being used to the RER in Paris, I can say that regional rail that has close stops in the core is amazing. the network has around 30 stations in the actual city. if your comming from far in the suburbs it allows you to get off far closer to your destination, which also spread passengers around the network instead of at one stop, reducing. if your going into the suburbs it mean that it takes less time to reach the RER. And if your going somewhere else in the city it works the same as any metro, just faster, for example taking a 4 stops ride on the RER instead of a 15 stop metro ride. An actual example would be if you arrive in gare du nord on the eurostar from the UK and want to go see the eiffel tower you could take a 40 minute metro trip or instead take a 25 minute regional rail trip. I'm not sure why anyone would complain about making go transit regional, it's already a cool system, why not make it amazing.
@@lik7953 Probably because we're addicted to driving into the city from the suburbs every morning, then driving back home and basically shutting ourselves off from society.
Thanks Reece for a very illuminating video! European experience very much supports your arguments. In particular having city centre stations IN ADDITION TO THE MAIN STATIONS (=Union) takes a lot of pressure off the main stations. This is true of large cities like London, Paris and Vienna, but also of medium cities like Zurich and Malmo. However in Zurich the stations on either side of the Hauptbahnhof (Stadelhofen and Hardbruck were not made large enough!
Ya serisouly, I have been using DORVAL as my MTL departure point on VIA for several years now, and without it would be 60mins wasted time backtracking 2x to go DT. Shoulder/annex/satelliteHUBS are *super* important to HIGH_GRADE regional transit. Going farther out *KIPLING* is a great example of this concept. We must apply this principle on the periphery of CBDs *way* more often.
7:24 Tokyo essentially does that on the Yamanote Line, with large poly centric hubs (similar in size to downtown Toronto) dotted along the line, like Tokyo proper, Shinjuku/Shibuya, Ikebukuro, Shinagawa, Nippori. Osaka does this to a certain extent too with Umeda, Tennoji/Abenobashi, and Namba.
Your theory is correct. However, two caveats: first, the mass of the trains has to be lowered and lines electrified. 2nd: train stations have to be designed for very efficient passing scenarios so that station leap frogging is as safe as possible. Check out the "Japanese" model where lines have a hierarchy of "express" type trains that stop at differing sets of stops. At the top end, have two stop trains. At the bottom, every stop type trains.
In the most German cities it would work so: S-Bahn Train: Average stops every 1,5-4 km, clocking every 15-30 min to destinations 20-30 km from the City center. Regional-Train: Average stops every 3-8 km, clocking every 30-60 min to destinations 30-50 km from the City center. Regional Express Average stops every 8-20 km, clocking every 30-120 min to destinations 40-100 km from the City center. This has the following advantages: - High frequency in the city-Center - slow trains hardly ever have to be overtaken, as they reach their end point before the next fast train catches up with them - suburbanites from has a semi-express service so they wouldn’t lose so much time.
Efficient commuter rail/ S-Bahn definitely needs to be well integrated with other modes of transportation in urban areas. The use gets fairy limited if you are only able to get into the city but not around. Good commuter rail integration can be found at many German S-Bahn systems, at Paris' RER and JR East Lines in Tokyo - e.g. the Yamanote Line
In a city centre, I think ~2-3km stop spacing is optimal. Close enough to increase coverage by a lot, but not enough to make trips too slow, especially with EMUs, which accelerate and decelerate quickly
Ontop of all this, during rush hour there will be express trains that bypass all the new downtown stations. So, if someone really wants to get to Union and is pissed about these new stations, they simply have to catch an express train for their commute, which will probably bypass even more stations in the 905 than it already does.
I think a balance of local and express service is the best thing to do. I particularly love how Helsinki has different services that serve all local stops while having others that serve as express services, skipping some stops. A commuter rail that behaves like a metro system is the best thing to have. Look up Not Just Bikes' coverage of GO Transit, he is spot on to criticize infrequent trains and massive infrastructure for car-dependent transit (cough cough Bloomington GO).
The closest station to Union is 17km away? What? The commuter rail network in my hometown (Kolkata, India) has an average of 2-2.5km for stops in the inner city centre. As you said, the commuter rail is the lifeline for a large part of the economy of Kolkata's suburbs. And yes, EMUs please. Pretty much all commuter rail systems in India use EMUs. The acceleration and deceleration capabilities on those are a marvel. It just baffles me that there's _opposition_ to good transit options.
In London UK, many longer distance commuter and intercity routes have a sizable 'edge city' hub a few miles short of the central area terminus. The most widely known is probably Clapham Junction, where the Brighton line runs parallel with the South Western for a short distance. Train companies eye the interchange traffic enviously, but in the peaks, many fast trains have to miss out these stops due to track capacity constraints. In fact, on the South Western, no fast line trains call at Clapham Junction at all during the peaks, which means a transfer to the Brighton line takes at least 30 minutes extra with a double-back via the Waterloo terminus or swapping to a stopping train at Basingstoke or Woking (where the express serves these, clearly). There have been recent upgrade proposals for Clapham Junction to allow all fast trains to stop, but they always throw up much opposition from those who seem constrained to think that a city the size of a small country must only ever have one station on its longer-distance routes. Shinkansen routes entering Tokyo almost all stop at a secondary hub on the edge of the city which offers a different range of onward connections than those available at the city centre terminus, and this approach is planned for the UKs HS2 project where a new station at Old Oak Common is being built in west London in addition to the more central Euston terminus. Old Oak Common will have a direct connection with the new Crossrail service now known as the Elizabeth Line, and fast airport services to Heathrow, which is to the west of the city so will save going into the centre and back out again.
I wish they would add more intermediate stops on SEPTA's regional rail when it goes through North Philly. Unlike the GO network, the line is 4-tracked so they could make the intermediate stations only for local trains.
Even though I've seen so many episodes where you discuss GO, this is the first time I realized that GO doesn't have throughservice. Why oh why don't they just connect the lines east-west!? Or do they plan to do that? Because it seems utterly ridiculous to terminate the lines at Union station.
Synergy _is_ pretty corporate. LOL Anyway, bring on more stops and more efficient trains! I'd love these lines to become something like a Tsukuba Express, hopefully with at least a fraction of the elevated...ness
Yeah, I only really took the go train when I had to commute from the suburbs into the downtown business core or to a Jays game. I mean, good thing for the underground PATH but If I want to go to Kensington or the Danforth, I'd have to pay 2 different systems. or drive to Finch before commuting down
It's my understand that electrified rail can accelerate and slow down more quickly, so shorter spacing becomes more practical. Short spacing in city center commuter routes is very common around the world. Many German S-Bahn systems have a through-running "trunk" route through the city center, often in a tunnel, and this trunk has stops where all the lines converge, and it effectively creates an ultra high frequency U-Bahn corridor for people that live along that trunk. That said, it's also great for everyone else because if most trips are to the downtown anyway, this doesn't noticeably slow down suburban trips and might speed them up because the extra stops will make it so more destinations can be reached without transfers. The shortest distance between Munich trunk-line (Stammstrecke) S-Bahn stops is around 1/3rd of a kilometer and that seems excessive. Though it's not unreasonable given the context - i.e. the transfers to U-Bahn and tram lines at those stops.
SEPTA trains are also kind of slow going to/from 30th street. It's about 6 mins between 30th and Overbrook and the trains start to speed up/slow down when Chestnut Hill W and Trenton head north after the zoo (maybe closer to when the bridge/tunnel Cynwyd has). At least it after entering the Zoo interlock that it announces 30th street so it's only like a min and half off, maybe 2
Hey terrific video!! Super informative. I really enjoy your presentations in the videos! Functional disconnection on rail lines drives me crazy. Terrific points! And I love your shirt! I did my M.A., and Ph.D. at SFU in psych!!
