GO Transit

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GO Transit Announces Rail Service to Kitchener-Waterloo (Updated)

GO Transit has announced that effective late in 2011 they will begin operation of two trains each way on weekdays to Kitchener-Waterloo stopping at Guelph and Acton.

No details of train times nor of overall service levels in the Georgetown Corridor are mentioned in the press release other than that this will be an improvement to current service.

The press release states that the storage facility will be “in Kitchener”.  GO Transit has clarified this as follows:

The temporary train layover facility will be located north of Victoria Street South, between Park Street and King Street West, in Kitchener and will include storage for two 12-car trains, crew and electrical trailers, fencing, and lighting.

The facility will be used until the permanent one is built at Nafziger Road in Baden.

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Metrolinx Takes Over Airport Link Project

On July 30, Metrolinx announced that it will take over the Air Rail Link project — a premium fare service between Union Station and Pearson Airport — from SNC-Lavalin.

Metrolinx will build, own and operate the service through its GO Transit division.

While the province and the Union Pearson Air-Link Group (UPAG), a subsidiary of SNC-Lavalin, were able to make significant progress negotiating, financial market conditions prevented acceptable terms. The government will continue to work with UPAG to build on the design and development work that has been completed to date.

This long-overdue change in the ARL scheme should bring the project into public view where all aspects of its design, financing and operation will be subject to the same scrutiny and openness as other Metrolinx projects.  Issues such as service levels, equipment provisioning and, most importantly, electrification will no longer hide behind the veil of “commercial confidentiality”.

Fares will be part of the overall Metrolinx/GO network scheme, and the amount of any “premium” surcharge over comparable GO fares will be a matter of public record.  The current one-way GO fare to the airport from downtown is $5.55, far below the $22 figure touted as a possible charge for the SNC-Lavalin operation.  As a matter of public policy, Metrolinx should decide whether the ARL should operate on a full cost recovery basis, or like other transit services, be subsidized for the larger benefits of moving travellers without autos.

This change will affect the design of infrastructure and operational planning.  If the ARL is priced and operates more like a GO service, it will attract riders such as commuting airport workers, and integration with through Kitchener-Waterloo line will be much simpler.  However, the size of facilities now proposed for the ARL may be inadequate to a role as a major airport link.  There may even be an option to rethink the technology choice for this corridor and the details of its connection at Union Station.

Today all we have is a press release, but Metrolinx must truly integrate the ARL planning into The Big Move.  The ARL will not be a separate, privately-owned service whose business might cloud planning and implementation of “competing” routes.  There should be one plan for the airport with regional bus and LRT services including the Eglinton, Finch West and Hurontario/Brampton lines.

The airport is a vital regional hub in The Big Move, and transit service to it must be more than a few lines sketched on a map.  Metrolinx should launch planning — including public participation — for its airport services immediately.

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Smart Card Wars (Part III) (Update 1)

Update 1:  July 28, 2010 at 4:00 pm: Comments and clarifications by Ernie Wallace at Presto have been added to this article.

On July 26, I visited the folks at Presto and talked with Ernie Wallace, Executive Project Director, about the system and its plans.  Subsequently, I did some digging of my own, primarily on the Ontario government website.  The information below is organized to keep topics and the logical flow intact rather than to represent the sequence of the conversation.

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Thoughts From Down Under

Jarrett Walker has a few good articles on his website, humantransit.org, that should be required reading for our friends at Metrolinx, among other places.

In What Does Transit Do About Traffic Congestion, he argues that the last claim that should be made for transit is that it will reduce congestion.  Instead, the benefits of a transit-oriented city show up in economic activity, mobility and other benefits.

There is, however, a caveat lurking here.  Dense cities with good transit (or even cities with a good potential for better transit) don’t appear out of thin air.  Once we build sprawl, then the benefits and effects of transit seen in the older, denser cities will not appear overnight even if we run the most intensive BRT, LRT or subway network through auto-oriented suburbs.  Transit can make things better, but it will not reverse the damage and inevitable congestion of decades of bad planning.

By the way, be sure to read the comments.  If you think the threads on this site get out of hand, just try Walker’s blog.  You will see some very intelligent point-counterpoint discussion in some threads.

