Transit Fantasy Maps

[bielawski]

What do you drink? I'd like to buy you one and discuss the western portions.

Sadly I'm like this when I'm sober. To start off, the choices to make VIA the only way to get from Brantford to London and to discontinue VIA service to Kitchener aren't based on any facts, just gut feeling.

One big thing though, with highway 7 the way it is, the Kitchener-Guelph section would be able to handle those kinds of frequencies all day instead of just during rush periods. Maybe 20 minutes during rush if GO can buy the line and with triple tracking at stations.

Good point. I was reluctant to do this at first because of the slightly discouraging ridership on the current rush hour trains, but they're a bit early/late for Kitchener-Guelph morning/afternoon commutes. I'll add it to the map. As for adding more peak trains, it would be possible to extend the E trains arriving in Guelph back west to Kitchener (for 15 minute frequency) if the track was fully twinned (the cost calculations assume a 10 km single-track gap).

How do you account for the freight traffic though? Does it use some of those lines, or does it have it's own trans-GTA line that isn't shown there?

On the York, eastern Milton, and Midtown lines the setup would be mostly triple-track with one track reserved for freights, one for GO, and the remaining one used as a passing track. On the other lines where freight traffic is relatively frequent, freight trains would have slots of 5 minutes or so immediately before a passenger train every half hour. This kind of operation would of course break down if headways were to become better than the ~10 minutes shown on the map. (The inner section of the Lakeshore line, with a continuous four tracks for most of the way, would work similarly to the double-track lines despite the narrower headways.) Keep in mind that all this is based on how things are done in Switzerland, where it's the norm to see a freight train pulling off into a siding, a passenger train passing it in the same direction, and the freight continuing on less than three minutes afterwards.

If you'd like to see the detailed track counts for the individual lines you can download this file*and open it with JOSM: the tracks=* tag is the total number of electrified tracks and the new=* tag is the number of tracks that would have to be added. I didn't bother making a pretty map of this (yet?).

 

[nfitz]

Sadly I'm like this when I'm sober. To start off, the choices to make VIA the only way to get from Brantford to London and to discontinue VIA service to Kitchener aren't based on any facts, just gut feeling.

Which is a good thing, given most of the studies over the last 40 years of putting high speed rail to London, have routed it through Kitchener, rather than through Brantford. The Kitchener alignment is much straighter, and much more suitable for high speed.

 

[bielawski]

Which is a good thing, given most of the studies over the last 40 years of putting high speed rail to London, have routed it through Kitchener, rather than through Brantford. The Kitchener alignment is much straighter, and much more suitable for high speed.

If that's the case then it may be better to run a 180 km/h "VIA-fast" Toronto-Kitchener-London precursor service to build up ridership for the eventual true HSR. Or would Kitchener itself contribute too little riders to justify building that much non-HSR track before digging it up again for HSR?

 

[In4matt]

bielawski I happy to see your map. I'm from the Tottenham/Alliston area, and I'm hoping if GO extends to Bolton, it would continue up to Tottenham/Alliston. Eventhough I don't live there now and there isn't much demand for the service, it would make it easier to visit my parents without a car or for people in that area to get into the city for work, school or entertainment. The closest you can get to that area now is Bolton or Highway 9 and the 400 by GO bus.

However, Honda makes heavy use of the rail line in that area. But it would be easy to expand or double track .

Nice map

 

[dunkalunk]

As of the last census numbers, the Kitchener CMA just outstripped the London one. Being 80km closer to Toronto certainly won't hurt ridership either.

 

[unimaginative2]

Which is a good thing, given most of the studies over the last 40 years of putting high speed rail to London, have routed it through Kitchener, rather than through Brantford. The Kitchener alignment is much straighter, and much more suitable for high speed.

Which is why it's especially ridiculous that it was described as "impossible" in the most recent high-speed rail study. Apparently they had a chat with Metrolinx, who told them that it would be "impossible" to fit three or four more trains an hour on a four-track line.

 

[aleesia]

So I made an update to my S-Bahn T.O. map (png, pdf) from a few pages back, with a sloppily-Googled cost estimate that comes out to around $13b.

Hmmm... One criticism: Where's Orangeville?

That line can also be extended further to Shelburne and Owen Sound if you like.

 

[bielawski]

I didn't show any train service to Orangeville because a train using the OBRY would actually be 10-15 minutes slower than a bus using Highway 10 due to the curvy section at the Forks of the Credit. Another option for service to Orangeville could be the abandoned railbed diverging from the OBRY 5 km south of Orangeville and joining the MacTier sub in Bolton. It too has an ~8 km curvy part climbing the escarpment, but it would be easier to realign since it doesn't have much development next to it and isn't within a provincial park, and the rest of the corridor has better geometrics than the OBRY corridor. I have no idea how much it would cost to buy up the corridor though.

 

[dunkalunk]

Which is why it's especially ridiculous that it was described as "impossible" in the most recent high-speed rail study. Apparently they had a chat with Metrolinx, who told them that it would be "impossible" to fit three or four more trains an hour on a four-track line.

There are various choke points on the line that would restrict expansion to 3, particularly in Guelph and Brampton. But with improved scheduling and CTC, more frequent service is most certainly possible.

