A joint federal-provincial announcement today added a long list of GO transit improvements to the parking lot and the Hamilton Junction grade separation projects.
Among today’s improvements are:
- Extension of GO Rail service into downtown Barrie (completion in 2011)
- Expansion of the tunnel at Exhibition Station to provide a new north access, and additional track capacity at this station (completion in 2011)
- Widening of the Credit River bridge on the Georgetown line to a capacity of three tracks, with two tracks initially on the new structure
- Refurbishing existing locomotives to improve reliability
- Adding 20 bi-level coaches to the fleet
Regular readers will know that I railed [sorry about that] against the amount of spending on parking lots announced in February. Today’s project list is much more oriented to improvement of service and passenger facilities. Yes, I know that to car commuters, parking is an important part of those facilities, but it’s not the only one.
From a longer range point of view, the planning issue of how parking lots and structures poison station locations remains a big problem. The Metrolinx plan for “Mobility Hubs” doesn’t work very well without pedestrian-oriented stations and good local bus services.
Steve Munro 
I wonder if they’ll put a pedestrian walkway across that bridge? I wish they had when they did the credit crossing on the lakeshore line…
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In the announcement there was this statement:
“Platform Snowmelt System:
– Installation of snowmelt systems at GO Transit’s Ajax and Bronte
GO Rail Stations during the 2010-2011 construction season.
Snowmelt systems ensure snow- and ice-free platforms, which
enhance customer comfort.”
The TTC should look into providing the same or similiar snowmelt system for all outdoor LRT stops, both for existing stops, future stops (ie. St. Clair), and Transit City outdoor stops.
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I still find it hard to believe that GO cannot find a way to get into Niagara.
There are a number of stations that VIA use…and it would be a huge relief on the QE.
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George Bell Says:
April 3rd, 2009 at 4:42 pm
“I wonder if they’ll put a pedestrian walkway across that bridge? I wish they had when they did the credit crossing on the lakeshore line…”
WHO WOULD USE THE BRIDGE? There are no roads or buildings near the bridge. There is a road that dead ends near one end but no one lives near by. It is not the responsibility of GO or CN to provide pedestrian bridges. Since the only approaches to the bridge are on the railway right of way a pedestrian bridge would only encourage people to trespass on the rail line. I believe that this bridge was shown on the track plan for the Kitchener expansion. They want to triple track most of the right of way from Halwest to Silver Junction (the Weston Sub to the Guelph Sub) and then double track to Kitchener. This would allow the start of the Kitchener service to begin in 2011 or 2012.
The snow melt system for a 12 car GO platform involves a large building (about 24 ft square with two boilers) to heat the liquid that flows through the heating coils. GO does this on Island Platforms because there is no place to put the snow. I know that the TTC has heating coils in some of the bus ramps to subway stations. The old exit ramp to Yonge St. from Eglinton Station used to have it but I think it was electric. It would save snow clearing but I wonder what the cost trade off would be.
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They talk about 3 tracks at Georgetown, but they’ve just widened the Brampton area to a whole 2 tracks and that included the bridge over Etobicoke Creek. (Picture in the latest Trains magazine!) And none of the other bridges between Bramalea and Georgetown have any provision for more than 2 tracks — well maybe one with some sidings on it (not sure).
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From Steve’s post:
[i]Expansion of the tunnel at Exhibition Station to provide a new north access, and additional track capacity at this station (completion in 2011)[/i]
New north access – does this mean a second one (in addition to the one currently there)?
Extra track capacity – does this mean more platforms or more tracks?
A previous poster mentioned Niagara. Part of the problem is speed – anytime I travel to Niagara, it takes forever to get through Hamilton. The line needs to to be improved for faster operations prior to any GO service (and even for VIA.)
Steve: From the press release:
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Sorry, I got confused about which line, you’re right, a pedestrian walkway would be silly on this bridge, but the other two Credit crossings on Lakeshore and Streetsville lines I feel could use them…
I agree that GO should not be building pedestrian bridges any old place, but in the case where it provides an easier way for people to get to stations and they are replacing a bridge anyways (Lakeshore last year), it makes sense to either do it, or to involve another government agency to partner with to do it … obviously some work is needed to create a bridge that is safe with regards to trespassing … but as a kid who grew up in the suburbs … I can guarentee you that people are still going to try to walk across the bridge anyways … if you provide a path, you can actually make it less dangerous.
