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GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

I was on the 11:16 LSW train this morning. It was absolutely packed by the time we hit Burlington, with the most passengers at Aldershot and basically full after Burlington GO itself. And the next two trains were packed as well; I got off at Burlington because I was standing at that point after a bathroom trip and had time to kill.

Really made me question how high demand is in this corridor. I didn’t ride LSW much when it was at its peak, so I wonder what we would need to run to actually meet demand (existing & induced in the future). There used to be 4ph if I’m not mistaken, and if we’re contemplating 10+ tph then LSW ridership might really take off.
 
anb said:
They should've just cancelled any track work today on both LW and Barrie as both the Gardiner and DVP were closed heading into downtown, and Line 1/2 both have delays/closures. They really need better planning all around the board in these situations. This would've been a great time to detour the west end weekend buses to Kipling terminal, but they instead chose Port Credit where the Lakeshore service is hourly and most likely over capacitated.
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I know they've definitely done coordination in the past to avoid double-closures (e.g. LSW Line + Gardiner on same weekend, or Barrie Line + DVP), but clearly it's not consistently working given this weekend's DVP & Gardiner closures and LSW & Barrie cutbacks were both planned well in advance.
 
sunnyside said:
I was on the 11:16 LSW train this morning. It was absolutely packed by the time we hit Burlington, with the most passengers at Aldershot and basically full after Burlington GO itself. And the next two trains were packed as well; I got off at Burlington because I was standing at that point after a bathroom trip and had time to kill.

Really made me question how high demand is in this corridor. I didn’t ride LSW much when it was at its peak, so I wonder what we would need to run to actually meet demand (existing & induced in the future). There used to be 4ph if I’m not mistaken, and if we’re contemplating 10+ tph then LSW ridership might really take off.
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Prior to the pandemic weekday midday service was 2tph Aldershot-Union + 1 tph Oakville-Union. There was a brief period just before the PM peak with consistent 15-minute service, but for the rest of the day there were a lot of 30-minute gaps, particularly in the counter-peak direction.

In September 2021 they implemented proper 15-minute or better weekday service from early morning to early evening, with supplemental 30-minute express service in the peak direction. In total it was 6 tph peak (4 local + 2 express) and 4tph local off-peak & counter-peak. Off-peak 15-minute service was eliminated in January 2022 due to operator shortages, and never has returned since.

Weekend service has never been better than local service every 30 minutes plus 4 express trains per day to Niagara (which have since been reduced to 3 despite mind-bogglingly high ridership).
 
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Okay so I just talked to a GO employee at Union Station and she shared a bunch of scheduling information with me.
(I’m going to rephrase it since my message was messy)

She said next weekend more weekend train service will be announced.
In the next month more Niagara service will return and should be printing physical train schedules pamphlets again since the schedules will be back to pre-COVID service levels

I really hope she’s right because that’s all amazing news.
 
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^ I hope that Union Station to Oshawa express train in the AM comes back. I wanted to ride it just for fun but didn't get the chance pre-covid.
 
Allandale25 said:
^ I hope that Union Station to Oshawa express train in the AM comes back. I wanted to ride it just for fun but didn't get the chance pre-covid.
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They'll be no regualar Lakeshore east express trains for at least 2 years, though more likely 3+ based on how much GO projects usually get delayed 🙄

www.durhamregion.com

GO suspends express Lakeshore East train service during three-year construction period

Additional trains making all stops between Oshawa and Union Station added
www.durhamregion.com www.durhamregion.com

reaperexpress said:
The scheduled travel times for GO local trains were all shortened by a few minutes in 2020 due to the drastically lower ridership, which produced shorter dwells at stations, as well as faster acceleration due to shorter trains. It sounds like (contrary to GO's proclamations of low ridership), ridership is returning to levels which require the extra schedule padding which was present pre-pandemic.
comrspeed.jpg


