[Second_in_pie]

Yes, I agree with you there. I'm just pointing out that Go Trains aren't THAT fast right now, due to rather unfavorable conditions. I guess all day service should roll out before lighter rolling stock and electrification and such, but those things shouldn't be very far away. The demand is there, Go's just not providing. I don't blame them, but it's the truth.

 

[yyzhyd]

With a few exceptions:

1. The Southbound DVP/404/401 interchange results in a frustrating 15 minute delay most times of the day.

2. The northbound DVP is almost always eternally jammed from between the Don Mills & Eglinton to past York Mills.

I don't think I have ever taken the bus from Union to Unionville station and reached faster than on the train.

 

[canarob]

I don't think I have ever taken the bus from Union to Unionville station and reached faster than on the train.

It depends on your station, I guess, as the night buses that stop at Markham first (the Markham-Uxbridge routes), are much, much faster than the train even with the slowdown northbound on the DVP. I would even argue that at night, the Unionville-Uxbridge buses are slightly faster for Union->Unionville. That being said, I've been stuck on buses in traffic jams many times, and if the bus has to detour, its all over. It's also terrible when it snows, etc. The (relative) reliability of rail is still a huge improvement. What I fear most though is losing frequency at night. E.i., instead of 19:05, 19:20, 19:40, 20:00, 20:20, 20:50, and 21:10 buses, there would only be 19:00, 20:00 and 21:00 trains.

the scheduled travel times from Markham GO Station to Union are 45 minutes

I do this everyday and sadly, it's almost always 50+ minutes.

 

[torontobatman]

Negitive.
Nothing is being done to widen the track under the 407. The work that is going on at that location is for a new bridge being built for the 407 widening.
Work being done at the Hagerman underpass is for a fiber optic cable being laid. New tracks are simply for replacement of the old tracks.

I'm sure you're right - I just remember seeing a tender for double tracking somewhere along the Stouffville line - do you know what that might be about?

 

[torontobatman]

I hope so, yeah. Seems a waste to do all that track work for a few trains a day. It makes me slightly nervous that they're going to have to deal with CP to serve Oshawa, though. Right now they have a pretty sweet setup with the GO sub. It's been over a decade now that CP has been blocking all-day service to Hamilton.

Forgive my naivety, why does CP block all-day service to Hamilton? Where is the CP section on that line, I'm assuming after Aldershot, right?

Also - does anyone know what the construction right to the west of Pickering is all about? This is right after the line that crosses over the 401 merges with where GO runs its trains.

 

[DavidJamesTO]

It's not so much an economic obstacle as a geographical one--the tunnel between the rest of the line and the Hunter Street station won't allow any additional traffic.

 

[Platform 27]

It's not so much an economic obstacle as a geographical one--the tunnel between the rest of the line and the Hunter Street station won't allow any additional traffic.

To be pedantic, it's a economic obstacle created by a geographical one.

The bottleneck amounts to about 1200 m of single track on a fully-CTC'ed line. I don't know exactly how much signal time a single GO Train moving through chews up, but any sane railway observer would describe it as not enough to seriously impact CP's operations.

The problem is that CP gets to define what a serious impact on their operations is, not GO or anyone else. And they've become rather attached to the flexibility of making moves from their Aberdeen Yard towards Niagara and vice versa via the wye under Dundurn without feeling under the clock. So their operations folks have made it clear that added GO movement time on their rails will come at a price that they alone will set.

Prior to the construction of the layover east of the Hamilton station, there were six trips through the tunnel in the early morning (3 dead-heads in and 3 revenue out) and eight in the evening (4 revenue in and 4 dead-heads out). Now that the layover is in place, CP has in their eternal graciousness permitted GO to switch to 8 revenue trips plus 0 dead-head movements. Which, as you math whizzes out their may notice, isn't really much of a gift at all, if this is all about precious tunnel signal time.

(Interestingly, in the EA from the early 90s that resulted in public money upgrading that trackage and adding CTC, something like 16 trips/day was quoted as the plausible final capacity. So much for that!)

I'm quite certain if GO really wanted to add train trips into Hamilton, they could get out their chequebooks and pay CP for them. At least at present, there's a large chunk of the day where traffic conditions mean that the status-quo QEW express bus is a faster ride to Union than an all-stops train would be. But some extra rush-hour service would be a great addition (particularly if they could get trains out of Hamilton at a more rider-friendly time, ie later than 07:17), especially if that could come with some rudimentary counterflow service.

 

[unimaginative2]

Forgive my naivety, why does CP block all-day service to Hamilton? Where is the CP section on that line, I'm assuming after Aldershot, right?

GO operates on CP's ex-TH&B line west of Hamilton Junction, which is near the Royal Botanical Gardens. It seems like it's mostly just a matter of not wanting to deal with the hassle of frequent passenger trains disrupting their freights.

 

[vegeta_skyline]

As much as I dislike frieght operators impacting on GO's operations, CP actually has a valid point when it comes to this section.

