GO Transit: Construction Projects (Metrolinx, various)

[reaperexpress]

Its a very nice station and there was much celebration on site on opening day, but its a little sad how little trains it gets, and the painfully slow stretch btwn Confed. and WH. Metrolinx really should prioritize better all-day direct link between Hamilton and Toronto

Given that the existing hourly bus service is so much faster than the train between Burlington and Confederation, I'm not sure how much transportation benefit there would be to extend more trains there. The bus takes 16 minutes and the train takes 34 minutes so even with a 10-minute transfer at Burlington the bus is faster.

For the Niagara trains I suspect stopping in Confederation is actually a net negative benefit for some of the trips (e.g. the Weekend AM trip to Niagara). The extra 2 minutes for 1500 people aboard the train outweigh the benefit for people boarding/alighting in Confederation, for whom the train saves literally no time at all compared to the bus.

Until more track is built through there, there will be no improvement of service to Confederation. CN has forbidden from having any more trains stop there.

Are they actually forbidding stopping there even for trains that are already passing by? There seem to be some deadhead movements from West Harbour to Lewis Yard that currently pass by the station out-of-service toward Hamilton in the early morning and toward the yard in the late night.

As for the slow stretch - there are things that can be done to improve it, but simply no impetus.

Remarkable that Metrolinx would consider that there's no impetus to resolve the enormous slow zone on (arguably) their flagship service considering all the advocacy and planning coming from Niagara Region

 

[smallspy]

Are they actually forbidding stopping there even for trains that are already passing by?

Yes.

Remarkable that Metrolinx would consider that there's no impetus to resolve the enormous slow zone on (arguably) their flagship service considering all the advocacy and planning coming from Niagara Region

You've seen the public releases, too - where do they talk about improving train speeds and decreasing travel times on that stretch? They simply don't.

From people inside Metrolinx, it just isn't on their radar. If it is going to be improved, then people need to start making noise about it before Metrolinx will lift a finger.

Dan

 

[lastcommodore]

Given that the existing hourly bus service is so much faster than the train between Burlington and Confederation, I'm not sure how much transportation benefit there would be to extend more trains there. For the Niagara trains I suspect there's actually a negative benefit for some of the trips (e.g. the Weekend AM trip to Niagara), with more disbenefit to the people travelling through than benefit to the people at Confederation.
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Im not sure what you mean by adding more trains would hurt Niagara through traffic? Let alone the trains that don't go to Niagara already (some end at WH), All Niagara bound trains already stop at Confederation, and from the data I have the travel time to Niagara has actually decreased by 3m from before Confederation.

Current

Previous (I don't have the exact date of when this time table was assembled, sadly)

Comparison to bus is also harder because I'm sure a great deal of them eventually get stuck on the bridge... Unfortunately, yeah, the time from Burlington to WH is 26m by bus (10m wait) and 35m by train. But if the GO train went through at a speed more akin to the rest of the network in Niagara, you can do Burlington to Confederation in 23m and improve service to Niagara.

To be clear, i think the first thing GO really should focus on there is speeds before frequency (Though the former is probably longer/harder to do), and should do so with better grade separation and dedicated track along Hamilton, right now the general area feels so slow.

 

[reaperexpress]

Im not sure what you mean by adding more trains would hurt Niagara through traffic? Let alone the trains that don't go to Niagara already (some end at WH),

I'm not saying adding more trains hurts Niagara traffic. Those are two separate statements.
1. Extending more WH trains to Confederation probably doesn't make sense (i.e. wouldn't be worth the cost even if CN allowed it). This would change if they fixed the slow zone through Hamilton.
2. The Niagara trains that already stop at Confederation would be better off skipping it, since there's so little benefit for passengers at Confederation.

All Niagara bound trains already stop at Confederation, and from the data I have the travel time to Niagara has actually decreased by 3m from before Confederation.

Yes all Niagara trains stop at Confederation, and I said that that doesn't make sense.

Clearly adding a stop at Confederation did not cause the travel time to decrease, it just happened to coincide with other changes. Adding a stop on a GO train line generally adds about 2 minutes in most cases, or 3 minutes on high-speed segments such as the 150 km/h zone near Appleby.

 

[PShells]

https://assets.metrolinx.com/image/upload/Images/Metrolinx/Toronto%20East/Platform_and_trackwork_by_Kennedy_GO_Station.pdf

Is this work “allowed” to be conducted during the day in a red zone because it’s considered SOGR work? Whereas work that’s deemed GO Expansion would not be granted in a RZ without a continuous work zone barricade? Is the RZ GZ policy to be taken this literally? It begs the question why similar projects can only happen overnight if labelled slightly differently.

The notice suggests it’s both routine maintenance and to finish the west platform at Kennedy GO (which is a “GO Expansion” project).

 

[Sauga89]

In Oshawa, the Farewell St pedestrian bridge will close next month for approximately 2 years. The work is part of the GO train extension to Bowmanville.

 

[EnviroTO]

I don't know why it isn't standard to have two elevators. One elevator is zero redundancy. I can understand Joe-Shmoh condo board that only has two elevators waiting on an overbooked elevator repairman, but with all the elevators that Metrolinx and the TTC have why does it take so long to return elevators to service?? They should have (a) wheel-trans buses on standby to solve for out of service elevators OR have elevator redundancy, and (b) have trained certified elevator repair folks or contracts with repair SLAs that are agressive.