@@flare2000x sometimes more. My closest Go station is 67km to Union in downtown Toronto and the longest I could travel would be 118km and the longest trip would be 192km
@@PSNDonutDude This made me realise that there is a regional train between Mainz and Cologne in Germany which is at least 151,62 kilometres in distance (areal distance between Mainz and Bingen and Bingen and Cologne).
I feel like regional rail acting like metro systems, similar to RER in Paris, Sydney Trains in Sydney, Australia, or even SEPTA Regional Rail in Philadelphia, are great examples of improving regional rail services. I often used to think about standard commuter rail systems being replaced with faster, more frequent, and electrified rapid transit like services would really make a significant impact on service and ridership. I am assuming Toronto's GO Transit system becoming like an S-Bahn system is similar to that of Montreal's new REM service, which will start operations next calendar year? I totally enjoy services like that a lot, I think that is important for cities to improve their regional rail systems.
It may reduce the traffic not only for Downtown but also the nearby cities, the downside is they need a good connection with local public transit. I took GO train from Rouge Hill to Union before, it at least 2 times faster than TTC Express
Definitely think that North American regional rail could learn a lot from Australia and New Zealand, where we have closer spacing, especially near the city centre and frequencies that more closely match metros. The systems in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and soon to be Auckland could all easily be described as S-Bahn / S-Train like
Would an alternate subwayesque backbone on the electrified sections really be a bad thing? As someone at the outer end of the Kitchener line I wouldn't be too put out to have to switch at Malton or Brampton to a faster, more frequent service for the 2nd half of my journey. Would there be a case to be made fore splitting electrified and diesel runs as part of GO development?
If transit doesn't stop for the holidays, transit videos shouldn't either! Anyways, happy holidays and thanks for another great video! Now to take the transit to my family's place.
This station spacing really is much too wide. Just as a comparison, Munich has Pasing and Ostbahnhof as additional stop’s for commuter and long distance trains 4 and 8km away from the main station. Most of these lines terminate at main station. The S-Bahn runs through and stops 10 times between those stations, so about every 1km. Essentially the regional trains act as express services, while the S-Bahn connects much more different parts of the city and provides a much higher frequency (~every minute on this corridor). Having every regional train stop at all stations wouldn’t make sense, because the frequency is already super high. But having those additional stations where almost everything stops means fever people clogging up main station and shorter trip times for people getting off there.
I think York U's Keele Campus is the largest in the country. U of T has the highest enrollment but almost half of that is at the Mississauga and Scarborough campuses. St. George is only around 35 000.
It’s a good point. For a lot of 905 commuters coming from the West, I reckon Spadina station will likely become the main point of arrival/departure - for at least 25% of trips going to Union now. Thats assuming LW / MI / KI stop there too, of course. And yes, it will be a great new station for folks living within the km radius of the station.
I live in Kitchener, and many people drive to Toronto because the train really only stops at Union, so if you are going somewhere other than downtown it isn't useful. More stops with connections to subway or LRT lines could help that. (More frequency and two-way, all-day service would also help.) Also, some people from the burbs will be getting off at those stops, freeing up space for new people boarding at close-in stations.
easy and cheap way to improve ridership, not sure if this is possible but you can potentially even skip stations that do not have any waiting passengers(sensors and on train stop buttons maybe)
Your points are right on Reece. My only caveat would be that GO needs to also redouble their efforts to also invest in the outer regions and to get projects up and running more quickly. Durham sits and waits for a BRT (almost 2 years of consultation?) and worse for a Bowmanville extension that was promised 11 years ago, but still is in the design phase. While outer regions struggle to fund basic routes and continue to wait for even the beginning of modern transit alternatives, GO may risk regions saying no to integration and co-planning and instead building their own non coordinated alternatives (Waterloo?) if they are perceived to be treated as second class riders whose main purpose is to fund projects in Toronto.
Another major advantage of additional stops in the city proper for commuter rail is the additional connections allowing city residents to get to jobs in the suburbs. Here in Chicago, there is a sizeable reverse commute flow to the suburbs. While I can appreciate a suburbanite thinking that addl stops only makes their commute longer, I must say that the commuter rail service isn't solely for the benefit of the suburbanite to use. I shouldn't need to mention that because the central city has so many employment zones, add'l stops will probably serve many suburbanites themselves by stopping closer to their ultimate destination or to a better subway connection that shortens their commute by not having to double back from Union station. By having so few stops in the city proper, you're making a city resident's commute that much longer if they have to travel longer to get to the commuter rail station or go all the way to a downtown station to make the connection before heading out to the suburbs. It's a two-way street and suburbanites just have to realize that that's the cost of living in a big city or its environs. Every city that has well placed inner city stops on its commuter rail system is that much stronger for it. The benefits to the region as a whole far outweigh the relatively little additional time some may have to be on the train.
Feels weird as hell to me living in Melbourne. The inner suburban stops here are 1-2km away from the city loop. Some stops here are less than 1km apart and you have to get into the far outer suburbs before stop spacing starts to average more than 2km. Multiple stations in and around the city certainly help to remove some of the pressure off of Flinders and Southern Cross.
All well and good but one big flaw with GO is having to go South to Union to connect to the other lines especially if you're to the North of Toronto. There should be a East-West corridor between Barrie line, Richmond Hill line, and Stouffville line. Maybe between Aurora, Gormley, and Unionville stations. Maybe it's a future option to consider.
This may be overly optimistic, but this does make me come up with a dream plan. Stations will have 500m~1km spacing within the city of Toronto. Two services will be run - "GO local", which will stop at all stations and only run within the CoT, and "GO regional", which simmilar to current GO trains and will only stop at current station spacing within the CoT. Passing can be done by converting existing quad-track sections from by direction (eg: lakeshore-lakeshore-stoville-stoville) to by service type (eg: local-express-express-local), or by adding passing loops at existing stations on dual track portions. Only EMUs will be used for local trains, and either EMUs or engine-hauled trains will be used for express trains. This would be the best of both worlds- fast trains to the centre for suburban passengers, and frequent trains for inner-city passengers. The city will also be able get, what is essentially, 5 new subway lines without needing to tunnel anything.
Metra Electric does this reasonably well by spreading downtown passengers out to Roosevelt Rd and Van Buren St in addition to the central terminus at Millennium Station. Unfortunately some of the other Chicago lines like the UP ones had their intermediate city stops removed in the 1960s to make travel to the suburbs faster.
And dont forget that there is always the possibilty for express-s-bahn for cities farer away from the center. Express-S-Bahn skip minor stops in the actual agglomeration and only stop where there are options to connect with other lines. That way you prevent both that trips from farer away in the metro area become to long and on the other hand prevent that every station is placed 3 kilometres away from each other!
While it sounds sensible that go should get a few more stops in the city center I think a full - S-bahn would have some drawbacks. I used to live close to a terminus of the Berlin S-bahn. When I went to Berlin I mostly used Regionalexpress or Regionalbahn trains because they took half the time to get to the center (Alexanderplatz in 30 minutes instead of an hour). . When they reached Berlin center they stopped every second or third S-Bahn-Stop. That spacing could be about the same distance suggested here. If I had magic powers and could change the Track layout in Berlin I would use the regional trains as a kind of express service using the other side of s-bahn platforms.
Whatever happened to the North Bathurst yard station on Spadina/Front ? Would have been rather convenient during games at the SkyDome, residents of City Place, Liberty Village, and north of King W.
