Updated August 2, 2013 at 6:00am:
André Sorensen has written a commentary in today’s Star expanding on his proposed use of the rail corridor for express airport service and a quasi Downtown Relief line. I’m with him on a more intelligent use of the rail corridor, especially to the northwest of downtown, but not with the premise that this could replace the proposed subway from Don Mills & Eglinton to the core.
Updated July 27, 2013 at 7:00am:
I have received correspondence from Professor André Sorensen, the original author of this proposal, that puts it in a somewhat different light.
This information has been added at the end of this article.
Original article from July 25, 2013:
Another proposed “relief line” surfaced recently with a scheme supported by Councillors Ana Bailão and Karen Stintz (who also is TTC Chair).
At the July 24 TTC Board meeting, Chair Stintz moved:
“That TTC CEO Andy Byford initiate discussions with appropriate Metrolinx staff to determine the feasibility of using the Georgetown and Lakeshore East Transit GO Transit corridors for the Downtown Relief Line, as part of the Downtown Relief Line environmental assessment.”
Regular readers of this blog as well as other other venues where the DRL is discussed and dissected will know that fantasy maps of new lines can consume a vast amount of web browsing time and debates verging on pitched battles develop between advocates of various schemes.
Toronto Council, a body which effectively ceded responsibility for major transit planning decisions to Queen’s Park in response to capital subsidies ranging up to 100%, has shifted to “let’s make a deal” mode. We have already seen a debate nominally about revenue tools be highjacked into series of “subway in every ward” motions. The Scarborough Subway proposal was only one of those on the table, and Council, unconstrained by the need to actually pay for anything, was more than happy to endorse whatever its members put forward.
Remember, this is not a government by latte-sipping pinko Commies, but a supposedly business-minded bunch of tax-fighting conservatives.
Into this environment comes a new proposal marrying some of the existing GO corridors with a local transit scheme. The idea, in brief, is to build a U-shaped route from northern Etobicoke southeast along the Weston rail corridor, through Union Station, out the Lake Shore East corridor to Scarborough Junction, and then north to Kennedy Station. Although it was not part of her motion, Stintz talked about using the rail corridors for an LRT route since Metrolinx was planning to electrify anyhow.
The scheme is superficially attractive, but it needs to be taken apart to see what works, what should be kept, and what needs rethinking.
What Will Fit in the Rail Corridors?
If a new line is to be built on dedicated tracks, there must be some place to put it. The Weston corridor is already full side-to-side thanks to the extra tracks Metrolinx has added for expanded services and for the UPX to Pearson Airport.
Through Union Station, any new service, especially one with a distinct technology, would have to find new space for its tracks, or permanently displace some existing operation.
To the east, Metrolinx already plans or has built more capacity in the corridor, and room for a separate line may be hard to come by.
Any new service on Metrolinx corridors should be provided with mainline compatible equipment such as electric multiple unit cars (EMUs). These are technically the equivalent of a subway car, streetcar or LRV, but built to mainline railway standards. This eliminates issues with locations where, necessarily, the new, local service must cross over existing regional and freight operations (yes, there is still the occasional freight train even though Metrolinx owns the corridors now). It also eliminates issues with cars built to city transit standards (operating voltage, collision strength, platform height, etc.) having to co-exist on a rail corridor.
We could have a long debate about whether Canadian regulations about this are reasonable, but don’t expect them to change anytime soon given the overriding concern with rail safety. Where such operations do exist, there is temporal separation so that a mainline train and LRV never occupy tracks where they could conflict. This is clearly impossible in an already-busy commuter rail corridor.
The UPX is something of an embarrassment, a line dating from the dark ages of a previous federal government, handed off to a PPP (SNC Lavalin) and finally taken over by the McGuinty government at Queen’s Park as a Pan Am Games project. At least two chances to revisit its design as a premium fare express service have been lost thanks to the project’s charmed state, but it will be difficult if not impossible to create a local Etobicoke-Weston-Downtown service in this corridor without taking over the tracks now designated for the UPX.
