Metrolinx buys Toronto-Barrie CN rail line

[EnviroTO]

There are good reasons to buy these corridors:

1. ACCOUNTING: Investing in the upgrade of a private companies assets with tax payer money makes no sense. The private company which finds the extra capacity as surplus to its needs as a freight company could turn around and let the investments fall into disrepair or sell. It is simply bad accounting and not smart management of tax payer money. Assets can't show up as assets in the budget without ownership.

2. SCHEDULING CONTROL: Of course the owner of the railway line sets the priorities of the line. To suggest otherwise makes no sense. Train stopping distances has nothing to do with it. Trains, including freight trains, are scheduled and clearance to enter a section of track is given in advance of arriving at that section of track or the train will have slowed to a stop before reaching it. With GO owning the track, if CN wants to run a freight at rush hour, they can tell them it isn't happening.

3. MAINTENANCE: Control of maintenance practices ultimately ends up determining the speed of the line. On a line infrequently used by freight there is no incentive to ensure maintenance occurs at a level which allows faster speeds. For freight purposes the maintenance of non mainline tracks is usually only suitable enough to safely traverse the line at lower speeds.

 

[vegeta_skyline]

And yet, still far more than the section north of Snider.

The section north of Snider is non-signaled OCS and GO only purchased the tracks up to Bardford. Also the line was badly deteriorated requiring extensive repairs. In other words it was pretty much worthless to CN. They might as well sell it and get something for it rather then having to pay to rip up the tracks. GO then rebuilt the line up to Barrie using CWR(Continuously Welded Rail).
The section south of Sinder is CTC(signaled) and is already CWR. Its still used with some regularity by CN to service customers and they likely will continue serving these customers for many years to come. All these aspects make it much more valuable.

I realize that buying the lines allows them to call the shots (to a degree), but at what cost? All that money could have been spent on upgrades to the lines, or new equipment, or enhanced service, etc.

I thought that you of all people should know how much money they are dropping on track upgrades and new equipment all for the purpose of enhanced service. 68$ million is a drop in the bucket when you consider things like the West Toronto Grade separation costing 277$ million.

Maybe I need to remind you?

After 2 decades of no improvements at all in the last 5 years we've now seen;

Major Projects;
Union Station Rail Corridor signal control system replacement (280$ million)
Union Station restoration (640$ million)
Snider grade separation
Hagerman grade separation (54$ million)
West Toronto Grade separation (277$ million)

Equipment procurement;
27 new locomotives (143$ million) with 20 more on the way (105$ million)
almost a hundred new coaches at appox 2.5 million each
(20 - feb 1 2003, 10 - april 1 2004, 10 - mar 30 2005, 20 - feb 1 2006, 35 - dec 2007)

vs.
Corridor Purchases
Weston sub mile (160$ million)
Newmarket sub mile (68$ million)

Lets not forget...

New Layover/outpost yards in Milton, Hamilton, Stouffville & Barrie

Oakville sub/Lakeshore West improvements;
-new third track from Burlington to Hamilton Jct. (mile 31.5 to 37.3)(72$ million)
-new bridges over Port Credit river, Mississauga rd., Southdown rd., 16 mile creek, Plains rd. and Hidden Valley rd.,
-upgraded Mimico East, Port Credit, 9th Line, Oakville Yard, Kerr st., Burlington West, Aldershot East, Waterdown, Snake & Bayview signal plants
-added new platform & tunnel at Aldershot & Burlington.
-new parking structure at Burlington (20$ million)
-Willowbrook yard modifications to accommodate for 12 car trainsets

in progress;
-nearly completed third track from Port Credit to Kerr st. (mile 13.3 to 22.1)(88$ million)
-major station improvements at Oakville(u/c), Clarkson (u/c)

-Bathurst yard modifications to accommodate 12 car trainsets
-3rd track in flyunder in the USRCorrider
-2 more PM(progressive maintenance) bays at Willowbrook, doubling capacity

