ICE - T (Inner City Express Trains)

Second session (11:40 to 12:40)

Session Proposed by: Dave Dewees

The basic premise: We have local transit for the downtown and we have GO for long-distance commuter transit. What is needed is a middle system that services those areas that are neither outside the city but are far from the downtown core and are underserviced -- call them "inner suburbs": Jane-Finch, Scarborough, areas in North Toronto  and near the extreme ends of the Bloor-Danforth line.

This service would use existing rail lines that run through the city. The service would be frequent, the car lengths would be short, the amount of stops would be much less than on a subway, and the cars would be electric.

If someone lives near Kipling (western tip of Bloor-Danforth) and works in Scarborough, their commute is unnecessarily long because of the frequent stops on the subway line. The ICE-T system could provide express-type service both east-west and north-south, making traversing the city by transit much faster and more appealing.

Another problem: To get downtown, people coming from a number of different directions currently have to transfer at Bloor-Yonge station. This often leads to an inefficient transit route for many (i.e. take the bus all the way down to Pape station, get on the Bloor-Danforth, transfer at Bloor-Yonge and ride the subway two stops to College). More importantly, it is creating a congestion/overcapacity problem at Bloor-Yonge than is not only frustrating and inconvenient, but potentially dangerous. Using ICE-T could allow people to bypass the current system's bottle necks and find more direct routes to where they are going downtown.

Issue raised by Mike: CP has a line that runs through Toronto that it uses for freight. Could freight capacity somehow be added to the rail lines running north of Toronto so that CP wouldn't have to run its freight through the middle of Toronto, opening that line for public transit? Points out that the complexity of this issue puts many obstacles in the path of an express public transit system through Toronto using existing rail lines.

Airport rail link: The lack of a rail link to Pearson International Airport is a huge strike against the city's claims to being a world-class city. Some kind of electric express train with limited stops between Union Station and Pearson would provide a rail link, add transit capacity to the city, and possibly address the concerns of residents along the proposed rail line (since residents were concerned were about the heavy, loud deisel trains proposed).

The proposed LRT link to Pearson via Eglinton would be an improvement over the current situation. But it would not preclude the link for a speedy rail link between Pearson and the downtown core. Linking Pearson to the city via an Eglinton LRT alone would be clearly inadequate.