GO Transit

[bravado]

And I wanted to reiterate ac3r's point that there is rail service to surprisingly small towns in Europe. It would be really nice to have that here. (But no, I don't think we have the political support for it).

Also: A lot of people from surrounding areas would likely rather drive to small towns and take a train into the big city. Thus, a small town could service more people than actually live there. This could be a good way to keep traffic in a better and more diffuse area out in the country.

[danbrotherston]

A regional LRT service between New Hamburg and Guelph would be an interesting prospect. In particular, the villages around KW often have nice cores that are hard to replicate. It would be nice if we could build greater intensity around those centres without the commuting pattern defaulting to the car.

Guelph to KW has some merit because of the size and density of each city, but given we have an existing rail line, it probably makes sense to utilize that. But New Hamburg and Baden are small and extremely sprawling (I know, I lived there) you aren't going to get many people on transit.

And I wanted to reiterate ac3r's point that there is rail service to surprisingly small towns in Europe. It would be really nice to have that here. (But no, I don't think we have the political support for it).

Also: A lot of people from surrounding areas would likely rather drive to small towns and take a train into the big city. Thus, a small town could service more people than actually live there. This could be a good way to keep traffic in a better and more diffuse area out in the country.

This would only be true if we significantly increased the cost and effort of driving into KW. Our government won't even consider restricting vehicle traffic at this point. These are not bad ideas, but they aren't ideas that make any sense in the current context in our city.

Hyperbole? Almost all existing student housing is within a 20 minute walk, and with the majority being less than 10 minutes from UW. When you include Laurier and Conestoga College the percentage of student oriented housing within 10 minute walk of a post secondary campus is probably >90%.

Elmira on the other hand, minimum travel time, by car, speeding straight down 85 from the south end of Elmira is already 15 minutes. No LRT is going to come close to being faster than walking from almost all student housing.

S Field Dr. in Elmira, at the tracks, to UW station is about 13km along the tracks, or 10 minutes at 80km/h.

So with the right LRT service, I think that compares pretty favourably to a lot of existing student commutes.

That being said, not every building could be literally on the station, and realistically if we ever get LRT to Elmira it would probably poke along at 70km/h, and depending on how many stops there are the real speed would be way belong my 80km/h, and so on, but to just cede all interurban transport to road-based vehicles is in my opinion unambitious, especially in the medium to long term.

"all interurban transport to road-based vehicles"...yeah, I'm not doing that at all obviously there should be a train to Toronto, in fact, we already have an (admittedly poor and underinvested in) train doing that already.

The problem is not the mode, but our development patterns. Students aren't going to live in Elmira without a car not just because they can't get to campus, but because they cannot get to a hundred other services, and because few communities are even built walkable. Just building a train isn't going to change any of that.

I'm all for developing transit focused walkable communities. I'd love to see the planned Breslau station be surrounded by a dense complete urban community rather than a sea of parking. But given that we won't even do that in a greenfield situation, we are not going to change our development patterns sufficiently in a situation faced by NIMBYs to justify it.

I just see other options as more realistic.

[jamincan]

A regional LRT service between New Hamburg and Guelph would be an interesting prospect. In particular, the villages around KW often have nice cores that are hard to replicate. It would be nice if we could build greater intensity around those centres without the commuting pattern defaulting to the car.

Guelph to KW has some merit because of the size and density of each city, but given we have an existing rail line, it probably makes sense to utilize that. But New Hamburg and Baden are small and extremely sprawling (I know, I lived there) you aren't going to get many people on transit.

It's a chicken and egg situation. I'm not saying investing in something like that is necessarily the best use of resources, but when all we have servicing those places is a highway, we shouldn't be surprised that everyone drives and the built form is conducive to it. My main point is that New Hamburg/Baden isn't really any worse than most suburban parts of KW, but it has the added benefit of having traditional town centres that could provide the bones for more pedestrian/transit-centred built forms.

[danbrotherston]

Guelph to KW has some merit because of the size and density of each city, but given we have an existing rail line, it probably makes sense to utilize that. But New Hamburg and Baden are small and extremely sprawling (I know, I lived there) you aren't going to get many people on transit.

It's a chicken and egg situation. I'm not saying investing in something like that is necessarily the best use of resources, but when all we have servicing those places is a highway, we shouldn't be surprised that everyone drives and the built form is conducive to it. My main point is that New Hamburg/Baden isn't really any worse than most suburban parts of KW, but it has the added benefit of having traditional town centres that could provide the bones for more pedestrian/transit-centred built forms.

The chicken/egg framing implies that we are talking about natural systems. But the fact is, when it comes to planning AND transit, both are done in a centrally planned, top down manner. Our city/region decides BOTH what transit to build AND what housing to build.