East of Union, indeed even through Union Station, the situation is more complex. The UPX is on the west/south side of the Weston corridor, but a through service must pass through Union, avoid conflict with tracks turning north at the Don Valley (the Richmond Hill corridor, itself slated for considerably improved service), and then arrive at Scarborough Junction on the north side of the rail corridor to turn north to Kennedy without blocking service on the Lake Shore itself.
This is an example of the problems caused by linking an east and west “DRL” especially if a non-standard technology like LRT were going to be used in the rail corridor.
Metrolinx/GO Electrification Plans
Although Metrolinx believes in electrification in principle, seeing it in practice is quite another matter. Transportation Minister Glen Murray has spoken of having the UPX electrified “by 2017”, but more recently this has softened to merely having the conversion “started in 2017”. That will get electric territory from the west end of the rail shed at Union to the Airport, but will not deal with the train shed itself, nor with electric service on the Lake Shore to a proposed maintenance facility in Oshawa.
The UPX will have a small yard for its small fleet in Rexdale, but any higher-capacity urban line will need more storage and maintenance facilities somewhere, and this pushes the scope of a first stage electrification beyond what is planned for the UPX.
A strong argument can be made that Metrolinx should electrify sooner rather than later, but any scheme for local service on GO trackage should work with the likely rollout first in the Weston corridor to the Airport.
The Function of a “Downtown Relief Line”
There are three major issues about a “DRL” that tend to get in the way of any discussion:
- Wherever it goes, this line will cost a lot of money and be difficult to build.
- The term “Downtown Relief” implies in some political circles that nobody north of Bloor Street will benefit, a problem worsened by the TTC’s insistence on showing only the segment nominally from Pape to Union in their plans.
- Demand for travel to downtown originates in many places, and one line will not solve everyone’s problems. However, only one line is ever drawn on the map assuming that we cannot possibly afford more.
A line diagonally to the northwest would serve a travel demand that does not now have a direct route to downtown except for a few peak period, peak direction GO trains. As it heads northwest, the Weston rail corridor goes through a widening swath of Toronto that is remote from the subway network. Rapid transit, whatever its form, would be an addition to this part of the city.
An important design issue, however, is that most of the proposed stations are not at major employment or residential nodes and this is unlikely to change in the medium term, possibly longer. Railway corridors have their limitations partly because of historic industrial areas and because more attractive development sites exist elsewhere.
Good feeder bus services and interchanges will be essential, and by implication, the line should be part of the TTC fare grid. By the time anything like this is built, the long-standing and highly artificial separation of GO and TTC as two separate fare structures must end as this is a barrier to GO’s role in supplementing/relieving subway capacity.
The eastern leg is more of a problem. With a subway interchange at Kennedy (to the presumed, by then, extended Danforth subway), the eastern service could bleed off some subway traffic provided that the interchange were reasonably convenient and service frequent. We have already seen how the supposed problems of a much-simplified LRT-to-subway transfer at Kennedy rank with The Apocalypse for Scarborough riders, and they will need a big incentive to change trains at Kennedy.
The line has stations closer to downtown, but the feeder bus network goes to the subway and is unlikely to be reorganized to feed into the proposed station locations further south on that eastern leg.
Both halves of this line look to divert riders from the Bloor-Danforth subway, but they do almost nothing to reduce the north-south flow on the Yonge line north of Bloor Station. That has always been the challenge for “downtown relief” — shifting north-south travel away from Yonge Street.
Metrolinx recently launched a study of travel in, broadly speaking, the Yonge corridor. This will include not only the existing YUS subway, its northern extensions and the DRL, but also the potential role of the GO corridors.
