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650 Metrolinx Sheds Light on GO Corridor Transformations
Metrolinx has long been criticized for its opaqueness, particularly as it relates to plans around improvements to GO transit rail services, but as part of a recent series of updates, Metrolinx has released what may be the clearest outline of its plans for the core frequent GO services, and how it plans to take us there from today’s hodgepodge of under construction infrastructure, antiquated assets, and coming future-ready technologies. Some might even say Christmas has come early this year. In this post, I hope to break down this latest graphic, below, discuss its implications, and also make some forward looking predictions about where things will go in the future.
Many transit-watchers (myself among them) were very disappointed about the not so subtle break up of Metrolinx and OnXpress operations earlier this year. However, what’s remained true is that plans and projects to transform and modernize the GO system are moving ahead — including with other “OnXpresses”, notably the construction teams which formed a separate organization under that confusing banner. This recent Metrolinx document doesn’t feature actual timelines, and has some confusing elements, but for the first time in a long time we actually know what the service goals we’re headed for look like, how we plan to meet them, and what checkpoints we need to pass along the way.
The first thing we need to say up front is that this isn’t a detailed construction document — some important details seem to be missing, but in broad strokes there’s a lot here. The doc is broken down into five columns reflecting the five corridors where frequent service is envisioned and where Metrolinx has majority ownership. That’s notable because while Metrolinx owns a good chunk of the Richmond Hill line, it doesn’t seem to have short term plans to run frequent service, and while Metrolinx would like frequent service on the Milton line, it belongs to CP railway. It should give people some hope that recently released Ministry of Transportation documents do talk about frequent service on these corridors, as well as significant other rail expansion. However, since those are longer-term projects, it makes sense that they aren’t included here, since while specific timelines aren’t provided; it seems reasonable to expect almost everything on here to happen in the next 5-10 years, maybe 15 if we’re being… realistic. But while that might sound like a long time, what we will get in that time period is still more or less going to look like what we’ve long been promised — frequent bidirectional train services in core urban parts of the region, and less frequent but still bidirectional service to regional centres.
Diving into the document, one shortfall — and there aren’t that many, is that the through-service orientation still isn’t really here — the Lakeshore line is combined in practice already, and the Kitchener and Stouffville lines also will be for the majority of service. This might sound like nitpicking, but it really is important that Metrolinx sees these as two cross-city lines; they still don’t brand them as such or even seem to see it that way in internal documents, but a huge part of the power of GO as a regional network that isn’t just oriented around commuter travel to the downtown core, is the ability to zip from Brampton to Scarborough, and from the Danforth to Port Credit without changing trains. Even just widening out the headings in this document could have made it clear that that’s what we’re building toward.
With that out of the way, let’s dive into the planned upgrades, and the service level they’ll get us to.
Lakeshore
For the Lakeshore line, we can see that most of the infrastructure for 15-minute service is already there — I mean after all, we did have 15-minute off-peak service on Lakeshore East and West, and so work is really oriented around upgrading stations, and doing grade separations, and then levelling up the trains and infrastructure to make that service level more sustainable, while also offering even more service during peak periods.
What does that look like? There should be a number of station upgrades for capacity and accessibility, probably already necessary as many of the older stations are showing their age with small platforms and limited circulation space. It’s also sort of funny how upgraded stations on the Kitchener and Stouffville lines like Weston and Agincourt are more modern facilities than stations like Oakville or Port Credit despite long having worse service. These works should right that. Upgrades aren’t just for passenger facilities though: new layover space should make running and crewing a high-frequency service more efficient and less costly as well.
Perhaps the most exciting work for many will be electrification, the foundations for which from grounding structures to upgrading bridges to increasing clearance have been slowly coming together over the years, and for which more and more direct preparatory work like substations and adjustments to bridges are coming together. We are getting closer and closer to the point where poles and wires are all that’s left. However, the document also makes clear something which Metrolinx still hasn’t — this won’t be traditional electrification, because in what will certainly be the first phase on the Lakeshore line, electrification extends from Burlington and Oshawa not to Union, but to the Union Station Rail Corridor at the rough edges of Downtown. Historically this would have been a real killjoy, but the deployment of battery trains into serious service in places like Germany with operator NAH, and soon in Dublin on their DART regional train system, means that instead, the network core with its numerous bridges, and the old Bush trainshed at Union, can remain unelectrified while service easily operates over these few central kilometres on battery. Since these new trains will almost certainly be electric multiple units, Metrolinx is also projecting roughly 30% faster service, likely from some higher speeds in some locations, but mostly from much faster acceleration away from stops, which is sluggish with current diesel trains.
