Lakeshore West line

Lakeshore West
GO Train westbound past Sunnyside in Toronto
Overview
Type	Commuter rail
System	GO Train
Locale	Toronto Mississauga Oakville Burlington Hamilton
Stations	12
Daily ridership	60,000 (2014)[1]
Website	Table 01
Operation
Opened	May 23, 1967
Owner	Metrolinx Canadian National Railway Canadian Pacific Railway
Operator(s)	GO Transit
Technical
Line length	63.2 kilometres (39.3 mi)
Track gauge	1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in) standard gauge
Operating speed	150 km/h (93 mph)[2] (locomotive max)
Route map Legend VIA Rail/Amtrak Maple Leaf service 130 Niagara Falls QEW Niagara Escarpment Welland Canal 406 Overpass Twelve Mile Creek 111 St. Catharines Jordan Harbour Grimsby only Niagara Region ¦ Hamilton Confederation Hamilton Yard 63.2 Hamilton GO Centre West Harbour Hunter St. Tunnel 60.0 Desjardins Canal 59.9 Hamilton Jct. Hamilton ¦ Halton Region 55.7 Aldershot QEW Underpass 52.5 Burlington Jct. 51.5 Burlington 44.9 Appleby 41.5 Bronte Creek 39.8 Bronte Sixteen Mile Creek 34.4 Oakville Halton Region ¦ Peel Region 26.9 Clarkson 21.2 Credit River 20.6 Port Credit Peel Region ¦ Toronto 15.4 Long Branch Willowbrook Yard 10.8 Mimico 9.2 Gardiner Underpass 8.2 Humber River 3.2 Exhibition Milton, Kitchener   and Barrie lines North Bathurst Yard 0 Union Lakeshore East, Stouffville   and Richmond Hill lines Station with all-day service Station with rush hour/limited service Maintenance yard

Lakeshore West is one of the seven train lines of the GO Transit system in the Greater Toronto Area, Ontario, Canada. It extends from Union Station in Toronto to Hamilton, with summer weekend and holiday excursion service extending to Niagara Falls.

History

The Lakeshore West line is the oldest of GO's services, opening as part of the then-unified Lakeshore line on GO Transit's first day of operations on May 23, 1967.^[3] The first train left at 4:50 am from Oakville bound for Toronto, ten minutes before service began out of Pickering.^[4] During the three-year experiment, all day GO Train service ran hourly from Oakville to Pickering with limited rush hour train service to Hamilton. The experiment proved to be extremely popular; GO Transit carried its first million riders during its first four months, and averaged 15,000 per day soon after.^[5][6]

Service began running west from Union, stopping at Mimico, Long Branch, Port Credit, Lorne Park, Clarkson, and Oakville. Rush-hour trains ran to Bronte, Burlington and Hamilton, at the former CN railway station at James Street.

GO trains started serving the Canadian National Exhibition in August 1967 from an older platform just west of the Dufferin Street bridge over the Lakeshore West line and the Queen Elizabeth Way. For the 1968 Exhibition season, temporary booths were set up to handle passengers, which topped 24,000 on the season's busiest day. This prompted the need for a proper station with additional capacity, and by the 1968 Royal Agricultural Winter Fair, the current Exhibition GO Station was built and put in service.^[5]

Lorne Park Station closed within the first year of the line's operation. Burlington was re-located approximately 750 metres eastward in March 1980. Appleby GO Station opened on September 19, 1988, followed by Aldershot on May 25, 1992. The opening of Aldershot coincided with the extension of all day and weekend service from Oakville to Burlington, however, this was reversed due to budget cuts on July 3, 1993.^[5]

Service to Hamilton was re-routed from the James Street station to downtown, at the current Hamilton GO Centre on April 29, 1996. All day service to Burlington was restored on May 1, 2000, and extended to Aldershot on September 7, 2007.^[5] On June 29, 2013, all day service was increased to operate trains every 30 minutes.^[7]

A third track has been added between Sixteen Mile creek and the Port Credit station. Combined with additional work undertaken since the early 1990s, this gives the Lakeshore West line at least three tracks from Union Station through to Bayview Junction.

West Harbour GO Station opened in July 2015, serving as a second Hamilton terminus for rush-hour train service.^[8] This new station was built adjacent to the former CNR James Street station used by GO until 1996.

