The Union Station Revitalization Project was approved yesterday (August 5) by Toronto Council with only one vote in opposition, the predictable gadfly Councillor Ford. Media reports claim that a few others might have voted against as well, but they were caught napping in their offices watching the debate via closed circuit TV, and didn’t make it back in time to vote.
Media reports, thanks to the emphasis in the Mayor’s press conference, focus on the new retail space to be created at Union Station, and this was a target for critics who say we shouldn’t be turning the station into a mall. They haven’t been paying attention. (For more details about what we are getting, please see my previous article on this subject.)
Of the total project cost, $640-million, the City is on the hook for about $300-million, some of which has already been spent on necessary building repairs. The City share will be partly covered through payments by the Head Lessee for the commercial space via three payment streams: an up front one-time charge, an annual base rent, and percentage of sales from the retail space. We won’t know the exact details until all of the agreements are in place later this year, and at that time we will also learn the identity of the successful bidder for the Head Lease.
Some opponents of City participation in this scheme argue that this should be a GO Transit project and the City has no business being in the railway station business, let alone creating a new shopping mall. I disagree, strongly, with this position.
First, GO Transit (and its new parent, Metrolinx) has shown repeatedly that it cares only about its own operations as a commuter railway, not about local development. GO would probably give us a tolerably decent railway station, but little more, and would plead poverty to any requests that it enhance the building. We know exactly what GO’s idea of “good design” is every time we walk through their existing station, a bargain basement of fast food and the uninspiring underbelly of a former Post Office.
From the City’s point of view, this is both a major interchange with the TTC (still owned by the City) as well as a gateway to new developments south of the rail corridor. Union Station is the link between the old and new “downtowns”, and is far more than just a train station.
Although I have discussed details of this project before, there are a few diagrams in the Council presentation that warrant comments.
Page 8: This shows an aerial view of the station with the new GO trainshed and glass atrium superimposed. This is part of GO Transit’s work on the station, and that is expected to begin in the fall. Oddly, media reports have tended to emphasize the view from the atrium in coverage of the City announcement, even though this is really a GO project.
The atrium will cover about one fifth of the trainshed area opening it up both for outside light and for views of surrounding buildings from the train platforms. The rest of the trainshed will be rebuilt substantially in its current form (it is an historic structure), but cleaner, structurally sound, with a green roof and with sufficient clearance for future electrification.
Page 9: This shows the existing PATH system of pedestrian routes and the additions that will be made by this project. An important aspect of the “new Union Station routes” (salmon) is that the new two-level concourses will allow for pedestrian flow through the station that does not compete with GO Transit and Via passenger areas.
Also shown on this page is the new Northwest PATH (yellow) that is part of the Union Station project, and about 10% of the total cost. This connection will spread out the load of commuters to and from Union between both wings of the station.
Pages 12-13: Page 12 shows the many routes to and from the GO concourses in the new plan. The vertical arrows in the middle of the GO Concourses link to the shopping level below. Other connections are provided to the Great Hall (thence to Front Street) and to the Bay and York Street teamways. Those teamways can also be accessed directly from stairways leading down from track level (not shown in this diagram). Page 13 shows the circulation routes at the new, lower shopping level including the direct connection to the subway station across the lowered moat.
Although the moat itself does provide another east-west route, the lowered section at the subway entrance will likely discourage its use as a through connection from Bay to York.
Pages 16-17: These pages show the existing and planned cross section of the complex looking east through the west end of the station. The purple section at the south end of the lower concourse is the loading area accessed from the south side of the building. This is visible in plan view on page 15.
Page 18: The diagrams here show the existing and future uses of various parts of the building seen in cross section looking south.
Page 20: The staging map on Page 20 does not include dates as these are still being finalized, but gives some indication of how the work will proceed. Phase 1 takes place largely in areas that are now unoccupied or little-used, and this will produce the new GO Transit West Concourse. Phase 2 builds the south end of the new GO East Concourse behind the existing one, and Phase 3 completes the GO Transit areas. This scheme allows GO to migrate its operations to the West Concourse before the existing area under the East Wing is taken out of service.
Phases 4 and 5 complete work in the Moat including lowering its level at the subway entrance to match the existing subway mezzanine. This revised Moat area is shown in the drawing on Page 22.
Steve Munro 
Come on Steve use your political clout and have them include the Coach Canada Terminal in these Union Station plans.
Steve: First off, I don’t have that kind of clout. Second, there is no place in Union Station proper for a coach terminal. GO is constrained as it is with the space between Bay and Yonge Streets.
There was a study underway of a site further south, but I believe it turns out that it’s too small. GO/Metrolinx are still trying to figure out how to get more space for coach services, and I suspect that they will look after their own needs long before they worry about the other intercity operators.
The fundamental problem is that years ago (you can’t blame David Miller for this one), we let the railways redevelop far more land around the station than we should have. GO was in its infancy, and there were no plans to move the coach terminal from Bay and Dundas. Hindsight is great, but meanwhile, we didn’t grab valuable land for transit use when we should have.
