GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

[mdrejhon]

I believe I have some of the answer to Metrolinx's GO RER being 20% faster.

Relevant to matter: There is a GO train that makes Burlington in just 40 minutes today!

I was surfing the GO schedules, and noticed that the Niagara summer train makes it to Burlington in a speedy 40 minutes!

This would be the fastest commute home for Burlington residents on Fridays on the 6:20pm train arriving Burlington at 7:00pm, every Friday beginning July 3rd. This screenshot is an excellent comparision of trip times of three different stopping plans.

Burlington Trip Times from Union
Regular allstop: 1h 01min
Regular express: 52min
Niagara seasonal: 40min

The Friday evening seasonal is presumably a longtime best-kept-secret of Burlington residents who work late in downtown Toronto to go "ahhhhh, TGIF!" when Burlington temporarily feels almost as close as Oakville to downtown.

How can Niagara seasonal be massively faster than the regular express? Without breaking railroad speed limits? Answer -- longer times at full speed between stops. It appears that, the current diesels are able to efficiently utilize a station spacing of approximately 10+ kilometers, due to the limited slow acceleration of the diesels. Apparently, because of the train performance graph -- big stop spacing between all stops, apparently outweighs the nonstop express followed by allstops in short station spacing, given the same number of stops!

When electric trains arrive, they will accelerate much faster to the railroad's speed limit sooner, so they can arrive at the next station sooner. Realistically, the improved acceleration of electric trains (EMUs moreso than electric locomotives, though) could reliably allow more aggressive timetables to be published that represents arrival times 20% sooner. That depends on whether Lakeshore gets EMUs (much faster timetables, 20%+ depending on stop distance) or electric locomotives (a bit faster timetables, 10% possibly?), assuming stop spacing remains the same.

When the Niagara seasonal eventually stops at Hamilton West Harbor, I would expect it provide a downtown-Toronto to downtown-Hamilton commute in slightly under one hour! Lovely.

Assuming the use of Stadler KISS type EMUs or similar, they have a 160kph max speed. The Stadler KISS EMU (pictured in Metrolinx recent PowerPoint presentations, here, here) accelerates at 4kph/second according to Stadler's specs (1.1m/s^2 = 3.96kph/s). This compares to 1kph/second for a single diesel engine and 2kph/second for a double-diesel consist (two diesels pulling a 12 car train).

My GPS speedometer on my iPhone confirms the acceleration of a GOtrain, and vegata_skyline (a GOtrain driver) confirms that the only way a GOtrain can accelerate 2kph/s is a double locomotive. He's right; I've never seen a GOtrain accelerate more than 1kph/s otherwise.

Not saying Metrolinx will chose Stadler KISS, but such similiar light EMUs accelerate similarly fast (several times faster than a diesel-pulled 12-car consist) due to all coaches having multiple motorized axles. Transport Canada proposed rules to Metrolinx to permit lighter non-FRA trains, so it could happen. An electrified GO network will likely eventually collect EMUs, beginning with routes of short stop spacing (e.g. SmartTrack route), which is important to stick to claims of 20% faster without increasing speed limits.

Although I expect Metrolinx to use electric locomotives on the Lakeshore line, eventually, the bilevels get relegated to peak-period service within twenty years, and EMUs used as a cost-saver (faster trains = fewer trains needed to maintain 15-min service = cheaper than near-empty offpeaks, and possible unstaffed level boarding at the existing Accessibility Platforms) before full discontinuation of the old classic Bombardier BiLevels in about the 2040s due to new orders and new cab cars. It is really not forever economical to operate the BiLevels on a 15-minute offpeak service all the way from Oshawa to Burlington, so as the coaches go EOL (end of life), they will probably be replaced with EMUs.

With EMUs, the "optimal big stop spacing" is much smaller (up to 4x smaller) than Niagara seasonal. This brings optimal stop spacing to smaller than the current stop spacing of many GO lines. From this, it appears EMU will easily perform 20% faster at current Lakeshore stop spacing, while maintaining the same arrival reliablility (guarantee) and safety margins.

