GO Train Fares To Increase

[SlickFranky]

Here's a simple example. I'm hungry and need to eat. So I decide if I don't want to be hungry I'm going to a restaurant to eat and spend $20 for a sandwich.
Testing your argument against logic, it cost exactly as much as it took to feed myself. $20. So I freeze how much I spend for a sandwich at $20. I'm still spending $20 for a sandwich.
Rather than my argument of efficiency. Why I can't I buy a $2 sandwich such as buy bread, lunch meat, miracle whip, etc...

Let's say your commute is a sandwich. GO is not a $20 dollar sandwich. A hired towncar with driver is the $20 deluxe. GO is the subway club. Driving yourself is the brown-bag special.

Except in this sandwich market, the subway club costs almost exactly the same as (often less than) the homemade. If you can make your own for cheaper, that's your call. But the ingredients for your sandwich are pricey. They're in limited supply, marked-up by private interests, and it's a pretty big sandwich. The subway club on the other hand is sold to you below market value, for a loss. We all chip in to keep your lunch bills reasonable. But it's a big sandwich, the 'sandwich artists' want a raise, subway's planning to expand, and the price of cheese has gone up. Subway has to raise its prices.

I don't know how you guys out there can stand eating such massive sandwiches at lunch every day. Then you complain that those giant hoagies are too expensive? Maybe you should consider going on a diet.

Analogies are fun.

 

[Platform 27]

Considering that GO has the highest cost recovery of any system in North America by far, it is hard to argue about efficiency.

Farebox cost recovery ratios have ultimately nothing to do with efficiency, or at least "efficiency" in the sense that salmonz has been referring to, though.

Hold the sandwich analogies for a second. Let's say a $4.25 GO Ticket just got hiked up to $4.50. Given 90% farebox recovery rates, that means Papa Dalton will be throwing in a further 50 cents and GO is ultimately supposed to be giving you 5 bucks' "worth" of a transit product in exchange. salmonz is convinced that GO can find greater efficiencies from within, and the 5 bucks' worth of transit that he wants is needlessly overpriced. Squeeze harder, do things differently, and the same service should cost GO only $4.70 to provide, maybe. That would mean they could keep the ticket hit at $4.25 from him and ask for 45 cents from the provincial taxpayer.

I'm just really skeptical that there's much fat to be found inside GO. For a decade starting in about 1993 it was constantly either being ordered to cut back hard or pinching pennies in the hopes the province wouldn't come knocking. It was a pretty withered husk of an agency by the time Eves desperately turned the provincial taps went back on in 2003 in an attempt to win re-election. Yes, there's probably been the odd bit of bloat mixed in with the spending growth since then, but this is not the TTC we're dealing with.

 

[SlickFranky]

I'm done with sandwiches. I was just being an idiot.

You're right. GO runs a pretty tight ship, partly because they haven't been heavily subsidized. And why should they be?

Cities are the economic drivers of our society. Effective, efficient cities benefit from a certain level of density, and dense cities need good transit. So I have no problem with fairly heavy subsidization there, it's a great investment.

GO, on the other hand, exists mainly to help correct the poor planning of our past. Ideally we wouldn't need GO, but those mistakes have already been made, and massive investments have followed and still continue. We are sprawled, and there's no going back for the time being. So GO is very important, but the people that use that service do so largely because they have chosen to be part of the sprawl. I don't think the province should be subsidizing that choice too heavily. 90% recovery sounds about right to me; enough to keep people moving and keep the core relevant, but not so much as to encourage continued sprawl.

 

[ShonTron]

Though the GO fare increase is still unfair for many reasons:
- As I have said many times, there's a lot of trips that charge the same or more than shorter trips even on the same route (see: Highway 407). Nothing planned to fix that, even though zone fare pairing could easily fix that with the old fare structure in place.
- The same flat fare increase is being put in place, rather than a
- No imagination for filling unused capacity, like off-peak services, bus services (which don't require maintenance of gigantic parking lots) with a peak/off-peak fare structure that's very common elsewhere on North American commuter systems. Metra had a really cheap $5 all-day pass on weekends for any corridor, any route. I remember, since I used it for a LaSalle-Blue Island-Randolph return trip in 2006.