Reece, Looking at your maps, it looks like all these trains terminate at Union station. Why not through running, à la RER / S-Bahn / London Thameslink etc? With the extra central stops, that allows people from the east to access the new infill stations on the west, and vice-versa. Spreads out your loading and unloading across the new stops. I used to (pre-you-know-what) regularly use Stadler Flirts in their homeland. They had ACCELERATION. As you say, the big time for electrification gain is 50% cruising speed and 50% better acceleration; that allows extra infill stops in the centre without major time loss.
You could also do a video of the small metro’s at europe (at islands) like Catania Metro or Palma metro. Both have 1 or 2 lines with 10-20 stations. Pls
Paris metro is known to have A LOT of stations and Parisians like to complain (ha!) that a lot could/should be closed. However various studies going back decades have shown that those stations are actually needed: without them, the larger stations could not cope with the extra passengers. So going back to Toronto, opening up a few more downtown stations could actually be a better deal than trying to expand Union even more. It can only grow so large.
But my European-viewer question is: Why don't simply travel through Union station and have an east-west S-Bahn corridor connecting all those new stops toghether?
There’s always been talk of a Midtown line to bypass the downtown and connect the independent lines altogether in an orbital way, but it would be an incredibly complex project and cost a fortune. I think another part of it would be educating customers to the idea that the GO train doesn’t end at Union. The train has always ended at Union since day 1 so that would take a lot of getting used too.
Yes, this is a good question. A lot of European countries invest a lot of money to have such possibilities. Like the “Zürich Durchmesserlinie”, the new main stations in Berlin, Vienna or Stuttgart, or expensive S-Bahn or RER Tunnels in many citys.
@@harrisonthorburn7415 Well I don't know the exact infrastructural situation but I simply thought about trains arriving at Union station and then continuing and through the station to another line, so just what happens in fairly every city in Europe, even without a dedicated S-Bahn Tunnel I mean if you are that lucky to live in a city with a costal urban corridor, it may sounds pretty logical to have a continuosly east-west heavy rail costal link
Toronto already does this to a certain extent; the Lakeshore East and West lines often through run as one service. More of these integrations will be possible in the future when a lot of the lines are electrified.
The good distance for such rail services is approx 2.5 km, so there is definitely room for improvement. But even Paris RER sometimes has too many stops, on RERs B and C for example, this looks more like a modern metro with distance between stations sometimes under 1km... Earlier portions of Canadian metros were heavily inspired by Paris metro with its short distances which is kinda stupid for big cities like North American ones. The standard nowadays is more about 1km for metro, the 350-500 m market being reserved for trams. That being said, Paris Metro was designed as an undereground tram to make competition with surface trams to free the streets from some traffic congestion... An efficient train stations with multiple destinations and more frequent lines should be segregated into track groups per desination. But to apply in Toronto, the city would need more frequency (and shorter trains)
Wow your hair grew a lot in 2 days!! Speaking of Commuter Rail, I don't think you've done a West Coast Express video in a while so while you're in Vancouver perhaps you could do a bit of filming for a WCE video.
Probably worth noting Locomotives as used on the GO network are far less efficient at accelerating than multiple units, so the original planners probably factored that in and didn't try and have a station every couple of km as the locomotives wouldn't have been able to handle it. A multiple Unit could get up to a 75-100mph top speed in 90-120 seconds whereas it might take as much as 8-10 minutes for a Locomotive to reach its max speed.
GO Rail electrification plans are nothing new but opposition from CN/CP about overhead catenary has put paid to the plans. Purchase of rail corridors by Metrolinx is a good step. The GO Train is quite good. Fairly quick, good service (well Lakeshore anyways). The expansion and electrification plans will be fantastic if they are implemented. We could have LIRR/Metro North type service. Even better would be a London or Glasgow style network. This would alleviate some subway overcrowding. Great video.
In this instance, adding new stops near the core makes sense, but recently looking at SEPTA’s entire commuter rail system in particular, that’s as INEFFICIENT as it looks… looks like we’ll below a fraction of a mile in spots that aren’t all that dense… with the frequency of stops within I-476 & I-276 on most of their lines, the stops seem incredibly close to one another to the point where either consolidation of operations and/or building a parallel LRT/BRT line to service all existing stops would significantly speed up their services between downtown and just outside of their highway bypasses. Would a local Clarify? Because it looks interesting in a bad way scratching the surface…
Union Station, not the centre of the universe! What's next, you'll be suggesting that we might even provide grade-separated rail transit to inner cities (horrifying)? Getting rid of parking spaces for people and jobs (gasp)! Or even that Toronto isn't the centre of the universe! My, my, Reece.
Electrifying is going to be a necessity for GO but I really don't think EMUs are going to be used despite their obvious advantages. I see GO adopting Siemens ACS-64s or something like them and using their existing coaches to save on the costs of not only completely new rolling stock but also the potential station upgrades across the network that may be required. Changing out the locomotives is the simplest thing to do with an already expensive project such as GO RER and they'll still produce the desired results of faster acceleration, better reliability, zero emissions, and quieter operation.
There is a a thing called regional express in Europe, a train that does not stop at every station that runs once per hour or less additionally to the slower trains
Japanese commuter rail/polycentric hub model: I feel like the result is rolling stock more closely resembling subway cars (longitudinal seating) rather than something like the LIRR M7 or North American style commuter cars in general... at least in Tokyo (outside Shonan cars, E217, E531). Very much more a fan of Osaka's Special Rapid service model personally - simple yet very much effective. 225/227 do the bulk of work with transverse seating and then you have 7-car 207/321s doing the local stops. I think the key to the Kobe/Kyoto line(s) is speed.
There's the 223 series with transverse seating too on Special rapid services, operating as far as _Maibara - Kyoto - Osaka - Kobe - Himeji_ (~2h) in either 8 or 8+4 car formations. 227 "Red Wing" series operate mainly around Hiroshima I think
@@lzh4950 I appreciate the follow up, as looking back on that I should have typed 223/235 series. In fact I do recall that most, if not all 221/223/225/227 do feature transverse seating
Go needs to be integrated with the subway. Kennedy, Bloor, Oriole/Leslie and Danforth/Main are the obvious candidates. Integrated means rerouting GO lines with surface-level stations allowing elevator access to the subway, like the S-Bahn and U-Bahn in Berlin. Not long corridors or overground shleps like today at Kennedy or Bloor. Oriole is close to North York General and not far from Leslie on Line 3 and the 401, so if they could be brought together, you could put a park-and-ride between Oriole and Leslie, so car commuters could catch a fast ride downtown on the GO system and maybe making some use of Mel Lastman's vanity project. If we extend Line 3 westward, it could meet up with the Downsview Park GO station. Danforth/Main is a no-brainer. A new station at Danforth connecting to Castle Frank would povide a N-S relief line for Line 1.
If we remove political considerations, this becomes an moderately easy calculation. By "political considerations" I mean things such as a politician like Greg Sorbara wanting a station in his constituency no matter the cost. We should build a new station if the value of the time wasted by everyone on the train who is not getting on or off at the new station plus the construction and operation costs of the new station is less than the value of the time saved by people who now have a station closer to their home/destination plus the value of the new traffic generated by the new station. Since that is a rather long run-on sentence, I will make it simpler. Let: TW = Value of time wasted by passengers who are not getting on/off at the new station. CO = Construction and operations costs of new station. TS = Value of time saved by people who now have a station closer to their trip origin/destination. NT = Value of new traffic generated by the new station. Then we should build a new station if and only if TW + CO < TS + NT
In retrospect Singapore's Circle Line could've benefited significantly from having express services, since many passengers get on & off @ the minority of interchange stations along the line, so @ most other stations the TW > TS
I think it's fine to add stations, but regional rail needs to function as regional rail and you definitely can have too many stations too close together. if it was my system, I would focus on getting people from the suburbs to union, and run a shuttle service back and forth along the denser portions, through running through union, so people could transfer.
