Metrolinx will conduct a series of public meetings at various locations to present information about their plans for the GO Transit network.

Location Date and Time Markham Village Community Centre

6041 Highway 7

Markham, ON L3P 3A7 Tuesday, February 18, 2020

6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. Southshore Community Centre

205 Lakeshore Drive

Barrie, ON L4N 7Y9 Wednesday, February 19, 2020

6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. Aurora Community Centre

1 Community Centre Lane

Aurora, ON L4G 7B1 Monday, February 24, 2020

6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. Scarborough Civic Centre

150 Borough Drive

Toronto, ON M1P 4N7 Monday, February 24, 2020

6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. Evergreen Brick Works

550 Bayview Avenue

Toronto, ON M4W 3X8 Tuesday, February 25, 2020

6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. Central Recreation Centre

519 Drury Lane

Burlington, ON L7R 2X3 Wednesday, February 26, 2020

6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. Metropolitan Centre

3840 Finch Avenue East

Toronto, ON M1T 3T4 Wednesday, February 26, 2020

6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. Lucie & Thornton Blackburn Conference Centre

at George Brown College

80 Cooperage Street

Toronto, ON M5A 0J3 Thursday, February 27, 2020

6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. Vaughan City Hall

2141 Major Mackenzie Drive West

Vaughan, ON L6A 1T1 Saturday, February 29, 2020

11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. Abilities Centre

55 Gordon Street

Whitby, ON L1N 0J2 Saturday, February 29, 2020

11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.

For the full set of documents, go first to the list of “participation opportunities”, then click through to an individual project page, and finally select the “Important Documents” tab. The same set of documents appears on every project’s page.

An important note here is that electrification is still officially an important part of the overall plan. The provincial flirtation with Hydrogen Trains seems to have disappeared at least for the projects on the major GO corridors that Metrolinx owns.

This is intriguing because Metrolinx has been sidestepping the decision on technology by saying that the private sector partners in the expansion plan would make that choice. Now, their literture is full of electrification including one document about effects on vegetation along the rail corridors to provide clearance for the infrastructure, and another on electromagnetic fields.

Several key documents are online as I write this on the morning of February 18, 2020.

Station Overview : Despite its title, this document covers many other topics, notably planned service levels for the GO corridors.

Station Studies : The title of this document is misleading because it contains little about actual stations, but a lot about environmental issues and a catalog of “cultural heritage” features which are bridges on the Richmond Hill and Lakeshore West corridors.

Infrastructure : This is the most extensive of the documents with information about bridges, stations and yard expansion plans.

Don Branch Storage Area Roll Map : The only detailed map of proposed infrastructure online at this point (February 18, 2020 at 5 pm) is a map showing the proposed use of the Don Branch as a three-train storage facility northeast of Union Station. There are no detailed maps for other projects.

Vegetation Removal Program

Electromagnetic Fields and Interference

Station Overview

This document begins with a map and list of all of the planned changes within the expansion program.

Two new grade crossings have been added on the Barrie corridor beyond the currently approved plans. These are at McNaughton Road in Vaughan and at Wellington Street East in Aurora. These are shown as “D1” and “D2” in the map above.

The junction at Scarborough where the Stouffville corridor branches off from the Lakeshore East corridor will be grade separated. As currently designed, eastbound trains turning north cannot do so without crossing over the westbound tracks, and this will not be a feasible arrangement as service levels increase on both lines. The Stouffville line will also be grade separated from Danforth Road. (This is described in more detail in the Infrastructure section below.)

On the Stouffville corridor itself, there will be seven new grade separations between Scarborough Junction and Unionville.

Double tracking of both the Barrie and Stouffville corridors is already underway in places.

There is also a map of the planned electrification. The section of the Richmond Hill corridor shown below is actually not on the west side of the Don valley used by the existing train service, but on the east side on the unused Don Branch (last used by the Peterborough commuter train) which will be upgraded as a storage area for three trains. (See Infrastructure section below.)

Metrolinx has included charts showing the service levels planned for GO operations on the four affected corridors. This is an odd choice because some of the information is out of date or does not match other announced plans. However, this is what they chose to publish.

I have been trying to get a definitive statement out of Metrolinx for two years on service plans that include SmartTrack, and as recently as February 5, 2020, their reply was:

A decision hasn’t been made on service levels.

The issue here is that the plans for new infrastructure along affected corridors would be affected by addition of stations, not to mention any extra service above what GO Transit has already planned to operate. Equally, if the Ontario Line is expected to offload demand at Exhibition and East Harbour stations as a downtown distributor, the demand placed on it depends on how many trains will actually stop there. Also there is the effect of large volumes of transfer riders arriving infrequently to meet much smaller, more frequent trains on the Ontario Line.

On the Lakeshore West line, there is no mention of the proposed Park Lawn Station, nor of service beyond Confederation to St. Catharines and Niagara Falls.

On Lakeshore East, there is no mention of the Bowmanville extension, nor of proposed stations at Gerrard (SmartTrack) or East Harbour.