The track is frequently used by CP freights and to CP a serious impact on their operations basically constitutes a single train having to slow down in the slightest because of a GO train. Because having to slow down and then speeding it up again takes a fair amount of fuel for a heavy freight train. This extra cost in fuel is an added expense and we all know how much the freight carriers try to avoided any added expenses on their operations like the plague.

 

[Northern Light]

Hunter St. Tunnel

Its my understanding, (please correct me if I'm wrong)...

That the Hunter St. Tunnel was 2 tracks for much of its life, and if it were 2 tracks today, there would be ample room for new GO Service.

However, a number of years ago, CP reduced the tunnel to 1-track in order to accommodate those super-tall container cars. (with the remaining track shifted to the centre or tallest part of the tunnel)

Would it not be reasonable to consider a dig-down of 1-2 M in order to give the necessary height in the tunnel to accommodate a 2 track, container-capable system?

Thoughts?

 

[Kiwi]

There's a lot of apartments surrounding the Hunter St tunnel so I wouldn't be surprised if there's underground parking lots toching the tunnel already. You would probably have to do something creative to expand the tunnel.

But I doubt GO Transit and the Government of Ontario are willing to fund an expansion of the tunnel. They'll build the James St Station instead, 2 GO Stations in downtown Hamilton.

 

[RedRocket191]

Would it not be reasonable to consider a dig-down of 1-2 M in order to give the necessary height in the tunnel to accommodate a 2 track, container-capable system?

Thoughts?

This is pretty much the only way to expand the tunnel. I think that the James Street north station is good in the interim, but it's no substitute for GO service into the downtown core which has tremendous development potential. It should be used for Toronto-Niagara service with the bulk of trains going into the TH&B station.

 

[Platform 27]

There's a lot of apartments surrounding the Hunter St tunnel so I wouldn't be surprised if there's underground parking lots toching the tunnel already. You would probably have to do something creative to expand the tunnel.

Hunter's relatively wide, the apartment blocks are set back fairly far from the curb, and I'm fairly certain that they don't have underground parking. It's also a deceptively deep tunnel--it's cutting horizontally through a berm of leftover earth dating back to the various convolutions Lake Iroquois went through, if I remember my tangent-inclined urban geography prof rightly.

But I doubt GO Transit and the Government of Ontario are willing to fund an expansion of the tunnel. They'll build the James St Station instead, 2 GO Stations in downtown Hamilton.

James St. N. is emphatically not downtown Hamilton. There are no more than a couple dozen FTEs within walking distance of that station. If you want to ultimately see counterflow trains feeding white collar workers into office-tower cubicle farms as a sort of baby Union, you can only do it with trains into Hunter.

As for James North's ability to eventually collect ridership from residential intensification one might see in central Hamilton under Places to Grow, it pales compared to Hunter. Infill, if and when it comes, would be taking place on the swathes of undeveloped or underdeveloped lands in closer to the core, rather than on top of the pretty mature neighbourhoods of semi-detacheds in the North end.

 

[vegeta_skyline]

Its my understanding, (please correct me if I'm wrong)...

That the Hunter St. Tunnel was 2 tracks for much of its life, and if it were 2 tracks today, there would be ample room for new GO Service.

However, a number of years ago, CP reduced the tunnel to 1-track in order to accommodate those super-tall container cars. (with the remaining track shifted to the centre or tallest part of the tunnel)

Would it not be reasonable to consider a dig-down of 1-2 M in order to give the necessary height in the tunnel to accommodate a 2 track, container-capable system?

Thoughts?

Yes it was 2 tracks for most of its life but not for a while now. There is no clearance for 2 tracks with the current dimensions of freight equipment and not just because of the super tall container cars but also for automack's and other types of rail cars. All of which constitute a large portion of the rolling stock of North American railroads. Its the reason why CN spent upwards of 200,000,000$ building a new larger tunnel under the St. Clair river in Sarnia.

Digging deeper is not a solution for the Hunter st. tunnel because its not a bridge structure, its a circular shaped tunnel. Its widest point is several feet above ground level. The lower you go the narrower it gets.

James St. N. is emphatically not downtown Hamilton.

Yes its not perfect but those the 2 locations are less than a mile away from each other away. Thats not an insurmountable distance.
Unfortunately whether those in Hamilton like it or not the only way their going to get more service is through the James St. station along the CN line.

Also for comparative purposes;
Is Oakville station located in downtown Oakville? No.
Is Oshawa station located in downtown Oshawa? No.
Is Cooksville station located in downtown Mississauga? No.

All these stations are located at approx. the same distance away from their respective city centers. Yes it has not prevented them from being frequently utilized.

 

[gghtransit]

^^^^^ I guess the next question becomes then does GO see a benefit in the long term to keeping service to the Hunter Street Station at all. Clearly the existing station serves a market, but in terms of long-term expansion to the Niagara Region and frequency of service the new James Street Station is the only alternative that appears to be in the works.

I could see the market for Fort Erie service on the line the Hunter Street Station sits on (market for any motorists coming from the way of Buffalo to avoid the QEW, but that doesn't appear to be in any transportation plans in the forseeable future.