Therefore, deciding to build high order transit, and NOT to build high order housing is self defeating

If, for example, we eliminated all zoning restrictions in Elmira, and told developers to build whatever they please, and were willing to take the heat from NIMBYs and tell them to just STFU and let developers run roughshod (free market rules), then the building transit would make sense, because at least it is possible to respond to the investment in transit. But it is literally illegal to do so now, and will be so for the foreseeable future to make good on the chicken, if we invest in the egg.

And how do I know such a thing to be true? We build the LRT in the city without first changing zoning. We are now retroactively fixing zoning in a lot of places. That's true, but look at what the priorities were. The LRT was placed in locations where zoning was already conducive (downtown) or where there were wide swaths of undeveloped land that could be developed without NIMBY opposition. Even then, we still see NIMBY opposition and compromises downtown. Worse, when we look at the rezoning plans, they are almost without fail protecting low density neighbourhoods around transit stations. Victoria Park, Uptown CORE, Even MHBP-midtown area is restricted. Even the current development plan we're looking at for Fairway seems to be protecting the low density areas there.

So even in the case where we DO reconsider development, we still refuse to actually redevelop against NIMBYs.  It's just the case that in the city, the small amount of land we are willing to develop, plus the existing high density areas are sufficient to justify the LRT, but until we get serious about actually redeveloping low density areas, or we get serious about forcing new communities to be complete and walkable, there is no point in investing in higher order transit in these areas.

This was a big epiphany for me, housing policy matters just as much as transit policy, without fixing housing policy, there is no fixing transit.

[jamincan]

Well yeah, I think that's kind of implicit in what I'm saying. The corollary is true too, though, zoning for higher density without providing good alternatives to cars isn't going to result in higher densities and lower car use since housing sales is market-driven. In other words, it is chicken and egg.

[ac3r]

And I wanted to reiterate ac3r's point that there is rail service to surprisingly small towns in Europe. It would be really nice to have that here. (But no, I don't think we have the political support for it).

The sad thing is, we used to have it! One can map all the abandoned railway lines on OpenRailwayMap or Google search old rail maps just to see how many small towns had rail lines. Many of these were freight because back then because we didn't have large trucks to ship goods, but they often ran small passenger trains as well since most people didn't have the means to easily travel. Trains connected Fort Erie to Wiarton, Pembroke to Sarnia etc.

Then it all just disappeared. It's a shame because. If we look at Great Britain, they still have nearly 16'000 kilometers of rail that gets used each day, with a ridership of nearly 2 billion. They still have cars and roads, but they use trains a lot. Their rail indeed connects not only cities, but towns and tiny villages. Many stops get used so infrequently that you have to manually request the stop, but those places are still connected nonetheless (Geoff Marshall has a great video series on these "request stops" which you can watch here). Canada differs due to its sheer size so the track length is greater, obviously, but either way our rail ridership is a dismal 101 million. That number includes commuter rail riders, which make up the vast majority of rail ridership here since few people travel cross country by train anymore.

I'd love to see rail get improved in this province and country though I truly doubt it ever will have a renaissance for a long time. Roads are just so expensive to maintain (trains are too, of course). Cars and trucks are expensive to maintain. It's terrible for the environment with things like pollution and the destruction of forests, wetlands etc. Road and highway construction costs a fortune since it needs so much concrete, steel, pipes, signs, lighting, police patrols, preventative maintenance and so on. We have to constantly repave them with bitumen, much of which we now get out of the tar sands out west so it's terrible for the environment. Trains are much simpler in terms of construction, operation and maintenance.

[danbrotherston]

Well yeah, I think that's kind of implicit in what I'm saying. The corollary is true too, though, zoning for higher density without providing good alternatives to cars isn't going to result in higher densities and lower car use since housing sales is market-driven. In other words, it is chicken and egg.

Actually, zoning for higher density will provide higher density housing, what it will not do is reduce car usage...the end result is LA...which is famous for bad congestion.

[ac3r]

And how do I know such a thing to be true? We build the LRT in the city without first changing zoning. We are now retroactively fixing zoning in a lot of places.

That's one thing I never understood. The region/cities wanted to seize on the potential of transit-oriented development because it works well but then they went about it such a bizarre backwards manner by building a transit system first and are now just doing this weird patchwork of rezoning as new developers move in with projects. The smart thing to do, when they initially planned for rapid transit, would be to also tackle the problems with zoning first. The City of Kitchener developed its PARTs/planning around rapid transit plan which was good, but they never considered preemptively rezoning things so the transformation of the city could evolve more rapidly once the transit was operational.

