And with the introduction of RER on the Barrie Line, having stations 2km apart in suburban areas may not be a bad thing, so long as there's an option to run express trains on the inner portion of the line.
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GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)
- Thread starter drum118
- Start date
MisterF
Senior Member
No amount of parking can satisfy the demand for RER type frequent rail service, especially when fares are fully integrated with local transit. GO will have to move away from the park & ride model and towards the feeder bus model that's been serving the subway for generations. That means that YRT has to learn from its neighbours and significantly increase service over the rest of the decade.
Agreed, but that's another reason why having stations closer together makes sense. If you have a station at almost every concession road (~2km apart), running local transit service on the roads would allow more local routes to more directly intersect with stations. When stations are 4+ km apart, the amount of deviation the local routes need to take, and by consequence the amount of time a transit user spends on a bus before even arriving at the station, increases substantially.
If you have a layered express/local pattern, you can increase accessibility while not substantially increasing trip times. For example, on the Lakeshore West corridor:
Route 1: Local Union to Oakville, terminate at Oakville
Route 2: Express Union to Oakville, local Oakville to West Harbour, terminate at West Harbour
Route 3: Express Union to West Harbour (stop at Burlington & Oakville), local to Niagara Falls
With this pattern, you could add infill stations at Park Lawn, Lorne Park, Ford, Dorval, and Walkers without substantially impacting travel times for most people on the corridor.
robmausser
Senior Member
Exactly this. Using single level EMU's along the Aurora to Union section would basically create subway(metro)-like acceleration profiles. Subway stations 2km apart is pretty standard. I'm actually hoping to see more infill stations this close together on the line, such as the proposed Concord Station. If you want people to not drive to the stations you have to put enough of them to be within reasonable transit distance.
LNahid2000
Senior Member
I was really disappointed that Niagara trains weren't running but I just got to Burlington and there was an announcement that they're running the 12B express to Niagara Falls. This is probably going to end up being faster than the train! It's ridiculously full and uncomfortable though.
Richard White
Senior Member
I'm hoping they start up the Niagara trains again soon. This is however Metrolinx...
Krypto98
Active Member
Metrolinx still owns the Guelph Sub from Silver to Kitchener correct? A CN foamer told me that its one and only owner is CN
crs1026
Superstar
Garuda
Active Member
Given the good ridership on the London pilot. Metrolinx should go ahead and buy the sub all the way to London.
Krypto98
Active Member
Then they can upgrade the tracks to 70-90mph
robmausser
Senior Member
They should work with VIA and upgrade it to class 6. Why not do the max you can if you are going to go through all the trouble. Class 6 would allow for 110mph, which is the max allowed with crossing gates in Canada.
The new VIA Siemens trains can do 125mph and even the EMD F59PH used on the London route can do 110mph, but the GO coaches I believe have a speed limit of 103mph.
Krypto98
Active Member
I'm just wondering what is the physical/ observable differences between class 6/5/4
Urban Sky
Senior Member
You should find all relevant differences between Track Classes 1-5 here, but for Class 6, your guess is as good as mine…
reaperexpress
Senior Member
GO's F59's have a top speed of 83 mph (133 km/h). I'm not sure what the speed limit is for the coaches, but they do operate up to 93 mph (150 km/h) in regular service.
110 mph on the London line would be nice, but it's worth noting that you get rapidly diminishing returns as you increase the track speed above the speed the curves can handle. After a certain point the benefit becomes zero as the train can't even reach the track speed before it needs to slow for the next curve. Trains will always need to operate slowly (30 mph?) through St. Mary's and Stratford due to the sharp curves which cannot be widened. Just west of Kitchener there's a series of curves which limit speeds to around 80 mph or so. I'm sure trains could briefly reach 110 mph in spots between the curves, but I don't imagine they'd be able to sustain those speeds long enough to make a measureable difference compared to a 95 mph track speed.
robmausser
Senior Member
I really have to disagree with this, there are large portions of that section of the GEXR thats super straight. Yes there are some curves but they pale in comparison to how many straight sections there are. This isn't a constantly wavering track through a valley or something.
As for the F59's I find that very surprising, i'd love to see some documentation on that. Most F59's have a 110mph top speed, and the ones own by GO were refurbished in 2011. I can't imagine they would be run down by now.
Regardless, once they replace the bridge on this section, which would coincide with retracking I am sure, they could use the MPI's or other locos.