Kingston & GO sub/Lakeshore East

completed;
-new third track from Scarborough to Cherry st. (mile 325.2 to 332.4) (69.5$ million)
-new bridges at Warden Ave, Danforth Ave. & rebuilt the Woodrow pedestrian overpass
-upgrade Cherry st., Danforth & Scarborough signal plants
-added new platform & tunnel at Danforth
-purchase of Don yard & creation of mid-day storage(15$ million)

in progress;
-parking structure Whitby(almost ready to open!)
-pedestrian bridge from parking garage at Whitby to platforms
-2nd tunnel at Ajax
-parking garage at Pickering
-pedestrian bridge over 401 at Pickering

future;
-extension of the line to Bowmanville, the major project being a under/over pass over 401 and possibly CP Belleville sub

Weston & Halton sub/Gerogetown

completed;
-new third tracks from miles on Halton sub/Georgetown from miles 11.1 to 14.8 and 15.7 to 18.9.
-new platform and tunnel at Mount Pleasant(completed?)
-new, rebuild or widened bridges at Dixie rd., Rutherford rd., Kennedy st., Etobicoke creek & McLaughlin rd.,
-upgrade Halwest, Peel, Brampton & Norval signal plants

in progress;
-new platform at Brampton(u/c) and Malton(u/c)
-triple tracking the bridge over the Credit River (single track currently)

Other lines
-Rebuilt the track to Barrie with CWR (mile 41.5 to 62.0)


New GO stations at;
Barrie South
Kennedy
Lincolnville
Lisgar
Milliken
Mount Pleasant
East Gwillimbury

Future GO stations (within the next 5 years) at;
Lakeshore West;
Hamilton James st.
possibly Grimsby
St. Catharines
Niagara Falls

Milton line -
4 new stations on the way to Cambridge

Georgetown -
4 new stations on the way to Kitchener(possibly up to 9 stations in the future)
Woodbine
Eglington

Barrie -
St. Clair
Sheppard
Barrie, Downtown

Richmond Hill -
Stouffville Road
Bloomington

Stoufville -
Uxbridge

Lakeshore East -
3 new stations on the way to Bowmanville


Well I think that’s enough for now. This is just the tip of the iceberg when you consider the future upgrades.
for example;
3 new tracks on the Weston & Halton sub/Georgetown, addition tracks on the Bala/Richmond Hill, Newmarket/Barrie, Uxbridge/Stoufville, Galt/Milton – eventually we’ll get this one Mississauga folks . Airport rail link. Rail Grade separations at Davenport, Doncaster and Hamilton Jct. Service extensions to Niagara Falls(limited service already), Cambridge(5-10 years), Kitchener(4-5 years), Bolton(5-10 years), downtown Barrie (2 years), Bloomington rd. Richmond Hill line(4-5 years), Uxbridge(4-6 years), Peterborough(5-10 years) & Bowmanville (4-5 years). All day service on the Milton, Georgetown, Barrie, Richmond Hill & Stouffville. And ultimately Lakeshore line electrification.

With all that you can't possibly sit there and tell me there not putting enough into the system, honestly.

And even with the purchases, dispatching is still in the hands of CN (for better or for worse).

For now yes, but in the future GO will take over even the dispatching. Big changes are already happening on the operational side of things. Despite the fact Bombardier is the operations contractor, GO has the ultimate say on virtually everything. Its quite the nice reversal from the bad ol' CN days. At first Bombardier was solely in charge of employee supervision but this has quickly changed. Now GO even has their own supervisors in the field, an area they never touched before. And their authority and duties supersedes that of the contractor's supervisors. All I can say is that it seems obvious to me what their planning. The same applies to the corridor purchases, seems obvious what the next steps would be.

Actually, next up is the Bala up to Doncaster - it was supposed to be purchased by the end of last year along with the Weston and the Newmarket Subs (although we now see how that's gone).

Perhaps, perhaps not the difference between the Bala vs the Weston and Newmarket is that the Bala is still used by mainline freights and not simply road switcher operations. Of course I'm talking about the section south of Doncaster of course since the line north of there is one of CN's main East-West lines and isn't going anytime soon.

 

[DavidH]

Great post, and an excellent listing of what's going on.

One small addition to the "in progress list" - a parking structure at Ajax. It may not have started construction yet, but given that you listed the Pickering structure, the Ajax one probably should be mentioned. Tenders closed two days ago for it.