I'm a senior citizen railfan living in Chicago. I hope I live long enough to see GO fully electrified with EMUs. What is the present average schedule speed of GO?
you look so cute and handsome in this video. (i do follow you for the content no worries, just wanted to let you know how good you looked, merry christmas!)
Perhaps, but I do believe that metro stations, especially like those on the London Underground in central London should be evenly spaced further apart, eliminating all non-interchange stations.
Perhaps not a good direct comparison, the Long Island Railroad before leaving New York City proper, same with Metro North, I believe. If a suburban commuter has to go all the way downtown and backtrack through the local transit, it doesn't sound like an efficient system, might even discourage potential riders as well.
I could agree with stops 3 km apart for regional rail, but 1 km is getting into subway territory, and most regional trains are not designed for that. Of course, there could be many skip stop express trains. A fast trip from the suburbs to city is necessary to incentivize people to take the train instead of driving there and increasing traffic.
@@RMTransit Why not expand the toronto subway to serve more neighborhoods then ? If the demand is there, it makes sense to have something like you see in NYC, where Metro north and the 5 train run north of the city, with Metro north making less stops.
Because funds for expansion are finite and the surface rail (which has express tracks) runs past these locations. No need to build redundant tracks when there are unserved priority areas.
I’m really enjoying your channel ,compliments of the season and here’s to 2022,I can’t find your email I watch you on my iPhone and TH-cam tv,you wanted me to email you ,could you point me in the right direction please then we can chat and any info about the London U.K. area I can then help you with,all the best and merry Christmas from Hammersmith west London ,Mark 🎅🏼🤶🏻🧑🎄
Damn, I lost all my text talking about why the comparison between GO and the Berlin S-Bahn isn't really good and you should rather compare it to the Regionalexpress/Regionalbahn. I'll write it again in the morning (I hope).
Thanks for the video. I really appreciate the detailed analysis, although, as somebody who was commuting daily on GO from Oshawa to Union pre-Covid, I have to disagree with you about the impact of adding additional intermediate stations. Doing so will frustrate commuters who are coming in from the ends of GO lines, guaranteed. Every stop slows down the trip a great deal, and trading away the speed benefit of electrification for additional stops doesn't make sense to me. Every stop adds the risk of delay, and anybody who had to commute daily on GO knows how often that risk comes to pass. What about express trains as a way to mitigate the impact of additional stops? I wish I could trust GO to supply an adequate number of express trains reliably, but they simply don't seem to be capable of meeting demand for express trains. GO's default behaviour will be to stop *everywhere* and only supply express trains in limited windows, and then only skip a paltry number of stations for express services. The bottom line for me is that if it still takes close to an hour to get from Oshawa to Union (or from Burlington to Union) on GO in 2035, after billions of dollars of investment, then we are not getting good value for money.
Good video but some financial analysis are too basic and not true. Expanding the system that requires subsidies generally will require more subsidies. However, I am not against the expansion and I agree it will make Toronto more accessible and alive
"If you want transit to succeed" more like if you want the city to succeed at all. The GTA is buckling under the weight of just a couple million people while other cities thrive with dozens of millions.
Adding more stops to commuter rails, you are going to anger train supporters aka car drivers who pretend to be environmentalists , transit advocate, less car on streets. Many so called train riders say trains are better because trains only stop few places while buses stop more places. Hello, how do people get to train stations? Oh train riders are drivers. They don't mind driving extra 10 mile to train stations so long trains act like uber take you to downtown. Take example, LA is building Gold line foothill extension. That is actually commuter rail than light rails r subway or whatever. To get to many FT GOLD LINE light rails ststions, you need cars. Yes, one or possoble two frequent buses go to one or two stations. The distance between each station is huge. This rail is buikt to satisfy selfish train riders just like mst rails in North America. Most rails are never built to help non car driver. To add insult, LA builds metrolink rail pretty much align with Gold line. Some rail supporters did ask if these two are identical. FT transit answered answered honestly yes because Gold line stops more. Th metrolink foothill stoos less. Some people want. Like people will adventure in any Gold Line stations when you need cars. People take FOOTHILL Gold line to go to downtown just like foothill metrolink except metrolinkn has fewer stops. Oh LA removed couple vital bus services because of duplicate. Duplicate means instead of taking teo 30 minute frequency buses, nn car drivers take four 45 to 60, frequent buses with more twist n turn. The resl reason is so much money is wasted on building rails such as car to train statios, duplicate rails, n your stupd regional connector. One rail supporter who has access to th funding told j. Of course that person neve said wasted just said great project. With this mentality, rails will never work in USA like Japan, Taiwan and Europe. Reload your Bright Star n mrntion it will turn profit if it doesn't help non car drivers. Go back to another of your stupid Video, High speed rail only kind of work in New England because you need cars to get to stations. Yes some rails get to stations. Those rails are accsdibe by cars n many commuter rails with limted stops. Most HSR suoporters probably want limited stops probably just downtown union stations at Houston n Dallas. They want car rental to improvs. Oh, they will cry Japan has bullet trains, but they always ignore you don't need cars to use rails in Japan
This video didn’t come out when expected, the big one is tomorrow!!
being used to the RER in Paris, I can say that regional rail that has close stops in the core is amazing. the network has around 30 stations in the actual city. if your comming from far in the suburbs it allows you to get off far closer to your destination, which also spread passengers around the network instead of at one stop, reducing. if your going into the suburbs it mean that it takes less time to reach the RER. And if your going somewhere else in the city it works the same as any metro, just faster, for example taking a 4 stops ride on the RER instead of a 15 stop metro ride.
An actual example would be if you arrive in gare du nord on the eurostar from the UK and want to go see the eiffel tower you could take a 40 minute metro trip or instead take a 25 minute regional rail trip.
I'm not sure why anyone would complain about making go transit regional, it's already a cool system, why not make it amazing.
People claim cuz North American people hate transit for some reason
@@lik7953 Probably because we're addicted to driving into the city from the suburbs every morning, then driving back home and basically shutting ourselves off from society.
Yep, the Paris model should be emulated
Thanks Reece for a very illuminating video! European experience very much supports your arguments. In particular having city centre stations IN ADDITION TO THE MAIN STATIONS (=Union) takes a lot of pressure off the main stations. This is true of large cities like London, Paris and Vienna, but also of medium cities like Zurich and Malmo. However in Zurich the stations on either side of the Hauptbahnhof (Stadelhofen and Hardbruck were not made large enough!
Yep, we face this concern with our “shoulder” stations too!
Stadelhofen will be upgraded :)
@@RMTransit What do you consider to be Toronto's "shoulder" stations?
Ya serisouly, I have been using DORVAL as my MTL departure point on VIA for several years now, and without it would be 60mins wasted time backtracking 2x to go DT. Shoulder/annex/satelliteHUBS are *super* important to HIGH_GRADE regional transit.
Going farther out *KIPLING* is a great example of this concept.
We must apply this principle on the periphery of CBDs *way* more often.
7:24 Tokyo essentially does that on the Yamanote Line, with large poly centric hubs (similar in size to downtown Toronto) dotted along the line, like Tokyo proper, Shinjuku/Shibuya, Ikebukuro, Shinagawa, Nippori. Osaka does this to a certain extent too with Umeda, Tennoji/Abenobashi, and Namba.
Indeed, and Toronto isn’t Tokyo, but we could be more like it!
