The Weston Corridor Is Not Full

Every decade or so, a new study of high-speed rail in the Quebec City-Windsor Corridor provides fascinating reading for people interested in transportation and infrastructure. Of course, such literature belongs firmly in the Fantasy section of the local library. The most recent report, titled “Ecotrain”, was produced in 2010 to update a more detailed 1995 study, making adjustments for changing circumstances and development. The earlier report recommended following international best practices by establishing seamless connections between high-speed rail and major international airports, permitting the replacement of short-haul flights with airline code-shares on trains. In order to access Pearson Airport from Union Station, high-speed trains would share the Weston corridor with other rail services. Unfortunately, the recent report indicates that informational meetings with Metrolinx resulted in the determination that the Weston corridor will be at capacity and would not be able to accommodate any high-speed services. (Deliverable 5, page 37)

This is particularly bizarre since Metrolinx is in the process of adding a pair of tracks for express trains from Union to Pearson Airport. At four trains per hour each way, it is quite disturbing to think that the agency might consider those tracks to be at capacity. By contrast, 28 trains per hour or more is normal in Europe, Asia, or even many parts of North America. One of the greatest assets of the airport shuttle project is the provision of two separate pairs of tracks for express and local services in the Weston corridor. Ultimately, one pair could be used for CityRail-style services while the other would be shared by the airport shuttle, regional express trains, and high-speed or intercity trains—essentially all trains skipping most stops between Union and Pearson. Certainly the addition of a handful of electric high-speed trains an hour would not be an undue burden on the neighbourhood. It would be an enormous waste of resources if a valuable pair of express tracks were reserved for the exclusive use of the airport shuttle when there is more than enough capacity for all conceivable express and intercity services.

The Interaction of Freight and Passenger Rail

Anyone who has ever ridden a train in Europe (let alone Japan) has seen that they know how to run a railway. Their passenger trains are faster, more reliable, more extensive, and far more frequent than in North America. Unless one enjoys hopping freight cars, however, it is less obvious but no less true that North America has many lessons to teach Europe about freight rail. In fact, Canadian railways move almost as many tonne-kilometres of freight per year as moves by rail in the entire European Union – 349.1 billion tonne-kilometres in Canada versus 377 billion in Europe. Canadian freight railways benefit from long distances and shipments of bulk natural resources, but the figure remains striking given the difference in population and economic size.

In recent decades, North American railways have become increasingly reliable and economical providers of freight transportation service. They’ve expanded beyond their traditional dominance in hauling bulk goods like coal and grain over long distances and have made major gains in hauling manufactured goods since the invention of the intermodal container. Canada’s own CN is often considered the gold standard of freight railways worldwide. Meanwhile, in Europe, most bulk traffic uses the continent’s extensive inland waterway network, while lighter goods tend to move by truck.

Operating a successful freight railway presents very different challenges from passenger rail. The most important criteria of success for freight rail are cost, followed distantly by reliability. As long as their goods arrive within a few hours of promised and the bill is lower than if they had gone by truck, most shippers are quite pleased. Low cost is achieved by packing as much as possible into each freight car, and as many cars onto each train. Over the past several decades, North American freight railways have invested billions into improving their infrastructure to increase their competitiveness. Tracks have been upgraded to accommodate heavier freight cars, new technologies like locomotives distributed throughout the train have permitted longer trains, and bridges and tunnels have been raised to permit the stacking of two shipping containers on each car. European freight cars look like toys compared to their North American counterparts and double-stacked containers are unheard-of. The average European train is less than thirty cars long, while more than a hundred cars per train is the rule in North America.

North American passenger rail operators are often quite reasonably accused of trying to operate as if they were freight railways, using freight locomotives, freight track maintenance standards and freight signalling systems. Europeans make the same mistake in reverse, trying to emulate their success in passenger rail by emphasizing the importance of speed and punctuality, even going so far as to propose running freight trains on high-speed lines. This does nothing to aid in the critical factor of cost per ton-mile. The limited amount of existing freight rail traffic makes large investment seem excessive, just as the low ridership of North America’s weak passenger rail service is used to claim that passenger rail investment is uneconomic. Of course demand is low when the service is poor; demand won’t get any higher until the service is improved.

