GO Expansion: Ontario's $27B+ Regional Rail Electrification Plan

Fri, 09 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 2014, the Province of Ontario made a promise - GO Transit, which is the commuter railway that connects Toronto with the cities around it, would become something closer to what people in Europe take for granted - a train that shows up roughly every 15 minutes, all day, in any direction, along at least 5 electrified lines.

The plan to achieve this vision in Ontario is called GO Expansion.

Metrolinx, the provincial agency that owns GO Transit, puts the price tag at roughly $27 billion, and in the fine print of its own quarterly report, it admits that even that number “does not reflect the full project cost.”

Originally, the GO Expansion’s completion date was 2032. As of 2026 though, not a single electric train has been ordered. Overhead wires for electrification are planned for 2 lines instead of 5, half a billion dollars of signalling work around Union Station has been written off, the German railway that was hired to run the whole thing got fired and according to a leaked internal plan, the finish line has quietly moved to somewhere around 2042.

So, what happened?

The Promise

GO Transit’s rail services run along 7 lines and all of them meet at Union Station, right in the heart of Toronto. If you’ve never used it, the important thing to understand is that GO was built as a commuter railway. It exists to get people into Toronto in the morning and out again in the evening. Railways call those hours on-peak and everything else, such as middays or weekends for example, is off-peak. And off-peak you wait at least twice as long for the next train to arrive (if there’s a train at all).

Map of GO Transit’s 7 Rail Lines. Source - Own Work

Take Lakeshore West, the busiest line on the network. It runs from Union Station all the way out to Niagara Falls. During rush hour, you get a train from Aldershot to Union roughly every 15 minutes. And that’s actually quite good! But show up on a Saturday afternoon and it’s at least every 30 minutes…

That gap is the whole reason the GO Expansion project exists. 15 minutes should mean 15 minutes, whether it’s Tuesday morning or Saturday afternoon.

GO Transit’s Diesel Locomotives

To understand why 15-minute service is hard to achieve, you need to know what’s at the front of a GO train today.

GO’s MP54AC Diesel Locomotive. Source - Own Photo

The newest locomotive that GO owns is called the MP54AC, built by MotivePower in Boise, Idaho. It has 2 diesel engines producing a combined 5,400 horsepower which makes it the most powerful diesel passenger locomotive in North America. And behind it are up to 12 double-decker coaches, each weighing around 50 tonnes.

But on top of dragging all of that weight behind it, the locomotive also has to generate the electricity for the lights, heating and air conditioning in every coach to keep everyone on board happy.

However, here’s the thing: it can pull all of that weight without any problems. What the locomotive cannot do is get 600 tonnes of coaches moving very quickly. And that matters more than it sounds because if a train takes a long time to accelerate out of a station, the next train behind it has to wait a bit further back. Slow acceleration doesn’t just make your trip longer, it also puts a cap on how many trains a line can hold.

So, the solution is to get rid of the locomotive entirely and instead of having one engine at the front, you put electric motors under every car so that every wheel pulls. Railways call these types of trains electric multiple units, or EMUs.

Stadler KISS in Caltrain livery. Source - Wikimedia Commons

And in my opinion, the obvious candidate to replace GO’s diesel fleet is something like the Stadler KISS. It’s a Swiss double-decker EMU that runs all over Europe and, since 2024, on Caltrain in California.

But it’s not that simple…

Electric Trains that Don’t Exist Yet

In order to meet Canadian regulations, Metrolinx essentially needs a custom electric train.

Their plan is to run an all-electric bi-level EMU and they would come from what Metrolinx describes as a “theoretical plant”. Metrolinx says it will talk to other Canadian transit agencies about ordering from the same plant, to “encourage” a manufacturer to build it.

But which manufacturer exactly?

Well, this kind of information isn’t really disclosed anywhere yet but my personal speculation is probably Alstom. They are French, however Alstom bought Bombardier’s rail division back in 2021. It’s also the company that operates GO trains today, under a 5-year, $1.3 billion contract signed in 2026.

Alstom office in Brampton. Source - Own Photo

But as of today though, Metrolinx has not ordered a single electric train. The leaked strategy says the first ones would arrive on the Lakeshore lines around 2036.

For a sense of how optimistic 2036 is, look at what happened in the UK not so long ago. The British government ordered 29 battery-electric trains (BEMUs) from Alstom, worth almost £1 billion, to be built at Alstom’s existing factory in Derby. That factory exists, the contract is signed, and the money is committed, however, those trains still don’t carry a passenger until 2034!