Meanwhile the TTC carries a debt on its books due to ongoing losses at Bay Street, and one concern is that the value of the property is less than the accumulated deficit of the coach terminal. Not a huge amount, but it will a one-time charge against the City/TTC when/if ever the property is finally sold.
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The TTC owns the Coach Canada Terminal?
Steve: The bus terminal at Bay and Dundas was built by Gray Coach Lines, a subsidiary of the TTC. The vestigial company is now called Toronto Coach Terminal Limited, and it is owned by the TTC.
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Couldn’t a coach terminal be built as an elevated structure immediately East or West of the train shed? For example, a terminal that was West could have pedestrian access from the SkyWalk. Elevated roadways over the tracks could connect to the road network south of the train lines and if budget is available, even include new direct on/off access to the Gardiner W/B. E/B Gardiner on/off access can be by existing access routes.
Steve: There would be major problems accessing such a terminal from anywhere other than the Gardiner, and even that is tricky given that the highway is all on the same level. It would be easy to turn north from the westbound lanes, but not from eastbound. Access to the local streets would be extremely difficult because of the grades needed to get down to that level from the rail corridor. It can be done, but not without chewing up space that’s at a premium (and not all publicly owned) in the vicinity.
Another issue would be the degree to which such a structure would cover the tracks and how it would be supported. There is no room for sets of columns between the tracks, and depending on how close you are to the station itself, the tracks themself are on a bridge, not on a fill. Proposals to deck over the track west of the station ran aground on this problem. There is also a question of ventillation of the track area considering that diesels will be with us for some time. This is not a problem in the train shed because it is designed with natural ventillation through the roof that originally carried away steam locomotive exhaust.
Finally, the Gardiner is the equivalent of two city blocks south of the rail corridor west of York Street (ie west of the train shed), and you would have to build your elevated roadway to the terminal over existing streets and between a collection of fairly new buildings that didn’t plan on having a roadway at the second storey level. To the east, the expressway is close to the rail corridor, but this doesn’t solve the problem of effectively adding a new interchange for buses to access their terminal.
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Two questions Steve:
1) You said above: “… major interchange with the TTC (still owned by the City) as well as a gateway …”.
Did you mean the interchange or the TTC when you say still owned by the city? I distrust Metrolinx on this score.
Steve: The TTC is owned by the City, and Union Station is a major interchange between GO and the subway. Metrolinx would love to grab the subway, but first they should learn how to run a railway rather than just drawing lines on maps. Union Railway Station itself is jointly owned by the City and by GO which has a strata ownership in the tracks and trainshed, and will be acquiring part of the West Wing and their new concourses. The City retains ownership of the sp
2) Given some of the fine trainsheds in Europe and even in North America e.g. Reading Terminal in Philadelphia, what makes the trainshed at Union Station so special? What is historical about it?
Steve: The following is excerpted from the Heritage Character Analysis of Union Station at page 30:
The only other extant Bush train shed is in Hoboken, NJ.
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The Bush shed at Union doesn’t have the skylights though, they were cut out to cut costs when the station was built. As such, I really don’t see why it should be considered a “true” Bush train shed as it doesn’t stick to the design, and more importantly, creates a drab platform environment that we should want to improve, not preserve. The 20-80 ratio between glass and historic structure should be reversed in the case of Union’s shed. The shed acts as a reminder of the mistakes that result from excessive cost cutting.
Steve: That change isn’t going to happen. The GO proposal has been floating around for a few years, and if you had wanted to lobby for a different one, you had plenty of chance to do so. The work is scheduled to begin in the fall.
The tender call closes on August 13 (this info taken from GO’s website).
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Would a set of bays on the north side of the existing terminal, another set on the south side of Front directly in front of the station (presumably with some kind of sheltered waiting area) and bus parking somewhere reasonably nearby (I’m thinking maybe buy or expand the Greyhound facility in the Portlands) have anywhere near the needed capacity? My very rough estimate is that you would end up with 18 new bays.
It’s not a perfect solution, but it doesn’t seem terrible and would get everthing moved. It could also deal with the busses loading across the street at the Royal York. Of course it also might not be a terrible idea to encourage the intercity lines to use suburban terminals (there probably are others, but the only one I know of with any significant intercity usage is STC) in the long term.
Steve: Front Street is to be reconfigured as a pedestrian area. Some will take this as yet another element of the “war on the car”, but the last thing we need there is an onstreet bus terminal. I don’t think that there is enough room to fit in a separate set of bus bays in the terminal east of Bay. If on the north side of that space, buses would have to face west to line up with the platforms and bi-directional traffic would not work in that space.
On a completely seperate note, is there anything about the trainshed that’s significant other than it’s uniqueness? I don’t exactly hate it, but theres not really anything aesthetically pleasing about it either…
Steve: It’s ours and it’s unique. There is a heritage eastment on this (and on the station in general) from Parks Canada as a National Historic Building. They agreed to the attrium because it only replaces part of the trainshed, and the rest of the structure will be rebuilt in kind.
