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

smallspy said:
Despite what Mrs. Haley said publicly, that's not true at all. One-third of the 18 vehicles coming are specifically designed to fit in between two of the rounded-cab end units, allowing them to extend each train from 2 to 3 cars long. That would give another ~90 seats per train.

Those same cars are also powered with two cabs, allowing them to run one-car trains should the need arise.

They can also decrease the headways, but that will begin to cause issues with the terminal at Union Station. 5 trains per hour is the limit that they can run, at least with the infrastructure that will be in place on day 1 at Union.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
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Actually, I think you're incorrect, Dan.

Each car seats 60, not 90 (source)--- so the 180-passenger/train ceiling already assumes all the trains are already running as three-car sets, not as married pairs. Three-car trains at 15 minute headways works out to 720 pax/hr/direction, with standing room on top of that (although I don't know how I'd feel about standing if I'd dropped considerably more than a GO fare for the privilege of a ride.)

As to whether they could go higher than that -- I've heard it said a few times that the geometry of the space at Terminal 1 reserved for the station ages ago made a four-car platform a non-starter (but can't recall ever reading that in black and white personally). So, even if you were willing to spend some money on modifications there and at Union, I don't know if that's a viable strategy to get four-car sets and thus more capacity. The other option would be to push up frequency: assuming the turn at Union could be made to work and additional track capacity were added to the majority of the corridor, you might be able to do 10 minute headways. That's actually more frequent than most of the similar airport rail links internationally like Heathrow Express.

Realistically, if I were running the service and hitting a capacity ceiling, I'd just keep jacking prices up and make it an increasingly niche service for the business and tourist crowd. I could then plow the net revenue into adding lower priced alternatives like a western extension of Eglinton or 15-minute GO service with a bus transfer.
 
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So if we take 60 seats per car of at most 4 cars at 12 mins min headway per Dan, that's max capacity 240 x 5 or 1200 pax per dir per hr. Worth keeping in mind when certain people want to have UPX become even more of a stopping service.
 
dowlingm said:
So if we take 60 seats per car of at most 4 cars at 12 mins min headway per Dan, that's max capacity 240 x 5 or 1200 pax per dir per hr. Worth keeping in mind when certain people want to have UPX become even more of a stopping service.
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A good point, and one I don't think got aired in the whole Clean Train thing. Rant follows.

This train is not really an example of "mass transit" infrastructure, isn't really readily convertible to fill that role, and --- assuming we can get proper signalling and regulation of the railway corridors so there's plenty of capacity for other more mass-transit-like services to operate in parallel ---that isn't the end of the world.

I personally see an airport express train as kind of like a spatula: it's a specialized tool ideally suited to scoop the last of the muffin batter out of the corners of a mixing bowl, but if you want to cut a steak then you probably want to have another utensil or two stored in your drawer... don't waste your time moaning about how bad the spatula is at the task or trying to to reinforce and serrate its blade.

The marginal cost to get from the current design limit of 720 pax/hr/dir up to the barely-better 1200 pax/hr/dir --- and that's with a bit of wishful thinking that a 4 car station could be MacGuyvered into existence --- is likely into the hundreds of millions: station costs, additional equipment, plus the 4th track and 401 tunnel that have been deferred. No matter what choices you make for fares or the number of stops, it's not going to change the bottom line that this thing's infrastructure is sized to carry about as many people as a middling TTC bus route. Which I suspect is probably a perfectly adequate capacity if you're just trying to move air travellers between downtown and the airport quickly. Ask it to do other stuff, too, though, and your spatula isn't looking so hot anymore.

If they want to offer Euro-style commuter service along the corridor, I think it's best to keep the elevated guideway and fancy little check-in lounge at the Skywalk out of it. Commuters don't care about luggage racks and don't much want to tromp through a tiny lounge full of waiting tourists on their way to work each morning (and those tourists probably don't want to jostle for space with them). Just layer on a separate commuter-oriented service, run it to Brampton every 15 minutes, and anyone using it to get to their job at the airport terminal can transfer to a short shuttle connection of some nature. Maybe LRT someday, but a timed bus connection at Malton would probably be fine for most for now.
 
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dowlingm said:
So if we take 60 seats per car of at most 4 cars at 12 mins min headway per Dan, that's max capacity 240 x 5 or 1200 pax per dir per hr. Worth keeping in mind when certain people want to have UPX become even more of a stopping service.
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1,200 passengers per direction per hour is about one subway train an hour (as the loading standard for a TR train is 1,080 passengers ... though that's the standard, the crush load is higher).

And this lack of capacity is the reason that riders boarding at Dundas West are going to be paying a very high fare to get to Union.
 
Platform 27 said:
Actually, I think you're incorrect, Dan.

Each car seats 60, not 90 (source)--- so the 180-passenger/train ceiling already assumes all the trains are already running as three-car sets, not as married pairs. Three-car trains at 15 minute headways works out to 720 pax/hr/direction, with standing room on top of that (although I don't know how I'd feel about standing if I'd dropped considerably more than a GO fare for the privilege of a ride.)

As to whether they could go higher than that -- I've heard it said a few times that the geometry of the space at Terminal 1 reserved for the station ages ago made a four-car platform a non-starter (but can't recall ever reading that in black and white personally). So, even if you were willing to spend some money on modifications there and at Union, I don't know if that's a viable strategy to get four-car sets and thus more capacity. The other option would be to push up frequency: assuming the turn at Union could be made to work and additional track capacity were added to the majority of the corridor, you might be able to do 10 minute headways. That's actually more frequent than most of the similar airport rail links internationally like Heathrow Express.

