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GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

ShonTron said:
So the annoucement is apparently a snoozefest. The only tangible improvement is the Barrie Downtown station and some money for more rail cars and locomotive refurbishments.
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Why do our politicians insist on doing announcements for every little thing. Go buys new train routinely, for example; do politicians need to be on hand every single time?

No, scratch that. I already know the answer.
 
nfitz said:
Weber street is only a 2-lane street past the station - unless someone went and widened it in the last year! King Street is the major artery from Victoria, north - supplemented by Charles and Duke south of Victoria. I really don't think that there are going to be that many university students commuting to Toronto on GO; I've taken the morning VIA train out of Kitchener - and that wasn't a young crowd at all. Bus service to the current station isn't that great; only the 8 passes by, plus whatever is on Victoria Street ... it's over half-a-kilometre to King where most of the buses are (I've walked it many, many times), doable, but I'm not sure that it's going to encourage as much as it should.

Perhaps they should just move the station to King Street sooner than later ... at least it would have a good transit connection then.
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Good points. I agree that VIA doesn't attract that many students, especially early in the morning. The night train has more students, especially on Sunday nights. Far more take the Greyhound, almost entirely because of the cost. VIA requires an ISIC card, which few university students have, and now costs $21 one way to Toronto. The Greyhound student rate is $14.10 and they'll accept a standard student card. A lot of students I've spoken to don't even know that VIA to Kitchener exists. GO on the other hand could be very appealing to some students. If they live in the western GTA, the stops would be much closer to their house, and the fares would likely be as low or even lower than the Greyhound. They'll likely be dramatically lower than the Greyhound for Kitchener-Guelph trips, so you might see a surprisingly large number of people on that route.

I've long heard about moving the station to King Street, but I've never actually seen any plans, at least since that big light rail/convention centre plan from a few years ago. While I think it's a great idea to move over to King Street and connect with the main transit routes, have more parking, and higher visibility, it'd be a shame if we lost our charming station to a GO shack.
 
DavidH said:
And here's the full news release, including a project list:

http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/April2009/03/c7346.html

It's lengthy, so I won't repost it here. Go click on the link... :)
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So this is not an announcement of any new money?

The "parking announcement" in February was for $500 million but only told us how they were going to spend half of it....this tells us how the other half will be spent.

On the Georgetown line (the one I am most familiar with) it might seem there is not much there (if all you did was count the number of items) but that one item is very significant. The credit river bridge (west of Brampton) has historically bee a significant bottleneck on the line and caused many delays/cancellations. Widening this bridge not only allows extension of more service west of Brampton (to the benefit of Georgetown and, presumably, Guelph and Kitchener) it gives people east of the bridge more certainty that their trains will get to them and not get stuck behind any trains that have broken down on the bridge (as has happened).
 
Oriole Rail Station
The existing pedestrian bridge, which connects the rail platform to the community to the west of the station, will be rehabilitated. Construction is expected to start in summer 2009, with completion in fall 2009.
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Sigh - what about a connection the subway station that you can see from the platform, but can't walk directly to. Or a connection from the south end of the platform to Leslie which would only require a few metres of sidewalk, and allow those working in the Lesmill business area to walk to the GO station without having two long legs of a triangle ...

Honestly, sometimes I think the people who do these things, never actually walk around the stations themselves ...
 
Where's the electrification announcement? I feel like a ten year old who just learned that Christmas got cancelled.
 
Hipster Duck said:
Where's the electrification announcement? I feel like a ten year old who just learned that Christmas got cancelled.
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Apparently it was just a big mix up. When they said electrification, they meant that conductors will now be armed with tasers to be used against passengers that complain about late trains.
 
megaton

Go Transit rolling into Peterborough this fall
http://www.mykawartha.com/news/article/38302

Province announces GO Transit expanding bus service to include Peterborough, expectation service will begin this fall
Date: 2009-04-03
Expect GO Transit buses to roll in and out of Peterborough this year, MPP Jeff Leal's office states.
This afternoon (Friday), MPP Leal's office issued a press release stating that GO bus service should be in this region by this fall.

GO Transit is currently developing a plan to implement the service for the Peterborough region.
 
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