“Relief” can come in more than one form. At its simplest, if some of the commuter demand can be shifted from the present or future subway to the GO corridors, this reduces the peak demand on the subway. A more complex goal would be to not only shift demand, but to make the new corridor a catalyst for redevelopment and an all-day link between sites with substantial demand. This is more of a challenge that simply running trains on existing tracks. Indeed, a line intended to lure development needs more stops in good locations, more nodes to stimulate, than a line whose function is to whisk passengers from the 905 to Front & Bay as quickly as possible.
Improved service on all of the GO corridors, not just from Woodbine racetrack to Kennedy Station, is essential in the medium term. We cannot wait decades for Metrolinx and Queen’s Park to fiddle around with small scale service improvements and implementation schedules stretching beyond the retirement of most Torontonians.
Over the past month, I have heard comments about the DRL suggesting that the line really isn’t necessary if only we can find some lower-cost alternatives. Even this Weston-Downtown-Kennedy line seems to be couched in the same terms — build this and you can avoid the cost of an underground DRL.
In the wake of the Scarborough Subway debate (whatever one may think of the outcome), it is clear that the DRL and its budget are huge targets for those with vanity projects, the chicken-in-every-pot subway plans. If we go down this road we will return to an era of pure transit fantasy, with lines built for ego and to court votes, and we will continue to defer a long overdue route in Toronto.
The TTC did the city no good by its long insistence that whatever might happen, more riders could be stuffed onto the Yonge subway through:
- diversion of riders to the Spadina line once it is extended to Vaughan
- trains with higher capacity (the Toronto Rockets or “TRs”)
- new signalling that would allow trains to run closer together
The TTC gave only passing thought to:
- constraints on station capacity (except at Bloor-Yonge where a very expensive expansion scheme is proposed akin to what is now happening at Union),
- the limitations of terminals (where the physics of train movements and the speed of operator responses set a lower bound on train departures), and
- fleet size (there is no budget provision for the extra trains a more frequent service would require, nor for their storage and maintenance).
This is a classic case of “just one more project” to attain the goal we have been promised, and the likelihood that we will never quite get there while demand and congestion continue to grow. When the full cost and complexity of fitting everyone onto the existing subway is lowballed, the “high cost” of a DRL can look daunting, and the TTC constantly downplayed it as an option. Going north of Danforth to Eglinton and beyond was rarely mentioned.
To his credit, TTC CEO Andy Byford sees the situation differently:
Mr. Byford stressed that, even if the idea is deemed feasible, at some point the TTC will have to go underground.
“I still think, if we talk about the east, there will ultimately, definitely need to be a separate corridor. A separate subway going from somewhere like the Danforth, or maybe even further north than Eglinton, down along King or Queen, and then up to Dundas West,” he said. [National Post]
Not One, But Many
The heart of the Metrolinx Big Move plan, for all its limitations, is to look at transit service as a network, not as individual projects. Many debates about the DRL have turned on single-line implementations and each of these is coloured by the objectives advocates for each proposal might favour. It is impossible to serve all of these goals with one line — there are too many “dots on the map” as potential areas deserving service, and too many demand corridors for one spaghetti-shaped line to serve all of them.
Metrolinx, the TTC, Toronto Council and the public need to understand the limitations of each scheme, the benefits each will confer (or not), and how each component will fit into a larger plan. Regional service and fare integration will be essential to making this work so that riders ignore the colour of the vehicle when making their route selection. We seem to be prepared to spend billions on subway lines so that riders can have cheap “TTC” fares to downtown rather than looking at what can be achieved for less total cost with improvements to the rail corridors.
Possibly, if Metrolinx churns out its study fairly quickly, we will get some of this info. Meanwhile, “debate” will be driven by each Councillor’s new map, and that is no way to plan a network.
Updated July 27:
The origin of this proposal is in work done by Prof. André Sorensen from the University of Toronto. He wrote to me about it on July 26:
Hi Steve
Just read your blog on my DRL Pearson idea, that Karen Stinz moved to be examined further. I would be happy to send you a fuller explanation, if you like. You got part of the idea wrong. The proposal is to use the UPX tracks. But the main point is that for regional transit it is time to look at electric express/local services along the rail corridors. Not sure where you got the map you published, but it is just a draft to measure the population along the route. I would be happy to send you a more final version.
