GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

[Sunnyside]

Well, I stated that in the context of the capacity the O/L removes from the rail corridor (two tracks worth) .

That decision is essentially made now.

It wouldn't be impossible to bury the O/L in the future, but it would cost than it would have originally, and it would be disruptive (the O/L would have to shut down at some point for new connections to be made, at the very least for a couple of weeks, but potentially for several months)

The projected cost for the Leslieville portion to be buried was 800M, I think a complex exercise to do that post-hoc would likely cost at least twice as much, if not triple.

To be clear, I do not see this happening and I'm not advocating for it. Its just a shame we did this wrong.



Aside from the above, the key opportunities would be removing storage tracks at the yards east and west of Union in favour of throughput capacity, and building a more robust than currently planned station at Spadina and Front to try and divert some riders.

This creates some hassles for GO, but is probably a sensible move in the medium term. There is sufficient capacity (or will be once O/L construction is done) for the near term. The real concern is the mid 2030s and beyond.

...And now would be roughly be when we'd want to model such things to have something planned for. Which must be made harder by the fact that every single rapid transit project is in any state but complete.

It seems like there was a reality that a lot of tunnel would be needed under Toronto at some point. There was the City's Relief Line, and GO's potential Lakeshore diversions under the corridor/King/Queen. They serve(d) completely different purposes- one to relieve the subway, and the other Union. I think the Ontario Line is a 'prudent' way to try to do both, but ultimately you will need to literally dig that corresponding amount of tunnel we had foregone when using the rail corridor for the inverse rail system (subway network). Instead, we'll soon need more throughput/bypass capacity for the GO Network anyway (edited- reworded for clarity)

By, say, pursuing just the RL and then something that directly targets the GO network., we'd avoid this (intermingling) mess. But, The Ontario Line does tackle both problems enough that the other doesn't go 'critical', which might have been a conventionally-wise business decision... In any case, I digress- the Ontario Line is simply doing two jobs that probably always needed to be handled by two things, not one.

 

[Willybru21]

Not sure if this is truly the right thread for this, but I went down to the Reference Library to get some materials on GO ALRT and thought you guys might like to see some of it (I took the photos with my phone so the quality may not be super good on some images). I'll start with photos from outside of Hamilton (there's a lot of Hamilton related things). Part 1:

Appreciate you posting these! What was the name/number of the book in the reference library? I’d love to have a look at it myself.

 

[Chris R.]

Appreciate you posting these! What was the name/number of the book in the reference library, I’d love to have a look at it myself.

Also appreciate these being posted. Reminds me of the Hamilton sky train renders!

 

[Sunnyside]

Hamilton Section Part 5:
View attachment 591500View attachment 591501View attachment 591502View attachment 591503View attachment 591504

I greatly appreciate these. Like the SRT, this was clearly something they were seriously considering building and wanted a specific community to be the showcase for. I do think we would have ended up with better service to Hamilton much sooner, but I do struggle to see the full ALRT network being built. This feels more like Toronto's one-shot electrification, closer to what systems like EXO and Metra see with one or two electrified lines in a primarily diesel system. Of course, this wouldn't have replaced the Lakeshore Lines, but it certainly would have functionally- especially in Hamilton. It often feels like this is one of the few places where actual transit improvements are proportionately scarce, but that's a whole other topic; It's more easily attributable to the high cost barriers to unlocking improvement in the sub-region never being pursued. ALRT for instance is a way to deal with the Hunter St tunnel, Bayview Jct, and track ownership issues at once.

I am also disheartened to learn that Mississauga's Official Plan of the day had planned ICTS corridors just like we plan corridors today. Does not bode well...

I have some documents I posted on SSP of Hamilton's Rapid Transit plans, mainly potential network designs (among the most interesting, imo!) from a paperback-only report as well, if anyone is interested in seeing that. Although I'd definetely say this and that should go into a different thread.

 

[JSF-1]

Appreciate you posting these! What was the name/number of the book in the reference library? I’d love to have a look at it myself.

All of these: https://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/search.jsp?Ntt=GO+ALRT

They couldn't find the Report of the Northern Line though. Id reccomend going to the 2nd floor desk like I did since some of the books are up there and you have to request them, while the majority are in the stacks which you have to request so the 2nd floor desk can do both for you. The only book that is out in the open is "Review of the GO-ALRT Whitby to Oshawa project, Thornton Road to Bloor Street East, (Oshawa), City of Oshawa, Regional Municipality of Durham : environmental assessment : submitted by Ministry of Transportation and Communications." which is on the 3rd floor in section 388 (its just to the left of the stairs it took me a couple of minutes to find).

The Toronto Archives and Ontario Archives also have a lot of stuff but I have no plans on going to either of them any time soon so there is that as well. As well with the Ontario Archives you may have to put in a request in advance since they keep a lot of their stuff in off site storage.

 

[Deadpool X]

Last week when my Milton train arrived at Union, it was announced that this train will continue as Stouffville line train. That was the first time I heard a Milton line train continue as another train.

