[Allandale25]

^ there was a TPAP for electrification started for the Georgetown-Kitchener portion I believe. Ran into opposition from some residents I. Guelph because of the proposed location for a Traction Power Station. I think the documents are online somewhere.

Update: here's the link

Home

A TPAP is an environmental assessment that studies the environmental impacts or effects of transit projects, and provides proposed mitigation. This streamlined approach helps to protect the environment, and allows for feedback through regular consultation from communities and stakeholders. The...

www.metrolinxengage.com

 

[crs1026]

Are there actual plans, however conceptual, to extend electrification into any of these places?

Electrification is only being seriously pursued where there are plans for sufficient frequency of trains and/or enough stops are being made in a short distance to demand the acceleration and braking. We may assume there will be frequency, but ML may not actually plan that to be the case, at least for now..

If you look at the RER business case (which may no longer be the roadmap, but anyways......) you will find that the really intensive 15 minute 2WAD is not being proposed all the way to the ends of some corridors. For the outlying areas, hourly service or less may be all that's proposed - and there is no economic case for putting those lighter used segments under wires.

Both freight railways are adamant about not allowing wires on their tracks. One may feel that they should rethink that, but they show no signs of being inclined to do so.

- Paul

 

[Sunnyside]

^ there was a TPAP for electrification started for the Georgetown-Kitchener portion I believe. Ran into opposition from some residents I. Guelph because of the proposed location for a Traction Power Station. I think the documents are online somewhere.

Update: here's the link

Home

A TPAP is an environmental assessment that studies the environmental impacts or effects of transit projects, and provides proposed mitigation. This streamlined approach helps to protect the environment, and allows for feedback through regular consultation from communities and stakeholders. The...

www.metrolinxengage.com

Thanks for this. Checking it out, it really seems like they didn't bother much at all with relocating the power station- for that matter, what is a traction power station for, and why can't it be located elsewhere? Does it need to be near a station?

Electrification is only being seriously pursued where there are plans for sufficient frequency of trains and/or enough stops are being made in a short distance to demand the acceleration and braking. We may assume there will be frequency, but ML may not actually plan that to be the case, at least for now..

If you look at the RER business case (which may no longer be the roadmap, but anyways......) you will find that the really intensive 15 minute 2WAD is not being proposed all the way to the ends of some corridors. For the outlying areas, hourly service or less may be all that's proposed - and there is no economic case for putting those lighter used segments under wires.

Both freight railways are adamant about not allowing wires on their tracks. One may feel that they should rethink that, but they show no signs of being inclined to do so.

- Paul

I will check the roadmap, but my main takeaway is that for the short extension to Hamilton, distance to the next stop is likely not the issue, rather it's the plethora of other issues of expanding GO service in Hamilton.

After reading through the roadmap, there is no indication of electrification beyond the currently determined bounds. What it does indicate is higher service levels beyond said points, ie. 30 min service to WH and hourly to Hunter GO (don't know how they plan on doing that). This is in line with what I assumed the situation was. The segments beyond the current electrification plan also could justify being electrified, it comes down to track ownership primarily. As you mentioned, we are not going to electrify freight lines because they would never agree; this is the primary reason why electrification isn't going to mt Pleasant (part of the contiguous GTHA) or Hamilton. These places are close enough to the soon-to-be electrified network, and have populations/densities that could easily justify wires if GO owned the track. I'd wager most traffic at Aldershot is Hamiltonians taking advantage of the serious improvement in service compared to WH or Hunter GO. Not to mention, the Barrie Line certainly does not need to be electrified all the way to the end if we are talking about places that 'deserve 15-minute intensive service'. It is being electrified because GO owns the corridor. They will probably not run 15-min 2WAD service to Barrie, but the wires will be there.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting your point here. Are you suggesting instead that service to these outlying areas would be better accommodated by long-haul express services on diesel locos? Ie, most Hamilton/Kitchener/Mt. Pleasant/Bowmanville traffic is actually intercity-style commutes to downtown Toronto? If so, that suggests the electrified, 'local' service can only be justified on the currently-planned electrified corridors. I'd disagree with this, but I am curious as to what you are getting at. My initial question was mostly pertaining to if GO had plans that looked at/recognized the value of extending electrification to locations that are a stone's throw away from other stations. Ie, Bowmanville, Hamilton and Mt. Pleasant/Kitchener (kept Kitchener as further discussion shows its been on the table before). My knowledge is pertaining to Hamilton mostly, but I am inferring that you think these locations are not worthy of electrification because they are too far, not because there are other, more insurmountable challenges in the way.

Edit: This is the report I looked at: https://www.metrolinx.com/en/docs/p..._BoardMtg_GO_Expansion_Full_Business_Case.PDF

 

[crs1026]

Maybe I'm misinterpreting your point here. Are you suggesting instead that service to these outlying areas would be better accommodated by long-haul express services on diesel locos? Ie, most Hamilton/Kitchener/Mt. Pleasant/Bowmanville traffic is actually intercity-style commutes to downtown Toronto?

