You get an LRT, you get an LRT, you get an LRT, you get an LRT, and you guys:
You're getting an LRT!
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So, I'm exhausted.
I had a test today at school, last night was the federal election which I stayed up very
late to watch.
I think it was an interesting result is what I'll say, but it's time to talk LRT.
In fact, on the day of the federal election, Metrolinx announced that they had closed the
Hurontario LRT tender, which essentially means they're, you know --
Metrolinx shook hands with the consortium Mobilinx --
I'm not a fan of all these names with “linx” appended to them which Metrolinx seems to love:
You have Crosslinx, we had Grandlinq, Grandlinx, something along those lines -- actually I
think it's Grandlinq but with a “q” in Waterloo, we now have Mobilinx, god knows
what other names we might get in the future.
I like the fact that the Finch LRT is just Mosaic Transit Group, I believe.
Anyways, enough about that.
The thing that's interesting is that on the day of the federal election, when everyone's
eyes were looking at the election and the results, etc., Metrolinx announced “oh we've
closed the Hurontario LRT”.
So, “details please”.
Okay, I'm glad you asked.
So, essentially the final value of the tender is 4.6 billion dollars.
If that sounds high, that's because it is.
The actual construction cost is, I think, around... it's less than two billion if I
recall correctly.
All these additional costs are the long maintenance, operation, etc., because usually with these
P3s, what happens is there's like a 20 to 30 year time period where the consortium will
operate that line, and then after that it kind of becomes the property of the province
to operate, etc., as it likes.
You could extend the contract or do a variety of things, but that's essentially how it works.
There's not that much that's changed about this plan, but I did think it was worth making
a video to kind of talk about the fact that Ontario is really having an LRT moment.
I mean, we've been having an LRT moment for quite a while, but I think it's good to kind
of look at where we are.
Before we get into talking about that, I do want to clarify some of the details of the
Hurontario LRT.
So the line connects from Port Credit GO up to Cooksville GO and then further along through
the kind of central area of Mississauga around Square One shopping centre, and then further
along to Brampton, up to Shoppers World, which is where the Brampton Gateway Terminal is
-- it's kind of a large-ish bus terminal.
The Shoppers World site is actually planned to be redeveloped, it turns out, so that would
be really good terminus, it looks like.
It's unfortunate that, I think, a previous Brampton City Council cancelled the extension
further north into Brampton, because it would be awesome if this line continued up to Brampton
GO station:
You'd have a line that essentially connects GO lines at the ends, has another interface
with the Milton line, even though it doesn't have all day service yet --
To be honest, neither does the Kitchener line, but it does have more service than the Milton line --
The line essentially connects a ton of other transit.
It would have been great to see it go all the way up to Brampton GO, especially because
that means people from the core of Mississauga could jump on the Hurontario LRT, go up to
Brampton GO and head out to Kitchener, at which point they could get off the GO train
onto another LRT, and then head to their destination in Kitchener-Waterloo.
In some ways, that full plan would have kind of resembled the Eglinton Crosstown --
Of course it wouldn't have gone underground at any significant point, but it would connect
GO lines at the ends, and I think that's kind of a nice feature.
So, details on the actual stops, etc.
So some new renderings were released, and essentially, the stops are quite basic which
we kind of expected, the trains will be the Alstom trains, the same as in Ottawa -- I'm
sure we’ll include some clips of that right now --
These trains are pretty decent.
I do prefer them to the Bombardier trains, but it seems like at this point, as I mentioned
in a previous video, Ontario really can't get a single LRT that properly works -- well
LRV, you know the vehicles that actually operate on these lines.
The Bombardier ones have these production delays and welding issues -- at least on the
streetcars, the Alstom trains seem to have a lot of doors issues, it’s kind of a mess.
That being said, the Alstom trains will be operated, I believe they're gonna start
operating as four car units, so that will be -- four segment units, four cars, segments…
I don't like LRT vehicles very much.
