ssiguy2
Senior Member
How many meters are these stations on the UPX line anyway?
Toronto Union Pearson Express | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx | MMM Group Limited
vegeta_skyline
Senior Member
Exactly, there will only be one train at a time at Union.
At Pearson trains will have a 20 minute layover, while at Union station they will only be stopped for 5 minutes.
Here's an example of how they will cycle at the airport;
11:40 - Train #1 arrives on track 1 at the airport, each train has 20 minutes to unload, load & change ends
11:55 - Train #2 arrives on track 2
12:00 - Train #1 departs from track 1
12:10 - Train #3 arrives on track 1
12:15 - Train #2 departs from track 2
12:25 - Train #4 arrives on track 2
12:30 - Train #3 departs from track 1
and so on so forth
And here's how they will cycle at Union;
11:55 - Train #1 arrives at Union, each train has 5 minutes to unload, load & change ends
12:00 - Train #1 departs Union
------- Train #2 is 10 minutes away from Union station when Train #1 leaves, it would not even be at Bloor station yet
12:05 - Train #1 & Train #2 pass each other somewhere on southern portion of the Weston sub
12:10 - Train #2 arrives at Union
12:15 - Train #2 departs Union
and so on so forth
vegeta_skyline
Senior Member
The UPX cars are the exact same length as your regular GO coach; 85ft, times that by 3.
DonValleyRainbow
Senior Member
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For those of you in the metric world, that's 25.9m * 3 = 77.7m. You could have googled that, but let me save you the trouble.
ssiguy2
Senior Member
Thank you as I automatically think Metric.
So these trains/platforms will have descent capacity but the idea of having only a one platform station at Union seems very short sighted. Seeing they are spending a lot of time and money on renovating/expanding Union you would think adding enough room for dual platform wouldn't be much of a stretch. Sounds like something Vancouver would {and did} do.
Makes it unnecessarily difficult to have the trains run further east to be used for eastern traffic but then Metrolinx probably did that on purpose to make sure it wasn't.
vegeta_skyline
Senior Member
How is it short sighted? I just explained to you how the schedule will work. Even taking into consideration minor delays there's still plenty of time to clear the platform at Union before the next train comes in. Besides the problem is one of a lack of capacity at Union, they didn't want to lose two through tracks due to the UPX service. It's going to be a huge issue in the future with RER service and they've yet to decide how exactly they will deal with that eg. satellite stations/tunnel(s)/two trains per track, etc.
Always forget about that, just so use to using imperial from working on the railroad
Riverman
Active Member
There was a UP train at the airport terminal when I arrived yesterday.
Markster
Senior Member
Apparently they were supposed to build it, today, for immediate conversion into SmartTrack. Multi-year business case for a very specific purpose be damned.
Platform 27
Active Member
Uh, are we talking the same Vancouver? When the Vancouver that I've been to built its rapid transit line to the airport, it chose to save money by only building the elevated guideway into the terminal wide enough for one track, and with a single-platform station at the end.
Just like Toronto, Vancouver operates its downtown-to-airport route with a double-platform at one end where all the recovery time is budgeted and a single-platform at the opposite end where trains have to get in and out smartly. It just happens to have flipped what end does what. Arguably the Toronto configuration is superior because it's better to get travellers off the platform and settling onto a waiting train immediately at the airport end, and have the downtown travellers do their waiting off-train in a lounge with check-in kiosks etc, rather than the opposite.
Bear in mind that Canada Line is theoretically supposed to be "real" rapid transit so if anyone should have been super interested in future-proofing for much higher-frequency service it should have been them... now that the YVR guideway and station has been built the way it is, retrofitting it to double-track and double-platform the whole thing would be extremely difficult and costly. So long as our train in Toronto remains purely intended as an express service for air travellers at a non-commuter fare, I can't imagine delivering sub-10 minute headways is ever going to be necessary.
I wonder how many cigars get smoked and moustaches get twirled at your imagined version of Metrolinx?