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Just to add a bit more speculation about a relocated coach terminal. I know the old police station on Harbour Street was once considered for a site. I’ve also heard more recently that the parking lots surrounding the Port Authority building next door at 60 Harbour are being considered as a site complete with direct off- and onramps to the Gardiner. If that were the case it’d be interesting to travel from New York’s Port Authority coach terminal to Toronto’s coach terminal at the Port Authority offices! I figure they own the land the parking lots sit on, so they could develop the site as such.
Granted one must travel through the Air Canada Centre from Union Station to access this site. Good luck during a game or concert! The site is relatively closer to Union than the current terminal. All that would be needed would be a stop underground at Lake Shore and Bay to get higher-order TTC service.
Steve: Yes, I know that land was under consideration but direct ramps are unlikely. As you mention, the connection to the railway station via the ACC would be tricky.
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I know this is going to get me in trouble, but honestly, how is a roof that historically important, and can’t something else be done by historians if it’s that important…like dismantle it and take it to the railway museum or something…
We better get moving on tearing down the gardiner, if we leave it long enough it will be the only one left and then we’re stuck with it forever…
What about the historic bathrooms in union, we better be keeping the fixtures, I don’t know what I’d do if all that scratchiti were to be lost to history…
Point being that functionality and design for a building that handles twice as much traffic as pearson should trump a lot of this stuff … imagine we still had the old terminal 1&2 because they were historic buildings … if things are truly historic then put them in a museum…
Steve: First off, the train shed is rather large to put in a museum, and without the tracks under it, it would lose its context. Second, once it has been rebuilt and brightened up, it won’t look as forelorn as today. Third, there is a debate about the bathrooms because the old fixtures don’t meet current sanitation standards, and I don’t know how this has been resolved yet.
As for the Gardiner, there are multiple examples of elevated roadways, and the Gardiner is by no means the sole survivor of a bygone era.
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Toronto’s shed is specifically the last surviving, substantially unaltered Bush train shed in Canada. There is also a surviving (albeit modified) Bush shed at Winnipeg’s Union Station. The Bush shed at Ottawa’s old Union Station was demolished in 1966-67 and the Bush shed at Montreal’s Windsor Station was demolished in the 1990s to make way for the new hockey arena (whatever it’s called today).
In the U.S., Bush train sheds survive in Chicago, Buffalo and Jersey City, as well as Hoboken, though some of these have been substantially altered.
Karl Junkin’s appraisal of what constitutes a “true” Bush shed is wrong. It is the ventilation mechanism that was patented and defines a Bush shed. Skylights are nice, but not essential to the design. The Bush shed has heritage value as a representative example of innovative engineering of its day, not for its aesthetics (though some people like those too). The ventilation works as well today as it ever did, and keeps the air under the shed fume-free and easy to breathe. A European-style arched shed would not, unless we electrify everything.
With better artificial light, and the new atrium, the train shed should be a much more pleasant spot (not that anybody will have much chance to linger there). On the other hand, the coming changes mean that Toronto’s Bush shed will lose its uniqueness (whatever that’s worth) as Canada’s last unaltered example of its type.
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Quote from Steve, above: “Metrolinx would love to grab the subway, but first they should learn how to run a railway rather than just drawing lines on maps.”
I understand that MetroLinx has already “assumed” ownership of the new LRT lines as well as of the Spadina subway extension.
Steve, this strikes me as a rather arbitrary action on the part of Metrolinx. What are the ramifications? Does the TTC and the city lose their jurisdiction over these lines? Does the city and the TTC still have to pick up part of the deficit? Who has the say over operational decisions?
Steve: Metrolinx (ie Queen’s Park) will own the assets but the TTC will operate them. It’s an accounting thing, but some at Metrolinx would like to use that as a wedge to take over part of the system. To his credit Rob Prichard has been very concilliatory about this arrangement.
The action, by the way, was initiated by Queen’s Park, not by Metrolinx itself.
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To Steve’s comment regarding what GO thinks of as “good design” go by the Mount Pleasant or Lisgar stations, which are both fairly new. Bare bones, utilitarian and boring … the most economical lamp posts and other fixtures and lots of concrete. GO’s new bicycle shelters are usually the facilities with the most flair at a number of the stations. Just think of applying that spartan aesthetic to Union Station. There would be even less down there than there is now.
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Is that similiar as to how the New York Subway was created? NYC owned the tunnels, but the IRT, BMT, and IND operated under a lease from the city.
So is the TTC going to “lease” the tracks, tunnels, and vehicles from Metrolinx?
Steve: It is unclear what exactly the legal arrangement will be. The TTC may operate the lines on behalf of Metrolinx.
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Steve after this extensive renovation, will there be any room to add trackage for GO or any other rail service if its needed in the future? (ie: above or below ground).
Steve: Not really. There are several problems. To double-deck the track area (up or down) would require creation of approach ramps that would take land now occupied by existing ground-level trackage, land that is at a premium because the corridor is constrained by buildings that have gone up around it.
