GO Transit

[ac3r]

It's definitely going to fail. Whoever it was at Metrolinx, sitting around a board meeting table, that said "yeah, this could be a great success, let's try it out" needs to be fired. Metrolinx is not always bad, but they sure as hell make a lot of questionable decisions.

[taylortbb]

It's definitely going to fail. Whoever it was at Metrolinx, sitting around a board meeting table, that said "yeah, this could be a great success, let's try it out" needs to be fired. Metrolinx is not always bad, but they sure as hell make a lot of questionable decisions.

The rationale I can see for this is that it's a precursor to buying the rest of the CN north mainline. The first service to Kitchener was really painfully slow, awkwardly timed, and only 2 trains/day. Current service isn't great, but it's definitely better than it was.

If Metrolinx bought the tracks from Kitchener to London, and brought them up to the standard they're currently doing for Kitchener to Georgetown, it could be a good service. The north mainline isn't any longer, just slower due to poor track quality, but it hits a number of larger population centres the Via service on the south mainline doesn't.

[danbrotherston]

It's definitely going to fail. Whoever it was at Metrolinx, sitting around a board meeting table, that said "yeah, this could be a great success, let's try it out" needs to be fired. Metrolinx is not always bad, but they sure as hell make a lot of questionable decisions.

The rationale I can see for this is that it's a precursor to buying the rest of the CN north mainline. The first service to Kitchener was really painfully slow, awkwardly timed, and only 2 trains/day. Current service isn't great, but it's definitely better than it was.

If Metrolinx bought the tracks from Kitchener to London, and brought them up to the standard they're currently doing for Kitchener to Georgetown, it could be a good service. The north mainline isn't any longer, just slower due to poor track quality, but it hits a number of larger population centres the Via service on the south mainline doesn't.

The the south line hits more population, North line hits Stratford (50k), KW (500k), Guelph (100k), Georgetown (50k), Brampton (600k), but the south line hits Woodstock (50k), Brantford (100k), Oakville (200k), Mississauga (800k), Hamilton (600k), Burlington (200k).

The problem with London is not that there isn't an opportunity to improve service, it's that the service proposed is significantly worse than existing options, and doesn't really make sense for anyone--even someone without a car.

[Bytor]

[Bytor]

Timing it for the London→Toronto commuters is ridiculous, though. Instead of making it an extension to the 7:32am trip from Kitchener, make it part of the 8:39am and they'd get more riders, I bet.

[jamincan]

I think part of the rationale for the scheduling is to space the trips from the current Via train.

[tomh009]

Timing it for the London→Toronto commuters is ridiculous, though. Instead of making it an extension to the 7:32am trip from Kitchener, make it part of the 8:39am and they'd get more riders, I bet.

Yes. Not only is the planned morning trip very early, but doing the return trip implies a 10h work day, which most people will not be keen on.

[ac3r]

The the south line hits more population, North line hits Stratford (50k), KW (500k), Guelph (100k), Georgetown (50k), Brampton (600k), but the south line hits Woodstock (50k), Brantford (100k), Oakville (200k), Mississauga (800k), Hamilton (600k), Burlington (200k).

FWIW, we're not at 500'000 people. The Region of Waterloo officially records our population as 630'000, which is visible on most Welcome To... signs around our periphery. I wouldn't doubt if it's even higher than that now since those were updated in 2019 if I recall.

[danbrotherston]

The the south line hits more population, North line hits Stratford (50k), KW (500k), Guelph (100k), Georgetown (50k), Brampton (600k), but the south line hits Woodstock (50k), Brantford (100k), Oakville (200k), Mississauga (800k), Hamilton (600k), Burlington (200k).

FWIW, we're not at 500'000 people. The Region of Waterloo officially records our population as 630'000, which is visible on most Welcome To... signs around our periphery. I wouldn't doubt if it's even higher than that now since those were updated in 2019 if I recall.

The region is 630k, but our urban population is closer to 500k, given that the other cites I listed weren't metro area populations, I think that makes it a more accurate comparison.

But it doesn't change the point anyway.

