reaperexpress
Senior Member
Most of the express options I have heard have the DT station being the one most likely skipped. GO's recent ReR update showed they are leaning towards Mt. Pleasant being the meeting point of express and local service and, in the past, Bramalea (with its #1 ridership and important bus connections) is often suggested as a good spot (also has more platforms/track capacity and is not limited by the track ownership issues as everything east of there is owned by ML).
I expect that skipping Brampton is based on the track capacity limitations (2 tracks there compared to 3 at Mt Pleasant and Bramalea), not ridership demand.
I am just as skeptical as you regarding ML's proposed stopping pattern with all stops to Mt. Pleasant and non-stop to Union. It is ridiculous, not just from a ridership perspective but also from a network perspective.
Having said that, I am not sure how charging for parking offsets a shift in stations by people looking for service? They are not going to say "there are no trains at X, but parking is free so I will go there". A shift would occur if people were looking for service. Anecdotal warning: My neighbourhood is about a 12 minute drive to Brampton GO....is about 16 minutes to Mt. Pleasant and (depending on 410 traffic) 20 - 30 minutes from Bramalea. I have neighbours who drive to Bramalea every day because there are already slightly more travel options......there were more of them when the 6:50 pm WB train terminated there...but there are still some.....if, say, Brampton stn. had way less service than either/both of Mt Pleasant/Bramalea I think you would see a fairly significant shift in people's choice of stations.....they would search out the station that had the best/most frequent service. Using my 'hood as an example, unfortunately the longer trip to Bramalea would win out over the shorter trip to Mt. P because the next variable would be cost of fare....people do very quick and informal calculations and a 25 minute drive to a frequent service station with lower fares would win out over a 16 minute drive to a station with frequent service and higher fares.
No one on this planet is proposing that we eliminate GO train service from Mount Pleasant or Bramalea. But it is conceivable that there be slightly fewer daily trips from Mount Pleasant than from Brampton Central given that the latter has considerably greater network importance. Charging for parking at Brampton provides a cost to offset the benefit of more travel options. Some people would switch from Mount Pleasant to Brampton to take advantage of the increased travel options, while others would switch from Brampton to Mount Pleasant or Bramalea to save on parking.
No that is not what I said at all. I said no existing trains should be converted to express at the expense of those current stations. I think we agree that if new trains are added they can be express. I also said that if new trains are added in off peak or shoulder that should not result in any peak trains being converted because that is a defacto reduction in utility at the skipped stations. If, however, new peak trains are added sure we can (and likely should) look at some of them being some sort of express service.
Ah I see, thanks.