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GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

Immediately ending the fall/winter college and university trips makes sense as all classes are going online, though many university services remain operational. I can't immediately think of other trips or routes to cancel - perhaps some of the one-shot express rush hour trains? Maybe the weekend Niagara trains?
 
drum118 said:
Metrolinx to reduce GO Transit service in response to coronavirus outbreak
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I heard rumours from the CSA of the train I am on daily that Bombardier (the company that employs the CSA staff) is looking to have a 1 on/1 off scenario where people people are rotated to work one week on and then have one week off. Basically two groups of staff rotating in and out.

He heard rumblings of this around the water cooler and the thinking was that it would limit staff exposure to the virus. Whether or not this could be done is a different story.
 
Due to an essential transaction, I was on yesterday's 6:30pm express Union to West Harbour. It was emptier than usual, only 1-2 persons per quad on most coaches. I had a quad to myself! Rarely see peak expresses that sparse.
 
micheal_can said:
I almost think it would be better to have full service. If the goal is social distancing, having half full trains does that nicely.
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I'm sure the trains are going to be pretty empty either way. My company of 50,000 got an email telling us to work from home for the next 3 weeks starting Monday.
 
micheal_can said:
I almost think it would be better to have full service. If the goal is social distancing, having half full trains does that nicely.
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That ignores two basic facts, however.

The first is that ridership is down 43 to 45% over the past 3 or 4 days, and likely to drop further.

The second is that a lot of the employees are scared as shit right now. There is already a huge amount of distrust between them and GO/Bombardier, and there are a lot of them that have been refusing work as they don't believe that they are doing enough to be protected - and so it is getting harder and harder to staff the trains, buses and stations. Cutting back on service - and thus having fewer vehicles out in service that need to be staffed - will help deal with that.

Dan
 
smallspy said:
That ignores two basic facts, however.

The first is that ridership is down 43 to 45% over the past 3 or 4 days, and likely to drop further.

The second is that a lot of the employees are scared as shit right now. There is already a huge amount of distrust between them and GO/Bombardier, and there are a lot of them that have been refusing work as they don't believe that they are doing enough to be protected - and so it is getting harder and harder to staff the trains, buses and stations. Cutting back on service - and thus having fewer vehicles out in service that need to be staffed - will help deal with that.

Dan
Click to expand...

I get that. But, if you think about it, with almost empty trains and buses, you are helping not making things worse. The staffing issue could be as simple as not running those services, and an announcement that the ____ train/bus is canceled.
 
The new schedules are up. They're not easy to read, because they don't list the train connections with the buses, and separate train-bus trips from train-only trips, but there's a few take-aways:

All but the last bus of the night will be suspended on Route 16, the Hamilton QEW Express.

Many rush-hour trains are gone, particularly the express trains on LSW, LSE, and Kitchener Corridors (some converted to local service). Milton Line loses several runs. The mid-afternoon and evening runs to/from Kitchener are gone, as is some evening service even to Mount Pleasant. No more trains to and from Niagara for now. Many bus routes cut back, especially the 407-series routes.

UP Express will be half-hourly.

What it does do is maintain full spans of service, even if it means a slower or less frequent service. People will still get to where they need to go. It puts a lot of their operators and maintenance staff in reserve, able to maintain these schedules.

Looks prudent to me.
 
Though the cuts are in some cases drastic (West Harbour having only a single train), for some trips the new schedules are actually an improvement.

On the Lakeshore lines, all trips are local, giving inner stations three (LE) or four (LW) trains an hour, up from the usual two, and the long gaps for certain station pairs on LE are down to 30 minutes. And on Kitchener and Stouffville, the less frequent peak-direction service allows for seamless hourly counter-peak trains in the morning and a gap of two hours, rather than four or six, in the afternoon.
 
ack said:
Though the cuts are in some cases drastic (West Harbour having only a single train), for some trips the new schedules are actually an improvement.

On the Lakeshore lines, all trips are local, giving inner stations three (LE) or four (LW) trains an hour, up from the usual two, and the long gaps for certain station pairs on LE are down to 30 minutes. And on Kitchener and Stouffville, the less frequent peak-direction service allows for seamless hourly counter-peak trains in the morning and a gap of two hours, rather than four or six, in the afternoon.
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for kitchener, the first counter peak train was at 8:55 am and with this schedule it is at 6:53 AM. The two counter peak afternoon bramalea trains were extended to Mount Pleasant. The 18:53PM to Kitchener has been shortened to Kitchener while the 19:53 has been extended to kitchener. The 16:53 kitchener train is no longer express and is all stops to mount pleasant. 6:10AM express is now all stops. The midday trains 7:47 AM and 2:47 PM from kitchener have been shortened to mount pleasant.
 
ShonTron said:
The new schedules are up. They're not easy to read, because they don't list the train connections with the buses, and separate train-bus trips from train-only trips, but there's a few take-aways:

All but the last bus of the night will be suspended on Route 16, the Hamilton QEW Express.

Many rush-hour trains are gone, particularly the express trains on LSW, LSE, and Kitchener Corridors (some converted to local service). Milton Line loses several runs. The mid-afternoon and evening runs to/from Kitchener are gone, as is some evening service even to Mount Pleasant. No more trains to and from Niagara for now. Many bus routes cut back, especially the 407-series routes.

UP Express will be half-hourly.

What it does do is maintain full spans of service, even if it means a slower or less frequent service. People will still get to where they need to go. It puts a lot of their operators and maintenance staff in reserve, able to maintain these schedules.

Looks prudent to me.
Click to expand...

It basically eliminates 30-minute frequencies for the busiest GO bus routes, turning them into hourly runs. I wonder whether some of these changes will become permanent: I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes a cost-cutting opportunity.
 
Here is a summary of the Kitchener line changes
new schedule.png
 
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