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TOareaFan
Superstar
lol
It is clear they only build track so that the mustached villains at ML can tie the young damsels to them!
reaperexpress
Senior Member
Not to mention that the Canada Line uses such comically short trains and platforms that they approached capacity within the first year.
I admit that using a single-platform station at Union is mildly short-sighted because it limits frequency to 4 or 5 tph. However:
- Union station is right next door, so we could easily make use of the same airport infrastructure for other (local?) services by adding high platforms there
- The primary contraint to operations will likely be crossing the Barrie and Kitchener lines at grade, not the platform capacity
- At the time of conception, there was not the push for frequent suburban railway service that there is today
- Given the relatively short timeline, they inevitably had to cut some corners on the UPX-only segments. But the important part is that they built the mainline to a very high standard, which is where most of the utility and investment was.
nfitz
Superstar
Lol ... no we're talking about the Vancouver where the grass is always greener, the Skytrain never breaks down, and the new farecard system isn't years behind schedule, millions over budget, and doesn't take too long to process each transaction.
TOareaFan
Superstar
ssiguy2
Senior Member
Don't know why you guys are bitching at me for, I have always been critical of the Canada Line.
The stations are ridiculously short and having only one platform and single track at Richmond is pathetic as is the YVR stretch and Waterfront. The Canada Line was Campbell's baby and wanted to get something, anything built in time for the Olympics with long term transit needs being secondary...........sound familiar?
Although there is no excuse the YVR section is fine as it still runs every 6 minutes and isn't even at one quarter capacity, you always get a seat at Bridgeport on a YVR inbound train. Richmond is another storey. They have actually had to stop people from even entering the station because the tiny platforms are packed and the trains completely packed by the time they leave Richmond-Brighouse, the first station on the line. Translink has actually had to add another 2 trains from Richmond in rush hour just so people at the first station can even get on.
Pathetic as it is the Canada Line is still vastly superior to what the UPX will be as it is standard Zone 3 fare from anywhere in Metro Vancouver.....$5 and is part of the standard transit system. It also runs every 6 minutes so it's capacity is still higher than UPX. It also doesn't smell, pollute, or make a ton of noise going by neighbourhoods and drops you off right at the front door. The main terminal entrance is literally 50 meters away.
Union UPX station platform is fine for the limited service it provides but my complaint was that it does not allow for an extension of the line eastbound. In other words Metrolinx seems to have gone out of it's way to make sure it is never part of a mass transit network and only a Bay Street Express and to hell with the taxpayers who actually paid for it.
The stations are ridiculously short and having only one platform and single track at Richmond is pathetic as is the YVR stretch and Waterfront. The Canada Line was Campbell's baby and wanted to get something, anything built in time for the Olympics with long term transit needs being secondary...........sound familiar?
Although there is no excuse the YVR section is fine as it still runs every 6 minutes and isn't even at one quarter capacity, you always get a seat at Bridgeport on a YVR inbound train. Richmond is another storey. They have actually had to stop people from even entering the station because the tiny platforms are packed and the trains completely packed by the time they leave Richmond-Brighouse, the first station on the line. Translink has actually had to add another 2 trains from Richmond in rush hour just so people at the first station can even get on.
Pathetic as it is the Canada Line is still vastly superior to what the UPX will be as it is standard Zone 3 fare from anywhere in Metro Vancouver.....$5 and is part of the standard transit system. It also runs every 6 minutes so it's capacity is still higher than UPX. It also doesn't smell, pollute, or make a ton of noise going by neighbourhoods and drops you off right at the front door. The main terminal entrance is literally 50 meters away.
Union UPX station platform is fine for the limited service it provides but my complaint was that it does not allow for an extension of the line eastbound. In other words Metrolinx seems to have gone out of it's way to make sure it is never part of a mass transit network and only a Bay Street Express and to hell with the taxpayers who actually paid for it.
Platform 27
Active Member
Except when you just flagrantly misrepresented how it was configured in order to claim Vancouver are a bunch of geniuses and Toronto's train was uniquely crippled.
