[nfitz]

Recognising this is off-topic, but Is a GO rail station at Dundas feasibly practical? The line is on the side of a cliff.

Used to be one. Depends how much of a curve they are willing to accept.

 

[rbt]

There are people in Brantford that commute on VIA right now to Toronto. I would expect that any new trains should service this group (plus offer commuting options to Hamilton).

It appears most potential Brantford customers for a GO service want to go to Hamilton (50%). We really ought to try a GO bus service for a couple years (connect to both West Harbour and downtown GO stations) to see what ridership is picked up. Estimates are around 300 trips per day in 2021.

http://www.brantford.ca/Transit Publications Documents/TZS_Brantford_GO_ presentation 2014-02-21.pdf

Not really worth another branch of service. It is, however, worth running hourly frequency buses to West Harbour.

 

[crs1026]

Used to be one. Depends how much of a curve they are willing to accept.

Point of trivia - After the earlier discussion about curves in GO platforms, I consulted an impeccable source (a guy who was involved in designing the original stations in the sixties). He told me that it was actually CN who insisted that the platforms be ruler-straight. Over time, it became one of those "because that's how we do it" things.

Whether GO still remembers, or cares, I can't say. But that's where it came from.

- Paul

 

[nfitz]

It appears most potential Brantford customers for a GO service want to go to Hamilton (50%). We really ought to try a GO bus service for a couple years (connect to both West Harbour and downtown GO stations) to see what ridership is picked up. Estimates are around 300 trips per day in 2021.

http://www.brantford.ca/Transit Publications Documents/TZS_Brantford_GO_ presentation 2014-02-21.pdf

Not really worth another branch of service. It is, however, worth running hourly frequency buses to West Harbour.

Given that there is already, GO Bus service every 30 minutes from Aldershot to downtown Hamilton if you extend some of the Aldersho trains west to Brantford, , and delay the bus by a couple of minutes, you could have a decent service. Ultimately those from Brantford can change trains at Aldershot for Hamilton Centre or West Harbour (or however far that line goes).

 

[dowlingm]

Given that there is already, GO Bus service every 30 minutes from Aldershot to downtown Hamilton if you extend some of the Aldersho trains west to Brantford, , and delay the bus by a couple of minutes, you could have a decent service. Ultimately those from Brantford can change trains at Aldershot for Hamilton Centre or West Harbour (or however far that line goes).

I wonder how many GO trains could actually be put through Bayview Junction from that direction before serious coin needs to be dropped.

 

[mdrejhon]

I wonder how many GO trains could actually be put through Bayview Junction from that direction before serious coin needs to be dropped.

Mighty serious.

There's a study somewhere by Metrolinx that shows they can only send hourly trains into Hamilton without a rail-to-rail grade separation. It was the reason why the RER plan for Hamilton only had hourly trains.

And that's still even with a fair bit of parallel trackage being added, too.

 

[dowlingm]

If Brantford people want to go to Hamilton, instead of triggering the Bayview Jct upgrade let's reinstate the Hamilton-Port Dover line, ripping out the Escarpment Rail Trail, connecting to CP east of Hunter Street

 

[crs1026]

If Brantford people want to go to Hamilton, instead of triggering the Bayview Jct upgrade let's reinstate the Hamilton-Port Dover line, ripping out the Escarpment Rail Trail, connecting to CP east of Hunter Street

The TH+B line that runs down city streets in Dundas? And is curvy as heck?

Or the CN line through Caledonia and the Six Nations ?

- Paul

 

[dowlingm]

The TH+B line that runs down city streets in Dundas? And is curvy as heck?

Or the CN line through Caledonia and the Six Nations ?

- Paul

The (former) CN.

 

[ShonTron]

The TH+B line that runs down city streets in Dundas? And is curvy as heck?

Or the CN line through Caledonia and the Six Nations ?

- Paul

The TH&B Hamilton-Brantford Line would be a more direct route than via the CN Dunnville and Caledonia Subs. The route is also a trail all the way from central Brantford to CP's Hamilton Yards, interrupted only by a supermarket parking lot in West Hamilton. You'd have to build an overpass on the 403 east of Brantford. The winding route on city streets in Dundas is the former Hamilton and Dundas radial railway, later absorbed by the TH&B as an industrial spur.

 

[mdrejhon]

If Brantford people want to go to Hamilton, instead of triggering the Bayview Jct upgrade let's reinstate the Hamilton-Port Dover line, ripping out the Escarpment Rail Trail, connecting to CP east of Hunter Street

There's a pending city motion that might be tantamount to this, to the best of my knowledge (Sigh...)

Motion on Hamilton Mountain GO Station
http://www.900chml.com/2015/11/25/hamilton-councillor-wants-go-transit/

This would have to happen if our Ward 8 councillor (Terry Whitehead) wants a GO station on top of the Mountain.

I'm not against the principle if we could economically put a GO station on top of the Hamilton Escarpment (Mountain Area), but I'm really wondering if that's the best use of money -- ala SmartTrack (sigh) -- since there's no really good railroad right-of-way to the central Mountain area.

It would be cheaper to run a short 1 kilometer A-Line LRT "mini-subway" into the escarpment with subway stations under St. Joseph Hospital and Mohawk College. Viola. The A-Line LRT becomes your "mountain GO station" equivalent -- and conveniently, it links to two Hamilton Downtown GO stations!

LRTs can do 6 to 10 degree slopes, while GO trains can only barely handle 2 degree slopes. And because of routing challenges, we'd probably need to ramp-tunnel it anyway for approximately a kilometer -- which happens to conveniently gopher-hole into the hospital/college campus if the LRT ramp tunnel steers south-west rather than directly under Upper James St.

