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+--- Thread: GO Transit (/showthread.php?tid=12)
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RE: GO Transit - westwardloo - 11-17-2019
(11-17-2019, 04:03 PM)ijmorlan Wrote:Hmm I don't know about completely cutting off lancaster and Bridgeport from accessing Victoria street. I am sure the people living on wellington would be upset with the increase traffic on an already busy street. Realistically weber separation was about 30 million. So 50million of the 900+million dollar budget isn't unreasonable. I think they will be looking at closing a lot of the level crossings in guelph though.(11-17-2019, 12:42 PM)westwardloo Wrote: I wonder in Lancaster will be considered for rail separation?
They should just close Lancaster at the tracks to motor vehicle traffic. Either keep a pedestrian/bicycle level crossing or build an overpass just for that traffic. With the new roads being built as part of the highway interchange to the east, and the bridge at Margaret, there is no need for Lancaster to remain as a route for crossing the tracks in motorized transportation.
RE: GO Transit - YKF - 11-17-2019
(11-17-2019, 04:03 PM)ijmorlan Wrote:I don't think Lancaster would ever be closed to vehicular traffic. It's far too significant of a street to close off at the tracks. If anything, St. Leger could be a candidate for closing off at the tracks to eliminate another at-grade rail crossing. As for Lancaster, I believe it should be grade separated. It's very similar to the grade crossing of Adelaide Street/CPR in London, IMO (which is currently in the process of getting grade separated).(11-17-2019, 12:42 PM)westwardloo Wrote: I wonder in Lancaster will be considered for rail separation?
They should just close Lancaster at the tracks to motor vehicle traffic. Either keep a pedestrian/bicycle level crossing or build an overpass just for that traffic. With the new roads being built as part of the highway interchange to the east, and the bridge at Margaret, there is no need for Lancaster to remain as a route for crossing the tracks in motorized transportation.
RE: GO Transit - jwilliamson - 11-17-2019
(11-17-2019, 04:44 PM)westwardloo Wrote:(11-17-2019, 04:03 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: They should just close Lancaster at the tracks to motor vehicle traffic. Either keep a pedestrian/bicycle level crossing or build an overpass just for that traffic. With the new roads being built as part of the highway interchange to the east, and the bridge at Margaret, there is no need for Lancaster to remain as a route for crossing the tracks in motorized transportation.Hmm I don't know about completely cutting off lancaster and Bridgeport from accessing Victoria street. I am sure the people living on wellington would be upset with the increase traffic on an already busy street. Realistically weber separation was about 30 million. So 50million of the 900+million dollar budget isn't unreasonable. I think they will be looking at closing a lot of the level crossings in guelph though.
The Margaret Ave. bridge reconstruction was only $6.5 million. If Lancaster could be a bridge instead of an underpass, I would expect that to be a closer comparable. I'm not sure if the grade on Lancaster would allow that though.
RE: GO Transit - kps - 11-17-2019
(11-17-2019, 07:24 PM)jwilliamson Wrote: The Margaret Ave. bridge reconstruction was only $6.5 million. If Lancaster could be a bridge instead of an underpass, I would expect that to be a closer comparable. I'm not sure if the grade on Lancaster would allow that though.
I think a road bridge over the tracks is likely, eventually. Victoria at the intersection is already about ten feet higher than the tracks¹, and could be raised a couple more there without hurting anything, as the current crest is at the geo-E/Kit-N end of the corner Shell. I suspect Breithaupt on the geo-W/Kit-S of Lancaster would be cut off for the bridge approach, the but geo-E/Kit direction is probably OK. The only loser is David's Fresh Cut Fries.
¹ You can get relative elevations out of Google Maps by asking for bicycling directions.
RE: GO Transit - danbrotherston - 11-17-2019
(11-17-2019, 04:03 PM)ijmorlan Wrote:(11-17-2019, 12:42 PM)westwardloo Wrote: I wonder in Lancaster will be considered for rail separation?
They should just close Lancaster at the tracks to motor vehicle traffic. Either keep a pedestrian/bicycle level crossing or build an overpass just for that traffic. With the new roads being built as part of the highway interchange to the east, and the bridge at Margaret, there is no need for Lancaster to remain as a route for crossing the tracks in motorized transportation.
I believe regional plans are to build a grade separation, they have already removed the Wellington -> Victoria section of Lancaster from the 2021 plan to rebuild Lancaster, in anticipation of that. That being said, closing is absolutely not in the cards, nor is a cheaper two lane configuration, the region is full steam ahead on VMT growth planning, so they'll be building for a climate disaster with this one.
RE: GO Transit - danbrotherston - 11-17-2019
(11-17-2019, 02:43 PM)tomh009 Wrote: The document projects roughly 10x the ridership for Kitchener/Breslau as compared to today. Maybe reasonable. But the surprising thing is that they expect 80% of that to be to Breslau. Is it an airport traffic projection?