Your theory is correct. However, two caveats: first, the mass of the trains has to be lowered and lines electrified. 2nd: train stations have to be designed for very efficient passing scenarios so that station leap frogging is as safe as possible. Check out the "Japanese" model where lines have a hierarchy of "express" type trains that stop at differing sets of stops. At the top end, have two stop trains. At the bottom, every stop type trains.
In the most German cities it would work so:
S-Bahn Train:
Average stops every 1,5-4 km, clocking every 15-30 min to destinations 20-30 km from the City center.
Regional-Train:
Average stops every 3-8 km, clocking every 30-60 min to destinations 30-50 km from the City center.
Regional Express
Average stops every 8-20 km, clocking every 30-120 min to destinations 40-100 km from the City center.
This has the following advantages:
- High frequency in the city-Center
- slow trains hardly ever have to be overtaken, as they reach their end point before the next fast train catches up with them
- suburbanites from has a semi-express service so they wouldn’t lose so much time.
Yep, a similar model to what will be happening in Toronto *hopefully*
Right now GO is pretty similar to the REX trains in terms of distance and stations
Efficient commuter rail/ S-Bahn definitely needs to be well integrated with other modes of transportation in urban areas. The use gets fairy limited if you are only able to get into the city but not around.
Good commuter rail integration can be found at many German S-Bahn systems, at Paris' RER and JR East Lines in Tokyo - e.g. the Yamanote Line
For sure, there shouldn’t be too many stops, but not enough is even worse
In a city centre, I think ~2-3km stop spacing is optimal. Close enough to increase coverage by a lot, but not enough to make trips too slow, especially with EMUs, which accelerate and decelerate quickly
Ontop of all this, during rush hour there will be express trains that bypass all the new downtown stations. So, if someone really wants to get to Union and is pissed about these new stations, they simply have to catch an express train for their commute, which will probably bypass even more stations in the 905 than it already does.
I think a balance of local and express service is the best thing to do. I particularly love how Helsinki has different services that serve all local stops while having others that serve as express services, skipping some stops. A commuter rail that behaves like a metro system is the best thing to have.
Look up Not Just Bikes' coverage of GO Transit, he is spot on to criticize infrequent trains and massive infrastructure for car-dependent transit (cough cough Bloomington GO).
Reece made a whole response video to NJB's Go transit rant :)
The closest station to Union is 17km away? What? The commuter rail network in my hometown (Kolkata, India) has an average of 2-2.5km for stops in the inner city centre. As you said, the commuter rail is the lifeline for a large part of the economy of Kolkata's suburbs.
And yes, EMUs please. Pretty much all commuter rail systems in India use EMUs. The acceleration and deceleration capabilities on those are a marvel. It just baffles me that there's _opposition_ to good transit options.
It’s not opposition to good transit options, just opposition to change, which is common!
In London UK, many longer distance commuter and intercity routes have a sizable 'edge city' hub a few miles short of the central area terminus. The most widely known is probably Clapham Junction, where the Brighton line runs parallel with the South Western for a short distance. Train companies eye the interchange traffic enviously, but in the peaks, many fast trains have to miss out these stops due to track capacity constraints. In fact, on the South Western, no fast line trains call at Clapham Junction at all during the peaks, which means a transfer to the Brighton line takes at least 30 minutes extra with a double-back via the Waterloo terminus or swapping to a stopping train at Basingstoke or Woking (where the express serves these, clearly). There have been recent upgrade proposals for Clapham Junction to allow all fast trains to stop, but they always throw up much opposition from those who seem constrained to think that a city the size of a small country must only ever have one station on its longer-distance routes. Shinkansen routes entering Tokyo almost all stop at a secondary hub on the edge of the city which offers a different range of onward connections than those available at the city centre terminus, and this approach is planned for the UKs HS2 project where a new station at Old Oak Common is being built in west London in addition to the more central Euston terminus. Old Oak Common will have a direct connection with the new Crossrail service now known as the Elizabeth Line, and fast airport services to Heathrow, which is to the west of the city so will save going into the centre and back out again.
I wish they would add more intermediate stops on SEPTA's regional rail when it goes through North Philly. Unlike the GO network, the line is 4-tracked so they could make the intermediate stations only for local trains.
Even though I've seen so many episodes where you discuss GO, this is the first time I realized that GO doesn't have throughservice. Why oh why don't they just connect the lines east-west!? Or do they plan to do that? Because it seems utterly ridiculous to terminate the lines at Union station.
Synergy _is_ pretty corporate. LOL Anyway, bring on more stops and more efficient trains! I'd love these lines to become something like a Tsukuba Express, hopefully with at least a fraction of the elevated...ness
They certainly could be, and basically no elevated tracks are required - though I wouldn’t be opposed!
Wow, that system looks mental. Never seen so few stations on a train line.
Yeah, I only really took the go train when I had to commute from the suburbs into the downtown business core or to a Jays game.
I mean, good thing for the underground PATH but If I want to go to Kensington or the Danforth, I'd have to pay 2 different systems. or drive to Finch before commuting down
It's my understand that electrified rail can accelerate and slow down more quickly, so shorter spacing becomes more practical. Short spacing in city center commuter routes is very common around the world. Many German S-Bahn systems have a through-running "trunk" route through the city center, often in a tunnel, and this trunk has stops where all the lines converge, and it effectively creates an ultra high frequency U-Bahn corridor for people that live along that trunk. That said, it's also great for everyone else because if most trips are to the downtown anyway, this doesn't noticeably slow down suburban trips and might speed them up because the extra stops will make it so more destinations can be reached without transfers. The shortest distance between Munich trunk-line (Stammstrecke) S-Bahn stops is around 1/3rd of a kilometer and that seems excessive. Though it's not unreasonable given the context - i.e. the transfers to U-Bahn and tram lines at those stops.
@RMTransit Merry christmas big g i hope you and the mrs are well and i wish you the happiest of holidays. Always appreciate you thanks for all :)
SEPTA trains are also kind of slow going to/from 30th street. It's about 6 mins between 30th and Overbrook and the trains start to speed up/slow down when Chestnut Hill W and Trenton head north after the zoo (maybe closer to when the bridge/tunnel Cynwyd has). At least it after entering the Zoo interlock that it announces 30th street so it's only like a min and half off, maybe 2
Yep! Quite close, just need more service in the case of Philly!
@@RMTransit They want to be more regular though, and most of my area has 4 tracks, although the work at Paoli has 2-3 track segments around and beyond
Well said, Reece! GO Transit will be more things to more people, transforming the GTA.
Absolutely, it has the room to be more
Hey terrific video!! Super informative. I really enjoy your presentations in the videos! Functional disconnection on rail lines drives me crazy. Terrific points! And I love your shirt! I did my M.A., and Ph.D. at SFU in psych!!
As someone from a city who has sub 500m station spacing on train lines, the GO station spacing seems absolutely ridiculous.
Remember it isn’t the only rail system, as I mentioned the subway is 500m and keeping GO higher is fine, but only when reasonable
@@RMTransit But still 16km?! There are small-medium sized cities that are barely 16km across!
@@jalflight3513 this is Canada. These regional lines go up to 80km if I remember correctly.
@@flare2000x sometimes more. My closest Go station is 67km to Union in downtown Toronto and the longest I could travel would be 118km and the longest trip would be 192km
@@PSNDonutDude This made me realise that there is a regional train between Mainz and Cologne in Germany which is at least 151,62 kilometres in distance (areal distance between Mainz and Bingen and Bingen and Cologne).
I feel like regional rail acting like metro systems, similar to RER in Paris, Sydney Trains in Sydney, Australia, or even SEPTA Regional Rail in Philadelphia, are great examples of improving regional rail services. I often used to think about standard commuter rail systems being replaced with faster, more frequent, and electrified rapid transit like services would really make a significant impact on service and ridership.
