This is great, or at least has the potential to be. If it gets them to move a little faster on electrification, this is a big win. Go NIMBYs!
 
But at the expense of what other projects? Does electrification of the Lakeshore corridor get pushed aside?

Also keep in mind that this will not totally eliminate diesel trains in the area. Freight trains will continue to run on diesel, as will (pending the repor on how far the electrification should go. To Malton/Airport or further) Go trains serving the outer areas of the region that will have to still run on diesel or diesel electric hybrids.
 
I'm at the point where just as long as the project doesn't get delayed I'm happy. Go team?!?!
 
Prometheus The Supremo said:
is it really necessary to wait for a study to tell you that increased diesel emissions from 400+ trains a day through densely populated areas is probably not good?
Click to expand...
Yes, you do, it's a question of degree. You don't need a study to show that drinking a cup of coffee is bad for you ... the increased cancer rate for coffee consumption is well documented. Heck the increased cancer rate for brocolli consumption is well documented. It's like one-in-a-trillion or something, but it's there. The study is there to quantify the degree, and put it in perspective.

How many deaths a year are expected from this increased emission? Is it 50 deaths a year? Bad. 1 death per year? Not good. How about one death every hundred years ... at that point, you are looking at less deaths, than you are from the reduced accident frequency of taking the cars off the road for the 5-year delay in implementing the more expensive project.

Prometheus The Supremo said:
there will also be benefits of faster trains. what's the problem?
Click to expand...
That assumes an infinite amount of money. And if that was true, no problem. But it isn't true. A more expensive project, will mean that this project will be delayed, or another one won't happen. And I think that the end result is that you will have more people killed from increased vehicle pollution, and car accidents, than you will from the increased diesel emissions.

Look at this from a different angle. Is this finding going to to delay the planned frequency increase in the Lakeshore line that was supposed to occur this year?
 
Woodbridge_Heights said:
But at the expense of what other projects? Does electrification of the Lakeshore corridor get pushed aside?

Also keep in mind that this will not totally eliminate diesel trains in the area. Freight trains will continue to run on diesel, as will (pending the repor on how far the electrification should go. To Malton/Airport or further) Go trains serving the outer areas of the region that will have to still run on diesel or diesel electric hybrids.
Click to expand...

It doesn't work that way. If the government feels there is a need to electrify this route, they'll do it. It will also set a precedent that all routes with frequent service must be electrified. If anything, this could hasten electrification on Lakeshore, Richmond Hill, and maybe even Milton.

That said, I'm concerned that they'll try for yet another cheapo "solution" by only electrifying to the end of Weston and then buying cumbersome and unreliable dual-mode locomotives. That would be a huge and short-sighted mistake. If they're going to electrify, do it to the end of the GO service.
 
unimaginative2 said:
It doesn't work that way. If the government feels there is a need to electrify this route, they'll do it. It will also set a precedent that all routes with frequent service must be electrified. If anything, this could hasten electrification on Lakeshore, Richmond Hill, and maybe even Milton.
Click to expand...
Ah, there's that mythical pool of money. It might well hasten electrification on Lakeshore, Richmond Hill, and Milton. But at the same time delay service increases.
 
Or it might delay a road widening, or a tax cut, or government office renovation, or a harbour dredging...or it might just force the government to borrow slightly more.
 
Parkdale aims to derail diesel plan

finally....

http://www.thestar.com/comment/columnists/article/651943


Parkdale aims to derail diesel plan

Jun 17, 2009 04:30 AM

Joe Fiorito

Why I love Parkdale, an ongoing series:

As you have heard by now, the province has a spiffy and expensive transit plan to close the distance between Toronto and the 905.

Public transit is good?

Not when it's bad.

If Metrolinx has its way, there will be an eightfold increase over the 50 diesel trains that go highballing through my neighbourhood now.

That's roughly 400 diesels a day hauling passengers up and down the Georgetown line, as well as to and from the airport. Round off the math and that's one diesel every three minutes.

Metrolinx says it hopes – merely hopes – that all those diesels will be electric, perhaps in 15 years.

My neighbours say hope is not good enough. My neighbours are right. Diesels stink. No one uses diesel anymore, except in Bangladesh.

And so the good people of Parkdale – and some from Weston and other neighbourhoods – came to a meeting of the board of health the other day.

At that meeting, the city's medical officer of health tabled a report about the effects of all those trains.

In summary:

Diesel bad, electric good.

But the medical officer of health was not emphatic enough for my neighbours. They wanted him to say, flat out, that the city does not want any stinking diesel.

Period.

End of sentence.

Peter Morgan was the first of a dozen or so to speak. He lives not far from me. He works downtown.

He said he passed by the bridge over the railroad tracks at Bathurst the other day. "There was a nauseous, metallic smell." He said the diesel fumes made it hard for him to breathe.

Let's get this straight: He is a normal guy, neither wild-eyed nor hypersensitive. He is my neighbour. He is a Parkdalian.

