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So, today’s new story.
Now, if you’re on Twitter and you follow any of the kind of, Ontario politicians, you
might have seen a huge Twitter blast over the past little bit because of the highways
409 and 401 tunnel.
And, if you’re like me originally, when I had heard about this project, you’re maybe
questioning it a bit: “why is this actually important?
“You’re basically building an underpass under the 401, and I get that it’s a big
highway, but it’s an underpass.
“It’s not super exciting. “
But then when you actually spend a bit more time and look into the project, you realize
that it’s actually hugely important, and it’s a huge project.
Now, if you don’t know the locations super well, it’s gonna be kind of hard to understand,
so I’m gonna try to layout the location quite nicely for you.
So, Highway 401, of course, is the main east-west connector across northern Toronto, and Highway
409 basically is a diagonal southeast to northwest highway which connects the 401 to Toronto
Pearson International.
So, basically, when the 409 starts, it just kind of branches from the 401, so there’s
a bunch of flyovers, and the highway goes off to the northwest, and the 401 kind of
goes west/southwest.
Now, at this point where the 409 and the 401 are kind of merging or splitting apart, there
are 21 traffic lanes, which is incredibly wide.
Of course, Highway 401 is one of, if not the most used, highways in the world.
So the fact that we’re doing a construction project there is significant, especially considering
the fact that there’s supposed to be zero impacts on traffic for the highway.
Now, why is this project actually needed?
So currently, the Kitchener corridor, if you’ve paid attention over the past few years, has
got a lot of money spent on it.
During the Georgetown South project, there were several major grade separations, including
the West Toronto Diamond which separated the CP mainline with the Kitchener line — or
the Georgetown South Line/corridor.
What this essentially enables is the UP Express service, which runs 15 minutes all day. In
fact, it’s probably pretty much still Metrolinx’s most frequent service, and it’s an incredible
service — a lot of people love it.
Now, the issue is that the UP Express is running small trains, which are really meant to just
be an express airport train.
However, since this service is so fantastic, a lot of commuters and kind of just regional
passengers have been using these trains to get to Weston and Bloor, the intermediate
stations.
With the Eglinton Crosstown opening, there’ll be another station on this route called Mount
Dennis, which connects with Line 5 going east-west, and this is gonna probably lead to some
significant overcrowding on the UP Express, which will be, kind of, one of the best connectors
on the west side of the city, because it’s a lot faster than taking the Toronto York
Spadina subway, or the Barrie Line which doesn’t have stops at all of its interchange points,
notably Bloor and Eglinton.
So, the point of this project is, then, to allow Kitchener trains to operate all day
in two directions, at least up to Bramalea, which is where CN has their tracks which come
in, and GO’s tracks essentially stop and Bramalea and they continue after Georgetown.
However, offering frequent service to Bramalea would at least relieve the congestion that’s
currently present on the UP Express, which would also mean you could serve kind of southeastern
Brampton, as well as northern Mississauga at Malton station.
So there’s lots of good connections to be had.
Unfortunately, since the kind of differential between the speed of the UP Express trains,
which are diesel multiple units, and the regular GO trains, which are just locomotive-hauled
long consists —
since there’s such a huge gap in the acceleration possible between these two different kinds
of trains, you can’t really interoperate them with only three tracks which, for the
section under the 401, is all we have, and for much of the corridor right now.
So, kind of the major — I would call it the “finishing move” for this corridor,
is to add a fourth track along pretty much the entire length.
It exists close to up to Bloor and in other areas, but it’s not currently used, that
fourth track. And what the project kind of entails beyond
just the 401 409 tunnel, is it entails extra platform at Bloor, so there’ll be now four
platforms there.
There’ll be four platforms at Weston, which will be kind of a weird layout, which is going
to be two side platforms and an island platform — usually, you’d expect two islands, but
— it’s a weird layout, what can I say.
So, you’ll have those two new platforms, and then you’ll have Etobicoke North getting
removed, because currently, Etobicoke North is in the way of the fourth track just north
of the 401 and 409, so you'll see that removed.
You’ll see the new station at Woodbine added, and then you'll have two tracks running under
the 401, which will replace one of the current tracks, giving us a total of four tracks;
that's two for UP Express, and two for Kitchener / VIA, and this will enable that frequent
all-day service on the Kitchener line.
In fact, when you think about it, by the time this project is done, the Stouffville Line
double-tracking will also be done, and since it’s previously been discussed that perhaps
these lines could be interlined, it would be very interesting to see if, when the project
is complete
— which is also when the Eglinton crosstown is complete, which is very convenient because
that's when we're gonna need a lot of relief on both the east and the west, with Kennedy
at Stouffville Line being connected to the Eglinton Crosstown as well —
well then, it's a perfect opportunity to have trains be able to operate frequently all day,
all the way from Bramalea down, up to Unionville on the Stouffville Line.
So that's what I imagine will happen, service pattern-wise.
The tunnel, as I said, adds two new tracks in a kind of nicer — I think it won't be
very much like an overpass, it will be like a sequentially excavated tunnel, so a bit
more arc-shaped — and that's going to enable that frequent all-day two-way service.
It's exciting because it means we'll finally have four lines — or I guess five with the
Stouffville Line — five lines with frequent all-day two-way service.
The Barrie line is arguably not so frequent, but hopefully, by then double-tracking has
progressed, and so we can see at least every 30 minutes trains.
But yeah, super exciting opportunity.
There's clearly a lot of demand since the UP Express is so successful, and it's an exciting
project.
Anyways, thanks for watching guys, follow us on Instagram and Twitter, and as always,
thanks for watching.