[Urban Sky]

This is utterly disappointing. When was electrification and the GO expansion announced ? It was when Wynne was premier and now to say it may not be finished until 2040 for just two lines is a joke. We are not serious in this country.

I invite you to look at European examples for what the lead times for major transit projects are there, even where they don‘t attempt to plan a massive S-Bahn network basically from scratch.

Some people here really don‘t seem to grasp how mindboggingly ambitious the initial plans were and how breathtakingly transformative the implementation of even a fraction of these service levels will be…

Meanwhile in Montréal, we‘ll receive nothing but the REM in terms of improvements for our regional rail transit networks by 2040…

 

[Dan416]

Honestly I was always skeptical about basically turning GO into an S-bahn type service. My excitement for it was tempered by the lack of any kind of plan for the Milton line.

IF they're still sticking to the idea of trains every 15 minutes in both directions, I would still take that improvement. If it is really limited to Lakeshore to start, that is a serious disappointment (although none of the other lines help me anyway, since Milton was never in the cards to start with).

Hopefully they can focus on getting the 15 min, and eventually move to improve the service down the line.

 

[afransen]

Honestly I was always skeptical about basically turning GO into an S-bahn type service. My excitement for it was tempered by the lack of any kind of plan for the Milton line.

IF they're still sticking to the idea of trains every 15 minutes in both directions, I would still take that improvement. If it is really limited to Lakeshore to start, that is a serious disappointment (although none of the other lines help me anyway, since Milton was never in the cards to start with).

Hopefully they can focus on getting the 15 min, and eventually move to improve the service down the line.

Given that GO Expansion has been so dramatically scaled back, with the justification being a need to stay 'within the funding envelope', it is not encouraging that anything significant will be happening wrt to Milton until the 2040s.

I'm curious if the 'funding envelope' shrank (ie, cuts to funding allocated for the project) or if it was merely ballooning cost estimates forcing a reduction in ambitions.

 

[Lakeshore West]

And just think, in five years we will be reliving this same disappointment with HSR!

 

[APTA-2048]

Honestly I was always skeptical about basically turning GO into an S-bahn type service. My excitement for it was tempered by the lack of any kind of plan for the Milton line.

IF they're still sticking to the idea of trains every 15 minutes in both directions, I would still take that improvement. If it is really limited to Lakeshore to start, that is a serious disappointment (although none of the other lines help me anyway, since Milton was never in the cards to start with).

Hopefully they can focus on getting the 15 min, and eventually move to improve the service down the line.

I’m not understanding something. Didn’t Lakeshore East already have 15 off peak service in 2018? What exactly have they achieved by the time this is all done?

 

[Urban Sky]

Given that GO Expansion has been so dramatically scaled back, with the justification being a need to stay 'within the funding envelope', it is not encouraging that anything significant will be happening wrt to Milton until the 2040s.

Would it really be that scandalous if the more difficult-to-fix corridors are only fixed 20 years from now? It‘s simply beyond the capabilities of the rail engineering and construction industry to work on six 40-100 km long corridors more or less simultaneously…

I'm curious if the 'funding envelope' shrank (ie, cuts to funding allocated for the project) or if it was merely ballooning cost estimates forcing a reduction in ambitions.

There is no point in having a funding envelope for projects which can‘t possibly be built within the next quarter-century.

 

[Adjei]

I invite you to look at European examples for what the lead times for major transit projects are there, even where they don‘t attempt to plan a massive S-Bahn network basically from scratch.

Some people here really don‘t seem to grasp how mindboggingly ambitious the initial plans were and how breathtakingly transformative the implementation of even a fraction of these service levels will be…

Meanwhile in Montréal, we‘ll receive nothing but the REM in terms of improvements for our regional rail transit networks by 2040…

Kathleen Wynne’s government announced funding for electrification of GO in 2015:

Premier Wynne announces Go rail system to receive $13.5-billion boost

The Ontario government has rolled out details on a huge expansion of GO rail service, a $13.5-billion investment that leaves little money for other transit projects around the region and falls short of earlier promises

www.theglobeandmail.com

To now be told that we will see some line electrified by 2036 and knowing how delays work here could go into the 2040s is ridiculous.

We are not building from scratch. It is an expansion of the current system. It is not like Toronto never had any rail service and we are starting from new. For this project to take 25 years to get electric trains on some lines is bizarre.

It took Donald Trump to get the federal government and the country to realize that we need to start building things to build up the economy. Maybe we need a Trump for Metrolinx.

 

[TossYourJacket]

The entire senior leadership at Metrolinx should be fired. This is an agency that is clearly incapable of delivering anything it promises and should be completely gutted and rebuilt, if not replaced entirely with something that has the ability to do literally anything with any level of competence.