I am assuming Toronto's GO Transit system becoming like an S-Bahn system is similar to that of Montreal's new REM service, which will start operations next calendar year? I totally enjoy services like that a lot, I think that is important for cities to improve their regional rail systems.
It may reduce the traffic not only for Downtown but also the nearby cities, the downside is they need a good connection with local public transit.
I took GO train from Rouge Hill to Union before, it at least 2 times faster than TTC Express
In many cases even better than that!
Definitely think that North American regional rail could learn a lot from Australia and New Zealand, where we have closer spacing, especially near the city centre and frequencies that more closely match metros. The systems in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and soon to be Auckland could all easily be described as S-Bahn / S-Train like
I see your point but with good transfer to the subway, one could transfer to the subway if they have a stop between the two stations
Would an alternate subwayesque backbone on the electrified sections really be a bad thing? As someone at the outer end of the Kitchener line I wouldn't be too put out to have to switch at Malton or Brampton to a faster, more frequent service for the 2nd half of my journey. Would there be a case to be made fore splitting electrified and diesel runs as part of GO development?
If transit doesn't stop for the holidays, transit videos shouldn't either! Anyways, happy holidays and thanks for another great video!
Now to take the transit to my family's place.
This station spacing really is much too wide. Just as a comparison, Munich has Pasing and Ostbahnhof as additional stop’s for commuter and long distance trains 4 and 8km away from the main station. Most of these lines terminate at main station. The S-Bahn runs through and stops 10 times between those stations, so about every 1km.
Essentially the regional trains act as express services, while the S-Bahn connects much more different parts of the city and provides a much higher frequency (~every minute on this corridor).
Having every regional train stop at all stations wouldn’t make sense, because the frequency is already super high. But having those additional stations where almost everything stops means fever people clogging up main station and shorter trip times for people getting off there.
I think York U's Keele Campus is the largest in the country. U of T has the highest enrollment but almost half of that is at the Mississauga and Scarborough campuses. St. George is only around 35 000.
35,000 is still up there!
It’s a good point. For a lot of 905 commuters coming from the West, I reckon Spadina station will likely become the main point of arrival/departure - for at least 25% of trips going to Union now. Thats assuming LW / MI / KI stop there too, of course.
And yes, it will be a great new station for folks living within the km radius of the station.
I live in Kitchener, and many people drive to Toronto because the train really only stops at Union, so if you are going somewhere other than downtown it isn't useful. More stops with connections to subway or LRT lines could help that. (More frequency and two-way, all-day service would also help.) Also, some people from the burbs will be getting off at those stops, freeing up space for new people boarding at close-in stations.
easy and cheap way to improve ridership, not sure if this is possible but you can potentially even skip stations that do not have any waiting passengers(sensors and on train stop buttons maybe)
can we talk about the proposed distance between bridge station and richmond hill on the Yonge extension lmao its like 300m
It’s slightly more acceptable since above ground and near a terminus, if there was through service it would be pretty excessively tight
Your points are right on Reece. My only caveat would be that GO needs to also redouble their efforts to also invest in the outer regions and to get projects up and running more quickly. Durham sits and waits for a BRT (almost 2 years of consultation?) and worse for a Bowmanville extension that was promised 11 years ago, but still is in the design phase. While outer regions struggle to fund basic routes and continue to wait for even the beginning of modern transit alternatives, GO may risk regions saying no to integration and co-planning and instead building their own non coordinated alternatives (Waterloo?) if they are perceived to be treated as second class riders whose main purpose is to fund projects in Toronto.
Another major advantage of additional stops in the city proper for commuter rail is the additional connections allowing city residents to get to jobs in the suburbs. Here in Chicago, there is a sizeable reverse commute flow to the suburbs. While I can appreciate a suburbanite thinking that addl stops only makes their commute longer, I must say that the commuter rail service isn't solely for the benefit of the suburbanite to use. I shouldn't need to mention that because the central city has so many employment zones, add'l stops will probably serve many suburbanites themselves by stopping closer to their ultimate destination or to a better subway connection that shortens their commute by not having to double back from Union station. By having so few stops in the city proper, you're making a city resident's commute that much longer if they have to travel longer to get to the commuter rail station or go all the way to a downtown station to make the connection before heading out to the suburbs. It's a two-way street and suburbanites just have to realize that that's the cost of living in a big city or its environs. Every city that has well placed inner city stops on its commuter rail system is that much stronger for it. The benefits to the region as a whole far outweigh the relatively little additional time some may have to be on the train.
Feels weird as hell to me living in Melbourne. The inner suburban stops here are 1-2km away from the city loop. Some stops here are less than 1km apart and you have to get into the far outer suburbs before stop spacing starts to average more than 2km. Multiple stations in and around the city certainly help to remove some of the pressure off of Flinders and Southern Cross.
All well and good but one big flaw with GO is having to go South to Union to connect to the other lines especially if you're to the North of Toronto. There should be a East-West corridor between Barrie line, Richmond Hill line, and Stouffville line. Maybe between Aurora, Gormley, and Unionville stations. Maybe it's a future option to consider.
Pls make a vid about the são paulo metro
I’m planning too in 2022, it’s in my list
This may be overly optimistic, but this does make me come up with a dream plan.
Stations will have 500m~1km spacing within the city of Toronto. Two services will be run - "GO local", which will stop at all stations and only run within the CoT, and "GO regional", which simmilar to current GO trains and will only stop at current station spacing within the CoT. Passing can be done by converting existing quad-track sections from by direction (eg: lakeshore-lakeshore-stoville-stoville) to by service type (eg: local-express-express-local), or by adding passing loops at existing stations on dual track portions. Only EMUs will be used for local trains, and either EMUs or engine-hauled trains will be used for express trains.
This would be the best of both worlds- fast trains to the centre for suburban passengers, and frequent trains for inner-city passengers. The city will also be able get, what is essentially, 5 new subway lines without needing to tunnel anything.
Do you know when lake shore east will be electrified, like the expected year for completion?
Metra Electric does this reasonably well by spreading downtown passengers out to Roosevelt Rd and Van Buren St in addition to the central terminus at Millennium Station. Unfortunately some of the other Chicago lines like the UP ones had their intermediate city stops removed in the 1960s to make travel to the suburbs faster.
Would be great to have an exo stn at Namur!you mentioned it in your video but how could that be built?
It could literally be simple platforms on the exo line with a short ped path or tunnel
And dont forget that there is always the possibilty for express-s-bahn for cities farer away from the center. Express-S-Bahn skip minor stops in the actual agglomeration and only stop where there are options to connect with other lines.
That way you prevent both that trips from farer away in the metro area become to long and on the other hand prevent that every station is placed 3 kilometres away from each other!
While it sounds sensible that go should get a few more stops in the city center I think a full - S-bahn would have some drawbacks. I used to live close to a terminus of the Berlin S-bahn. When I went to Berlin I mostly used Regionalexpress or Regionalbahn trains because they took half the time to get to the center (Alexanderplatz in 30 minutes instead of an hour). . When they reached Berlin center they stopped every second or third S-Bahn-Stop. That spacing could be about the same distance suggested here.
If I had magic powers and could change the Track layout in Berlin I would use the regional trains as a kind of express service using the other side of s-bahn platforms.
Whatever happened to the North Bathurst yard station on Spadina/Front ? Would have been rather convenient during games at the SkyDome, residents of City Place, Liberty Village, and north of King W.
Reece, Looking at your maps, it looks like all these trains terminate at Union station. Why not through running, à la RER / S-Bahn / London Thameslink etc? With the extra central stops, that allows people from the east to access the new infill stations on the west, and vice-versa. Spreads out your loading and unloading across the new stops.