I suppose, perhaps, one reason it is like this is because of our weird municipal politics. Everyone seems to hate the idea of amalgamation, but in cases like this it makes things easier to accomplish if you're one large entity. Instead, we have a regional government, followed by 3 separate city governments despite the 3 cities being physically one, indistinct metro area followed by a bunch of different township governments. It becomes challenging to agree on things and get things done. Single-tier municipalities can be a lot easier to manage in comparison. I mean, Toronto City Council has 26 members that govern the largest city in the country. All together, Waterloo Region has I believe 47 members. That's a hell of a lot of voices for such a small place.

[danbrotherston]

And how do I know such a thing to be true? We build the LRT in the city without first changing zoning. We are now retroactively fixing zoning in a lot of places.

That's one thing I never understood. The region/cities wanted to seize on the potential of transit-oriented development because it works well but then they went about it such a bizarre backwards manner by building a transit system first and are now just doing this weird patchwork of rezoning as new developers move in with projects. The smart thing to do, when they initially planned for rapid transit, would be to also tackle the problems with zoning first. The City of Kitchener developed its PARTs/planning around rapid transit plan which was good, but they never considered preemptively rezoning things so the transformation of the city could evolve more rapidly once the transit was operational.

I suppose, perhaps, one reason it is like this is because of our weird municipal politics. Everyone seems to hate the idea of amalgamation, but in cases like this it makes things easier to accomplish if you're one large entity. Instead, we have a regional government, followed by 3 separate city governments despite the 3 cities being physically one, indistinct metro area followed by a bunch of different township governments. It becomes challenging to agree on things and get things done. Single-tier municipalities can be a lot easier to manage in comparison. I mean, Toronto City Council has 26 members that govern the largest city in the country. All together, Waterloo Region has I believe 47 members. That's a hell of a lot of voices for such a small place.

I don't think "everyone" hates amalgamation. In fact, I hear a lot of people (including here) support amalgamation.

But I strongly disagree that a "larger" organization is easier to manage. Scale is in fact one of the hardest problems in human history to solve. Toronto's 26 members (which by the way was undemocratically cut by half in the last municipal election by our anti-democractic premier) is a great example of why this would be bad. Toronto is perhaps not the poster child, but a poster child of bad governance.

More voices is almost always better, and I haven't really seen the multiple tiers of government being a significant obstacle to the LRT, not like it has been problematic in other ways.

The NIMBYism we see happening re LRT station planning is happening at both a city and a regional level, and planning a geographic area like a station area is something which doesn't actually scale well, because local context should matter.

[ijmorlan]

"all interurban transport to road-based vehicles"...yeah, I'm not doing that at all obviously there should be a train to Toronto, in fact, we already have an (admittedly poor and underinvested in) train doing that already.

The problem is not the mode, but our development patterns. Students aren't going to live in Elmira without a car not just because they can't get to campus, but because they cannot get to a hundred other services, and because few communities are even built walkable. Just building a train isn't going to change any of that.

I'm all for developing transit focused walkable communities. I'd love to see the planned Breslau station be surrounded by a dense complete urban community rather than a sea of parking. But given that we won't even do that in a greenfield situation, we are not going to change our development patterns sufficiently in a situation faced by NIMBYs to justify it.

I just see other options as more realistic.

Sorry, you’re right, I shouldn’t have suggested you (of all people) were ceding all interurban transport to roads.

I think I agree with all your points above. In this particular case I think maybe I chose to express a more idealistic viewpoint than what you were saying. Still hoping for a world where some of the ideas we discuss in this forum are more politically realistic.

[danbrotherston]

"all interurban transport to road-based vehicles"...yeah, I'm not doing that at all obviously there should be a train to Toronto, in fact, we already have an (admittedly poor and underinvested in) train doing that already.

The problem is not the mode, but our development patterns. Students aren't going to live in Elmira without a car not just because they can't get to campus, but because they cannot get to a hundred other services, and because few communities are even built walkable. Just building a train isn't going to change any of that.

I'm all for developing transit focused walkable communities. I'd love to see the planned Breslau station be surrounded by a dense complete urban community rather than a sea of parking. But given that we won't even do that in a greenfield situation, we are not going to change our development patterns sufficiently in a situation faced by NIMBYs to justify it.

I just see other options as more realistic.

Sorry, you’re right, I shouldn’t have suggested you (of all people) were ceding all interurban transport to roads.

I think I agree with all your points above. In this particular case I think maybe I chose to express a more idealistic viewpoint than what you were saying. Still hoping for a world where some of the ideas we discuss in this forum are more politically realistic.

Lol...fair point...and I want idealism... I swerve wildly between idealism and cynicism on weekly basis.

