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GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

IRT_BMT_IND said:
Yeah, Calgary has only one bus route with all day, 7 day per week frequent service, and most of the suburban bus routes are useless for anything other than getting to an LRT station. Edmonton actually has a much better high frequency bus grid.
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Can't argue with this. Calgary's bus system isn't good IMO. Part of it is the city gambling on rail, and putting their resources into that direction. It has paid off in some ways, but of course bus service hasn't evolved, and is crappy all around.
 
mdrejhon said:
True, though that's a city of mere 1.2 million and on a mere one mode (and of that, a mere single corridor), that's still downright impressive by North American standards. Car-dependency nonwithstanding, and some of those stations are now gradually evolving into hubs now.

I also say this in perspective in that our GO network's capacity is very underutilized, and the importance of keeping electrification since it one of the many pre-requisites to doubling total daily ridership of GO.
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Having those stations turn into nodes is going to be key. As mentioned in the post above, the city gambled on rail transit vs bus transit, and in order to build up the rail system, bus transit has suffered. The benefit from leveraging the transit nodes is finally starting to be seen thankfully. It's taken a while, but it's finally coming to fruition. Lots of projects planned or under construction around various stations.
 
I would add that part of the problem faced by the bus system in Calgary is the road system. Bus use in Toronto is high in part because of the grid of arterial roads that blanket the suburbs. While not particularly pleasant, Toronto's arterial roads are easily accessible by foot and can deliver riders to a subway line usually without having to transfer. Calgary's suburban arterial roads, by contrast, are built like parkways. They're curvilinear and have limited access, which makes them terrible routes for buses. As a result, Calgary's suburban bus routes tend to meander in and out of subdivisions, completely inefficiently.

Toronto's arterial grid would be perfect for creating a system of interlocking LRT routes that would provide mass transit to the inner suburbs and spur transit-oriented urban development. If only someone had proposed such a system - a kind of "transit city", if you will.
 
This could go in several different threads (SmartTrack, Election Promises, fares), given the latest Ben Spurr story re Smart Track: the GO $3 fare thing came up in QP today. Andrea asked of the Minister would commit to it. In his response he seemed to imply he'd make a decision after the Gordon Campbell line by line review and emphasized they never committed to it, ranted about the deficit and debt and said nothing in life was free.
 
^ they are so used to it I bet they think the status quo will never change. It's related to how long it'll take to build stuff.
 
innsertnamehere said:
nothing. But it will incrementally change traffic, along with a lot of other small measures that may add up to a significant amount of change.
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I don't think it will change traffic at all...I think it will give transit users in Toronto another option and some of them will change their pattern of commute and it will free up some seats on the some streetcars/buses/subways on the TTC because of that.....but the impact on traffic will be near zero.

I also think that the whole "$3 per trip inside Toronto" should be changed to "$3 per trip within the same municipality"
 
Cross posted to Smart Track thread. Transcript from today's exchange via Ben Spurr. Per @TOareaFan's advice, Andrea should probably change "anywhere in this city" to "within the same municipality". Also, change "lower the cost of GO trips in Toronto" to "municipalities", etc.

2nlQBoC
 
^ For reference, here's the archived news release by the former government. Interestingly, Mount Dennis is only 16 km from Bramalea Station. So that would be captured by the fare reduced to $6.

  • Adult fares for GO Transit trips between approximately 10 km and 20 km will also be reduced, and will vary between $3 to $6, depending on the specific route.
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A generic answer- but the main takeaway is that we should know more about the fates of transit projects by the end of the month.
 
Allandale25 said:
^ For reference, here's the archived news release by the former government. Interestingly, Mount Dennis is only 16 km from Bramalea Station. So that would be captured by the fare reduced to $6.
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Bramalea to Bloor is now $7.77 with Presto.....to Weston it is $6.95.....so Mt. Dennis was going to be, what, $7.40(ish)?
 
^ Why wouldn't it be $6 Bramalea to Mt. Dennis based on "Adult fares for GO Transit trips between approximately 10 km and 20 km will also be reduced, and will vary between $3 to $6, depending on the specific route." Did they clarify what "specific route" meant? I just measured it and it's 16 km.
 
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