reaperexpress
Senior Member
How many times do we need to repeat that the GO service will NOT be used by commuters from London to Toronto?
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- Thread starter drum118
- Start date
Northern Light
Superstar
Stay tuned for gas prices going up.........likely to $1.50 per L, within 2 weeks.
Full return to the office (likely January)
An associated shortage of parking spots.
The mask mandate being dropped; (likely January), as that's the indication for 'return to normal' and will give people greater confidence.
innsertnamehere
Superstar
my experience is that the QEW / Gardiner is still much less busy than normal still, though yea, lots of traffic even with still lower volumes. The Gardiner especially is still much less busy and is nowhere near as congested as it was pre-pandemic. While many more industrial industries have returned to work, downtown based industries (office employment) are still work from home, which means that the Gardiner is proportionately more empty than other highways still.
I expect GO ridership to start to pick up once downtown office workers return.
Krypto98
Active Member
What's up with the large discrepancy between the travel times of the Via Rail train and the Kitchener Go train? The Via Rail train is a good 15 minutes faster for the exact same stops and distance.
Allandale25
Senior Member
Bordercollie
Senior Member
Think about that, the P42 and F40's with 2-3 LRC or HEP cars, or an F59 with 6-8 Bilevel coaches. Which one is heavier? I bet the gearing is not the same either.
reaperexpress
Senior Member
Yeah I generally have far more faith in GO's schedules than VIA's. Beyond just having fewer conflicts with freight trains, I think GO's better on-time performance is also partly because GO is constantly tweaking schedules to reflect actual run times. In contrast, the North Mainline VIA timetable has remained untouched for years despite track upgrades between Kitchener and Georgetown and a considerable increase in GO services east of Kitchener. It's possible that new slow orders have also appeared west of Kitchener since the schedule was written.
While the scheduled VIA travel time between London and Kitchener may be too short, I suspect that the scheduled travel time between Kitchener and Toronto is too long. GO express services run the line in 1h41 making 6 intermediate stops, while VIA schedules 1h35 making 3 or 4 intermediate stops. I would have expected a larger difference between the two given the much lighter VIA consists (typically only 2 or 4 single-deck coaches) and GO's generally more conservative scheduling. VIA also schedules 26 minutes from Kitchener to Guelph while GO schedules only 21.
My guess is that VIA's end-to-end travel time is accurate, but their eastbound departure time from Kitchener should be about 5 minutes later (and westbound departure 5 minutes earlier). That would work out to 1h59 London - Kitchener and 1h30 Kitchener - Toronto, which matches the GO travel times a bit better.
P.S. The GO schedule is a testament to how appalling the tracks currently are west of Kitchener:
Kitchener - Toronto:
103 km in 1h41 (61 km/h avg) - while making 6 intermediate stops (14.7 km spacing)
London - Kitchener
92 km in 2h12 (42 km/h avg) - while making 2 intermediate stops (30.7 km spacing)
It is absolutely disgraceful that the train only averages 42 km/h west of Kitchener. A train service with 31 km stop spacing and a dead straight alignment between stations should average around 80-90 km/h, based on other VIA lines with similar stop spacing.
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Garuda
Active Member
Anecdotally I don’t think I’ve ever seen the VIA train arrive at its scheduled 9:44am time in Guelph.
Bordercollie
Senior Member
I'm sure that a tie replacement program and some new sleepers would help. Probably 100K would go a long way to increasing speeds
smallspy
Senior Member
reaperexpress
Senior Member
Fixing broken ties may address some slow orders, but we'd still have a 40 mph (64 km/h) line speed which is too slow to be useful to anyone. In my opinion the line needs a ground-up reconstruction to 95 mph (153 km/h) standard, with two additional sidings to enable hourly service in both directions. Then we'd have a line which would actually attract some measureable ridership/revenue, with downtown-to-downtown travel times faster than the best-case scenario by car.
Maybe if there are some very low-hanging repairs which could lift some slow zones at minimal cost, then they could do those, but I personally wouldn't spend any significant money on the current track infrastructure which (in my opinion) should be totally replaced.
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smallspy
Senior Member
A simple tie replacement program may be all that is needed to get the line back up to its historic line speed of 80mph. And would take far less time and cost than a full rebuild of the track structure (which may or may not be able to attain your 95mph wishes).
Dan
reaperexpress
Senior Member
Ah that's great to hear. I wasn't aware that the historic line speed was 80 mph (129 km/h). If tie replacement is all it takes to get it up to 80 mph, then that does sound worthwhile. If the current track structure is in decent condition, then a 95 mph upgrade could be postponed until it needs more serious work.
What is the scenario you're referencing where a 95 mph standard would not be attainable? Although some of the curves do indeed limit speeds to 80 mph or lower, that shouldn't preclude a higher track speed on the extremely long straight segments between stations.
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Northern Light
Superstar
Whether the investment the KW-London track segment is 10M or 100M or more; that segment needs to be in public ownership, rather than having a vast public subsidy to CN which would then still control access/schedule/slots.
reaperexpress
Senior Member
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that. It almost goes without saying.
Technically the purchase itself is also a subsidy to CN, but at least it's a one-time subsidy rather than a perpetual ball-and-chain on passenger operations.