I wasn’t taking a position, so much as trying to operate within ML’s original rationale, right or wrong.

There are many jurisdictions where the entire GO network would already have been electrified end to end. Many of us posters would be absolutely supportive of doing so. Rightly or wrongly, ML has applied a more restrictive set of criteria. Under Ml’s criteria, an extension to Bowmanville that only sees 5 peak trains in each direction per day does not justify electric trains, even though it is only a fairly short extension of a route that will be electrified from Oshawa westward. (The 5 trains thing was the initial BCS plan, it may have been upgraded since then, but only to hourly 2WAD ? I have lost the ball here…)

This discussion here is a bit ambiguous in that sometimes it is us transit nerds debating what ML’s strategy ought to be, but at other times us transit nerds simply recognizing what ML’s stated strategy and underlying service design is and wishing they would get on with it. Both are valid discussions, but one is more freewheeling and uses non-ML assumptions and service specs. It can be more academic, since ML is not necessarily interested in our free advice.

Maybe if we invoiced them big bucks for access to this thread…..

- Paul

 

[Sunnyside]

I wasn’t taking a position, so much as trying to operate within ML’s original rationale, right or wrong.

There are many jurisdictions where the entire GO network would already have been electrified end to end. Many of us posters would be absolutely supportive of doing so. Rightly or wrongly, ML has applied a more restrictive set of criteria. Under Ml’s criteria, an extension to Bowmanville that only sees 5 peak trains in each direction per day does not justify electric trains, even though it is only a fairly short extension of a route that will be electrified from Oshawa westward. (The 5 trains thing was the initial BCS plan, it may have been upgraded since then, but only to hourly 2WAD ? I have lost the ball here…)

This discussion here is a bit ambiguous in that sometimes it is us transit nerds debating what ML’s strategy ought to be, but at other times us transit nerds simply recognizing what ML’s stated strategy and underlying service design is and wishing they would get on with it. Both are valid discussions, but one is more freewheeling and uses non-ML assumptions and service specs. It can be more academic, since ML is not necessarily interested in our free advice.

Maybe if we invoiced them big bucks for access to this thread…..

- Paul

Agreed, this discussion seems to hinge on Metrolinx being vague on methodology, strategy, logic, etc. You and I are both right, in that under the current framework, the current electrification plans are the most logical and cost-efficient places to expand to. Really the reasons for why are irrelevant because in typical Mx fashion, they are not clear nor particularly grounded in data anyways. More methodological approaches to determining where better service is needed or could at least work is something Mx should be doing already. There is an inherent cultural demand for more transit, and there’s a lot that actually needs to be done- more than we are able to build.

The region needs a cohesive end goal for the transit system of the GTHA, in this case for GO to clear up topics like these. Just because something isn’t possible now, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t ever be done; its often a cost issue, not a viability issue. And conflating these two is the crux of the problem here, which would be alleviated if mx would show us their ideal completed system, and work backwards from there.

Also, you would think Metrolinx and other agencies would take a look over here once in a while. Not everyone’s a professional, but there’s no harm in seeing input from passionate people.

 

[ssiguy2]

You mean to tell me that electrifying just the original RER sections could take up to another decade? Why, in God's name, did they not just put up all the poles as they were building/repairing/expanding current lines and stations or would that have been too logical?

If it takes more than 3 years to electrify the entire RER sections, then heads should roll.

 

[superelevation]

You mean to tell me that electrifying just the original RER sections could take up to another decade? Why, in God's name, did they not just put up all the poles as they were building/repairing/expanding current lines and stations or would that have been too logical?

If it takes more than 3 years to electrify the entire RER sections, then heads should roll.

We are talking about electrifying hundreds of kilometers of track in a country that has done zero mainline rail electrification in decades? Why would we put up poles until the last moment, one of the few benefits of our current situation without electrification infra is that corridors have few obstructions and are very open, why throw that away with so many major projects still needing to be done

 

[KevinT]

Thanks for this. Checking it out, it really seems like they didn't bother much at all with relocating the power station- for that matter, what is a traction power station for, and why can't it be located elsewhere? Does it need to be near a station?

It's a transformer station that powers the 25 kV railway overhead from the 115 kV (or higher depending on the line) primary grid tie. It has to be both a) close to the rail line and b) near a major grid tie. There's not that many places they can go.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting your point here. Are you suggesting instead that service to these outlying areas would be better accommodated by long-haul express services on diesel locos? Ie, most Hamilton/Kitchener/Mt. Pleasant/Bowmanville traffic is actually intercity-style commutes to downtown Toronto? If so, that suggests the electrified, 'local' service can only be justified on the currently-planned electrified corridors.

This is where I was confused too that Guelph was even being looked at for a traction power substation, as it's beyond the CN-owned Georgetown to Bramalea (roughly, don't recall the exact endpoints) section of the Kitchener Line. Although it did imply that either dual power locomotives or battery electric locomotives were being considered, presumably to provide a frequent service all the way out to Kitchener. Selfishly I'm excited about that, and very dismayed over what happened in Guelph.

