The weird case of the GO Stouffville Line
Cities are investing in regional rail and need to make sure to maximize it's value!
Here in Toronto, the GO Stouffville Line is quite interesting, because it might be the GO Transit line with the most potential for the future with improved service frequency and electrification.
This is for a number of reasons:
The Stouffville Line basically directly serves (<500m walk generally) two valuable north south corridors within Scarborough with rapid transit service — Midland and Kennedy, as well as a number of other north-south corridors less directly such as Warden, Brimley, and Birchmount.
Success for Toronto’s suburban transit often relies heavily on feeder bus service, and a number of key corridors — such as Steeles, Finch and Sheppard currently feed or will feed into new and existing stations. York region’s VIVA could also feed and service lots of riders too, if it ran more service.
This can absolutely provide some relief value for the Yonge Line (as well as Line 2 and Bloor Yonge) given the numerous people who ride buses from Scarborough to both subway lines to head downtown (and the substantial office growth around Union with projects like CIBC Square and 160 Front). Plus, even with a moderate service frequency, the high speeds of the Stouffville Line (mainly on the shared corridor with the Lakeshore East Line) can get you to many places downtown faster than the existing subway lines alone.
There are a number of major transit-oriented developments planned around the Stouffville Line, including (starting from Union) at the Port Lands, East Harbour, Danforth, Scarborough, Kennedy (which is going to be a very large hub), Agincourt Mall, Milliken/Pacific Mall, Downtown Markham, and around Mount Joy.
Major visible improvements. I don’t think any line is seeing the same kind of drastic visual/infrastructure improvements right now (the Davenport Diamond on the Barrie Line is visible, but a new station at Bloor Lansdowne is some ways away still).
To put this in perspective, historically the GO stations along the line have been quite low visibility given their light infrastructure and few structures, but the upgraded stations are not only visually much more noticeable (and in the case of Steeles and later Finch, have portions that extend over the roadway), but they are also just plain nice. The Stouffville line stations have jumped from some of the most lacklustre on the network to the nicest — with full canopies, digital next train displays, lots of waiting rooms, and more, that are up to the standards of the best stuff you see in Europe. Better yet, access should be better too with new and improved pedestrian access and bike lanes as well as storage, and I also think the new grade separations and Finch and Steeles will make access via bus much better. All of this will help make it obvious to locals that vastly improve service is coming (the stations don’t feel all that different from subway stations) and will be much more comfortable places to wait for the infrequent, but all-day long current service.
Connectivity. The Stouffville line already through-runs some services onto the Kitchener line, and that’s likely to only increase in the future. This means that one can get across Toronto to places like Liberty Village, the Stockyards, parts of Etobicoke, as well as the airport and beyond much faster by using it over even the traditional rapid transit network. And the Kitchener Line is also seeing the kind of drastic capacity and station improvements happening on the Stouffville line, so frequent through-running isn’t even probably all that far off. At the same time, the connection between the Stouffville and Ontario lines at East Harbour will open up most of the offices in the region and most of downtown south of Dundas to passengers from Scarborough and York region.
So, given all of these huge trends, changes, and positive features of the Stouffville line, what’s so weird about it? Well, as with a decent number of our transit plans, I feel like we are missing some obvious opportunities to improve our infrastructure and optimize what we are building to reduce high costs, improve service, and attract more riders.
One of the things I bang on endlessly about with GO is the lack of stations at logical transfer locations on the regional rail network that feel like a vestige of the commuter-oriented operation we are trying to move beyond. The volumes that expanded regional rail service will be able to move is going to be massive, and can very much overwhelm local and even rapid transit connecting to other destinations, much less major stations like Union. Because of this, it feels logical to me that we keep transit riders on the GO network for as much of their trip as possible to maximize the system’s plentiful capacity, and this means putting stations in locations where riders can conveniently transfer to combine trips across multiple lines. I frequently talk about potential for this at a location like Spadina in Downtown Toronto, but another clear location where this makes a lot of sense is Scarborough Station, where the Lakeshore East and Stouffville lines diverge. This location provides a lot of value for transfers, because it’s quite natural that someone might want to change between the outer segments of these two lines to travel been Durham and York region or even within Scarborough, and the alternative trip is either an annoying jog on a bus or changing somewhere much closer to downtown and wasting valuable time. What’s even more frustrating in this situation is that despite platforms for both lines already existing at this location (they will need to be modified for more frequent service), enabling convenient transfers here does not appear to be the plan — though fortunately this could change!
Now, I mentioned a ton of TOD in the positives of the Stouffville line and it does exist, but the TOD is basically at best adjacent to station sites and at worst some distance away. Other lines like Lakeshore West, Kitchener and Barrie are seeing direct station integration with private developments, and this seems like an excellent option especially within the City of Toronto where drive-up customers should be decreasing with better local transit service.
Of course, a big part of getting Toronto residents onto GO is having that local service to get them to the stations, and this is a place where we really need to get to. Everyone agrees fare integration is important — including the government! But they are not currently making any moves to fix the situation between GO and the TTC even though it will clearly be mutually beneficial.
Something I feel is excessive are the grade separations going on on the line. While I am broadly a complete supporter of grade separation, it feels like every minor street that crosses the Stouffville line is being trenched of turned into an overpass, and that does not feel necessary to me, especially with short and fast passenger trains. Other countries have much higher standards than we do in Canada for such crossings (gates come together to completely enclose the crossing / take up vertical space as well), but that leaves me feeling like another case where we cannot find a healthy middle ground, so either a dangerous and sloppy crossing stays or it must be replaced at great cost.
There is also something quite odd in the plans, which is that frequent service end and is planned to always end just across the border of York region at Unionville Station. This feels like a super weird end point for frequent service, because the land use between Scarborough and this part of Markham is not really that distinct, and there is plenty of room for expanded stations and tracks in the corridor (which will be fully electrified) all the way to Mount Joy where development does fall off a cliff to the north because of the greenbelt. My suggestion would be to at least provide every 15 minute service all the way to Mount Joy, even if that means leaving some single track sections. That being said, it seems possible that resistance to more frequent service might be because of the excessive standards we seem to aim for for any semi-frequent service. An example of this is the full double tracking, station expansions, and grade separations galore we see in so many places.
The final thing I find suuuuper weird with the Stouffville line are two instances where major development adjacent to the railway are poorly connected to their local stations. The first is the development around Agincourt station, where there is this large cluster of towers south of the station but no pathway connecting those residents to the station — in fact, unlike at Milliken, there is not even a pedestrian bridge over the street despite the high rise housing right there! Unionville is another crazy situation. The station itself can only be accessed from the east, meaning someone who wants to travel to the offices and other points of interest in the massive downtown Markham development adjacent to the station needs to walk in the opposite direction for quite some distance to connect. This is a huge own goal especially as the station has JUST been rebuilt and still does not even have a connection to the road to the north.
All of these things work together to lessen the impact that could be had by the Stouffville line and that’s too bad because we are spending over a billion dollars on various upgrades to it, and for that money we really should be moving rapid transit numbers of people — which we are not! Yet…
The weird case of the GO Stouffville Line
It is weird that we have underpasses for minor streets, yet at stations with lots of TOD around them we don't have underpasses to allow pedestrains to get to their housing without crossing a busy street or walking over a bridge.
The only GO rail line I've never somehow rode. I need to change that soon and document some of this 'weirdness' myself.