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GO Transit Electrification | Metrolinx

Those 4-5 car trains shift to 8 car trains by 2056.

Onxpress contract terminates in 2048, making nfitz's question very relevant.

That's an 8 year window where we potentially go from a very congested trains on some lines to a new contract, through a flurry of station construction, a rolling stock order (many cars will be well beyond their best before date), to enlarged trains.

They're not going to voluntarily make any capital investments after 2040. Is Metrolinx clever enough to have included clauses regarding minimum passenger comfort levels forcing ongoing expansion?
 
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Posted today.


I don't have time at the moment to review in detail, but there's a looking ahead section and there's a reference to updates in 2025.

Maybe @Northern Light @crs1026 can pull out and spot more relevant pieces.

There's nothing new in terms of specific service improvement timelines or specific dates for infrastructure projects.

There is some information on process and logistics around the project.

Notably, the following:

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The emphasis on a meter by meter examination of the line is interesting - perhaps a sign of intent to get on with electrification, and a focus on more systemmatic maintenance practices.
The article refers to "construction", but ML's "early works" efforts have already done a lot of that. It will be interesting to see if Onexpress proposes adding track, beyond finishing what ML already plans. I suspect they are referring to laying track on the added roadbed that ML is already roughing in.

- Paul
 
Onxpress contract terminates in 2048, making nfitz's question very relevant.

That's an 8 year window where we potentially go from a very congested trains on some lines to a new contract, through a flurry of station construction, a rolling stock order (many cars will be well beyond their best before date), to enlarged trains.

They're not going to voluntarily make any capital investments after 2040. Is Metrolinx clever enough to have included clauses regarding minimum passenger comfort levels forcing ongoing expansion?
Well, it's a co-developement phase, they'll make decisions cooperatively on how much they want to future proof and whether it makes sense.
 
so sounds like we wont see the actual finished schedule until next year.
While it sucks to wait, Its not like we would be seeing anything this year since ONxpress is taking over operations in january anyway
 
Construction notices until the end of the year. Not sure if there's anything to gleam from that.


There are some hints there.

I would need more time than others to work through them.........

But there are clear patterns of work with beginnings and endings.

Significant segments in the first 1/2 of the year are Lakeshore west of Oakville; and Barrie.

In the latter portion of the year it shifts to Lakeshore west of Union, Barrie, and Stouffville.

@crs1026 would be well suited to fine-tooth combing what is likely what.
 
There are some hints there.

I would need more time than others to work through them.........

But there are clear patterns of work with beginnings and endings.

Significant segments in the first 1/2 of the year are Lakeshore west of Oakville; and Barrie.

In the latter portion of the year it shifts to Lakeshore west of Union, Barrie, and Stouffville.

@crs1026 would be well suited to fine-tooth combing what is likely what.

The things that stood out to me were

- the pattern of LSW operating to Oakville but hourly beyond - suggests fairly mundane track projects such as rail or turnout replacement or undercutting and resurfacing, mostly west of Oakville. Only one or two full closures west of Oakville.
- repeated closure of LSE and Stouffville services (the latter between Kennedy and Union) hints at work along the Ontario line. With so much bridgework and corridor widening happening, and the overall plan calling for the "running" Go tracks to gradually shift to the south west of Pape as embankments and bridges are completed, I suspect these frequent closures will be the norm for the next couple of years
- the July 13-14 outage on both Kitchener and Barrie lines is interesting - hints at track work or changes between Parkdale and Bathurst Street.... perhaps the separation of the two services? The UP website is silent on any change to UP service on those dates

I cross checked with the VIA ticketing site, and (so far) there are no notices about delays or cancellations to VIA trains at least as far out as July. Perhaps VIA has not had time to make its plans.

It's also interesting to note what isn't included
- no mention of service impacts to Niagara trains at West Harbour, which might have implied work on the east end connection
- no mention of closures on the Stouffville line north of Kennedy, which might tie to the West Highland Creek bridge or cutover of the new double track
- no mention of work on the Kitchener line, which might tie to any of Guelph, Acton, Georgetown, or Woodbine

Lastly, ML's ability to keep work on the schedule is not stellar...one hears of outages where primary tasks were deferred at last moment because some moving part wasn't ready. Lots of other tasks may be scheduled in parallel, so the outages may proceed, but ..... where I worked, dropout of work from scheduled outages was closely monitored as an indicator of planning and execution excellence (or not). It will be interesting to see how ML performs - it's clearly a more challenging to-do list with many lines advancing in parallel.

- Paul
 
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so sounds like we wont see the actual finished schedule until next year.
While it sucks to wait, Its not like we would be seeing anything this year since ONxpress is taking over operations in january anyway

Or the cost, since the price-tag is inversely related to the delivery date. There's incentive in the contract to deliver quickly.
 
- the pattern of LSW operating to Oakville but hourly beyond - suggests fairly mundane track projects such as rail or turnout replacement or undercutting and resurfacing, mostly west of Oakville. Only one or two full closures west of Oakville.
I expect the full closures to have some work occuring at Burloak. They are quite busy with utility relocation and grading work to prepare for building the grade separation. I'm not sure if ROW realignment is occuring this year, but I expect they will need full closure for some of the utility relocations.
 
I expect the full closures to have some work occuring at Burloak. They are quite busy with utility relocation and grading work to prepare for building the grade separation. I'm not sure if ROW realignment is occuring this year, but I expect they will need full closure for some of the utility relocations.
Burloak certainly is one of the reasons, but not the only one.

The work at Long Branch to add tunnels and rebuild the station is also another. There are also turnout replacements in various places that are scheduled to be done this year.

There is also undercutting to be done in places in order to get areas ready for electricification.

Dan
 
Onxpress contract terminates in 2048, making nfitz's question very relevant.

That's an 8 year window where we potentially go from a very congested trains on some lines to a new contract, through a flurry of station construction, a rolling stock order (many cars will be well beyond their best before date), to enlarged trains.

They're not going to voluntarily make any capital investments after 2040. Is Metrolinx clever enough to have included clauses regarding minimum passenger comfort levels forcing ongoing expansion?

i just want to say how unlikely it would be for them to really hit capacity even by then

12 car trains at crush load with 5 minute headway theoretically on all 7 lines just for one hour every day would over *quadruple* GO ridership without accounting for a single other passenger... and that's ignoring express trains.

Lakeshore West is *by far* the busiest route and just using Wiki here but 2017 stats showed 17.7 million riders for the year. If the entire ridership was focused down to 2 hours per week day (so both directions), that would equate to 34,000 passengers per direction.

The rough expected crush capacity with a full train set for 2 hours at peak would be 180,000 (~18 trains x 5000 x 2). Do you really think Lakeshore west is going to increase ridership nearly 5x in 20 years? the theoretical capacity of each electrified GO train line, using electric locomotives and bombardier bilevels is higher than the *entire* ridership of the TTC at present day.

to put the absurdity of this capacity into context, there's like 10 stations on the typical all day lakeshore west train starting at aldershot. So every station there'd have to be 2-3 people entering every station *every second* in order to conceivably hit crush capacity and I think we're a long long long long long long ways away from having 2 constant single file lines at any station and this is ignoring people getting off and people going the other direction.

like i'm not kidding here, I think you'd run into other major issues long before the trains fill up. This capacity is well beyond this regions current ability to meet it, even at rush hour.
 

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