I used to (pre-you-know-what) regularly use Stadler Flirts in their homeland. They had ACCELERATION. As you say, the big time for electrification gain is 50% cruising speed and 50% better acceleration; that allows extra infill stops in the centre without major time loss.
There is through running, I just wanted to highlight the lines!
You could also do a video of the small metro’s at europe (at islands) like Catania Metro or Palma metro. Both have 1 or 2 lines with 10-20 stations. Pls
Paris metro is known to have A LOT of stations and Parisians like to complain (ha!) that a lot could/should be closed. However various studies going back decades have shown that those stations are actually needed: without them, the larger stations could not cope with the extra passengers. So going back to Toronto, opening up a few more downtown stations could actually be a better deal than trying to expand Union even more. It can only grow so large.
But my European-viewer question is: Why don't simply travel through Union station and have an east-west S-Bahn corridor connecting all those new stops toghether?
There’s always been talk of a Midtown line to bypass the downtown and connect the independent lines altogether in an orbital way, but it would be an incredibly complex project and cost a fortune. I think another part of it would be educating customers to the idea that the GO train doesn’t end at Union. The train has always ended at Union since day 1 so that would take a lot of getting used too.
Yes, this is a good question.
A lot of European countries invest a lot of money to have such possibilities.
Like the “Zürich Durchmesserlinie”, the new main stations in Berlin, Vienna or Stuttgart, or expensive S-Bahn or RER Tunnels in many citys.
@@harrisonthorburn7415 Well I don't know the exact infrastructural situation but I simply thought about trains arriving at Union station and then continuing and through the station to another line, so just what happens in fairly every city in Europe, even without a dedicated S-Bahn Tunnel
I mean if you are that lucky to live in a city with a costal urban corridor, it may sounds pretty logical to have a continuosly east-west heavy rail costal link
Toronto already does this to a certain extent; the Lakeshore East and West lines often through run as one service. More of these integrations will be possible in the future when a lot of the lines are electrified.
Some already do, and that’s broadly the plan
The good distance for such rail services is approx 2.5 km, so there is definitely room for improvement. But even Paris RER sometimes has too many stops, on RERs B and C for example, this looks more like a modern metro with distance between stations sometimes under 1km...
Earlier portions of Canadian metros were heavily inspired by Paris metro with its short distances which is kinda stupid for big cities like North American ones.
The standard nowadays is more about 1km for metro, the 350-500 m market being reserved for trams. That being said, Paris Metro was designed as an undereground tram to make competition with surface trams to free the streets from some traffic congestion...
An efficient train stations with multiple destinations and more frequent lines should be segregated into track groups per desination. But to apply in Toronto, the city would need more frequency (and shorter trains)
Wow your hair grew a lot in 2 days!!
Speaking of Commuter Rail, I don't think you've done a West Coast Express video in a while so while you're in Vancouver perhaps you could do a bit of filming for a WCE video.
I’d like to, but no promises because this is my break!
You must remember that Toronto has subway, buses and street cars where as after you leave Toronto GO is the only game in town
Probably worth noting Locomotives as used on the GO network are far less efficient at accelerating than multiple units, so the original planners probably factored that in and didn't try and have a station every couple of km as the locomotives wouldn't have been able to handle it. A multiple Unit could get up to a 75-100mph top speed in 90-120 seconds whereas it might take as much as 8-10 minutes for a Locomotive to reach its max speed.
Bear with you in case of cat sounds? We want to *see* the cats.
The cat is featured in one video, kudos if you can find it!
GO Rail electrification plans are nothing new but opposition from CN/CP about overhead catenary has put paid to the plans. Purchase of rail corridors by Metrolinx is a good step. The GO Train is quite good. Fairly quick, good service (well Lakeshore anyways). The expansion and electrification plans will be fantastic if they are implemented. We could have LIRR/Metro North type service. Even better would be a London or Glasgow style network. This would alleviate some subway overcrowding. Great video.
Would you like to make a video about freight train corridors and how they work?
In this instance, adding new stops near the core makes sense, but recently looking at SEPTA’s entire commuter rail system in particular, that’s as INEFFICIENT as it looks… looks like we’ll below a fraction of a mile in spots that aren’t all that dense…
with the frequency of stops within I-476 & I-276 on most of their lines, the stops seem incredibly close to one another to the point where either consolidation of operations and/or building a parallel LRT/BRT line to service all existing stops would significantly speed up their services between downtown and just outside of their highway bypasses.
Would a local Clarify? Because it looks interesting in a bad way scratching the surface…
Well said reece great channel.
Union Station, not the centre of the universe! What's next, you'll be suggesting that we might even provide grade-separated rail transit to inner cities (horrifying)? Getting rid of parking spaces for people and jobs (gasp)! Or even that Toronto isn't the centre of the universe! My, my, Reece.
Electrifying is going to be a necessity for GO but I really don't think EMUs are going to be used despite their obvious advantages. I see GO adopting Siemens ACS-64s or something like them and using their existing coaches to save on the costs of not only completely new rolling stock but also the potential station upgrades across the network that may be required. Changing out the locomotives is the simplest thing to do with an already expensive project such as GO RER and they'll still produce the desired results of faster acceleration, better reliability, zero emissions, and quieter operation.
Wow your hair grows super fast!
There is a a thing called regional express in Europe, a train that does not stop at every station that runs once per hour or less additionally to the slower trains
Japanese commuter rail/polycentric hub model: I feel like the result is rolling stock more closely resembling subway cars (longitudinal seating) rather than something like the LIRR M7 or North American style commuter cars in general... at least in Tokyo (outside Shonan cars, E217, E531).
Very much more a fan of Osaka's Special Rapid service model personally - simple yet very much effective. 225/227 do the bulk of work with transverse seating and then you have 7-car 207/321s doing the local stops. I think the key to the Kobe/Kyoto line(s) is speed.
There's the 223 series with transverse seating too on Special rapid services, operating as far as _Maibara - Kyoto - Osaka - Kobe - Himeji_ (~2h) in either 8 or 8+4 car formations. 227 "Red Wing" series operate mainly around Hiroshima I think
@@lzh4950 I appreciate the follow up, as looking back on that I should have typed 223/235 series. In fact I do recall that most, if not all 221/223/225/227 do feature transverse seating
Go needs to be integrated with the subway. Kennedy, Bloor, Oriole/Leslie and Danforth/Main are the obvious candidates. Integrated means rerouting GO lines with surface-level stations allowing elevator access to the subway, like the S-Bahn and U-Bahn in Berlin. Not long corridors or overground shleps like today at Kennedy or Bloor. Oriole is close to North York General and not far from Leslie on Line 3 and the 401, so if they could be brought together, you could put a park-and-ride between Oriole and Leslie, so car commuters could catch a fast ride downtown on the GO system and maybe making some use of Mel Lastman's vanity project. If we extend Line 3 westward, it could meet up with the Downsview Park GO station. Danforth/Main is a no-brainer. A new station at Danforth connecting to Castle Frank would povide a N-S relief line for Line 1.
If more commuter rail stops is a good thing, maybe Westside Express Service in Portland could get more riders if it just had more stops.
If we remove political considerations, this becomes an moderately easy calculation. By "political considerations" I mean things such as a politician like Greg Sorbara wanting a station in his constituency no matter the cost.
We should build a new station if the value of the time wasted by everyone on the train who is not getting on or off at the new station plus the construction and operation costs of the new station is less than the value of the time saved by people who now have a station closer to their home/destination plus the value of the new traffic generated by the new station. Since that is a rather long run-on sentence, I will make it simpler. Let:
TW = Value of time wasted by passengers who are not getting on/off at the new station.