André
[The map was taken from Councillor Ana Bailão’s Facebook post.]
In a further note, he said:
The point is that this would use the UPX tracks that are currently in place, and could start as an express service, later being modified to allow the local service. It would certainly have to be done to mainline rail standards, for the reasons you indicate.
I am currently working on an analysis of the development potential of the nodes along the corridor from Union Stn. to the Airport. I think that this corridor has much more development potential than along the Bloor Danforth line, partly because it lies between downtown and the Airport, and partly because of a lot of vacant and lightly used land along the corridor. Bloor did not have those conditions. The corridor is between the two largest employment nodes in the region, the Airport and Downtown. That will drive a lot of potential development.
I agree that local services would have to be reorganized to feed to those new stations.
best wishes,
André
For more information, please read Sorensen’s paper The Logic of Express-Local Rail Service to Pearson Airport and the associated map.
Steve Munro 
Which brings us to my secondary concern. Proposals like this may have value worth exploring as part of the big picture for transit in Toronto and the GTA. However, it’s when they are packaged as an alternative to a DRL subway that they are rendered worthless. As a result, by debunking them from the viewpoint of alternatives to a DRL subway, good ideas might be killed off permanently when they shouldn’t be considered in that context in the first place.
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In answer to your question in the title, it’s very definitely Gerrymanding. No two ways about it whatsoever.
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It seems like every time a new group holds a press conference or issues a press release announcing their transit ideas, Karen Stintz presents a new transit “plan” to Toronto City Council. I haven’t commented here in a long time since I’ve largely tuned out the transit bickering at City Hall. Nothing will ever get built with a never ending change in course. Or maybe that’s the plan?
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Given that Metrolinx is now working towards having four tracks from Union to the spur that leads into Pearson, two for UPX and two for the regional Georgetown/Kitchener line, why not have this regional line share the UPX tracks east of the airport spur. If the Etobicoke North station was replaced by a new platform at Woodbine (acting as both a regional stop and the western terminal of a new local line) then both the UPX and the regional trains would share the same destination, the same stops (Weston and Dundas West, and I presume Mt Dennis, once the Eglinton crosstown is complete) for the balance of the trip eastward. I think that their headways would be more compatible too. The Etobicoke North station would become the Kipling station on the local line. The balance of the Georgetown South track from Woodbine to Union could be used for Professor Sorensen’s “relief” line.
This may not offer much relief to the YU line but it could be some relief to all those people living in the north-west of the city who have to cram themselves onto over-crowded buses to get anywhere.
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Could the powers-that-be look into incorporating branch services on the outer east and west legs of any DRL? Would the users tolerate 10± m non-rush service on those branches, after getting used to the 5± m non-rush service on the current subway and proposed Transit City lines?
If people get upset about having to transfer on rapid transit lines, branch lines could be an alternative. If they don’t mind reduced service on those branches, that is.
Other cities in the world have branches for their subway and light rail lines. Many of the lines already run using 10± m non-rush hour headways in other cities, on their rapid transit lines. Could Toronto do the same, at least on a branch line?
Steve: Don’t forget that this branching must also work in the peak period too! Depending on the DRL technology, and it’s a challenge either way. If the DRL is a subway, then you are building a branch for relatively low service/ridership. If the DRL is commuter rail, you are constrained to the location of rail corridors which don’t notably branch on most routes.
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Sigh; and for a few reasons.
Maybe ten years ago, in being propositional to the Front St. Extension Dumb Growth, one of the transit options was to do transit up to the NW via this corridor, more local, TTC-based transit. And I’m sure I was building upon other plans etc., just I didn’t know so much about them then, but going up on the diagonal to the NW (and NE) is smart as the NW is low on good connecting transit, and forget about the airport to some extent as we need to ratchet down flying if we have any hope of a stable climate.
