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I think once King Street re-opens the need for grade separation on Park will diminish, especially since the GO trains don't cross there. The trains that cross Victoria at Walnut don't seem to run during busy hours of the day that often and they are usually pretty short. They are also slow so the risk of collisions isn't as high.
I think MidTowner's concern is that many of our buses don't connect directly to Toronto trains - most go to Square One, which has no rail connections and makes it harder to get to Toronto proper.
How workable would it be to lower the grade of the rail corridor in the St. Leger/Lancaster area to make road overpasses more feasible?
(05-04-2016, 11:58 AM)yige_t Wrote: [ -> ]Umm...

The proposed Brantford GO bus will run every hour during peak and every 2 hours off-peak/weekends. How is that "much more frequent" or "better service" than our hourly GO bus to Square One (which connects to the 21H/P bus to Union, running every 15-30 minutes)? Not to even mention the frequent weekend express services, and the train meets to/from Milton and Bramalea we already have.

Umm… (sorry, could not resist)

Brantford’s service will connect directly to the Lakeshore West rail line throughout the day, and on weekends.

You’re right about the service to Mississauga from Waterloo, and the connection to a Go bus. From the Highway 25 stop, that will probably be about the same timing to Union as Brantford will be. From Waterloo, though, it’s nearly three hours and more subject to delays than the rail lines are. As for the train meets, they are peak only.

Edit: Kevin is right. I consider a one-stop bus ride connecting to the frequent Lakeshore train line to be better than a six-stop bus ride connecting to another multi-stop bus ride. But I was thinking about the comparison between Brantford and more specifically Cambridge: downtown Brantford will soon have an all-day bus to an all-day Go train line, whereas Cambridge's service is from near the 401 and (at least for the train meet to the Milton line) is only a few buses at peak hours.
(05-04-2016, 01:13 PM)clasher Wrote: [ -> ]I think once King Street re-opens the need for grade separation on Park will diminish, especially since the GO trains don't cross there.  The trains that cross Victoria at Walnut don't seem to run during busy hours of the day that often and they are usually pretty short. They are also slow so the risk of collisions isn't as high.

I used to take the first 7 of the morning from Kitchener heading north, and the issue for it was that the grade separation at King means that the GO trains have to back out over Park to get onto the mainline, and can then reverse and move forward. The worst morning it was about a 20 minute delay, and another was ~30 minutes due to gates that wouldn't go up (most cars just drove between the gates, GRT obviously not, eventually doing a multi-point turn).
(05-04-2016, 01:13 PM)clasher Wrote: [ -> ]I think once King Street re-opens the need for grade separation on Park will diminish, especially since the GO trains don't cross there.

GO trains currently cross Park, back and forth, to get on to the overnight layover sidings, but are moving this summer to a former industrial yard between Victoria and Shirley, behind the east end of Frederick..
(05-04-2016, 01:31 PM)KevinL Wrote: [ -> ]How workable would it be to lower the grade of the rail corridor in the St. Leger/Lancaster area to make road overpasses more feasible?

Probably not at all. The yard, which is the main reason for delays there, is right beside Lancaster.
I thought 2 trains were sill going to sleep at the existing facility even though there will be 4 more at Shirley. Is that not the case (ie, is the existing layover facility being completely removed)?
Ah. Well, then.
I believe the near-term plan is only 4 trains in the morning to Toronto, so they'll likely move everything to Shirley Dr, and keep operations consolidated.
GO does like keeping things together. I would find it interesting if they would decide to use both layover facilities at the same time.
I thought it weird too but I thought with 4x bays at Shirley and 2x at Vic/Park that was the 6 trains.
(05-04-2016, 02:24 PM)Canard Wrote: [ -> ]I thought it weird too but I thought with 4x bays at Shirley and 2x at Vic/Park that was the 6 trains.

I haven't seen any plan for 6 trains yet.
But for sure, it's nice to know that there exist sidings for 6.
Oh. I thought it was 4 MORE trains. Maybe it's just 4 total.
At the time of the Shirley announcement GO said the park street facility would close leaving four slots. The need for a Lancaster separation will become more apparent then because the trains will have cross once to complete their trip and then once more to get back to the layover facility both in the morning and at night.

Perhaps time to move this discussion the go thread?