^^^^ All the more reason to go catenary/battery hybrid. It requires far less time to build making cost estimates far more reliable and vastly cheaper. It would also result in easy expansion of the system with no new infrastructure required. Added to this is the bonus of being able to find the...

I hope they have the common sense to at least incorporate some battery power like being able to go just 30 or 40 km on battery. The advantages are clear. This would mean that any disruption in the power supply including problems with the wiring would not bring the train to a least make it to...

I'm curious..............Who of you think that ML will go with a battery train system with catenary recharging at each station or a core area of 100km and how many think they will go with 100% catenary?

Interesting update from Germany. Last week the rail transit agency for the very populace Rhein/Ruhr Valley announced that it is buying 60 battery vehicles to run on it's huge and very busy network to electrify the entire rail corridor system within the next few years. The trains will have...

There is absolutely no reason why they couldn't electrify the entire 200km within 2 years at the very most. ML saying otherwise is just lying and trying to cover up the ineptitude. If they found workers to build Garage Mahals then they can find them for electrification. Of course this wouldn't...

I think the Tories would support the plan or maybe even support true HSR to try to get some of those SWO seats or even to keep the ones they have. The NDP would support it or even demand higher speeds and electrification and many of the urban seats in South Central/Western Ontario are...

Holder stated in an interview a couple days ago after the HSR announcement that new service to London & SWO must meet 3 conditions: 1) Higher speeds 2) More reliable 3) More frequent This will require a lot of twinning of track, overpasses, and more rolling stock. He did not state that it...

London Mayor Ed Holder has stated that an announcement for VIA expansion in SWO is coming VERY soon which means within the month for full political points. I am sure the mayors of London & Windsor gave Ottawa a mouthful when the HFR was announced and omitted 10% of the nation's population just...

For 6-12 billion, this is pretty damn unambitious. These travel times are still ridiculous considering the money they are spending. Also, what about London & Windsor?

Thank you for such a well reasoned and thoughtful rebuttal. The Titanic sank 20 years earlier so maybe we should ban passenger ships too? We maybe able to fly to Mars on a Duracell in a 100 years but we don't have 100 years or even 50. Decarbonization of our entire transportation sector must...

How does it take 8 years to build just 8 km of subway with only 3 stations?

I agree, it's certainly not ideal. The ideal solution is the one presented by the Board of Trade but now that it has been presented, Metrolinx probably won't go for it if for no other reason than they don't want to copy an idea that wasn't theirs. That said, if the TTC flatly refuses to accept...

Shifting GO RER over to the TTC subway system would not be fare integration but rather the double fare outside Toronto city that commuters pay now except there would not longer be a GO fare. As an example, someone going from Brampton to UT would pay their standard Brampton transit fare to get to...

There is another option if the TTC refuses to take even a minor hit to it's finances. This would be to just RER becoming part of the subway system and most of it is already grade separated anyway. Essentially the Toronto subway goes from it's current 75 km to 300 km overnight. What this would...

It's certainly better than nothing but quite frankly not by much. The reality is that there must be a full scale transit integration model between EVERY agency and that is becoming even more important with the expansion of GO. Frankly, the individual transit systems really should not be having...

I don't know about the feasibility of "hydrid planes" but even if they are potentially feasible, they should not be endorsed. They will simply be used as a "better than oil" half measure much like many natural gas companies saying that it's cleaner burning than oil but omitting the fact that it...

^^ That's a possibility for these tiny little planes but impossible for large national carriers who make up 99% of all air traffic.

Of course this guy is forgetting one key point.......................downtime. It would take hours to recharge these batteries and time is money. Also these micro planes account for next to nothing in terms of passengers carried worldwide on a daily basis. Batteries are completely useless for...

Is that just a standard GO rail station? It's monstrous!

But knowing such things is key to the system's viability and ridership potential. The jumbo 12 car trains running now when electrified, will obviously have higher capacity but at the same time be significantly slower due to non-level boarding and hence much longer dwell times. Most people may...