source: The Toronto Star
ON - It would mean a faster and greener ride, and electrifying GO Transit’s rail system may even cost less than previous estimates suggested.
But don’t look for GO to electrify any of its lines in time for the 2015 Pan Am Games — and that includes the run that will run from the airport to Union Station.
It’s unlikely there would be time to electrify the airport link service before it opens that spring, said Karen Pitre, project director of a $4 million GO electrification study that was slated to be complete next month.
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And if the power grid knocks out, then what?
5 comments:
No power means they'll be as helpless as the subway and streetcars. But, there's also the possibility of being stranded somewhere in the middle of nowehere, or in the middle of a big bridge. You'd have to wait it out, or wait until GO asks CN to tow all the disabled trains.
Does this mean that it will be deadly to to cross the tracks at the stations as well as illegal?
@RonNasty: It's not only illegal, it's also "prohibited" (!)
With regard to power outages... most power outages we get in the GTA are caused by city-level transformers, which convert the grid's very high volatge (200kV) into a medium voltage (5-15kV), or nieghbourhood-level, which cinvert that into something usable by customers. The latter tend to have no backup or redundacy.
Because an electrifed rail system would use a high voltage (25kV), it would be powered by transformers feeding directly off the main (200kV) grid. The number of tranformer sites needed for the whole system would be relatuively small (single digits), so having multiple/redundent transformers at each site would be finanically viable.
(NB: the subway is on a seperate system to houses/offices, but the stations aren't... In a blackout, the trains can still run, but you can't use the stations. This wouldn't apply to GO)
In summary: if the City of Toronto has a blackout, it will almost certainly still be possible to run GO trains.
I support the electrification of GO Trains, however there are many issues. Obviously in other jurisdictions electric trains are being used all the time.
My issue is the cost and time it would take to employ it all. I don't think that this is something that could happen in 5-10 years.
The Clean Train Coalition, and more recently the Junction and Weston residents, have been advocating for this. My question is: who will pay for this? It is still expensive compared to diesel. As it is we are a few billion dollars short and we can't provide frequent service in some areas. There will need to be a tradeoff somewhere. Now I'm not saying that getting to work on time has priority over someone's health. But even if the trains, once the GTS projected has been completely, run at maximum volume and a person sits in the middle of the tracks the entire day for a few years, their health will only be impeded by so much. In fact, I think the cars they drive have more of an impact the diesel trains.
I discussed electric trains with a colleague before and it just made me look at the culture that we have in the GTA. If the MTO was to provide $4b to construct a new highway, no one would make a fuss even though it is supporting vehicular use, etc. Why doesn't anyone make a fuss about using hybrid cars?
Re:urbanempress... yes, electrifcation is expensive to implement, but there are two big benefits:
1) Electric trains are cheaper to run (lower energy costs and simpler maintainence).
2) Electric trains can have *much* higher power ratings than diesel trains, which allows for faster acceleration, which means shorter joruney times (especially if there are a lot of stops).... and shorter journey times means more revenue for GO Transit. (Journey time is the single bigegst factor in people's choice of car or transit)
In short, electrifcation means lower costs and more revenue :-)
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