[ShonTron]

North America's high speed rail is really slow compared to the rest of world. However, look at the NA cities in the list. Just Toronto, Philadelphia and Seattle?

Atlanta, Portland, Cleveland, Chicago (x2), Vancouver, St. Louis, San Francisco, Baltimore, Washington (DCA), Minneapolis, Portland, Salt Lake City, and Mexico City all have direct airport to downtown rail links. Denver's under construction.
JFK, EWR have rail shuttle to downtown rail service; Boston, LAX, DFW, PHX, BWI (from Washington) have short connecting bus services to a rail link. (There are others at smaller airports.)

Only SFO, EWR, JFK have a hard premium fare; St. Louis and Vancouver have a moderate premium for single-ticket fares from the airport.

 

[reaperexpress]

The only one on your list that I have any familiarity with is Heathrow and the only comment I would make about your table from that perspective is that the travel time you note is quite a bit higher from from T4&T5.

The same is true with most of these systems. To keep things comparable, I chose the closest terminal. Travel times would be longer to Toronto Pearson's Terminal 3, London Heathrow's Terminal 4/5, Tokyo Narita's Terminal 1 etc.

That said, i have never understood the need to justify/compare prices of things across different markets. It is like when people say things like "condo prices in Toronto are still cheap here on a psf basis when compared to London/Tokyo/Hong Kong/New York/insertcityname here"....so what? Things should be priced within their markets and compared to other options. So when I hear prices for the UPX mused at the mid-$20s each way, I compare it to cab or airport express buses and find that it is a reasonable number relative to the service provided.

Indeed, it is not a valid argument to say "_x_ city has a certain ticket price so we should too". However, real-estate and airport transportation are on opposite extremes of variability based on location. Real estate values are incredibly site-specific, whereas airport transportation is somewhat comparable because it is largely marketed to people from all over the world.

I also disagree with the notion of shutting down, both, Bloor and Weston. Weston yes....replace it with Mt. Dennis....but the same way Mt. Dennis will connect the UPX to a, hopefully, busy and valuable E-W transit line, Bloor station links the UPX to the BD subway. Weston provides no value, now or in the future.

My thinking was that low travel time is essential to justifying a premium service, so each stop needs to have very high utility to justify stopping. It's not a question of whether stations are useful, but rather whether they are so important that we cannot get away with skipping them. I guess we just differ about whether Bloor meets that threshold.

Bloor's marginal utility depends significantly on the base services in the corridor as well as the city's rapid transit network. I think Mount Dennis will be pretty well accessible from anywhere in the city, including Bloor, thanks in part to the Spadina Line, and local service along the Weston corridor. Certainly if there is any more than 15 minute frequency local service along the corridor, there is no case for UPX stopping multiple times en-route.

For example, along its route from Tokyo Station to the airport, the JR Narita Express (N'EX) passes many major stations which are major hubs including subway or similar-importance lines. Yet they are not served, since the point of the premium service is to be fast (admittedly there are numerous ways to get to Narita by train, not just one like in Toronto).

North America's high speed rail is really slow compared to the rest of world. However, look at the NA cities in the list. Just Toronto, Philadelphia and Seattle?

Yes. The list was more of a personal curiosity measure than an actual statistical analysis and it is obviously not even remotely comprehensive. I initially only intended to include premium airport services, hence the lack of North American cities. The few non-premium examples are a result of what I happened to be reading about at the time. For example, I was reading about transit expansion in Seattle-Tacoma so I added in its light rail link to the airport to see how it compares with an dedicated link. Similar with the other non-premium examples.

I didn't want to include local rapid transit links because I feel they are not as comparable to UPX. I obviously didn't stick to that, given that SeaTac is on there. Yet another symptom of the list merely being a result of personal interest. If I expand the list, I will remove Seattle from it and add San Fransico, BWI and others as suggested by ShonTron. Denver's would already be on here if I had enough info about it.

 

[drum118]

Had a meeting up by the airport on Thursday and since it was a nice day, decided to some catchup on the UPX line, since I am month behind doing so.

Tracks are in place for about 50% of the guide way and pour concrete anchor. Can't get a good shot of the new terminal from the Link trains.

The Link trains are 7 section and move slower before the shut down and not a rough ride as well. Train 1 had door problem and was taken out of service to deal with it, but was put back into service later with those door out of service as well not opening.

A few videos with the first one from Viscount to Terminal 1, Backward view from Terminal 1 and one of the elevated UPX line from the parking deck. Photos should be on line in the next few days.
[video=youtube_share;1gSkdy-0VvQ]http://youtu.be/1gSkdy-0VvQ[/video]

 

[Platform 27]

^Much appreciated, drum. Awesome stuff there.

Are they going to be putting in platform edge doors where those orange tarps are?

 

[drum118]

^Much appreciated, drum. Awesome stuff there.

Are they going to be putting in platform edge doors where those orange tarps are?

Yes. There is only 6 doors going in with glazing in between them

 

[vegeta_skyline]

Thanks for the photo update.

Man is the viaduct ever currrr-vy and those aren't even the tightest turns. Maximum speed is going to be quite slow on that, I'd estimate 30mph.

