^ Great points and insights Dan. What month this year will GO's RTC start operating?
CN is telling their staff that the closure of the Toronto RTC is tentatively scheduled for September, so.......December? I'm not optimistic about it just yet.
What about weekend service on the Kitchener line up to Mount Pleasant? metrolinx owns the line till then and the route doesn’t cross paths with CN?
A bit of a black hole, unfortunately. No one seems to know anything. Perhaps this is one area where Verster can push things along further.
How frequent will it be? I assume that it will be hourly two way? Will it go to Stouffville or just Unionville? Thanks!
The service will likely be very, very similar to the weekend service of the Barrie Line - a couple of trains southbound from Lincolnville in the morning, hourly service to Unionville, and the last two trains of the night ending up in Lincolnville.
Wow, I didn't expect that so soon.
Though it's going to be necessary I'd think with a $3 fare from Rouge Hill to Long Branch, unlike the current $8.31. That's going to create some modal shift.
When do these new $3 fares take effect? I've been out of town, not paying enough attention.
I get the impression that staff was blindsided by this $3 fare plan. At least, the staff that I know and deal with.
Thank you for the very informative post about what has been delayed for the immediate future, and I think that you have provided a great deal of insight into some of the reason why GO is only marginally more of a viable urban connector this decade than 2 or 6 decades previous. However, I am going to be that forumer and point out again that I am observing that GO has not had reasonably steady progress, with regards to: dedicated trackage, track duplication, level boarding, station amenities, TOD, electrification, above all - regular 2WAD services, everything, really. Rather, the progress that it is happening of late doesn't make up for Toronto's 120 year long rail history.
I disagree that the system is "marginally" better than it was 20 or 60 years ago. The explosion of service and ridership on the 407 corridor, for instance, is proof of that.
Could it be better? Sure. Is it still primarily centered on downtown Toronto? Of course. Has progress been done in a steady manner? Of course not. But look at the history, and at the various governments in power at various points of its history. No matter what, it is and remains a ward of the government and thus beholden to their whims.
But to claim that things are only slightly better than they were 60 years ago is not just misleading, but does a disservice to the amount of work that has been done in that time.
All these years later in 2018, GO is still attempting to impress upon stations built in dirt fields, surrounded by nothing but giant parking lots, single track extensions with peak period-only service hauled by diesel locomotives into the distant future for some reason despite Ontario's cheap and clean hydroelectricity (it is, by global standards, still very cheap), and I am saying that I don't think it has to be this way. What I have noticed is that there tend to be two types of forumers, the idealist ones like myself (i.e. "Why do most wealthy overseas cities have train systems that make ours look like crap? Let's build ours better now - here's how!") and the well-informed ones who reverse-engineer the current situation to try to make sense of it (i.e. "Toronto is built on a unique combination of silty sand and bedrock that *no* other city has ever had to deal with! No government could ever have conceived of legislating a better deal with CN and CP or providing adequate transit funding because there are so many systems in place etc etc!").
Do things need to change? No doubt. And the electrification is but one step of that.
But you know what, one thing was said during one of the earlier electrification studies in the 1980s, and it very much holds true today.
"You can't have the gravy without the steak."
What does it mean? Electrification of the system is a nice-to-have, not a need-to-have. A lot more service can be run with diesels, and more quickly, than holding out and waiting for the electrification to come. Can you imagine if they had stopped improving service after that electrification study in 1986? You say that the system is only marginally better today - well it would have become an outright failure if that had been the case.
And once again, and unfortunately as always, it comes down to funding. That's on us as the electorate.
As for the aforementioned plans to run GO trains to Cherry St or Exhibition, that's really not at all the same as say, making the Stouffville-Milton Line, or the Barrie-Lakeshore East Line. How this would be achieved is up for debate, but essentially running regular services from end-to-end and interlining based on a logical pattern is reasonable. What would also be reasonable would be to have all stations in trunk sections being served regularly by multiple services, or to have a nearby transfer station that is actually useful to a passenger and doesn't require them to backtrack. It boggles my mind why not all Stouffville trains stop at at least one of Scarborough or Danforth stations, because someone from Oshawa should be able to work in Markham or shop at the Pacific Mall, considering there are train stations in all three locations. I think a good example of the above from a less-populated, less-dense city than Toronto is the Melbourne system, so I'm attaching a map of it (purple lines are regional services) to this post for reference.
And what is there to gain from running the lines through as you're suggesting? Once the USRC resignalling project is done (hopefully by the end of next year), it will be come more efficient from a train-movement standpoint to turn trains back.
Which I guess ties in with your point from your previous paragraph about legislating the railways. There are some improvements to be made in that regard - but a lot of what is talked about on this forum, and many others, is nothing but sheer dreaming. When it comes to lobbying for regulation change, anything that will adversely affect the freight railways - and even just slightly - is going to result in them opposing it, and thus not going to be approved. You can call it the tail wagging the dog if you like, but the fact of the matter is that moving freight is and will continue to be the primary raison d'être of the railways in Canada.
But......there are improvements that can be made within the legislative framework, and some of that is happening already. The removal of the requirement to do a brake check while changing ends within the USRC is but one example of that, and there's still more small improvements to be found.
So I don't think I'm kidding myself when I say that past intentions for GO have amounted to very little, and that disproportionately significant, concrete changes are happening now because the old guard that held us back for so long is just beginning to die out, figuratively speaking. I certainly never said I think Verster is a messiah, I only commented that he amounts to fresh blood at the top of a historically conservative organization.
Has GO been a historically conservative organization? Absolutely. And for the first 20 years of its existence, it saw itself as a railway first, and a commuter organization.
Over the past 20 years, however, the pendulum swung too hard in the other direction. They have become too political, too far removed from their roots. You are right in that he is fresh blood at the top, and maybe he is the guy to bring the pendulum back into the middle. Only time will tell.
But that goes both ways. Over the past 20 years or so, GO (and Metrolinx) has been guilty of wanton and unnecessary spending. I guess this ties in with Paul's comments about the lack of transparency and the hiring of fresh-out-of-school types, but there needs to be a bit of an infusion of the "old school" mentality back into the organization - and I don't know if Verster has the power (yet) within the organization to make that happen.
If I remember correctly, some of the bilevels are over 40 years old and still in near mint condition. Yes, they have a lingering scent of diesel particulate, but it's still impressive considering how old they are.
Almost $1million per car will make them seem mint. Realistically, the oldest cars have just 10 years of life left in them, and maybe less.
Dan
Toronto, Ont.
