GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

[hw621]

I had one of those light bulb experiences today - had an errand north of the city and thought, hey while I am up there I could park at the GO and do a quick mid day return trip downtown before I head home. Nice day for a train ride.

Arrived at King City to find the parking lot stuffed. Overflow lot is behind a church, 10-15 min walk away.... also full. Nice day, so I figured I would try Newmarket. Same story. Carried on to Aurora, with its large garage....also completely full. Now I’m thinking go for a drive instead, so I head towards Unionville. Same story there. Decide just to head home, via 407 TTC. Its lot also full. Only Pioneer Village had space.
It would have been moot, because Thursday is Roadswitcher Day and the Aurora mid day trains are bustituted anyways. Yes, again.
My point being - while I have always been opposed to building large parking garages at GO stations, I have to admit that up that way the car is everything and if a potential rider can’t find a parking spot at the GO station they will probably just carry on by car. This bodes badly for mid day GO train ridership.
GO really needs to do something about first mile/last mile, otherwise riders just won’t appear, even with RER - we can only build so much parking.

- Paul

Maybe local transits can beef up their feeder bus services, of course, only if the ridership is there.

 

[hw621]

Too bad RH Line is only peak direction during peak. If it was all-day, it'll need way more parking. (and double tracking).

Is there any benefit to two way hourly service to Oriole and Old Cummer only, due ti freight north of that ?

Not enough ridership to warrant running the 10 car trains, and not enough to warrant buying DMU's.

And heres the real reason:

not enough wow wizz bang to warrant a politician to want it in order to buy votes.

Actually RH is quite parallel to Line 1, my wildest idea is, it can be turned into a de facto Relief Line, a better choice than the current SmartTrack...

 

[Leo_Chan]

Actually RH is quite parallel to Line 1, my wildest idea is, it can be turned into a de facto Relief Line, a better choice than the current SmartTrack...

I think you already know this, but the reason it's not is the money required for realignment and double tracking.

 

[hw621]

I think you already know this, but the reason it's not is the money required for realignment and double tracking.

Like, more expensive than building a brand new subway?

 

[Leo_Chan]

Like, more expensive than building a brand new subway?

Well the last estimate was $1 Billion just for flood prevention. I would assume that cost may be doubled now. It's also almost impossible for connections at Bloor or Eglinton, which is a major requirement that the Relief Line does meet. Also, GO lines go into Union rather than King or Queen Street (obviously), so the compared benefit for east/west travel is nothing.

 

[Neutrino]

RER stands for Regional Express RAIL.

Nooo, really??

 

[Leo_Chan]

Nooo, really??

Not that we know of. They don’t really have any major bus plans made public. Most route changes are only to compliment train service and different times of year.

 

[hw621]

Any comprehension of Verster's recent interview?

 

[Allandale25]

It would have been moot, because Thursday is Roadswitcher Day and the Aurora mid day trains are bustituted anyways. Yes, again.
- Paul

Is this becoming such a common occurrence, and on a specific day, that it can now be named? Is this the typical day CN does some kind of freight movement? So, GO had to cancel trains and replace them with buses?

 

[crs1026]

Is this becoming such a common occurrence, and on a specific day, that it can now be named? Is this the typical day CN does some kind of freight movement? So, GO had to cancel trains and replace them with buses?

It's CN train L544 and the last documentation that I saw says it runs Mondays and Thursdays to Bradford (assuming there are cars to be moved). Yes, trains were short turned at Maple today. There were buses arranged which makes me think GO expects this event.

It's possible that the CN "change of card" dates (the process where work is posted and the crews bid on specific jobs) didn't align to GO's, so CN may have been caught out when GO introduced the midday trains in December. Perhaps CN can't change the timing until its next change of card. One sure hopes this doesn't carry on ad infinitum.

- Paul

 

[nfitz]

The other day I experienced first hand the challenges of using intermodal transit via the GO and local bus network.

Going from Downtown Hamilton to Oakville (403/Bronte area) via HSR, GO Train and Oakville Transit took 1 hour 40 minutes

Drive time: 23 minutes.

At mid-day 23 minutes.

I've taken a GO Bus from downtown Hamilton to meet the train in Aldershot before. They generally meet quite well, so not much waiting. Hmm, still about 55 minutes to Oakville GO - bus arrives 15 minutes before train leaves ... well it didn't the day I did it in a snow storm! Anyway, I was glad I wasn't driving - in rush hour to Union (well Danforth and home by then). Normally I take the express bus to Union, but I wasn't sure I wanted to be on the QEW and Gardiner with storm.