While it’s obvious that overhead wires should eventually run through the core of Canada’s largest city, as they do in every other major developed city in the world, this does helpfully decouple electrification from potentially complex and delay-prone works in the densest parts of the country. Wiring up Union station still does need to happen though!
The other good news is that ETCS (the European Train Control System) is here to stay. This will be one of the first major deployments of ETCS in the Americas (probably before even the US), and it will provide the capability to take train frequencies to metro levels, as well as enable automatic train operation and automatic platform screen door alignment in the long term. The US northeast corridor does have a system with some of the same capabilities, but ETCS is globally-standard, used in Europe, China, India, Australia, and more, and with many companies providing modern and interoperable equipment for it. The fact that our signalling will be globally standard and not a bespoke North American solution is great, and by removing one person in the cab of every train, it should help GO’s chronic crewing issues, especially as service continues to ramp up. ETCS will be provided by Alstom (although again other companies could be used in the future) as part of the remnants of OnXpress, and testing is actually going to spin up soon for testing on some Metrolinx-owned sections of the relatively low-traffic Richmond Hill line. While it’s got very little attention historically, this technology is a real revolution, enhancing safety, enabling extremely high frequencies, enabling reducing staffing requirements to enable more service, and creating the platform for all kinds of other modern features.
The combination of electrification and ETCS will mean off-peak headways see trains coming at least every 15 minutes, and during peak periods (and presumably other high demand periods like events) trains will run every 7 and a half.
There is unfortunately also some bad news though; despite the major efforts to extend service to Hamilton with West Harbour and Confederation stations, the long-term planned off-peak frequency even for just West Harbour is no better than the hourly service it’s already had for a few years, despite clear and growing demand and the substantial station facility. Demand for West Harbour service would likely be even higher if not for travel times actually being slower on the train than on the fastest buses, something which might be rectified given the aforementioned electrification-related speed improvements. At the same time, service on the brand new Bowmanville extension being built at great expense and with several new stations, will also be limited to just hourly service off peak.
Perhaps on a more positive note, Metrolinx’ use of battery trains might actually enable electric service to extend beyond corridors which it exercises total control over. For example, it seems entirely feasible for an hourly battery service to run the entire length of the Lakeshore line from Bowmanville to Confederation. The upshot of this is better frequencies and service on the inner portions of the Lakeshore route, since less lower performance diesel trains need to be in the mix, even if they will probably still be required for some time for trips to Niagara Falls.
Kitchener-Stouffville
For the Kitchener and Stouffville lines, there is also a lot here. In some ways you might look at the corridor more as the Stouffville line through-running to the UP Express (running on the local Kitchener line tracks despite its name — as confirmed by recent changes to St Clair – Old Weston station), and the regional services to Kitchener, with a few additional trains to Bramalea.
The good news is that plans around higher frequency train service to Pearson Airport seem to have solidified, with electric trains running every seven and a half minutes — more frequent than the baseline on Lakeshore, because of the limited 90-metre length of Union-Pearson Express (UPX) trains. The new Pearson trains could be of the same design as those used on Lakeshore should the high platform at Pearson be reconfigured by raising the tracks at that station, and by having the Pearson trains use the GO section of platforms at other stations along the line. This would also enable every other Pearson train to continue to the Stouffville line to provide 15-minute service to Unionville.
Other later changes on the Kitchener-Stouffville line are much the same as we will see on Lakeshore, with ETCS and electrification installed. However, it seems that electrification may only be installed on the local tracks of the Kitchener line for the through-running to Stouffville airport services. This might reduce costs, and the line does have a significant section where operating alongside CN from Brampton to Georgetown might interfere with overhead wires, but you’d think electrification with battery trains would be perfect here, since overhead lines could be installed on the Metrolinx owned trackage through Guelph and Kitchener as an “island”. By comparison on the Stouffville line, electrification will extend right to the end of the line (as has been on-and-off planned over the years), meaning that a mixed fleet won’t be needed on this route in the long term.
