GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

[mattbg]

It is not to get people from LV to union.....it is to enhance the likelihood that off peak service (when it ever arrives) on those 3 lines have destination points to use the off peak service for. The LV/Exhibition area is an event filled area and putting a simple station there would drive usage on the three lines in question during off peak.

Just as people crowd the platforms of Exhibition stop on the Lakeshore line before/after TFC matches or the Honda Indy....so would people on the Milton and Georgetown lines. Forcing them onto eastbound lakeshore trains to switch at Union for a westbound train home after an event (or even worse, seeing the event they are headed to out of their window as they go to Union to switch to train to bring them back again before the event) makes no sense if it could be avoided by building a small station to serve all three lines in the LV area.

I see... thanks for the explanation.

 

[Dan416]

LV station would be great for getting TFC games!

 

[TOareaFan]

^and the ex...amphitheater shows, Ontario Place, caribana, trade shows/home shows, Royal Winter Fair, games/concerts @ rich, etc

 

[Mapleson]

There isn't really much room for another station around LV. A 315m platform built adjacent to Exhibition GO Station, would extend over/under Dufferin. If you tried to shift it west away from Exhibition Station, you hit the curve, which isn't very great operationally, so GO won't built them.

However, Exhibition GO Station is getting a new platform next year and space for a 4th platform somewhere in the distant future.

 

[TOareaFan]

There isn't really much room for another station around LV. A 315m platform built adjacent to Exhibition GO Station, would extend over/under Dufferin. If you tried to shift it west away from Exhibition Station, you hit the curve, which isn't very great operationally, so GO won't built them.

However, Exhibition GO Station is getting a new platform next year and space for a 4th platform somewhere in the distant future.

The potential station we are talking about is on the other set of tracks that cross Queen and King between Dufferin and Strachan....those tracks carry trains on the Milton/Georgetown/Barrie lines. They could not use the Ex station anyway but a new stations somewhere between king and queen could provide a valuable 3-line destination/event station for off-peak service.

 

[Mapleson]

The potential station we are talking about is on the other set of tracks that cross Queen and King between Dufferin and Strachan....those tracks carry trains on the Milton/Georgetown/Barrie lines. They could not use the Ex station anyway but a new stations somewhere between king and queen could provide a valuable 3-line destination/event station for off-peak service.

Ah ha, that makes more sense. Between King and Queen is all curve, and that's no-go with GO. You could take out Douro St. for a good station location though, or else you'd need to push it west of Dufferin/Queen and that puts you awfully close to Bloor GO Station.

 

[TOareaFan]

Where does it start sloping? This just seems like a such a lost opportunity to put in a mult-line useful station. Just looked on a map and after the tracks cross over from the north side of King to the South side they seem pretty straight there. There is almost 1,500 feet of straightness between King and intersection of Pindarello and Western Battery then about another 875 feet before they get to Strachan.

So, how much straight track do they need to put in a fairly simple one platform "station" and how much space do they need for the incline due to Strachan? is 2,375' anywhere close enough to do both?

(now that I look at it, they are fairly straight as the cross King too....can you use the bridge in station/platform?

Ah ha, that makes more sense. Between King and Queen is all curve, and that's no-go with GO. You could take out Douro St. for a good station location though, or else you'd need to push it west of Dufferin/Queen and that puts you awfully close to Bloor GO Station.

Just after the bridge crossing King there is a fairly straight stretch.....no one answered the question I posed about how long a platform would be needed....might be tight....perhaps not all cars would empty out there but I really think they should be looking at what needs to be done to get trains from those 3 lines stopping at/near EX/LV in conjunction with any unveiling of off-peak rail service.

 

[nfitz]

Between King and Queen is all curve, and that's no-go with GO.

It's only a no-go because GO says it's no-go. Danforth station is on a curve as well. I don't see why you couldn't have a platform that starts just south of Queen, and crossed Queen and Dufferin ... from the curve perspective at least. Or starts west of King, and goes east to before Douro.

The curves for either of those locations don't seem any worse than Danforth.

I'm quite sure if the folks at GO HAD to put a station in, they'd find a way to do it, rather than a way to say no.

 

[Mapleson]

Just after the bridge crossing King there is a fairly straight stretch.....no one answered the question I posed about how long a platform would be needed....might be tight....perhaps not all cars would empty out there but I really think they should be looking at what needs to be done to get trains from those 3 lines stopping at/near EX/LV in conjunction with any unveiling of off-peak rail service.

A stardard 12-car GO platform is 315m.
Horizontally, you need about 10m. It would definately fit between King and Strachan. I suggested putting the station on the north side of the corridor on Douro St. there, as Western Battery is pretty built up now looking at Google Streetview. You could use the bridge in a station/platform, but messing with the existing structure (for example putting in stair wells) makes things complicated and expensive.

