Gas Prices ...

[nobbie48]

I thought cycling was stupid. I got curious because my wife was into it for a bit.

I have 2 kids, had to get them (by bike) to daycare and then school bus stop in the mornings and then go to the office by bicycle (otherwise it was motorcycle or public transit) while wifey took the car to the train station and took the train to work downtown.
I was an overweight dude, who hadn't ridden a bicycle in probably 10-15 years. Yes i was relatively active (i'd do a spartan race once or twice a year and did nothing the rest of the year) so I started step by step, but at first riding from sauga to downtown was quite the trek. 23km each way.
Eventually it got easier, and eventually i actually started enjoying it. Until the pandemic that is.

I met some people at my work who did the same from Oakville and even Burlington. Gotta be honest, they were fitter than me though. The reason people aren't doing it more is partly because it's VERY intimidating to ride next to cars and roads are currently the most efficent/short way to get to places on a bicycle. My motorcycle experience made it a walk in the park to be "naked" in the middle of traffic, but for the common mortal, it sounds like a madman's journey. If you put good intuitive infrastructure in (emphasis on good & intuitive), people will use it. Not half assed infrastructure that dumps you in the middle of nowhere and where have to fend for yourself/figure out your way in the middle of rush hour traffic. I mean you want something that would be comfortable enough for an 12 y-old to take without being scared for their life.

I completely agree that a bunch of people cannot realistically take their bicycle whether it be due to work requirements or schedules. But there's a ******** of people who could do it and that's who we need to focus on. Make it viable for the people who can; not an extreme sport that feels like you're endangering your life every time. Amsterdam was, at one point a very car-centric society in the 70s if i remember well and they decided to make drastic changes. Montreal has made major changes recently to have some "bicycle highways". It's not that it's not possible, it's that it's not a priority.
In winter i take public transportation because i don't own a bike that can do the winter commute and besides, the infrastructure is not in place for that to be done easily from where i live to where i work. But there are places that make it a priority with real winters unlike what we have in Toronto. As traffic gets worse year afteryear, those concessions (whether it be for public transit or cycling) are the only things that will keep traffic moving. Better act now before it gets worse.

When I was in high school which was before cars had coffee holders and especially phones I thought nothing of taking highway 2 to Niagara Falls from west Toronto. Today, not on my life because of drivers sipping, munching, talking and texting. What? Texting is illegal?

Nothing is being done about driver training, DUI bikes, lane hogs or crappy roads etc. Until those issues are resolved I see little hope for us emulating the Netherlands with bike usage.

 

[GreyGhost]

I think you get people to the trains using conventional means -- just make the train stations central, and have easy air-rail links.

Boondoggle? Possibly - but what gov't project isn't?. I think the corridors we have for highways could be shared with trains. Trains need little more than their width, stealing 11' from the highway allowance, and Southern Ontario has very little grade change to deal with. If the rails could be shared with freight trains, we could efficiently move trucks to the corridor centers, then use small tractors for the last mile.

Perhaps we could move remote workers further from the GTA and solve a bit of the housing cost issue. My wife is a remote worker, she's not interested in moving to London, Sudbury or Kingston if they are a 3 hours drive from civilization. If she could get to the city center inside 2 hours by train we have a maybe. I'm sure there are lots of people with the same view.

High speed rail by definition cannot share rails with freight. It just doesnt work. It must be on its own track. It could be in the same corridor or possibly in a corridor with road. There are issues with setback as a derailment at speed would wipe out a lot of adjacent land/vehicles/people. Running in a highway corridor pretty much guarantees that if it comes off there will be lots of people to hit.

Remember that with stations many 10's of kms apart. To avoid a long commute to get to the fast train, you need to live within walking distance of the station. If you drive, you have time driving, time finding a place to park, time walking from car to train and you have to get there early enough to guarantee you dont miss the train as the service would be hourly at best. Add in all that crap and you are probably adding at least 30 minutes to the trip. Living within walking distance of a high speed station likely means that typical single family homes are not an option (station should be in a high density area) and while cheap for Toronto, those dwellings will be crazy prices for London.

 

[Iceman]

Vancouver to Barrie, the highest price I paid was in Kenora at 1.63/l.

Sent from my SM-A530W using Tapatalk

 

[Brian P]

High speed rail needs to be on its own track, stops have to be 100 - 200 km apart and near city centre, and the train ticket should include local public transit at both ends. Speaking from observation, the high-speed train station in Barcelona doesn't even have any appreciable car parking around it, and there's no need. You are expected to either connect to local public transit (which is easy) or walk or bicycle (you can take your bicycle on the train) or taxi.