Metrolinx has none of those 3 things and it’s promising 2036…

Where Electrification Stops

But even if you did have the electric trains, you’d need overhead wires (catenary) to power them, but under GO Expansion they don’t cover the entire GO rail network.

For example, on Lakeshore West, the wires end at Burlington. Everything west of there (Aldershot, West Harbour, Confederation, St. Catharines and Niagara) stays diesel.

Burlington Station. Source - Own Photo

On Lakeshore East, the wires end at Oshawa which is currently a terminal station, but not for long though.

And that’s because the Lakeshore East line is getting a $1.5 billion, 18.7 km extension beyond Oshawa with 4 brand-new stations: Thornton’s Corners East, Ritson Road, Courtice and Bowmanville.

Metrolinx contracted the work to Bowmanville Construction Partners which is a joint venture of Ledcor and Dragados Canada. Ground was broken in January 2026 and the project is scheduled to take about 15 years, so we’re talking the early 2040s.

But what’s interesting is that those 4 stations aren’t in the contract because Metrolinx wants private developers to pay for them through its Transit Oriented Communities program, so the tracks are funded but the stations are not yet.

And at this point, I had a personal, relatively dumb question - what happens when an electric train reaches Oshawa and then the wires just… end?

I assume nothing would happen because the train would just stop, turn around and head back to Union. Perhaps, if I wanted to go 2 more stops to Ritson Road for example, I would have had to get off and wait for a diesel train to arrive. And that’s by the original GO Expansion design by the way, because electric trains handle the busy section between Union and Oshawa, and the old diesel trains keep running past the end of the wires.

Oshawa Station. Source - Own Photo

But there is another option that was already briefly mentioned here. Electric trains with batteries on board (BEMUs) can charge under the wires and coast past the end of them on battery power. Metrolinx looked into this in 2024 and concluded that the technology is still in its “infancy” for a train of the size GO needs (12 coaches).

Keeping New Trains Apart

If you end up running trains faster and closer together, you would need a better way of keeping them from hitting each other.

Today, a GO train stops because the operator looks ahead and sees a red light on a post beside the track. The system knows where the train is because its wheels complete an electrical circuit through the rails which is a technology that dates back over 100 years.

And Metrolinx wants to update it to a system called ETCS (European Train Control System), Level 2. So, instead of a light beside the track, the train’s permission to proceed arrives by radio and appears on a screen in the cab for the operator to see. Trains can safely run closer together, and, interestingly, it would be the very first mainline deployment of ETCS anywhere in North America.

The Elon Musk of the 1920s

Since every GO line converges on Union Station, it’s naturally the biggest chokepoint in the entire network. Metrolinx knew that long before the GO Expansion project even had a name, so, by 2013, it had already started upgrading the Union Station Rail Corridor (USRC) - a 6.4 km stretch of track that runs right through downtown.

USRC (Union Station Rail Corridor). Source - Own Photo

USRC exists because somebody has to decide which train goes where and for the better part of a century, that job has been done from one of the three old brick towers - including the John Street Interlocking Tower. It’s a 1920s-era system of levers, relays and wires and in 2019, Metrolinx’s own manager of signals called it “the Elon Musk of the 1920s”.

And the problem isn’t the system’s reliability, because on the contrary, experts believed it could have kept moving trains for perhaps another 100 years. The problem is its throughput. A system like that is fine when a train shows up every half hour or so, but it just can’t continuously juggle trains every 15 minutes, on every line, all day long.

So in November 2014, Metrolinx signed a contract with Alstom to replace hundreds of signals, install 8 new overhead signal bridges, upgrade 40 km of circuited track and design a modern computerized interlocking - all due to be delivered in 2019. The overall project was valued at $365.5 million, with $92 million committed from the federal government. The hardware was built at Alstom’s plant in Rochester, New York and PNR RailWorks did the installation.

But here’s where it all went wrong - according to Metrolinx’s own financial statements, the system was designed “based on the existing track configuration and with limited allowance for future track layout changes.” In other words, they built new signals for the track layout Union had in 2013, before anyone had decided what USRC would look like under GO Expansion.

So, in 2023, Metrolinx paused the project. In the financial year ending March 31, 2026, its auditors signed off on a $504 million write-down, with management concluding that “the majority of the assets no longer have any long-term service potential.” Metrolinx said a “usable portion” was retained though, but hasn’t said which portion exactly.

