Have any viability studies been done in respect of extending GO east of Hunter Street to a suburban/east Hamilton terminus? I remember reading a CN vs CP comparison in respect of a Niagara extension which said the CP line as a whole would take a lot of capex to get it to useful speed/capacity but I was thinking more of a single stop with P+R plus storage tracks using the same number of consists given the tunnel constraint. I guess it might be seen as cannibalising Confederation GO traffic now since that seems to be being greenlighted to shove Hamilton Council over the LRT finish line.
It would help reduce duplication but:
- The tunnel is only a single track
- It's super-difficult to add extra trackage even in the single-track trench (you could trenchwall, but...)
- The corridor is owned by CP which has historically been harder to negotiate with than CN.
- Metrolinx successfully purchased way more trackage from CN
- West Harbour (JamesNorth) is on a very long, straight-arrow CN corridor with plenty of ROW for two more extra tracks along a lot of its route.
- West Harbour (JamesNorth) is a faster and straighter eventual route to Niagara Falls
- The CN corridor is almost a perfect straight HSR-capable arrow almost all the way to Niagara Falls and has room for 4-tracks without residential expropriation (2 tracks used, protected space for 2 more tracks).
It would be stupendously expensive to find a way to get frequent Niagara service through Hunter station, since we'd need to end up triple-tracking the tunnel (one CP track, two Metrolinx tracks) and expropriate a lot of houses for two-way service. Also, who knows, they may be intending to electricify the CN corridor in the next twenty or thirty years -- a good theoretical connector for a theoretical Acela Empire Express service that New York State keeps occasionally talking about (high speed trains to New York City by 2050, anyone?).
The CN corridor that JamesNorth/Confederation GO will use, is a wider and straight arrow corridor capable in theory of sustaining 300kph+ HSR speeds all the way to Welland Canal (near Niagara Falls) if fully grade separated, track separate of CN, electricified, and with rail rated for speed is installed. There is only one faint bend. A super tiny 3-degree Grimsby bend -- so slight that high speed trains can breeze through that curve at 300kph -- especially if further rounding the curve as there's farmland inside the curve to allow further straightening to massively increase of the turning radius to 300kph-compatibility with no braking. That 3-degree curve is the only curve between Hamilton Junction and Welland Canal! It's ruler-straight other than that! Almost perfect straight A to B. It could someday let 300kph between the Hamiltion Junction (west Hamilton) all the way PAST St. Catharines with full 300kph future capability theoretically achievable without expropriation or stealing track from CN -- that's how damn straight the CN railroad is! So even if it won't happen till 2050-2100, it is a wide four-trackable corridor worth protecting for future HSR. Almost no residential expropriation needed to add four tracks all the way to St. Catharines (even through Grimbsy and St. Catharines, there is reserved space for four track corridor). It only currently has two tracks -- just begging for two additional Metrolinx-specific tracks if we negotiate well with CN -- in a corridor capable of full 300kph acceleration someday next century! Welland canal is another story, but who knows, within 100 years, we might finally do the $1bn canal grade separation tunnel. *this* is the Niagara corridor we want to use; it's a straight arrow without the looping CP curves. So, why bother trying to go to Niagara Falls via the curvy CP routing? Given we'll have to do lots more expropriation anyway, on top of that to boot? There is really no contest that the shortest way between A and B is a straight line (short of building a tunnel under Lake Ontario to Toronto). Yes, HSR is a pie in the sky for this corridor right now -- but I am just saying all of this to merely pointing out that this corridor straightness and corridor space is so vastly superior to the CP routing via Hunter. St. Catharines residents won't want to take 3 hours by train via the CP corridor when the straight-arrow CN corridor allows 2 hours via plain GOtrains.
Note: At the same time, I realize HSR to Niagara is a longshot. When HSR happens, it will be either Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal or the London-Kitchener-Toronto that will be first, probably 2030s. However, Toronto-Hamilton-Niagara highspeed is probably more viable in Year 2050+ than Windsor or Quebec City, especially if Empire Corridor gets an Acela Express to New York City someday, and the attractive (to Metrolinx for high speed GOtrains) pursuit for 1-hour Niagara commute for our grandkids' children. The straight arrow is over 50 kilometers; a HSR train only needs 15km to accelerate to 300kph.
Now, you're right... Throwing enough money, it would be possible to extend past Hunter, and make it the main route to Niagara area, but it would be so stupendously expensive given the single track at the bottom of a trench followed by a single track tunnel, then beyond is a difficult housing expropriation situation (or expensive CP appeasement by building a new CP corridor for CP) as it squeezes through tight corridors beyond in a much more winding route than the CN route, and bring people to Toronto much more slowly than the virtually ruler-straight CN corridor.