To the west, the corridor is wider because it fans out into two separate lines and conceivably there might be room to drop below the existing tracks. However, the space is very tight between the CN Tower and the Convention Centre. There is a 3-D view of the Convention Centre area on their website. This shows the many buildings that limit the corridor’s width.
To the east, the corridor is on a fill and roads go under it. Any new stub terminal underground would have to be at a level below existing streets and utilities (Yonge, Jarvis, Sherbourne, Parliament, Cherry) and this would affect both the length and placement of any approach ramp.
Underground construction would have to deal with a busy working railway above, and any station would have to be well west or east of the current site because Union Station’s foundations go down a long way and building under them would be extraordinarily complex. (The “dig-down” of the current project involves removing dirt from areas under the station, but does not go below the foundation of the station structure.) Obviously any new underground terminal could only be used by electric trains due to ventillation problems.
Going above the tracks presents different challenges. First, it would create a new structure in the rail corridor that would have to be supported. Opportunities for structural columns are rare as we have already seen with plans for a new footbridge over the tracks at Peter Street, and trains are much heavier than pedestrians and bicycles. Placing the existing tracks under a new structure could trigger a need for electrification of the existing level, and that would be a major issue both for VIA and for GO services.
Again, this would have to be a stub terminal east or west of the existing station because going above the trainshed, especially with its new atrium, would require more clearance than simply placing the existing approach tracks under a new structure. That structure would also block views from lower floors of existing buildings near the corridor. To the west, an elevated approach would run into existing crossings of the corridor at Spadina, Peter (planned), John. the Convention Centre and Skywalk).
Finally, passengers using the new terminal areas would have to get to and from the main part of downtown and the subway and would add to the passenger flows that will already double over the coming decades.
This is one of those situations where, I am sure, with sufficient money and a “we can build anything” attitude, more capacity could be created, but it would be extremely difficult.
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All this discussion about ways to expand the capacity of Union Station beyond GO’s planning targets is really begging the question of whether moving such a large number of additional commuters into and out of downtown Toronto every day is a good idea. It’s simply not sustainable for ever increasing numbers of people to work downtown and live out in GO-serviced suburbs, passing through Union Station twice daily in between the two.
Presumably, some of the people living in the many new condos downtown are within walking distance of their downtown jobs. Hopefully, some of the people working newer employment centres in Mississauga and elsewhere live (or will live) closer to their jobs too. More people choosing to live that way could mean less pressure on GO services. High capacity regional transit is obviously vital to the economic future of the GTA, but so is reducing peoples’ commuting distances wherever possible, encouraging more people to commute via local transit, cycling and walking.
Not everyone needs to come downtown, not everyone should come downtown, and there will never be enough capacity to allow everyone to come downtown. The Powers That Be need to recognize these truths and plan around them, rather than coming up with hugely expensive schemes to keep adding more capacity to the existing system.
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@Andrew Jeanes – that’s just heretical talk if I ever heard it. Without more people on transit where would the need for crayon-drawing on maps be? 🙂
In any case, it has occurred to me more and more lately, and especially given the numbers shown on the Union Station presentation, that maybe the answer is to send VIA and Northland trains to North Toronto and all GO service to Union.
This would of course require a major upheaval in how railways in the GTA are operated, with the USRC extended to all of 416 and some/all of 905, interconnections between CN and CP lines to permit the CP corridor to handle trains to/from CN alignments and VIA passengers intending for inner Lakeshore stations could transfer to GO at an outer GTA mutual station like Aldershot or Oakville.
Would this be expensive? Absolutely. Would it be cheaper than tunnelling or flying over at Union. Without question, and would add resilency through interconnections to a rail network that is almost dangerously radial and prone to disruption (see this week’s flooding for example).
VIA and Northland are not true commuter services but have substantial counterflow service. Even a full VIA ex Kitchener or Kingston would not impact the Yonge line at Summerhill like a 12-car GO train would and giving up slots and platform times at Union to GO maximises the infrastructure there. Summerhill is not “as convenient” for VIA travellers admittedly but it is certainly more “in the thick of things” than Ottawa Station is, I would argue, and only 4.3km from Union compared to the Island Airport’s 3.1km+ferry.
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Here is a hare-brained idea that will solve the problem of what to do with the DRL and the ARL. Make them one line. Extend the DRL under Adelaide or Richmond to the Weston Sub and GO up the Weston Sub to the airport. It would probably need to be standard gauge to allow for multiple use of the tracks but SNC-Lavalin want high platforms; the tunnels would need to be larger to accommodate the catenary and the platforms would need to be longer. If they ran 12 car trains, one station could probably connect with the Yonge and the University subways but I get silly.
The idea sounds wild but look at the benefits:
You get a service to the airport that would actually make connections with more of the city and transit lines.
The DRL would have a useful west end.
Many passengers would be diverted from Unin station from both the east and the west.
