Save Union Station - Background

Background

Letter to Gordon Chong and the Board of Go Transit, March 10, 2003

SAVE UNION STATION

c/o 50 Baldwin Street, Toronto, ON M5T 1L4

March 10, 2003.

Mr. Gordon Chong and Members of the Board GO Transit

We wish to make this presentation to the Board meeting on Friday, March 14, at 10:00 a.m.

Our organization has been involved in consideration of the issues surrounding the leasing and development of Union Station. We are familiar with the plans that have been proposed and with the current condition of the Union Station property. We have had the opportunity of meeting with GO Transit and with the other transportation agencies operating in and around Union Station.

We are here to support GO Transit in its plans to double the number of commuters using Union Station on a daily basis, and to ask the Board to authorize further studies in respect to platform configurations. We believe that the plans should ensure that within the next decade platforms are widened, that most connections between the concourse and platforms are by escalator, and that most of the track is covered with a new roof.

As we understand it, current plans for GO Transit are to generally keep the platforms as they are now; and create many new staircases linking the concourse and the platforms. Current platforms are generally very narrow with little space between the edge of the platform and the housing for the staircases. Platforms 2 - 3 and 3 - 4 are both about 4.5 meters wide, platform 4 - 5 is only 3 meters wide. While considerably more of each platform will be occupied by staircases, apparently the hope is that most GO Transit users will spend little time on the platforms, and will wait in the concourse until the train is in the station. We believe there are several problems with this scenario:

1) Many passengers do not want to wait until the train is in the station. We believe attempts to try to corral them in the concourse will not be successful.

2) The distance between the concourse and the platforms is currently 41 steps, the equivalent of three flights of stairs. We believe that most people expect escalator services for such a connection, and that while some passengers welcome the thought of running up and down two flights of stairs, most do not. Escalators should be the main way of making this connection.

However, as GO Transit staff have pointed out, escalators cannot be installed where platforms are narrow because then passengers get delivered by escalators to the platform whether or not the platform is crowded, thus creating a dangerous situation. (Stairs, on the other hand, can provide storage of passengers.) The only way to accommodate escalators is to have platforms with a generous width where there are virtually no occasions when the platform is so crowded that it cannot accommodate more passengers as they are delivered by the escalator.

3) The narrow platforms may not conform with current building code provisions. It is unclear whether there is a compliance problem if the only change is creating more stairways, but there is an inherent problem when a major piece of public infrastructure is considerably under current standards of what is acceptable. Section 3.12 of the Ontario Building Code deals with rapid transit lines, and states, in Section 3.12.4.5(6) that a platform with trains on either side should be 6.4 meters wide. None of the island platforms used by GO Transit at Union Station come close to this width.

4) The current narrow platforms are not capable of accommodating new structural elements for new structures above them, whether a new roof or a building, without substantially cutting into the space available for passengers. To make the platforms more pleasant, it is mandatory that a new roof be installed.

For these reasons we believe GO Transit should be trying to ensure that as redevelopment happens to Union Station the platforms are widened. This can only be done by realigning the tracks. Currently most of the tracks in Union Station are single tracks, separated by platforms. If they are doubled up they can become at least twice as wide which will be adequate for the installation of escalators, the location of supports for new structures above, and they will be seen by GO passengers as being safe and attractive. This will require the installation of new columns down to bedrock for the re-aligned track and any redevelopment of Union Station should include these columns.

We believe that redevelopment should include this realignment of tracks with the creation of wider platforms and a new roof.

The cost estimates of these changes, including changes to signalling, are in the order of several hundred million dollars - a significant sum of money. GO Transit does not have these funds at its disposal, even though it is probably the largest passenger rail operation in Ontario. We believe this money should be made available to GO to make these improvements.

One source of funds may be the redevelopment of Union Station, with a view to producing significant sums of money that will fund this kind of transportation improvement. While the Request For Proposals recently sponsored by the City of Toronto, and now on hold, was never geared to producing this kind of revenue, other ways of producing it may indeed do that. We believe that this hiatus in the consideration of redeveloping Union Station is an appropriate opportunity for GO Transit to indicate it wishes to create wider platforms, install escalators and create a new roof, and that it wishes to see proposals for the redevelopment of Union Station include plans for generating these funds.

A second course of funds would be the federal and provincial governments. It appears that David Collenette, Minister of Transport, has a great interest in improving rail facilities, including the introduction of a high or higher speed train in the Southern Ontario corridor. We believe it may be possible to get a commitment from the federal government for a large portion of funds necessary to create the improvements required by GO Transit.

We believe that if GO Transit made it clear that it wished to ensure that there were wider platforms, escalator connections and a new roof, that other governments would accommodate these requests. We believe Toronto City Council could help champion this matter. We think the first step is for GO Transit to restudy these matters with a view of working towards the objectives we have outlined so that when City Hall takes a new initiative with respect to Union Station these reasonable requests will be part and parcel of the city's basic proposal.

Yours very truly,

John Sewell for Save Union Station Steering Committee

Noel Copping, Laura Cooper, Lawrence David, Andrew Jeanes, Cathy Nasmith, Wayne Olson, Alison Reid, John Sewell, Linda Sheppard, Bobbi Speck, Noelle Zitzer