It’s funny you say that because GO currently DOES have a shortage of crews, but nobody here even considered that.
This thread has really been annoying me the past few days, it seems like some people here just want the old cab cars to be in service just because they haven’t been used yet, ignoring the fact that Metrolinx is building up a fleet for a significant service increase that’s imminent within a year.
Instead of being a bunch of armchair enthusiasts complaining that you can’t ride the old coach yet, we should be excited that GO is even seeing initiative and preparing their fleet to be able to handle more service one day. Would you all rather GO have to delay phase 2 of service expansion next year because they don’t have enough equipment? I think not.
Who is saying anything that you are saying? You are attacking a whole bunch of points that no one has made.
On the issue of crew shortages: this is a two faceted issue. The first point is that that may very well be true, but that is not something that should concern anyone as a regular user of the service. If I go into a store, and there is no one available to assist me with whatever it is I need, I don't care about what administrative issues lead to this result, I care that there is no one to perform the service that I require. If I need to get somewhere, and I end up missing my train or bus, and have to wait an hour for the next one (bonus points if I have to do so in inclement weather), all I see is that I am now stranded in the middle of nowhere in the freezing cold, or baking sun. Whether that reason be because there is not enough crews or because all the vehicles disintegrated into rusty powder in the middle of the night is not my affair. It just shows me a failure on the part of the organization to deliver an acceptable level of service (no, hourly frequencies anywhere in a region as densely populated as the GTA are not a success).
Second point: bringing up the crew shortage in a discussion about why refurbed rolling stock is not being used is a red herring. There is no link between having X amount of crews and being able to run Y rolling stock unless we subscribe to the frankly baffling line of thought here that Metrolinx
cannot use the refurbished cars unless they have more service. For the third time, I am saying that it is entirely possible to use all the equipment, but using each car less frequently. There are cars currently in circulation that could be substituted with refurbished cab cars: the remaining cab cars, 251-257, are 10 years old and accordingly worn out, while the refurbished cab cars are newly refreshed; the earliest CEM cab cars are 7-8 years old and the same thing applies; the refurbished cab cars could be used to substitute Series II and III coaches as regular passenger stock, which have worn out, dusty seating (especially the Series II cars) that is unpleasant to me as a passenger. There are lots of non-enthusiast arguments to put the cars into service now.
"GO currently DOES have a shortage of crews, but nobody here even considered that." - This is a self serving ad hominem attack.
"Instead of being a bunch of armchair enthusiasts complaining that you can’t ride the old coach yet..." - This is a self serving ad hominem attack.
"Would you all rather GO have to delay phase 2 of service expansion next year because they don’t have enough equipment? I think not." - This is a self serving ad hominem attack.
I have repeated infinitely that I do not understand the financial basis for refurbishing something and then not using it for several years. And setting that aside for the moment, bringing all of this up seems to miss a critical truth in this whole discussion:
But yes, when people are interested in vehicles, and a new or substantially modified in appearance vehicle starts appearing, it is entirely natural for people to be interested in seeing them, and to slag them off as being foamers just creates bad blood in the community. The only community of people of shared interests who attack other people in that community more than transportation enthusiasts are Star Wars fans.
These are the first cab cars to be painted into the new scheme. This is not like someone asking about when we're going to see a Series II-IV coach repainted into the new colours, those are identical to the Series I and V coaches already running around in the new colours. So obviously, a change is going to attract attention, no different than if the first CEM cab cars had been delivered and then not used for several years. If you are posting in this thread, it's probably because you have some level of interest in the rolling stock. Don't act like you are above this.
As for me? I never like to share or justify my opinions on various transit vehicles, because it's tacky and irrelevant and no one cares, but since you have elected to use this line of argument:
I am interested in finding out when the refurbs come back into service because within the next half a year or so, I will, in all likelihood, be moving out of Ontario. Therefore it is my personal interest to know if the cars will enter service before then. I'm sorry if that offended your sensibilities, I will now return to blindly beating the Metrolinx drum. Hooray for fluid, vaguely defined timelines that can fall apart at a moment's notice!