 

[vic]

are there any plans for more stations on this line within toronto? i think a good candidate would be a station on eglinton with a connection to the eglinton LRT.

In a letter from GO:

"At the public sessions we held in April, the feedback you provided and the interest you showed about this project proved just how important this project is to your community. We took your comments about this project into consideration and thanks to your input, we are planning on proceeding with an Environmental Assessment (EA) that will include the Davenport Diamond, the proposed new station at Saint Clair Avenue, and the future rail service expansion on Barrie GO line. For this reason, we will be cancelling the current Davenport Diamond process, in favour of a larger, more comprehensive EA on the Barrie GO line, which will include the Davenport Diamond."

I have no idea why they're considering St. Clair. Bloor or Eglinton would seem to make more sense, I think.

 

[rbt]

I have no idea why they're considering St. Clair. Bloor or Eglinton would seem to make more sense, I think.

St. Clair is roughly ~2km from Eglinton or Bloor at this location (nearly the exact centre in fact). This is not an unreasonable spacing for an "express" service parallel to the subway line.

Once all grade separations are complete this line could be twinned (appears space exists) and electrified to Rutherford or Maple with 10 minute frequencies.

Likely a fairly cheap alternative to an eastern DRL (once all scheduled work is complete) and has a side bonus of also intercepting Eglinton, St. Clair, Highway 7, and Spadina subway at Sheppard.

 

[Platform 27]

What should be up for purchase is the Milton line. What is Metrolinx doing sitting on its ass while it's 2nd busisest line after Lakeshore gets little to no rail improvements in like 10 years? When I was in university, there were 6 trains in, 6 trains out. Now there's 7 trains in, 7 trans out. I hardly call that progress. Why can't they prioritize? They should focus on the line that could attain Lakeshore ridership quickest, and that'd be Milton.

Milton line trains run on Canadian Pacific Railway, Ltd.'s only east-west line in the Quebec-Windsor Corridor.

Let me rephrase that: Milton line trains run on Canadian Pacific's only east-west line in the Quebec-Windsor Corridor.

Ottawa's guiding principle of public policy underlying the entire regulation of the Canadian commercial rail industry, going back 20+ years now, is that Canada should have two competing private carriers with their own tracks, both large enough to play in the same league as the American Class Is.

If CP doesn't own the tracks from West Toronto to Milton (or get a parallel replacement), it has zero in-house connectivity between 90% of Canada and those parts of Southern Ontario to the West of Toronto, New York state, or Michigan. It would basically cripple CP as we know it as a profitable business.

Hell, even if CP's CEO went on a drunken bender with Dalton McGuinty and they struck a deal over cocktails to sell the line to Metrolinx, Ottawa might be obliged to block the deal for competitiveness reasons.

Finally, in our haste to advocate a good transit system, let's not forget that the GHG benefits of having a competitive national freight railway system offsetting the need for trucking far, far, far outweigh the GHG benefits the entire GO network achieves by offsetting commuters.

You don't think Bala Subdivision to Doncaster will be on the priority list? I don't think CN has any customers on this section.

If I were GO's management, I'd be in no real hurry to buy Bala.

• In the medium term (ie once the Gormley extension plus the Bethesda Rd. layover is finished), the actual total number of GO train movements on it will go down (from 16/weekday to 10 or 12), giving it the fewest train movements of all the lines in the network by a fair margin. In the longer term, Richmond Hill will probably wind up being the last line to get bidirectional service. Plenty of time to leave options open.
• CN uses it for a couple of through freights running between the Oakville sub and its northern mainline (plus moves from Oakville Yard/Clarksonny stuff to MacMillan Yard, I presume), not switchers going in and out of industrial spurs, so freight's congestive effects are comparatively small.
• As a through route, CN's probably not about to start skimping on maintenance. There's also a fair few bridges and overpasses along the way that would make it potentially costlier to maintain than average.
• CN has sold 2 of its 3 N-S links between the Lakeshore lines and its mainline in the last year, and I imagine they'd prefer to wait and see how things go for a few years before getting rid of the last one. Before they feel reasonably secure in the new order of things, they might attach an added price to snipping the last cord.

I agree with vegeta, I think we'll see an exploration of buying the Kingston sub from Cherry St. to Durham Jct. and then them standing pat for a bit.

