Waterloo Region Connected
High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - Printable Version

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RE: High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - Canard - 04-15-2018

Maglev avoids all the problems you mention because it's typically grade separated (elevated).  In many ways, it would be simpler and faster to call up Transrapid and get them to build the line, avoiding all conflict in farmland, too.

   


RE: High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - tomh009 - 04-15-2018

While I don't really agree with your traffic routing logic, I don't want to argue about that as I think it's subjective, at least until someone does a real analysis on it.

But I would like to know why you think it's better to have a level crossing at St Leger and a pedestrian bridge at Lancaster, rather than a grade-separated crossing at Lancaster and a pedestrian bridge at St Leger.

Especially given that the new Highway 7 alignment will be from Wellington/Shirley rather than Victoria: Lancaster is already four lanes between Victoria and Wellington, so it can carry the increased traffic between the two, while St Leger and Wellington (between St Leger and Lancaster) are only two lanes. Unless we were to widen those two roads, we would be reducing the cross-railway capacity from the current six lanes to two, which seems like a bit much to me. And when freight trains are shunting, traffic backs up significantly on Lancaster and Victoria already, with two lanes it would surely be worse.


RE: High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - ijmorlan - 04-15-2018

(04-15-2018, 02:40 PM)tomh009 Wrote: While I don't really agree with your traffic routing logic, I don't want to argue about that as I think it's subjective, at least until someone does a real analysis on it.

But I would like to know why you think it's better to have a level crossing at St Leger and a pedestrian bridge at Lancaster, rather than a grade-separated crossing at Lancaster and a pedestrian bridge at St Leger.  

Mostly because Lancaster south (east) of Victoria shouldn’t be a through route. Cutting it off at the tracks would make it not a through route. Of course, so would cutting it off immediately south (east) of Victoria, but then you still have to figure out what to do about Lancaster/Victoria and the crossing. So this is just a side benefit. I think most traffic on Lancaster north of the tracks can use other routes; for example, anybody who is using the expressway north of Lancaster to access Victoria St. can use the expressway all the way to Victoria instead of Lancaster.

Note that I consider a pedestrian bridge a nice-to-have future improvement; pedestrian and bicycle traffic doesn’t jam up and cause traffic flow problems on Victoria so I consider that a (fully-protected, as it is now) level crossing should still be OK for some time to come.

Quote:Especially given that the new Highway 7 alignment will be from Wellington/Shirley rather than Victoria: Lancaster is already four lanes between Victoria and Wellington, so it can carry the increased traffic between the two, while St Leger and Wellington (between St Leger and Lancaster) are only two lanes. Unless we were to widen those two roads, we would be reducing the cross-railway capacity from the current six lanes to two, which seems like a bit much to me. And when freight trains are shunting, traffic backs up significantly on Lancaster and Victoria already, with two lanes it would surely be worse.

Remember the Highway 7 interchange includes two new routes south from Wellington; one an extension of Bruce St. east of the highway and another road west of the highway which hooks up to Edna where the ramps do now. These will both cross under the railway and both connect directly to the Wellington St. ramps. So there is plenty of capacity across the rail line at roads that can actually handle it on both sides of the tracks.

Overall, my approach is not actually looking at moving traffic along Lancaster; instead, I’m suggesting that there are better routes for most of that traffic, especially after the Highway 7 interchange is built. I would be interested if anybody has examples of significant origin/destination pairs that might currently use the Lancaster crossing where there won’t be another route that is just as good.


RE: High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - tomh009 - 04-15-2018

OK, thanks. I understand your point of view now.

Regarding Lancaster St, E of Victoria St, my recollection from my commuting days is that somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4 of the eastbound traffic on Lancaster (coming from either Waterloo or the expressway) turned onto Victoria. And most of the rest turned immediately onto Queen St (as I did). Anyway, this should be clear (either way) from the City of Kitchener traffic counts. Are those online somewhere?


RE: High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - jordan2423 - 04-16-2018

(04-15-2018, 02:36 PM)Canard Wrote: Maglev avoids all the problems you mention because it's typically grade separated (elevated).  In many ways, it would be simpler and faster to call up Transrapid and get them to build the line, avoiding all conflict in farmland, too.


wait, why doesn't Ontario take Maglev into consideration instead?


RE: High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - ijmorlan - 04-16-2018

(04-16-2018, 02:29 AM)jordan2423 Wrote:
(04-15-2018, 02:36 PM)Canard Wrote: Maglev avoids all the problems you mention because it's typically grade separated (elevated).  In many ways, it would be simpler and faster to call up Transrapid and get them to build the line, avoiding all conflict in farmland, too.


wait, why doesn't Ontario take Maglev into consideration instead?

