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GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

dowlingm said:
Rob Ford scrapped cookies at City Council "to save money". These guys only care whether the Toronto Sun/Pestmedia/CFRB will approve of a particular cut and will overlook something like cap and trade which consumers never see on their bills anyway and thus have only Tories to believe on how much it impacts them.
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Yesterday, as an example, the Minister of Health announced a small change/tweak to a policy introduced by the previous government that will save far more money than we would ever lose by reducing GO fares for short trips (still not sure there is a revenue loss there)....notwithstanding that new Health Minister should be the new Premier (IMO) it shows my point that the GO fare reduction is not likely a priority item.
 
TransitBart said:
Guys. That is true. But a stop in the middle of a former aircraft hanger / convention centre (aka The International Centre) connected to nothing illustrates the point. ie. Malton GO.

Only networked stops count. Unlike many here, I focus less on whether Line X will have this traffic or that traffic. But everything needs to be tied together and that had largely escaped GO until the past 5 years. It was great if you lived close to a line in a suburb and worked downtown Monday to Friday.
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Why do only networked stops count? The number of people getting off of the southbound and on to the northbound Barrie trains at Newmarket Station hasn't greatly increased because of the addition of the busway. They are still walking to get to the hospital.

The location of the stop close to a destination, or a way to get to that destination, is far more important than just building to random connection or networked points simply for the sake of making it an interconnected network.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
 
TOareaFan said:
Yesterday, as an example, the Minister of Health announced a small change/tweak to a policy introduced by the previous government that will save far more money than we would ever lose by reducing GO fares for short trips (still not sure there is a revenue loss there)....notwithstanding that new Health Minister should be the new Premier (IMO) it shows my point that the GO fare reduction is not likely a priority item.
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It's a bit more than a tweak and was disappointed to see Paikin call it an efficiency. It is shifting hundreds of millions back on to employer health plans which is a political choice - I suspect the Liberals intended it as a business subsidy - and I'm not arguing for that, merely to accurately describe it. To my mind an efficiency is when cost to deliver is reduced overall, not merely removed from one set of books. We saw with the "billion dollars of savings" that the Ford regime will need careful watching when it comes to finances.
 
dowlingm said:
It's a bit more than a tweak and was disappointed to see Paikin call it an efficiency. It is shifting hundreds of millions back on to employer health plans which is a political choice - I suspect the Liberals intended it as a business subsidy - and I'm not arguing for that, merely to accurately describe it. To my mind an efficiency is when cost to deliver is reduced overall, not merely removed from one set of books. We saw with the "billion dollars of savings" that the Ford regime will need careful watching when it comes to finances.
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He can't tell the difference between an efficiency and a liability (a required future cost); delaying construction of bus maintenance facilities isn't an efficiency when you still need to build it and the cost increases significantly over time.

It shouldn't be surprising when he considers the combined total spending out of Ontario government/households/businesses to be an efficiency too.
 
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rbt said:
He can't tell the difference between an efficiency and a liability (a required future cost); delaying construction of bus maintenance facilities isn't an efficiency when you still need to build it and the cost increases significantly over time.
.
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As long as inflation is less than the saved interest than its not a net additional cost. Further in your example there may be changes to the needs within a bus maintenance facility over time (e.g. electrical charging stations) that would require a huge retrofit of the garage (really any type of technological advancement). So all in it could save you money.

When I think of a bus maintenance facility there has been building efficiencies over the past several years as well. It's basically an industrial building. The 36 foot pre-insulated panels that are now in use save a huge amount of construction time and cost.

If there is not a need you should not overbuild for the above (saved interest costs, changing requirements, construction advances)
 
If there is not a need you should not overbuild for the above (saved interest costs, changing requirements, construction advances)
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I agree about not pre-building infrastructure.

Trouble is, the facilities were already the minimum option to maintain current service quality levels and we've paid extra since then in the following ways:
1. an accelerated construction schedule due to the substantially deferred start
2. leasing private facilities as a stop-gap
3. delayed rolling out additional service leading to customer complaints as they were left standing on the curb as full buses drove past them

The decision to restrict bus facilities was compounded by the simultaneous halting Sheppard LRT construction and deferring the SRT rebuild (both increased bus facility requirements).

The actual outcome has almost perfectly matched the best case scenario staff presented at the time the deferral decision was made; in short, the added costs were predicted.


Point being, the Fords included some highly questionable items as savings which, in reality, have cost substantially more.

There likely is waste at both levels of Government (just as there is in most private business) but you need to take enough time to understand the effects before randomly slashing things. If Ford wasn't still touting his city savings, I wouldn't care; but he's touting his "skillset" without bothering to learn from the results of previous performances (meaning he has zero interest in improving on his historically poor results).
 
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Tweet from Ben Spurr:

Premier Doug Ford announces the end of cap-and-trade in Ontario, effective today. Among other things, carbon allowance proceeds were to fund discounted transfers between the TTC and 905 transit agencies.
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hw621 said:
Should we start a fare integration thread?
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It might be useful to document projects that were approved on the basis of cap-and-trade funding. The YRT/BT e-bus trial is one such project. I wonder how many projects are now at risk.

- Paul
 
I'm familiar with "TTC times two" where the "single, continuous trip" rule is bent to allow for a segment via GO. Does anyone know if the reverse is true or if there is a transfer credit of any sort if one travels GO-TTC-GO?

From time-to-time, I need to travel from York Region to the Pearson area. In the past, I've used YRT/Viva (or get a ride) to connect to GO's Route 40.

But with the launch of 2WAD train service, and with the Concord station/hub being a far-off improbability, I'm contemplating:

Barrie Train to Downsview Park
TTC Subway north to Hwy 407 (or south to Yorkdale)
GO Bus 40 (or 34) to Pearson

I believe the TTC trip would be charged $1.50 (co-fare).

Is there any discount/credit for the 2nd trip on the GO system, occurring within 3 hours of tapping on the train?
 
joet00 said:
Is there any discount/credit for the 2nd trip on the GO system, occurring within 3 hours of tapping on the train?
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From my understanding of how the system works, you wouldn't be changed a base fare for your second trip. So your second trip would cost the amount on the fare calculator minus the base fare (which is $5.30 I think).
 
joet00 said:
I'm familiar with "TTC times two" where the "single, continuous trip" rule is bent to allow for a segment via GO. Does anyone know if the reverse is true or if there is a transfer credit of any sort if one travels GO-TTC-GO?

From time-to-time, I need to travel from York Region to the Pearson area. In the past, I've used YRT/Viva (or get a ride) to connect to GO's Route 40.

But with the launch of 2WAD train service, and with the Concord station/hub being a far-off improbability, I'm contemplating:

Barrie Train to Downsview Park
TTC Subway north to Hwy 407 (or south to Yorkdale)
GO Bus 40 (or 34) to Pearson

I believe the TTC trip would be charged $1.50 (co-fare).

Is there any discount/credit for the 2nd trip on the GO system, occurring within 3 hours of tapping on the train?
Click to expand...

LNahid2000 said:
From my understanding of how the system works, you wouldn't be changed a base fare for your second trip. So your second trip would cost the amount on the fare calculator minus the base fare (which is $5.30 I think).
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I think Triplinx calculates fares as well as route alternatives....no?
 
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