Steve: I have deleted a long quotation from Wikipedia about the Jet Train which is available via the link above.

In a commuter corridor, high speed operation has its limits because trains cannot run productively at extremely high speed for long before they have to slow down for their next station. The vital thing, especially if stops are fairly close together and headways are tight, is good acceleration and braking, more like a subway train than a mainline railway. The reasons for this have been discussed at length elsewhere on this site, and I won’t rehash the point.

Exactly how do you define “2 builds”. As long as the initial design is compliant with electrical clearances, the additional costs of electrification should be only slightly more than build at time, because we’re not talking about third rail and much of the electrification cost is off-site in grid connections and transformers.

This “build it and then build it again” talk is characteristic of clean train rhetoric but it is not substantiated. Irish Rail are building a 2 to 4 rail expansion project (Kildare Route Project) which will carry increased diesel urban and interurban as we type and electrifying it in 2015. Nobody there is freaking out.

An earlier comment by James intrigues me. His point is timing and money supports implementing this as a diesel line, since it will eventually be electrified anyway.

If there is money to invest in building the line (regardless that MX wants to spend it on diesels), should it not be invested prudently so we are able to spread around the limited transit budget for max effect?

At this stage, all in with premium costs of tier 4 diesels, it looks to me like we are getting close to 1.25 B. Then there is the cost of operating diesels and the cost of putting increasingly expensive fuel in diesels. Then Metrolinx wants to spend another 1.5 B to electrify the line in 10 years, according to Mr Prichards latest interview. So the current plan to improve the Georgetown South line and finally make it electric will take 2 builds over 15 years and cost nearly 3B, using the Metrolinx approach.

Estimates I have seen can achieve electrification of Georgetown South for an increase in the existing project budget by 300M+/- as indicated by Councillor Thompson, who sits on City’s Ec Dev committee so should know something about costing large projects. Others have said that this difference pays for itself due to fuel savings and cost efficiencies which electric trains have over diesels. The Lakeshore electrification study indicates it is possible to design and build a longer corridor within 3 years, and offers a full benefits case that applies to Georgetown South as well.

So when James asks about timing and whether we have the money to spend in the next 3 years, I suggest we do on both counts. In order to complete the build by 2015 as the Minister of Environment identified, we have the existing budget, we have an electrification study to provide a fully detailed analysis by end of 2010, we have a comparative costing that justifies any added expense due to reduced operating cost, and we have the time to design and build electric in order to get people off the road into clean trains.

GO’s equivalent in Montreal, AMT, has the Deux-Montagnes Line which is a heavy rail commuter line that is electrified. This was done back in 1918 because it goes through the Mount Royal tunnel.

So how ‘boot that Canada Line, eh?

Steve: That’s a rapid transit line that happens to go to the airport. Because it’s a mini-subway with third rail power, we “know” how to build it.

It’s interesting that though they are going in the direction of electrifying no one wants to pull the trigger and commit … I mean they are making moves to make things possible in the future (bridges, union station, etc.).

From the political side I guess they are feeling it’s too big a risk (it won’t be done in the next two election cycles, it will cost a lot of money (savings won’t come for many election cycles) and it has the potential to piss off a lot of people (nearly everyone in canada/ontario who doesn’t live within 20 miles of it if it goes over budget, or doesn’t work, or gets delayed) … so we continue on with getting closer to the moon by spending money on bigger rockets, but nobody is willing to commit at this point … there is also the issue of admitting you just built a rocket that won’t get you to the moon … eventually this will happen as the risks become less (once you don’t have to worry about the track being laid, and the bridges being built, the act of putting up wires seems trivial) … but at somepoint someone is going to have to admit they built a big rocket that didn’t work as advertised.

The lakeshore line is nice to start with because it doesn’t have nearly as much risk associated with it, georgetown has the airport, construction of 8 new tracks (or something like that), a bunch of bridges, union station, the rail yards and a well organized community group … lakeshore, on the other hand probably has some bridges, union station and the rail yards … the tracking is already done, no airport (and associated issues) and given the ease that they added an extra line in oakville, I doubt they would have much trouble from the community to make it electric … now, that’s not to say it would be easy, but I think they could easily do union to clarkson as a phase 1 to get the team working smoothly, then split into two or three teams to do lakeshore to hamilton, lakeshore east and georgetown … the two big jobs to me seem to be the yards and union, that area obviously needs to be done first, and GO should be pushing to get that section done as soon as possible … once that is done, I feel like there will be a much bigger political reason to get specific lines done.

