[URBAN NOTE] Two more links about the Union-Pearson Express transit line

[rfmcdonald]

blogTO's Derek Flack notes that the TTC is taking advantage of the controversy over the high cost of tickets on the Union-Pearson Express to advertise its 192 Airport Express bus. Speaking as someone who has used it multiple times, I can attest to it being superb, directly integrated into the subway network for no extra fare.

According to the Star, the current ridership of the bus is 4,500 daily. With a desire to double that number, the TTC will wrap the vehicles with travel-themed graphics and add the service to the official route map that appears on subway vehicles.

While the service is obviously slower than a taxi or the UPX (unless you happen to live near Kipling Station), the three-stop express service is actually pretty good, and it makes sense to highlight its existence to transit users who may not have even considered it given the attention focused on other modes of travel to Pearson.

At Transit Toronto, meanwhile, James Bow posted--crossposting from his own blog--an article suggesting that the Union-Pearson Express, as relatively unaccessible as it may be, has to be seen in the context of general improvements to the mass transit infrastructure of the Toronto area. It's not such a high price to pay.

[T]o truly understand and appreciate the contribution the UPExpress makes to public transit in Toronto, you have to look not at what's running on its rails, but what's happening beside its rails. Metrolinx did not spend its money building tracks for the UPExpress alone. The entire Weston Sub was torn up these past four years, and the investments are about to come on stream.

The UPExpress will run on two tracks that were strung between Union and Pearson Airport. The railway bridges over the Humber River and Weston Road used to be single-tracked; now they have four tracks. Bloor station, which used to have two modest platforms and primitive facilities, will now have a modern station building and four platforms for passengers to access. At what used to be the Strachan Avenue level crossing, four tracks are becoming eight, passing unimpeded through an underpass. That's in addition to many other widened bridges and new underpasses, and the elimination of a level crossing with the busiest Canadian Pacific railway line in eastern Canada.

More than that, Metrolinx has purchased all of the tracks running from Union Station to Bramalea and from Georgetown to Kitchener. Before construction began in 2011, GO Transit used to operate three trains in both directions between Union and Bramalea. It's likely that this service will be restored once the UPExpress is up and running. Indeed, every obstacle to operating half-hourly train service, seven days a week, between Union and Bramalea has been removed. The only question about setting up such a service is if GO Transit can find room in its budget for it.

A GO train operating through Weston station every half hour, seven days a week, able to whisk residents to Union or Brampton within 20 minutes, all for a fare of just $5.65, is far more useful a service than a $11 shuttle operating every fifteen minutes going just to the Airport. I think that if Weston residents were told that the former is what they could expect to receive by the end of 2015, they would have been a lot happier. And, ironically, they would not have needed a stop on the UPExpress to make this service a possibility.