[urbanclient]

Thanks for sharing this!

This is only a win if they also change the Danforth Station reconstruction project so that it also restores the third track in service in time for the completion of the third track west of Danforth. Danforth and Birchmount are within the same track segment so the third track is only useable if both of those projects maintain it in service.



It is not true that the current third track is too short to support scheduled local and express trains. For an express train to overtake a local train, the only strict requirement is a siding long enough to fit the local train.

Take for example the operations at Geldermalsen station in the Netherlands, where some local trains are scheduled to be overtaken by an intercity train using a passing track that is only 600 metres long.

Those local trains are scheduled to sit in Geldermalsen for 6 minutes, in contrast to a typical local station where the scheduled dwell is less than a minute. This is because the minimum scheduled separation between trains is 3 minutes.

This is the only effect of the length of the passing track: the amount of time the local train needs to sit to let the express train pass.

The current third track still in service on Lakeshore East is 12 kilometres long with 4 intermediate stations. Even if the Danforth and Birchmount projects cut the Danforth-Scarborough segment out as well, that still leaves 7 kilometres and 3 intermediate stations between Scarborough and Guildwood (inclusive).

With 4 intermediate stations within the passing track in service between Danforth and Guildwood, the local train is already 8 minutes slower than the express train before adding any additional padding, so even without adding any schedule padding to the local train, they can achieve a 4 minute scheduled separation between the two trains on the shared track on either end of the passing track.

If GO Ops honestly believes that a 12 km (or 7 km) passing track is too short for an overtake, they have no business being in charge of train operations for GO expansion. The ultimate conditions for LSE will only include a 7 km passing track because the other 2 tracks between Union and Scarborough will be claimed by the Stouffville line. This is effectively telling us they don't plan to run express services in the future.

Also their use of "full service" instead of "local" or "all-stops" suggests that they're trying to portray express services as an inferior, partial service, as opposed to the reality that they are two different services that attract different customers, and with 6 trains per hour you can still maintain local service every 15 minutes while adding a 30-minute express service.


It's 6 trains every hour, not 6 trains every 10 minutes, but I'll assume that error was introduced by the MPP, not GO ops.

Anyway, introducing express service does not affect the number of trains per hour that can operate through the 2-track pinch point between Union and Danforth. The only effect of an express service would be that trains change order outside of the capacity-constrained segment, but the 2-track segment does not have any intermediate stations so it makes no difference which order the trains enter. Any amount of time they want to schedule between trains can be achieved by adding schedule padding on the triple track segment.

In the previous point they said that express service is impossible, but now literally two sentences later they say it is possible but they'd need to reduce service from 6 tph to 5. So which is it?


The only consequence of an outdated signalling system on express operations is that trains need to be scheduled further apart. For example if trains need to be scheduled at least 5 minutes apart, the local train would need to be 10 minutes slower than the express through the triple-tracked segment (which would require 2 additional minutes to be added to the schedule for local trains that are being overtaken by a GO express train).

But we know that GO Transit thinks their signalling system is sufficient to schedule trains as little as 3 minutes apart because that's what they do during peak periods. This is the PM peak service they are operating today:

Isn't this due to the "safety" culture aka cowardly unambition? They could safely express trains if they were competent, but they're too lazy to try to be competent, so they'll chalk it up to safety.

 

[reaperexpress]

Isn't this due to the "safety" culture aka cowardly unambition? They could safely express trains if they were competent, but they're too lazy to try to be competent, so they'll chalk it up to safety.

So far they don't seem to have played the safety card to justify their laziness. It would be a hard sell given that the current schedule already schedules trains as little as 3 minutes apart so that wouldn't be new to them.

What would be new is that there would be more variety in switching movements so the Metrolinx dispatchers would have more things to pay attention to. It's an increased workload so it would be fair for them to ask for additional staff to accommodate it, but so far they've been fighting against the express service rather than comprehensively describing its costs and benefits.

 

[crs1026]

I haven't played this all out to @reaperexpress 's meticulous detail....., but I wonder if the problem is what happens to the schedule east of Durham Jct. As you point out, it's not difficult to schedule overtakes between Guildwood and Scarborough Jct, but...the headways that get the express to close up on the previous train at Guildwood would be a bit irregular to the timings from Rouge Hill east, and all stops will still be made by all trains in that stretch.

I would like to see the ridership numbers that justify the 10-minute service... it's great to see, I guess, if we are filling six trains an hour.....but.... the logic seems to be that 10-minute service means the average passenger waits five minutes less than with 15 minute headways, and that mitigates the added time for stopping trains over an express.

To my mind the obvious solution is a four track configuration with two fast, two slow, and a flyover.under at Scarborough Jct.... and maybe a third track east of Guildwood. We had that plan, until we didn't. Value engineering that produced a wrong result, never mind how good the signalling system may be some day.

- Paul

 

[reaperexpress]

I haven't played this all out to @reaperexpress 's meticulous detail....., but I wonder if the problem is what happens to the schedule east of Durham Jct. As you point out, it's not difficult to schedule overtakes between Guildwood and Scarborough Jct, but...the headways that get the express to close up on the previous train at Guildwood would be a bit irregular to the timings from Rouge Hill east, and all stops will still be made by all trains in that stretch.

I would like to see the ridership numbers that justify the 10-minute service... it's great to see, I guess, if we are filling six trains an hour.....but.... the logic seems to be that 10-minute service means the average passenger waits five minutes less than with 15 minute headways, and that mitigates the added time for stopping trains over an express.

To my mind the obvious solution is a four track configuration with two fast, two slow, and a flyover.under at Scarborough Jct.... and maybe a third track east of Guildwood. We had that plan, until we didn't. Value engineering that produced a wrong result, never mind how good the signalling system may be some day.

- Paul

Yes the schedules east of Guildwood would be uneven but that's fine because they already short turn 2 trains per hour at Whitby due to capacity constraints at Oshawa, so we don't want Pickering/Ajax/Whitby passengers to be evenly distributed between trains anyway.

Here's the conceptual schedule from my blog post.