 

[Second_in_pie]

St. Clair is roughly ~2km from Eglinton or Bloor at this location (nearly the exact centre in fact). This is not an unreasonable spacing for an "express" service parallel to the subway line.

Once all grade separations are complete this line could be twinned (appears space exists) and electrified to Rutherford or Maple with 10 minute frequencies.

Likely a fairly cheap alternative to an eastern DRL (once all scheduled work is complete) and has a side bonus of also intercepting Eglinton, St. Clair, Highway 7, and Spadina subway at Sheppard.

Yeah, but why St. Clair? Connection with a glorified streetcar vs. two opportunities to connect with subway?
For the Barrie Line, I'd start with adding in Bloor and Sheppard. Bloor connects with the B-D and Georgetown Lines, while Sheppard connects with the Spadina Subway (which brings us to VCC.) I think putting another stop at Highway 7, about 3 km away from VCC, while there's already a connection to a subway that terminates at VCC, is a bit redundant for now. Buuut, if the VCC redevelopment area is as big as I think it is, a station at Highway 7 might help take off some pressure and create more opportunities for people going and coming from there. The only problem I see is that, with a line so long, people may find it inconvenient with too many stops. But if there's going to be upgrades to allow for higher speeds (I hope so,) then maybe that's ok. It's only 1 1/2 or so right now. If they could knock that down to 1:15 with three or four extra stops, I'd be quite content.

 

[RedRocket191]

Yeah, but why St. Clair?

Building GO stations in areas underserved by GO stations, maybe?

 

[rbt]

Yeah, but why St. Clair? Connection with a glorified streetcar vs. two opportunities to connect with subway?

Couldn't say. At the beginning the St. Clair EA, before Eglinton was proposed, they expressed interest in a station at St. Clair provided it was a ROW for the streetcar.

It seems perfectly reasonable to study it now. If there aren't any passengers, it won't be built and if there are potential passengers it will be built.

At some point someone needs to run a business case for it.

 

[Second_in_pie]

Couldn't say. At the beginning the St. Clair EA, before Eglinton was proposed, they expressed interest in a station at St. Clair provided it was a ROW for the streetcar.

It seems perfectly reasonable to study it now. If there aren't any passengers, it won't be built and if there are potential passengers it will be built.

At some point someone needs to run a business case for it.

Oh, they're studying it. That's a relief.

Again, the problem I see for this route is speed. The Barrie line really is set up to serve the north, with an express piece down to Union and the CBD. If you add in a station at St. Clair, you'd have to add in stations at Bloor and Eglinton as well, which are stops that really aren't needed. The way I see it, the connection with the Spadina subway will be great. Riders from Eglinton can just hop onto the Spadina subway, go to Sheppard West and hop on the train. It's a miniscule extra amount of time, about two and a half kilometers to the Spadina line, which has a real RT link to the Go line.
This basically kills the need for an Eglinton station, saving time. This might be less crucial with EMUs, but currently stopping the Go train at Eglinton would cut the route in half, and would probably add 10 minutes to the trip when you account for picking speed back up. Bloor is acceptable to me, because it connects with the subway and Georgetown lines, and would take about 11 km to get to Union and the end of the line to connect, while Eglinton to Sheppard West would only take about 10 kilometers on much quicker track. Eglinton will already be getting service on the Georgetown line to Bloor and Union, so I don't think it'll miss much on that part.

 

[RedRocket191]

Adding a station adds three minutes to the total travel time.

Not ten.

Three.

Assuming that EMU trains accelerate and decelerate at twice the rate of diesel trains, adding stations adds 1.5 minutes to the schedule.

 

[Platform 27]

Yeah, but why St. Clair? Connection with a glorified streetcar vs. two opportunities to connect with subway?
For the Barrie Line, I'd start with adding in Bloor and Sheppard. Bloor connects with the B-D and Georgetown Lines, while Sheppard connects with the Spadina Subway (which brings us to VCC.) I think putting another stop at Highway 7, about 3 km away from VCC, while there's already a connection to a subway that terminates at VCC, is a bit redundant for now. Buuut, if the VCC redevelopment area is as big as I think it is, a station at Highway 7 might help take off some pressure and create more opportunities for people going and coming from there. The only problem I see is that, with a line so long, people may find it inconvenient with too many stops. But if there's going to be upgrades to allow for higher speeds (I hope so,) then maybe that's ok. It's only 1 1/2 or so right now. If they could knock that down to 1:15 with three or four extra stops, I'd be quite content.

