WB62
Senior Member
This is it, theres no current plans to electrify to Bowmanville or Hamilton. The LAST thing this project needs is another scope increase
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- Thread starter innsertnamehere
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denfromoakvillemilton
Senior Member
This is not surprising.
felix123
Active Member
Metrolinx quietly drops Deutsche Bahn, Aecon from multibillion-dollar GO expansion project
Deutsche Bahn, the German national rail company, and construction firm Aecon had been contracted out to operate and maintain GO transit in Ontario starting this year.
www.thestar.com
Confirmed that DB is being dropped. Looks like GO Expansion is now GO 1.0.1
Edit: Sorry this was already posted on the last page.
PL1
Senior Member
Or GO 2.0 is now WENTMetrolinx quietly drops Deutsche Bahn, Aecon from multibillion-dollar GO expansion project
Deutsche Bahn, the German national rail company, and construction firm Aecon had been contracted out to operate and maintain GO transit in Ontario starting this year.
Confirmed that DB is being dropped. Looks like GO Expansion is now GO 1.0.1
Sauga89
Active Member
I think this has come up before, but Union Station is federally protected. There is a federal Heritage Railway Stations Protection Act. I've included a link to the act, and the associated regulations. Basically, from my reading, to alter heritage features, there is a bureaucratic process the federal government has to follow (EDIT: in response to an application), then the federal environment minister has to approve it, and then the federal cabinet has to vote to approve it as well.
I imagine there would be legal challenges from supporters of the train shed at various stages of the process. I suppose any MP or senator could propose an amendment to the act to specifically exclude the train shed from the Union Station designation, but that would require legislation to pass through parliament. There may be other heritage protections for the train shed at the provincial level as well.
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afransen
Senior Member
This is a disaster for the region. The the amount of growth projected, it is untenable to have GO service expansion stalled out for another decade.
felix123
Active Member
Yeah it's been an economic emergency for a few years now and I think they're blowing Toronto's chance to pull investment away from much larger economies in the region like Chicago and Boston. Pretty insane how dumb ML and the province are.
crs1026
Superstar
Heritage properties do regularly get altered, and many are not preserved in total, so this idea is not legally dead. But the process may make it difficult to unlikely to happen.
To put a little meat on the Act, the normal process would be for the proponent (usually the property owner) to put forward a proposal outlining the alterations proposed. (This would typically require a fair bit of background work with moderately explicit architectural and engineering detail. One can't simply propose to demolish as an idea without describing what will replace the structure)
(In this case, with various agencies owning various parts of Union Station, I would see demolishing the trainshed as a likely non-starter simply because all of these agencies would have to reach a consensus on commissioning and funding a design and then blessing the product...likely with a fair bit of public input demanded......given the politics involved I doubt that all that is easily achieved..... and then some agency or level of government would have to fund the construction.)
The proposal would be reviewed by the federal heritage bureaucracy - it appears Parks Canada has the lead role, although the responsibility for heritage matters seema to move around in cabinet shuffles, and other ministries may seek a role as well. The proposal would likely take some haggling and revision to satisfy the staff that the alterations are appropriate and reasonable. Some conservation measures would likely be required - that might mean conserving some elements, or less likely moving the trainshed somewhere else for some other purpose.
Then the proposal with a staff recommendation in support would be put before the Historic Sites and Monuments Board, a deliberative body with its own mandate under the Historic Sites and Monuments Act. Again, at this stage, the Board must hear from the public before rendering its decision.
If the Board supported the proposal, it would go to the Minister for a decision. I don't see any appeal process spelled out in the Act, so the Minister's decision would be final.... not that stops people from mounting challenges in court.
All in all, while there may be a very good argument that the trainshed is awful, I just don't see all the stars aligning to move this along. If you look at how long it has taken to deal with Penn Station in New York, timing and vision and funding are all critical. And at the moment, which would we rather have....a nicer trainshed, or an extension of our LRT, subway and GO network ? The money may be better spent on other things right how.
- Paul
sixrings
Senior Member
Want to reevaluate the go is better to serve Mississauga than a subway to sq1 take?
afransen
Senior Member
This is happening because of funding or Metrolinx incompetence, or more likely, both. A subway to Mississauga is never going to happen while these are barriers.
nfitz
Superstar
The discussion in the GO Service thread is that most lines won't receive 15-minute service - at least until the late 2030s. Or electrification.
dowlingm
Senior Member
There *might* be some lemonade here. Posters above have asserted that ONxpress have tried to get changes to crew operations and rail regulations. Presumably Metrolinx/GO has had some awareness of how these discussions went and could get more if they hire on some of the folks let go by ONX. At least some of these may have been issues which GO may have feared “opening a can of worms” while ONX could come with clean hands saying “look this is how we do it in Europe, it’s not reasonable to make us use a starting point we has no hand in negotiating”
If ONxpress made at least some headway, GO/Alstom can now say “hey we are only asking for the stuff you said you would do for ONX”
If ONxpress made at least some headway, GO/Alstom can now say “hey we are only asking for the stuff you said you would do for ONX”
Sauga89
Active Member
More realistically, anyone could just walk down to their local MP's constituency office, and ask them to tack on an amendment to the next bill to remove the train shed from the Union station heritage designation. The new environment minister, who will probably help set government policy, is a Toronto MP with a constituency office at Queen and Pape. Any MP could submit such an amendment though.
Bojaxs
Senior Member
If what some people in this thread are saying is true, then clearly OnXpress came into this not knowing what they were getting themselves into.
When it comes to crew sizes, you first have to get the Feds involved because having two members in the cabin is a federal regulation applied to all railroad operations across Canada. Both passenger and freight. This is something CN and CPKC have already been trying to work on with the Feds to no success. Secondly even if you can convince the Federal regulators to shrink cabin crews down to 1 man, you then have to negotiate with the labour unions. And they'll most likely object claiming it violates their member's safety while on the job.
How can GO realistically achieve European rail standards on the network when so much of the network is still single tracked, and shared with freight? It was never possible.
A lot of you guys are blowign this way out of proportion. Claiming the whole GTA is doomed because this project fell through.
All GO needs to do is get AD2W service with 15-30 frequency on as much of the network as possible using the existing diesel fleet. It's not complicated.
This idea that GO was going to run electric, 4-5 coach trains every 5 minutes on the lines was a pipe dream.
When it comes to crew sizes, you first have to get the Feds involved because having two members in the cabin is a federal regulation applied to all railroad operations across Canada. Both passenger and freight. This is something CN and CPKC have already been trying to work on with the Feds to no success. Secondly even if you can convince the Federal regulators to shrink cabin crews down to 1 man, you then have to negotiate with the labour unions. And they'll most likely object claiming it violates their member's safety while on the job.
How can GO realistically achieve European rail standards on the network when so much of the network is still single tracked, and shared with freight? It was never possible.
A lot of you guys are blowign this way out of proportion. Claiming the whole GTA is doomed because this project fell through.
All GO needs to do is get AD2W service with 15-30 frequency on as much of the network as possible using the existing diesel fleet. It's not complicated.
This idea that GO was going to run electric, 4-5 coach trains every 5 minutes on the lines was a pipe dream.
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Urban Sky
Senior Member
If a shady railroad with non-existant safety management systems transporting dangerous goods over derelict infrastructure was able to get around this rule, then surely a railroad operating over ETCS or other state-of-the-art train control systems should be able to exploit that precedent.
This is certainly the bigger constraint here, but OC Transpo’s Trilium Line can serve as a precedent…