Realistically, if I were running the service and hitting a capacity ceiling, I'd just keep jacking prices up and make it an increasingly niche service for the business and tourist crowd. I could then plow the net revenue into adding lower priced alternatives like a western extension of Eglinton or 15-minute GO service with a bus transfer.
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You are absolutely correct. My apologies.

But this means that it seems that they've either changed, or finalized, some of the operating conditions of the line. At first, they were talking about running the trains as two-car sets at first, with some heavy departures upgraded to three-car trains as necessary once they figured out how busy the service was going to be. And one-car trains in the very quiet times. Now, it appears as if they will be running the three-car trains most of the time.

One last note - yes, the cars seat ~60 per unit, but keep in mind that there is also room for another 100 or so standees. Now, I'm not for a second suggesting that we use the 60+100 number as the capacity of the trains, but there is no reason why some small number of standing passengers can't be taken into account in the loading standards.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
 
smallspy said:
You are absolutely correct. My apologies.

But this means that it seems that they've either changed, or finalized, some of the operating conditions of the line. At first, they were talking about running the trains as two-car sets at first, with some heavy departures upgraded to three-car trains as necessary once they figured out how busy the service was going to be. And one-car trains in the very quiet times. Now, it appears as if they will be running the three-car trains most of the time.

One last note - yes, the cars seat ~60 per unit, but keep in mind that there is also room for another 100 or so standees. Now, I'm not for a second suggesting that we use the 60+100 number as the capacity of the trains, but there is no reason why some small number of standing passengers can't be taken into account in the loading standards.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
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At her talk last week, Kathy Haley gave the impression that they were going to discourage (if not flat out refuse) standing.....when asked about the ability to book an actual seat in advance (as opposed to just buy a ticket) she said that she felt there was enough capacity that everyone would get a seat and if you got to the station and there was not a seat for you the next train would leave in 15 minutes so not a huge inconvenience.
 
TOareaFan said:
At her talk last week, Kathy Haley gave the impression that they were going to discourage (if not flat out refuse) standing.....when asked about the ability to book an actual seat in advance (as opposed to just buy a ticket) she said that she felt there was enough capacity that everyone would get a seat and if you got to the station and there was not a seat for you the next train would leave in 15 minutes so not a huge inconvenience.
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Standing doesn't match well to the image of the UPX and it could cause some deep customer dissatisfaction. The luxury of the trains is one of the marketing points ("large leather seats") and if a customer paid the hefty price of a UPX ticket and ended up standing rather than sitting in one of those seats it's completely conceivable that they'd be be angry at the experience.
 
MrsNesbitt said:
Standing doesn't match well to the image of the UPX and it could cause some deep customer dissatisfaction. The luxury of the trains is one of the marketing points ("large leather seats") and if a customer paid the hefty price of a UPX ticket and ended up standing rather than sitting in one of those seats it's completely conceivable that they'd be be angry at the experience.
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Despite appearances and marketing, standees happen with some regularity on the Heathrow Express, which seems to be the standard with which UPX is trying to emulate. For a 20 minute or less trip, it is certainly not onerous.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
 
smallspy said:
Despite appearances and marketing, standees happen with some regularity on the Heathrow Express, which seems to be the standard with which UPX is trying to emulate. For a 20 minute or less trip, it is certainly not onerous.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
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I would certainly not find it onerous, but I can also easily see many a stressed/tired passenger having spent multiple hours on a flight and/or dealing with generic airport hassles, finding out they need to stand on the train trip they paid ~$30 for, and causing a ruckus.
 
MrsNesbitt said:
I would certainly not find it onerous, but I can also easily see many a stressed/tired passenger having spent multiple hours on a flight and/or dealing with generic airport hassles, finding out they need to stand on the train trip they paid ~$30 for, and causing a ruckus.
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Tired airport passengers are quite willing and capable to sit on the floor or their luggage. It's only 20 minutes, they've likely spent much longer than that in lines already that day. Not a big deal.
 
rbt said:
If 180 seats every 15 minutes isn't enough, they can simply bump the price by 50% and turn enough of a profit to buy more equipment.

This service is not for price sensitive users so market based pricing should be used.

Frequent GO service from Brampton/Mississauga and a shuttle/people mover to the Malton GO stop is more along the lines of what airport employees require.
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Maybe we can do this on the TTC subway system. Just keep increasing the price until the congestion at Yonge and Bloor drops to an acceptable level.
 
BurlOak said:
Maybe we can do this on the TTC subway system. Just keep increasing the price until the congestion at Yonge and Bloor drops to an acceptable level.
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Completely different market; the airport business traveller who expensed their $250+ airline ticket and will be expensing the train ticket too, has plenty of alternatives for getting downtown. The overseas tourist who dropped $1200 on their airline tickets and will be spending another $5000 on hotels for 2 weeks isn't going to notice an extra $15 either. If it buys another train to run 10 minute service, then so be it.

That said, if city hall is persistently unwilling to increase property taxes necessary to cover capital and operating subsidy then we ought to consider selectively raising fares to cover the gap. I would much prefer to pay a $1 subway congestion fee (peak period/direction south of Bloor) than to take the London approach which is to close the station doors to prevent additional passengers from entering the system.

For political reasons you might implement this kind of this at the same time as a downtown parking surcharge is put into place.
 
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