I would have preferred this option;

1. Use of existing industrial spur connection to the mainline, the switches and track alinement would of course need significant upgrading.
2. Two industrial facilities would be cut in half, they may have been able to continue operations on smaller portions of land. One is an oversized storage yard for Ipex Inc the other Gazzola Paving Limited. May have required expropriation.
3. Gentle high speed curve along undeveloped land.
4. A City of Toronto Winter maintenance depot located here would need to be relocated.
5. Most expensive potion, Disco road would be grade separated with an overpass followed by 6 new bridge structures for the 427-409 interchange. The track however would remain at almost the same elevation, and trains would be able to operated at a high speed as the 427-409 interchange is already at an elevated level.
6. The UPX would continue at ground level along side unused parking lots.
7. The UPX would only now begin to elevate in order to clear Viscount Rd and further onto the airport. Access road to the parking structure would of been relocated to south side.
8. UPX trains finally slow down for the final curve into the Airport station. This path would have required the removal /rebuild of the Airport people mover.
9. UPX continues along an elevated viaduct at a much lower level then the actual one above Dixon and airport access roads.
10. UPX continues next to the T3 parking garage and then follows that of the existing people mover using most of its existing columns.
11. UPX terminates where the Airport people mover station for terminal 2 currently exists.

In all, travel times could have been cut by 3-4 mins from the currently projected 25 min since the almost 2 mile long/3km viaduct will be the slowest part of the trip (the slow trip through the Union Station Rail Corridor is at least only a little over 1 mile long). Likely would of been more expensive option and probably would have required the elimination/rebuild of the people mover as well as some expropriation. But I'm curious if they even considered such an option.

Anyhow, whats done is done.

 

[reaperexpress]

Thanks for the photo update.

Man is the viaduct ever currrr-vy and those aren't even the tightest turns. Maximum speed is going to be quite slow on that, I'd estimate 30mph.

I would have preferred this option;
[...]

In all, travel times could have been cut by 3-4 mins from the currently projected 25 min since the almost 2 mile long/3km viaduct will be the slowest part of the trip (the slow trip through the Union Station Rail Corridor is at least only a little over 1 mile long). Likely would of been more expensive option and probably would have required the elimination/rebuild of the people mover as well as some expropriation. But I'm curious if they even considered such an option.

Anyhow, whats done is done.

I don't think anyone was under the impression that the airport spur would be a proper railway. I gather that the main considerations were cost and speed of construction.

I think in the longer run we will need a second airport link anyway, which runs through the airport rather than terminating, and is capable of handling mainline trains. After all, Pearson is not just used for Toronto, it is for all of southwestern Ontario. The existing airport spur is perfectly well suited for a potential DRL West extension, fulfilling people's desire or a subway to the airport. Subways should be within the load restriction, and 30mph isn't as annoying on a subway as it is on a premium express service.

 

[Voltz]

When the UPX is deemed a failure and the Gov of the day decides to shut it down and replace with a set up that is more economical, I would like them to consider changing it to something like; running frequent all day GO service to at least Brampton, adding new stations including one at Woodbine, and then either using the existing trains as a shuttle from Woodbine to the airport or extending the Finch West LRT via Woodbine station along the UPX spur to the Airport and use that as a shuttle.

 

[reaperexpress]

When the UPX is deemed a failure and the Gov of the day decides to shut it down and replace with a set up that is more economical, I would like them to consider changing it to something like; running frequent all day GO service to at least Brampton, adding new stations including one at Woodbine, and then either using the existing trains as a shuttle from Woodbine to the airport or extending the Finch West LRT via Woodbine station along the UPX spur to the Airport and use that as a shuttle.

The problem with the frequent-service GO option is that it would create serious capacity issues at Union. It's fine in the short term, but in the long term I think the airport service needs to use a new railway into downtown, and the DRL would fit the bill perfectly.

 

[EnviroTO]

I would have preferred this option;

I would have preferred the rail deviation option. Far most useful to have regular GO and VIA trains service the station.

 

[ssiguy2]

I'm curious. Has anyone every done an analysis of the cost difference between what the current UPX rail corridor is going to cost and how much it would have cost if they had made the system standard heavy rail from the beginning? Same number of stations, route, Union, everything except the rail technology itself?

 

[Bamako]

The problem with the frequent-service GO option is that it would create serious capacity issues at Union. It's fine in the short term, but in the long term I think the airport service needs to use a new railway into downtown, and the DRL would fit the bill perfectly.

Perhaps the cheapest "git-er-done" option would be to use Dupont and dump people off at Summerhill, but this would warrant having a DRL in place.

 

[nrb]

Tangentially related, but I was on the railpath today and looks like there's been a huge effort to absolutely cover the hoarding for the project in street art.

I don't know who coordinated doing this or how it happened but it's covered, top to bottom, north to south in some gorgeous colourful art. Pretty unusual to see this level of graffiti and that much paint spent on temporary hoarding. Anyway, it looks great.

 

[jimmy3]

will the station at union only have one platform?

 

[nfitz]

will the station at union only have one platform?

No, it will have 25 platforms.

There's nothing stopping arriving trains dropping of passengers on any platform. Or departing really, though I assume departing trains and most arriving trains will be off a single platform.