The poor state of European freight rail is a clear demonstration of the difficulty of operating both a successful passenger and freight railway. The needs of the two types of trains are simply too different. In fact, much of what makes European passenger rail so successful causes serious problems for freight. Heavy North American freight trains wreak havoc on high-quality track built for high-speed passenger service. Europe’s extensive track electrification offers enormous benefits, but it also limits overhead clearance for double-stack containers. High platforms at stations permit passengers to board without needing to climb stairs, speeding loading and providing wheelchair accessibility. Unfortunately, they can also restrict the width of passing freight trains. Some of the problems are simply the result of history, particularly in Britain where railways were built in the Victorian age to a very narrow loading gauge. New European lines are built to minimize curves, a big problem for high-speed passenger trains, but which comes at the cost of steeper grades that are a nightmare for heavy freight trains. European railways have been built over decades for passenger rail, not freight, so it isn’t surprising that European freight railways have struggled.

The needs of passenger and freight railways are so different that separation is likely the only solution. Of course, passenger trains and freight trains can still share tracks in many places, especially on low-density long distance passenger routes, but major passenger corridors should be separated from major freight routes so that they can be optimized for their respective users. Fortunately, the advent of intermodal shipping means that only a core of freight network is required; instead of picking up a few cars at each shipper, much freight traffic is now delivered by trucks to a relative handful of intermodal terminals. North America benefits from its legacy of competing private railways, which produced multiple parallel corridors that can now be divided between passengers and freight. The Amtrak-owned Northeast Corridor has almost no freight traffic, as there is a parallel corridor owned by the freight railways and dedicated to their trains. Europe needs to embark on the arduous project of clearing a core network for heavy freight cars and double-stacked intermodal containers, likely after shifting most passenger trains to new high-speed lines.

Running a decent regional rail system in a North American city will require the exclusion of most freight trains from regional rail tracks. Local customers can have freight cars picked up and dropped off at night, when regional trains are not operating, but through freight traffic should use dedicated tracks. Especially for high-speed lines, the problems posed by North American heavy freight on track superelevation, track wear, platform height, and collision safety are too problematic for extensive track sharing. (More in future posts on sharing between freight and CityRail) Fortunately, many cities including Toronto have already shifted most of their freight rail traffic to bypass routes in the suburbs. Toronto’s main intermodal terminals are in Brampton and Vaughan and there are relatively few directly served industrial customers in the city centre. The Barrie and Stouffville lines, and most of the Richmond Hill, Lakeshore and Kitchener lines, have very little through freight traffic. The Milton line and segments of other routes would simply require separate tracks for freight traffic, either in the same corridor or on a new parallel route. Most freight traffic in the GTA would not interact with CityRail at all, while separating the two track users where they do interact would not be an insurmountable task.

CityRail In Depth: Corridor Capacity

Toronto is facing a transportation crisis. We have more people using every form of transportation than any of the systems were designed to accommodate. Our best chance to expand rapid transit throughout the GTA for the smallest price is to add a new level of train service, referred to here as CityRail. This is the second in a series of in depth articles exploring aspects of CityRail.

This article is shared with Urban Toronto.

This article defines an ultimate scenario for various rail services in the Greater Toronto Area. It will explore rail corridor capacity to accommodate the maximum foreseeable level of CityRail service without excluding other corridor users. Using conservative assumptions based on international standards and a modern signalling system, it is clear that an extremely high level of service can be accommodated with a relatively limited expansion of the existing physical infrastructure. CityRail doesn't need billions of dollars of big infrastructure projects. In fact, it could be implemented with a handful of small targeted projects combined with the improvements Metrolinx is already undertaking.

