Perhaps you have noticed how slow the UP Express train leaves Toronto Pearson’s airport. Perhaps you just arrived from somewhere far off and are anxious to get home to the comfort of your own bed with clean sheets and creature comforts. As you depart Pearson, you notice the train is very slow. Like you could run faster kind of slow. Well it seems that it’s not just caution or train acceleration. It’s the track.
When the UP Express was being built around 10 years ago, everything was rushed. The Province and the City of Toronto wanted to have fast transit for the Bay St executives and Queens Park politicians to be able to rush to the airport to fly off to New York or Ottawa and not be hampered by the horrible traffic between downtown and Pearson.
That includes the last mile of track that leads up to the Airport.
The company that runs the UP Express would like to see it fixed, and have reached out to no less than 4 engineering firms to address the weakened structure that supports the tracks. They have all suggested the same obvious fix, which is to run shuttlebuses between the last stop and Pearson airport while the track is fixed.
But that would require getting on a shuttlebus at the airport with your hefty luggage, and then dragging that luggage off the bus and onto the train, to contine the trip do the downtown core. And when you’re heading to the Airport, getting off at the 2nd last top, dragging your luggage off the train and onto the bus, just to drag or carry it off again to begin the wonderful luggage security experence at Pearson Airport.
A former Metroxlinx employee was asked about this and there is no fix without shuttlebuses. None of the Engineering firms want to put their name to any other solution beyond rebuilding the track in those last minutes of the train ride. Metroxlinx doesn’t want shuttlebusses. Engineers say it’s the only way. Nothing gets fixed. But it’s all because UP Express was rushed all those years ago.
UP Express has other problems. Despite running since 2015, the trains are wearing out and the Japanese supplier has gone out of business. Getting parts to fix the trains is difficult and riders can tell because of the suspension and bouncing making even reading on the train a sickening experience. Bombardier, a major supplier of trains to the subway and Go Transit was not chosen, perhaps for reasons good or bad, but the trains were not provided to them so there’s little interest in anything but selling us new ones.
For out of towners, the UP Express could be a godsend. People from Stratford, Windsor, or Owen Sound that have no transit to the Airport. Currently they come into Toronto to drop off their vehicle at Long Term Airport Parking which requires additional shuttlebuses between the Airport and parking lot. Having the UP Express extend further into Brampton or Mississauga, where vast parking lots exist, would allow these unserved markets be served by transit directly to the Airport quickly and easily.
But the wonderful thing about the UP Express is that it is connects two major transit hubs: Union and Pearson. And for people in Missisauga along the Milton Go Line, it can serve as a convenient, fast and all-day transit option to going downtown. Just hop on the UP Express and you can be at Ripley’s Aquarium or the Eaton Center or SkyDome (cough Rogers Centre cough). Extending the train further west could encourage more downtown visits when driving into the Toronto core can take an hour and half with traffic and construction during the summer.
In any case, the track to Pearson needs reconstruction, no one wants shuttlebuses for that last mile of track, and any plans to extend it west will no doubt be deprioritized in favour of a higher speed rail (HSR) that improves 150km/hour speeds to a bit more at a cost of $80 billion dollars. Because solving small problems is less shiny and flashy than fixing ones that make a real difference.