EMUs will perform to 90mph railroad speed limit more than a third of the kilometerage of the rail on Lakeshore, and for lower speed limit sections, more than half of the kilometerage between the stations. This assumes no infill stations (which, presumably, are expected -- e.g. Etobicoke south between Exhibition and Mimico)

Both acceleration levels off as max speed is reached, but the EMU accelerates generally four times faster across the whole curve, meaning that maximum speed is achieved in a quarter the distance. Vegata_skyline repeatedly said that a GOtrain barely reaches maximum speed at current stop spacing on Lakeshore, before it has to decelerate. But if it gets to maximum speed 4 times sooner, it can spend a third of the spacing between stop coasting at full speed, rather than an accelerate-then-nearly-immediately-decelerate cycle that frequently happens with GOtrains.

From multiple angles:
- observation of Niagara Seasonal performance versus Regular Express performance;
- math calculations confirms;
- acceleration performance of EMUs confirms;
- current optimal stop spacing performance observed by Niagara Seasonal;
- GO network current stop spacing would allow an EMU to be at railroad speed limit possibly up to half of the kilometerage.

So, assuming the use of EMUs, I consider Metrolinx's assertion of "20% faster" quite accurate and possibly conservative assuming the use of EMUs, even without changing current railroad speed limits.

Attachment: BurlingtonExpress.png (58KB)
Union to Burlington in just 40 minutes​

 

[smallspy]

Why is this news to you? They've been running this train for the past 4 or 5 summers.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.

 

[mdrejhon]

Why is this news to you?

That's not the point of my post. It's not why I posted.

(Consider: enlightening the average UrbanToronto reader, who don't know as much as you do.)

 

[nfitz]

Perhaps if the post was just a couple of sentences, the point would be clear, rather than lost in the noise.

 

[mdrejhon]

Perhaps if the post was just a couple of sentences, the point would be clear, rather than lost in the noise.

This type of post can't be condensed to just a couple sentences. Maybe with lots more effort, compacted massively like 25% of its original size, of course. But those who know me, know it is useless to debate shortening my posts.

Back on topic - I'm looking forward to vegata_skyline's response if there's one -- He always has interesting responses (often Liked by others) to these types of posts that I'm sure (as you, nfitz) will find easier to read as he explains many things better than I do. Skip over those post-size criticisms and let others reply. Consider the rewards of those potential follow-on responses ...

 

[nfitz]

You certainly didn't need to cut-and-paste multiple schedules to simply tell us that it takes X minutes on Train Y from A to B. Particularly when said train has been running for years.

If you were reporting some rare historic schedule ... maybe.

 

[mdrejhon]

If you were reporting some rare historic schedule ... maybe.

Historic, no. Rare, yes. Rheoretically, where do you find three consecutive GO trains, for one route, that has 3 very dramatically different stopping plans?

I'd wager nobody here has ever posted a screenshot comparison of the 3 stopping plans of the same route, showing dramatically different trip times for consecutive trains.

But, yes, I see it's two copies. The last copy was supposed to be a link. Fixed.

 

[drum118]

Very strange how Paris France can do it, yet GO needs more cars to do it. Must be sardines on those trains. Can't recall if I rode one in 12.
http://www.alstom.com/press-centre/...ver-the-100th-mi09-trainset-to-stif-and-ratp/

Alstom and Bombardier deliver the 100th MI09 trainset to STIF and RATP

Alstom, Bombardier, RATP and STIF have celebrated, at the Alstom site of Valenciennes Petite-Forêt, the departure from the factory of the 100th MI09 duplex train destined for Line A of the RER network in Paris. The delivery is part of a contract awarded to the Alstom-Bombardier consortium in 2009. In February 2015, STIF1ordered 10 extra trains, bringing the total number of trains ordered to 140.

Every MI09 can transport up to 2,600 passengers at maximum speeds of 120 km/h. Each train is 110 metres long and is made up of five cars, each equipped with three large doors on either side to facilitate passenger exchange in the stations. Its highly efficient electrical braking system reduces the energy consumption of the trains. A Wi-Fi link between the train and the ground ensures the transmission of the train’s operational parameters, thus anticipating maintenance operations and guaranteeing a reliable service.

