Toronto Union Pearson Express | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx | MMM Group Limited

ssiguy2 said:
Just petty bitching from the Weston area residents.

I think one of the primary concerns they have is that all the disruption and noise they are having to go thru would be a lot easier to take if this was a transport line that they could actually use. People will bite their tongue and put up with delays in construction for public transit projects because they can at least see the long term benefits. The problem is that this is not a public transit project but a Bay Street express.

Toronto is probably the only city on the planet that is building a diesel train to it's airport as a fast link BEFORE they actually provide mass/rapid transit for the masses of regular travellers and thousands of workers who have to get their everyday. If the people were allowed to use their TTC pass to ride the train to the airport or downtown {ie built as a subway/LRT} then I don't think you would be getting this kind of petty bitching.
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there are plenty of cities that run with premium services to the airport only. Newark in New York is one that comes to mind.

Neil said:
If only there were a rail corridor near by, lightly used most of the day, that could be used to haul away this bulk material.
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quite difficult to haul away material when you are just hauling it to another part of the construction site. and what do you expect them to do, build a temporary paved road for the hundreds of trucks to use? and they must eventually exit anyways, so all you will be doing is dumping westons problems on some other unwilling neighborhood.
 
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ssiguy2 said:
Just petty bitching from the Weston area residents.

I think one of the primary concerns they have is that all the disruption and noise they are having to go thru would be a lot easier to take if this was a transport line that they could actually use. People will bite their tongue and put up with delays in construction for public transit projects because they can at least see the long term benefits. The problem is that this is not a public transit project but a Bay Street express.

Toronto is probably the only city on the planet that is building a diesel train to it's airport as a fast link BEFORE they actually provide mass/rapid transit for the masses of regular travellers and thousands of workers who have to get their everyday. If the people were allowed to use their TTC pass to ride the train to the airport or downtown {ie built as a subway/LRT} then I don't think you would be getting this kind of petty bitching.
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You do realize that the UPE is only part of the reason why these improvements are being done, right? And that these improvements are just as much, if not more-so, for GO's sake than they are for the sake of the UPE? The UPE was just the catalyst.
 
Yes I do realize that much, if not most, of the construction is part of the GO Kitchener improvements.

As far as the station at Weston, that was purely for politics and had nothing to do with providing service to the area.

Who the hell would pay $25-$30 bucks to get from Weston to the relatively close Pearson and would be just as cheap and from Weston a hell of a lot faster. Relatively few even take GO train service from Weston to get downtown so no one in their right mind will pay a UPX fare to do it.
 
we still don't know fares, and I seriously doubt they will charge the same to get from weston as they would to get from Pearson.
 
innsertnamehere said:
quite difficult to haul away material when you are just hauling it to another part of the construction site. and what do you expect them to do, build a temporary paved road for the hundreds of trucks to use? and they must eventually exit anyways, so all you will be doing is dumping westons problems on some other unwilling neighborhood.
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The Weston Tunnel and Strachan dig down are removing a lot of material, not just moving it around the site. What I am proposing is to use rail hopper cars to transport that material off site and not a multitude of dump trucks through city streets. Hopper cars would be unloaded out of the city where it would not be someone else's problem.
 
ssiguy2 said:
Yes I do realize that much, if not most, of the construction is part of the GO Kitchener improvements.

As far as the station at Weston, that was purely for politics and had nothing to do with providing service to the area.
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If by "politics" you mean "it was one of the rolling demands the community made so a concession was made"...yes I agree.

ssiguy2 said:
Who the hell would pay $25-$30 bucks to get from Weston to the relatively close Pearson and would be just as cheap and from Weston a hell of a lot faster. Relatively few even take GO train service from Weston to get downtown so no one in their right mind will pay a UPX fare to do it.
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Again, the people who planned the Express train connecting Downtown and the airport designed it as an express train. They, I believe, were very aware of the likelihood that a stop at Weston would not generate much traffic. However, the community demanded that a stop be built....probably many of the same people who are now criticizing the construction process for that same station.

The Weston stop is a mistake....but it was a demand made by the community after their first demand (that the two sides of their community remain connected) was met and became the new card they played to attempt to stop the line from being built.
 
innsertnamehere said:
we still don't know fares, and I seriously doubt they will charge the same to get from weston as they would to get from Pearson.
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In the original "Blue 22" plan (long since shelved, I know) the Weston Station did not exist but there was no distinction between the fares between Bloor and the Airport were the same as Union to the Airport.....so perhaps the Weston fare will be the same. Then when no one uses it they can shut down that stop and return it to its original express design.
 
but you can't seem to wrap your head around the likelyhood that they won't use the same fare structure. I think the line will be a success if it is $15 or less from union to the airport, with scaled fares for both Bloor and Weston.
 
innsertnamehere said:
but you can't seem to wrap your head around the likelyhood that they won't use the same fare structure. I think the line will be a success if it is $15 or less from union to the airport, with scaled fares for both Bloor and Weston.
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And I think it will be a success (with its target market of Pearson to DT customers) at $25. At that price it will still be, by far, the cheapest, most reliable and predictable way of making the DT-Pearson connection. Based on the alternatives (and I should say conversations I have with people who visit our business from out of town) I don't think it needs to be discounted to $15 to make it work.

I simply stated that the old model did not differentiate between a Union trip and a Bloor trip as a hint to how people who plan these express trains think (in response to you "seriously doubting" that fares would not be the same at Weston....I even included the disclaimer that overall plan had been scrapped but it still might give us a hint to how they think.
 
What is it with this city and subways? It seems everyone wants a subway? Is subway the only form of transit there it is.
 
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