I really like the idea of a JFK type moon launch with this thing (electric trains everywhere), but politically I don’t think it will work … better to do a step at a time and cut down on the risk.

McGuinty has made some all in type moves over the last few years (move ontario/metrolinx, nuclear power plants, ehealth), and the problem is when they start to fall apart, they fall apart fast and big … and sometimes not even for relevant reasons … sometimes small and fast is better than large and slow.

Because that’s not where the yard is? Unless an additional yard is built somewhere on that line, something I’m not opposed to given the movement count, we will have to electrify several km of line as non-service. Furthermore – the Georgetown line is soon to become the Kitchener line, and the West Toronto-Union run carries Milton/Barrie and will carry Bolton. Do they jump the queue too?

This is becoming bizarre – there’s a serious contention here that Georgetown’s ridership and train movements post-2015 requires electric service BEFORE three lines that are 3000hp loco+12 2-way all day right now?

All to stop 900hp 2-car Budds (I simply don’t believe 4 powered cars will be used in service entry – if they did it would be because of the service running way AHEAD of projected ridership) puttputting up to Pearson, and for which Tier 4/Euro Stage IIIB engines will be available from Cummins by 2011?

Steve: I have never proposed that all service in the corridor go electric. However, services to Bolton and Kitchener will be peak only, and these could run as diesel expresses mixed in with the electric locals ending at Georgetown. If we are to believe Metrolinx’ plans, the Milton and Barrie lines will have very frequent service on them too. The essential problem is that Metrolinx must either disavow its plans for massive service improvements in many corridors (which would make a mockery of their claim that “The Big Move” would have any significant effect on network behaviour), or recognize the capital costs of implementing what their plan contains. Meanwhile are we supposed to say, with a wink, that we all know Metrolinx will never actually build that service and so the EA doesn’t matter?

As for the RDCs puttputting up to the airport, the figures I am quoting are from Metrolinx, and they show that this service would pollute more than the car trips it replaces. If those numbers are wrong, let Metrolinx say so, admit that they don’t know what they are doing, and admit that they have misled the government.

@George Bell – there may not be “local” experience but surely we could request secondments from Montreal AMT for the duration of the project, given their use of electric commuter equipment on Canadian heavy rail.

Steve: Yes, it’s not as if nobody in Canada has ever seen an electric railway before.

Imagine we had started off on transit city before we had done St. Clair … we would have got the whole thing done and then realized we had to pull the whole thing up to fix the water mains … that’s if we could have got through all the legal issues from all the BIA’s that would have banded together … 25% of the city would have been shut down because the access to their front doors would be blocked by rails and construction equipment that were delivered a year before they could be installed … and the whole thing would have been delayed another year by a strike or two…

There are a lot of issues that will need to be worked out with electrification (even if it is a pretty standard thing to do elsewhere) – engines, two level cars, safety, pole design, bridge design, station design … staging the construction spreads the risk out, allows for leadership to understand the issues, engineers to understand the equipment, the community to understand the costs, the builders to understand the staging, and the system to continue to partially function … and for the second line to be better than the first…

Steve: The Georgetown line is shorter than the Lake Shore. Why not make it the guinea pig? Your argument is valid in that project management skills are not thick on the ground given experience with some TTC projects, and GO’s handling of the West Toronto grade separation is a classic case of telling the community to f* off. If anyone wonders why people are so distrustful of GO/Metrolinx, so expecting to be screwed at every opportunity, you just have to look at that debacle.

Quite bluntly, I don’t expect electrification will ever occur without external pressure. There will always be some reason to defer, and we won’t even get Lake Shore. If Georgetown has to wait for something that does not even have funding or an implementation schedule, it will wait forever.