USRC (Union Station Rail Corridor) Signals. Source - Own Photo

This is my personal speculation but if you’re curious, you can actually go and look at those signals and signal bridges. Just stand on Blue Jays Way (besides Marriott hotel) and look down at the USRC corridor - you’ll see brand-new aluminum signal bridges spanning the tracks. Every signal head on them is either covered with a black bag marked with an X or physically turned sideways. The cables are coiled up on the walkways, connected to nothing. I even found a manufacturer’s label on one of the masts.

Mast Manufacturer Label. Source - Own Photo

Metrolinx’s own blog says these bridges started going up in late 2021. So this piece of steel was fabricated nearly 12 years ago, sat around for about 7, was installed, and has never shown a single light.

The signal heads themselves carry General Electric branding, which sort of makes sense because Alstom bought GE’s rail signalling business in 2015, a year after it won this contract.

General Electric (GE) Signals. Source - Own Photo

Now, you could argue that these signals will one day be switched on for freight and VIA trains, which won’t carry fancy ETCS equipment. But most likely, they’d be pointing at the wrong tracks. Maybe some lights will get moved but as of right now though, this is what half a billion written off dollars look like.

Roof That’s Way Too Low

It’s probably not a surprise to anyone that Union Station is considered to be a National Historic Site. That designation doesn’t just apply to the absolutely gorgeous building on Front Street, it also covers the steel train shed over the platforms that was built in 1929 and 1930 to keep rain off passengers and let the smoke out from steam locomotives.

Union Station’s Train Shed. Source - Own Photo

And starting in 2010, Metrolinx spent about $248 million restoring that shed - it was allowed to replace the middle section with a big glass atrium, but the rest, which is about 7 acres of steel, had to stay exactly as it was.

But the thing is, Metrolinx’s own engineers said that the steel shed itself is way too low for overhead catenary to fit in by a matter of inches. And in order to touch that roof to do any modifications, Metrolinx needs to put together a proposal and get the City of Toronto, the Province of Ontario and Parks Canada to sign off.

The options reported at the time were roughly these:

Use a rigid overhead conductor rail bolted to the ceiling instead of a hanging wire, the way some railways do inside tunnels
Dig up the tracks and lower them but there’s a thick concrete slab underneath, so that’s virtually impossible
Cut through every column in the shed, insert a taller section, and jack the whole thing up in pieces, all while thousands of people walk through the station

Or, and this is where BEMUs come back, leave the roof alone and run trains that can drop their pantographs and roll into Union on battery power.

As of today though, no decision has been made on what to do about this problem.

Whose Tracks Are These?

Everything so far has been about the 2 lines that are actually getting overhead wires. The other 5 have a more basic problem because on large stretches of them, GO doesn’t even own the track.

Kitchener Line. Between Bramalea and Georgetown, GO runs on CN’s Halton Subdivision, which is CN’s main freight line through the region. GO squeezes in between freight trains and if CN needs the track, CN gets the track, if you know what I mean. From Georgetown to Kitchener, Metrolinx does own the line, but it’s mostly single track, so trains in each direction take turns. However, in 2025, Ontario and CN reached an agreement-in-principle for the province to buy about 21 km of land inside CN’s corridor and build more than 40 km of dedicated GO tracks. But it’s an agreement-in-principle and the land hasn’t changed hands yet. As for electrification itself, the original plan had wires as far as Bramalea. Metrolinx’s current end-state plan stops them at Pearson Airport, which is the stretch that UP Express uses.

Area between Bramalea and Georgetown. Source - Own Photo

Milton Line. 54 km long, about 50 km of it owned by CPKC (Canadian Pacific Kansas City railway). As of today, rush-hour weekday service only. But politicians want to fix that and the possible solution is called “The Missing Link”. In theory, it’s going to be a new freight bypass along Highway 407 between Milton and Bramalea, which would move CPKC’s freight off the Milton corridor and CN’s freight off the Kitchener corridor all in one go. In January 2025, Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford, told Metrolinx to study it under a new name called GO 2.0.

The Missing Link plan (in red). Source - Own Work

Richmond Hill Line. 5 trains run on it into Union in the morning, 7 back out in the afternoon, all on weekdays only. Metrolinx owns the southern half of the tracks and north of Doncaster it’s CN’s transcontinental mainline. On top of that, it runs along the bottom of the Don Valley, which tends to flood from time to time. For example, in July 2013, passengers had to be rescued from a stranded train by boat. Metrolinx’s estimate for making the line work under GO Expansion is about $1 billion in flood protection plus a grade separation at Doncaster, so this line is not in the electrification plan, not in the 15-minute plan and not really in any plan.

