Of course, that's why I wouldn't have recommended building it for 15 to 20 years, even if the government had designed the new bridges differently. But if you had built the bridges to accommodate it, it would hardly cost "billions" to lay 60 km or so of track on a mostly intact, existing right of...

I measured the 400 corridor on Google Maps at more than 90 metres wide in Barrie. The current six-lane highway, including shoulders and a grassy median, is only 40 metres wide. Even after expanding the highway to 10 lanes, that should leave a fair bit of room for rail...or at least it would if...

I posted my reply to all this on the GO services thread if you want to go look for it there. My apologies to all the northerners. I didn't mean for this to get so off-topic.

I'm replying to a discussion that came up in the Ontario Northland thread, which I think belongs better here. We were discussing use of the Northlander train to get to cottage country around Gravenhurst, and I lamented that the 400 widening project through Barrie didn't include provision for the...

I stand corrected on the Northlander timings. I apologize, as I definitely should have double-checked. I must have confused the arrival time for the southbound train at Union with the departure time of the northbound train. My bad. As for the Newmarket sub stuff, I'll quote you and reply in the...

Well, because a train is faster than a shuttle bus, and I was thinking there's probably some demand for fast transit between London and Kitchener. Also, the 100 km between the two I thought wasn't well suited to VIA, which is designed more for long-distance than daily commutes. I guess I was...

Someone on the GO construction projects thread last week was asking if GO could run a Kitchener to Guelph shuttle now that the Breslau track work was done. Maybe if GO bought the northern route, it could run a few London to Guelph local service trains (terminating in Guelph) in addition to...

The problem is that the Northlander I think isn't going to be timed for that. I think I read that it's supposed to leave Toronto around 9 a.m., and come back in the other direction late at night. That's not bad for cottage-goers headed up for a week or two, but isn't suitable for day trips into...

I can't speak for him, but I believe he meant that "much of owning a cottage in Canada is inviting your friends and family from the city for the weekend, and the cottage owner could do the pick-up for last mile."

Honestly, I would expect any demand for passenger rail in Muskoka would have more to do with serving summer cottage country travellers than winter driving. Even the Northlander might find itself used by cottage-goers in the summer if it's priced cheaply enough, despite being a long-distance...

Is it even necessarily in MLSE's interest to empty out the arena especially quickly? This is not my area of expertise, but maybe someone who lingers a little is more likely to buy a jersey, or buy something to eat on the way out.

I suppose that the funnelling effect depends on the direction of travel? I'd guess that the arena fills up gradually, and then empties out in a big burst. It might not be that crowded before a game or event as people enter. The bottleneck might be more of a problem as people leave, but in that...

I actually did raise this first in more detail in a post on the Union revitalization thread if you want to go look there (post #11,250 on Sunday), but then the next day, urban sky and nfitz started arguing in this thread about whether there was space at Union, so I raised it here as well more...

Ha! (Insert amused laughter here) Fair enough, you've got me there, I admit. Could I beg your thoughts on redeveloping the office space at Union? I really think that even if a pre-clearance facility isn't practical, that moving the VIA rail concourse over to Metrolinx's current office space...

Okay, I feel like I've already made a fairly decent and detailed argument that there is space at Union. Can I ask for a more detailed criticism backing up your assertion that there is no space? Everyone else, feel free to chime in on this as well, if you have a specific criticism of the space...

I'm not sure I understand your objection, and I think you may have misunderstood what I meant. That second paragraph you quoted wasn't about pre-clearance at all. It was suggestions about more streamlined checks at the current border stop in Niagara Falls, as an alternative to a pre-clearance...

I'll be honest, I didn't mean to suggest a customs check at Union was necessarily a great idea, just that I thought there was space for it. I'd place more faith personally on a Schengen-type deal or some way of speeding up the current border checks. You could maybe have people fill out...

If we're talking about space at Union, I'd point you to a post I made yesterday on the Union revitalization thread - and I agree that there probably is still underused space at Union. I figure Niagara Falls will probably need a new station closer to the falls eventually. The more realistic of...

This is the "news desert" effect in action. I've studied the economics of the advertising business a little. Essentially, the media used to make their money primarily from advertising revenue, not from subscriptions. But nowadays, many businesses prefer to use targeted online ads using data they...

Maybe you could do something with the space Metrolinx uses for offices? (My apologies if this has been suggested before; searching "metrolinx offices" produces a mess of results). A for-profit business would likely consider a range of factors in choosing an office space. They'd consider how...