
I think Gweed is well aware of those plans. his question is that previously the plan had always been for hourly GO service to Richmond Hill, which obviously isn't adequate. but would 15 minute GO service be? thats the question and I believe the answer is yes. I think the Yonge line still needs to go to Steeles, but the extension to RHC seems rather silly now.

I'll apologize in advance for re-hashing arugments from another thread but....

Well, that's an opinion but I think stopping it at Steeles is worse than silly. As I pointed out, that density is directly contingent on stopping the subway THERE. If you stop it short of the designated growth centre you are purposefully mis-aligning the province's growth and transit plans. You're entitled to believe the GO service is adequate but all the plans are based on the assumption they will have GO and the subway. If either doesn't materialize, neither does the plan. Unlike other GO corridors, here we are talking about Yonge Street, and a GO line that dives off into a valley. You can't have a regional network when you fail to make obviously natural connections, like a major growth centre, on Yonge Street, amidst contiguous existing development, just north of the 416/905 border.

There is actually no logic whatsoever to stopping at Steeles except that someone drew a line there 40 years ago on a map. This is what it looks like today and there is very clearly no difference in built form or anything else between the north and south sides of the municipal border.

y-s.jpg


With all due respect, the only people who advocate it stopping at Steeles are people who live in Toronto who never go up beyond it.


I always find it interesting that there are subway plans into places where condos are planned, and people show future renderings of all these condos to justify a subway there, when large groups of existing condos don't have subway access, example the whole King West & Liberty Village area, where tons of huge condos both completed and about to be completed.

I think this was already addressed but the point is really quite straightforward: what we have now, for the first time, is a growth plan for the larger region and it advocates curbing sprawl by requiring transit-oriented infill. You can't legislatively require municipalities to provide infill and then not provide the infrastructure or it won't work and you will get more sprawl. Or you could be really spiteful and legislatively demand they intensify at a specific location and decide to build the transit 2 kilometres away, I suppose. I don't know why you would, but you could.
 

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It is absolutely illogical to stop the line at Yonge and Steeles, what is there? If the expansion will be stopped there, then don't build it at all.
 
I'll apologize in advance for re-hashing arugments from another thread but....

Well, that's an opinion but I think stopping it at Steeles is worse than silly. As I pointed out, that density is directly contingent on stopping the subway THERE. If you stop it short of the designated growth centre you are purposefully mis-aligning the province's growth and transit plans. You're entitled to believe the GO service is adequate but all the plans are based on the assumption they will have GO and the subway. If either doesn't materialize, neither does the plan. Unlike other GO corridors, here we are talking about Yonge Street, and a GO line that dives off into a valley. You can't have a regional network when you fail to make obviously natural connections, like a major growth centre, on Yonge Street, amidst contiguous existing development, just north of the 416/905 border.

There is actually no logic whatsoever to stopping at Steeles except that someone drew a line there 40 years ago on a map. This is what it looks like today and there is very clearly no difference in built form or anything else between the north and south sides of the municipal border.

View attachment 25036

With all due respect, the only people who advocate it stopping at Steeles are people who live in Toronto who never go up beyond it.




I think this was already addressed but the point is really quite straightforward: what we have now, for the first time, is a growth plan for the larger region and it advocates curbing sprawl by requiring transit-oriented infill. You can't legislatively require municipalities to provide infill and then not provide the infrastructure or it won't work and you will get more sprawl. Or you could be really spiteful and legislatively demand they intensify at a specific location and decide to build the transit 2 kilometres away, I suppose. I don't know why you would, but you could.

But if you live in the city at Y and E for example, what reason do you have to go to YR anyway? It looks like according to the most recent reports the province is not that keen on extending yonge anyway, even that golden report had it stopping at steeles. I don't agree with that, they should leave it that way it is when GO service goes to 15 minutes system wide. Bring the DRL to Don Mills Finch, BD to McCowan Finch, and call it a day.
It is absolutely illogical to stop the line at Yonge and Steeles, what is there? If the expansion will be stopped there, then don't build it at all.

Agreed. Expand the GO service, and then move on.
 
I think this was already addressed but the point is really quite straightforward: what we have now, for the first time, is a growth plan for the larger region and it advocates curbing sprawl by requiring transit-oriented infill. You can't legislatively require municipalities to provide infill and then not provide the infrastructure or it won't work and you will get more sprawl. Or you could be really spiteful and legislatively demand they intensify at a specific location and decide to build the transit 2 kilometres away, I suppose. I don't know why you would, but you could.

Even if we're talking about building transit lines to empty fields and hoping developers build condos there and people move in, we already have a place for that: the Vaughan-York U Spadina extension. Plenty of space to build at Downsview Park and in Vaughan along the new subway there which is almost complete at this point. The bonus is that it's not a subway that's already at-capacity like Yonge is (or will be).

Another situation where we can grow and build infrastructure is the west Don lands where there are already tons of condos being built and where the DRL would run though.

I don't see showing renderings of a bunch of future condos at Highway 7 and Yonge to be a convincing argument that building a subway there is a priority. If the argument was that there are already tons of buses running down Yonge at capacity so we may as well build a subway to carry those existing riders, I find that a much more convincing argument.
 
I don't, for a minute, think that things will be built as described in Murray and Wynne's announcement. Bits and pieces of what have been announced might, but over a longer schedule and in a much more compromised manner than many of us are expecting.

It should be read as a platform to enter an election with. At first I thought it was a huge political gamble for the Liberals, but I realized over the space of a day that it was actually pretty clever realpolitik.

Forcing this announcement into the budget forces Horwath between a rock and a hard place. She could reject it, force an election and, if the Liberals lose, the Liberals will also go down as transit martyrs. They didn't have to do anything, but people will talk for a generation about how the Liberals under Wynne had this terrific plan and the NDP blew it. When you think about it, it's sort of Network 2011 under Peterson redux.

If the Liberals win, the very long-range nature of some of these proposals means that many will still only have made it to the EA stage before another election comes up. Again, some money will be spent, and some of the low hanging fruit may actually get built, but some of the responsibility for what to do with the flagship ideas, like HSR to London and the DRL, will inevitably be dumped onto the next government.
 

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