A Calgary C-Train style park-n-ride garage could be built in one of the large Mohawk/St Joe parking lot, to help reduce the number of cars coming to Downtown Hamilton.

Park-n-rides / parking-garages are a compromise (we need more TOD, pedestrian friendly), but this could be a possible "Hamilton Mountain GO Station Lite" substitute, as there is plenty of parkinglot land at the hospital/college campus and would reduce cars heading into Hamilton downtown; making it easier to further urbanize/densify downtown Hamilton. Ditto for Limeridge Mall, though it would be a surface LRT route towards there.

This would be cheaper than trying to punch a much-longer more-gradually-sloping railroad up the escarpment again, and serve far more Mountain users with a more centrally-located station that happens to be right at a massive college/hospital campus area with developable massive surface parking lots -- conveniently a multi modal transit hub candidate (including commuters/pedestrians & cars). It's an imperfect compromise, but better than SmartTracking into the Mountain.

I'm gong to send feelers out to my contacts to try and get more information about what's proposed here...

---EDIT---

Update, I've found out that this is a GO bus station.

That GO train photo on 900CHML confused the heck out of us, and didn't say whether it was a bus or train station.

Disregard the above post.

 

[DonValleyRainbow]

---EDIT---

Update, I've found out that this is a GO bus station.

That GO train photo on 900CHML confused the heck out of us, and didn't say whether it was a bus or train station.

Disregard the above post.

Wow, quality reporting by CHML...

 

[dowlingm]

The TH&B Hamilton-Brantford Line would be a more direct route than via the CN Dunnville and Caledonia Subs. The route is also a trail all the way from central Brantford to CP's Hamilton Yards, interrupted only by a supermarket parking lot in West Hamilton. You'd have to build an overpass on the 403 east of Brantford. The winding route on city streets in Dundas is the former Hamilton and Dundas radial railway, later absorbed by the TH&B as an industrial spur.

More direct, sure, but presumably would still need to access GO Hunter Street via the Hunter St tunnel? I was (entirely futilely, but anyway) thinking about services which would either turn back at GO Hunter Street or run through the tunnel as continuation services without using additional slots. For the $ required to reinstate I daresay you could probably just rebuild/widen the Hunter St. tunnel

 

[ShonTron]

Ugh. Terry Whitehead is Hamilton's answer to Glenn DeBaeremaeker.

 

[kEiThZ]

@MisterF

Didn't want to derail the Pearson thread. We can have this discussion here.

I don't know why you assume that a transfer would be necessary at Union. Union is a through station, not a terminus. A train going to Pearson could stop there and then keep going, getting from downtown Montreal to Pearson in around 2:40. That's well within the travel times of air-rail partnership connections in other countries. As for frequencies, hourly or better trains (33 per day in the case of Ottawa) is what was projected in the 1995 feasibility study. If only a third of them go directly to Pearson, that would, again, be consistent with the frequencies offered by other air-rail partnership trips. There's no way that airlines could keep hourly flights going with so many people switching to trains. In the 90s Air Canada themselves estimated that they'd lose close to half their Corridor business to HSR.

This is phenomenal if it happens. But it's a big "if". And the airport and airlines can't not plan for expansion based on promise for not just HSR, but HSR that's competitive enough with air. As for transfer at Union, it needn't just be a transfer. Even a long stop at Union would put a dent in travel times. More realistically, it's possible that whoever is operating will either split service at Union (so that the TOM service and SW Ontario service terminate at Union) or that there will be no SW Ontario service and we'll get HSR just between TOM, in which case riders will be transferring to UPX. You are basing your assumptions on the absolute best case scenario. I'm a little more pessimistic.

Yes, high speed rail would mean billions in government investments. But as I said before, it also means less money put into highway expansion, decreased congestion costs, savings for policing and collisions, less pollution, and increased economic activity from induced trips and increased interconnection between cities.

I agree with you on the benefits. The disagreement arises on whether these benefits accrue from high speed rail or just solid rail service. Think of it like a Metrolinx Benefits Case Analysis. That's essentially what the government will be evaluating between HSR and VIA Fast.

Actually the private sector did say that they'd sign up for that, proposing to partially pay for the capital cost. That's what the Lynx proposal was looking to do 25 years ago, which had the backing of half a dozen corporations plus the banks. It was the government that didn't pursue it, not the private sector. The private sector would be part of VIA's proposal as well. Yes, VIA is now pushing an incremental approach out of pragmatism. And with Trudeau in power it actually seems somewhat likely to happen. But VIA was advocating for full HSR until fairly recently.

I sincerely believe that the Trudeau government will jump on the VIA Fast proposal. Beyond that? I have my doubts. The private sector can pitch in something. But th $19-21 billion from the last report, is beyond all but the richest of consortiums and that will require concessions that most governments might balk at.

You might want to ask the authors of the feasibility studies that have all shown that HSR in the corridor is viable.

I don't doubt that HSR is viable. Not arguing that it is. But convincing consortium and the feds to invest billions will require much more of a solid business case than what those studies did. And more to the point, those cases will have to prove that the jump in benefits from $4 to $20 billion in capex is worthwhile. VIA's own CEO has made the specific argument that you can get 80% of the benefit (and ridership) of HSR for 20% of the cost. It'll be interesting to see who can argue against that.

If that happens I'd be all in favour of it. Realistically, a more modest rail expansion is much more likely to happen in the near term. The only true high speed rail option that's looking remotely likely right now is the one to London. Both the VIA proposal and the London HSR, along with GO RER, would build momentum for HSR to Montreal at some point in the future.

I'd rather get VIA Fast in my lifetime than HSR when I'm retired or dead. The London HSR plan will simply be rolled in to VIA's plans. It's just too difficult to have yet another agency in the mix, with yet another service, competing with other traffic on one corridor.