CO = Construction and operations costs of new station.
TS = Value of time saved by people who now have a station closer to their trip origin/destination.
NT = Value of new traffic generated by the new station.
Then we should build a new station if and only if TW + CO < TS + NT
In retrospect Singapore's Circle Line could've benefited significantly from having express services, since many passengers get on & off @ the minority of interchange stations along the line, so @ most other stations the TW > TS
I think it's fine to add stations, but regional rail needs to function as regional rail and you definitely can have too many stations too close together. if it was my system, I would focus on getting people from the suburbs to union, and run a shuttle service back and forth along the denser portions, through running through union, so people could transfer.
Yeah it is better especially if you have a express service and a local.
Absolutely
Hi it's aceative content, can I reused that by Arabic to learning
Thanks
Thanks
Engineer Ibrahim Shalaby
Egyptian National Railways
Great stuff!
Thanks!
liked video 🚄🚋Merry Christmas 🎄
You too!
I don't get how I can disagree with this guy and respect the heck out of him at the same time.
I'm a senior citizen railfan living in Chicago. I hope I live long enough to see GO fully electrified with EMUs. What is the present average schedule speed of GO?
you look so cute and handsome in this video. (i do follow you for the content no worries, just wanted to let you know how good you looked, merry christmas!)
Had to drop some shade on Eglinton LRT huh reese😂😂
Couldn’t resist
RM, do you think go transit is a good thing
Perhaps, but I do believe that metro stations, especially like those on the London Underground in central London should be evenly spaced further apart, eliminating all non-interchange stations.
Perhaps not a good direct comparison, the Long Island Railroad before leaving New York City proper, same with Metro North, I believe. If a suburban commuter has to go all the way downtown and backtrack through the local transit, it doesn't sound like an efficient system, might even discourage potential riders as well.
For sure, they could even use more stops like Sunnyside!
There are barely any major stops in the city outside of Atlantic Terminal, Penn, Woodside, Jamaica and Grand Central.
I could agree with stops 3 km apart for regional rail, but 1 km is getting into subway territory, and most regional trains are not designed for that.
Of course, there could be many skip stop express trains. A fast trip from the suburbs to city is necessary to incentivize people to take the train instead of driving there and increasing traffic.
Yes, but when you aren’t going to build a subway on the same line and there’s a major node it’s fine
@@RMTransit Why not expand the toronto subway to serve more neighborhoods then ? If the demand is there, it makes sense to have something like you see in NYC, where Metro north and the 5 train run north of the city, with Metro north making less stops.
Because funds for expansion are finite and the surface rail (which has express tracks) runs past these locations. No need to build redundant tracks when there are unserved priority areas.
Dear Reece Martin,
I truly enjoy your videos can you do a yrt/viva videos?
Super Idol的笑容 都没你的甜 八月正午的阳光 都没你耀眼 热爱 105 °C的你 滴滴清纯的
Unfortunately, the YRT videos never show up when they're supposed to.
I’ve done several!
@@RMTransit pls more
@@RMTransit also yrt should lower their fares for increased rider ship
I’m really enjoying your channel ,compliments of the season and here’s to 2022,I can’t find your email I watch you on my iPhone and TH-cam tv,you wanted me to email you ,could you point me in the right direction please then we can chat and any info about the London U.K. area I can then help you with,all the best and merry Christmas from Hammersmith west London ,Mark 🎅🏼🤶🏻🧑🎄
Email is in the channel description
i hate living on milton line, its service is so bad, it's barely getting upgraded, and nobody ever talks about it D:
How can you make videos about the best topic (train networks) every day?
I think that if i make videos i will not have any time
Damn, I lost all my text talking about why the comparison between GO and the Berlin S-Bahn isn't really good and you should rather compare it to the Regionalexpress/Regionalbahn. I'll write it again in the morning (I hope).
Thanks for the video. I really appreciate the detailed analysis, although, as somebody who was commuting daily on GO from Oshawa to Union pre-Covid, I have to disagree with you about the impact of adding additional intermediate stations. Doing so will frustrate commuters who are coming in from the ends of GO lines, guaranteed. Every stop slows down the trip a great deal, and trading away the speed benefit of electrification for additional stops doesn't make sense to me. Every stop adds the risk of delay, and anybody who had to commute daily on GO knows how often that risk comes to pass. What about express trains as a way to mitigate the impact of additional stops? I wish I could trust GO to supply an adequate number of express trains reliably, but they simply don't seem to be capable of meeting demand for express trains. GO's default behaviour will be to stop *everywhere* and only supply express trains in limited windows, and then only skip a paltry number of stations for express services. The bottom line for me is that if it still takes close to an hour to get from Oshawa to Union (or from Burlington to Union) on GO in 2035, after billions of dollars of investment, then we are not getting good value for money.
Good video but some financial analysis are too basic and not true. Expanding the system that requires subsidies generally will require more subsidies. However, I am not against the expansion and I agree it will make Toronto more accessible and alive
"Something like an S Bahn" or what any European would call normal for a major global city.
Show the cats
Mr Cat was featured in a video, up to you to find it though ;)
Meanwhile I'm sitting here wishing my corner of the US had ANY passenger rail of ANY kind/size so that we *could* have these arguments. 🤦♂️
You can't run an S-Bahn style service with frequent stops without fast accelerating trains!
you forgot oriole on your map in the beginning!
He was only including the regional rail lines, so not the RH or Milton lines
What makes a cat sound strange?
I’m in Vancouver where we have a cat
"If you want transit to succeed" more like if you want the city to succeed at all. The GTA is buckling under the weight of just a couple million people while other cities thrive with dozens of millions.
Adding more stops to commuter rails, you are going to anger train supporters aka car drivers who pretend to be environmentalists , transit advocate, less car on streets.
Many so called train riders say trains are better because trains only stop few places while buses stop more places. Hello, how do people get to train stations? Oh train riders are drivers. They don't mind driving extra 10 mile to train stations so long trains act like uber take you to downtown.
Take example, LA is building Gold line foothill extension. That is actually commuter rail than light rails r subway or whatever. To get to many FT GOLD LINE light rails ststions, you need cars. Yes, one or possoble two frequent buses go to one or two stations. The distance between each station is huge. This rail is buikt to satisfy selfish train riders just like mst rails in North America. Most rails are never built to help non car driver.
To add insult, LA builds metrolink rail pretty much align with Gold line.
Some rail supporters did ask if these two are identical.
FT transit answered answered honestly yes because Gold line stops more. Th metrolink foothill stoos less. Some people want. Like people will adventure in any Gold Line stations when you need cars. People take FOOTHILL Gold line to go to downtown just like foothill metrolink except metrolinkn has fewer stops.
Oh LA removed couple vital bus services because of duplicate. Duplicate means instead of taking teo 30 minute frequency buses, nn car drivers take four 45 to 60, frequent buses with more twist n turn.
The resl reason is so much money is wasted on building rails such as car to train statios, duplicate rails, n your stupd regional connector. One rail supporter who has access to th funding told j. Of course that person neve said wasted just said great project.
With this mentality, rails will never work in USA like Japan, Taiwan and Europe.
Reload your Bright Star n mrntion it will turn profit if it doesn't help non car drivers.
Go back to another of your stupid Video, High speed rail only kind of work in New England because you need cars to get to stations. Yes some rails get to stations. Those rails are accsdibe by cars n many commuter rails with limted stops.
Most HSR suoporters probably want limited stops probably just downtown union stations at Houston n Dallas. They want car rental to improvs.
Oh, they will cry Japan has bullet trains, but they always ignore you don't need cars to use rails in Japan
the more options to get out of toronto without a glorified wheelchair... the better.
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