The MI09 trains are designed and produced in France on the industrial sites of Alstom in Valenciennes Petite-Forêt and Bombardier in Crespin. The five other French Alstom Transport sites involved are Ornans for the traction motors, Le Creusot for the bogies, Tarbes for the traction chain equipment, Petit Quevilly for the main transformer and Villeurbanne for the passenger information and electronic control systems.

Line A of the Paris RER2 transports 1.2 million passengers a day, which makes it the most heavily frequented regional line in Europe. The MI09 trains currently in service on the line have already covered over 24 million kilometres.

About Alstom Transport
A promoter of sustainable mobility, Alstom Transport develops and markets the most complete range of systems, equipment and services in the railway sector. Alstom Transport manages entire transport systems, including trains, signalling, maintenance and modernisation, infrastructure and offers integrated solutions. Alstom Transport had sales of €6.2 billion and booked €10 billion of orders in the fiscal year 2014/15. Alstom Transport is present in over 60 countries and employs around 28,000 people. Present on 12 sites in France, Alstom Transport is the leading French railway company and contributes to the vitality of local economies. Its approximately 8,900 employees in France provide a pool of expertise to serve French and international clients. A job at Alstom creates about three amongst its suppliers.

 

[smallspy]

Historic, no. Rare, yes. Rheoretically, where do you find three consecutive GO trains, for one route, that has 3 very dramatically different stopping plans?

I'd wager nobody here has ever posted a screenshot comparison of the 3 stopping plans of the same route, showing dramatically different trip times for consecutive trains.

But, yes, I see it's two copies. The last copy was supposed to be a link. Fixed.

The vast majority of your posts are a combination of regurgitated garbage from elsewhere and what you think is the way GO/Metrolinx/City of Hamilton/Transport Canada do and/or should operate - and of which the vast majority of is wrong.

And again, they have been running that Friday-only train for quite a few years. So you made a screenshot of it....bully for you. There's still nothing ground-shattering there.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.

 

[mdrejhon]

The vast majority of your posts are a combination of regurgitated garbage from elsewhere and what you think is the way GO/Metrolinx/City of Hamilton/Transport Canada do and/or should operate - and of which the vast majority of is wrong.

Hold it with the personal attack, buddy.

While you know more about today's train actual operations than a railfan like I do, you're not on the same level as drum118 or vegata_skyline in quoting Internet-based references.

As you correctly imply sir, some of what governments writes ends up being garbage, but they are genuine public records. That you cannot dispute, regardless of whether they are true, will become true, or not.

As an office worker myself, I know the meeting-room corporate culture, so I know when some things feel more nebulous (purely paper tiger, like Peterborough GOtrain) and when some things feel more probable/eventual (left and right hand agreeing: multiple documents pointing to same thing, land purchases, actual funding, government announcements, etc) . In any industry, management often decides against field operations, and vice versa. Also, my predictions isn't necessarily equal to what I want to see happen. And historically, what Metrolinx wants to do isn't necessarily what GOtrain drivers want. It's a constant fight.

It is not to say I am sometimes wrong (and sometimes I definitely am), and I possibly repeat myself often, but you need to exercise a little more tolerance. Just because you completely disagree with one or two of my posts that may end up being wrong, or one topic, does not mean most of my other posts are invalid.

Certainly, there is a difference between my knowledge of train operations versus knowledge of content of government documents are two different balls of wax. Just because as a railfan I'm wrong about a few things about EMUs, does not mean *everything* I say about EMUs are wrong -- you can see me quoting resources. There is for example, very strong indicators that EMUs, when eventually they arrive (whether very soon or distant future when BiLevels fall apart) will arriving to a Kitchener-Stoufville routing before arriving to a Lakeshore East/West routing.