I have heard that many of the problems with GO's fares are supposedly going to be addressed one day with a full Presto rollout. But they could do so much now with the lousy fare system they have now.

And for service improvements? Anyone who subscribes to GO's E-Alerts for the Georgetown corridor would tell you that line is still really messed up, partly GO's fault ("equipment problems"), and to a lesser extent partly CN's fault (freight trains)and partly the City (Dufferin Jog construction). Cancellations and delays are almost a daily experience.

 

[kettal]

I'm done with sandwiches. I was just being an idiot.

You're right. GO runs a pretty tight ship, partly because they haven't been heavily subsidized. And why should they be?

Cities are the economic drivers of our society. Effective, efficient cities benefit from a certain level of density, and dense cities need good transit. So I have no problem with fairly heavy subsidization there, it's a great investment.

GO, on the other hand, exists mainly to help correct the poor planning of our past. Ideally we wouldn't need GO, but those mistakes have already been made, and massive investments have followed and still continue. We are sprawled, and there's no going back for the time being. So GO is very important, but the people that use that service do so largely because they have chosen to be part of the sprawl. I don't think the province should be subsidizing that choice too heavily. 90% recovery sounds about right to me; enough to keep people moving and keep the core relevant, but not so much as to encourage continued sprawl.

This is nonsense. It's the highways which encouraged sprawl. If the sprawl happened around train stations instead of freeways, we would be much better off.

 

[SlickFranky]

This is nonsense. It's the highways which encouraged sprawl. If the sprawl happened around train stations instead of freeways, we would be much better off.

Agreed, never said any different. Cars caused sprawl. GO arose to serve that sprawl. Artificially low GO fares could encourage more sprawl. It's a highly simplified view obviously.

Just to be clear, when I say 'encourage', I'm talking macro-scale.

 

[doady]

Artificially low GO fares could reduce sprawl as well, if the fare decrease is for non-drivers only and for short distance trips.

But yes, with a fare system that encourages long distance travel and punishes people who do not drive, and the huge park-and-ride lots that reduce density, and the stations designed for solely car access, GO is definitely an agent of suburban sprawl.

 

[Ed Drass]

It would be interesting to determine how much the expansion beyond GTA is costing in capital and operating. How much are existing riders contributing toward service in Peterboro, Niagara and KW?

 

[Platform 27]

But yes, with a fare system that encourages long distance travel and punishes people who do not drive, and the huge park-and-ride lots that reduce density, and the stations designed for solely car access, GO is definitely an agent of suburban sprawl.

Whoah whoah whoah. That's more than a little over the top.

By virtue of the flat base charge, GO isn't a perfect fare-by-distance fare system. But that's far from "encouraging long distance travel."

By virtue of the fact that free parking is currently bundled into GO tickets, GO is giving park-and-riders a perk that non-park-and-riders can't take advantage of. But that's far from "punishes people who do not drive."

Suburban sprawl happened. Yes, that sucked. But we're not about to turn Erindale back into rolling pastureland. Quality GO service to the existing 'burbs will allow them to densify. And at the end of the day, no matter how big and ugly the parking lots are, GO's infrastructure is still less car-oriented than the alternative, which is more lanes of 400 series highway.

 

[salmonz]

It would be interesting to determine how much the expansion beyond GTA is costing in capital and operating. How much are existing riders contributing toward service in Peterboro, Niagara and KW?

I brought up with Metrolinx Chairman Rob MacIssac that lines like Niagara and new routes should be subsidized differently. The new and expanded routes should be "investment" routes and more subsidy is needed, however, these new and expanded lines should not be impacting the price of existing and well established routes. It's like with urban development, do you ask existing taxpayers to build a new road within a new subdivision? No, in Halton the stance is that growth should pay for itself, i.e. that new road for the new subdivision should come from development charges. I think it's only fair. Why should GO be any different?