Or, instead of slowing down train schedules, they could keep the local trains short (e.g. 6-car MP40 or 8-car MP54) and add supplemental express service during periods where more capacity is required. On LSW, they obviously need to reintroduce peak-period express service from Niagara and Hamilton (these can be longer trains), and during the midday they could run an hourly express service from West Harbour (cutting the local service back to Aldershot or Burlington).
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Wait, you guys want slower trains to come back, really? I thought the whole point of efficient public transit was to get people from one place to another as fast as possible less but maybe I'm mistaken. Besides the main reason why the schedule was so padded was for optics. With the schedule padding that was in place GO transit could claim high on-time performance levels and reduce the chances of having to pay a refund for delays since trains could make up a lot of time by going full speed (i.e. normal speed prior to the change). The padding was so much that in order to reduced dwell times and save even more money(from fuel conservation) they implemented ridiclous speed and throttle limits between every stations which were almost all below 60mph. Let's no go backwards in time again please. If GO wants to be competitive with car travel and reduce dependacy on it they are going to have to continue reducing travel times going forward not increase it.
 
Willybru21 said:
Okay so I just talked to a GO employee at Union Station and she shared a bunch of scheduling information with me.
(I’m going to rephrase it since my message was messy)

She said next weekend more weekend train service will be announced.
In the next month more Niagara service will return and should be printing physical train schedules pamphlets again since the schedules will be back to pre-COVID service levels

I really hope she’s right because that’s all amazing news.
Click to expand...

Speaking of Niagara.. does anyone know what platform the Weekend Niagara trains are generally departing from this year? Usually they are on a consistent platform.
 
SkylineHorizon said:
Wait, you guys want slower trains to come back, really? I thought the whole point of efficient public transit was to get people from one place to another as fast as possible less but maybe I'm mistaken. Besides the main reason why the schedule was so padded was for optics. With the schedule padding that was in place GO transit could claim high on-time performance levels and reduce the chances of having to pay a refund for delays since trains could make up a lot of time by going full speed (i.e. normal speed prior to the change). The padding was so much that in order to reduced dwell times and save even more money(from fuel conservation) they implemented ridiclous speed and throttle limits between every stations which were almost all below 60mph. Let's no go backwards in time again please. If GO wants to be competitive with car travel and reduce dependacy on it they are going to have to continue reducing travel times going forward not increase it.
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I said that we should run more express services and that local services should use shorter (faster-accelerating) trains so they don't need additional schedule padding. Which part of that did you interpret as "I want slower trains"?
 
Rode the 25 Waterloo bus to Square One from Cambridge today at around 1:13 pm and the bus is dangerously at capacity. I was still able to board the bus but there are almost no seats left and the service still runs hourly when it should be every half and hour because of many U of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier students heading back to Square One.
 
stevensontransit said:
Rode the 25 Waterloo bus to Square One from Cambridge today at around 1:13 pm and the bus is dangerously at capacity. I was still able to board the bus but there are almost no seats left and the service still runs hourly when it should be every half and hour because of many U of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier students heading back to Square One.
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I've personally noticed issues with the 25 and 30, as well as hearing about it from other people. I talked to a GO employee a month or so ago while riding an at-capacity 30 bus that had to leave passengers behind, who pointed out that extending the 30 to UWaterloo without any other service improvements has been a disaster. Now that more Waterloo students are back, GO needs to bring back the 25 express variants that pulled Waterloo riders off the "milk run" 25 bus and levelled out ridership. Currently it seems buses depart Waterloo basically full, are already almost at capacity once they reach Kitchener and I can't imagine what goes on in Cambridge. It creates an unfair service pattern within the tricities where someone in Cambridge who was maybe trying to make an appointment or reach a connecting service might not be able to get on the bus, or might have a very late bus due to excessive dwell times.
 
I was on a new GO bus two weeks ago, and it has seatbelts. I think the expectation is if the bus seats have seatbelts, you are required to use them. It has been a while since I’ve been on a standing room only GO bus, but they used to be a big problem on some of the midday and evening 31 buses, especially before the limited midday/evening train service was introduced.

Does GO still permit standees?
 
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