It just demonstrates your intolerance and closed-mindedness to a railfan who might sometimes get some things spectacularly correct and some things spectacularly wrong. After all, some of my musings/my predictions of announcements came true (e.g. Stoney Creek GO station, Hamilton LRT, etc. Also, Metrolinx has now been quoted one of my predictions about SmartTrack "wyeing" alternatingly at the spur, ala Paris RER-style or Calgary C-Train style).
Showing recent successes in judge of government documents as a long-time office worker, I believe I call things much more accurately than the average news reporter, I'd say. Do you say all newspapers and all TV shows are garbage? I think I'm justified to call out your bluff that most posts I've written is wrong, that although I may be incorrect sometimes in a few of them. Anyway, I would guess that maybe some GOtrain drivers are probably against some things what Metrolinx is doing -- maybe this might be your feeling that is contributing -- but this shouldn't be pertinent to this matter. It's fine to disagree with some of what I write. It's fine to agree to disagree. But this level?

Instead of a categorical disagreement, -- we rather should be pooling our knowledge here -- your field knowledge and my office knowledge (cubicle/meeting/documents/planning/etc). But I have also worked for some infrastructure companies -- at the office level. Mapping software. GPS tracking software. Reliability metrics. Decisions do filter down in unexpected ways, some cancelled, some goes through, left hand versus right hand, and I've gained a feel of what's probably more likely to go through and what's probably not going to happen.

Preferably, can't we just get along?

Sincerely,
Mark Rejhon
Hamilton, Ontario

 

[mdrejhon]

Very strange how Paris France can do it, yet
GO needs more cars to do it. Must be sardines on those trains. Can't recall if I rode one in 12.
http://www.alstom.com/press-centre/...ver-the-100th-mi09-trainset-to-stif-and-ratp/

Being a Canadian company, what's your opinion about Metrolinx tending towards a EMU by Bombardier versus another's? We already know that the Stadler KISS clipart that Metrolinx recently uses is likely placeholder art (even if definitely not 100% nor 0% odds).

Theoretically speaking, given a long-term likely migration to EMUs given an electricified rail network (whether sooner in SmartTrack era, or later in EOL of bilevels), do you think politically we will stick with Bombardier for our EMUs, and avoid European/Asian brands? Given your links to actual construction?

That said, we do see the Japanese locomotives and DMUs being purchased, so there's precedent of Metrolinx not purchasing from Bombardier, and we do see Bombardier's lateness with several clients including TTC.

 

[Electrify]

So after all this time I click on to Google Maps, and GO's data is still missing! Their Triplinx service is pretty nice, but Google is so universal that it is asinine not to be on there!

I tweeted them before and heard nothing back. When I first discovered this, I assumed that they were in the process of sending them updated schedules. But now it appears to be a permanent change. I just tweeted them again, hopefully I will hear back this time.

With the Pan Am games starting a lot of tourists are going to be confused when looking for GO transit information on their phones...

 

[mdrejhon]

So after all this time I click on to Google Maps, and GO's data is still missing! Their Triplinx service is pretty nice, but Google is so universal that it is asinine not to be on there!

I tweeted them before and heard nothing back. When I first discovered this, I assumed that they were in the process of sending them updated schedules. But now it appears to be a permanent change. I just tweeted them again, hopefully I will hear back this time.

With the Pan Am games starting a lot of tourists are going to be confused when looking for GO transit information on their phones...

I would love to see GO provide real time arrival/delay estimates to Transit App. The data exists, so it just needs to be implemented down the API chain....

As an app programmer, it can't take one employee more than a few days of work at most, tops -- it is simply reformatting data into an industry standard XML format. It may simply be bureaucratic inertia, provisioning of limited resources, management goaheads, guarding from publicizing data, etc. And they are still overdue in the new version of the GO app, so limited resources may be pushed flat-out at the moment.

 

[mdrejhon]

On another topic...
I am an app software developer, and have done some programming for multiple mapping & GPS projects, so knowledge is indirectly relevant here, as some (not all) transit companies analyze GPS data to tweak timetables.

Consequently, the Metrolinx timetable changes are an interesting topic matter from a mathematical analytical perspective. Timetable tweaks that comes from the back office / head office.

Different transit companies have very different approaches on how to do timetable adjustments.

