Quote:
Originally Posted by lrt's friend
The track is grade separated but the separation was created years ago for what was a former signal track freight line. Nothing was planned for urban transit service when this was done. The problem is the number of bridges (several) needing major modification or replacement as well as the Dow's Lake tunnel and the cut to the north of that, which will require major blasting through bedrock. The original plan was going to require a 3 year closure in order to address the major modifications to the right of way but that was scrapped because of local Liberal/Conservative political dynamics. The city now figures it can apply a cheap solution, which does not address the problems with the right of way. The city has double tracked about the only places they could without major modification but single track sections remain long and this has slowed down trains because they now have to wait for signals. The second phase is going to be worse because of potential complicated train movements if service is extended to the airport and there is yet another single track bridge at a critical point on the line where the most trains need to interact for Phase 2. It is just a bad plan and the likelihood of even slower trains and less frequent service in the future is high because of the constraints of the right of way. This can only be resolved by going to the expense of replacing some of the bridges so that more double tracking can take place. However, that has not been put into the Phase 2 budget.
|
The city has yet to acknowledge that their existing expansion is a failure. The failure comes from not building sidings long enough to have some redundancy in the system. I think this comes in part from not having any engineers on staff that have any knowledge of railway construction and more important, railway operation. The line was needlessly shutdown to construct 2 short sidings. Thus is something that would never happen on CN or CP. The lack of trained oversight means nobody vets the consultants recommendations. There is no long range plan for eventually doubling the existing single track sections.
At least the city could have a plan for completing the least expensive segments such as lengthiness the existing sidings. The current plans for adding additional lanes to Hwy 417 call for double track clearance under the bridge. Maybe that can be extended north to the new Gladstone siding. Since the province is paying for the bridge expansion maybe the city and the province could reach a cost sharing agreement to get this all done at once.
If the city had a plan, made it public and stuck to it then the public would see light at the end of the tunnel.