I know that this would require a major paradigm shift by GO, Metrolinks and the TTC. A different type of vehicle would be required, a cross between regular subway and GO. I will give you my crazy idea for that in a while but check out City Rail in Sydney Australia. They operate something like this.
Steve: Hmmm … a 12-car GO train pulling into the airport. They just might have to redesign the terminal. Also, trains of that length would require rather large stations on the DRL.
Yes, silly.
The real problem is that the ARL shouldn’t be a railway operation, it should be part of the local transit network, but SNC seems to have enough politicians by the short and curlies that their stupid project just won’t go away and let us build something reasonable.
Maybe once we lose the bid for the Pan-Am games, the pressure for an airport link will die down again, and we can discuss something more appropriate.
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Mark Dowling says:
August 8, 2009 at 12:15 pm
“In any case, it has occurred to me more and more lately, and especially given the numbers shown on the Union Station presentation, that maybe the answer is to send VIA and Northland trains to North Toronto and all GO service to Union. ”
Welcome to the club. I said this a while ago and I believe that it is the way to go. The West end lines from the Oakville sub can head up the Canpa sub from Mimico north to the Gault and North Toronto Sub, The trains from Kitchener can divert along the North Toronto sub, and the trains from the Kitchener sub [??] can turn up the Don Valley and head across the North Toronto Sub. However I believe that GO should operate everything but the Ottawa and Montreal trains so to would not require that much re routing.
Steve: I presume you mean the Kingston sub. If so, it would make more sense for them to swing onto the CPR out in Durham and come straight across the city. There is no trackage to make the sort of move you describe at the Don Valley and the curves required would be extremely difficult to fit in.
VIA maybe able to operate a high speed inter city rail line but they do not have a clue how to operate a system that makes a number of stops with their antiquated ticketing and loading system. Union Station for GO service only, but GO service should run most of the intercity rail network in Ontario. If GO could get the subsidies that VIA gets for Ontario train operation then they could run a hell of a lot better service for a lot lower fare structure.
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Steve – Is it fair to blame the “bargain basement of fast food” on GO? I thought the City, not GO, controls the tenants.
Steve: Actually you are correct. My apologies to GO re the tenants.
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I wonder if the increased capacity at Union contemplates the future possibility of highspeed rail. The US has recently approved $13 billion to start a HSR network in that country, and surely Canada will belated trundle along. Big picture, considering that energy prices will continue to rise in a way that will compromise the economic viability od mass market air travel, investing in rail hubs seems like a no brainer. I would bet the time will come that Toronto will need a second major rail hub at Summerhill as well – good thing the province owns the LCBO!
Steve: The LCBO is a tenant in that building. As for HSR, I really wish we could just get good, frequent, speedy service on what we have rather than focussing on one very expensive project that would only serve a few cities.
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I’m not convinced, but I do like the sound of moving VIA to North Toronto. I would agree that (whatever else happens) GO should take over VIA operation to Niagara (although I’d leave the Maple Leaf through running with VIA) and North Main Line service to London via Kitchener, but I would leave VIA with the Brantford – London corridor (at which point Brantford is the only reasonably significant VIA controlled commuter destination) and route both Windsor and Sarnia trains that way. I agree that VIA has demonstrated a complete inability to run regionally oriented service, but it really does seem like a stretch to call the Windsor or Sarnia lines anything other than traditional intercity routes; even the North Main Line looks like a GO operation to me less because of commute heavy use to the western sections as because of local (London – Waterloo, Waterloo – Guelph, etc.) use.
I do wonder if maybe the Canadian should continue to use Union even if the rest of VIA switches to North Toronto though. The connectivity is less than ideal, but for that train it seems like the symbol of Union as an entrance to Toronto might be more important, and I do question how well North Toronto could handle a train of that size, although I suppose it would end up with at least peak GO service as well, and those are comparable in size. This is especially important to consider if, as I suspect, North Toronto can’t actually accomadate very many tracks, the Canadian can and does sit for quite some time, and while the rest of the services can move on fairly quickly the nature of a touristy trans continental sleeper train is that it is going to need a lot of platform time.
Steve: One important point in looking at a move of Via services is that they plan substantial additions over the next few years thanks to new funding they received from Ottawa. Also there is the small matter of North Toronto sitting on the CPR mainline. There’s not as much capacity relative to the number and type of trains VIA runs as might appear.
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I wonder how many of those commenters who would see VIA move to North Toronto, GO take over VIA’s southern Ontario services etc. actually ride VIA trains on a regular basis. As for handing VIA services to GO, I invite you to take your opinions to the Canadian Passenger Rail discussion group on Yahoo Group, where I expect you’ll have your asses handed to you in about 30 seconds.
While VIA is just a tenant of GO and the city at Union Station, and in theory GO could reduce or eliminate VIA’s access to tracks in the Union Station Rail Corridor, there could be negative consequences of doing that to a federally-controlled crown corporation (remembering that the feds just committed $133 million to the Union Station revitalization).