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

Though if trains that stopped there were shorter would a shorter platform be needed? Even if 12 car monsters were bypassing the station would a 6 car station be 170 odd m long?

 

[Platform 27]

It would definately fit between King and Strachan. I suggested putting the station on the north side of the corridor on Douro St. there, as Western Battery is pretty built up now looking at Google Streetview. You could use the bridge in a station/platform, but messing with the existing structure (for example putting in stair wells) makes things complicated and expensive.

I think we went through this earlier in the thread or elsewhere, but the likely obstacle to a station between King and Strachan isn't the horizontal geometry, but rather the vertical... the tracks will have to be ramped down to the low point of the trench that's being built as part of the Strachan grade separation. What might be adequately flat track now to stop and restart a train on mightn't be flat enough in a year or two.

 

[TOareaFan]

I think we went through this earlier in the thread or elsewhere, but the likely obstacle to a station between King and Strachan isn't the horizontal geometry, but rather the vertical... the tracks will have to be ramped down to the low point of the trench that's being built as part of the Strachan grade separation. What might be adequately flat track now to stop and restart a train on mightn't be flat enough in a year or two.

That is when I asked this question:

So, how much straight track do they need to put in a fairly simple one platform "station" and how much space do they need for the incline due to Strachan? is 2,375' anywhere close enough to do both?

 

[Tuscani01]

Somewhat GO related:

A Wal Mart is coming to the giant piece of empty land right next to Dixie GO. Great use of land! (not)

http://www.mississauga.com/news/business/article/1041807--new-walmart-in-development

 

[Mapleson]

It's only a no-go because GO says it's no-go. Danforth station is on a curve as well. I don't see why you couldn't have a platform that starts just south of Queen, and crossed Queen and Dufferin ... from the curve perspective at least. Or starts west of King, and goes east to before Douro.

The curves for either of those locations don't seem any worse than Danforth.

I'm quite sure if the folks at GO HAD to put a station in, they'd find a way to do it, rather than a way to say no.

Stations on curves have accessiblity and/or operational issues. Generally, one tries to avoid putting stations on curves because the gap between the door threshold and the platform edge varies with where the doors are placed along the length of the car. GO train cars have two sets of doors means irregular gap distance between the platform edge and train. It's an accident waiting to happen and liability insurance reflects that.

There are stations on curves, Streetsville GO Station is another grandfathered in, but they require CCTV monitoring and other special operating procedures that makes it more costly to operate.

It's the same reasoning that saw in part Lisgar Station build at 10th Line instead of Winston Churchill. The mentality goes deep enough at Metrolinx that when we were looking for possible future station locations, it was suggested to build in the Niagara Escarpment Protection Area (with appropriate rezone) rather than build on a curve. The logicistics of that political mess killed the option, but they wanted us to at least consider it, whereas building on a curve was ruled out of hand.

Though if trains that stopped there were shorter would a shorter platform be needed? Even if 12 car monsters were bypassing the station would a 6 car station be 170 odd m long?

Current GO cars are 25.9m long, so a 155m station would be sufficient for a 'half station'.

I think we went through this earlier in the thread or elsewhere, but the likely obstacle to a station between King and Strachan isn't the horizontal geometry, but rather the vertical... the tracks will have to be ramped down to the low point of the trench that's being built as part of the Strachan grade separation. What might be adequately flat track now to stop and restart a train on mightn't be flat enough in a year or two.

I was looking a little further east than the depression under King and didn't take the Strachan seperation into account. Without the numbers in front of me, I'd still say it's workable.

 

[nfitz]

Stations on curves have accessiblity and/or operational issues. Generally, one tries to avoid putting stations on curves because the gap between the door threshold and the platform edge varies with where the doors are placed along the length of the car. GO train cars have two sets of doors means irregular gap distance between the platform edge and train. It's an accident waiting to happen and liability insurance reflects that.

Sure ... but that hasn't stopped them in the past, and there is no plans to close them. It didn't even stop them recently extending Danforth 2-cars into the curve - rather than on the straight-section at the other end!

If having yet another station with a bit of a curve at the end of the platform is only impediment to having a major downtown station, then it's a price worth paying.

The long-term numbers seem to show that Union station is going to remain a major bottleneck to operations in the future, with a limit on the number of train movements through the station. One way to decrease dwell times at Union is try and do things that make it so that you don't have 98% of the passengers trying to get on or off the train there. One way to do this is to build a DRL that intercepts GO lines in both the east and west (Gerrard Square? Cherry? Exhibition/Liberty? Queen/Dufferin?), and siphon off signifcant GO traffic there ... in the same manner that in Montreal, that Vendôme siphons off a lot of the traffic on trains heading to Lucien L'Allier (Windsor).