Nonetheless, this is clearly subject to change, and an issue that may be realities down the road. The Kitchener and Stouffville works don’t mention some projects which we know and expect to happen, like more layover space, which probably just accurately reflects that plans for this corridor are less developed; indeed, most of the projects mentioned are just additional tracks. It’s been pretty clear for quite some time that a phased approach of modernizing lines and improving service will likely be taken as it has been historically, because you can’t manage all the construction and transformation of every line simultaneously; It seems we can probably expect that as electrification takes place on the Lakeshore line, diesel trains freed up from it will then be used to enhance service on other lines, and learnings can be taken to make adjustments to future plans.
A positive change is that we actually have a solid commitment towards hourly all-day bidirectional service out to Stouffville (which is more than I recall us having before) and to Kitchener, as well as a train every two hours to Old Elm. This comes on top of trains every 15 minutes to Bramalea and Unionville and half-hourly service between the ‘mounts’ (Mount Pleasant and Mount Joy that is). These frequencies are a little less impressive than Lakeshore in the core, but I don’t think they are so poor as to feel like too painful a loss over the even higher frequencies we were promised under the previous plans.
Barrie
The Barrie line is perhaps the most interesting, because it sort of seemed like it might be getting the short end of the stick since services on the line won’t through-operate to another line, and thus there is less of an imperative to increase service and capacity quickly.
Instead, it seems like we will still be getting a fairly frequent service on the core of the line, but with some questionable cutbacks further to the north. The core of the line with the interchanges to subway lines 2, 5, and 1 is still planned to see 15-minute bidirectional off-peak service, but instead of extending to Aurora as long-planned, it will instead end at Maple and not jump across the Greenbelt. Aurora will now get half hourly service, Bradford will be hourly, and Allandale Waterfront in Barrie every two hours. Like on other lines, peak service is more frequent right to the end of the line, but to more distant locales like Barrie, Kitchener, Bowmanville, and Hamilton GO seems set to remain a regional train, not REM or BART-style regional rapid transit — at least for now.
What seems clear is that looking forward, station designs and corridor land use should absolutely protect for additional tracks in strategic locations. That means space for passing loops for express services on Barrie in particular given what a long route it is, and that virtually the whole route is double track.
What is clear looking at the diagram, as nice as it is, is the absolutely disorganized way work has been undertaken. Many projects not needed for several years are already complete, while some key showstoppers limit the service that can be operated today. Moreover, there aren’t really any timelines provided: that’s not all bad, the diagram is oriented in a functional way around the service that can be operated when certain work is done, but this doesn’t say when the work will actually be done, or even when Metrolinx would like it to be!
It also feels a bit off to refer to the penultimate state here as the “end” state, since for several corridors that’s only a train every fifteen minutes. Of course this could be seen as a more significant “interim” state, but it’s not clear why it should be anything more than that.
The Future
And that’s where we can step back from the information provided and see what we have and where we might be going. What’s clear is that we’re moving towards having the Kitchener line local service and the core parts of the Lakeshore line all ready for 7.5 minute service, as well as towards 15-minute service on the Stouffville and Barrie lines. What’s not clear is when any of this will actually happen. 15-minute service on the GO network has historically really just required double-tracking (and even that is excessive, for example the Stouffville line should have no issue operating bidirectional 15-minute service even with a single track segment from Kennedy to Scarborough station) and that level of track capacity is not far away on the Kitchener or Stouffville lines, with work on the Barrie line also progressing rapidly.
What’s not clear is why exactly service would only stop at 7.5 or 15 minute frequencies. With ETCS and electric trains, there should be the capacity to run trains every 4-5 minutes which is almost another doubling again in capacity. This is particularly important because trains are already busy today, and as frequency increasingly reaches a turn up and go level, GO will suddenly become the fastest way to get to many places, even with a transfer or two thrown in. For example, the 401 is so congested (and GO is so fast) that it may well make sense during some periods of the day for a rider to take the Kitchener-Stouffville line from Agincourt up near the 401 across the city to Woodbine — also north of the 401 — going all the way Downtown to Union and back up on the way: while we might not be getting the Paris RER, we seem to be getting the London Overground.
What’s obvious is that by the time all of the work described in the documents released is done, more work will be needed. Train frequencies will need to increase, new stations will be needed to take the pressure off of overcrowded hubs, and entire new transit lines may be needed to better connect passengers. There is a lot of transit to be built.
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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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