I see large resistance in Metrolinx to the idea of express or frequent regional rail service as their current fleet and current train separation and weight rules are only able to support commuter-style service. 12-car locomotives are complete overkill on some outer lines and a huge barrier to entry for GO Rail service in these markets.

 

[BurlOak]

If Transit City would have included a skeleton GO-REX system plus a DRL it would have been the best transit expansion project in recent North American history.

I just read this article in the Globe http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...ists-markham-councillor/article2430391/print/.

"Metrolinx has not said how much it will cost to complete the transformation (I-METRO-E). But the agency’s planners don’t think GO’s track network – which extends 425 km, of which GO owns about two-thirds – should be used to offer local service. “We want to make sure our vision of the GO system doesn’t get conflated with the local system,†says Metrolinx’s vice-president of policy, planning and innovation, Leslie Woo, adding that the networks should be “complementary.â€

It seems what appears the most logical to many here is not even being considered by Metrolinx.

 

[gweed123]

I just read this article in the Globe http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...ists-markham-councillor/article2430391/print/.

"Metrolinx has not said how much it will cost to complete the transformation (I-METRO-E). But the agency’s planners don’t think GO’s track network – which extends 425 km, of which GO owns about two-thirds – should be used to offer local service. “We want to make sure our vision of the GO system doesn’t get conflated with the local system,” says Metrolinx’s vice-president of policy, planning and innovation, Leslie Woo, adding that the networks should be “complementary.”

It seems what appears the most logical to many here is not even being considered by Metrolinx.

I wonder how much of this is politics, and how much of it is actual transit planning rationale. To me, it seems the biggest political obstacle to implementing this service is the TTC. They're extremely resistant to change, and even more so when that change would be in essence a competition to their services.

TTC and GO co-exist nicely now because right now there are very few people from Toronto (aside from maybe people in places like Rouge Hill) who actually take GO. If the service is beefed up and new stations inside of Toronto are put in place, suddenly it's a competitor.

This mentality needs to change for sure, but I think that that's a big reason why Metrolinx is so passive about this proposal. It's a turf war basically.

 

[car4041]

To me, it seems the biggest political obstacle to implementing this service is the TTC. They're extremely resistant to change, and even more so when that change would be in essence a competition to their services.

I'm not sure if I would reach that conclusion. Based on the quote from Leslie Woo, it looks like Metrolinx would be a pretty big political obstacle too. It seems to me that the TTC and Metrolinx are both equally content to stick with the status quo.

I think it will take a force external to both agencies to make things change -- the public has to decide that they want it, and then they have to elect a government that promises to do it. Of course we're nowhere near that point yet, but the recent proposals for I-METRO-E and adding stations to the Georgetown corridor might be a start in building the needed political momentum.

Also, I find it almost bizarre that Woo says the networks should be "complementary" -- surely "integrated" would be a much better goal!

 

[BurlOak]

I'm not sure if I would reach that conclusion. Based on the quote from Leslie Woo, it looks like Metrolinx would be a pretty big political obstacle too. It seems to me that the TTC and Metrolinx are both equally content to stick with the status quo.

I think it will take a force external to both agencies to make things change -- the public has to decide that they want it, and then they have to elect a government that promises to do it. Of course we're nowhere near that point yet, but the recent proposals for I-METRO-E and adding stations to the Georgetown corridor might be a start in building the needed political momentum.

Also, I find it almost bizarre that Woo says the networks should be "complementary" -- surely "integrated" would be a much better goal!

What is the purpose of electrifying the GO network if not to provide local service? Is it just to reduce the amount of diesel pollution?

If you go through the expense of electrifying, then getting the most use out of each corridor is a necessity. Possibly Metrolinx was just thinking about the short-term before electrification gets implemented, but I don’t think so.

Everyone in Toronto who has looked at a map sees that local service (and integrated fares) on the railway lines would be of great benefit to improving transit. However, for longest time GO has been saying it can’t be done. The public has tried to push this at times, but it has hit a brick wall.

On one hand we have Metrolinx saying that the GO network is not for local service. On the other hand we have (had) TTC saying that all other options to improve the Yonge line must be considered before the DRL. It is not wonder the transit system is a mess – it has been managed to be such by these agencies. They are much more responsible than any lack of funding or political interference.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

Here is an old map I did that I just found. Its not very good in my opinion and its incomplete but I thought I would upload it anyways. There are countless changes that need to be made:

- Make Sheppard terminate at Sheppard West station. There's no need for it to continue further west
-Change the interchange point for the DRL/YUS. Perhaps a Financial District interchange station
-Make the DRL turn west at Weston to meet the Eglinton subway at Pearson Airport
-Extend the Bloor-Danforth east to connect to Sheppard East station (replacing the SRT).
-Extend Bloor-Danforth west into Mississauga.
-Extend Yonge line north to Richmond Hill Centre
- Add Jane LRT (I added interchange stations but never actually drew the line)
- Add Waterfront LRT
- Add the Malvern LRT
-Remove/Add many of the stations


The lines are:
Yellow - YUS
Green - BD
Purple - Sheppard
Red - Eglinton subway (actual subway and not underground LRT)
Blue - DRL
Pink - Finch LRT

 

[Red October]

That is glorious. I wish we had the balls/money to do it.