At least the road folly was eventually deflected, but the Clowncil never really got into the spirit of its official plan etc. and started to look for better transit.
And in he meanwhile, there’s been momentum in the Pearson/Union link, to the extent that we have now really squandered a rare corridor in the greenhouse century and it will be rather uphill to adjust the institutions and tracks to fully use it for a good public transit route.
While the highest-best use of the corridor is for transit, odds are very high that the bike community will strongly resist the removal of a very rare thing in the core of TO – a pleasant, safe bike ride as that Rail Trail does provide that, and it is a key part of the Bike Plan for the west end, since the City is far more adept and able to spend millions on off-road trails than $25,000 a km to repaint streets like Bloor St., where shedding TTC subway demand on to bikes could expand the subway for the price of paint.
A Front St. transitway may still be possible, the need is still there.
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Sorensen’s article — like far too many coming from well-intentioned advocates recently — is so simplistic it hardly warrants comment. Just electrifying a railway won’t enable you to offer a transit-like mix of urban and regional rail service. It requires more track, new stations, direct TTC connections and an advanced rail traffic control system. Furthermore, this plan still doesn’t eliminate the need for the TTC Downtown Relief Line.
It would be nice if some of these ideas originated with rail and transit professionals with real-world experience instead of academics and armchair rail fans. Electrified, European-style urban rail service on existing and selectively augmented rail corridors within Toronto’s boundaries makes sense. But it isn’t a panacea and it won’t come cheap.
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Metrolinx claims that UPX must use equipment that meets main line Transport Canada, AAR, strength specs because they run in a corridor that could have main line freights, perhaps sometime. Do you think Metrolinx will ever let a freight train on those tracks if they don’t even want GO or VIA on them?
Has anyone ridden the subway between Kipling and Islington? The 3 tracks south of the chain link fence are main line freight. Why can the TTC do this while Metrolinx can’t do this with UPX? It could then run rapid transit equipment, signalling and headways. There are no freight sidings east of the Humber and I don’t think there are any on the south side out to where the line cuts off to the airport. Metrolinx has to come up with a better excuse!
Steve: The problems arise closer to Union where it is impossible to avoid crossing a main line rail track unless one completely grade separates the line.
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Hi Steve
I’ve seen a lot of chat around capacity constraints on the rail corridors, Union Station, etc. I’m always puzzled when I see this because although I’ve never counted the amount of traffic on those lines, the general feel of the level of traffic seems to be quite light. I live beside the Weston corridor and it seems I rarely see a train go by. I lived in Japan for a few years, also living beside a train corridor, and when I compare the level of traffic between there and what I see here, there is just no comparison. The line beside my apartment in Japan was 2 tracks and had a train frequency of every 1-3 minutes. They also ran freight trains on the line, although even their freight trains were electric. It was not uncommon to stand in a train station and have a freight train go by at 60+ km/h. Weston corridor is I think 4 tracks wide, and during rush hour you’re at least 10 mins between trains, probably more. There surely should be capacity left for some local service – even once the Union-Pearson Express is added.
When comparing a central station, like Nagoya JR station (city same size as To), to Toronto Union, it also doesn’t compare. Nagoya station maybe had 4 more tracks, but there was literally a train leaving every 30 seconds or so. At Union it isn’t remotely close to that busy even at rush hour.
So Steve, I was wondering if you could give some insight into why it seems that way? Is it just the electrification vs diesel technology difference?
A side note, I always laugh at the on-time criteria for Go-Transit. In Japan, the bullet train had a on time performance of plus/minus 0.3 mins in 2006, and if any trains are late more than 5 mins, they hand out apology notices at stations. Imagine if we even came close to that level of service. I think Metrolinx/TTC needs to import some Japanese engineers. Check out Wikipedia.