This is a disappointingly status quo plan from Metrolinx, not surprising but still disappointing. What I mean by that is, they're planning to be a park and ride, and nothing more. If they took an aggressive car-lite growth plan from KW, where a significant portion of the commuter traffic had access to the central station through LRT, that would be by far the obvious choice...as it is, they're basically going to limit ridership by parking. But we all knew this was the plan when they proposed Breslau.
If they were truly amitious, they could build a complete high density community around Breslau, but that would take cooperation and planning, but that's about the only way that Breslau could be built without being nothing more than a park and ride sink for the region.
As for the actual plan, the bypass is the right choice. We already have frequent delays because of freight operations, a few small improvements aren't going to change that. And yes, it sucks that passenger rail is in this state, we probably shouldn't have privatized our rail network, but this is the world we live in, and CN is not in the business of accommodating passenger traffic, that won't ever change, no political pressure, nothing short of the bypass or eminent domain would make those tracks prioritize on-time performance of passengers over freight.
RE: GO Transit - timio - 11-17-2019
There are ways they could minimize freight-caused delays on the existing route, but it involves a 3rd track through Brampton (sizeable property impact) and a rail-rail grade separation west of Mount Pleasant (less property impact, but would take some time as there is no way CN would temper traffic to allow expedited construction)
I would guess a fair number of residents in the new subdivision going in east of Breslau would be Toronto-bound commuters, which would lead towards part of the large expected passenger volume.
Also, in suburban areas, station with parking deserts tend to have higher passenger volume than those with little to no parking. Unfortunate, but 'tis the reality today.
RE: GO Transit - danbrotherston - 11-17-2019
(11-17-2019, 09:29 PM)timio Wrote: There are ways they could minimize freight-caused delays on the existing route, but it involves a 3rd track through Brampton (sizeable property impact) and a rail-rail grade separation west of Mount Pleasant (less property impact, but would take some time as there is no way CN would temper traffic to allow expedited construction)
I would guess a fair number of residents in the new subdivision going in east of Breslau would be Toronto-bound commuters, which would lead towards part of the large expected passenger volume.
Also, in suburban areas, station with parking deserts tend to have higher passenger volume than those with little to no parking. Unfortunate, but 'tis the reality today.
Minimize sure, but not eliminate, I mean, I don't think it's possible to have continuous Metrolinx rails between KW and Toronto which do not cross or share with CN at any time without building the bypass, I'm guessing that isn't what is proposed in that option, even if it was possible.
It's also going to cost them the ability to do a fully electrified catenary system, which is a shame, it'll make electrification more risky. It will also mean polluting freight trains will continue through the middle of populated areas.
As for parking, that is the situation yes, but you'll also find that a most suburban GO stations they've gone to considerable lengths to make a car the ONLY way to access a station. I've walked to some before and I was made to feel very unwelcome. This is a choice, not an inherent design. I've heard they want to correct this, but the problem is all of their modeling is based on the status quo.
RE: GO Transit - ijmorlan - 11-17-2019
(11-17-2019, 06:32 PM)YKF Wrote:(11-17-2019, 04:03 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: They should just close Lancaster at the tracks to motor vehicle traffic. Either keep a pedestrian/bicycle level crossing or build an overpass just for that traffic. With the new roads being built as part of the highway interchange to the east, and the bridge at Margaret, there is no need for Lancaster to remain as a route for crossing the tracks in motorized transportation.I don't think Lancaster would ever be closed to vehicular traffic. It's far too significant of a street to close off at the tracks. If anything, St. Leger could be a candidate for closing off at the tracks to eliminate another at-grade rail crossing. As for Lancaster, I believe it should be grade separated. It's very similar to the grade crossing of Adelaide Street/CPR in London, IMO (which is currently in the process of getting grade separated).
It can’t be that significant. It doesn’t have enough capacity to be significant. South (east) of Victoria, it’s a narrow two lane road. North (west) of Victoria, the rail crossing regularly closes for minutes at a time during rush hour.
Look at the map carefully — if somebody comes south (east) on Lancaster, they either have to continue on Lancaster, or turn left or right at Victoria.
If they would turn left at Victoria, they can use the new roads to be built as part of the highway interchange to cross under the tracks.
If they would turn right at Victoria, they can use Margaret to cross over the tracks.
If they would continue on Lancaster, we’re talking about a relatively small fraction of traffic, and they can use one of the previously-mentioned routes to cross the tracks and then Frederick, Queen, or Victoria to get back to Lancaster.
Closing the Lancaster crossing would eliminate the traffic insanity around that area while only slightly increasing traffic on mostly Margaret and the new access roads. It’s not clear to me that traffic on Wellington would necessarily much increase — when I talk about using Margaret or the new access roads, I don’t mean to use Wellington to get over to those roads necessarily; instead I’m suggesting people would re-evaluate their entire routes. Furthermore, the inability to come down Lancaster would probably reduce traffic on Lancaster south (east) of the tracks, and therefore reduce the insanity where Cedar, Krug, Lancaster, and Weber all meet.