Lakeshore West trains have become more and more crowded at rush hours, even though trains are often only ten minutes apart.^[9] This has led to increasingly serious planning of electrified trains on the Lakeshore corridor, often termed GO Transit Regional Express Rail.

Service

On weekdays, trains run on the Lakeshore West line every 30 minutes or better between approximately 5 a.m. and 10 p.m. eastbound from Aldershot, and between approximately 6 a.m. and midnight westbound from Union. Service start an hour or two later on weekends and holidays. On weekdays, six trains serve Hamilton directly in the morning and the evening rush hour, four at Hamilton GO Centre and two at West Harbour GO Station. At other times, buses connect Hamilton GO Centre to Aldershot and Union Station.^[10]

Since 2009, GO Transit has operated excursion trains to St. Catharines and Niagara Falls on summer weekends and holidays.^[11] The train makes limited stops along the line (Exhibition, Port Credit, Oakville and Burlington) before continuing around Burlington Bay and heading east into Niagara Region.

On May 26, 2015, the Government of Ontario announced that service would be extended to Confederation GO Station in Stoney Creek. Construction is expected to begin in 2017, with the extension completed in 2019.^[12][13]

In 2008, Metrolinx published its regional transportation entitled The Big Move. As part of this, the agency identified an express all-day service between Hamilton and Oshawa (via Toronto Union) as one of its top 15 priorities.^[14] Metrolinx has also committed to eventually providing service every 15 minutes on the line, as well as electrifying railways. This project, dubbed Regional Express Rail, is expected to reduce some trip times by 20%.^[15][16]

Ownership

In order to facilitate service expansions, GO Transit's parent agency Metrolinx has slowly acquired portions of all corridors of the GO Transit system from the freight railroads, Canadian National Railway (CN) and Canadian Pacific Railway (CP). Most of the Lakeshore West line operates along the Oakville subdivision, and until 1998, it was completely owned by CN.^[17]

The first segment of the Oakville subdivision, between Union Station and 30th Street in Etobicoke (just west of GO's Willowbrook yard), was acquired from CN on March 31, 2010.^[18] On March 27, 2012, a second segment was purchased to the west, to a point just west of Fourth Line in Oakville.^[19] On March 22, 2013, Metrolinx completed a third segment purchase westward to a point just east of where the CN Halton Subdivision joins the line in Burlington.^[20]

These three segments represent Metrolinx's current ownership of the line. CN continues to own the tracks between Burlington and the Desjardins Canal, as well as the Grimsby subdivision that carries trains into Niagara. CP owns the tracks between the Desjardins Canal and the Hamilton GO Centre.^[21]

Station list

Station	Municipality	Services			Connections	Notes
		L	E	N
Union	Toronto	●	●	●	Corridor TTC	Through service to the Lakeshore East line
Exhibition		●	｜	●	TTC
Mimico		●	｜	｜	TTC
Long Branch		●	｜	｜	TTC
Port Credit	Mississauga	●	｜	●	MiWay	Future connection to Hurontario LRT
Clarkson		●	●	｜
Oakville	Oakville	●	●	●	Corridor Oakville Transit
Bronte		●	●	｜	Oakville Transit
Appleby	Burlington	●	●	｜	Burlington Transit
Burlington		●	●	●	Burlington Transit
Aldershot		●	●	｜	Corridor Burlington Transit
Hamilton	Hamilton		●		Hamilton Street Railway	Only bus service off-peak
West Harbour			●	｜	Hamilton Street Railway	No service off-peak
Confederation				｜	TBD	Opening 2019
Casablanca	Grimsby			｜	TBD	Opening 2021[22]
St. Catharines	St. Catharines			●	Corridor St. Catharines Transit	Summer service only
Niagara Falls	Niagara Falls			●	Corridor/Maple Leaf Niagara Falls Transit WEGO Niagara Falls Visitor Transportation	Summer service only

References

General references

• Daniel Garcia and James Bow. "GO Transit's Lakeshore Line". Transit Toronto. Retrieved June 2015.  Check date values in: |access-date= (help)

Bibliography

• Sergeant, Wilfred (2004). "Building GO-Transit: The Rail Commuter Initiative of The Government of Ontario & Canadian National Railways, People in the project 1965-1969". Starkville, MS: HTA PRESS. 

External links

• Lakeshore West GO Train and Bus Schedule