unimaginative2
Senior Member
That's completely ludicris! First of all Metrolinx has already targeted Lakeshore as the first line to be electrified (IIRC). There has to be a reason they chose that line. Even so if we ignored Metrolinx's conclusion what makes you say that Georgetown would be the catalyst for the other lines to be electrified vs any one of the other lines. How would electrifying Georgetown create the demand to electrify the Richmond hill Corridor any more than electrifying the Lakeshore line. It doesn't, and all lines 'could' be seen as 'the' catalyst to get the rest of the network electrified, so in theory using that argument to get Georgetown done first is a fallacy. 1a: What is the benefit of electrifying one line at a time vs doing the entire network all at once?
Because there's intense political pressure to electrify Georgetown immediately and not Richmond Hill or Lakeshore, and once they electrify one line the rest, or at least most of the rest, are sure to follow.
Second. There is no way electrification is done only to Weston, electrification from Union to the Airport is the first, and main segement and it should not, will not be subdivided up in some sort of spite tantrum by Go/Metrolinx. If they only electrify to Weston than the ARL might as well just use the Diesel RDC's that they initially planned as the benefit of having an electric train all but vanishes. A comment like that leads me to think that you aren't really understanding the situation. 2b: Electrify the entire GO network??? are you nuts! Barrie sees what 2 trains each peak (4 total), Bolton would likely have the same number. You want to electrify all the way there for a handfull of trains? You must really believe in that bottomless pit of money then, do you have any idea what it would cost to electrify from Niagra Falls - Toronto - Whitby/Ajax and North to Milton, Georgetown, Bolton, Barrie and Aurora?
I hope you're right, though I don't think it would be some spite tantrum that would make them do it. The political pressure for electrification is in the Weston area, not northwest of there. They might be sorely tempted to take the easy way out and try using dual mode locomotives. The Weston NIMBYs have been calling for just that.
Yes, I'm not sure this is really something to get quite so upset about. I should hope that in the future, we'll see a lot more trains to Barrie and other destinations. All of them should see at least a train an hour. Many European countries have virtually their entire national networks electrified. It's really not that astounding. I'd like to see real high speed rail in the Quebec-Windsor corridor, and that would certainly be electrified, and at that point secondary routes in the province should be electrified too. In the interim, VIA trains and routes that see only a few trains a day could reasonably use dual-mode locomotives. When they're talking about hundreds of trains a day, it's not sensible.
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