[Hipster Duck]

Does Vancouver have a GO commuter rail equivalent?

Vancouver has the WCE, as denfromoakville mentioned, but, truth be told, Vancouver is not well-suited for commuter rail. There are only two viable rail corridors heading out of downtown Vancouver, and both of them leave from separate stations. One is the existing West Coast Express CP mainline that heads to Waterfront station while the other is the old CN mainline which heads into Pacific Central station on the outer edge of downtown - similar to if Union Station was at Cherry street.

At any rate, the CN mainline is more or less paralleled by one of the Skytrain lines which provides rapid transit service that is both more frequent and faster than anything that they could run on the existing mainline tracks.

Anyway, I don't think that the expansion of the GO train is a magic high card that can be used to trump Vancouver's real transit gains. It's not like GO has expanded that much in the past 30 years when you think about it. We still have only one all-day, relatively frequent rail line and the same 5 rush hour only lines that we did back then, we just added a few more stations and built a whole lot of parking. In GO's case it might be even more embarassing since the population of the 905 is about 300% bigger than it was in 1986.

 

[nfitz]

West Coast Express.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Coast_Express

It's peak-only service, with only 5 trains in a 2-hour window. With a ridership of only 11,000 passengers a day it's probably most closely comparable if the GO Trains consisted only of the Richmond Hill line. Toronto's GO Trains carry close to 175,000 passengers a day. It will be interesting to see if the West Coast Express ridership grows or shrinks once the Skytrain is extended to two of it's stations in Port Moody and Coquitlam in 2016.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

It's peak-only service, with only 5 trains in a 2-hour window. With a ridership of only 11,000 passengers a day it's probably most closely comparable if the GO Trains consisted only of the Richmond Hill line. Toronto's GO Trains carry close to 300,000 passengers a day. It will be interesting to see if the West Coast Express ridership grows or shrinks once the Skytrain is extended to two of it's stations in Port Moody and Coquitlam in 2016.

Largely true, except ridership is around 180k. LIRR and MNRR along with NJ transit are over or around 300k each. I think ridership will stagnate, espcialy since the Sky train is more convenient and frequent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commuter_rail_in_North_America

 

[nfitz]

Largely true, except ridership is around 180k.

I messed up the math somewhere, I was converting from the 2010 annual ridership, using a factor of 300 for Lakeshore and 250 for the others ... and should have got 175k not 300k. That the real number is 180K would indicate the Lakeshore factor is 280 rather than 300 ... a likely indicator of being a very daily commuter-driven service compared to a more typical urban transit route. Looks like it's grown from 180k in 2010 to 187k in 2012! http://www.gotransit.com/public/en/docs/publications/quickfacts/Quick_Facts_Info_to_GO_EN.pdf

I think ridership will stagnate, especially since the Sky train is more convenient and frequent.

I was pondering that. On one hand I agree with you ... on the other hand it's only 24 minutes from Waterfront to Port Moody and 29 minutes to Coquitlam on the commuter train. The Skytrain travel time to Lougheed Town Centre is 32-34 minutes now and it will take another 15 minutes (47 to 49 minutes) to get to Coquitlam. Also the the Evergreen line can serve as a feeder for the commuter train from other areas.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

I messed up the math somewhere, I was converting from the 2010 annual ridership, using a factor of 300 for Lakeshore and 250 for the others ... and should have got 175k not 300k. That the real number is 180K would indicate the Lakeshore factor is 280 rather than 300 ... a likely indicator of being a very daily commuter-driven service compared to a more typical urban transit route. Looks like it's grown from 180k in 2010 to 187k in 2012! http://www.gotransit.com/public/en/docs/publications/quickfacts/Quick_Facts_Info_to_GO_EN.pdf

I was pondering that. On one hand I agree with you ... on the other hand it's only 24 minutes from Waterfront to Port Moody and 29 minutes to Coquitlam on the commuter train. The Skytrain travel time to Lougheed Town Centre is 32-34 minutes now and it will take another 15 minutes (47 to 49 minutes) to get to Coquitlam. Also the the Evergreen line can serve as a feeder for the commuter train from other areas.

Good Stuff on the growth. I hope to see it pass 200k soon. I think for the WCE, like us with the GO trains, they need more tracks on the line to truly have growth in ridership.

 

[ssiguy2]

I don't think Evergreen will have any measurable impact on WCE and if anything I think it will increase ridership. Taking WCE will still be far faster than the SkyTrain but it will hook up with SkyTrain at 2 stations so anyone coming in the PoCo, MR,PM, Mission will be able to make transfers far more easily and faster than currently for those going to SFU, NuWest, or Metrotown.

Note the WCE is FULLY integrated with regular fares so a WCE ticket transfers you onto any bus/SkyTrain in any zone throughout Metro Vancouver. If you buy a ticket to get to WCE the amount you paid depending on your zone is automatically deducted from your WCE fare. WCE and regular transit are considered part of a system unlike Toronto where GO and the TTC are fiefdoms.