He noted that there is a city-run daycare not far from the Bathurst bridge. If the stench bothered him now, he wondered how the increase would affect those tykes.

He also wondered how any of us who live along the tracks would be able to breathe when 400 diesels a day go rolling by. He said the city should demand that the province electrify the trains from the start.

Big applause.

Alanna Morgan spoke next. She and Peter are husband and wife. She said there are 17 kids under the age of 10 on her short block, and more children per capita in our part of town than in any other neighbourhood in the country.

She said hundreds of kids play baseball, soccer and T-ball in Sorauren Park every night. That park, as well as her house – oh, hell, as well as mine – are in what is called the strike zone for the bulk of the noxious gases.

She does not want Metrolinx to "turn a generation of children into collateral damage." She got as much applause as Peter.

Keith Brooks also spoke. He, too, lives nearby. He had his son, Callum, by his side. The boy is 10 months old and was chewing a biscuit.

Keith wants electric trains now, not in 15 years. He said, "If they have the money, they have it now."

Callum said, "Gaak."

He meant, "You tell 'em, Pops."

And so it went.

Someone mentioned that all those diesels would pass by more than 70 city schools, and someone else said Metrolinx had already studied electrifying the line, but that study has not been released.

Why not?

In the end, the medical officer's recommendations were toughened and strengthened and unanimously passed.

Can the city actually force the province to see things our way? I think we can, I think we can, I think we can.
 
nfitz said:
Yes, you do, it's a question of degree. You don't need a study to show that drinking a cup of coffee is bad for you ... the increased cancer rate for coffee consumption is well documented. Heck the increased cancer rate for brocolli consumption is well documented. It's like one-in-a-trillion or something, but it's there. The study is there to quantify the degree, and put it in perspective.

How many deaths a year are expected from this increased emission? Is it 50 deaths a year? Bad. 1 death per year? Not good. How about one death every hundred years ... at that point, you are looking at less deaths, than you are from the reduced accident frequency of taking the cars off the road for the 5-year delay in implementing the more expensive project.
Click to expand...


i don't know about death rates but diesel emissions in the air from over 400 trains a day is probably not good for one's health.

why would the project have to be delayed for 5 years? there's all kinds of work they could do before they get on to the wiring.




That assumes an infinite amount of money. And if that was true, no problem. But it isn't true. A more expensive project, will mean that this project will be delayed, or another one won't happen. And I think that the end result is that you will have more people killed from increased vehicle pollution, and car accidents, than you will from the increased diesel emissions.

Look at this from a different angle. Is this finding going to to delay the planned frequency increase in the Lakeshore line that was supposed to occur this year?
Click to expand...
if money is such a big concern, why build the thing in the first place?
 
You know, it is this that makes me lose faith in this country. I wonder how it's possible that only a small part of our national network (a short distance around Montreal) is electrified? I did some reading a few months ago, and found out that Yugoslavia electrified its main railways over 40 years ago! That's Yugoslavia, Canada is Canada, a first world country with a third world mentality!

Frustrating this all is, this completely lack of foresight.
 
unimaginative2 said:
It doesn't work that way. If the government feels there is a need to electrify this route, they'll do it. It will also set a precedent that all routes with frequent service must be electrified. If anything, this could hasten electrification on Lakeshore, Richmond Hill, and maybe even Milton.

That said, I'm concerned that they'll try for yet another cheapo "solution" by only electrifying to the end of Weston and then buying cumbersome and unreliable dual-mode locomotives. That would be a huge and short-sighted mistake. If they're going to electrify, do it to the end of the GO service.
Click to expand...

That's completely ludicris! First of all Metrolinx has already targeted Lakeshore as the first line to be electrified (IIRC). There has to be a reason they chose that line. Even so if we ignored Metrolinx's conclusion what makes you say that Georgetown would be the catalyst for the other lines to be electrified vs any one of the other lines. How would electrifying Georgetown create the demand to electrify the Richmond hill Corridor any more than electrifying the Lakeshore line. It doesn't, and all lines 'could' be seen as 'the' catalyst to get the rest of the network electrified, so in theory using that argument to get Georgetown done first is a fallacy. 1a: What is the benefit of electrifying one line at a time vs doing the entire network all at once?

Second. There is no way electrification is done only to Weston, electrification from Union to the Airport is the first, and main segement and it should not, will not be subdivided up in some sort of spite tantrum by Go/Metrolinx. If they only electrify to Weston than the ARL might as well just use the Diesel RDC's that they initially planned as the benefit of having an electric train all but vanishes. A comment like that leads me to think that you aren't really understanding the situation. 2b: Electrify the entire GO network??? are you nuts! Barrie sees what 2 trains each peak (4 total), Bolton would likely have the same number. You want to electrify all the way there for a handfull of trains? You must really believe in that bottomless pit of money then, do you have any idea what it would cost to electrify from Niagra Falls - Toronto - Whitby/Ajax and North to Milton, Georgetown, Bolton, Barrie and Aurora?
 
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