From a biking perspective it seems that the area next to tracks would sometimes be good locations for bike paths, with properly designed barriers etc. This would encourage biking to and from stations from farther distances. Especially in suburbs where “straight line biking” is difficult due to neighborhood design and those annoying posts they put in the middle of the shortcut paths require dismounting and walking your bike.
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I think they should connect GO’s Oriole Station to the TTC’s Leslie Subway station. Those two stations are very close to one another, I wonder if they could build a pedestrian tunnel between the two nodes like Kennedy Station’s link to the GO station near it.
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I’m pretty happy with this announcement – I think that this money is being spent in the right places. Particularly, the extension into downtown Barrie, though planned for a while now, is not something I actually expected to see happen soon, and this is a really excellent development to help make downtown Barrie a little bit more vibrant (and to maybe help curb some of the sprawl enveloping Barrie).
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I agree that parking should not be the only thing that is improved but it is an important consideration. At present, I believe that something on the order of 80% of GO trips are auto park and ride access. Certainly they will have to work to get more people to walk to the stations and take local buses but if significant improvements are made to GO service more parking will be needed if these improvements are to result in ridership increases.
I’m wondering why in some station locations GO doesn’t partner with some developers. The developer would build mixed use on current parking areas or other under-utilized areas near the station. In return GO would get some sort of compensation and a provision of parking. I know this cannot be done at every station (who wants to make developments in some of the very industrial areas near GO stations) but there must be some attractive ones. This could even be done at TTC stations. I’m sure there is some significant red tape that would block this.
Steve: It’s not a question of red tape, but of capacity. Metrolinx plans call for GO to operate 15 minute or better service on routes like Lake Shore, Georgetown and even Richmond Hill. This means there will be a line capacity of at least 4-6 trains per hour which takes us into the 10K range. We know that with existing service levels, the parking lots fill quite early in the day, and for substantially increased capacity, the cost and size of a parking structure would be horrendous regardless of who pays for it. There are also serious problems today with traffic congestion into and out of parking lots. Imagine what happens when trains arrive every 10 minutes.
There is a point where adding more parking is a physical and operational impossibility. You can’t just keep adding more service to the rail corridors without addressing the need for good, convenient, frequent local bus service. Imagine if the subway ended at Finch and there were a handful of buses running every 20 minutes only in the rush hour, with the rest of the demand trying to park in the Hydro corridor.
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David Youngs Says:
April 3rd, 2009 at 9:10 pm
“They talk about 3 tracks at Georgetown, but they’ve just widened the Brampton area to a whole 2 tracks and that included the bridge over Etobicoke Creek. (Picture in the latest Trains magazine!) And none of the other bridges between Bramalea and Georgetown have any provision for more than 2 tracks — well maybe one with some sidings on it (not sure).”
All the bridges except the ones over Queen Street and Main Street have been widened to at least three tracks. GO is putting a fourth track in from Halwest to Kennedy Road. The three track section ends just before the Queen Street Bridge and starts up again just west of the CP diamond for the Orangeville line. I don’t know where you are living but I assure you that all the other bridges were widened. I lived through the construction delays; but GO did build the new sections of the bridges to match the old ones so if you happened to drive through after the construction you may not have noticed that the concrete on the south side of the bridge is cleaner than the rest of the bridge. They are also supposed to be double tracking the bridges over the Humber and Black Creek.
The section that is two tracks is only one km long and has problems with running on an embankment and between a street and the station. The new south platform at Brampton will be on the north sidewalk of Railway Avenue, but a few feet higher. The third track west of the diamond is being installed now. Some of the other third track east of Kennedy on the south side used to be industrial leads and has been updated with heavier welded rail so it may not appear to be new but operationally it certainly is. They also appear to be upgrading the track that is north of the old main line.
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More for David Young:
I went out this morning and drove along the line from Malton to Mt. Pleasant. This is what I found.
The Halton Sub was two tracks from the Junction with the Weston Sub at Halwest to west of Georgetown except for the part from Kennedy Road to Union St in Brampton and the single track bridge over the Credit River. They have triple tracked all the part that was double tracked from Brampton Station to Halwest. They double tracked the part that was single track. They have widened the railway Bridges over Dixie Road, Kennedy Road, Etobicoke Creek, Fetcher’s Creek and McLaughlin Road. They made the architecture of the new part match the old so they have actually built two brand new 1950 style poured concrete arch bridges at Dixie and McLaughlin. They even resurfaced the Dixie Road Bridge so that all of the exposed concrete, except on the underside over the roadway is brand new. It is difficult to find the joint.