Steve: Of course it’s a mayoral shot. I think it’s long overdue for Smitherman (and John Tory too) to decide whether they would come to City Hall as a Governor seconded from Queen’s Park, or as advocates for the city who would challenge Queen’s Park on substantive issues. However, that doesn’t invalidate the questions raised by the letter, and Smitherman would ignore them (or worse reply with inaccurate information) at his peril.

Steve: The current number is around 50 plus freights, and that is spread across all lines (Bolton doesn’t have service yet). Day 1 is in 2015.

The electric supply issue is not critical but it is important. Supply has dropped off the radar with the decline in manufacturing but hopefully the recession will ease off which will entail an increase in demand. There is a proposal to build a gas fired plant in Oakville which is already attracting opposition, as are the proposals for Mississauga.

The backfill argument excludes that increases in transit should be accompanied by changes in highways to press home the modal shift *and should be planned as part of the greater Metrolinx scheme* – expansion of Georgetown should be accompanied by conversion of one lane of 427 to at least HOV if not a full transit lane. There is a danger in encouraging the car-promoters that transit is a “can’t win don’t try” activity.

This trip substitution/backfill argument needs three points of clarification.

1. The province is not planning to reduce the number of lane kilometers of highway. If there were such a scheme they could argue that they are swtiching people from car commuting to train commuting. Instead what the georgetown line does is expand total transportation capacity. It’s about more trips not mode switching.

2. To expand on the first point The Big Move is based on population growth forecasts for the Toronto region of 50%. The reason they want to increase train service is to deal with the new trips. Yes overall modal share will tip more toward transit, but total car trips will not fall. Therefore any pollution from the georgetown will be in addition to current transportation related loads.

3. Metrolinx is arguing that they must build this line to switch people from relatively highly polluting transportation modes to relatively low ones. If this is important why won’t they support a switch from diesel to electric?

Gord

It’s mainly Canada that doesn’t like electric trains. Even the US, which isn’t usually considered the best role model for transit and train use has over 700km of electrified rail service in the Northeast Corridor. Some parts of it have been electrified for over 100 years. Many commuter rail services surrounding New York City are also electrified.

Canadians on the other hand have none and seem to be alone in the world when it comes to sticking with Diesel. We love to pat ourselves on the back for being environmental leaders, as long as we don’t have to do too much.

My short reply would be:

We agree on electrification in the longer term; and we probably agree that Metrolinx for reasons either financial or political has played against this idea to excess.

But I suppose I come back to ‘so what’?

Which is to say, nothing proposed precludes electrification. Metrolinx has committed that every bridge/tunnel etc. will be designed with electrification in mind.

And GO’s own studies on Lakeshore strongly suggest electrification IS coming.

So really I write this off as an argument about timing.

Do we have to spend money on this in the next 3 years?

The conclusion I draw is no we don’t

And that regardless this corridor is successful to the point estimated and which we all hope; WILL be electrified, it will just happen 10 years from now.

Which to me; is far better than delaying this project another year or 3 in hopes of forcing electrification into the Day 1 Plan.

Steve: The other difference in our positions is that, bluntly, I don’t trust Metrolinx to actually electrify even when the need for it is unavoidable. This is particularly true for the UPRL which is, or isn’t, under government control depending on which press release you read. That line will have new (refurbished) equipment specific to that service that won’t be replaced for years. UPRL trains generate far more pollution per rider than the GO service according to Metrolinx’ own projections.

With the greatest of respect, I think you are overselling the backfill argument in traffic and giving short shrift to those whose exasperation at the endless delays to a worthy project is quite justified.

Steve: The “endless delays” are brought on by the way the project is promoted and misrepresented by GO Transit, now Metrolinx and Queen’s Park. Also, more recently, the Metrolinx plans substantially increased the amount of service proposed for the corridor. This significantly affected issues of noise and pollution.

To address the back-fill argument: To be certain, when roads have free space and traffic moves more, some people will shift their driving to the now open corridor and or choose to drive.

However, taking that argument to its extreme logical conclusion, as you seem to be; would require that for each person that GO adds as a passenger, presumably a previous motorist is using approximately this corridor to travel in; they will lose a user to car traffic and the net benefit would be zero. This of course means we shouldn’t build transit of any kind, since for every rider we attract, we will lose an equal number due to freed up road space.

