Staff was not told that the testing was going to happen until less than a week before they started.
That's beyond reckless. Murphy's Law is almost inevitably invoked. Doubtless it must have weighed heavily on middle management and supervisors.
In fact, there is some serious concern that all of this is being done without having designed and tested any procedures for the event that service goes all pear-shaped. VIA's also got some concerns as well, as there is an almost certain inevitability that their trains will incur some minor delays on the two-track stretch between Pickering and Guildwood or even the rest of the way into Union.
All it will take is one equipment malfunction, a frozen door, jammed switch, and if the signal and control system is up against design capabilities, it'll all go down like dominoes. One only hopes that they have contingencies in place, one of which might be to simply go back to the former timetable where performance was predictable and proven. There's a built-in buffer to allow for the unexpected, within reason.
While this whole thing has been planned for a very long time, there is still a very strong odor to this of someone up in the Ivory Tower trying to please someone even higher up. A lot of people are not happy with how it's been implemented.
The real shame about this is that was probably a very well-thought and planned 'next stage' that GO had been working on.
I suspect the 'inside story' will leak out from some disgruntled employees, maybe even to the axed execs who may have peccadilloes of their own, but even Il Duce (Del Duca) didn't mess with the operations side.
This is going to go very wrong, and then the finger-pointing begins. When I see the two former deadheads from Union to Mimico being pressed into a schedule for no discernible reason other than to add coloured bars to the timetable, I see trouble squared. And those were just the easy ones to see from a glance, there must be a lot more.
This could have been incrementally implemented for many of the added routes, and worked well once the glitches had been programmed out. I fear the wrong people are going to get blamed...again.
Edit to Add: Just going back to 'read between the lines' and this cued a new thought: (Harvesting underutilized coaches from other sets to add to the highest demand ones)
As for why they haven't said that in the past - well, they have, but they usually aren't so overt with it.
Let me project: 'Because the political imperative wasn't as demanding/desperate before'.
I'm going to cut a little slack to Yakabuski, although God knows why, I haven't seen any honourable moves from anyone in this regime, just double-talk and mirrors...but perhaps he too is a victim in this. He believed the hype (gist: "GO is protected, we'll do everything the Libs promised and more) and then found out he had nothing to work with. I can understand a tight budget, but to not put *something* towards incremental infrastructure improvements to make a number of situations work a lot better is just bad management, even if you're broke.
Not buying detergent to do your washing is hardly a saving. And the mime is "This won't cost us anything". That's the chant of a cult headed to suicide.
Frugal, yes, absolutely, a lot was being wasted prior. But you don't turn off all the drinking water because one tap was leaking.
So who's the first to walk? Yakabuski? He's set himself up to be tripped if he doesn't.