So its capacity is not particularly relevant. Except, wait...
...having oodles of capacity is apparently something that matters?
Here's the shocking truth that applies equally in both Vancouver and Toronto, and probably in most other cities in the world as well... when you're exclusively looking at people moving between downtown and the airport, there just plain aren't that many people making those trips every minute of every day. I'm not an expert, but I'd bet theoretical ridership volumes probably put it squarely in the territory of a decently-frequent bus route. The problem with just running a bus scaled to that theoretical demand is that most air travellers want all the trappings of speed and comfort that come from trains or they won't show up and will choose another way of getting to the airport.
The only reason to need not just rail transit, but high-capacity rail transit -- again, this applies both in Vancouver and Toronto -- is on account of other trips that might potentially be happening along the same corridor that are garden variety trips to work, or trips to grandma's house, or trips to the game, and so on. The people making Canada Line trains burst at the seams on the trunk part of the route aren't folks getting off planes who are so enamoured by the cheap tickets that they spontaneously split, bacteria-like, into eight people. They're a university student from Richmond going to class at UBC each morning, a guy living in a False Creek condo visiting his girlfriend in the southern part of the city, a businessman going to an office tower downtown, and so on.
Vancouver's serving both types of trips on one type of train with one type of stopping pattern with one type of fare. Toronto, agree or disagree, isn't. Although who knows what may ultimately happen on that corridor, it sounds like for the time being the plan is to have two or three services, and Smart Track or GO RER or DRL west who knows what will layer in and serve those other types of trips. And that's the service where total design capacity is going to be a relevant consideration.
According to Weston NIMBYs, who appear to be so equipped with superhuman senses that not only can they smell trains, but they can smell trains from the future.
Uh, the distances between train platform and air terminal in YYZ and YVR seem pretty damn similar. YYZ throws in an escalator but it's fully indoors while YVR's walkway is open to the outside air with a cover, and I guess we'll have wait until they're both operating to do a comparison test.
One, as far as we know there's going to be nothing physically obstructing an UP train from continuing east on the same rails through the trainshed and on to Halifax if they felt like it.
But, two, you're missing the whole point. We're talking about a small little platform space that was designed for serving a modest flow of air travellers, and here you're shaking your fist because its unsuitable for future conversion into Bloor-Yonge station v 2.0. Well, uh, yeah. I'm unsuitable for future conversion into a wagon.
If you want a frequent, local, mass-transit line a la SmartTrack running through Union --- either in the future or in some alternate past timeline before the Metrolinx moustache-twirlers changed history specifically to enrage West Coast monorail enthusiasts --- you'd never want to use a station like the one that's been built in the SkyWalk. It's tucked where it is precisely so it's out of the way from the mass flows of traffic, both human and train, moving through the station. SmartTrack would need to be somewhere far more central, with ready access to multiple tracks in both directions and a straightforward connection to the subway scaled for mass transfer movements. It's sized for 78 m trains, and I suspect whatever SmartTrack or RER turns out to be will involve longer trains. And who knows how high their platforms will be.
Er, no. From what we know, Metrolinx were given a relatively modest sum of money in the middle of a huge economic downturn and were told to build what SNC Lavalin was going to build and get it up and running in four years. I'm pretty sure Dalton McGuinty didn't follow that direction up with "oh, and can you also please change SNC's plans to future-proof everything so we can shut this train down a month or two after opening and instantly make it match the future transit plans of current Leader of the Opposition John Tory, because, get this, four years from now he'll have been pushed out of Queen's Park by his own party and be trying to defeat, get this, the crack-smoking mayor of Toronto by pitching something called SmartTrack"
The thing is, most of the infrastructure they've built is fine from a "become part of the future mass transit network" perspective. The corridor improvements can all be reused. There's room for electrification and extra tracks. The Pearson station could be made part of a mass transit network. The only potential throwaway, assuming you wanted to stop running the UP Express service as presently conceived, would be the platform at the SkyWalk.
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