That 55 minutes drops to 39 minutes with trains from Hamilton Centre and 38 minutes with trains from West Harbour - I think both are getting hourly service to Union at some point.

Gosh, only 41 minutes from Union to Oakville GO. A few times I've done that, and then jumped in a taxi to a meeting - or jumped on a bus if it's in the station. More predictable than driving mid-day - but driving out of Toronto is different than Hamilton.

 

[DonValleyRainbow]

ICYMI, UT has a front page sit-down with Phil Verster.

An interesting note about service through Union:

The other key constraint at Union is the complexity of train movements through the station. Rather than each route operating on dedicated, direct tracks through the station (like the subway), most trains move across several tracks, sometimes blocking other trains from entering or leaving the station. They must crawl at a snail’s pace through the many switches, which further reduces capacity. Most trains, the Lakeshore route aside, also terminate and turn around at Union. The time required to carry out the safety procedures to turn a train forces long waits, all the while taking up track space on the most valuable real estate in the city. In response to this, Verster described “working out our train plan to be such that we can pair services coming from the west of Union with services that go to the east, so that by pairing the services appropriately relative to the service intensity and the service plan, we can have a minimized number of crossing moves.” As an example, “if we have services from the Barrie corridor not crossing over all the way to Lakeshore East,” he said, “then we don’t have an X formation of services ... from the Lakeshore West corridor that may be going up on the Stouffville or Richmond Hill line.”

Sounds like a laudable goal, especially since it means more efficient use of train equipment by keeping them rolling in revenue service instead of parking them in a yard. But first thing that comes to my mind is trickle-down delays. GO already has a problem with this when rush hour trains are delayed coming from Willowbrook, North Bathurst or Don yards. If you interline a series of revenue runs and something happens on the way, the only way you prevent trickle-down delays is having back-up trains. So I have faith they could do it, but they would need to order even more rolling stock (if they haven't already) as reserve/stand by for those situations.

 

[crs1026]

^Union is already configured to do a certain amount of this, and GO has figured out how to use its plant in this way, but the continuous construction and platform shifting of the past five years has impeded doing so to best advantage. Also, the traditional pattern of unidirectional service on most routes means many trainsets end their run at Union and head directly to yards after arrival. As more double tracking and 2 way service is added, trainsets can make an outbound trip and not necessarily tie up downtown or at Willowbrook.

In a perfect world, every train coming out of Willowbrook and Bathurst yards for the afternoon rush would proceed to eastern destinations, and every train coming out of Don Yard would load and proceed to western destinations. That's a tough thing to schedule and execute in practice. I believe GO already uses some of the trackage east of Union to allow trains coming in/out of service to do their reversing tests somewhere other than in the depot proper.

- Paul

 

[smallspy]

^Union is already configured to do a certain amount of this, and GO has figured out how to use its plant in this way, but the continuous construction and platform shifting of the past five years has impeded doing so to best advantage. Also, the traditional pattern of unidirectional service on most routes means many trainsets end their run at Union and head directly to yards after arrival. As more double tracking and 2 way service is added, trainsets can make an outbound trip and not necessarily tie up downtown or at Willowbrook.

In a perfect world, every train coming out of Willowbrook and Bathurst yards for the afternoon rush would proceed to eastern destinations, and every train coming out of Don Yard would load and proceed to western destinations. That's a tough thing to schedule and execute in practice. I believe GO already uses some of the trackage east of Union to allow trains coming in/out of service to do their reversing tests somewhere other than in the depot proper.

- Paul

To a large degree, all of this is already being done. Trains from the west are the ones that get stored at Don, and wherever possible head back westbound in the afternoons. Same goes for trains to and from Bathurst North Yard. There are a number of trains - mainly Kitchener/Georgetown runs - that continue east to Scott Street to change directions and run out of service during the morning rush hours.

What is going to be interesting is the upcoming April schedule changes. It seems that there is going to be a LOT more mid-day service running, seemingly in an effort to keep those trains out on the road and not in yards. Apparently the new CEO has demanded a 25% increase in the number of trains running this year, and it looks like this will go a long way towards meeting that objective.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.

 

[micheal_can]

Something I wanted to do when I visit the area is to ride the trains around.

Anyone ever do it? I would be doing it on a weekend.