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Full Version: High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London
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(04-14-2018, 02:49 PM)tomh009 Wrote: [ -> ]What kills this (and makes real HSR difficult, too) is the plethora of level crossings and slow segments through cities. That's expensive to fix, politically challenging and totally unglamorous -- and yet the gating factor to achieving any serious speed-up of the train service.

This is exactly why the region and city need to be reminded that projects like the current Lancaster Street Reconstruction (Victoria Street to Bridgeport Road, Design 2017 – 2019, Construction 2020) needs to be re-done as a grade separation or the chance is lost for 50 years.
(04-14-2018, 09:19 PM)Pheidippides Wrote: [ -> ]
(04-14-2018, 02:49 PM)tomh009 Wrote: [ -> ]What kills this (and makes real HSR difficult, too) is the plethora of level crossings and slow segments through cities. That's expensive to fix, politically challenging and totally unglamorous -- and yet the gating factor to achieving any serious speed-up of the train service.

This is exactly why the region and city need to be reminded that projects like the current Lancaster Street Reconstruction (Victoria Street to Bridgeport Road, Design 2017 – 2019, Construction 2020) needs to be re-done as a grade separation or the chance is lost for 50 years.

Quite right. Lancaster and Bingeman are the key ones in Kitchener (St Leger could easily be closed if Lancaster were grade-separated). Sadly Bingeman was built as a level crossing.

Is grade separation being seriously considered for this project?
(04-14-2018, 09:45 PM)tomh009 Wrote: [ -> ]
(04-14-2018, 09:19 PM)Pheidippides Wrote: [ -> ]This is exactly why the region and city need to be reminded that projects like the current Lancaster Street Reconstruction (Victoria Street to Bridgeport Road, Design 2017 – 2019, Construction 2020) needs to be re-done as a grade separation or the chance is lost for 50 years.

Quite right. Lancaster and Bingeman are the key ones in Kitchener (St Leger could easily be closed if Lancaster were grade-separated). Sadly Bingeman was built as a level crossing.

Is grade separation being seriously considered for this project?

When I contacted the region last July this was the response:

Quote:The Class Environmental Assessment (EA) for Lancaster Street is just getting started, and a grade separation at the railway will be one of the options considered. 
 
The current budget is based on one possible outcome of the EA for financial forecasting purposes only.
 
If a grade separation ended up being the preferred option and it was approved by Council, then the capital budget would be revised and the overall capital program would be updated.
 
The comments you provided below, together with all comments received during the course of the EA, will be considered by the Lancaster Street project team.
 
The other crossings, as you noted, are City streets.  The City would deal with those in their own master planning and capital budget processes.
 
If you would like any more information about the Lancaster Street EA or if you wish to provide any further comments, you can contact our project manager, Peter Linn, at Plinn@regionofwaterloo.ca.
(04-14-2018, 09:19 PM)Pheidippides Wrote: [ -> ]This is exactly why the region and city need to be reminded that projects like the current Lancaster Street Reconstruction (Victoria Street to Bridgeport Road, Design 2017 – 2019, Construction 2020) needs to be re-done as a grade separation or the chance is lost for 50 years.

Oooo, where might one find plans for this? This is the first I have heard of it!
(04-14-2018, 10:23 PM)Canard Wrote: [ -> ]
(04-14-2018, 09:19 PM)Pheidippides Wrote: [ -> ]This is exactly why the region and city need to be reminded that projects like the current Lancaster Street Reconstruction (Victoria Street to Bridgeport Road, Design 2017 – 2019, Construction 2020) needs to be re-done as a grade separation or the chance is lost for 50 years.

Oooo, where might one find plans for this?  This is the first I have heard of it!

The consultant to do the EA has been selected, but that was the last I heard of it.

It shows up in Kitchener's 2018 budget in 2021/2022 now (it will likely be a joint region and Kitchener project), but as of 2017 the region had it as 2020.

