This reminded me of when I attempted last weekend to try to catch a 12B bus at Burlington by taking the local 12 from the carpool, but of course that bus had to come miserably late and miss the connection. The worst part of it all was that the express bus left 5 mins late and still couldn’t catch it because our bus was late by just *1 min*. I just left it and my backup plan was just to head to Toronto instead. Who thought it was a good idea to leave out the 407 riders from getting an express bus to Niagara as well especially coming from an express bus (40), and who was the genius that had the bright idea to have both the express and local bus leave at the same time from Burlington?
I had better luck this weekend doing the exact same route and succeeding this time. The problem however was the massive overcrowding at Burlington and the poor communication all around. When we pulled up to the station, the volume of passengers were about 3 bus platforms long and some of that crowd almost reaching the main doors of the building. There were supposed to be 2 extra buses heading straight to Niagara and surprise surprise, both buses filled to the max and in standing room only (was on one of them and I'm really glad i stayed on the lower level of the bus because it was a lot more quiet and comfortable in comparison to the packed upper level). So instead of thinking logical and have as much buses as they can get on standby, these backup buses didn't come until like 20-25 mins after the scheduled time for the express bus to leave... knowing that its especially a long weekend and almost the entire GO ridership wants to head to Niagara, and I have no words as to what I have experienced, just exhaustion of consistent disappointment on the communication side. Besides all this however, it was actually really great coming back. Got to Brampton in just only 2:30 hrs which was purely because every connection was timed so close between the 12B -> 12 -> 40, and it felt like a miracle. Guess that's what happens when you actually have an express service...