[rbt]

Anyone else surprised that this thing could generate 6 million passengers per year? Assuming a totally even distribution of passengers between work days and weekends...that averages 16,500 per day! If they are all return trips....8,250 people a day moving between these centres?

I'd buy it. Experience in most cities is that their most common passenger is a commuter on routes supporting trips under 60 minutes regardless of cost or distance. London to Kitchener may be lightly loaded but Kitchener to Toronto will probably be packed in the morning/evening rush periods even if there is a large fare premium over standard GO service.

 

[mpd618]

The reason why I think you've got to start with upgrades is because the needed market isn't HSR to London, but fast regional rail to Brampton, Guelph, Kitchener. I really fear getting distracted by some left-field HSR plan to London will distract from this other need. Anyway, upgrading of the existing track is needed in any case if this new fancy HSR is going to skip Guelph, Brampton et al.

I'm not sure how much I buy it, but in today's announcement, Murray talked about the preliminary study of the regional upgrades, and said they found that going all the way to HSR wasn't that much further.

 

[TOareaFan]

I'd buy it. Experience nearly everywhere else is that most passengers will take it daily as commuter rail if the trip is under an hour. Commuting from London is a bit of a stretch but it will probably be pretty popular with Kitchener residents working in downtown Toronto.

8,000 people live in KW or London and work in Toronto? Let's say half of his projected 16,500 rides per day are projected as commuters......4k people live in those cities and commute to Toronto?

And if it is to satisfy a commuter demand.....is 1/2 hourly service all day not a set up for overcrowding in the peak and empty in the middle of the day?

 

[diminutive]

The reason why I think you've got to start with upgrades is because the needed market isn't HSR to London, but fast regional rail to Brampton, Guelph, Kitchener. I really fear getting distracted by some left-field HSR plan to London will distract from this other need. Anyway, upgrading of the existing track is needed in any case if this new fancy HSR is going to skip Guelph, Brampton et al.

I'm not opposed to HSR, even to London, but I think Murray is nuts.

It's completely nuts. Most of the GTA is stuck in traffic and the rest of the Province is probably lucky to see 30 minute bus service, and the solution is to blow what can't be less than several billion dollars on a train targeting a couple super-commuters?

It's such an obviously crazy idea, so obviously an attempt to just dangle something shiny in front of Liberal battleground ridings in
KW and London.

 

[mpd618]

8,000 people live in KW or London and work in Toronto? Let's say half of his projected 16,500 rides per day are projected as commuters......4k people live in those cities and commute to Toronto?

And if it is to satisfy a commuter demand.....is 1/2 hourly service all day not a set up for overcrowding in the peak and empty in the middle of the day?

All of the messaging around this is about economic development through the "knowledge economy". It's not so much about existing demand, but about inducing new demand and new economic ties between cities along the 401 corridor. And honestly, I don't see how 70-minute trains every half hour between London, Kitchener, Pearson, and Toronto wouldn't completely change the calculus about where and whether to set up offices for a new or existing business.

 

[ehlow]

If this actually happens, then someone living in downtown Kitchener, say within walking distance of the GO station, will be able to get to downtown Toronto faster than most parts of the GTA and some parts of Toronto itself!

 

[DonValleyRainbow]

If this actually happens, then someone living in downtown Kitchener, say within walking distance of the GO station, will be able to get to downtown Toronto faster than most parts of the GTA and some parts of Toronto itself!

And that's a good thing? I'm going to risk starting a big debate by uttering these words: "bedroom communities".

 

[innsertnamehere]

.. Like any high speed rail line? I'm honestly very confused by the distaste for this.

You can get downtown from Pickering just as fast as you can from finch station today if you catch an express train, this is no different. Personally I am extremely excited about this..

This treats daily commuters as much as it treats regional ones. It's for more than the 4,000 daily commuters from kwc, it's for the 50,000 daily car trips on the 401. Couple this with improved GO rail service and local connections and it becomes easy to get around the GTA from this line. For example it would be faster to take the HSR to union and then the GO train to Mount joy than to drive, even if you take the 407. With the 407 it would be maybe 5mins faster but without it you would be up 30 minutes (assuming no traffic)

I could see this taking the route of the UPX, with at least a large portion of capital costs covered by the fares, and the entirety of operating costs. It's final cost numbers to the taxpayer are probably quite low, much like the UPX.

 

[diminutive]

All of the messaging around this is about economic development through the "knowledge economy". It's not so much about existing demand, but about inducing new demand and new economic ties between cities along the 401 corridor. And honestly, I don't see how 70-minute trains every half hour between London, Kitchener, Pearson, and Toronto wouldn't completely change the calculus about where and whether to set up offices for a new or existing business.

That's just it, this feels like an excuse for the Liberals to play up a bunch of Richard Florida-isms about the creative class and "knowledge economy" (they'll probably wrap it up with their corporate welfare to Open Text and others) rather than anything like a coherent transit policy (which prioritizes actual rider benefits per unit of investment).

Of course it wouldn't "completely" change anything. Perhaps a few thousand people may use such a line, less than people who use Glencairn Station for the love of god. It would be a rounding error in a region with millions of jobs, except in terms of its outsized costs. Politicians love this stuff because, like the UPX, it allows them to use empty buzzwords (again, bring on the Richard Florida) and appeal to voters who normally find the indignity of riding a bus discomforting, but the see the "knowledge economy" as something "transformative."