Probably because it’s even more fantastically expensive and requires absolutely everything to be completely new — no re-use of existing platform facilities where appropriate.

Anyway, regular rail can be elevated. It’s expensive to do so, even if what is being elevated is somewhat thinner than a typical rail line.


RE: High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - ijmorlan - 04-16-2018

(04-15-2018, 10:04 PM)tomh009 Wrote: OK, thanks. I understand your point of view now.

Regarding Lancaster St, E of Victoria St, my recollection from my commuting days is that somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4 of the eastbound traffic on Lancaster (coming from either Waterloo or the expressway) turned onto Victoria. And most of the rest turned immediately onto Queen St (as I did). Anyway, this should be clear (either way) from the City of Kitchener traffic counts. Are those online somewhere?

I don’t know where to get traffic counts. I agree they would be good to see! I’m really just guessing about where people are going when they use the Lancaster crossing.

In the event that almost everybody turns on to Victoria or Queen, it reduces the relevance of my concern about traffic on the south (east) part of Lancaster, but on the other hand it would most likely mean that Margaret or the new interchange roads would be perfectly acceptable alternate routes.

Overall, I’m not absolutely certain that closing the crossing would work, but I’m pretty sure and it’s the sort of question that would be best researched by doing a comprehensive traffic modelling study considering much more than just the immediate vicinity of the crossing.


RE: High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - Canard - 04-16-2018

(04-16-2018, 07:31 AM)ijmorlan Wrote: Probably because it’s even more fantastically expensive

Please provide data.

Quote:and requires absolutely everything to be completely new — no re-use of existing platform facilities where appropriate.

We're talking about building hundreds of kilometres of completely new track and OCS. The very small amount of infra that could be reused (which I doubt is realistically anything at all) is not worth considering. You really think a TGV is going to pull up to Kitchener's 100+ year old station?

Quote:Anyway, regular rail can be elevated.

It can be, but it is orders of magnitude more expensive to do so because the guideway cross section is just so, so much bigger.

Anyway, I already know I'll lose this battle and be shot down with every subsequent comment so there's zero point in me even trying to mention any of it.

My dream world from the 80's that I grew up reading books about never happened.


RE: High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - Pheidippides - 04-16-2018

Thanks for the clarification on who owns the track between Park St in Kitchener and Main St in Georgetown.


Anyone travelling from the Bridgeport area (west, east, north) or Lexington/Eastbridge trying to get to DTK would not be served by that plan.

St Leger as a level crossing is not a viable alternative because most shunting movements also block St Leger. So then you would have diverted all the Lancaster traffic on to a narrower road that is still affected by the level crossing problem (safety issue and efficiency issue).

Park and Strange will eventually need to be grade separations if HSR becomes a reality because while correct the trains would not be travelling at high-speed at that point in their journey (EB slowing down in to station or WB accelerating to speed) there would still be increased potential for a crash and the number of interruptions would be very high throughout the day (I would assume at a 48min trip there would be at least 1 trip per hour in each direction at least 12 hours a day = 24; plus any future GO trains coming in an out of a Baden Yard).

All good thoughts that should be presented to the EA consultant.


I'll see if I can make a quick map of the traffic counts sometime today.


RE: High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - KevinL - 04-16-2018

(04-16-2018, 09:09 AM)Canard Wrote: We're talking about building hundreds of kilometres of completely new track and OCS.  The very small amount of infra that could be reused (which I doubt is realistically anything at all) is not worth considering.  You really think a TGV is going to pull up to Kitchener's 100+ year old station?

No, but one could pull into the transit hub we're already planning to build.


RE: High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - Canard - 04-16-2018

Which could be built to accommodate HSR or Transrapid or a derigible. It’s not built yet. So my argument remains.


RE: High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - KevinL - 04-16-2018

Not built, but well into its design and assessment, all of which are based around a standard rail model. Emphasis on standard.


RE: High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - Coke6pk - 04-16-2018

derigible
(04-16-2018, 10:55 AM)Canard Wrote: Which could be built to accommodate HSR or Transrapid or a derigible. It’s not built yet. So my argument remains.

Looks through Region`s request for proposals for dirigible costing's....

Coke


RE: High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - kps - 04-16-2018

(04-16-2018, 11:24 AM)Coke6pk Wrote: Looks through Region`s request for proposals for dirigible costing's....

They're making good progress on the transit hub dirigible hangar.

   


RE: High-Speed Rail (HSR) - Toronto/Pearson/Kitchener/London - Canard - 04-16-2018

(04-16-2018, 11:18 AM)KevinL Wrote: Not built, but well into its design and assessment, all of which are based around a standard rail model. Emphasis on standard.

Oh? My mistake, I thought a designer hadn't even been selected yet.