 

[Mad Mike]

High speed rail needs to be on its own track, stops have to be 100 - 200 km apart and near city centre, and the train ticket should include local public transit at both ends. Speaking from observation, the high-speed train station in Barcelona doesn't even have any appreciable car parking around it, and there's no need. You are expected to either connect to local public transit (which is easy) or walk or bicycle (you can take your bicycle on the train) or taxi.

That makes sense in Toronto, remote would need parking as they will collect passengers from larger, less connected areas. Kind like how Barrie GO parks a million cars, Union zero.

As for high speed, I don't think we need maglevs. Using the Amtrak type installed in the NE runs 200+kmh,shares with freight traffic and costs far less than maglevs.

 

[nobbie48]

High speed rail by definition cannot share rails with freight. It just doesnt work. It must be on its own track. It could be in the same corridor or possibly in a corridor with road. There are issues with setback as a derailment at speed would wipe out a lot of adjacent land/vehicles/people. Running in a highway corridor pretty much guarantees that if it comes off there will be lots of people to hit.

Remember that with stations many 10's of kms apart. To avoid a long commute to get to the fast train, you need to live within walking distance of the station. If you drive, you have time driving, time finding a place to park, time walking from car to train and you have to get there early enough to guarantee you dont miss the train as the service would be hourly at best. Add in all that crap and you are probably adding at least 30 minutes to the trip. Living within walking distance of a high speed station likely means that typical single family homes are not an option (station should be in a high density area) and while cheap for Toronto, those dwellings will be crazy prices for London.

The one big problem with public transit is that it is public transit. It serves the average mass not the individual and I have doubts about the individual giving up the time flexibility.

 

[jc100]

I love the train system in mainland Europe. When I lived in Paris plenty of people didn’t own a car due to parking and fuel cost concerns but mainly because public transport was just so efficient. French TGVs would get me where I wanted to go pretty quickly and in great comfort. Even in the UK the high speed rail system works pretty well. Problem is, these are enormous infrastructure projects that require massive planning, compromises and buy in. I think Canada would benefit hugely from a push in this direction. Needs some brave people to really get it going. As mentioned above, it has to be free of the freight to work well and the prices need to be affordable or it will just be a white elephant.

 

[Mad Mike]

I love the train system in mainland Europe. When I lived in Paris plenty of people didn’t own a car due to parking and fuel cost concerns but mainly because public transport was just so efficient. French TGVs would get me where I wanted to go pretty quickly and in great comfort. Even in the UK the high speed rail system works pretty well. Problem is, these are enormous infrastructure projects that require massive planning, compromises and buy in. I think Canada would benefit hugely from a push in this direction. Needs some brave people to really get it going. As mentioned above, it has to be free of the freight to work well and the prices need to be affordable or it will just be a white elephant.

Why freight free? It doesn't make sense to build a people only mover. Moving freight seats the investment, increasing viability.

Think about diesel savings when 200 trailers at a time can get loaded onto electric rail cars.

 

[jc100]

Why freight free? It doesn't make sense to build a people only mover. Moving freight seats the investment, increasing viability.

Think about diesel savings when 200 trailers at a time can get loaded onto electric rail cars.

The rails are different for true high speed trains I think, the trains are designed to lean and so the rails need to cope with different forces. Freight breakdowns keep the high from the high speed.

Edit: Plus the way things run in Canada freight seems to have priority and can’t run at the high speed train speeds. There’s the bottleneck.

 

[timtune]

High speed rail needs to be on its own track, stops have to be 100 - 200 km apart and near city centre, and the train ticket should include local public transit at both ends. Speaking from observation, the high-speed train station in Barcelona doesn't even have any appreciable car parking around it, and there's no need. You are expected to either connect to local public transit (which is easy) or walk or bicycle (you can take your bicycle on the train) or taxi.

Loved riding the high speed trains in Europe. Watching the LED speedometer spool up towards 200kph. Oddly looking out the window it doesn't seem any where as fast as doing that speed on a bike.

 

[LePhillou]

Why freight free? It doesn't make sense to build a people only mover. Moving freight seats the investment, increasing viability.

Think about diesel savings when 200 trailers at a time can get loaded onto electric rail cars.

Freight causes delays. Sometimes quite major.

Freight limits the design of the trains/rails which makes them slower.

And freight traffic is increasing.

It took me over 10 hours to get from toronto to quebec city including train change in MTL (without counting the go train before that). it was supposed to take 9 hrs even with the train change in MTL.
Sure i get there a bit more rested and couldn't theoretically still work while taking the train, if the wifi was secured
But i'm basically wasting a whole day. And once i get there i'm lucky if it lines up with a bus (downtown quebec) or have any bus at all (ste-foy station)

Now planes get delays too, and i think most of us have gone through that too lol
There will be delays when getting from one place to another, but having 1 out of 3 trips be late is a concern and classifies it as unreliable.

