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GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)
- Thread starter drum118
- Start date
Krypto98
Active Member
I officially love you
Krypto98
Active Member
Looking at the June 2013 Kitchener schedule
It used to take 2 hours exactly from Union To Kitchener all stops, if it had an express option then it would have been 1hr 53 minutes.
The trip time is now as of January 2022 1hr 43 minutes and potentially if express was still offered the time being 1hr 36 minutes. So 1hr 30 minutes is entirely possible if Georgetown is fixed up.
Adding the historical 1hr 10 minutes Kitchener-London time. (Although I think Metrolinx could save another 10 minutes) we could have a 2hr 40 minute London-Toronto time.
reaperexpress
Senior Member
Before you spend too much time entering data from the Kitchener line, you might want to check out (and make a copy of) my Kitchener Line Historical Schedules spreadsheet.
However, please note that there are probably small errors in my versions of the timetables, given that I fill most of the trips in with click-and-drag formulas. For example I recently noticed that my version of the October 2021 timetable was missing the stop at Etobicoke North for the westbound 17:49 express, and the times at subsequent stations were wrong as a result.
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nfitz
Superstar
You can also (not easily) find most schedules back to the dawn of the Internet using the Internet Archive - https://archive.org/web/
reaperexpress
Senior Member
Here's a quick table with the Kitchener line travel times since 2014.
Since some periods didn't have express trips from Kitchener, I filled in those travel times by reducing the local travel time by the same amount as in the most similar schedule which did have both express and local trips.
Note that some of the time savings which appeared in 2020 were due to reduced ridership and thus reduced dwell times. That should be taken into account when summarising track improvements.
Allandale25
Senior Member
emphurent
Active Member
I generally don't like to post about this stuff, but the recent service cuts on the Kitchener Line are just simply unacceptable. The service to Kitchener was cut to 4 trains a day in each direction, all piled into 2 hours in the morning. This is a service that once had 12 or more trains a day per direction...
Naturally many people who would be using this train to go to the city for the weekend are forced to use the last train of the day: 7:45 am...
Bus service was not ramped up to replace any lost trains either, leading to overcrowded buses like the one I took last week.
The Kitchener platform today was packed end to end with people, which normally would make me excited to see so many using transit, but instead just reminded me of the fact this route has taken service cut after cut. There is just no excuse here. The Guelph platform was similar as well...
Naturally many people who would be using this train to go to the city for the weekend are forced to use the last train of the day: 7:45 am...
Bus service was not ramped up to replace any lost trains either, leading to overcrowded buses like the one I took last week.
The Kitchener platform today was packed end to end with people, which normally would make me excited to see so many using transit, but instead just reminded me of the fact this route has taken service cut after cut. There is just no excuse here. The Guelph platform was similar as well...
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Fritter
Active Member
I hope Metrolinx can quickly ramp up service as it looks like many of the COVID restrictions are soon ending, and I suspect passenger counts will quickly rise to the point current service levels cannot handle the influx.
reaperexpress
Senior Member
The previous schedule (Oct 2021) had 10 GO trains per day from Kitchener to Guelph, half of which ran express east of Bramalea, plus 1 Via train per day. That's the most the line has ever had - pre-pandemic it was 8 GO and 2 Via. The current "temporary" schedule (Jan 2022), has 5 trains per day, all of which run local.
I am surprised we haven't heard about the "temporary" service cuts at least partially being rolled back yet, given that the lockdown has ended and ridership is returning. The Kitchener line was among the most severely impacted by those cuts, so I'd hope it would be the first to get service back.
Here in the Netherlands, over the past week I've noticed the trains getting properly crowded - like pre-pandemic crowded. Service is back to the normal pre-pandemic schedule, except for a few peak-period commuter trips which remain cancelled due to a less pronounced peak-period ridership spike.
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Urban Sky
Senior Member
Not to mention that these "4 trains a day in each direction, all piled into 2 hours in the morning" is exactly what was offered as recently as just over 3 years ago:
Source: GO schedules (from effective 2018-09-01 until 2019-01-03)
ARG1
Senior Member
Well as time passes and awareness of the service increases, demand also increases requring more and more trains. What worked 3 years ago doesn't necessarily mean it would work today as the province reopens.
Bureaucromancer
Active Member
While one hopes the cuts will be rolled back, I see nothing in Metrolinx behaviour to indicate calling them “temporary” is anything but an outright lie…
crs1026
Senior Member
I may have been misled by your sentence structure. You are suggesting that ML intends to roll back its plans for the Kitchener line?
I am quite confident that they will restore service as quickly as they can.
There is a great reality to be faced - the past two years have been disastrous for the Province's finances, particularly in terms of revenue for all transit operators. Some sort of cost stabilisation is needed. We won't see much about that until after the provincial election, but whichever party wins the election will have to face that pain. Service may not bounce back to pre-2020 levels as quickly as we wish.
But the expanded service is pretty much unstoppable at this point.
- Paul
Bureaucromancer
Active Member
And thats exactly the thing - all the plans in the world don’t mean **** when the reality of every schedule release is some new excuse for not running the trains we did in the recent past, never mind ACTUALLY implementing the expansion.