This would also be a great stretch for segregated cycling lanes.
(04-14-2018, 09:19 PM)Pheidippides Wrote: [ -> ]
(04-14-2018, 02:49 PM)tomh009 Wrote: [ -> ]What kills this (and makes real HSR difficult, too) is the plethora of level crossings and slow segments through cities. That's expensive to fix, politically challenging and totally unglamorous -- and yet the gating factor to achieving any serious speed-up of the train service.

This is exactly why the region and city need to be reminded that projects like the current Lancaster Street Reconstruction (Victoria Street to Bridgeport Road, Design 2017 – 2019, Construction 2020) needs to be re-done as a grade separation or the chance is lost for 50 years.

Would eliminating a level crossing one kilometre away from a station really make that much of a difference to travel times?
(04-15-2018, 08:26 AM)greybird Wrote: [ -> ]
(04-14-2018, 09:19 PM)Pheidippides Wrote: [ -> ]This is exactly why the region and city need to be reminded that projects like the current Lancaster Street Reconstruction (Victoria Street to Bridgeport Road, Design 2017 – 2019, Construction 2020) needs to be re-done as a grade separation or the chance is lost for 50 years.

Would eliminating a level crossing one kilometre away from a station really make that much of a difference to travel times?

That crossing ties up traffic pretty quickly when they are switching in the yard there, it would probably have some benefits even if they built it right now.
Lancaster needs a grade separation because many times during the day, Lancaster/Victoria becomes a complete cluster due to train shunting. In my mind a grade separation here may not make that much difference to rail traffic but it will be worlds better for those who travel through the area on other modes. Go by there any time they are shunting and you'll see what I mean.
(04-15-2018, 08:37 AM)Canard Wrote: [ -> ]Lancaster needs a grade separation because many times during the day, Lancaster/Victoria becomes a complete cluster due to train shunting.  In my mind a grade separation here may not make that much difference to rail traffic but it will be worlds better for those who travel through the area on other modes.  Go by there any time they are shunting and you'll see what I mean.

As someone who lives in the area it's a blessing and a curse. It means people are far more likely to go the Victoria Street route to the highway, which is a win for the neighbourhood as I don't like Lancaster becoming a rushed through fair. Right now with all the construction that road is packed and it effectively kills access between the two sides of Lancaster, which is actually cutting off access to the two local school for anyone on the northside.

There are, of course, other solutions to make that work but North Americans already struggle to let their kids walk to school and this makes it significantly worse. Having grade separation with rail will mean there will be even more who think it is a quick way to get to bypass sections of the highway, which means more cars down that road.

One solution might be to do something drastic at least from after Wellington on Lancaster that basically means get on the highway at Wellington or deal with a tight road (ie. Guelph Street reconstruction) or stopsigns or something along those lines.
(04-15-2018, 08:37 AM)Canard Wrote: [ -> ]Lancaster needs a grade separation because many times during the day, Lancaster/Victoria becomes a complete cluster due to train shunting.  In my mind a grade separation here may not make that much difference to rail traffic but it will be worlds better for those who travel through the area on other modes.  Go by there any time they are shunting and you'll see what I mean.

My solution would be to close Lancaster to motor vehicle traffic at the tracks. Vehicles can use the Margaret St. bridge or the St. Leger level crossing on the west, or the new access road being built as part of the Highway 7 project on the east. This would also remove a lot of traffic pressure from the portion of Lancaster south (east) of Victoria, which is a narrow street that isn’t really appropriate as a major traffic route. It would likely indirectly improve the situation at Cedar/Weber/Lancaster/Krug as well.

We could then separately study the concept of building a much less expensive pedestrian/bicycle grade separation at Lancaster. Even without it however the massive traffic backups associated with the level crossing would disappear.
The grade crossings probably won't help travel times too much, but disturbing the track along the stretch between the future hub and the Wellington county border with a bunch of grade separation projects would probably force the rail company to upgrade the track to the latest minimum safety standards. With a little incentive from the province or feds maybe the upgrade could be to the highest track class instead of the minimum required for safety changes. For example, upgrading the class of track from class 1 to class 5 the speed limit would change from 15mph to 95mph. Does anyone know what class of track is currently between the future hub and the Wellington county border?

