[reaperexpress]

For that matter, I also don't know why MX doesn't run hourly, or if not possible, two-hourly service past Mt. Joy. Old Elm to Unionville is 31 minutes so 1hrly is probably too tight but 2 hrly service should be possible. It feels as though MX just doesn't run the service they built for.

Every 60 minutes Union to Mt Joy and 120 to Old Elm doesn't work out mathematically. To use the Unionville passing location which enables hourly service to Mt Joy, the dwell in Mt Joy needs to be 31 minutes. The travel time from Mt Joy to Old Elm is only about 15 minutes, so to maintain evenly-spaced hourly headways coming back south you'd need to sit at Old Elm for 1 minute or 2 hours. A 1-minute turnaround time is obviously a very bad idea, so to run a reliable service you need a second platform at Old Elm that doesn't exist.

The service pattern with hourly to Mt Joy and two-hourly to Old Elm would require one additional trainset, which is a big increase for not much additional service considering the current hourly service only requires 3. Long story short, it makes much more sense to run a regular, cost-efficient hourly service to Mount Joy and run bus service from there to Stouffville and Uxbridge.

 

[lastcommodore]

Every 60 minutes Union to Mt Joy and 120 to Old Elm doesn't work out mathematically. To use the Unionville passing location which enables hourly service to Mt Joy, the dwell in Mt Joy needs to be 31 minutes. The travel time from Mt Joy to Old Elm is only about 15 minutes, so to maintain evenly-spaced hourly headways coming back south you'd need to sit at Old Elm for 1 minute or 2 hours. A 1-minute turnaround time is obviously a very bad idea, so to run a reliable service you need a second platform at Old Elm that doesn't exist.

The service pattern with hourly to Mt Joy and two-hourly to Old Elm would require 5 trainsets, which is 66% more than the current 3 trains used for the hourly Mt Joy service. Long story short, it makes much more sense to run a regular, cost-efficient hourly service to Mount Joy and run bus service from there to Stouffville and Uxbridge.

You're right. I made that statement a bit too in the heat of the moment. I went thru the timetables and wrote down a theoretical one, it just doesn't work out with the current single-track between Unionville to Mt. Joy, and a long layover at Old Elm would be impractical. The best I could get on a theoretical spreadsheet would be hourly service to Old Elm with double tracking to just short of Markham GO with three trains.

Thank you for the correction!