On Stouffville, there is no mention of proposed SmartTrack stations at Finch and Lawrence, nor any indication of whether trains from this line will stop at stations in the Lakeshore East corridor other than Danforth. It is also unclear how the peak service every 7’30” (8 trains per hour) from Unionville will fit into the overall Lakeshore operations.

On the Kitchener corridor, the most glaring omission is all day service to Kitchener itself with trains shown only from Mount Pleasant eastward. Also missing are the proposed SmartTrack stations at St. Clair and Liberty Village.

Finally, on the Barrie line, new stations are shown at Caledonia and Spadina-Front, but not at Bloor.

Station Studies

This document is a collection of information which has nothing to do with stations despite its title.

It begins with several pages on natural heritage, species at risk, tree removal for electrification, archaeology, and cultural heritage (primarily bridges). Several of the bridges on the Richmond Hill corridor are beyond the scope of proposed work, but they are included in the list.

The section on air quality and electrification states that Metrolinx will “Electrify system to the maximum extent possible”, but that “Service on rail corridors not currently owned by Metrolinx will continue using diesel locomotives”. This is not exactly news, but it is useful to have the explicit statement that electrification will not extend onto trackage owned by CN and CP. Where diesel locomotives remain in service, they will be upgraded to Tier 4 emission standards if they are rebuild, or replaced at end of life with new Tier 4 engines. There is no mention of Hydrogen as a power source.

An updated air quality study is in progress, but the results will not be available until future public meetings.

Metrolinx is also revisiting its noise modelling to take into account planned service patterns as well as technology changes in noise abatement.

Of course if the service plans shown above are not accurate, then the air quality and noise studies will not be accurate either. This is particularly important for portions of the corridors that will see very frequent service including the addition of more trains than the GO Transit expansion project itself foresees.

Infrastructure

Stouffville Corridor Grade Separations

Seven grade separations are proposed along the Stouffville corridor:

Denison Street road under rail

Kennedy Road road under rail

Passmore Avenue road under rail

McNicoll Avenue road under rail

Huntingwood Drive road under rail

Havendale Road crossing replaced by pedestrian/cyclist bridge or tunnel

Progress Avenue road over rail

What is striking about the design renderings for all of the road/rail crossings is the significant amount of infrastructure and the gap this creates in the surrounding area. This is only possible because the crossings are in locations that have little or no need for access to the lands immediately adjacent to the streets crossing the rail corridor. These are areas where pedestrian demand is likely to be quite low because the circulation pattern is designed around auto access.

Scarborough Junction Grade Separations

In previous discussions about the future of the Stouffville corridor, Metrolinx has tried to keep grade separation at Scarborough Junction off of the table because of its cost and complexity. Clearly they have reached the point were this is no longer possible given planned service levels.

Two grade separations are require: one for eastbound trains to pass under the Lakeshore corridor and turn north on the Stouffville corridor, and the other for the Stouffville corridor to pass under Danforth Road.

Other changes planned here are the widening of the rail bridge over St. Clair Avenue East to make room for an additional track as part of the junction’s reconfiguration, and a pedestrian/cycling crossing bridge or tunnel at Corvette Park.

The discussion of facilities required in the Stouffville corridor and at Scarborough Junction makes no mention of the possible addition of hourly VIA service as part of their Montreal High Frequency Rail project. With the allocation of the Don Branch as a storage yard (see below), the option of leaving downtown via the CP trackage has been foreclosed.

Don Branch Storage Yard

The single track Don Branch leaves Union Station parallel to the Richmond Hill corridor on the west side of the Don Valley, but swings to the east side north of Gerrard Street running alongside the DVP. Roughly at Pottery Road, opposite the Brick Works, the line crosses on a high bridge and then turns east to join the CP mainline just west of the former Leaside Station.

The track was purchased from CP by Metrolinx in 2007 and has sat fallow ever since with many weeds and small trees growing along the right-of-way.

Metrolinx proposes to convert a portion of this branch from near Bloor Street as a three-train storage area with a small service building directly under the Viaduct. All storage would be on the east side of the valley which is not subject to flooding. The Don Branch would be electrified from Union Station up to the end of the storage track. This design leaves the existing roadway and cycling/pedestrian paths in the valley intact.

Beach Layover Facility in Burlington

The largest of the planned new train storage areas is in Burlington at the proposed 16 train Beach Layover Facility. This would be an electrified yard at the western limit of electric territory on the Lakeshore West corridor. (Burlington Station is out of frame to the right, northeast, of the photo below.)

Access to the yard would split off from the Lakeshore corridor just east of the point where the CN freight line connects in from the north (at the top right of the picture below) so that there would be no conflict between CN and GO electric operations. The land is currently occupied by industrial businesses and would have to be acquired by Metrolinx.

Unionville Storage Yard

A two train, single track storage facility is proposed in Unionville in the existing corridor just north of Enterprise Boulevard.

This would be the northern limit of electrification on the Stouffville corridor.

Thickson Road Bridge Expansion

The Lakeshore East corridor bridge at Thickson Road to provide a third track linking the Whitby Maintenance Facility to Oshawa Station.

Kitchener Corridor

There are no meetings nor new documents for work already underway in the Kitchener corridor in this round of public meetings.