This post assumes the establishment of three distinct levels of service, which mirrors most European systems. Within urban areas, there is a high frequency and frequent-stop rapid-transit-style service (such as the S-Bahn in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, and the RER in France), which would be CityRail in Toronto. It would run roughly to the edge of the developed urban area while towns and cities beyond would be served by a regional express service operating at lower frequency, like the RegionalBahn trains in Germany and TER in France. In Toronto, these trains would have on-board comfort similar to existing GO trains and would make only major station stops out to Niagara, Barrie, Kitchener, Cobourg, and perhaps Peterborough. An interesting option could be the provision of two service classes, with second class similar to GO and first class more like VIA, with reclining seats and food service. The final level of service is InterCity or high-speed service, which would offer a VIA Rail level of comfort and on-board service and be geared to passengers travelling distances greater than 100km. CityRail and the Regional Express services directly complement each other, with the former providing high-frequency and high-capacity for shorter trips while the latter provides the comfort and speed desired by passengers travelling longer distances. No single type of rail service could adequately serve all of Southern Ontario, but three levels of service will permit frequent stops and short headways for people travelling shorter distance while retaining comfort desired by longer-distance riders.

CityRail assumes the installation of a communication-based train control (CBTC) system in all corridors. CBTC uses modern wireless technology to keep track of exactly where trains are at all times. Rather than simply defining large sections of track that can only be occupied by one train at a time and notifying train drivers by signal lights, it can constantly maintain a safe space around each train that varies depending on the stopping distance required by each train at its current speed. It can greatly increase capacity on a line compared with current technology, particularly when different trains have different stopping requirements. It’s also a major safety improvement, since it makes absolutely sure that no two trains occupy the same track at the same time, and can even automatically stop an errant train without any intervention by its driver. Following a serious commuter rail crash in Los Angeles, the U.S. Congress has mandated that all American passenger rail corridors be equipped with such a system by December 2015. A state-of-the-art signalling system is the best way to add capacity to a rail network without spending vast sums on more tracks.

Adopting a signalling system that is compatible with the European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) standard is by far the best option for CityRail. European countries have spent billions of dollars developing this most advanced signalling standard. Better yet, it’s not exclusive to a single signalling system supplier; instead, all major suppliers have developed systems that are compatible with the standard. This means that components and future upgrades can be obtained from whichever supplier is most economical. Standard North American signalling systems have received far less research and development investment and have far fewer competitive suppliers. They are also far less capable, explaining the comparatively poor performance of North American heavy rail lines. Freight trains would not share tracks with CityRail trains, so there is no need for freight operators to install ERTMS equipment in most of their locomotives. For the relative handful of trains that serve local traffic in the City of Toronto, a small subfleet of ERTMS-equipped locomotives could be maintained. VIA Rail is a relatively small operator, so the cost of re-fitting its equipment would be comparatively small. For some trains, it might be possible to use electric ERTMS-equipped locomotives while they run through the GTA and then replace them with diesels at the last electrified station. Any potential high-speed line would use ERTMS-compatible signalling anyway. There is the potential for bugs which would need to be worked out in order to make ERTMS work in North America, but a major new signalling installation like CityRail should use the most capable and widely available international standard.

The diagram above describes an ultimate operating scenario in which CityRail is operating at high frequency on all corridors, while accommodating intercity, Regional Express, and Airport Rail Link services. This is meant to focus primarily on CityRail and is not meant to be an exhaustive or precise depiction of future rail service. For simplicity, it does not include the use of the North Toronto line nor services that run less than once an hour. I have assumed a relatively conservative maximum capacity of 24 trains per hour per direction on dedicated CityRail tracks (roughly every two and a half minutes) and 12 trains per hour (every five minutes) on other passenger tracks. For comparison, the busiest section of the RER accommodates over 30 trains per hour (less than two minutes apart), while the Munich S-Bahn tunnel handles 30. Crossrail in London will operate with 24 trains per hour per direction when it opens, expandable to 32. Some intercity corridors operate with even closer headways. While changes to regulations and operating practices will be necessary, the laws of physics are not different in Paris, so it is possible to run regional rail trains at high frequency in Toronto.