In If On-Time Performance is 96%, Why Am I Always Late?, Walker discusses the conundrum that transit agencies talk a great line for being on time, but the actual experience of users is much, much, much worse.  Both GO Transit and TTC have a love for patting themselves on the back (although rarely each other’s), and talking about their improvements in on-time performance.

So much of this is relative to the metrics used (how late can a train or streetcar be and still be “on time”) and the lack of weighting of the results to reflect the number of passengers affected by on time (or not) service.  Even in the off-peak, gaps of two scheduled headways or more are common on downtown routes and this drives riders away.  At least with NextBus, it is now possible to know with certainty that there is no car just around the bend out of sight, and if there is, it’s going in the opposite direction.

GO Transit now has schedules that reflect the real world in which they operate, but persists in reporting all-day on-time figures rather than breaking these out to show service quality when most people ride the system.

Finally, in Strasbourg:  You Can’t Take It Home With You, we get a loving overview of both the city and its tram system, part of the renaissance of LRT in France.  The real issues come at the end where we learn about the major changes in street space usage and restrictions on cars that accompanied the installation of tram lines in this very old city.  The moral, applicable to anyone comparing transit systems, is to look beyond just the technology and the scenery, and understand how and why the city streets work (or don’t) as they do.

Any moves to improve “congestion” in Toronto must start with a fundamental debate about what the streets are for, and which existing uses must be reduced (and how) in order to make room for what’s left over.  Ironically, we focus these debates on the heart of downtown, a comparatively small area, when the real problems of transit’s competitiveness and congestion lie out in the suburbs.

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Smart Card Wars

With the election upon us, some candidates have decided that transit Smart Cards are an issue they can use to say “I’m the best candidate” by hitching their star to Ontario’s Presto card program.

The Star reports that the TTC will proceed with a tender for an Open Payment system later this year with the intent of a 2011 rollout.  Mayoral hopeful Rocco Rossi has his own scheme called “Presto Plus”.  Can the TTC actually commit to a new system with the current regime still in office?  Rossi’s campaign confirms that he would cancel the TTC’s scheme if he were to become mayor.

Metrolinx would love to see the TTC sign on to Presto, but many questions remain about just what Presto can do for a truly integrated transit system.

Smart Cards are yet another example of the way that transit technology wars in the GTA get in the way of solving fundamental transit problems.  The technology choice becomes more important than the service it provides.  Here are a few questions anyone with “the answer” should consider.

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Paying the Piper (2)

On July 12, the Toronto City Summit Alliance (TCSA) held a round table at Wychwood Barns to discuss their recently published paper on transit funding.  Please refer to my first article on this topic for details.

The round table added nothing to what we already know on this subject, but did provide insight into public policy debate here in the GTA.  Although this was officially a TCSA event, it was clearly at the service of Metrolinx who had a strong presence.  Rob Prichard, Metrolinx CEO, gave opening remarks.  As I have already noted, John Brodhead, Metrolinx VP of Strategy & Communications, co-chaired the working group behind the TCSA paper.  Other Metrolinx staff were scattered through the crowd, some as facilitators at tables.

Invited participants included activists of varied backgrounds, a few politicians, professionals from government and industry, representatives from various business groups, a few from the media, and others from the collection of “usual suspects” one sees at this type of gathering.  The idea, the hope, was that the collected wisdom of this group might inform future debate and recommendations about how to proceed.

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GO Transit Electrification Study Update

Where Did The Study Come From?

GO Transit’s Georgetown corridor, home to many existing and proposed services, has not been a happy place for the Environmental Assessment process, especially on the southern end of the line.  Officially, this project was the Georgetown South Service Expansion (GSSE), now shortened to the Georgetown South Project.  However, the project has a troubled history thanks to:

  • Extreme insensitivity to local concerns about noise and vibration from the West Toronto Diamond grade separation project eventually resulted in a successful appeal to the Canadian Transportation Agency forcing GO to change its construction methods.
  • Proposals to slice through Weston with a widened rail corridor, including closing streets that linked the commercial strip on Weston Road to the residential communities to the east, infuriated local residents.  This was compounded by their discovery that, initially at least, much of the additional traffic on the corridor would be for the premium fare airport shuttle from Union Station.