[tomh009]

The key question, though, regardless of the population, is where would London residents want to take a train to, and how often? Are there people in London commuting (near/daily) to Hamilton, Burlington or Oakville? Or would Kitchener be a more popular option?

The population figures will not be the whole story, as I don't expect a London-Brampton trip, for example, to attract a lot of pax in spite of Brampton's large population.

I should hope that GO has done their market research to determine where people would want to get to (from London) but I have no actual data.

[danbrotherston]

The key question, though, regardless of the population, is where would London residents want to take a train to, and how often? Are there people in London commuting (near/daily) to Hamilton, Burlington or Oakville? Or would Kitchener be a more popular option?

The population figures will not be the whole story, as I don't expect a London-Brampton trip, for example, to attract a lot of pax in spite of Brampton's large population.

I should hope that GO has done their market research to determine where people would want to get to (from London) but I have no actual data.

I do not get the sense this decision is based in market research.

[tomh009]

The key question, though, regardless of the population, is where would London residents want to take a train to, and how often? Are there people in London commuting (near/daily) to Hamilton, Burlington or Oakville? Or would Kitchener be a more popular option?

The population figures will not be the whole story, as I don't expect a London-Brampton trip, for example, to attract a lot of pax in spite of Brampton's large population.

I should hope that GO has done their market research to determine where people would want to get to (from London) but I have no actual data.

I do not get the sense this decision is based in market research.

Or the selection of the route was based on market research -- and then they ignored the research when they set the schedule.

[nms]

Why not take a different approach? If Metrolinx is expecting a negligible number of passengers to travel west of Kitchener, it shouldn't be too hard to double the expected number.  
1. Find a friend with a car. Have them drive to Stratford while four others take the train there. Even better, find a friend with a school bus license and do the same thing.
2. Talk to the people at the Stratford Festival.  Could you arrange for Festival goers to take the train west to catch a show, and then the Festival buses them home? (they already do this for audience members from Toronto).
3. Take a trip to London on Friday evening, stay the weekend, and return Monday morning.

Yes, it's less than ideal for now, but with some creative activism, it could confuse the Metrolinx data!

[ijmorlan]

Kitchener→Union Station is finally competitive time-wise after the recent minimal upgrade work (1:41 station to station, vs ~1:50 driving), it's just not convenient in terms of scheduling. However, track work can still be done K→U as the best possible time for an all-stops run with Class 3 tracks and 2 minute dwells is ~1:27. Inwards past Mount Pleasant the stations are too close together for trains to go any faster, but Class 5 tracks would shorten up K→MP times and the complete all-stops run would be ~1:16, making it competitive with cars outside of rush hour as well.

A K→U express (skipping everything between Mount Pleasant and Union), at Class 6 speeds would take roughly 59 minutes.

If there's interest, I could produce similar stats for L→K.

Thanks for working this out. It’s really amazing how much improvement would be possible with changes that would be much less expensive than building HSR.

[danbrotherston]

Kitchener→Union Station is finally competitive time-wise after the recent minimal upgrade work (1:41 station to station, vs ~1:50 driving), it's just not convenient in terms of scheduling. However, track work can still be done K→U as the best possible time for an all-stops run with Class 3 tracks and 2 minute dwells is ~1:27. Inwards past Mount Pleasant the stations are too close together for trains to go any faster, but Class 5 tracks would shorten up K→MP times and the complete all-stops run would be ~1:16, making it competitive with cars outside of rush hour as well.

A K→U express (skipping everything between Mount Pleasant and Union), at Class 6 speeds would take roughly 59 minutes.

If there's interest, I could produce similar stats for L→K.

Thanks for working this out. It’s really amazing how much improvement would be possible with changes that would be much less expensive than building HSR.

Is it? Or is this even different from HSR? The main reason for a new alignment for HSR would be to increase turn radii or eliminate turns altogether, which you'd have to do to achieve class 6 speeds anyway. I don't think this is likely to be cheaper or even meaningfully different from the HSR proposal from KW->T which significantly involved using the original tracks and rerouting around a few places which had constrained turns for high speed.