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- Thread starter drum118
- Start date
dowlingm
Senior Member
"the government will open" - is that not a curious construction? Shouldn't that be "Metrolinx"?
[this occurs elsewhere too - Ontario completes final testing, the Ontario government has successfully completed testing]
PL1
Senior Member
I guess they're saying the quiet part out loud – ML is just a mouth/hand for the MOT/Government of Ontario
reaperexpress
Senior Member
innsertnamehere
Superstar
Metrolinx has long failed at that and become the public-transit version of MTO. It's not a new thing, nor is it a thing of the PC government. It failed pretty much as soon as it was started on that front with the Liberal government of the time constantly interfering.
Allandale25
Senior Member
sixrings
Senior Member
Enough crews this time?
Bojaxs
Senior Member
I'm looking at the Milton line schedule for Oct. 25th on their website. All I'm seeing is one train departing Milton at 4:30pm, but no trains returning to Milton after the game.
ShonTron
Moderator
Oct. 25: Milton Line extra train service
On Saturday, Oct. 25, to help you cheer on the Toronto Blue Jays, we’ve arranged extra GO train service to get you to the game and home safely:
- A 4:30 p.m. train departing Milton GO, making all stops to Union Station arriving at 5:33 p.m.
- A 12:30 a.m. train departing Union Station, making all stops to Milton GO arriving at 1:30 a.m.
Let’s GO Blue Jays!
Bojaxs
Senior Member
Ah, whoops! I forgot to flip around the destinations at the top of the page.
tsm1072
Active Member
It has been discussed a bit before, but considering Metrolinx already owns the tracks to Kitchener, and is planning hourly service, buying the tracks that continue on to London, upgrading to a reasonable speed, and running a frequent service to London is probably better done by Metrolinx. They have the resources to upgrade and maintain the track, and the London to Toronto distance is not unreasonable to do as a regional rail style service once the tracks speeds are improved. It will also function well as a Kitchener to London service and provide commuter service for those in and near communities like Stratford that may coute to London or Kitchener.
Bordercollie
Senior Member
Its not owned by Metrolinx, they bought rights to build a second track. So technically they own half the corridor.
kalis0490
New Member
The gov did allocate 160M for London go in 2022? but I believe that didn't go anywhere. (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/london-go-transit-metrolinx-final-report-1.7078430)
Technically speaking the GO pilot wasn't cancelled due to low ridership but due to construction at London station.
Baden-new Hamburg was the originally planned terminus of the Kitchener line before the expansion of the Shirley yard (https://www.therecord.com/news/wate...cle_71ed8a59-5592-5065-a4c5-45d50eff11ff.html) and there are many new subdivisions/industrial projects in the area which have used the potential for GO service in their planning reports.
Stratford-Kitchener is easier, because the tracks are (slightly) less degraded and because there's a yard at Stratford. Its already faster than driving rn
London- Stratford has very degraded track + bridge replacement at St Marys,.
If London-Kitchener can be upgraded to hourly service taking an hour it would be VERY popular due to the huge student influx (UWO, UW, WLU, UG, UT etc). London and Kitchener are also not small towns as both are ~700K rn.
ShonTron
Moderator
London-Stratford-Kitchener should be a separate service and shouldn't be 10-car bilevel trains. We really need a separate fleet and a service model for provincial services like Kitchener/Stratford/London, or even Toronto-Oshawa-Cobourg-Belleville-Kingston-Brockville-Ottawa if ALTO takes over the intercity market there. Trains with the speeds to match VIA services (up to 160 km/h) and with more comfortable seating than GO, but be a "turn up, by a ticket, and ride" service with no reserved seating or one car with reserved seating.
Toronto-Kitchener-London is a very long line for 10-car trains with minimal amenities; the capacity per train isn't needed for the western section, where you'll want at least a few round trips per day.
reaperexpress
Senior Member
They promised 160M but they never actually allocated it. Once they were elected they conveniently forgot about that promise.
Most of the ridership was from Stratford and the train crews were based in Kitchener anyway. They could have continued the Stratford-Toronto service if they wanted. They also could have introduced a London-Kitchener GO bus if they wanted. But they already won the election so there was no longer any point in spending money on services west of Kitchener.
Indeed, the London-Kitchener-Guelph corridor has very solid ridership potential if the tracks are upgraded to 160 km/h standards and they build the Kitchener Central station with a direct connection to the LRT, and more intercity/regional bus platforms than the current station.
It's true that London-Kitchener doesn't need 10-car trains, but that doesn't mean London-Stratford passengers should need to transfer in Kitchener just to get to Guelph, Brampton or the airport. The hourly trains from Kitchener to Toronto should ideally be running express anyway, so they can use smaller 6-car (or even 4-car) BiLevel sets that make minimal stops from Mount Pleasant to Toronto where there is overlapping local service.
I think the existing GO fleet is already well-suited for regional-express GO service, it's just a matter of retrofitting interiors have an airline-style seating layout and traytables. The trains can already reach 150 km/h and the BiLevel layout is good for providing lots of seating capacity on longer-distance trips. Eventually we'd want the next generation to reach 160 km/h, but in the meantime we will have lots of BiLevel coaches and diesel locomotives to spare as they are (hopefully) replaced by EMUs on local services.
Extending the hourly 6-car BiLevel service beyond Kitchener to London would provide more capacity than technically required, but having one unified Intercity-style GO service all the way along the corridor would produce a much more substantial shift in travel patterns than just a little shuttle from London to Kitchener (and presumably Guelph).
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