VIA is not leaving Union Station anytime soon, nor should it, for lots of good operational reasons. If CP were willing, and if Metrolinx had the money to pay for upgrades, the CP North Toronto subdivision and station might be a useful commuter facility. North Toronto will never be a major intercity passenger terminal.
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The problem with the Canadian is that it only runs three times a week. If it ran weekly maybe the trains could be shorter, but I seem to remember reading about opposition from Rocky Mountaineer to such an idea.
@Andrew J – I use VIA and given that I live on the BD line North Toronto is about as convenient for me as Union. On the present arrangements, Guildwood would actually be more convenient for trips to Kingston if (a) there was decent TTC connection from Kennedy and (b) VIA promoted it as a Toronto stop to the point where more inbound trains stopped there. Your point re: federal funding is taken.
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Andrew Jeanes says:
August 9, 2009 at 1:32 pm
“I wonder how many of those commenters who would see VIA move to North Toronto, GO take over VIA’s southern Ontario services etc. actually ride VIA trains on a regular basis. As for handing VIA services to GO, I invite you to take your opinions to the Canadian Passenger Rail discussion group on Yahoo Group, where I expect you’ll have your asses handed to you in about 30 seconds.”
I don’t ride them because they are too expensive. I could rent a car and drive to most destinations alone for less money and make better time. I have watched their trains load and unload at numerous stations and it is slow and dangerous. Watch them try to use that platform for loading handicap passengers. Try to fit a wheel chair or motorized scooter through the door and turn down the aisle. They waste too much time at station stops. If they could eliminate 5 minutes from 6 intermediate stops on a line, then they could cut running times by half an hour and it would not cost one infrastructure improvement except for proper station platforms like GO’s. I tried to use VIA’s on line booking service to find out their Niagara Falls schedule but it would only let me book trains in 2003! This is very helpful. I finally found the schedule and it takes 2 hrs and 3 minutes which is not much worse than GO’s 1 Hr and 59 minutes but it is GO’s first attempt at this and I believe that they can cut the time. They certainly cut the fare.
GO is not perfect but a lot of their on time problems are caused by things over which they have no control. Granted they could do better at informing the public. Try to imagine what GO service would be like if it were operated by VIA equipment and they only used two or three single doors at each station. That is my beef with VIA. Nineteenth century operating practices in the 21st century. Try trains in most of Europe and they only have a couple of minute dwell times at major centres. Try to imagine a Windsor to Quebec train with only a 2 or 3 minute dwell at Toronto and Montreal. When VIA can do that then they are operating an efficient, modern system.
I know VIA is not going to go to the North Toronto Station but it makes more sense than letting them use 4 or 5 platforms at Union for the pathetic trains service they run. They should be allowed 2 or 3 tracks at most and learn to store and marshal their trains somewhere else, or to load 2 or 3 trains on the same platform at the same time. They don’t carry anywhere near the number of passengers that GO does so their platform allocation should be along the same ration. VIA has just over 2.4 million passengers to GO’s 42 million. That is about 7% of the passengers through the train part of the station. VIA deserves at most 1 track given the number of passengers that they carry. If VIA is serious about giving better rail service than the need a huge paradigm shift. They make the TTC look like forward thinkers and innovators.
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Robert Wightman says:
“I don’t ride them [VIA] because they are too expensive. I could rent a car and drive to most destinations alone for less money…”
Are you assuming a one-day round trip? If your rental car sits idle in a driveway at your destination for several days, the cost quickly mounts up.
I make weekend trips from Toronto to Port Hope and back about once a month, leaving Friday and returning Monday. VIA, with advance purchase, is $44.10 (GST included). Enterprise Rent-A-Car, with a weekend special, is $79.18, not including the cost of gasoline. Do you know of a much cheaper rental car company?
“If they could eliminate 5 minutes from 6 intermediate stops on a line, then they could cut running times by half an hour…”
No doubt there’s room for improvement in boarding procedures, but a reduction of 5 min per station is impossible, because total dwell time at intermediate stops is already typically under five minutes.
For VIA #48, the eastward train that I most often take, the scheduled dwell times are 2 min at Guildwood, 3 min at Oshawa, 2 min at Port Hope, 3 min at Cobourg, 2 min at Trenton, etc. The arrival status page on the VIA web site shows actual dwell times for tonight’s train of 4 min at Oshawa, 1 min at Port Hope, and 4 min at Cobourg (the train hasn’t arrived in Trenton yet). These are in line with my own experience on this train.
“I tried to use VIA’s on line booking service to find out their Niagara Falls schedule but it would only let me book trains in 2003!”
I don’t understand that at all. The VIA booking site doesn’t let you enter a year, only a month and day. If you enter Aug-Dec, it assumes you mean 2009; if you enter Jan-July, it assumes you mean 2010. I usually book through this site, and have no problem at all with dates.
