reaperexpress
Senior Member
I don't think it will ever happen now that all of this money has been dumped into Bloor and Weston's UPX stations, but I think the perfect solution would be to get rid of Bloor and Weston and have just one intermediary stop at Caledonia (Eglinton) where it intersects the Crosstown line. That station seems much more likely to be a fairly important hub than Weston or Bloor/Dundas W.
I agree that there needs to be a more frequent GO local service, but my reason for that is if you remove Bloor and Weston in exchange for Caledonia, then you at least still have a northern station on the UPX line where GO users can interchange with the service. Hell, somebody who absolutely wants to get to Bloor station but doesn't want to deal with the bus can take UPX to Caledonia then GO to Bloor, ditto for Weston and a possible future station at St Clair. Also, because we have no idea how long it'll be before Crosstown gets to the airport, I can imagine some midtowners taking the UPX out of Pearson then transferring to the LRT at Caledonia.
I agree that having just a single intermediate stop at Mount Dennis (Caledonia is on the Barrie Line) is optimal from a route perspective. I'm just not sure if skipping just a single stop would save enough time to take a trainset off the route which is what provides the big cost savings. It's possible but not certain.
I do recognize that it's not an immediate solution given the current shortage of alternatives.
What I'm thinking is that once the line is electrified from Union to Pearson, the new electric service drops one or two stops as discussed, and the existing DMUs are repurposed for a Union to Bramalea GO local service, making use of the high-level platforms at Bloor, Mount Dennis and Weston, as well as new high-level platforms at Union, Etobicoke North, Malton and Bramalea. The hourly Kitchener GO service past Bramalea into CN territory would run with limited stops as a regional service.
Further into the future, once there's sufficient capacity at Union (or downtown somewhere) to support 4 terminal tracks for airport service, we could add an Airport Local GO and Airport Express line each operating 4 tph.
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