Based on my experience working at companies, including infrastructure, and participating in meeting rooms, there is often a concept of targets. A price, a time, a checklist, a combination, etc. This also applies to timetables, which itself is essentially a defacto target, calculating percentage reliability, etc. One year, a timetable has 55 minute, and next year, a timetable has 58 minutes for the same time.

For those interested in the topic:

Typically, field staff like to scratch their heads over many management decisions, but when looking into it deeper, you learn to understand (if not necessarily agree) how certain forms of bureaucracy work for different companies. For example, a decision may not be cancelled due to cost but due to a specific target not being met. Or a sudden cancellation of something good occurs, a head scratching decision, then looking deeper it ends up being only 60 percent of management "wants" checkboxes were achieved on a budget that should have brought it to completion, and they had several meetings, Or a million reasons. Field staff demand things, management sometimes obliges.

One example is timetables at some transit companies (not necessarily Metrolinx). It is a complex interaction between boardroom decisions, versus field considerations (eg unions, resources) versus infrastructure/fleet versus budget versus performance targets versus analysis of historical performance.

The short story example:
- Timetable was done one year
- A bad winter and missed performance targets, increased congestion, etc, occurs
- On-time Performance target falls short
- Timetable gets analyzed, negoitated between departments, and readjusted, e.g. Longer transit times, to meet targets
- On-time Performance target better met

Some transit companies do a really terrible job, of course. Others are more pro-field-staff, while others just do not bother to look at traffic data, GPS data, etc (something I actually analyze -- I have programmed mapping/GPS software and infrastructure maintenance tracking software) or just lazily look at customer complaints only, or the head office just rubberstamp last year's schedule despite protests from field staff. Or they listen to field staff mainly and tweak half based on their recommendation, and half their own analysis. There is an understanding of mental process through a corporate chain that does that.

When a transit company network is improved (e.g. More lanes, dedicated transit lanes, less contentions/conflicts, better maintenance, EMU trains, buses in good shape, etc). The reliability sometimes goes up, targets get met, staff finds it unusually conservative (consistently long dwell, more boring, going much slower than speed limit), analysis shows vehicles are closer to ideal timetable than before, etc. Historically, EMUs have shown greater average reliability despite their problems, although the best diesel networks are more reliable than poorly built EMU networks.

From all parties, pressure to make timetable more aggressive increases.

Obviously, there are interactions (congestion - road, airspace, runway slotting, track contention, speed limits, expresses overtaking, outside congestion, etc) so it's a big game of tetris sometimes to come up with a timetable that has a higher predicted reliability while being more aggressive, getting more people moved faster.

Management solicits opinions from drivers, backoffice doe certain kinds of analysis, meetings are done between top stakeholders (managers and important workers) etc. Tweaks are made to the transit timetable, and then reliability targets are met. Some run this process to an exact tee -- the Japanese are very very famously rigorous, exact and analytic -- super aggressive goals that are actually met.

Often, a timetable will become more aggressive until it no longer outperforms targets, then reliability is roughly same but transit times are shorter. That is how it works at certain transit companies. Chose better average reliability or better average transit times. A balance.

Again, this may not necessarily be Metrolinx, but they do follow some classic patterns of a typical decision tree resembling at least vaguely the above. And we do see some of their targets publicly published, numbers vetted by dozens of office employees, and agreed upon by all the stakeholders (front-line employees, offices, management, unions, etc).

Some decisions from above can appear strange, especially to field staff, but it is useful to analyze why a decision occured, from an academic perspective.

 

[smallspy]

...blah blah blah...

Sincerely,
Mark Rejhon
Hamilton, Ontario

My intolerance, Mark, is to people who continually make assumptions despite having been corrected. To people who go on like they know better, despite being told otherwise.

That, and long run-on posts that contain only very little actual information that is pertinent to the topic at hand. Or people who post for the sake of seeing their name on yet another post.

I have no problems with sharing information with those that don't have it. I think you'll see in my previous posts that I've done just that. But I'm also not going to waste my time saying the same thing over and over again to correct people.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.