But I also think that a dose of realism can help idealism.

Like if driving became 3-4 times as expensive, and we also invested in excellent cycling infra (including parking) and a frequent bus from Elmira to Northfield station (maybe even with some BRT light features) how much ridership could we drive there. I see that as a fairly realistic prospect.

But I'm still pulled back by the reality that even such an investment as that is down the list from a hundred other investments in and around the city that we can do.

I also see a risk in an Elmira investment in that we encourage additional sprawl in the suburban towns because we haven't fixed our development patterns.

FWIW...I think the most meaningful interregional transit connection that we should make right now is Guelph<->KW.  It is something we could do literally next week with buses, and then use it as an argument for improving rail connections sooner than later. But it's absolutely less transformative and aspirational than any of the Elmira ideas we've discussed...I mean, its the most meaningful in part because it would be an immediate success with almost zero changes to anything else.

[Bytor]

Hyperbole? Almost all existing student housing is within a 20 minute walk, and with the majority being less than 10 minutes from UW. When you include Laurier and Conestoga College the percentage of student oriented housing within 10 minute walk of a post secondary campus is probably >90%.

Elmira on the other hand, minimum travel time, by car, speeding straight down 85 from the south end of Elmira is already 15 minutes. No LRT is going to come close to being faster than walking from almost all student housing.

S Field Dr. in Elmira, at the tracks, to UW station is about 13km along the tracks, or 10 minutes at 80km/h.

So with the right LRT service, I think that compares pretty favourably to a lot of existing student commutes.

That being said, not every building could be literally on the station, and realistically if we ever get LRT to Elmira it would probably poke along at 70km/h, and depending on how many stops there are the real speed would be way below my 80km/h, and so on, but to just cede all interurban transport to road-based vehicles is in my opinion unambitious, especially in the medium to long term.

What you're describing is more of a RER/commuter rail service than an LRT.

80km/hr is pretty much max rated speed for most LRT-grade vehicles out there, so the average speed when including stops is *always* going to be less than that. The rule of thumb is that your average speed will be 80% of the maximum speed, assuming all segments have a geometry that lets the trains run at the same maximum. That means service out to Elmira, *if* the trams could go 80km/h between stations, would be at an average of 64km/h tops.

Better to buy all the GEXR/CP tracks down to Galt and the yard at Samuelson, make sure there's double tracks from Elmira to Galt, and run a heavy rail RER/commuter service that stops at Galt, Preston, Block Line, Downtown, Uptown, St Jacobs, and Elmira. With eyes on extending to Paris and Brantford, eventually, by rebuilding along the rail trail. (Yes, that can be done and still preserve the trail.)

[ijmorlan]

What you're describing is more of a RER/commuter rail service than an LRT.

I’m thinking back to the old interurbans, which were effectively streetcar lines that extended out into the country. The idea is that we don’t necessarily need the huge volumes required to justify a full sized GO train. On the other hand, those interurbans were built when the roads were terrible; it may be that what makes sense in the modern context is buses, not long LRT lines.

[nms]

Here are a few (very much tongue-in-cheek) suggestions:
- Convince CN and CP to get back into the passenger service game (that would take a lot of subsidies)
- or nationalize the entire rail network and rent the tracks slots back to CN & CP (much the same way that some rail systems are run in Europe)
- Connect Ayr to Cambridge with a DMU service that runs from Woodstock to London (because the CPR will support that)
- Connect Stratford to Guelph with a DMU service that includes either flag stop stops or proper stations at every village or settlement in between
- slowly resurrect the old Grand River Railway system to connect everything from Elmira to Brantford
- make sure that every former village along the rights-of-way has the option for a flag stop.

Railway building in the 19th century attracted the same kind of venture capital that tech start-ups do today. Unfortunately, it lead to a lot of over building before Southern Ontario really had a population density to support passenger rail. Once the lumber was cleared out of southern Ontario, private railways (and later just CN and CP) had little to justify maintaining their railway networks. Interestingly, after several decades of shedding branch lines, the big two have become interested in them again but who knows how long that will last.

[Bytor]

What you're describing is more of a RER/commuter rail service than an LRT.

I’m thinking back to the old interurbans, which were effectively streetcar lines that extended out into the country. The idea is that we don’t necessarily need the huge volumes required to justify a full sized GO train. On the other hand, those interurbans were built when the roads were terrible; it may be that what makes sense in the modern context is buses, not long LRT lines.

I really wish that the RoW would change GRT's focus from only K/W/C to *all* the *designated* urban areas in Waterloo, of which would include Elmira, St. Jacobs, Wellesley, Baden, New Hamburg, and Ayr, and then require 15 minute head way express busses between them and the cities.