Why don’t Toronto’s Go Trains stop inside the city?
In terms of transit, one of the things that shocked me most when I moved to Toronto was the lack of suburban railways, especially compared to London, England and Melbourne, Australia, two places I’ve to date spent much of my working life.
Toronto has corridors already for trains, use these for the city, not just to the suburbs!
The recent Toronto’s Transit Camp re-prompted me to look again. It’s clear: the Go’s Train Lines permeate Toronto along corridors distinct from existing mass transit, but they just aren’t used for passengers. Picking just one line for example purposes, there are only 4 passenger trains each way on the Bradford line per day, at peak times. Otherwise you’ll have to go by road.
Why are these lines mainly used for freight? I am told there is a lack of demand for long distance travel by train, but this does not explain why Toronto can not use the Go Lines for passenger transport within the reaches where population density is high.
For example:
Currently this line to King City, Vaughan, Aurora and Bradford: there are no stops between York University and Union Station.
Lansdowne & Bloor, Lansdowne & Lawrence, Lansdowne & Steeles.
For example, Bloor & Lansdowne could be great as a Go station, plus the land where the lines cross is relatively cheap . (Near Weston and Bloor.)
All the Go Train lines exiting Toronto could have stations at major intersections. e.g. Lansdowne and Lawrence. And the trains could go as far out of the core as demand warrants, say to Steeles or Vaughan off-peak: simply reverse the train around and bring it back to Union.
All these lines: do they have Multiple Tracks? Would they fit?
Infrastructure wise, a primary constraint would be multiple tracks along each corridor. I’d guess they ideally need at least 4 lines: fast and slow in each direction. Is there a map of which lines already have multiple tracks?
As Mark Kuznicki said in the Transit Camp back channel:
I love Summerhill station! a new Beltline would be very cool…across midtown and then down the valley to downtown. The Beltline [has been] turned into a hiking trail.
(And of course, to such trails, the city could add overhead light rail transportation, or even elevate other existing lines)
$6bn to get to York University? Can’t we Just Go?
Yet there is a plan to spend $6bn on extending the subway to York University. Why bother when the Go Train line already goes to York University, and beyond?
More fully using Go Lines, to the Airport
So, discussions are already on the table ? The nearest I could find is http://transit.toronto.on.ca/gotransit/2102.shtml :
Another change is the building of a high-speed rail link between Union Station and the Airport. The only thing confirmed at this point is funding for the project, and the amount of that funding hasn’t even been specified. Some backers of this project would like a dedicated high-speed line, while others believe a better option would be to route the Airport people mover to a new GO train beside Woodbine Racetrack, and to increase GO Train service between Union and Brampton to half-hourly, seven days a week. (Remains the same)
Environmental Assessments are underway for several corridor improvements, including the West Toronto grade separation project, which is well advanced. As well, there is also an EA for a second track between St. Clair Avenue and Weston, which would permit more train movements. Another EA set to begin will address the bottleneck in Downtown Brampton, where the line is single-tracked for a short stretch on the busy Halton Subdivision.
http://www.stevemunro.ca/?p=66 has the most detail on the subject.
Is there some great reason why great progress can’t be made over the next ten years (2017) using these train lines?
NB. My thanks to Kieran Huggins for spending time with me clarifying some of these issues.
March 20th, 2007 at 12:32 am
Good post Martin. I don’t seriously think the Forest Hill crowd would give up their Beltline trail….I think we can honestly say that hell would freeze over first.
March 20th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
Yeah! Back in the mid-late 80s I lived near the Dundas West subway station and had an unpleasant commute to work downtown, feeling quite sardine-like in each of two subways. Then I discovered the presence of a nearby GO train station (”Bloor”, on the Georgetown line). The station exists so that people coming into the city can take the Bloor subway instead of going to Union Station, but I and my fellow discoverers got on there instead of off, and had a pleasant ride downtown. The ticket-taker, who was busy in the evenings with all the people heading out of the city, had only 10 of us to deal with in the mornings. And that was a total of 10 across the four trains that ran each morning (and each evening in the other direction). So he spent most of the time studying a book, “Let’s C” (a book about how to program computers in the language C).