So we'd need to increase reliability which can be done by having dedicated lanes, same goes with avg speed. We could have a slow system that goes into every town like the current via rail and then have a high speed one/express that only makes stops at major stations in major cities. But i don't know how this would work better than what we have in place.

 

[Mad Mike]

The rails are different for true high speed trains I think, the trains are designed to lean and so the rails need to cope with different forces. Freight breakdowns keep the high from the high speed.

Edit: Plus the way things run in Canada freight seems to have priority and can’t run at the high speed train speeds. There’s the bottleneck.

I still believe its a matter of scheduling. Yes, freight runs slow, but that improves when you shorten trains and eliminate level crossings. Routing corridor freight could also be fast load where tractor and trailer move as one .

 

[bastak]

High speed rail only works if you have a very long distance between stations. You can't just ride to the nearest track, you need to get to the nearest station. Stations are somewhere between 40 and 180 km apart. Putting the stations closer together completely eliminates any advantage of high speed rail as you spend so much of your time stopped and a bunch accelerating/decelerating. Even at 40 km between stations, train is at 300 for ~five minutes.

I was talking to a work colleague who used to commute to downtown Toronto from Guelph every day. He said that there used to be VIA Rail service that would make less stops than the current GO train. Faster than driving in he said. GO train service started and none of the usual crowd switched over from VIA, simply because it was faster. Then one day, he and others on the platform discovered that VIA Rail service had been discontinued at that stop, and now the commute was an additional 30-40 min on the GO train. Not surprisingly, he (and likely many others) opted to drive in rather than take the GO train. I read an article recently that GO train service has been extended to London with a 4 hour (!) one way trip. I think (hope) the VIA Rail will be unaffected, but overall it seems like we're moving in the other direction. More stops, slower service.

 

[LePhillou]

I was talking to a work colleague who used to commute to downtown Toronto from Guelph every day. He said that there used to be VIA Rail service that would make less stops than the current GO train. Faster than driving in he said. GO train service started and none of the usual crowd switched over from VIA, simply because it was faster. Then one day, he and others on the platform discovered that VIA Rail service had been discontinued at that stop, and now the commute was an additional 30-40 min on the GO train. Not surprisingly, he (and likely many others) opted to drive in rather than take the GO train. I read an article recently that GO train service has been extended to London with a 4 hour (!) one way trip. I think (hope) the VIA Rail will be unaffected, but overall it seems like we're moving in the other direction. More stops, slower service.

Prime example of making the alternative less desirable than driving.
There's just so much potential but the logistics get in the way between shared tracks and "buy-in" for certain services. The problem is, if there are more trips in both directions you'll have more people using it and you can then make more money out of it. But enabling this in the first place takes a lot of coordination with the other users (via/CN) and most likely costs money so unless they see a need for that ridership to be services they probably won't initiate it.
It's a stalemate as they won't take the bet that people will switch over.

 

[ToSlow]

Just picked up a Mazda2 hoping for great results for gas mileage and reliability.

From everything I have seen and read it’s supposed to be an excellent car for the value

 

[DownUnder]

 

[bastak]

Just picked up a Mazda2 hoping for great results for gas mileage and reliability.

From everything I have seen and read it’s supposed to be an excellent car for the value

Congrats on the purchase. Always liked that car, excellent value for money.

 

[Deleted member 50930]

I am downsizing the 19s to 17s for next season, should bring me into LE hybrid Camry range (~50 mpg)

 

[Baggsy]

Prime example of making the alternative less desirable than driving.
There's just so much potential but the logistics get in the way between shared tracks and "buy-in" for certain services. The problem is, if there are more trips in both directions you'll have more people using it and you can then make more money out of it. But enabling this in the first place takes a lot of coordination with the other users (via/CN) and most likely costs money so unless they see a need for that ridership to be services they probably won't initiate it.
It's a stalemate as they won't take the bet that people will switch over.

At one point, my wife who doesn't drive, was offered a job in Milton.
Wow, that's right on the Milton GO line. I could drop her off at Kipling or Union and she could zip right out there, or could she?
Apparently, all trains would come in in the morning and leave in the evening.
I believe that's still so, even though so many people reverse commute.

 

[mimico_polak]

At one point, my wife who doesn't drive, was offered a job in Milton.
Wow, that's right on the Milton GO line. I could drop her off at Kipling or Union and she could zip right out there, or could she?
Apparently, all trains would come in in the morning and leave in the evening.
I believe that's still so, even though so many people reverse commute.

It is. The trains run to union until about 9-10am and then don’t start the return trip until 3pm or so. And only until 7 at the latest going west.

Apparently the Lakeshore west line runs both ways all day hourly. But that’s useless to me (and your wife).