Anyway though, they'll basically operate as a half of what the O-Train currently operates,
though there is capacity for extension -- I've confirmed this with the Hurontario LRT team
-- such that the platform can be extended all the way up to a hundred metres, which
means you can get two five-car units on the line, which is actually -- that's pretty decent.
That's probably enough capacity to the point where, if you need more than that, then you
should be looking at something underground or elevated.
The last kind of key details mentioned is the city centre in Mississauga.
Originally the plan was to have a loop around it, though as mentioned in a previous video,
the loop got killed because loops are expensive and lots of track is expensive.
It's okay, and I think that it doesn't -- the project itself doesn't lose a lot from losing
the city center loop, however it does kind of make the city center of Mississauga a little
less interesting.
It would have been nice to have close transit stops to all of the condos to the south of
Square One and to the west of Square One, because if you look at it now, those condos
along those roads are actually going to be a decently long walk from the LRT, so that's
not exactly ideal.
People might even consider taking a bus depending on how able-bodied they are because it's a
decently long walk across parking lots, Square One, and then another parking lot to this
city center transit terminal.
Also kind of unfortunately, if you actually look at the stop at the city center transit
terminal, it's not really anything special: It's literally just a flat at-grade stop.
It doesn't look like the city center terminal is really getting a huge reconfiguring or
anything, so it just kind of looks like another bus bay almost:
It's not really that fantastic in my personal opinion.
It's also kind of unclear how services will operate:
There's basically a Y-Junction to the east where Hurontario itself meets the 403, I believe,
and so it will be kind of interesting to see since the track is essentially like this:
You have a track going into the city center, a track going out to the south, out to the
north, and then one that goes vertical.
You kind of gotta wonder what services are gonna operate, you know?
Will -- I guess some trains will operate through to Brampton from Port Credit, some trains
then perhaps from Port Credit direct to the city center, some trains from Brampton direct
to the city center:
It's kind of unclear to me, it's kind of a weird layout, not necessarily something I
think I'm a huge fan of, but it's what we got so we're gonna have to live with that.
So yeah, the Hurontario LRT all confirmed, construction should start, I believe, in early
2020 is what I heard, very exciting.
So what does this mean for Ontario as a whole?
Well, as you guys saw this year, two new LRTs opened:
We had Ion over in Kitchener-Waterloo, and we had the O-Train Confederation line over
in Ottawa.
Well, Ontario's LRT love is not ending obviously.
Currently in Toronto we have two major LRT projects under construction: Finch West and
the Crosstown, and now in Mississauga there's going to be the Hurontario LRT, and Hamilton
LRT is moving along quite well.
At this point, I think it's fair to say, especially with the results of the federal election last
night, none of these LRT plans are going to get cancelled.
That means that. in just this next couple of years we'll have opened about six or seven
new LRT lines, which is kind of crazy.
If you actually look at other places around the world, even like the entire United States,
I'm not sure they're gonna open that many new LRT lines in this time period, so it's
pretty impressive to see we're doing it, and I kind of wanted to articulate what I think
the vision with these LRT lines can be.
Now, I do question whether the Crosstown being above grade in some locations is really a
smart decision:
There's a few places where it's really just a terrible decision that they put it above grade.
That being said, I do think the crosstown will mostly be able to serve Toronto well
given that it's Underground for much of its route, and the eastern portion will indeed
have less traffic so it's mostly okay.
Finch West, of course, along with pretty much all the other LRTs short of the O-train will
all be at grade for the majority of their routes -- some of them kind of go below grade
when they make interchanges like Finch and Hurontario, but beyond that there's not much
else to say.
I think that these LRTs are going to be really good for local connectivity.
When you look at Ontario, unfortunately for someone who enjoys transit, Ontario loves
cars, and the populous in Ontario just loves to drive, and Ontario is super suburban and
sprawly, so I think these new LRT lines are a wise decision in order to offer some really
high order transit along key corridors in still sprawling areas.