I know you don’t mean to convey that, but it certainly comes across that way.

I would suggest that there are roughly speaking (given a static population) a set-number of trips that this corridor of travel has.

Steve: The assumption of a static population is at the heart of the problem. First off, let’s assume that in a static environment, there is some upper bound to the total number of trips. We should reach a point where moving one of them off of roads to rail will not immediately result in a backfill effect. However, the population and demand are not static, and what we are really doing is providing more overall capacity and limiting the effect of future congestion that puts an upper bound on the number of new trips an unmodified network could handle. With growth, the road system will always be full and will produce more or less a standard level of pollution assuming no major technological change in the overall auto and truck fleets.

A certain percentage use highways (401/427/Gardiner), a smaller number use local roads, and a certain percentage now use transit. I will assume walking and biking are largely non-factors for GO Transit or Highway, long-haul trips.

The expansion of GO to all-day service, more frequent service, with more and better stations, should lure a meaningful percentage of trips from the car to transit. I’m sure the various studies have exact numbers, but we can assume the goal would be to move at least 10 points of modal split over, else the project hardly seems worthwhile.

Now due to growing population, over time, back-fill will occur. But that is in the future, and is the subject of other planning and capital funding exercises (from Smart Growth to BRT, to Hurontario LRT, to Transit City etc. etc.)

Steve: No. Some of the backfill will occur immediately as trips that otherwise would not be attempted find space to travel. In a worst case situation, the ability to sell a new house in the 905 would become difficult because commuting and congestion would be unacceptably bad. I agree that various other schemes that are not core-oriented will help both suburban 416 and the inner 905, but the many-to-many nature of trips in those areas make a substantial modal shift challenging.

In the meantime this project, as Tier 4 diesel produces a very real environmental benefit and planning benefit.

Steve: This assumes that Tier 4 diesels will be available at a reasonable capital and operating cost. Also, as I will describe in a post on Wednesday, Metrolinx has very substantially overstated the comparative pollution outputs of rail and car travel, including allowance for Tier 4. You will have to wait for the details, but it is a major blunder in their calculations.

To be clear, nothing in this construction of grade-separations or laying of new track in any way precludes future electrification.

Moreover, as pointed out by other posters, the capacity constraints at Union will almost certainly drive electrification in this corridor long before the train load reach their 2031 projected peak.

I think there are many of us here, and in the pro-transit community, though I will speak for myself, who very much support electrification in this corridor but do not see it as life and death important at this particular stage of things. We perceive the risk of more delay to this much need project as being far more harmful.

It is perhaps ironic, that I think I am critiquing an all-or-nothing attitude out of the clean-train folks, which you yourself have criticized in those who are pro-subway (anti-transit city).

You can appreciate in that context, and have written that subways, on one level might be superior in a number of contexts, but they are not affordable, nor politically viable, particularly if the goal is to create a network. Better to build up the the technology in increments and accept what some might see as ‘second best’ in order to build a network, later upgrade it; rather than see, as in the 80′ and ’90′s virtually no new subway construction.

Here we have something that gives many of us the same feel, in the name of seeking perfection, all at once, a project may be delayed interminably or worse killed off all together, by making it too cost prohibitive or politically unpalatable.

Can’t we all just say, Weston deserved a better deal on stations and roads, and dot it. Strachan needed a better crossing, and got it. WE all need this corridor improvement and if we can just live w/Tier 4 Diesel for a short while, we’ll get it.

Maybe good enough is sometimes not good enough; but it is good enough for now. Fight tomorrow’s battle tomorrow (after the building the grade separations and lay the new track!)

Steve: I think the issue here is a debate over where the line between “better as electric” actually lies. Metrolinx has skewed their arguments quite badly in the past, and if they had taken a less contentious approach, avoided the sense that they were trying to fudge the figures at every possible turn, they might have a better reception. However, you must remember that things like the Strachan Avenue design change only came about because the City of Toronto dragged Rob Prichard down to the site to show him what was proposed. At that point, he got the message, but it should not have needed that sort of political intervention.

