(I can imagine the same type of people who think it's a waste to run trains in two directions, which I've heard firsthand).
If this is common at ML, then there is indeed a problem. The 2WAD frequent service vision has been the ML vision since 2014-2015. Pretty well everything ML has done since then has had this end vision. if people are still fighting that....
Still, It does seem that there are two differing planes of thought. One has a vision of fairly conventional GO trains running 2WAD at 15 minute headways using current fleet (with some enhancements around things like electric locos) and perhaps some bells and whistles on the most heavily used portions, particularly LSE/LSW.
The second envisions moving directly to a much higher level system that encompasses all of EMUs, higher level platforms, 5 minute headways, automated operation with higher order ETCS-ish control, vastly reconfigured trackage especially at Union...... all in one big gulp and on all lines immediately. (certainly, some UT posters hold this vision, and their frustration with it not arriving comes through regularly). It sounds like DB's vision lay here and they assumed they had the mandate and funding for it.
I have to admit that I only really absorbed the former, thinking that the latter was likely to be achieved eventually, but was beyond a scope that a project could accomplish in this decade.... and recognising that 15 min 2WAD was likely all that was affordable in the short term, especially given how much construction even that will take. There simply isn't enough money to do the DB "big gulp".....and enhancing the various routes can't wait.
The most troubling part for me is the suggestion that even this lesser level of system might now be at risk and some of it deferred. We need that 15 minute service to Mount Pleasant, Aurora, and Unionville already....as well as on LSE/LSW.
And, we have shifted the goalposts by rolling in Kitchener and Niagara....which both also need urgent upgrading. Bolton ? Milton? London ?
Perhaps those two visions have indeed been fighting each other all along - if so, ML is guilty of not creating clarity, and also of not verifying just how much money is actually available.
Personally I would rather see the objective being that very conventional system sooner, with the added territory and routes. If we are going to the higher level platform, I don't see any investment in the conventional that is then torn out as money wasted.
The higher level platform deserves a single wholescale implementation on a small and delimited application, as a matter of crawling before we walk. Perhaps Bramalea/Pearson only. Followed by a larger project on Milton, which will likely evolve into a parallel non-shared paired corridor with GO fully separated from CPKC. That line will be effectively a greenfield build, a logical second step towards new practices and rules. For LSE/LSW, cram in more conventional trains until we are sure we know what we want and prove we can make the transition.
- Paul
www.thetrillium.ca