I was mistaken about a fourth track near Kennedy Road. What I thought was the third track on the south side was actually the industrial leads which they have cleaned up and shortened. The third track is on the north side and goes all the way to the east side of Centre Street just east of Etobicoke Creek to Kennedy Road. They are starting to lay the track from west of the CP diamond for the Orangeville Brampton Railway. They have removed the switch for the Dixie Cup spur and it does not look like they will put in a new one. The track has not passed west of McLaughlin yet. The right of way is graded to the Highway 7 overpass but needs to be finished from there through the new station to the new yard. It is intended to join into the double track just before Chinguacousy Road.
The south Island platform at Mount Pleasant is just about finished as they are putting on cosmetic finishing. The south platform at Brampton is proceeding along slowly with almost all of the work to date being underground for footings, cabling, signals and electricity. They seem to be starting to clean up all of the stuff from this so I expect them to start the actual platform soon. The construction sign that went up in February 2008 said that the construction would be from March to May, it just did not specify which May. They are putting elevators and a south platform at Malton station so only the east most five cars can be used there. There was not a handicapped platform because it was an island platform with no elevator. It appears that the south track is being upgraded to mainline status as there is only a single track signalled main line with industrial lead tracks on either side at the moment.
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Ah, put a comment on the web and find out the facts!
I haven’t been a rider on GO for 5 years now and the only bit of the tracks I see is downtown Brampton.
Steve: Tch! Tch! There is a future for you at Metrolinx.
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This new station for Barrie is actually going to be downtown? I just saw something somewhere else on the web which made me think that this new station only going to be closer to, not actually in, downtown Barrie. If it isn’t right downtown it certainly should be. I wonder if it’s going to be where the CN passenger station used to be.
Steve: The press release says “Allandale GO Rail Station: A second GO Transit rail station will be built in downtown Barrie to provide more travel options for GO customers in Barrie.” This is the old CN station site.
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Steve says:
“…There are also serious problems today with traffic congestion into and out of parking lots. Imagine what happens when trains arrive every 10 minutes.”
I hate to break the news but between 17h16 and 18h03 there are six trains that arrive at Oakville and five of them stop at Clarkson, They are running on an effective 10 to 12 minute headway right now and they will increases the trains by 2 cars each for a 20% increase in capacity. Four of these trains operate express from Toronto to at least Clarkson so they have a heavy load at Oakville. Lakeshore East operates six trains per hour in the peak time slots also.
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I think one of the issues with a shortage of parking is that there isn’t enough other service into a lot of GO Stations. There needs to be an overall transportation plan, rather then just a handful of GO and local transit buses, that were running before hand, and just conveniently shifted into a new station. Metrolinx could have solved this by developing an overall regional plan, but I think it will end up being too many people wanting to make a name for themselves and nothing will really happen.
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I have driven around to most of the various GO train stations. There are a number of them with no or little public transit service to them and no one living within a half marathon of them; unfortunately if we don’t provide parking lots no one will ride them. That said I do believe that the next time GO considers a fare increase they put in a $4.00 parking charge. That would make up about the same amount of money and encourage people to use public transit, car pool or kiss and ride.
I was in the Pickering GO station this morning from 7:00 to 7:20 and there were about 8 or 9 Durham Transit buses and 4 GO buses meeting each departure but most of the Durham riders were transferring between buses and not riding the GO train; oh well, it is a convenient and sheltered transfer point.
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Now that the Weston sub is going to be owned by GO I’m wondering what kind of income GO will derive from CN freights and VIA trains using it. Whatever it might be surely every little bit should help.
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David Aldinger Says:
April 8th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
“Now that the Weston sub is going to be owned by GO I’m wondering what kind of income GO will derive from CN freights and VIA trains using it. Whatever it might be surely every little bit should help.”:
I believe that the term for this is wheelage and that it is spelled out in either legislation or contract, but as the term implies this is dependent on the number of wheels (axles or cars or however you want to count) that go over the line. If GO runs reverse peak and weekend service to Guelph and Kitchener it is going to cut into VIA’s revenue because who is going to pay $40 or more to go to Toronto and back. This would especially hit the university and college traffic on weekends.
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