[Sauga89]

This is actually an important point which leads me to my other point. In terms of actual daily movements over the line, there is already room for more GO service. In general, I fail to see the capacity constraints acquiring the line releases. Given that all the freights are through by the morning, there isn't any reason GO couldn't add more trips to Niagara already other than crewing, and fleet. The two most relevant line capacity constraints are Bayview and the Seaway which acquiring the line does not in any way address, at least not in a way that let's you magically get to 9 daily trips just by owning the line as this presentation claims.

We do have a Niagara specific GO thread where this has been discussed if you want to read recent discussions on this topic.

 

[reaperexpress]

I was curious how the crowding at Downsview Park would be handled after the first concert at the Roger’s Stadium, so I went there towards the end of the concert to have a look.

By 10pm (over an hour to the end of the concert) there was a consistent flow of people leaving the stadium, from 11:15pm to 12:20am there was a massive amount of people going down into the TTC subway and to the GO platform.



The subway alone could not have cleared the crowd before the 3 southbound GO trains began arriving at Downsview, that’s just a ridiculous idea.

11:15pm:

View attachment 667961

12:13am:

View attachment 667967

View attachment 667962

The crowd died off pretty abruptly after around 12:20, this was taken at 12:33am:

View attachment 667968

Amazing reporting, thanks! Were you able to see how busy the GO trains were? Reports after the stray kids concert indicated they were departing half-empty

 

[WB62]

Amazing reporting, thanks! Were you able to see how busy the GO trains were? Reports after the stray kids concert indicated they were departing half-empty

No problem!

Yep fully believe that, there wasn’t enough signage advertising the GO service on the approach to the station, everyone’s first option was the subway.

Luckily this seems to have improved, they added multiple digital signs since I’ve been there, here’s a photo from tonight’s concert:

I overheard the estimate from the stationmaster at Downsview that night, they were saying roughly 2k total riders on the first 2 trains, which quite literally is half the seated capacity on a 12 car train, even less if you want to consider standing capacity.

 

[Allandale25]

 

[nfitz]

View attachment 668952

A valiant effort. But obviously will be futile when there's only 2 tracks along Ontario line segment. But perhaps it will encourage Metrolinx to fast-track the third track and restoration a bit. Metrolinx is notorious for waiting a long time after construction is complete, before instituting service changes.

I have no idea how they could have promised a September 2024 date. The construction in that segment has been impressively efficient and fast from an observer's point of view. I don't know if the start was delayed or something?

 

[Metroscapes]

Dee

A valiant effort. But obviously will be futile when there's only 2 tracks along Ontario line segment. But perhaps it will encourage Metrolinx to fast-track the third track and restoration a bit. Metrolinx is notorious for waiting a long time after construction is complete, before instituting service changes.

I have no idea how they could have promised a September 2024 date. The construction in that segment has been impressively efficient and fast from an observer's point of view. I don't know if the start was delayed or something?

That seems tight. But I think the principle here is that, even if there were legit delays, there's no explanation or attempt to publicly communicate a new target. It's just clamming up and smiling nervously.

 

[crs1026]

That seems tight. But I think the principle here is that, even if there were legit delays, there's no explanation or attempt to publicly communicate a new target. It's just clamming up and smiling nervously.

It’s worse than that in that it appears that the construction in spots requires the contractor to start by building the outer wall of the north embankment and work inwards…. Wouldn’t surprise me if ML has actually pushed the third track off in the schedule so more gets done faster on the Ontario line. And of course nobody is going to fess up if that is the case.
In any event, there is still lots of bridgework to be done, so I would not expect the third track to be finished before next spring at the earliest.

- Paul

 

[smallspy]

I have no idea how they could have promised a September 2024 date.

Really easily. There is no reason why they couldn't run express trains tomorrow, if they wanted to. While the signal system is not quite as robust as the system installed on the Weston Sub, it is still plenty good enough to allow them to have three trains running eastward - or westward - at speed between Danforth and Union.

I fear the problem is more one of corporate laziness, an unwillingness to try and do something a little harder. There seems to be a lot of that permiating the organization.

Dan

 

[crs1026]

Really easily. There is no reason why they couldn't run express trains tomorrow, if they wanted to. While the signal system is not quite as robust as the system installed on the Weston Sub, it is still plenty good enough to allow them to have three trains running eastward - or westward - at speed between Danforth and Union.

I fear the problem is more one of corporate laziness, an unwillingness to try and do something a little harder. There seems to be a lot of that permitting the organization.

When you take the old (2019) express timings and insert them in the current schedule, its interesting how few overtakes are actually needed to introduce some express runs - and if that were done, some of the "trippers" that originate at Oshawa/Whitby and only make one trip to Union before laying up might be adjustable by a couple minutes.

For that matter, the "express" runs need not run as frequent or as fast as before the cancellation - if they gained a couple minutes' running time, they could interleave with the stopping trains and not require overtakes at all. I doubt that many riders would actually check new versus old timings, and the political pressure would be addressed. Or start some local trains at Pickering as in the past.

White and yellow runs are current, green are the old express times inserted in the schedule. The heavy box border shows where an overtake would be needed.
Have the 07:55 arrival move to 07:59, the 08:23 to 08:29, and the 08:42 to 08:44, 08:55 to 09:00, and you virtually eliminate the overtakes.

