Allandale25
Senior Member
Am I the only one who finds it VERY odd that all the RER lines are to begin operations in 2025? We are talking over 200 km {what exactly is the total kms of RER anyway?} of electrified line with new vehicles GO/TTC have no experience in. Usually it takes many months to train the staff on the new vehicles, route, and safety runs on the route so expecting them to do all this at the same time for opening of the same year with 200km seems really weird. Even the Chinese would have a hard time opening 200km of new near-subway level service in one year. All of this is to say nothing of all the new vehicles arriving within a year of each other.
In the comparison to what China has done and the timeframe for GO electrification, I'd be interested in knowing if China (or other places) built a lot of completely new corridors or used existing ones. Some advantages, I would think but I'm not an expert, that GO has with its version of electrified RER include:
- using existing corridors;
- not needing to built to HSR standards;
- a sense already of where the additional tracks are needed and other infrastructure;
- studies already done on where to get the power and its distribution;
- being able to adopt what other places have done with electrification given that they've had it for decades for commuter rail.
I would agree that the rough HSR timeframe the Province has given seems much more ambitious.
Maybe I'm just being naive though. That'd be a fair point. I do think that the wiring of the Union Station Rail Corridor is going to be complicated. On the training part, I'd have to let others speak on how long that would actually take. I think a bigger challenge from what I've read over the years here won't be retraining the existing operators, rather, it'll be finding enough new operators to join and expand the team in time.