Steve: Yes, there is a lot of unused capacity on our rail corridors, but the constraints arise from many factors. Some are current, some are historical. The first and most important is that these lines were originally designed for intercity, not commuter, operation. Signalling, track layouts, platform capacity at Union, all of these speak to trains that run infrequently and have long dwell times with leisurely passenger boarding. The single most telling factor is that our stations do not load level with the trains (although this would have proved challenging for the double-deck GO cars that have a lower floor than the standard intercity passenger car).
The routes fanning out from Union originally had a lot of level crossings and these are only now finally disappearing in most locations. These place a lower bound on train frequency because with many tracks and frequent service, the crossing would never be open. The signal system is not set up to handle closely-spaced trains the way the subway system does. It’s not impossible, just a question of what the service criteria and complexity we want to pay for might be. The railways don’t need 2 minute headways, and so they never invested in that kind of plant.
For GO to push more trains through Union, there must be more “hookups” of service east and west of the station so that it is not a terminal, but a line station. That would require considerable improvement to the east given the inbalance in service today which is very heavily weighted to the west. In turn, that requires upgrades to corridors such as Richmond Hill and Stouffville so that they can handle more trains.
Electrification, especially with self-propelled cars (EMUs) rather than locomotive hauled trains, gives better acceleration and deceleration (just think of the subway). This permits closer train spacing and shorter times between stations. That can be translated to better service with the same number of trainsets, or more stations with the same running time, or various combinations. However without the signals and the station capacity to handle frequent arrivals and short dwell times, closer headways simply cannot be operated.
As for GO’s on time performance, their stats improved substantially a few years ago by the simple expedient of changing the timetables to match what they could actually achieve most of the time. This may seem cynical, but at least they have a fighting chance of providing the advertised service. If they get down to close headways, the timetable is less important because riders will simply get on whatever shows up next. Nobody plans to take the 5:35 train from King Station, for example.
Just as the TTC’s operating practices are mired in decades of “we know how to do this” and “traffic congestion is the root of all evil”, GO will probably have difficulty adjusting to the provision of very frequent service. This will require a will do figure out how to do more, rather than a constant refrain of excuses (some fiscal) about why we have to make do with less.
Even so, there is an upper bound on the capacity of the commuter rail network in Toronto, and operations such as those in Japan and elsewhere are unlikely to be seen here.
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If they have half a brain, I know not a nice thought, they would go along Wellington, Adelaide or Richmond. There is not room at Union for the traffic it could generate.
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Robert Wightman wrote:
I wonder if the TTC could do this if the line were being built today.
When the original LRT line in Denver was built (opened in 1994), and extended south (opened in 2000), its right of way paralleled a railway line. So much so that level crossings along the original part of the line share road signals and gates with the railway (this photo shows a three-track crossing and the closest track is not an LRT track).
Fast forward to this year when the new west line opened. In building this new line, its junction with the existing system is within about a kilometre from the north end of the original line. New FRA rules would not allow this to be approved given the close proximity of the rail line, despite the fact only the curve and the track switches were new track work. The LRT project had to include re-routing the parallel rail line further to the west for the stretch of the original LRT right of way that the new route would be on it.
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There is a simple solution for this: make the platforms level with the lower level of a GO train. Then obviously GO trains would load level, and VIA trains would load significantly closer to level than they do now (certainly those little stepstools would not be needed). One could even have one or two platforms at VIA height, or there could be small portions of some platforms raised to VIA height much as there are now small portions raised to GO height for accessibility.
This should have been done as part of the massive renovation currently underway. Escalators and stairways would obviously have to be extended to be a little taller so it’s not a trivial project.
Steve: The station platforms are GO Transit territory, and are not part of the City’s “dig down” underneath. Union Station is like a strata-condo where GO owns a slice through the middle, but the City owns underground and above the top of the railshed. There is no way that GO, on their budget, would have undertaken changes to the platform heights. Yes, a worthwhile idea, but not one we will see any day soon.
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AAR and Transport Canada rules do not allow platforms within about a foot of the normal car envelope. Take a look at the handicap platforms on GO and you will see the set back. Where the platform is elevated and adjacent to the car sides the speed limit is restricted to about 5 or 10 mph. Try running express service with those restrictions.
In Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor where there is a lot of high platform loading they need gauntlet tracks to keep the through trains a foot from the platforms while allowing the stopping trains to pull over. Nothing is easy with AAR or TC rules.
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To relieve Union Station of congestion and make room, run the Milton line straight across to Summer Hill Station with a new station to transfer at Dupont Subway station.
Steve: A nice idea, but there’s not a lot of room left for peak period transfers onto the University line at Dupont Station. There is also a problem with getting CPR to give up track time on that corridor.
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Thanks for the information. I will definitely have to take a closer look at the accessibility platform next time I’m in a GO station. Of course in the train shed the low speed limit should not be a problem. I wonder what the setback is in Montreal where I understand the platforms are raised?
Steve: Don’t forget that Central Station in Montreal is a terminal, not a through operation.
Incidentally, you may be interested to know if you don’t already that the Waterloo LRT is planned to use gauntlet track at stations in the section that shares track with the freight service. I learned this at the “station design” public information session. Although it’s not shown on the mockups done for the session, I mentioned the fact that the freight train would go right through the station at night and the representative volunteered this information (although without using the word “gauntlet”, it being a general audience session). I believe there are three stations where this is planned to happen.
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As long as the platform height is higher that the normal GO height, which is about 15 cm. higher than normal VIA platforms, there would be no clearance problems. However if there are barriers at the end of the stations to keep you from wandering down the Right of Way this would require gauntlet track.
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Has this actually been confirmed? I’ve heard rumors of a yard at the 401 & Islington but I’ve also heard that the trains will use Willowbrook yard, at least initially.
Steve: According to the Metrolinx/UPX website, construction of a dedicated maintenance facility is already underway. It is possible that the first cars will arrive in 2014 before this is finished and they would be received and tested at Willowbrook.
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For the initial diesel UP Express service, there will be a service track just east of Hwy 27 for minor/light maintenance, but the fleet itself will be stored and maintained at Willowbrook. If/when the UP Express is electrified, they will have a dedicated maintenance and storage yard just east of Islington. Both locations are Metrolinx owned and currently being used as staging areas for the Georgetown South corridor expansion project. Neither facility is currently under construction, as the RFP for the service track was issued in April and going to tender shortly, while the dedicated MSF is currently in Conceptual Design.
Steve: So nice that Metrolinx has accurate info on their site.
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Why is there no discussion about adding GO service along the CP line that runs just north of Dupont? It could intersect with Dupont and Summerhill stations and take the pressure off Union.
Steve: Two reasons. First, there is a question of capacity on what is CP’s main line through Toronto. Second, the subway connection would be at the point where the line has no capacity to accept more riders, especially with surge loads that GO trains would produce. Unlike Union, stations on the CP would not be in walking distance of the destinations for a large proportion of GO riders, and a subway trip would be needed for them to complete their journeys.
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If anything, a passenger rail service on the CP North Toronto sub could act more as a semi-express service running parallel (more or less) to the Bloor-Danforth line, connecting the western GTA to midtown, central and NE Toronto.
In that case, some of the passengers on such a service who would transfer to the subway would be bound for points north of downtown.
Of course the transfers between the CP sub and the subway would not necessarily be convenient … and so far TTC and GO haven’t done the greatest job of building convenient transfers … but transfers could improve if Metrolinx ensured that the connections were more or less seamless and there was a service worth transferring to.
Steve: There is provision at Summerhill Station for a knock panel to provide a link from the basement of the railway station to a future south entrance to the subway. This path was protected when the station was renovated as an LCBO store.
If there is potential for travel patterns that would not overload the downtown-bound subway, with decent connections between TTC subway and any surface rail service and some kind of fare integration, and above all if CP is willing to let go of the sub … then there might be a chance.
