reaperexpress
Senior Member
Can Niagara even support one train per hour? I know the plan is a forced transfer at Hamilton - James street.
I don't know. I certainly hope it will be able to support it a some point in the future, but I don't know how long it will take to change Hamilton and Niagara Regions' travel behaviours sufficiently.
To be realistic I probably should have included the split service in that breakdown, given that GO's fear of delays at the Welland Canal would not yet be resolved by grade-separation at that point. So it probably should have been:
2 trains per hour Hamilton - Toronto (or Unionville?) making limited stops, and
2 trains per hour Hamilton - Oshawa making all stops,
(and intermittent connections at Hamilton toward Niagara Falls).
It's worth noting that Toronto-Niagara is currently the busiest intercity bus corridor in the country, with 17 privately operated buses per direction between Toronto to Niagara (bypassing Hamilton) as well as 18 GO buses from Burlington to Niagara (also bypassing Hamilton). Combining all these passengers with the passengers travelling to Hamilton from Grimsby, St Catharines and Niagara Falls might be enough to warrant hourly train service. But without direct Toronto-Niagara service, there's no chance of capturing a big portion of the existing bus market, so it's a bit of a Catch-22.