I think closing Lancaster to vehicular traffic will be a non-starter; it is too busy (17,000 AADT in 2014) and the detour would be too long (for residents, EMS, fire, GRT, snow ploughs, etc.).

I would prefer that they add active transportation crossings at St. Leger and Ahrens, and work on grade separations at Duke, Lancaster, and Bingemans. If HSR were to come through we'd also have to grade separate Park and Strange as well; but I see those as lower priorities even if the GO yard eventually moves to Baden.

Part of the problem is that the future/current GO train yard is east of the Lancaster crossing so even with the modest 4 trains of day AM/PM it will be 16 crossings a day when the Park St yard is abandoned and all four trains sleep at Shirley yard because it will go west to the train station (and future hub) before it goes east, and the opposite at night (go west to the hub and back east to the Shirley yard).

So even in the present state (8 GO trains per day (@2min to cross), 4 VIA (@2min to cross), 2(?) freight (@3min to cross), and 1 shunting movement (@10min duration) the intersection is closed for an half hour a day minimum. By the time we move to two-way all-day service on the 1/2 hour you are looking the intersection being closed more than 3 hours per day.

Even at the current train and traffic volume Lancaster's cross-product or the number of potential interactions between trains and vehicles per day is  ~374,000; already well over the historical Transport Canada threshold of 200,000 per day for consideration as a grade separation, and approaching the newly recommended threshold (a cross-product of 400,000; adopted from the US DOT). Add any kind of growth to vehicle traffic or train traffic (two-way all-day GO) and that cross-product and likelihood of a crash grows exponentially.

I tried to summarize this problem last year in one of my first attempts at story telling with data in Tableau.
It's worth pointing out that 'the railway company', from the Kitchener Hub to Georgetown, is Metrolinx. They own that track.
Metrolinx plans to double-track the line between Kitchener & Georgetown. (But hey, I plan to win a lottery and retire to a private island. We'll see which happens first.)
The full EA from 2009 had plans of what double tracking from Kitchener to Georgetown would look like, but I haven't been able to find them for a while.
(04-15-2018, 12:24 PM)Pheidippides Wrote: [ -> ]I think closing Lancaster to vehicular traffic will be a non-starter; it is too busy (17,000 AADT in 2014) and the detour would be too long (for residents, EMS, fire, GRT, snow ploughs, etc.).

Too long for whom? The worst case is somebody who needs to get from Breithaupt and Lancaster to Victoria and Lancaster, who would now have to detour via St. Leger (level crossing) or Margaret (bridge) (Although for that specific case they could just walk under my proposal…). But almost anybody else can take an alternate route that isn’t really a “detour” as such. For example, Wellington and Lancaster to Margaret and Queen; instead of Lancaster to Queen, take Wellington to Margaret. Almost the same distance. Or anywhere east of the expressway to Victoria west of Lancaster; instead of Wellington to Lancaster and then Victoria, take Wellington to the Bruce St. extension and then Victoria; no difference in distance. I predict that a network analysis, taking into account Lancaster’s unsuitability as a through route south (east) of Victoria, would show that the Lancaster crossing could be removed with essentially no impact on travel times. Actually they might improve because Victoria and Lancaster would not jam up the way it does now. Just because there is lots of traffic through that link doesn’t mean that re-routing the traffic is infeasible. And often the solution to a bottleneck is not to widen the roads in the bottleneck but rather to improve alternate routes. This is already being done with the construction of the Bruce St. extension as part of the Highway 7 project.

Quote:I would prefer that they add active transportation crossings at St. Leger and Ahrens, and work on grade separations at Duke, Lancaster, and Bingemans. If HSR were to come through we'd also have to grade separate Park and Strange as well; but I see those as lower priorities even if the GO yard eventually moves to Baden.

Why do you think HSR would require grade separations at Park and Strange? No matter how “HS” the service is out in the country, it’s not going to be “HS” at those locations. That’s one of the great things about HSR as opposed to fancy stuff like maglev: it can run on normal track, even poor track, as long as it isn’t expected to be “HS” in those locations. And no train is “HS” near a station.
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