The main constraints on train frequency are the signalling system, train braking distance, train acceleration, dwell time at stations, and the need for fast trains to overtake slower trains. The installation of ERTMS would eliminate all signalling constraints. Train braking distance and acceleration would be greatly improved by operating lighter, more modern, electrified European standard trains, particularly for CityRail. It could be more problematic on non-CityRail tracks where VIA and other trains must share the corridor, which is why I have assumed a more generous 5 minute minimum headway. Dwell time at stations can be mitigated by rolling stock that is designed for rapid transit operation, with many doors and high floors. The Spanish Solution, involving a platform on both sides of the train so all doors can be used, is another option. At some stations, a two-track corridor could expand into four platform tracks so that a following train could pull into a parallel track as the one ahead is departing. Finally, the need to overtake is not so severe within the City of Toronto as frequent-stop CityRail trains will be in their own corridor separate from express trains. Regional Express, intercity and Airport Rail Link trains could all travel at the same speed through the city. Any conflict between non-stop intercity trains and stopping Regional Express trains could be resolved with passing tracks at stations. Changes to operating practices and regulations, combined with careful scheduling, will permit high frequency rapid-transit-style service on all CityRail corridors without requiring a massive investment in more track.

Lakeshore, Milton, Kitchener, and Stouffville (as they are currently named) are the CityRail corridors with the highest demand potential given the relatively dense areas and high-capacity connecting routes they serve. Richmond Hill, Bolton, and Barrie have somewhat lower potential given that they either closely parallel existing rapid transit routes or pass though relatively inaccessible or lightly developed areas for much of their length. I have therefore assumed a very substantial ultimate CityRail service of every 5 minutes on the former group and every 10 minutes on the latter. At the outset, trains would likely run at half as often. Lakeshore, Kitchener, and Barrie would also see up to 2 Regional Express trains per hour. The Kitchener corridor would have a separate pair of tracks for its Regional Express services, which would be shared with 4 Airport Rail Link trains per hour and two intercity or high-speed trains. The Lakeshore would also have a dedicated pair of tracks for Regional Express, intercity and high-speed services. As considerably more CityRail trains would be operating on the west side of the city than on the east, those trains would need a place to turn. Rather than carrying out that relatively time-consuming process at Union Station, the most valuable real estate in the city, I propose that it be done at a station on the site of the existing GO Don Yard at Cherry Street. There is ample space there for multiple platforms to turn trains, with the added benefit of serving the new West Don Lands and Port Lands developments. Toronto's rail network, with targeted improvements, can accommodate even a very high level of rail service.

The infrastructure expansion that would be required in the City of Toronto to provide even this extremely extensive ultimate level of service is relatively small. It would likely include:

• Building a dedicated pair of CityRail tracks in the CP Galt Sub (GO Milton) corridor.
• Expanding the Weston corridor to 4 tracks north of the Junction and 6 tracks south, which is already approved in the current Metrolinx EA.
• Expanding Lakeshore East to 4 tracks.
• Providing a continuous pair of tracks on the Stouffville, Richmond Hill, Barrie, and Bolton corridors.
• Flying (grade-separated) junction where the Bolton and Barrie lines enter the Kitchener/Milton corridor, and where Stouffville enters the Lakeshore corridor.
• A grade separation between the Milton corridor and the Kitchener intercity/ARL tracks.
• The re-alignment of tracks through the Union Station Rail Corridor to eliminate the need for different lines to cross and unnecessary switching.
• The addition of simple surface stations along all routes to serve dense development and major connecting bus, subway, and streetcar routes.
• A station complex at Cherry Street to turn and service trains.
• Electrification of all corridors.

Many of the improvements that would be required for the introduction of CityRail are already being built or planned by Metrolinx. However, their true potential is only unlocked with modern electrified, multiple unit rolling stock and advanced signalling systems. None of the projects listed above require lengthy underground construction or new corridors. In fact, almost all of it can easily be accommodated in the existing GO corridors. CityRail would add hundreds of kilometres of rapid transit to the GTA without needing to bore a single tunnel. The only needed physical plant is simple surface stations, selective grade separations, new tracks in existing corridors, and electrification. These are comparatively simple and inexpensive projects by the standards of rapid transit. The GTA is blessed with an extensive network of rail corridors, and if used to their full potential through the implementation of CityRail, they could greatly enhance transit service throughout the region.