Regarding headways: Be careful what you wish for regarding very short headways. If your line only has a single track per direction (Barrie, Stouffville, LSE following introduction of line-based running) and your local service is very frequent, you can't have any express services. I for one don't want to be making every station stop en route from Barrie to Toronto.
But plenty of people already are fine with it even with the current 2 hour long trip to Barrie and Electrification with cut down that travel time.
i mean...how long is the average streetlight?
also if the schedule is synced enough, they could probaly get the timings down to get the trains to pass at the exact same time to lower the frequency of the gates.
like when each grade separation is $100 million the value goes way down
this is in defence of cancelling the scarborough grade separation and the one in etobicoke
That's impossible, not without slowing trains and automation. You might be able to sync a couple crossing with little change but the only way to sync them all up would be to control train speeds likely requiring many situations where trains are operating at far lower speeds then they otherwise would normal do just to so you can time a crossing right rather than operating at full speed and that's self defeating. Its better and more efficient to simply eliminate the crossing all together which coffers the additonal benefit of eliminating any chance of grade crossing accidents. Many of the worse grade crossings in Canada are in the gta/within the GO transit network and more frequent trains will only make these crossings all the more dangerous;
A lot of times the speeds are slow because of track geometry, not because of train's top speed limits. That won't change with electrification. Does faster acceleration alone account for that much time savings? (I don't believe in shorter dwell times theory if we are still running DDs)
Yes at least on the Lakeshore and other straight line corridors. Richmond Hill/Stouffville not so much due to their poor geometry. Diesel locos are dinosaurs vs electric ones when it comes to acceleration, also shorter trains will make just as much of an impact as im sure people undoubtedly noticed during the pandemic.
In 2000, it took 42 mins for the train to go from Union to Bronte, that number is 46 mins today:
Also has as much to do with schedule padding as anything else. Padding makes the system more reliable to be sure but at the expensive of time. The 15 minute guarantee and the desire to not have to pay it out plus the governments need to continually pat themselves on the back about how great they are when it comes to on time performance doesn't help matters either.
it's more for the future
they could set themselves up to massively expand the station count but are choosing not to. while it would have a higher up front cost (trains + stations), they'd be able to create very good local service on par with TTC subway on top of being a regional network.
like upwards of twice as many stops in urban areas with little to no reduction in service times due to much better acceleration.
Disagree. The difference between EMU and electric locos isn't half as much has the difference between 12 pack diesel hauled locos and 6 pack electric hual locos. The reduction in train size is just as important as the switch to electric. Switching to EMUs won't result in that dramatic of a reduction plus they can already meet the desired service levels without without them. I don't see any evidence that go corridors would require subway like capacities in the near future even with a few additional stops that's just wishful thinking on your part.
Interesting - for some reason I’d never put two and two together re: cost of operating GO. Unfortunately, doing all the legwork for electrification has also become more expensive at the same time, and, given the recent news of Windsor losing an LG Chem plant because of lack of generating capacity, I’m really curious how much capacity we need/have to power the trains.
Thats sounds more like a local power distribution issue in south west Ontario than general lack of power.
