Grand River Transit

[coriander]

This is actually huge news! Surprised more people aren't talking about this. This is a necessary step in getting 2WAD service to Guelph and KW, I suspect this will result in 15-20min service levels once constructed.  Although, this fly over will probably take 3-5 years to design and build unfortunately.  I suspect since they had to expropriate the land they were hoping to have this done sooner, but now is better than never. 

If we could get an announcement about the Provinces commitment to HWY 7 and the Breslau GO this could easily be the biggest week in News for the Region haha

I agree this news is good, and that it moves forward 2WAD GO to the region.

What I disagree with is the suggested frequencies.

We've seen nothing anywhere at all that would suggest 30 minute service all day...

And 15-20 minute service is 100% impossible on the line without significant extra work with Metrolinx has explicitly stated that it won't do. They are not twinning the line, which would be necessary for reliable 15 minute service, instead they are going with the cheaper option of building bypass tracks that can enable hourly (and maybe half hourly in the best case) service.

And honestly, I think that's really fine, hourly service with a half hourly peak service would be absolutely game changing, and probably more than enough service that it makes sense to make other improvements (e.g., faster trains) the new low hanging fruit.

OK, you're right. I had misremembered some things. The PDBC doesn't even have 2tph in both directions even at peak hour. I guess it makes sense, with passing tracks only at 10-15 minute intervals. At the same time, with some more passing loops, good scheduling discipline, and probably better train performance (our giant loco-hauled trains are truly sluggish), I think a lot more service could be extracted out of the one track. Railways abroad tend to be more conservative on infrastructure demands for the same level of service compared to America, it seems. For the future, it doesn't seem outrageous to imagine a mostly double-tracked line with several bottlenecks in the future; capacity of the corridor definitely has room to grow.

To be honest, I got bamboozled by the Government's advertisements talking about 15 minute service to Kitchener, as well as the whole 30 minute 2WAD regional campaigning.