This established a confrontational relationship between GO and corridor residents.  When Metrolinx published The Big Move, it was obvious that vastly expanded service would be operated along this line including:

  • All-day service at least to Brampton on the Georgetown line
  • All-day service to Milton
  • Peak period service to Bolton (a line that now has no GO operations but shares the corridor to the north end of Weston)
  • All-day service to Barrie (a line that shares the corridor from Dundas Street south to the rail yards at Bathurst)
  • All-day service every 15 minutes on the Air Rail Link from Union to Pearson Airport operating via the Georgetown line and a spur to be built into the airport lands

GO was so preoccupied with opposition in Weston that it failed to take account of the quickly growing population around the rail corridor south of West Toronto Junction.  Aside from the question of daily train movements, GO further alienated residents with a proposal for the Strachan Avenue grade separation that would have created a major barrier within the new King West / Liberty Village community.  This matter was not resolved until intervention by Metrolinx and a compromise solution acceptable to the City of Toronto was adopted.

GO runs popular services, and as a provincial agency it is used to getting more or less what it wants.  Public participation and accommodation have not been GO’s strong suits.

When the Georgetown South project revealed that there would be over 400 train movements per day on the southern end of the corridor, residents were more than a little upset.  Their concerns about noise and pollution were not  helped by GO’s appeal to the greater good with claims that, overall, there would be less pollution thanks to auto trips diverted from highways.  Those highways are not in backyards in Weston, the Junction and Parkdale, and the benefits that might accrue on Highways 400, 401 and 427 were little comfort to those who would see their local rail corridor gain vastly more traffic than it has today.

From this swelling activism came a demand that GO electrify its system to reduce noise and pollution levels in the neighbourhoods through which it travelled.  Electrification had been considered before, but only in the context of the Lake Shore corridor, and only for lower service levels than The Big Move contemplates.  This has always been a “nice to do” that gets shunted aside thanks to budget constraints and a desire to concentrate on building service.  By late 2009, the demand for a detailed study reached a level where Queen’s Park and Metrolinx could not dodge the issue, and GO’s Electrification Study was born. Continue reading →

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Metrolinx Board Wrapup for May 2010

The Metrolinx Board met on Wednesday, May 19 for an unusually long public session.  Rather than post separate articles, herewith a compendium report.  The major topics are:

  • The Board Speaks!
  • The Managing Director Reports
  • We Have A Vision, We Just Don’t Know What It Is Yet
  • Achieving 5 in 10, or Transit City Rescheduled
  • GO Rail Service Expansion Benefits Cases
  • A Question of Advocacy

The Board Speaks!

Probably the most astounding thing about this meeting, the first anniversary of the “new” Metrolinx, is that the Board members finally found their voices.  I was beginning to wonder if they were ever going to show some indication of earning their keep and actually asking hard questions of staff in public.  We’re not quite there yet, but at least the discussion gave an indication that the Board is thinking about its role.

As regular readers will know, I believe that organizations such as Metrolinx should be publicly accountable through an electoral process and through direct access to one’s representatives.  Boards that answer to nobody but the government which appointed them, and entertain no criticism from the public, can leave much to be desired.

To be fair to Metrolinx, even when it had a political board, much of the “public participation” was managed to achieve concensus with, more or less, what Metrolinx planned to do anyhow.  That other well-known transit board, the TTC, is elected, but has succumbed to the disease of being cheerleaders for the organization right-or-wrong.

Metrolinx has not had to actually do much (as opposed to GO Transit which was simply merged into its new “parent”), and we have yet to see how the Board and the Government will react if Metrolinx badly fouls up any of its projects.

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GO Transit Pile Driving Ruled Unreasonable (Update 3)

Updated April 12, 2010:  Metrolinx has dropped the appeal of the CTA’s order.  The Star quotes Transportation Minister Kathleen Wynne:

“This is about working with the community and repairing any damage that has been done and building a good relationship,” said Ontario Transportation Minister Kathleen Wynne.

“These transit projects are going to be going to go on for a number of years, as they should be. That means there will be disruption in the communities,” she said.

But the government is committed to working with residents to make the process as comfortable as possible, said Wynne.

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