(05-04-2022, 11:52 AM)jamincan Wrote: With regard to 2WAD service on the Kitchener Line, though, the business plan was only approved in March 2021, and they have already made improvements that have allowed scheduled times on the line to drop (at least that is what I've read elsewhere, and I can't say if there's since been a regression). The pessimist in me worries that it could end up being another Hwy 7, but the optimist in me takes encouragement from the fact that there appears to be progress without all the fanfare and ribbon-cutting, which hopefully means that there is more substance behind it than Hwy 7.
You're still ignoring the Bramalea→Georgetown bottleneck which the Liberal government had gotten CN to agree to in principle just prior to the election.
After the election, during which a promise was made by Ford&Co. to get #2WADGO "sooner" than the Liberals, they cancelled that bypass with vague claims of working with CN to make it possible on the Kitchener line. This meant all that planning to get around the bottleneck had to be redone. When it became obvious that the section of that line still owned by CN was just far, far too busy with freight to simply slot it enough trains to reach the hourly both ways promise to Kitchener, they started vaguely talking about adding extra tracks to the bottleneck part in the Halton Sub.
It took them three years to finally put out that preliminary business case in 2021 for a project they had promised would be finished in 2024/25 and it only vaguely mentioned extra passing tracks in the Halton Sub but not where. In comparison, the Breslau passing tracks were mentioned before the initial business case was released in 2019.
A year later after that preliminary case they still have no plans at all where exactly the extra tracks in the Halton Sub would be laid to alleviate the capacity issues in the bottleneck, or at least none they have made public.
The EAs/TPAPs for this current work and anything else done outside the bottleneck were completed back in 2009-2014 and as of yet no new EA/TPAP has been started for these vaguely mentioned extra tracks in the Halton Sub.
At best, nothing done until now was not already planned under the Liberals, but in reality they have delayed many things like the improvements you cite that allowed quicker trip times because Metrolinx was ordered to halt everything for two years while they went into review mode.
Plus, the choices that the Tories have made are OK short term choices for adding a few extra trains to Kitchener but they do nothing for the long run, perhaps even hurt the long run, as electrifying all the way to Kitchener will require complete separation of freight and passenger lines given CN's refusal on those projects, and, ultimately, require the cancelled bypass getting built anyways.