Toronto and Chicago, A Tale of Two Cities - Part 3A: Suburban Rail Today
Metra and GO Transit are a classic case of why going by the numbers in transit often doesn't work.
Toronto’s GO Transit network and Chicago’s Metra are two of North America’s only large suburban mainline rail systems, and both networks move tens of thousands of riders around their respective regions every single day.
Toronto and Chicago are both suburban cities, with the Chicagoland area clocking in at about 9.5 million people and the GTHA having roughly 7.1 million. These huge populations and the equally huge areas they are spread over make the case for sprawling suburban rail systems obvious — and while on the surface GO and Metra appear different, the system statistics and more importantly the on-the-ground realities all tell drastically different stories.
The Stats
To understand the enormous differences between GO and Metra, it helps to look at the raw system stats. Metra has 11 lines to GO’s 7, and Metra stops at over 240 stations while GO serves just 71. The Metra network even has over 100 kilometres-more track than GO, with about 780 km as opposed to GO’s 625 km. The differential in system scale suggests Metra might run away with far more riders and a much more impressive system — but in many ways, the situation with Metra parallels the one with the Chicago El discussed back in part 1:
The Chicago El moves far less people than the TTC subway, despite being a much larger and more famous network — with more impressive infrastructure in many cases.
However, as it turns out and the more research I did for this article, the more it became clear that the gap between Metra and GO was much wider than the already very large gap between the Subway and the El. This is to the extent that “talking about Metra and GO as if they are similar” is going to enter my mental store of “red flag” phrases people have about public transit along with “demand is fixed”, “transit can’t work in suburban areas”, and “LA is building a world class transit system”. GO is really an order of magnitude better — and I hope to make the case for it in the rest of the article!
The Systems
That enormous gap begins from the city centre railway stations. Toronto’s is simple: Union is a nice station with direct indoor connections to the vast majority of downtown offices, subway and underground streetcar connections, a large bus terminal, and now with its redevelopment — a bunch of restaurants and a modest mall. Already, many trains through-run at Toronto union which has no terminating tracks at the moment, with more planned in the future (this will be discussed more in Part 3B!). While Toronto Union Station does not have a modern layout (yet), it feels nice and modern.
By comparison, Chicago has four downtown rail terminals that function as five. These include the Ogilvie Transportation Centre, Chicago Union Station (which is two back-to-back terminals with only two through tracks), LaSalle Street Station, and Millennium station. I would argue that while Chicago Union is probably a more impressive building than Toronto Union, none of the Chicago stations feel nicer or more modern, especially with Toronto’s big glass central train shed. Having separate stations without through-running not only makes cross-region journeys a lot more annoying, but each individual station is also worse connected than Union in Toronto.
The rolling stock is another big difference between GO and Metra. On the diesel side (indeed, Metra does have an electric line) Metra has a much more diverse fleet, which obviously makes operations more complex and everything more expensive. While Metra has a wide variety of locomotives, many of which were not designed for passenger service (Metra has recently rebuilt a number of rather old freight locomotives for its use) and which I personally find quite dated looking and unattractive. GO by comparison has just two main types of locomotives — and most of its locomotives are from the streamlined MPI Express series.
For passenger coaches, both agencies have a large number from a number of orders and different manufacturers over the years, but GO’s bilevel cars — which are the de-facto standard in North America — are far superior to the “Gallery Cars” Metra uses. People in Toronto frequently complain about the bilevels, but basically every problem they have is worse with the gallery cars.
If you’re not familiar, galley cars are high-floor, double-deck railcars, with single entrances on both sides and an upper deck with an open centre (originally allowing a ticket inspector to walk through each car once and check tickets on both levels) and two very narrow aisles at the sides.
The gallery cars have half as many doors as bilevels, with stairs at every door and poor accessibility, a horribly cramped upper level, generally poor circulation, and a design that looks 70-years old (which, it of course, is). Cab cars don’t have a sleek design unsurprisingly and so the whole train just ends up looking incredibly dated. It’s a reminder of the type of rolling stock that shouldn’t operate on a modern passenger railway and should have been phased out decades ago. When I talk about ugly non-functional rolling stock in the US, this is exactly the type of thing I am talking about (Chicago is getting some new passenger cars — but that’s best left to Part 3B as well), and it really is remarkable how many decades newer the newest conceivable GO consist would look compared to the newest conceivable Metra consist, even though the real age difference would be measured in years.
