Personally I'm not wild about electrifying the ARL until it's a proven financial winner given that the ARL was planned before Porter existed and is unlikely to deal with all the reasons YTZ is pulling in more services.

Business travel between neighbouring US cities and Toronto is on the decline. And international business would still have to go to Pearson, not to mention most international toursits would likely land at Pearson as well. I know I wouldn't flinch at paying $15 for train service from the airport to downtown (if I was a tourist).
 
Business travel between neighbouring US cities and Toronto is on the decline. And international business would still have to go to Pearson, not to mention most international toursits would likely land at Pearson as well. I know I wouldn't flinch at paying $15 for train service from the airport to downtown (if I was a tourist).
Couple of things:

first, Porter have been moving into the interline space so some international traffic may now come into YTZ especially if there is no competing direct service to YYZ.
second, I don't think the fare has been announced has it? After all the original ARL was premised on a fare of $22 e/w and that was a while ago.
 
You simply change the law so that there's no liability in such situations.
I bet nobody's ever thought of that. :rolleyes: Assuming such an action would make it past the SCoC, releasing rail companies from liability is a recipe for unintended consequences by giving them the green light to let things slide.
 
I bet nobody's ever thought of that. :rolleyes: Assuming such an action would make it past the SCoC, releasing rail companies from liability is a recipe for unintended consequences by giving them the green light to let things slide.

This is essentially how WSIB works. You cannot sue your employer for a workplace accident. You have to claim through WSIB. I am not a lawyer, but the same legal principle could apply - railways could buy insurance from the government and any claims would come from that pool. In turn, there is an incentive to improve safety because it means lower premiums.
 
I bet nobody's ever thought of that. :rolleyes: Assuming such an action would make it past the SCoC, releasing rail companies from liability is a recipe for unintended consequences by giving them the green light to let things slide.
You remove them from liability in the situation where signage and fencing is maintained. No need to remove them from liability if they've failed to maintain signage or fencing. No excuse in an urban area for not checking the fencing daily.
 
It isn't necessarily about the Tube. Mainline services north of London are generally overhead power and those south are third rail. This is a problem in the latter case whenever there is a snowstorm, resulting in thousands of angry people stranded at Waterloo station. First Capital Connect's Thameslink service switches power sources at Farringdon, roughly in the middle of the city.

Yes, this is what I was referring to. The tube will always be third-rail (third and fourth, really) because clearances are too tight. However, the lines feeding Waterloo, Victoria, London Bridge, etc. were all operated by the Southern Railway, which introduced third-rail operation long before catenary became standard in the UK. Long stretches of third-rail surface line would be impractical here, not just for safety but because of the climate issues mentioned by Wrenkin. In one high profile closure, some passengers got home by hitching a ride with a steam-hauled excursion that happened to be heading their way. Unfortunately there's no siding to connect the John Street Roundhouse to Union Station, and I'm not sure their steam engine is operable anyway.
 
^With the exception of metro systems and add-ons to existing third railed mainlines, I don't know if anybody is even building third rail anymore.

Aside from the trespasser safety/liability issue, there's the fact that overhead catenary is:
- considerably happier with inclement weather.
- considerably easier to use in conjunction with level crossings assuming you have (or eventually want to electrify) non-grade separated lines. (And yes, third rail level crossings do exist, but they generally involve a break in the power flow for trains passing over which makes them finicky)
- allows for much higher voltage (and thus lower transmission loss)
- allows for much higher train operating speeds (perhaps less relevant in the GO context, but if you're thinking about maybe future-proofing for having shareable infrastructure with some flavour of electrified Via or HSR someday, catenary's the only game in town for them.)

And of course, there's the compounding factor that because everyone else in the world realizes the above, they're overwhelmingly building overhead catenary and ordering overhead-using rail equipment, which means the supplier market is tilted towards pricing overhead as the default and third rail as the option.

I imagine sticking underside shoes on a train design originally intended for overhead pickup isn't exactly rocket science and any manufacturer will do it for you, but assuming that your system isn't genuinely special there's no reason to ever plan for something that's not off-the-shelf. The closest thing to a modern standard is overhead catenary carrying 25 kV AC at either 60 Hz (North America, Japan) or 50 Hz (most of the rest of the world). It's the only rational option for GO electrification, and it appears to be the only option they have in mind.
 
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I have absolutely no empathy for people who live near an airport and then bitch about the noise. Likewise I have no empathy for people who choose to live by rail corridors and bitch about the noise. The Weston Community, however, does have a very valid point about the pollution. When the ARL gets going there will be a diesel train rolling by every 5 minutes............that is a hell of a lot of pollution effecting hundreds of thousands of people. There is a real difference between a nusance and a health hazard.