Niagara Falls, Kitchener-Waterloo, Peterborough, Barrie (it's fairly new), and the new expanded bus routes should be classified as "investment" lines where it will take a while to build up the ridership to a more sustained level, i.e. 50-80% fare recovery. To pay for this "investment", this should come from the province. This would shelter the existing users from experiencing 5% yearly fare increases for new investments in establishing new routes that are probably underutilized. I once took the GO Bus from Bronte to Milton and I was the only one on the bus. I was coming from Union so this bus was essentially an operating loss to GO.

Just something I realized (unrelated to above), Mr Prichard mentioned at the Board meeting on Friday that rising costs of Natural Gas were contributing to the rising operating expenses. I don't know how this could be. Natural gas commodity prices are 1/3 where they were a year ago and isn't expected to climb near there anytime in the near future and this winter has been relatively warm.

 

[Ed Drass]

Natural gas commodity prices are 1/3 where they were a year ago and isn't expected to climb near there anytime in the near future and this winter has been relatively warm.

Natural gas? I understand GO doesn't have the best history of getting good fuel rates, particularly diesel. The TTC has the opposite reputation.

As for ultra-GTA expansion, I don't feel the province has elucidated us on the need to undercut any existing private-sector bus lines with subsidized GO service.

 

[salmonz]

Natural gas? I understand GO doesn't have the best history of getting good fuel rates, particularly diesel. The TTC has the opposite reputation.

As for ultra-GTA expansion, I don't feel the province has elucidated us on the need to undercut any existing private-sector bus lines with subsidized GO service.

Yes, for heated track switches. Why am I not surprised on the fuel rates, lol.

I still don't have a sense how the province is expecting to get more riders when they're jacking up the prices all the time, especially when they want to expand. More riders = higher fares. Who wants that?

- Andrew

 

[doady]

Whoah whoah whoah. That's more than a little over the top.

By virtue of the flat base charge, GO isn't a perfect fare-by-distance fare system. But that's far from "encouraging long distance travel."

By virtue of the fact that free parking is currently bundled into GO tickets, GO is giving park-and-riders a perk that non-park-and-riders can't take advantage of. But that's far from "punishes people who do not drive."

Suburban sprawl happened. Yes, that sucked. But we're not about to turn Erindale back into rolling pastureland. Quality GO service to the existing 'burbs will allow them to densify. And at the end of the day, no matter how big and ugly the parking lots are, GO's infrastructure is still less car-oriented than the alternative, which is more lanes of 400 series highway.

Non-park-and-riders are being forced to pay higher fares for parking they don't use and people who live close to pay higher fares. People who have the most sustainable and urban lifestyles are paying the highest fares in proportion to the cost of operating GO Transit. And higher fares is punishment, the same way a fine is punishment.

Highways aren't the only alternative to GO's giant parking lots. Another alternative is just promoting local transit and walking to stations. I never talked about turning Erindale into pastureland. I'm talking more about turning Erindale's into something that supports transit, walking, and biking.

 

[hwy7]

Another alternative is just promoting local transit and walking to stations.

Agreed. But in practice, I don't know how much success GO can have promoting local transit when local transit is terrible. Durham region, for example, has probably the worst public transit system I've ever experienced in my life. Rush hour buses are okay, but if your non-peak GO train arrives just a few minutes late, you'll likely find that the DRT bus has already left. GO transit's parking lots are ugly, depressing, and anti-walking, but unless local transit commissions are forced to improve their service, nobody will be leaving their cars at home and taking the bus.

 

[EnviroTO]

The operating expenses include rising costs of natural gas likely because they are using more. They have added a lot of new heated switches over the past couple of years. I hope they turn them off completely including the pilot light during the summer months.