WCE will never be able to get the frequency of GO because much of the route is along the edge of Burnaby Mountain and the Burrard Inlet so there is not room to widen the tracks without a massive and very expensive investment which wouldn't be worth it. Vancouver's employment centres are also far more spread out than Toronto so the downtown employment will never come close to what it is in Toronto.

 

[doady]

No, what's absurd is taking a meaningless statistic like 'absolute ridership numbers' completely out of context.

Toronto is twice as old and three times the size of Vancouver. Toronto probably has five times the number of people employed in its downtown core. Vancouver's pre-war population was the same as what London, Ontario is today. More people live within a 25km radius of the CN tower than in the entire province of British Columbia. Of course Vancouver is going to have lower ridership numbers. By your logic, Mumbai must be an example of rapid transit leadership because they have individual rail lines that carry three times the passengers of the entire TTC system.

We are talking about providing relief to the existing Toronto subway system which is overcrowded. If ridership numbers and capacity don't matter, then really overcrowding doesn't matter either. There is no point discussing the DRL at all. Let's close this thread.

 

[Platform 27]

Then again the question is, why not GO service for TTC fares as an experiment? Although I guess the real question is why isn't someone starting a petition and contacting the media about pricely this?

For heaven's sakes, I feel like we've explained this to you fifteen times.

THERE IS NO SPARE RUSH HOUR CAPACITY ON GO.

You want to relieve Yonge-Bloor at rush hour by putting TTC subway riders on GO? Fine, spend the money on the ticket cross-subsidy, thousands of East Toronto/Scarborough folks go to Union, they plop down in seats and stand in aisles on the GO train where Pickering-bound passengers have been for years, and after several weeks of Fall of Saigon-type mayhem on the Union station platform those Pickering-bound people say eff this and go back to driving to work.

So, to recap, after your magic cure-all plan, we've spent a bunch of money, there are more cars on the roads, and the GO train is pulling into Pickering every evening with empty seats because the former TTC passengers only used them for the first 5 km of the train's 50 km run.

Yes, there absolutely needs to be more GO to serve Torontonians at rush hour, but first there needs to be space to put them. That means spending big bucks on more trains, more tracks, better signals and more stretching and prodding of Union in some sort of undetermined fashion so it all works.

The obstacles to more off-peak rail service on GO are a lot lower, but that's not really relevant to the idea that GO can serve as an cheap DRL.

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

Then again the question is, why not GO service for TTC fares as an experiment? Although I guess the real question is why isn't someone starting a petition and contacting the media about pricely this?

Truthfully I'd be happy if Go fares within Toronto were equivalent to the premium fare charged on the TTC's express routes...

 

[nfitz]

For heaven's sakes, I feel like we've explained this to you fifteen times.

THERE IS NO SPARE RUSH HOUR CAPACITY ON GO.

I'm yet to see a GO Train that couldn't squeeze more standees on. Even the busiest ones I've been on, have still had enough space, that people thought it was okay to sit on the stairs - taking up twice the space that one person standing takes.

Sure, you have to stand ... but if it's only with central Toronto, it's not like you wouldn't be standing on TTC, and for a much longer period.

I'm not sure the need to be rude about this. Particularly as I don't think your correct. There's only no spare rush hour capacity if you think everyone should have a seat - which isn't how any other transit within Toronto works!

 

[M II A II R II K]

I guess they can't run GO trains at 90 second frequencies then.

 

[APTA-2048]

I think what Platform 27 is saying is you can't relieve the overcrowding on Yonge by overcrowding Lake Shore East instead. Especially at the same time you knock off around $2 from some people's fares and keep everyone else's the same.

 

[diminutive]

And the Metrolinx forecasts estimated that the line would be well into heavy rail subway territory, second only to the Yonge line in ridership. And that didn't include a northern extension along Don Mills.

When did Metrolinx ever forecast that?

 

[diminutive]

Except like I have said - if you do such a close-ended analysis, it will invariably close the door on the usability of the line in the future. As a piece of infrastructure, the DRL will be one that is used, extended and built on beyond foreseeable future - think of even the Dundas West-Eglinton routing as the starting point - like Union-Eglinton of the original YUS - instead of it being the ultimate build-out.

It's not that I'm ignoring those benefits, it's that benefits which accrue 50-100 years down the line are essentially worthless. Most of Toronto's subway network is and will be under capacity for the foreseeable future, barring Yonge south of Bloor of course. Even that wouldn't be overcapacity if weren't stupid about having our main E-W subway miss downtown completely and force a transfer onto Yonge, or had we kept the wye operational.

Which is why I've also said that calling it a DRL and focusing exclusively on the relief aspect is not sufficient - the line should (and can) be aligned to provide relief not only to the YUS - but to the entire NS and EW network in the core. Oh and let's not even get into the network connectivity of the system in terms of reliability in the debate over ridership in said area.

Yes, this is actually something I agree with very much. Framing the DRL purely in terms of 'relief' of Yonge is foolish, practically and politically. The DRL really needs to sell itself as a broader improvement to local and regional transit, not simply something to shift some Bloor riders away from Yonge.

 

[M II A II R II K]

They should have gone with that flying U thing, and even better a flying V, that would have diagonally caught Chinatown, and Cabbagetown area on the other side.