grey said:
GO had ridiculous signal visibility requirements and were being unnecessarily difficult to deal with and uncooperative, according to Vaughan.
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What a completely ignorant thing of him to say. Sorry but the safety of over one hundred thousand people a day takes precedent over making people accessed a grade 10 feet higher than they would like. :mad:
 
vegeta_skyline said:
What a completely ignorant thing of him to say. Sorry but the safety of over one hundred thousand people a day takes precedent over making people accessed a grade 10 feet higher than they would like. :mad:
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It wasn't. GO was using it as an excuse. They really didn't want the bridge built and they were being completely inflexible. They rejected many proposals that carefully considered signal sightlines. GO even proposed a clear-span bridge (with no columns) that would have shut down transit service for weeks, and there's no way they'd let that happen. They were being complete jackasses.
 
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It's not about not wanting the bridge to be built, its about protecting their interests. I'm sorry but GO wasn't created to service the constituents of Cityplace. It's completely unreasonable of them to expect GO to just shut down several lines for weeks on end. That does not make them jackassess, they are fulfilling their intended obligations. Its incumbent on Concord to come up with a plan/design to protect GO's interest, and not the other way around.
 
vegeta_skyline said:
It's not about not wanting the bridge to be built, its about protecting their interests. I'm sorry but GO wasn't created to service the constituents of Cityplace. It's completely unreasonable of them to expect GO to just shut down several lines for weeks on end. That does not make them jackassess, they are fulfilling their intended obligations. Its incumbent on Concord to come up with a plan/design to protect GO's interest, and not the other way around.
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I get the safety angle. Everyone does. That's not what this was about. GO dragged their feet for years before cooperating with the City and Concord to reach an agreement, and after finally revealing their requirements (demands), they played a shell-game with CN by trying to force the City to encroach on their air rights. Par for the course with negotiations between GO and the City; this is not they only time they've been dismissive or outright evasive.
 
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This bridge has a long history and much of it involves GO, vegeta. Check the archives of this thread and the entire Bridging the Design Gap competition that was run a few years back for evidence of their recalcitrance.
 
vegeta_skyline said:
It's not about not wanting the bridge to be built, its about protecting their interests. I'm sorry but GO wasn't created to service the constituents of Cityplace. It's completely unreasonable of them to expect GO to just shut down several lines for weeks on end. That does not make them jackassess, they are fulfilling their intended obligations. Its incumbent on Concord to come up with a plan/design to protect GO's interest, and not the other way around.
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Grey has it right. GO was being obstructionist beyond what was reasonable.
 
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Sure maybe the way GO went about things was overbearing. Heck I'm probably one of their biggest critics on UT. But ultimately I know exactly where they're coming from on this issue because I'm actually out there operating trains in the field 40+ hours a week. So I know a thing or two about how sight-lines impact operations and also about the specifics of sight-lines in the USRC(Union Station Rail Corridor). Many 'incidents' in the past could have easily been avoided had simple logic been used when choosing a location for signals. In the USRC they don't have that luxury. Because of the limited amount of space and the curvature of the tracks signals need to be placed in certain locations with little margin for adjustment in order to best facilitate the movement of trains efficiently and safely. To put it bluntly the USRC is f***ed-up enough as it is when it comes to signals and its been the location of more 'incidents' regarding signals than any other place in the entire country. The last thing we need is any more obstructions.

Also, to expect GO to completely shut down operations on 4 major corridors for several weeks for the construction of a single pedestrian bridge is preposterous. The economy of this city would be heavily impacted without the existence of GO.

And lastly this corridor is planned to be electrified in the future, which will require a significant amount of overhead clearance. GO will have to rebuild countless bridges as it is to accommodate those plans in the future. Obviously they will protect that clearance requirement with regards to any bridges going forward.

Btw, GO was not 'playing along' with CN.
CN is a completely separate entity from GO, they have their own agenda when it comes to everything. All they give a shit about is making money and their demand for restitution in the form of air rights was indeed completely asinine.

What I don't understand is why they didn't build a flight of stairs to the east of the north & south base of the bridge to compliment the ramps built to the west. Such a simple solution that could of alleviated most of the complaints regarding the bridge. Except for those too lazy to walk up a single flight of stairs of course.
 
vegeta_skyline said:
What I don't understand is why they didn't build a flight of stairs to the east of the north & south base of the bridge to compliment the ramps built to the west. Such a simple solution that could of alleviated most of the complaints regarding the bridge. Except for those too lazy to walk up a single flight of stairs of course.
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Allegedly because they didn't want to do snow clearance on stairs, per earlier in the thread.
 
^^^ ah yes, that's right I remember that. How petty of them to not want to bear the costs of snow removal on 2 flights of stairs.

grey said:
Appreciate the inside info. Thanks!
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No problem. And I apologize if I came of as being combative.

From the sounds of it, it seems as though perhaps GO didn't explain their operational needs very thoroughly during negotiations and were overtly authoritarian. Of course I was never a privy to those so I have no idea what actually occurred in the instant case, but in the past it was not unusual for GO to not fully understand how a railroad actually functions(in the past they left that part of the business to the contractor, previously CN). Though I must add, since metrolinx was formed their understanding has increased tremendously.
 
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I think it's good that GO is beginning to understand how a railroad actually functions!

(See, I'm trying to be more positive with my posts!)
 
Platform 27 said:
Allegedly because they didn't want to do snow clearance on stairs, per earlier in the thread.
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vegeta_skyline said:
^^^ ah yes, that's right I remember that. How petty of them to not want to bear the costs of snow removal on 2 flights of stairs.
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While that may have been a secondary reason, it certainly wasn't the primary concern. Since there is no sidewalk along the south side of Front at that point, it would either be incumbent on Concord Adex to construct one, or to simply connect it to the existing intersection at Portland St, allowing pedestrians to safely cross the road and proceed east or west on the north side. Seeing as any developer worth their salt wouldn't want to invest in 5-600 meters of offsite sidewalk construction, they simply chose the latter.

As reported by our faithful adventurer drum118.
 
How about building some kind of pedestrian underground or bridge crossing over Spadina from Concord towards SkyDome?
 
renvel said:
How about building some kind of pedestrian underground or bridge crossing over Spadina from Concord towards SkyDome?
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It already exists, under Spadina, right to Skydome.

What would really be nice is a second crossing through Spadina, at the South end of CityPlace closer to the Gardiner. Either connect the south linear park, or build a bridge connecting N1/N2's courtyard to HVE's courtyard.

See the link below to see the area I am referring to:

http://maps.google.ca/maps?q=Toront...DvFJCy5OsJg0MtFSk1mWNA&cbp=12,263.29,,0,-3.48
 
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