Realistically, though, yeah, they’ll just build a grade separation without even seriously studying the idea of closing a road instead. And, it actually is possible that a serious study would reveal that closing the road would be bad for traffic, but I think it would improve traffic. I certainly don’t believe that just because it’s busy now that closing it would make things worse. We already know from real-world examples in California that entire congested freeways can be suddenly closed due to earthquakes and it doesn’t necessarily make traffic worse — it can actually make it better.
The dumb thing is that building the grade separation will run the study for real. I predict that during the construction, traffic will improve, including at the relatively distant corner of Cedar and Weber, to the extent that we will wonder why the bridge construction is being done. At a minimum, they should try closing the crossing for a few months; then only if traffic is really bad should they consider spending millions of dollars to build a bridge.
RE: GO Transit - tomh009 - 11-18-2019
(11-17-2019, 11:07 PM)ijmorlan Wrote:(11-17-2019, 06:32 PM)YKF Wrote: I don't think Lancaster would ever be closed to vehicular traffic. It's far too significant of a street to close off at the tracks. If anything, St. Leger could be a candidate for closing off at the tracks to eliminate another at-grade rail crossing. As for Lancaster, I believe it should be grade separated. It's very similar to the grade crossing of Adelaide Street/CPR in London, IMO (which is currently in the process of getting grade separated).
It can’t be that significant. It doesn’t have enough capacity to be significant. South (east) of Victoria, it’s a narrow two lane road. North (west) of Victoria, the rail crossing regularly closes for minutes at a time during rush hour.
Back in my car-commuting days I drove this stretch daily. And it's definitely busy. The street closure is a pain when it happens, but it doesn't stop people from using it for the rest of the day.
The region's traffic count data shows an average of 36,000 cars on Lancaster St at Victoria St N. That's a very high count, on par with the busiest stretches of roads like Weber St, University Ave and Fischer-Hallman Rd.
RE: GO Transit - timio - 11-18-2019
I'm not sure it'll be a simple grade separation. I wouldn't be surprised if they have to lower the tracks first in order to keep the grade of the road reasonable. That could make things a bit complex. Especially if they want to [eventually] add a 3rd track through there.
Regardless, it seems that David's will have to close and the scrap yard would need to reconfigure access.
RE: GO Transit - MidTowner - 11-18-2019
(11-18-2019, 12:27 PM)tomh009 Wrote:(11-17-2019, 11:07 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: It can’t be that significant. It doesn’t have enough capacity to be significant. South (east) of Victoria, it’s a narrow two lane road. North (west) of Victoria, the rail crossing regularly closes for minutes at a time during rush hour.
Back in my car-commuting days I drove this stretch daily. And it's definitely busy. The street closure is a pain when it happens, but it doesn't stop people from using it for the rest of the day.
The region's traffic count data shows an average of 36,000 cars on Lancaster St at Victoria St N. That's a very high count, on par with the busiest stretches of roads like Weber St, University Ave and Fischer-Hallman Rd.
That's the figure for the intersection with Victoria...
The 2015 Regional traffic count shows 14,115 on Lancaster between Breithaupt and Victoria. That's not insignificant, but it's not high, and I think that number would support ijmorlan's assertion that the idea should at least be seriously considered.
RE: GO Transit - KevinT - 11-18-2019
(11-17-2019, 12:42 PM)westwardloo Wrote: I wonder in Lancaster will be considered for rail separation?
This would be cheaper:
Railway Gazette International: God of death enforces railway safety rules
RE: GO Transit - tomh009 - 11-18-2019
(11-18-2019, 01:47 PM)MidTowner Wrote:(11-18-2019, 12:27 PM)tomh009 Wrote: Back in my car-commuting days I drove this stretch daily. And it's definitely busy. The street closure is a pain when it happens, but it doesn't stop people from using it for the rest of the day.
The region's traffic count data shows an average of 36,000 cars on Lancaster St at Victoria St N. That's a very high count, on par with the busiest stretches of roads like Weber St, University Ave and Fischer-Hallman Rd.
That's the figure for the intersection with Victoria...
The 2015 Regional traffic count shows 14,115 on Lancaster between Breithaupt and Victoria. That's not insignificant, but it's not high, and I think that number would support ijmorlan's assertion that the idea should at least be seriously considered.
Ah, I see, I misinterpreted the number. So using the "between" numbers from Union to Victoria, Lancaster carries between 15,000 and 18,000 cars per weekday. That's still similar to Ottawa St S or Westmount Rd S.
It might "eliminate the traffic insanity" but that traffic would not disappear, it would move somewhere else, so a new "insanity" would pop up, whether on Margaret, Wellington or elsewhere.
RE: GO Transit - MidTowner - 11-18-2019
It's specifically 14,115 average between Breithaupt and Victoria. Some of the traffic you mention between Union and Victoria takes Guelph or Louisa or Wellington.
14,115 on average pass over the tracks on Lancaster. For Westmount, only a few segments of Westmount Road East right before it ends at Fischer-Hallman carry that few vehicles.
Edit to add that, were Lancaster closed, some of that traffic really would just disappear. You're right that most of it would move to other streets, but it might or might not be true that the result would be "insanity" there.