- Paul

 

[smallspy]

When you take the old (2019) express timings and insert them in the current schedule, its interesting how few overtakes are actually needed to introduce some express runs - and if that were done, some of the "trippers" that originate at Oshawa/Whitby and only make one trip to Union before laying up might be adjustable by a couple minutes.

For that matter, the "express" runs need not run as frequent or as fast as before the cancellation - if they gained a couple minutes' running time, they could interleave with the stopping trains and not require overtakes at all. I doubt that many riders would actually check new versus old timings, and the political pressure would be addressed. Or start some local trains at Pickering as in the past.

White and yellow runs are current, green are the old express times inserted in the schedule. The heavy box border shows where an overtake would be needed.
Have the 07:55 arrival move to 07:59, the 08:23 to 08:29, and the 08:42 to 08:44, 08:55 to 09:00, and you virtually eliminate the overtakes.

- Paul

View attachment 669072

And that doesn't even take into account the still-existing triple track section from Guildwood to Danforth. Another option would be to move the departures of the expresses ahead to ensure that they pass the locals within that section.

Dan

 

[Fritter]

So we have 2 people here, with reasonable knowledge and expertise who have put together a realistic plan to insert some express trains back into the LSE schedule, and all the minions at Metrolinx earning top dollar can't come up with a plan to improve customer satisfaction and ridership?
I guess I'm missing something.

 

[crs1026]

So we have 2 people here, with reasonable knowledge and expertise who have put together a realistic plan to insert some express trains back into the LSE schedule, and all the minions at Metrolinx earning top dollar can't come up with a plan to improve customer satisfaction and ridership?
I guess I'm missing something.

Well, the spectators don’t have access to budget, crews, or equipment cycles - so it’s easy to plan something on paper.
But I agree with @smallspy that the word “can’t” seems to crop up more often than it should in MLspeak.
And as few of the spectators have ever worked on an overseas rail line where things are said to be done to a more expert standard, we aren’t very compelling to the recent ML hires /s

- Paul

 

[reaperexpress]

When you take the old (2019) express timings and insert them in the current schedule, its interesting how few overtakes are actually needed to introduce some express runs - and if that were done, some of the "trippers" that originate at Oshawa/Whitby and only make one trip to Union before laying up might be adjustable by a couple minutes.

For that matter, the "express" runs need not run as frequent or as fast as before the cancellation - if they gained a couple minutes' running time, they could interleave with the stopping trains and not require overtakes at all. I doubt that many riders would actually check new versus old timings, and the political pressure would be addressed. Or start some local trains at Pickering as in the past.

White and yellow runs are current, green are the old express times inserted in the schedule. The heavy box border shows where an overtake would be needed.
Have the 07:55 arrival move to 07:59, the 08:23 to 08:29, and the 08:42 to 08:44, 08:55 to 09:00, and you virtually eliminate the overtakes.

- Paul

View attachment 669072

If they use the express track that is still in service between Guildwood and Danforth, they can run the expresses at full speed. Based on the previous schedule, an express train can save 10 minutes, so it would depart Pickering 5 minutes behind a local and arrive Union 5 minutes ahead. Most notably it would arrive at the start of triple track (Guildwood) 2 minutes behind the local, and reach the end of triple track (Danforth) 4 minutes ahead.

There's currently a cluster of Lakeshore East trains arriving Union a few minutes apart around 08:30:

The easiest way to reintroduce express service would be to just make one of those runs express, while maintaining 15-minute local service.

As far as I can tell, both of the affected trains arrive out-of-service from Whitby yard, so it should be possible to shift their departure times without messing other stuff up. The only possible reason I could see with this schedule being infeasible is if moving the train's arrival from 08:34 to 08:37 somehow creates issues for the train's next trip. But it's only a 3-minute difference so I doubt it. The main downside of this schedule is that it reduces the buffer between the trains, so if either the local or express are delayed, the delay will propagate onto the other train (unless they're more than 6 minutes delayed in which case they'd just run in sequence and not overtake).

To run more than one express trip they'd probably want to add additional trips to avoid creating a gap in the 15-minute local service. So that depends on them having an available crew and trainset. It looks like an additional trip could be added that overtakes the local trip arriving Union at 08:27, but the 08:20 Stouffville Line trip would need to shift a couple minutes earlier to make room. Currently there's no counter-peak service on the Stouffville Line so that shouldn't create any scheduling conflicts, but the uneven headway might prevent them from introducing counter-peak service in the future. There seems to be plenty of room to add an express trip arriving Union at 08:07.

TL;DR: I agree with you and @smallspy that it seems possible to re-introduce express service without waiting for the third track to be reinstated between Danforth and Union.

 

[stevensontransit]

Go fall service changes effective August 30th is out and upsettingly many of these changes show small improvements outside post secondary increases considering those return to office mandates by many companies and employers in Toronto and Ontario public servants that’s announced today: https://www.gotransit.com/en/travelling-on-go/service-changes-will-begin-on-aug-30

 

[chrisw]

Stouffville line

Starting Tuesday, Sept. 2, we’re adding two new weekday trips on the Stouffville line.

NEW! 3:32 p.m. train departing Union Station, making all stops to Unionville GO arriving at 4:13 p.m.
NEW! 5:37 p.m. train departing Unionville GO, making all stops to Union Station arriving at 6:18 p.m

This is quite new as no trains currently turn back at Unionville GO, they all go to Mount Joy or further.

It's incremental service but Northbound 30 min frequency now starts at 3pm instead of 4pm.

For Southbound service, from Unionville GO, trains now come every 2 hours instead of a 4 hour gap.