 

[crs1026]

This is where I was confused too that Guelph was even being looked at for a traction power substation, as it's beyond the CN-owned Georgetown to Bramalea (roughly, don't recall the exact endpoints) section of the Kitchener Line. Although it did imply that either dual power locomotives or battery electric locomotives were being considered, presumably to provide a frequent service all the way out to Kitchener. Selfishly I'm excited about that, and very dismayed over what happened in Guelph.

I have never been confident that the ML staff who were designing the Kitchener electrification were having much contact with the ML staff who were negotiating access rights with CN. Left hand, right hand is a ML trait.
Electrifying to Kitchener had momentum back when the “Missing Link” idea saw CN moving off the Bramalea-Georgetown segment altogether. But once CN and ML reached agreement to share the line, with some incremental improvements such as a third track at Brampton and the Silver flyover, electrification simply isn’t going to happen.
Just getting to a solid 2WAD service to Kitchener with diesel will take so long that it’s worth forgetting about wires west of Bramalea. By then, some alternative non-wired technologies may have reached commercial viability. Personally, I would like to see wires to Mount Pleasant at least, but I’m not confident that CN will ever agree to that.

- Paul

 

[Sunnyside]

I have never been confident that the ML staff who were designing the Kitchener electrification were having much contact with the ML staff who were negotiating access rights with CN. Left hand, right hand is a ML trait.
Electrifying to Kitchener had momentum back when the “Missing Link” idea saw CN moving off the Bramalea-Georgetown segment altogether. But once CN and ML reached agreement to share the line, with some incremental improvements such as a third track at Brampton and the Silver flyover, electrification simply isn’t going to happen.
Just getting to a solid 2WAD service to Kitchener with diesel will take so long that it’s worth forgetting about wires west of Bramalea. By then, some alternative non-wired technologies may have reached commercial viability. Personally, I would like to see wires to Mount Pleasant at least, but I’m not confident that CN will ever agree to that.

- Paul

I agree almost entirely with everything you've said here. Electrification to Kitchener is absolutely a pipe dream, and I am kind of surprised it was considered. I can't imagine the marginal cost of going quad track to Mt. Pleasant is that much though, and you gain significant benefits. There's complete electrified service for all of Brampton, and Brampton GO is brought up to snuff as a regional node with connections to Hurontario. Battery electric to Kitchener is somewhat realistic, but also far off. It sounds silly, but hourly service to Kitchener is likely decades away, even if it is via conventional diesel loco or DMUs. It really shouldn't be, but Metrolinx's hands are tied financially and building additional track just doesn't look appealing right now I guess.

 

[KevinT]

It sounds silly, but hourly service to Kitchener is likely decades away, even if it is via conventional diesel loco or DMUs. It really shouldn't be, but Metrolinx's hands are tied financially and building additional track just doesn't look appealing right now I guess.

Not so sure about that, significant work is going into the second platform in Guelph and double track through Breslau. I suspect they wouldn't do that unless hourly was in the cards, although then again without shovels in the ground for the Silver flyover, who knows?

 

[Sunnyside]

Not so sure about that, significant work is going into the second platform in Guelph and double track through Breslau. I suspect they wouldn't do that unless hourly was in the cards, although then again without shovels in the ground for the Silver flyover, who knows?

I'm referring to what I saw in the 2041/2051(?) Transportation Master Plan, but not exactly sure. I agree it might be, and certainly should be, but I haven't seen anything suggesting otherwise myself.

I'm somewhat surprised Waterloo Region and Guelph haven't attempted to coordinate for more tracks between just the two municipalities for a local DMU service (or to Cambridge). Its much more useful and achievable for residents in a shorter time frame, and GO would never operate a local service like that of their own volition. All I know exists is a proposal floating around somewhere, which doesn't do anyone any good. You'd think they would at least run a half-hourly bus to gauge demand.

 

[smallspy]

You mean to tell me that electrifying just the original RER sections could take up to another decade? Why, in God's name, did they not just put up all the poles as they were building/repairing/expanding current lines and stations or would that have been too logical?

And to what standard do you put up the poles for? Headspans? Cantilever? Portals? What is your pole-to-pole spacing, and will it then be different with the rest of the line or system?

Dan

 

[ssiguy2]

Putting aside being able to put up the poles before any other construction, there is no way it should take more than 3 years to electrify 250km of track.

All they need due is contract the construction to several different companies at the same time. As for not having any experience, that is a loud of crap. As I understand it, subdivisions get new lighting and electrical poles put up all the time all over the damn place.

 

[Sunnyside]

Putting aside being able to put up the poles before any other construction, there is no way it should take more than 3 years to electrify 250km of track.

All they need due is contract the construction to several different companies at the same time. As for not having any experience, that is a loud of crap. As I understand it, subdivisions get new lighting and electrical poles put up all the time all over the damn place.

Maybe we're in the wrong frame of reference. Metrolinx was mostly pulling the numbers based on how they think this is all going to go. With DB on the project, they will likely knock some sense into this whole thing. I don't know if they will speed up stringing the wires, but they will definetely recommend/actively pursue the most efficient implemention plan possible.