Steve: As a matter of personal observation, when I ride the Toronto-Stratford service, the dwell times at stations tend to be governed by whether the train is waiting for someething (a conflicting train, or actually being early). However, busy stations (like Stratford on some days) do take quite a while to load even though passengers are distributed among the cars depending on their destination. The two biggest delays are luggage and passengers for whom the high steps are a challenge.
The only problem I ever had with Via’s ticketing was with non-working ticket machines at Union, but that was a few years ago and seems to have been fixed. The online system works fine, although some of the navigation could do with improvement.
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Tom Box says:
August 11, 2009 at 7:18 pm
“Robert Wightman says:
“I don’t ride them [VIA] because they are too expensive. I could rent a car and drive to most destinations alone for less money…”
“Are you assuming a one-day round trip? If your rental car sits idle in a driveway at your destination for several days, the cost quickly mounts up.
“I make weekend trips from Toronto to Port Hope and back about once a month, leaving Friday and returning Monday. VIA, with advance purchase, is $44.10 (GST included). Enterprise Rent-A-Car, with a weekend special, is $79.18, not including the cost of gasoline. Do you know of a much cheaper rental car company?”
In June I had to go to a meeting in Kitchener from Brampton and could not get a discounted ticket. VIA’s price was around $55.00 and the times were not convenient. See table below. I tried their booking tonight and I can get a discounted ticket tomorrow for $44.00 versus Enterprise’s $50.00 plus gas. As my meeting was from 19)) to 19:30 Enterprise was a lot more convenient and about the same price. If I took some one with me there was no comparison. The only good thing about VIA is that Brampton Station is a 10 minute walk from my house and my meeting was two blocks from the Kitchener VIA station/ You are correct; if I qualify for a discounted fare and can plan ahead VIA is cheaper than renting a car for one person, barely.
Leave 11:44 Arrive 12:47
Return21:44 Arrive 22:51
Discount fare $44.00
Regular fare about $55.00
Enterprise $50.35 + gas
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Robert – the direct comparison is somewhat specious. After all, you aren’t being chauffeured by Enterprise. However, there is an economic cost to shoehorning your life around a via schedule, especially when there is (as I frequently whinge) no morning service to Kitchener.
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Robert Wightman says:
“In June I had to go to a meeting in Kitchener from Brampton and could not get a discounted ticket. VIA’s price was around $55.00”
The regular round-trip fare for Brampton – Kitchener is $46.20 (GST included). I don’t know how you came up with $55.
“and the times were not convenient.”
I agree that frequencies on the “back route” from Toronto to London via Kitchener are woefully inadequate.
“I tried their booking tonight and I can get a discounted ticket tomorrow for $44.00”
The discounted fare is $42.00. That’s not much of a reduction from the regular fare. The reason is that you’ve run up against VIA’s minimum one-way fare of $20 (+ $1 GST). Advance purchase won’t get you below that minimum. For longer trips, the advance purchase discounts are more significant. This high minimum fare is a disincentive to using VIA for short trips.
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Tom Box says:
August 13, 2009 at 10:43 am
Robert Wightman says:
“In June I had to go to a meeting in Kitchener from Brampton and could not get a discounted ticket. VIA’s price was around $55.00″
The regular round-trip fare for Brampton – Kitchener is $46.20 (GST included). I don’t know how you came up with $55.
I tried to find the regular fare yesterday but could only get the discounted fare. Since I read that early discounts were 30% I assumed that $55.00 was the regular fare, sorry.
“and the times were not convenient.”
I agree that frequencies on the “back route” from Toronto to London via Kitchener are woefully inadequate.
“I tried their booking tonight and I can get a discounted ticket tomorrow for $44.00″
I tried it twice and got $42.00 one time and then tried it for a different day and got $44.00 so I used the $44.00. It is not easy to get a schedule or a list of basic fares from VIA without doing a lot of page changing. I onetime managed to download their PDF schedule but I have trouble trying to find it all one the net sometimes.
Granted Brampton to Kitchener is not much of a difference but if two of us want to go to Stratford for an afternoon and an evening show stay over and come back the discounted fare is $47.25 each or 94.50 versus the rent a car versus the rent a car fo $50.00 + gas. I guess that we can each pick a trip that favours our choice. My point is that VIA is still too expensive for most people given the service that you get and the choice of trains times. When I went on their site today I got a chance for a one way fare to Montreal of $69.00 not bad when compared to $35.80 to Niagara. The best fare for Porter Air that I found in a quick search is $124.00 each way but they have a lot more choice of flights and a shorter trip time.
I did VIA from Brampton to Montreal and got a round trip of $289.00 for the same dates. Go figure.
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Robert Wightman says:
“I tried to find the regular fare yesterday but could only get the discounted fare. Since I read that early discounts were 30% I assumed that $55.00 was the regular fare, sorry.”
There are two or three (depending on the city pair) different reduced fares. The cheaper the fare, the more restrictive it is for advance purchase and non-refundability.
The amount of the reduction can vary from one route to another. For Toronto-Montreal, the three possible reductions are “Special” (47% off), “Supersaver” (38% off), and “Discounted” (21% off).
