Reconfiguring Operations at Canada's Largest Rail Station
Heading for a trip to Ottawa on the train this week, I was spurred to write something about the kind of wacky way things work at Toronto Union Station. Seeing construction on part of the facility, I really hope one of the major renovation projects we are undertaking can be used as a catalyst for rethinking how the passenger experience at Union works.
Now, I need to actually explain what spurred this on: As it turns out, the southern platforms at Toronto Union — served by the "South" concourse — have basically had their shelters entirely flattened in the past few weeks and months, as well as their tracks being removed, and soon the platforms will also be complete removed. The southern platforms are rather unique because they aren't within the old train shed structure at the station.
Before this stuff had gone on, the southern platforms were ones I used quite regularly, often hosting services on the Stouffville Line. That being said, they were not especially wide when compared to other platforms at the station — all of which are low and quite narrow which makes stepping off even accidentally quite easy, even if you get bumped. This was annoying because there was additional space adjacent to the platforms for tracks which have historically been used to bypass Union Station, but which were almost never used in recent years.
This brings us to the big southern Union station project going on right now. Before closing for construction, accessing the southern platforms at Union station was not the greatest, as access was off a mess of hallways and stairwells not directly served by the newly renovated Bay and York concourses (where seating, washrooms and food options are actually available). At the same time, the few vertical access points for the platforms were less than ideal as with most at Union Station. One platform did have a very unusual escalator, but in general, access was via a narrow staircase that could only accommodate one stream of people heading in each direction; elevator access also was not great. The project going on should rectify this, ideally opening up the space and providing wider and more numerous vertical access points, hopefully including escalators!
A more minor consideration worth mentioning is that stairs and escalators up to platforms at Toronto Union have doors either at concourse level or right on the platform. This helps keep air con in in the summer and heat in in the winter, but the non-automatic swinging doors are not elegant.
Given I've mentioned the additional and larger vertical access points to the platforms, you're probably imagining that there will be wider, more open platforms, and that should be the case: Right now, much of the already narrow platforms are taken up by vertical access structures, columns and the like. Roughly what should be happening is that the island with platforms 26 and 27 will merge with the existing island that serves platforms 24 and 25, making a much wider island platform and subtracting a track. Fortunately this track will be recovered and served by a new side platform built roughly where the southern bypass tracks for the station were located — this should ultimately create three large high capacity platforms.
The last important contextual detail to include is how boarding works for GO Trains. At least right now, things are a lot like on other longer-distance intercity rail services: you wait in a concourse and your train comes up on a display screen with a platform number some time before departure. At Union Station, this is supposedly done because platforms are too narrow to safely allow people to wait on them (but platforms aren't locked so this seems unlikely); more probable is the flexibility provided by being able to assign platforms last minute, and this is enjoyed by our current rail operating paradigm. However, this creates a lot of issues that I have seen firsthand observing frequent services at Union Station.
Now, some might say "trains usually use the same platforms", which is certainly true, but given the difficult layout of the station (or any terminal station where you may have to walk to the end of the platform to switch trains) having to run to a different platform at the last minute is really difficult if your train is assigned a different one. On the other hand, the same can be said for even just about any dynamic platform assignment if it isn't done at least ten minutes before boarding — which at Union it seems to more and more frequently not be. While an able-bodied single person with no bags and enough knowledge of the station can get from concourse to platform in less than ten minutes, that is not true of a large portion of riders.
At the same time, more than with rapid transit services, there is a tendency for riders to hold doors on GO services because of their limited frequency, and the fact that its very easy to end up on the platform late or in the wrong place, especially since the pandemic, many trains have only taken up about half of the platform
So, now that all the background is out of the way, where do I think the opportunity is? Well, given the Lakeshore Line (yes, singular) — operating services every 15 minutes or so pre-Covid — runs along the southern part of the Union Station rail corridor and has the highest ridership, I think it would be the perfect location to pilot dedicated directional platforms at Union Station. This would essentially remove the biggest capacity bottleneck from the Lakeshore Line, allowing it to operate well at 15 minute headways or better. What would also be awesome is the fact that Lakeshore Line passengers upon arriving at Union Station would no longer need to consult digital boards to find their platform — they would simply follow signs for Lakeshore East and Lakeshore West, as with a rapid transit system. Of course, mainline regional rail in places like Tokyo use this approach as well, usually maintaining the platform numbers in the case of a temporary rerouting. Now, I am sure not every Lakeshore train would initially use the two large southern platforms, but the vast majority likely could.
The benefits aren't just wayfinding related: with larger dedicated platforms and 15-minute service (with next train screens at platform level), passengers could wait at platform level, reducing congestion in the concourses that can slow down boarding on other services as crowds make their way from where they are waiting to their assigned platform. The other big benefit is that riders would feel less pressure to hold train doors, when they know that another train on the same line will be in the exact same location in 10 or 15 minutes.
So, will this major construction opportunity be taken to reorganize operations at Toronto Union? Perhaps, perhaps not. But I think considering the dynamics of how service operates with a complex central station facility is critical, especially when building anew.