 

[afransen]

Would it really be that scandalous if the more difficult-to-fix corridors are only fixed 20 years from now? It‘s simply beyond the capabilities of the rail engineering and construction industry to work on six 40-100 km long corridors more or less simultaneously…

There is no point in having a funding envelope for projects which can‘t possibly be built within the next quarter-century.

At the current rate, I think it might take the better part of a century. Perhaps the problem requires more than patience.

If the constraint was construction industry bandwidth, why were the descoping changes couched as due to funding limitations?

This is the province that can't even deliver fairly basic LRT lines on time or on budget.

 

[kaptrice]

Would it really be that scandalous if the more difficult-to-fix corridors are only fixed 20 years from now? It‘s simply beyond the capabilities of the rail engineering and construction industry to work on six 40-100 km long corridors more or less simultaneously…

There is no point in having a funding envelope for projects which can‘t possibly be built within the next quarter-century.

There are a few historical titans who have managed such things: for instance the Five Directions Commuting Campaign grade-separated and quad-tracked the main Tokyo lines in the decade from 1965; but Tokyo is Tokyo and Toronto is Toronto; moreover the JNR was the JNR and Metrolinx is Metrolinx. Otherwise, things in Paris and Munich still took multiple decades, right?

 

[nfitz]

Would it really be that scandalous if the more difficult-to-fix corridors are only fixed 20 years from now?

to meet a 10- year old promise? That's 30 years.

How do you justify not restoring the every 15-minute service they suspend in 2020?

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Would it really be that scandalous if the more difficult-to-fix corridors are only fixed 20 years from now? It‘s simply beyond the capabilities of the rail engineering and construction industry to work on six 40-100 km long corridors more or less simultaneously…

There is no point in having a funding envelope for projects which can‘t possibly be built within the next quarter-century.

Then perhaps we need to import the specialized expertise and labour and tell our engineering and construction industry to get the F out of the way if they can't perform.

AoD

 

[Northern Light]

Would it really be that scandalous if the more difficult-to-fix corridors are only fixed 20 years from now?

The scandal here, is that this project was announced in ~2015. Ten years on.........there isn't one corridor delivering its promised potential or even a material fraction thereof.

It‘s simply beyond the capabilities of the rail engineering and construction industry to work on six 40-100 km long corridors more or less simultaneously…

Fair....to a point............except there is no serious work contemplated for R-H in the near term and none started on Milton.............so we're really talking 4 corridors for now. Moreover, the necessary work to get service to the initial promise of 2-way, all-day, every hour or better to the end of non-Lakeshore lines, every 15m or better for most of the Lakeshore corridor, is far from the entire length of each corridor.

So we're not talking about 700km worth of corridor work here, except when we talk electrification.

What people are so exasperated by is not that it may take 20 years to get Milton, 4-tracked, and electrified and delivering every 10M or better service.

Its that there are zero lines currently offering every 15 off-peak service, save and except Lakeshore after 3pm on weekends.

There's simply too little work product accomplished and too little result from that that has.

There is no point in having a funding envelope for projects which can‘t possibly be built within the next quarter-century.

In this post (yours), you were at 20 years, now 25? I know you understand the importance of consistency.

I get where it will take a while to get full RER in 5 corridors ( I don't see the point in even trying that with R-H).

But I have to say, I'm entirely convinced that another 25 years, making the entire project 35 years is more than ample to deliver the work in question.

Yes people should have reasonable expectations.............but that you're pouring just a bit too much water in the wine.........

 

[crs1026]

Considering that we have never seen a funding envelope with cash flows laid out over a full decade, it is impossible to know whether the envelope shrank, or the money spent to date didn't go as far as planned, or if cost estimates for remaining work have increased, or if scope changed.
(My bet is some of each)
That's the point - the public has been left in the dark.
And likely the original numbers were a wild guess, and the whole costing thing was left to the consortium to work out over the co-development period.
And since the consortium is still in place for the "build" side of things, they have likely been subject to the same ambiguity and waffling.... so they still may not know.

- Paul

 

[Tuck]

I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge the hard work of @jackhauen in putting this extensive piece on the record.

I would like to further thank those who took the time to speak with Jack privately and provide the necessary background.

We're all better off when the sunlight shines as a disinfectant on the sort of nonsense that's been going on here.

This may be one of the most disapointing and disheartening things I have ever read.

Pretty crushed about it. 20+ years for a "minimum viable product". It's so painfully mediocre, but I guess it's my fault for even getting my hopes up.

Metrolinx is a failed organization. Gut it or kill it, but it cannot be allowed to continue to exist in its current state.