A single ticket cost something like three times as much as a TTC fare, but it was so worth it. With the TTC fare increases since then, it looks as though the price difference is much lower now.
I imagine it’s still possible to do this. Even if they’ve managed to eliminate the ticket-taker in the mornings (which might be difficult under the union contract), someone with a monthly pass should be fine.
March 30th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
[…] Original post by Martin Cleaver […]
May 8th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
A Couple of answers Martin:
1 GO trains do stop inside the Toronto boundaries: The Lakeshore stops at Longbranch, Royal York, Exhibition, Union, Danforth, Scarborough, Eglinton, Guildwood and Rouge Hill, in fact only one station on the original Lakeshore East Line was outside Toronto and that is Pickering. The Milton Line only has one stop besides Union and that is Kipling but Georgetown has Etobicoke North, Weston, and Bloor. The Bradford line only has the stop for York University and the Richmond Hill line has stops and Oriole and Old Cummer. The Stouffeville line has Miliken, Agincourt and Kennedy so there are 18 stations in Toronto besides Union Station. Only the Lakeshore line and the CP line to Milton are double tracked for most of their run in Toronto. The other lines are basically now just industrial spurs with only one or two freights a day. There is room to double track most of these lines IF you can get rid of the industrial spurs. There is no room for 4 tracks in most areas except the CP North Toronto Sub North of Dupont St. but it is CP’s main freight line through Toronto.
The Airport express line is, as near as I can find, going to operate with a single Budd RDC car rebuilt in Moncton on a 15 minute headway maximum so it would need about 6 or 7 cars for an effective spare ratio. It would not make any stops except maybe the Bloor GO station bewteen the airport and Union Station if it ever gets built. It would not have room for other passengers. This group would not want to ad stops or cars as it would increase there travel time, stops and expenses while not increasing their revenues enough to cover costs.
As I said on Steve Munro’s site I still believe that the best thing to run in the Weston Corridor in the 416 and airport area is a standard gauge electric line with GO style self propelled electric cars running off catenary. I know that some one keeps saying that you cannot mix high level cars and overhead but there are electric line in the US, specifically the North East Corridor and the IC and South Shore in Chicago, and I find it hard to believe that they never have high cars operating on or across them. These MU cars with their better acceleration could operate to the airport with a transfer connection in Malton to the diesel hauled coaches to Georgetown which could operate express to Union. They could also have more stops to provide a service between subway and current GO operations.
I don’t believe that this corridor lends itself to LRT or HRT easily but I believe that the electrified GO service would succeed. Electrification should be at 1500 to 3000 VDC to reduce overhead clearances required as CN will never run 25 000 VAC on this line. I think that you have to keep the low platform loading of the GO coaches so that stations could be used by either service. As this is more of a suburban service than a local one you should have a higher seating to standing ratio than the TTC has on LRT or HRT. I don’t care if you paint them green or red; the operator is irrelevant, as long as the service is provided. By running GO style equipment you would cut down on the spare part inventory required. Electrify one line to Willowbrook and the heavy maintenance could be handled there or you could haul the coaches behind a locomotive.
I feel like I am fighting a one person crusade here but having ridden the suburban rail systems in Sydney Australia (City Rail) and in Melbourne I believe that there is another option that we are missing. Since GO owns the Newmarket Sub maybe this would be the thing to do. You could probably electrify the entire line and run a decent headway all day to the 407 for less money than will be spent on the subway extension. It would also provide a faster downtown connection to North York. Sorry York U but I am sure that an LRT line could be included for little more than the subway extention.
I beleive that this could also be run, in Toronto, on the Bradford and Stouffeville lines but the Richmond Hill line would not be very usefull as it runs in the middle of the Don Valley for much of its rout and its two stations are near the Yonge and Sheppard Subways. The CP line to Peterborough and Havelock would make a good line as it would serve the new development in the North end of Scarborough and Durham region. It could come Downtown by either joining the Stouffeville line in Agincourt or following the CP mainline, if you can get CP to let you on to their main freight line and down through the Don Valley. This line would need to be rehabilitated as it has a 10 or 15 mph limit for mosyt of ots length.
April 5th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
I’m pleased that this issue is being built on. See
http://toronto.transitcamp.org/METRONAUTS1/Regional_Rail