This is made even worse by the fact that no one along the corridor it's polluting will even be able to take it. I understood the line will be about $25 each way. Remember this line will not have transfer ability onto the TTC so that's about $28 one way. If 2 people are travelling together they would be far better off just renting a cab and get door to door service. All the smell, pollution, noise, and Torontonians still won't be getting a transit service to the airport because make no mistake, this is in no way a transit service. This mickey-mouse attempt at connecting Pearson to the city will mean as little to the long suffering commuters of Toronto as the Maid of the Mist does to the people of Niagara Falls.
 
The Weston Community, however, does have a very valid point about the pollution. When the ARL gets going there will be a diesel train rolling by every 5 minutes............that is a hell of a lot of pollution effecting hundreds of thousands of people. There is a real difference between a nusance and a health hazard.
Surely those currently travelling from the Airport to downtown are currently doing so by bus, Limo, taxi, or car. And surely those vehicles create more emissions than the Tier 4 diesels.

You can't claim creating less pollution is a bad thing.

Not sure why the Weston community isn't out there protesting the major highways and arteries that run near and through their community. They'd create a lot more pollution than the trains!
 
Point taken but you can't electrify a freeway.

Toronto has a clear rapid transit corridor from Union to Pearson being built..........most cities would give their left nut to have an existing corridor going near their airport. This is the western section of a DRL waiting to happen. By simply adding about 5 more stations {ie Woodbine, Etobiko North, Eglinton, St.Clair, Queen West}, electrify the line and be part of the TTC service a huge amount of the city will have rapid transit that they did not have before and at a very affordable price. They could simply add , for example, $3 for those going all the way to Pearson which is common throughout the world.

Toronto could always get a PPP to help kick in some money and use the extra $3 for Pearson travellers to pay them back with. This line is going to get very low ridership and make no difference to Torontonians getting to the airport but if they simply ran it as spart of the TTC it would take potentially 100,000 of trips off the roadway, provide a great rapid transit corridor, and make a REAL dent in car pollution.
 
Surely those currently travelling from the Airport to downtown are currently doing so by bus, Limo, taxi, or car. And surely those vehicles create more emissions than the Tier 4 diesels.

You can't claim creating less pollution is a bad thing.

If you removed all airport traffic from Toronto highways, that space would get filled up by other trips, so there wouldn't be any pollution reduction. But you're right that nearby neighbourhoods should protest things like Highway 401 widening on air pollution grounds.
 
If you removed all airport traffic from Toronto highways, that space would get filled up by other trips, so there wouldn't be any pollution reduction. But you're right that nearby neighbourhoods should protest things like Highway 401 widening on air pollution grounds.
That's a valid argument during peak periods. There's already excess road capacity in off-peak periods, when many, if not the majority of these trains will run.
 
Point taken but you can't electrify a freeway.

Toronto has a clear rapid transit corridor from Union to Pearson being built..........most cities would give their left nut to have an existing corridor going near their airport. This is the western section of a DRL waiting to happen. By simply adding about 5 more stations {ie Woodbine, Etobiko North, Eglinton, St.Clair, Queen West}, electrify the line and be part of the TTC service a huge amount of the city will have rapid transit that they did not have before and at a very affordable price. They could simply add , for example, $3 for those going all the way to Pearson which is common throughout the world.

Toronto could always get a PPP to help kick in some money and use the extra $3 for Pearson travellers to pay them back with. This line is going to get very low ridership and make no difference to Torontonians getting to the airport but if they simply ran it as spart of the TTC it would take potentially 100,000 of trips off the roadway, provide a great rapid transit corridor, and make a REAL dent in car pollution.

In many ways this will happen. The ARL will provide express service while GO will provide the local service. Sure GO won't stop directly at the airport but then how many Weston residents are really looking at getting to the airport vs getting to Union.

To put simply. The rail corridor has enough capacity to run both types of service. An express limited stop, and a local all stop service.
 
In many ways this will happen. The ARL will provide express service while GO will provide the local service. Sure GO won't stop directly at the airport but then how many Weston residents are really looking at getting to the airport vs getting to Union.

To put simply. The rail corridor has enough capacity to run both types of service. An express limited stop, and a local all stop service.

Hate to keep bringing this up but GO's current response to that is that they have no plans to introduce full (ie. Lakeshore type) service on that line.
 

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