Speaking for myself, I’d love to have the option of taking a direct train between Erindale and Agincourt, or a two train trip between Erindale and Finch via Summerhill, rather than driving or trying to take a GO Bus along the 401.
Cheers, Moaz
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Sorry to say, but that’s always going to be a problem. CP will never ‘let go’ (relinquish ownership) of the sub, not for as long as they exist. It’s their only East-West link.
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Is there any room to run a train on its own new tracks along the CP right of way north of Dupont?
Steve: No.
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You’re probably right … though Robert Wightman did make a case for Metrolinx facilitating a move of CP trains onto the York Sub (sharing it with CN) to bypass Toronto.
Of course it would cost a huge amount of money assuming that it was ever possible.
Cheers, Moaz
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If there’s no room for passenger trains on CP’s right of way through Toronto, then Metrolinx should buy the right of way and CP can use the money to build a new Toronto bypass north of Toronto like CN. Perhaps it can be parallel to CN’s line along 407. Considering the Lac-Megantic incident, we shouldn’t have dangerous freight going right through the heart of the city.
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Steve, this may be unrelated but do you know if GO Transit is still planning on moving the Oriole Station slightly north to Sheppard in order to provide a quick convenient transfer with the Sheppard subway (Leslie subway station)? Also why were so many GO stations built far from major intersections when the lines themselves pass close to major intersections (there are many examples of this and not just the Oriole station)?
Steve: Oriole Station has been an issue for years, but GO/Metrolinx seems to show no interest in shifting it. As for the general location of stations, I suspect these were dictated by site issues such as the ease of building parking and bus transfer areas. GO’s has never relied on walk-in trade.
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Regarding Yonge Subway, where is the heaviest crowding occurring on that corridor and what is ridership demand like on the Spadina-University branch of the North South line? My thinking is, if the demand is at or around the Sheppard Street area, the simplest solution to relieve that is to extend the Sheppard Subway west and connect with that Spadina corridor to relieve the pressure of the longer distance subway riders off of Yonge.
The only practical solution to relieve Yonge are 2 more tracks down Yonge to serve as an Express corridor for the long distance riders with intermediate stops so it frees capacity for the local corridor.
Steve: The heaviest crowding occurs in the area either side of Bloor Station where the trains are completely full. Even further north in the AM peak, riders have to wait for several trains to pass before they can board a train, and this is often made possible by insertion of an empty gap train. Similarly in the PM peak, the line is completely full northbound to Bloor and it is quite common to let many trains pass before one can board. The slightest delay in either case has a ripple effect that takes a long time to clear away, and can be compounded because on packed trains people faint or have other health problems. Passenger assistance delays are quite common during crowded times on the subway.
As for the University line, it too is full southbound at St. George and inbound capacity is helped only by the fact that there are short turn trains originating at St. Clair West that arrive comparatively empty. With the opening of the Vaughan extension, this short turn will shift further north (the TTC has planned to move it to Glencairn for a few years now, but this always falls victim to budget cuts). There is a bit of reserve capacity on University, but that is disappearing and certainly ten years out (when the BD extension opens) is will be consumed. That extension will add to demand on the line from the north much as the Yonge line at Finch is now filled with commuters from northern Toronto and southern York Region. Some of this demand should be on GO Transit, but the disjointed planning, lack of fare integration, and poor service on the northern GO lines pushes riders onto the TTC. Far more can be accomplished to relieve the subway lines by getting riders off of them and onto GO than would be achieved by a Sheppard connection (itself at least a $1b project) to Downsview Station.
Capacity can be added to the YUS with more frequent service, but this has operational limits. The TTC once talked about getting down to a 105 second headway (34 trains/hour) from the current 140 seconds (26 trains/hour). However, the terminal track arrangements and operations will not support this. Moreover, with 1/3 more trains/hour, there would be capacity problems at some stations where the load from one train barely clears the platform before the next train arrives under peak conditions. This can be severely compounded simply by having one escalator out of service for maintenance under today’s conditions, and the system must be able to deal with that sort of constraint.
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