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692 Confederation GO Opens in Hamilton
It’s been four years since Metrolinx opened its last station, Bloomington, in York Region. It was in many ways the grand crescendo to end an era at GO transit: an enormous, multilevel structure mostly dedicated to car parking, served by just a handful of rush hour trains and a few buses each day. The ultimate expression of a wasteful 9-5 commute, car-centric public transport model.
By comparison, Confederation GO — a station that seems like it has been used for half a dozen ribbon cuttings at this point — which will start seeing train service at the end of the month, and which has already had bus service for over half a decade, feels incredibly sensible. The station is low-slung, and while it does have parking, it’s a modest (by GO standards) surface lot, which could be easily turned into dense mixed-use development and a more substantial bus terminal in the future. The station is rather no frills compared to facilities closer to the centre of Toronto, such as new Stouffville line stations, with a canopy, but one which does not extend the full length of the single island platform (albeit with only one track – for now), and an entrance down to the west side of Centennial Parkway, the major arterial road the station is located at, but no fancy pedestrian bridges or bus platforms. Oddly, no expense was spared … on light standards. That being said, no frills is not bad: Toronto has a real problem with infrastructure costs, and while many new GO stations are nice, it probably is better for transit, and for landing future investment (which could be used to upgrade stations) to have two “ok” stations, rather than one stunner. Not literally cementing in huge amounts of car parking should also hopefully create more of an incentive to improve feeder bus connections, which are the type of things that would especially make sense at a station like Confederation, which has a lot of residential development near it, but which is presently surrounded by big box retail and industrial uses (which probably will be redeveloped in the future as transit-oriented development).
In the short term, the station won’t be getting all that much service, with the handful of daily Niagara trips every day also stopping at Confederation in addition to West Harbour Station. It is worth noting that these trips are slightly faster than they used to be, thanks to track work at West Harbour station that lets trains continue through the station to Niagara; there are also plans in the near term to add one additional round trip on weekends, and given how busy the Niagara trains are, I wouldn’t be surprised to see even more added service in the future. That being said, it’s a bit disappointing that only Niagara trains will serve this station, as previous rumors had suggested the station might be served by some or all of the hourly trains serving West Harbour. Still, the way the station is set up, a second track could be added, and a very high frequency of service should be possible in the future, with trains every half hour definitely foreseeable. If that were to happen, the station would end up being more like many other current Lakeshore East stations that have historically seen bidirectional half hourly train service throughout much of the week.
At the same time, both the government’s interest in growing Niagara as a tourist destination and broader tourism region (something that is actually happening, the region boasts what has been called Canada’s best restaurant: https://restaurantpearlmorissette.com/) and that real aforementioned demand for additional train service to Niagara Falls make it seem likely that additional trains stopping at Confederation is likely over the years, even if its fate is tied to Niagara rather than Hamilton for the foreseeable future. This also probably paints a good picture of what service to both the future Beamsville and Grimsby stations will look like in the future.
This does leave Confederation in an odd place at the moment; the station is obviously mostly not going to be used for people travelling to Niagara who could often fairly easily drive and are unlikely to want to use just a small number of train trips to go a relatively short distance, but the trips the station will serve are very much oriented around travelling there. At the same time, the current Niagara schedule isn’t well suited to commuters heading from Confederation to downtown Toronto since these are not extended West Harbour trips, but Niagara trips with an extra stop, making the current service unlikely to be really ideal for anyone. This is compounded by the fact that the trips are not particularly fast. Another potential market for this station, and one I personally find quite interesting is for commuters from Niagara and St Catharines to Hamilton, in particular McMaster University, however the schedule is perhaps even more poorly set up for these folks, with a train probably getting you into town well before eight and requiring a very early wakeup, when the travel time should allow a departure from Niagara or St Catharines around that time to still arrive in Hamilton before nine.
Of course, the discussion of the future of Hamilton transit isn’t complete without mentioning that after over a decade of talk, the Hamilton LRT, an east-west tramway through the city, is finally taking steps forward. The line is meant to be virtually all on the surface (save for an underpass needed to cross a freight railway), and will likely be smaller scale than the Finch West or Hurontario LRT projects, more similar to the existing ION system in Kitchener Waterloo. The project is relevant to the topic of Confederation in particular because its eastern terminus at Eastgate mall — along Centennial Parkway — is just a stones throw (1.5 kilometres) away from Confederation; in fact, it’s a little disappointing the line isn’t just being extended there now because that seems inevitable in the future, and because unlike the ION, Hamilton’s LRT won’t directly connect to any of the city’s now three GO stations. Had that connection been made, then eventually additional services from Niagara and St. Catharines could connect passengers directly onto light rail to downtown as well as McMaster University and sports at Hamilton stadium.
Suffice to say, Confederation is a mixed bag: while service isn’t going to be great from day one, and some decisions, like not having a second track for now, and not connecting the Hamilton LRT just another kilometre and a half to this station feel shortsighted and likely to be expensive fixes down the road, the station will further expand the GO network into a system that isn’t solely oriented around 9-5 downtown Toronto commuters. At the same time, the more modest design of the station signals a version of GO transit that can experiment more with new stations and services without building grand concrete cathedrals, and that’s probably a very good thing.
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Reece Martin is a well-known advocate for good transit, worldwide. He is based in Toronto and blogs at nextmetro.substack.
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UrbanToronto will continue to follow progress on this development, but in the meantime, you can learn more about it from our Database file, linked below. If you’d like, you can join in on the conversation in the associated Line 5 and Line 6 Forum threads, or leave a comment in the space provided on this page.
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UrbanToronto has a research service, UTPro, that provides comprehensive data on development projects in the Greater Golden Horseshoe — from proposal through to completion. We also offer Instant Reports, downloadable snapshots based on location, and a daily subscription newsletter, New Development Insider, that tracks projects from initial application.
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