Because, at heart, I don’t trust anything Metrolinx says until I have verified it thoroughly, I strongly suspect that they are overstating the case against electrification. They need to prove otherwise, and Ministerial bafflegab is no substitute for hard evidence.

Why are Torontonians (and our elected officials) so lazy? Why do we need to spend time and money on a study? Our future needs are surely better served if we allocate funds for electrification now in order to ensure long-term viability of this project.

This is not just about providing a link to Pearson – the case can also be made that communities in Weston (and a stop at Dundas West) provide needed subway relief. Are you listening Adam Giambrone?

The integration of regional and urban rail has been a proven success the world over – but not in Canada, I fear. Short-sighted to say the least…

Steve: And that, sad to say, is thanks to the combined histories of the TTC and GO. You may recall that Metrolinx steadfastly refused to get involved in local transit planning and funding as part of “The Big Move”, nor to contemplate true network integration with GO and TTC operating as one network with a common fare structure. This problem has been around for a long time, long before Adam G. was anywhere near the TTC.

- Union Station must be electrified first before any of the GO lines can be electrified. To provide sufficient clearance for the overhead lines, the trainshed must be rebuilt.

Steve: This work is already included in GO Transit’s reconstruction of the trainshed that will begin shortly. They have designed for electrification from the start, and the marginal cost is likely quite small as they had to rebuild the shed anyhow. I also believe that the new signal system installed in the area around the station is compatible with electrified operation.

- Furthermore, the section of track between Union and Willowbrook Yard must be electrified, unless GO plans to build a new yard to serve the Weston corridor.

Steve: Electrification of the Lake Shore corridor was announced as one of the priority projects by Dalton McGuinty in Move Ontario 2020. Metrolinx has already published an analysis of this scheme which, among other things, concluded that electrification was unavoidable given the level of service planned for that line. Therefore, the cost of a link to Willowbrook is part of an already identified priority project.

- High clearance is required to accommodate high freight cars (double stack containers and autoracks), which are significantly higher than GO Bilevels. Unless these are banned (which would be problematic on lines owned by CN/CP) this will likely require modifications to increase clearance under bridges/through tunnels.

Steve: The cost of improving clearances at various locations was included in the Lake Shore electrification studies done by GO. All of the structures planned for the Georgetown corridor will be high enough to accommodate overhead wiring. The CPR is trickier depending on what is done with the Milton line.

Realistically, even if we were to decide to electrify the GO network today, it would take at least five years before electrified trains are in operation. Meanwhile, significant increases in GO service will take place. Is it really realistic to electrify the Georgetown on “day one”, whatever that means? Furthermore, I don’t think it is a big deal to initially operate the Weston corridor with diesel trains because (a) it will not be 400 trains on day one; service will be ramped up gradually and (b) if we have a surplus of diesel locomotives, we can either sell them or move them to expanded diesel-only lines (Niagara, Kitchener, Peterborough etc.) when they are replaced with electrics. Finally, the Lakeshore line should surely be the first line to receive electrification because it is a more important line than the Georgetown line.

Steve: If we are to believe the statements from Metrolinx, the “day 1″ number of trains in the corridor as a whole will be 140 Air-Rail link trains plus about 180 GO trains. Some of those are Milton trains, and some are Barrie trains, and so I can’t say definitively how many would still be in “the corridor” north of the West Toronto diamond. It is certainly no stretch to say that there will be over 200 trains on “day 1″.

An important reminder is that people wrongly talk only about Weston in this debate. In fact, the number of trains planned for Milton and Barrie will also rise substantially by “day 1″ and this affects the people living along the corridor south of West Toronto.

Steve: You may have noticed they have been doing quite a bit of this already.

Steve: There is no contract, only a memorandum of understanding which has nowhere near the same force in terms of claims for damages. It should be noted that the requirements placed on SNC by the Minister’s order are more onerous than those originally contemplated, and could be read as a change of the underlying assumptions. In a story published tonight in the Globe (and likely in Wednesday’s paper), we learn:

Even if the line is converted to electric, if hundreds of trains are going to use the Georgetown tracks daily, the residents along that corridor will be in for hell. If I were them, I’d move now.