From N-to-S:

Barrie line and Highway 7 ("Concord," most likely) is, IMHO, a very strong candidate for an infill station, especially as Viva ramps up E-W service. I've noticed it marked as a potential site on official GO maps before. Certainly in the medium term it would be a lot cheaper to add 500 surface parking spots here than to build a parkade structure at Rutherford.

Barrie line & Sheppard is going ahead as part of the Spadina subway extension. The existing "York University" mini-GO station will likely be closed when this opens.

Barrie line & Eglinton hasn't appeared, in part, I think, because that site would be only about 2 km removed from Eglinton West subway station on the YUS. For people heading eastbound on the Eglinton LRT hoping to go downtown, I reckon headways on the Barrie line would need to get down to something like 15 minutes before it would become a reliable alternative for a rider to change to the GO there rather than keep going the extra distance east to Allen Road and changing to the subway. Also, another 2 km to the west is the Georgetown line & Eglinton, and a station there ("Mount Dennis"?) seems very likely in the medium term. If that were to be the case, the total catchment left which would choose this station as the fastest option to go downtown would be very small indeed.

Barrie line & St. Clair, then, in light of the absence of an Eglinton stop, becomes more of a viable candidate. Because the distance east to the St. Clair West subway station is greater, and the 512 will be slower than an underground Eglinton LRT, that ridership competition issue with the YUS subway isn't as big a factor. There also isn't likely to be a St. Clair option on the Georgetown line.

Finally, Barrie line & Bloor is comparatively difficult because getting the subway connection to work is tricky. Unlike the Georgetown line, where you can pretty much drop straight below the rail corridor and hit subway platform, you'd need a 200m tunnel to get to Lansdowne station. I don't think a direct passenger interchange with the Georgetown line, as you implied, is really in the cards either. There's a 400m gap, so you can certain set up signposts and hope people walk, but usually people won't.

 

[Dan416]

Milton line trains run on Canadian Pacific Railway, Ltd.'s only east-west line in the Quebec-Windsor Corridor.

Let me rephrase that: Milton line trains run on Canadian Pacific's only east-west line in the Quebec-Windsor Corridor.

Ottawa's guiding principle of public policy underlying the entire regulation of the Canadian commercial rail industry, going back 20+ years now, is that Canada should have two competing private carriers with their own tracks, both large enough to play in the same league as the American Class Is.

If CP doesn't own the tracks from West Toronto to Milton (or get a parallel replacement), it has zero in-house connectivity between 90% of Canada and those parts of Southern Ontario to the West of Toronto, New York state, or Michigan. It would basically cripple CP as we know it as a profitable business.

Hell, even if CP's CEO went on a drunken bender with Dalton McGuinty and they struck a deal over cocktails to sell the line to Metrolinx, Ottawa might be obliged to block the deal for competitiveness reasons.

Finally, in our haste to advocate a good transit system, let's not forget that the GHG benefits of having a competitive national freight railway system offsetting the need for trucking far, far, far outweigh the GHG benefits the entire GO network achieves by offsetting commuters.

So what you're saying is that we'll never get regional rail on the Milton line? I thought as much. I guess if GO can't be improved, there's only one other option

 

[DavidH]

So what you're saying is that we'll never get regional rail on the Milton line? I thought as much. I guess if GO can't be improved, there's only one other option

He didn't say anything of the kind. He simply said GO wouldn't be able to buy the Milton corridor.

 

[salmonz]

He didn't say anything of the kind. He simply said GO wouldn't be able to buy the Milton corridor.

The Milton corridor is a crap design anyways. It needs to be straighter to get higher speeds. Just imagine ... being able to whip past Streetsville at 135km/hr. Right now the bend at Streetsville feels like you're going to tip over if you're sitting inside the curve at the lower level of the car. There's many twists and turns on the Milton line the trains take forever to go anywhere.