Now, Metra does have EMUs as well, which operate on the electrified Metra Electric District line, but asking if someone would rather these trains or bilevels is another good litmus test for transit sanity. The trains on the electric district while being EMUs are of the same horrible gallery design as the rest of Metras trains, and that means they really aren’t very good. Even the Silverliner design used in Denver — which I think is pretty mediocre — is way better.
The Transit
When you actually look at the service levels on GO and Metra, at first glance they seem pretty similar — both have a couple lines with peak-only, one-directional commuter service like is so common in North America, and both have a majority of their lines providing an all-day, two-directional service.
But while Metra at best provides roughly hourly off-peak service, GO has provided half-hourly off-peak Lakeshore service for years (even getting it up to about every 15 minutes just before the pandemic), and for all intents and purposes the every 15-minute airport express train in Toronto is also a GO service. And honestly, even at the lower current service levels, GO having a single downtown terminus is a huge deal — you can make tighter connections between lines, and it’s easy to kill an hour at Union station waiting for a train. At the same time, the agencies are on a very different trajectory. While Toronto had only one corridor with consistent all-day bidirectional service ten years ago, it now has five, and services on the non-Lakeshore corridors are set to start getting better than hourly over the next few years — overtaking any of Metra’s services. Metra has been pretty stagnant from what I can tell.
And there are reasons for this: GO owns a much larger proportion of the tracks they operate on, and so they have been able to choose their own destiny in a way Metra can’t with its current situation. The through-running and less gigantic network also probably helps GO focus on less, but better (as well as a desire to emulate the best suburban rail networks in the world, which doesn’t exist to nearly the same extent among transit agencies in the US). The one thing I do think is interesting that Metra does is have the freight railroads operate some of its services when on their corridors — which likely helps allow for high frequencies in places where Toronto doesn’t currently see them, but this is something that we seem to be figuring out. At the end of the day, there is a pretty clear vision for GO to be a high-frequency, mostly electric regional rapid transit system, while the plan for Metra is… more of the same.
And that difference in direction can be seen in a lot of places. GO already has tighter integration with Toronto’s rapid transit system, and thats getting a lot better with 5 big new urban interchange stations set to come online in the next decade and a vastly improved connection at Bloor-Dundas West. You can also seamlessly use your Presto card on GO in a way you cannot use your Ventra card for Metra.
The stations are another enormous point of differentiation. Right now, most Metra stations are in line with the worst GO stations in terms of design and passenger amenities: Platform canopies are not all that common, and many platforms are wooden and/or narrow — Even the Metra electric does not have nice stations. I used to complain about GO often having only large bus-style shelters on its platforms at some stations, but Metra often has essentially no canopies!
By comparison, GO’s stations — particularly its new ones — feel like modern rapid transit stations; the type of thing you’d see on a subway system. Platforms are covered with canopies and are heated, there are elevators, nicely designed next train screens, heated waiting areas and tactile platform edges. There is also often decent bike parking and increasingly good local transit connections — which GO has rapidly been shifting its last-mile connections to. You can kind of see how by being much leaner and having less than a third as many stations helps GO here: there are just less stations to maintain and upgrade, so they can all be nicer.
GO’s operations are also better in some ways, GO trains actually have higher top speeds and GO has a lot more quad track dedicated to passenger trains to allow local express services on the lines it owns. GO also, from what I can tell, has an order of magnitude less level crossings than Metra — something that will take a long time and an incredible amount of money to change. GO even has wifi on all of its trains (Metra has it on some trains)! And GO has its buses as well, which offer a ton of useful connections and even decent orbital services.
In that way, GO ends up feeling like a real regional and suburban transit network, where Metra is well… a rather antiquated railway. Comparing the experience as a rider from on the two systems, GO feels like a semi-decent European regional railway (besides the bad land use and parkades at many stations) while Metra feels run down and messy. And that divergence is only going to accelerate in a big way — we will cover more in the next article.
Metra feels run down and messy because, in large part, it is run down and messy. Most people don't care because they show up right before their commuter train and leave promptly on the other end. But if Metra were to ever try to evolve into a full multifaceted network, it would struggle really with basic amenities.
But to be fair, both GO and Metra services could really benefit from non-core routes that do not operate out of the downtown hub(s). GO at least has good connectivity to other rail and bus options to help span that gap. Metra, not so much.
You didn't compare current ridership stats. Will that be in the next section?