 

[Bureaucromancer]

I greatly appreciate these. Like the SRT, this was clearly something they were seriously considering building and wanted a specific community to be the showcase for. I do think we would have ended up with better service to Hamilton much sooner, but I do struggle to see the full ALRT network being built. This feels more like Toronto's one-shot electrification, closer to what systems like EXO and Metra see with one or two electrified lines in a primarily diesel system. Of course, this wouldn't have replaced the Lakeshore Lines, but it certainly would have functionally- especially in Hamilton. It often feels like this is one of the few places where actual transit improvements are proportionately scarce, but that's a whole other topic; It's more easily attributable to the high cost barriers to unlocking improvement in the sub-region never being pursued. ALRT for instance is a way to deal with the Hunter St tunnel, Bayview Jct, and track ownership issues at once.

I am also disheartened to learn that Mississauga's Official Plan of the day had planned ICTS corridors just like we plan corridors today. Does not bode well...

I have some documents I posted on SSP of Hamilton's Rapid Transit plans, mainly potential network designs (among the most interesting, imo!) from a paperback-only report as well, if anyone is interested in seeing that. Although I'd definetely say this and that should go into a different thread.

I suspect that if Oshawa and Hamilton had happened we would eventually have seen the northern corridor built by around the time the Mississauga Transitway opened, but yeah, I don't see much possibility the Lakeshore conversion would have happened.

 

[JSF-1]

I have some documents I posted on SSP of Hamilton's Rapid Transit plans, mainly potential network designs (among the most interesting, imo!) from a paperback-only report as well, if anyone is interested in seeing that. Although I'd definetely say this and that should go into a different thread.

Perhaps we can have a thread dedicated to transit plans, drawing, and schematics for projects past and present? Like a repository where those things will always be available.

 

[nfitz]

One of the points I am getting at is that intercity access coming down the valley makes sense even if it is a lakeshore service and doesn't pull off the Metrolinx corridor until Pickering

Ah, an interesting thought. Using the Belleville/York/Kingston subs rather than the Belleville/Havelock/York/Kingston sub, I'd guess?

The bottleneck on Lakeshore because of the Ontario Line is only a few blocks between Eastern and Pape. Would a somewhat longer (how much?) route save time, if you could add an extra track or two east of Pape, for VIA? And what would be the construction costs?

Certainly worth thinking about - my guess is that the answer would be stay on Lakeshore. But maybe not if VIA ends up using Don/Belleville/Havelock for HFR.

Gosh, the York sub is wide! I've never looked at the property map along it before. Could probably add 7 more tracks along most of it!

 

[SubHuman]

Last week when my Milton train arrived at Union, it was announced that this train will continue as Stouffville line train. That was the first time I heard a Milton line train continue as another train.

I recently had Google transit directions tell me to get to Aurora by getting on a southbound train at Bloor (this is the Kitchener line) and then stay on the same train as it would then become a northbound train on the Barrie line. When the train arrived at Union, there was no announcement about that, but also nothing about it going out of service. A uniformed GO person was outside loudly telling everyone to go downstairs and to another track to get to the Exhibition, where they probably correctly assumed most people were going. She saw me still sitting on the train, stepped inside and said it to me. I told her I was staying on it to continue to Aurora, and she said she didn't know if that was correct and I should go down the stairs to check the departure boards. I just stayed in my seat and within a few minutes found out the Google directions were correct.

I've had the same thing happen a couple of times before, with a southbound Kitchener line train becoming a northbound train to Centennial GO (Markham).

 

[Bureaucromancer]

Gosh, the York sub is wide! I've never looked at the property map along it before. Could probably add 7 more tracks along most of it!

I really do take all the proclamations that CN and CPKC couldn't possibly share the ROW with a grain of salt. Certainly some significant grade separation of the CPKC side of things would be needed to keep the yard accesses clear, but I am far from convinced that this is a worse option than a whole new corridor.

 

[Allandale25]

Appreciate you posting these! What was the name/number of the book in the reference library? I’d love to have a look at it myself.

With all your great postings on topic I would have assumed you had already seen it

 

[Willybru21]

With all your great postings on topic I would have assumed you had already seen it

I have mixed feelings right now, on one hand I’m happy they posted all that stuff about GO ALRT that I previously didn’t know about, on the other hand I’m sad because I just finished redoing 19 of my GO ALRT maps a few months ago, and now they’re all inaccurate:

 

[Willybru21]

All of these: https://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/search.jsp?Ntt=GO+ALRT

They couldn't find the Report of the Northern Line though. Id reccomend going to the 2nd floor desk like I did since some of the books are up there and you have to request them, while the majority are in the stacks which you have to request so the 2nd floor desk can do both for you. The only book that is out in the open is "Review of the GO-ALRT Whitby to Oshawa project, Thornton Road to Bloor Street East, (Oshawa), City of Oshawa, Regional Municipality of Durham : environmental assessment : submitted by Ministry of Transportation and Communications." which is on the 3rd floor in section 388 (its just to the left of the stairs it took me a couple of minutes to find).

The Toronto Archives and Ontario Archives also have a lot of stuff but I have no plans on going to either of them any time soon so there is that as well. As well with the Ontario Archives you may have to put in a request in advance since they keep a lot of their stuff in off site storage.

Thank you for the information! One last question, I don’t live in the city of Toronto, am I still able to request these books? I haven’t used the reference library before.

 

[urbancog]

I don’t live in the city of Toronto, am I still able to request these books?

If you can show a work address within the City boundary you can get a library account.