Even in cities like San Francisco, practically synonymous with the "knowledge economy," the tech industry only accounts for 8% of the workforce. Meanwhile, while everyone's patting themselves on the back about how creative and transformative things are becoming and how great it is that Twitter gets millions in tax breaks, the bulk of the Bay Area deals with crap transit to get from their homes-next-to-oil-refineries to low paying service sector jobs and underfunded schools.

It's the complete skewing of government priorities away from some idealize notion of the "greater good" towards a super specific form of favouritism where certain industries (entertainment, tech, certain types of sexy manufacturing) are able to extract totally outsized benefits.

.. Like any high speed rail line? I'm honestly very confused by the distaste for this.

Because the major issues with transit in the GTA/Ontario have more to do with basics like access to reliable bus service and the like, not the absence of a luxury train to London (of all places..)

It's akin to a country with rampant illiteracy or malnutrition suddenly insisting on free PhD programs.

 

[ehlow]

.. Like any high speed rail line? I'm honestly very confused by the distaste for this.

You can get downtown from Pickering just as fast as you can from finch station today if you catch an express train, this is no different. Personally I am extremely excited about this..

This treats daily commuters as much as it treats regional ones. It's for more than the 4,000 daily commuters from kwc, it's for the 50,000 daily car trips on the 401. Couple this with improved GO rail service and local connections and it becomes easy to get around the GTA from this line. For example it would be faster to take the HSR to union and then the GO train to Mount joy than to drive, even if you take the 407. With the 407 it would be maybe 5mins faster but without it you would be up 30 minutes (assuming no traffic)

I could see this taking the route of the UPX, with at least a large portion of capital costs covered by the fares, and the entirety of operating costs. It's final cost numbers to the taxpayer are probably quite low, much like the UPX.

Yes with this HSR line and frequent GO service across the GTA I'm excited about the possibility of our region and province hopefully becoming much easier to travel by rail in general, pushing us in the direction of what they have in Europe.

Not sure if you were responding to my post, but I didn't intend to express any "distaste", just that it would be kind of amazing that downtown Kitchener could be "closer" in terms of travel time to downtown Toronto than places in the GTA. However hopefully transit within the GTA will improve by then as well.

 

[mpd618]

...rather than anything like a coherent transit policy (which prioritizes actual rider benefits per unit of investment).

We seem to build new highways all the time in order to generate new economic activity, but I guess transit can only improve pre-existing trips?

Politicians love this stuff because, like the UPX, it allows them to use empty buzzwords (again, bring on the Richard Florida) and appeal to voters who normally find the indignity of riding a bus discomforting, but the "knowledge economy" as something "transformative."

If you see how downtown Kitchener and Waterloo Region as a whole are rapidly transforming with tech companies, both new and established, you might think differently about whether the knowledge economy is an empty buzzword. In a region like Southwestern Ontario that has been driven for the last century to a large extent by manufacturing, a shift in local economies in the direction of tech-heavy jobs is a big deal.

Even in cities like San Francisco, practically synonymous with the "knowledge economy," the tech industry only accounts for 8% of the workforce.

Waterloo Region's tech sector is now over 10% of the labour force and I believe it is the major source of economic growth here.

 

[ehlow]

Re: politicians supporting the tech sector

I think that politicians often like showing that they support tech because tech tends to be very high-growth and bring a lot of money in quickly (in terms of investment), and creates high-paying jobs that require education. I'm not saying the amount of tech-jobs is a significant percentage of the jobs overall, but it does have that association with the story of creating companies from nothing but ideas and creating many high-paying jobs.

Whereas there's generally a problem with young people getting an education and not being able to find a job related to their degree, in the tech sector it's almost the opposite situation where there is a big demand for people with degrees in Computer Science, and your education directly leads to a high paying an rewarding job.

Tech & tech startups tends to have the positive associates with innovation, entrepreneurship and from some people's perspective, the tech sector seems like the ideal basis of jobs/economy of the future. Whereas manufacturing is often viewed as jobs of the past.

You see this all the time with politicians visiting new tech companies or committing money towards "innovation funds" or investing in new video-game studios in the city for example.

 

[DarnDirtyApe]

No matter how you slice it, there are just not that many people who want to get travel between London/Kitchener and Toronto or Pearson. Most of that vaunted tech sector workforce in Waterloo will never have any reason to use this shiny new line, and neither will most of the 5MM+ people in the GTA who face a crappy commute every day. I love HSR as much as the next transit nerd, but we would be so much better off with upgraded regional rail, including service from KW to Pearson.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Regional trips also tend to generate more GDP per trip per se, someone traveling while not commuting is going to spend a lot more in London or Toronto than if they were commuting for a job.

By that way of thinking we should never build any regional connections as urban connections should always take precedent. The 401 should have never been built to montreal as more people drive on dundas street every day than on the 401. In reality it doesn't work like that, there are dozens of other factors to consider for a project rather than just sheer ridership. The individual trips made on this would be much more important than the ones made on the Yonge subway line, it would free up space on the 401 for shipping, and have major environmental benefits as the trips made on this service are much longer and energy consuming than shorter trips. (Meaning converting it to electric travel would have a major benefit). There's a whole lot of factors to consider, economic benefits, sprawl reduction, housing costs, built form, etc, etc, etc. By the looks of this it would be coupled with some major work for local transit as well, so I still don't see an issue with it.

 

[DarnDirtyApe]

Okay, so let's do a cost-benefit analysis on HSR vs upgraded regional rail and see which wins. We aren't going to get that because this is a typical Ontario Liberal vote-buying scheme. I could see this making sense if there was all day GO service between Kitchener/Pearson/Toronto that was overloaded, but we are so far away from that! It makes no sense.