For Brampton-Kitchener, the “Discounted” fare is only 9% less than the regular fare and “Supersaver” offers no additional reduction, because of VIA’s minimum fare policy, as mentioned previously. There is no “Special” fare for this city pair.
“I tried it twice and got $42.00 one time and then tried it for a different day and got $44.00”
For the $44 fare, you must have been getting the Discounted fare one way and Regular the other way. There is a limited quantity of discounted tickets for each train. Buying in advance doesn’t guarantee getting the discounted fare. They can sell out.
“I onetime managed to download their PDF schedule but I have trouble trying to find it all one the net sometimes.”
A PDF version of the paper timetable was available on the VIA web site until mid-June of this year. Unfortunately, the new version of the VIA web site no longer has this, just some clumsy dynamically-generated timetables.
“if two of us want to go to Stratford for an afternoon and an evening show stay over and come back the discounted fare is $47.25 each or 94.50”
The Supersaver fare is $42 each (VIA’s minimum fare, again). Still more expensive than your car rental example, to be sure. The marginal cost of an additional person in a rental car is almost zero. Not so on a train, so a car is more likely to win out when you have more than one person sharing the cost.
“My point is that VIA is still too expensive for most people…”
Many trains do run full, or close to it, and they aren’t populated by a tiny elite of rich people. It’s not clear to me that an across-the-board fare cut would increase ridership enough to maintain the current revenues. A more sophisticated yield-management system would likely allow deeper discounts for less popular routes and times, but it would make the fare structure even more opaque.
“When I went on their site today I got a chance for a one way fare to Montreal of $69.00…I did VIA from Brampton to Montreal and got a round trip of $289.00 for the same dates. Go figure.”
Each train has a limited number of seats available at the various reduced fare levels. You probably picked the first train of the day for Toronto-Montreal, and it still had some Special fare seats available. Starting from Brampton, you would be connecting to a later Toronto-Montreal train, and it sounds like it had only Regular fare seats available.
The Special fare is not available for Brampton-Montreal, so the best you can do is Supersaver, which is $180.60 return, taxes included.
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Tom Box says:
August 14, 2009 at 10:54 pm
Robert Wightman says:
I think that we have beaten this horse long enough. Suffice it to say VIA’s web site and fares are difficult to work out for a new user.
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Andrew Jeanes wrote:
“While VIA is just a tenant of GO and the city at Union Station, and in theory GO could reduce or eliminate VIA’s access to tracks in the Union Station Rail Corridor, there could be negative consequences of doing that to a federally-controlled crown corporation (remembering that the feds just committed $133 million to the Union Station revitalization).”
And GO would also lose out in two other ways if they reduced VIA’s rights to access tracks at Union:
1. Reduced income from charging VIA – their tenant – for the access they receive.
2. Potential income from people (like myself) from using GO to connect with VIA. If VIA were not using Union, there is a good chance that I would not be taking GO to connect with VIA.
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Giambrone is admitting there is not the imagination or will to take the DRL through Union, where it would connect to GO trains and buses, the future Pearson line, and the Harbourfront line. Instead of making the effort to push a proper solution through, like a modern city should, we’ll get a half-assed solution that is going to make a few tens-of-thousand commuters (including disabled) walk blocks out of their way for decades, and no doubt require an expensive modification or two after some human-rights cases… How Toronto.
This is hard to take having gone through Tokyo’s Shinjuku station yesterday: 2 million people a day, bus stations, six national lines, three private lines, three subway lines and a busy retail environment. I know, I know, that is Tokyo and we can never do anything like that in Toronto… actually, that is my point, isn’t it?
Steve: I really have no use for comments that attack someone for stating what is basic fact — all of the room at Front Street is already spoken for. Moreover, many, many trips across the system are on routes like the BD subway that don’t come anywhere near Union. The idea that this is essential for the DRL is rubbish. The DRL needs to get people into the heart of downtown where they can either walk to their destinations, or transfer to another line.
Please don’t drag the disabled into this. They have to make connections between routes all over the city. At Union Station itself, they have to travel long distances simply to get from one end of the railway station to another (e.g. the southernmost GO platforms to the subway station and the office towers beyond).
As for Tokyo, I suspect that a lot of their infrastructure was designed from the outset to handle many more people. If you want to argue with Union Station configurations, you need look no further than the loss of width in the rail corridor for development (CN Tower, Convention Centre, condos), and the mingy little loop that the TTC provided for the Harbourfront car. Union subway station was built as it was because demands were never expected to be at today’s level.
Those are decisions that considerably predate Adam Giambrone’s term at the TTC, and in some cases, his birth.
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Just thought it’s worth pointing out for some of the commentators that the actual transfer distance from a station on Wellington (assuming a station at Bay, which while not guaranteed seems likely) is under 200m, considerably shorter than many train – bus connections at Union. From University is a little more, but still under a quarter km and from Yonge is still only about 300. None of these are ideal, but neither are they terrible, and they are certainly comparable to the Spadina station transfer.
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