Never cared much for concrete ties, the difference is not probably significant enough to be noticeable by the casual rider but when you spend hundreds of hours on them each year you really notice the rougher ride and increased vibrations. Like smallspy said, the optimal solution would be plastic ties. Although it seems they still haven't made their way to Canada just yet. For now its just another one of those railway improvements I'm impatiently waiting for.

The issues with vibration can be dealt with using suspension - it certainly isn't a problem on the North-East Corridor.

As for plastic ties, they are slowly making inroads - a good number of recently worked-on level crossings have been built with them. Part of the issue with them is that they are still more expensive than plastic.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
 
That old concrete support to the right was torn down this past week.

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The top of the barrier is the same level or very close as the old road level. You can see the different in clearance with the new lower grade road in place.
 
Some renderings I stumbled upon, not sure if they've been posted here or not: (apologies, couldn't find any larger sizes)

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EDIT: These appear to be outdated designs.
 
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Starting Feb, a second crew will be added to various project that will seeing them work up to 11pm, not the current 7pm. Some may go beyond the 11pm time frame.

Plans call for the West Toronto Diamond line to be move March 31 to the new flyunder subject to weather. Currently there is about 4" of ice on the floor level to the point of talks about having some hockey games there.

Tender will be call for in Feb for the new walls with one community split if they want a wall or not. A CLC meeting is to be held to resolve this split to a point another community meeting maybe held for final vote.

Most projects are in the 70% completed stage with only the Humber River and Black Creek bridges being 100% completed.

The 2nd Diamond Deck is currently schedule to be move the long weekend in May with Old Weston Rd being move in mid June. Again weather and timing will determine the move with the schedule still being work on at this time. If all go to plan, Old Weston Rd should reopen in Aug.

The Goal is to complete all the work by year end.
 
The numbers don't add up, they claim its 5,000 a day but 1.2 million annually.. to get 1.2 million you would need 32 thousand a day..

The article (while confusingly worded) seems to be saying of the $5million people who go to the airport each year from downtown the UPX expects to take 5,000 ppl per day.....365 X 5,000 = 1,825,000 people/year.......saying that it will eliminate 1.2 million car trips seems to indicate that, on average, cars to the airport are carrying 1 1/2 people (1,825,000 / 1,200,000 = 1.521)
 
5000 a day seems like a very low ridership for 15 minute frequency trains running along a dense corridor. If they added a couple of stations (Eglinton, St Clair, Liberty Village?) and lowered the price it would allow those that live along the corridor to use it as a regular transit.

Having said that, I'm still glad there will be a train to the airport.

If they did that, they may lose the core/target customers who are willing to pay a "premium" fare for guaranteed/reliable speed.
 
it would be nice if we could eventually see a west connection made so that people from Kitchener/Guelph or even as far as London could take Airport Express Trains to Pearson for flights instead of having to take taxis all the way or airport shuttle vans. I'm thinking we'll see a solution that's somewhere in between by having regular all day service between Kitchener and Toronto with the ability to just connect to UPE at Weston if they want to go to the airport.
 
it would be nice if we could eventually see a west connection made so that people from Kitchener/Guelph or even as far as London could take Airport Express Trains to Pearson for flights instead of having to take taxis all the way or airport shuttle vans. I'm thinking we'll see a solution that's somewhere in between by having regular all day service between Kitchener and Toronto with the ability to just connect to UPE at Weston if they want to go to the airport.

There is a much simpler solution........Malton. Find some way (my prefered is to extend the airport people mover...but there may be others) to connect Malton GO station to the airport and now you have solved the very real problem/opportunity you identify and the issue people have about the UPX not being "public transit"......every GO train on the KW line would then be an option for airport travel from either direction.
 
If they did that, they may lose the core/target customers who are willing to pay a "premium" fare for guaranteed/reliable speed.

Right, and they would gain a lot more customers than those that they would lose.

What is the goal of this transit line? It could provide rapid transit to a huge part of Toronto, or it could be a premium service only for those heading to the airport, with fares so expensive that very few would use it every day (the article said at least $15).

It could be the western DRL with very little cost except subsidizing the tickets like the rest of the transit system.
 
There is a much simpler solution........Malton. Find some way (my prefered is to extend the airport people mover...but there may be others) to connect Malton GO station to the airport and now you have solved the very real problem/opportunity you identify and the issue people have about the UPX not being "public transit"......every GO train on the KW line would then be an option for airport travel from either direction.

This isn't too bad of an idea actually.
 

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