Whether I think it would be better to spend all this money on more subways in Toronto,
no, not necessarily.
The GTHA itself is urbanized as a region and so we do need to focus on connectivity outside
of the core.
The question is: how does LRT answer that?
I think, with GO RER as well, a lot of these LRTs are going to be fantastic.
if you look at it, Ion, Hurontario, Hamilton, and the Crosstown all connect to GO RER, and
they're going to be great because they're going to allow passengers to essentially get
off a long distance regional RER train and then hop on to a local LRT that gets them
to their final destination.
As I mentioned, if the Hurontario LRT had have actually gone to Brampton as many of
us had hoped -- and that's Brampton GO, the train station -- people could have rode from,
for example, Hamilton --
this is just hyperbole, but you could have rode an LRT from Hamilton to the GO station
in Hamilton, gone on a GO train, rode the GO train to the Mississauga LRT on Hurontario,
got off road the Mississauga LRT its entire length, got off again at Brampton GO, then
took another GO train out to Waterloo, and then got on the ION there:
That's two GO train trips and three LRT trips, all without having to essentially make a long
transfer or take a bus -- that's pretty fantastic actually.
Not that, again, not that that's a realistic trip, nonetheless I think that it's fantastic
to see that we have so many LRT projects now progressing.
It was kind of a question of “are they going to cancel some of these projects” about
a year or two ago when the Ford government initially got in --
I have to say, people do criticize the Ford government, and everyone, I'm sure, has their
qualms with pretty much any government, but I am happy that they didn't go and just rapidly
cancel all these different projects.
It's exciting to me that even people on the conservative side can see the value of transit,
especially transit that isn't just a subway -- which as we know Doug Ford in the past
has been known to love.
It’s exciting to see that we're starting to get so many lines that are very similar
across the province as well, because what it means is we can take our learnings on one
line and disseminate them to other lines.
One thing you'll notice in Canada in general is that all our big transit systems, short
of Calgary and Edmonton, basically use different technologies.
If you look at the SkyTrain, we have the automated, kind of bespoke Bombardier technology and
the Hyundai Rotem automated EMUs, and Calgary and Edmonton we have high-floor LRT that's
based on technology for German subways, in Toronto we have kind of standard-ish subways
but with an odd track gauge, in Ottawa we have low-floor LRT that's basically metro,
in Montreal we have a kind of typical Metro except it uses rubber tires -- which is normal
in some areas of the world but it's not like any of our other systems.
So, if you look at it, basically none of our major urban agglomerations are using the same
technology right now, and sure, all of these LRTs are basically being built in the same
urban agglomeration, but the exciting thing to me is the idea that you're going to have
some ability to build consistency from one system to another, which is something we don't
really have right now because our systems are just so different.
For example, say we start getting new vehicles, well Metrolinx ideally can just mass order
them for all the lines in the future, and it's really cool to think that all these distinct
LRT lines could have the same vehicles.
Wayfinding is another thing that could be consistent across all these lines, and more
things in the future --
Say that they develop a really good way of doing pavers on the LRT tracks so that it
looks nice or so that it saves energy or something wild like that, it's so easy then to go and
deploy to all these different LRTs because the province has basically built, you know,
six or seven LRTs all using very similar specifications, and I think that's quite exciting.
Anyways guys, I'm happy the Hurontario LRT is moving forward.
I'm happy Ontario is going to have so many consistent transit lines that are specs-wise
very similar to one another, which allows some interchangeability.
I'm just happy that it seems transit’s going to be moving forward, and of course we're
going to be making many many videos over the coming years about all these new LRT systems,
and we're going to be going back to Ottawa and Waterloo to film more videos there.
Anyways, of course, if you enjoyed the video, consider following us on Instagram and Twitter,
and as always, have a nice night.
Thanks.
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