Flooding of Richmond Hill GO line in 2013. Source - cityfloodmap.com

Barrie Line. This one Metrolinx does own and there’s a lot of real and tangible progress. The Barrie line used to cross CP’s freight tracks near Dupont and Lansdowne on a flat diamond - one of the busiest rail-to-rail crossings in North America, where a GO train would sit and wait for a freight train to pass. In 2019, Graham Construction won a $175 million contract to fly the line over the top on a 1.4 km elevated guideway. The first GO train successfully crossed it in December 2023. Additionally, 2 new stations, Caledonia and Bloor-Lansdowne, are under construction. But the overhead wires are deferred with no date and here’s the funny part - the leaked 10-year plan says Barrie riders will actually get slower trips in the meantime because every new station adds a stop and a diesel locomotive takes time to accelerate, stop and get going again.

Davenport Diamond Grade Separation. Source - Own Photo

Stouffville Line. Metrolinx-owned, partly double-tracked already with a target of a train every 15 minutes to Unionville. But it’s deferred from electrification just like Barrie and from Scarborough Junction into Union it shares the corridor with Lakeshore East, so it inherits every Union Station problem that has already been mentioned above.

The German Railway

As with any Metrolinx construction project, there’s a whole web of companies involved in it and GO Expansion is no exception.

The consortium hired to deliver this project is called ONxpress. When it was announced in 2022, it had 4 equal partners: Aecon from Canada, FCC from Spain, Alstom from France and Deutsche Bahn, the German national railway. They were to build the tracks, the signals, the electrification, just about everything.

And a related company, called ONxpress Operations, which is majority-owned by Deutsche Bahn with Aecon as the junior partner, was announced to take over actually running GO trains for 23 years, starting in 2025.

But then, Deutsche Bahn (or DB for short) came in wanting to run GO the way railways run in Europe.

Take crew scheduling for example. In 2025, The Trillium published an investigation where it had seen a crew shift description that ran for 9 hours, in which the crew spent under 2 hours actually operating a train with passengers on it - the rest was deadheading and waiting around. Some of that is unavoidable on any railway of course, but DB thought it could be better and wanted to automate crew scheduling with German software.

But Metrolinx wasn’t receptive and discouraged its use. The message from Metrolinx’s leadership was that things “work differently in Canada.” So, the 2025 handover never happened and then in May of 2025, the operating contract was fully terminated. DB called it a “significant realignment” of the project and Metrolinx told staff the project had to fit its “current funding envelope.”

Making Union Bigger

On top of the signals and the roof problems, Union Station itself doesn’t have enough tracks and platforms to be able to handle more trains. Metrolinx knew that, so in 2020 it signed an agreement for the Union Station Enhancement Project (USEP).

USEP (Union Station Enhancement Project). Source - Own Photo

The idea is to widen the existing platforms, add 2 new tracks and platforms on the south side of the station, build new stairs and elevators and dig out a brand-new concourse underneath that runs from Bay Street to York Street.

The work is being done by the ONTrack Alliance. There are 2 American contractors - Kiewit and Alberici, doing construction. WSP, which is Canadian, doing design. And a Kiewit subsidiary called Mass Electric Construction Canada doing the signalling. Construction started in early 2022 and under the new platforms, crews have been pouring a track slab 80 cm thick. East of the station, new bridge spans over Jarvis and Sherbourne went up in 2025 so the corridor went from 6 tracks to 8.

ONTrack Alliance Companies. Source - Own Photo

The ONTrack Alliance signed a $562 million agreement to deliver these upgrades, with completion targeted for Fall 2025. So, it’s already at least a year behind but when it’s all done, Metrolinx says Union Station will be able to handle up to 80 trains an hour which is 4 times more than what it handles today.

Is GO Expansion Dead?

Well, originally, the province promised a European-style railway with 5 electrified lines and a train that shows up every 15 minutes, all day, in both directions, all done by 2032. And to be fair, a lot has been built with brand-new tracks, new bridges, new stations, an elevated guideway and a much bigger Union Station taking shape in front of everyone’s eyes.

But we still have no electric trains on order. Overhead wires only on 2 lines in the next 10 years and the other 3 with no concrete date. Half a billion dollars of work just written off. A roof that’s been too low for a decade with no decision made. A German railway fired, and the finish line pushed to somewhere around 2042.

So, is GO Expansion dead? Absolutely not.

Is it what Ontario was promised? Not really, because as of right now it looks like a bigger, better diesel railway, with a promise that the electric part comes some time later.

I’d love to be wrong about the timeline so if you know something that I don’t, or if I’ve made a mistake anywhere in this article, tell me by emailing andriyasredel@gmail.com

Andriyas Redel