Quote:
Originally Posted by ScreamingViking
GO is more than a user -- they've acquired much of their network. I believe the only parts they do not own are at the western end of the Lakeshore corridor through to Niagara Falls (CN's freight operation relies on it), I think also the tail end of the Kitchener corridor, and CP still owns the one to Milton. There may be other sections. On the Lakeshore East line there were dedicated tracks for GO Trains built next to the existing subdivision through Pickering, Ajax, Whitby, and Oshawa.
However, there is freight traffic allowed on parts of the Lakeshore corridor (e.g., to access a rail yard and the Ford plant in Oakville, and a refinery and cement facility in Mississauga) so there is still the occasional freight delay. It's much better than it used to be though before GO's purchase (actually Metrolinx is the owner).
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With the Kitchen corridor GO owns all of it except for a frustrating section between Bramlea station and Georgetown which is frustrating since that stretch acts as a bottle neck preventing frequent service to Brampton city centre, Mount Pleasant, and points beyond. It's where the CN mainline shares the corridor and it would require widening or a CN bypass to increase frequency, with widening threatening the historic Brampton station building and other disruptive changes and a bypass being very expensive.
Personally I think there should be a short tunnel of maybe 1.5-2km or a viaduct over the existing tracks. Once GO RER is up the trains can be shorter and more frequent allowing for a shorter station platform, and it would really only need a single track. If a stop was with faster accelerating electric trains you can maintain an average speed of 60km/h when including one stop so it would only take a couple min for each train to clear that stretch. So you could have service as frequent as 10 min per direction, although 15-20 min per direction would be more forgiving with inevitable delays.
If there were 8 car, single level EMUs with two 2ph serving Kitchener and 2tph for Cambridge using an upgraded branch spur at Georgetown, that would provide 15 min service to Brampton, MP, Georgetown, and Guelph. They could run express past Bramlea (which would have a separate local service terminating there), perhaps with a stop at Eglinton for some trips. Although people could also just transfer to a local service at Bramlea to access intermediate stops. And of course there could still be additional peak services using the existing service tracks to provide capacity.