GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

[nfitz]

I'm surprised at the number of stations they're planning within Cambridge.

Two stations? That doesn't seem excessive. And one additional station in Milton on Guelph line, and one half-way in-between.

 

[Dan416]

Knowing GO, the Cambridge station will be location on the outskirts surrounded by parking and farms, similar to the Barrie station. GRT has been improving so much too, a GO station in the middle of nowhere would just encourage people to take the car and hamper GRT's progress.

As a resident of Mississauga and regular user of MT, I am strongly opposed to any sort of improvement for the Milton line, as it would just reinforce the car culture in Mississauga. MT has by far the highest ridership in 905, and had 20% ridership growth in the past 5 years. GO expansion will just negate that and kill the system. MT will become like Oakvile Transit if these plans go through.

This is your most backward post yet. As an avid GO user and driver and former Mississauga Transit user. GO is the fastest way to get downtown by public transit. No way in hell am I gonna wait on a bus for an hour just to get to Kipling. 1.5 hours to get downtown by municipal transit? No effing thanks.

Regional/Express Rail on Milton--Bring it on! The sooner the better! Every 15 minutes would be great.

 

[SunriseChampion]

Just look at which areas have the best GO Train service and you will see the same thing: they all have crappy local transit.

You sure about that?

Lakeshore line has the best GO service and, along it, is also found some of the best local transit service in the Golden Horseshoe.

The fact that Durham, Oakville, and Burlington have shite local transit doesn't mean it has anything to do with level of GO service.

 

[Second_in_pie]

*psst, Durham, Oakville and Burlington make up a good half of Lakeshore's length*

But there's really not a lot of sense in saying there's a correlation between Go service and local transit.
First of all,hey both serve totally different markets. Right now, Go is a commuter service. In the future though, it will be a regional service, meaning long-distance trips. If you were going to go downtown from Weston, it'd probably make a lot more sense to take the Go train than the bus. But if you wanted to take the bus to the local supermarket to get groceries, I doubt you'd want to take the Go train.

Also, there's really only one corridor (two routes) that can really boast "improved Go service" (and 1 hour frequency is definitely not something to stomp on others over.) You can't say that the Stouffville line has any better service than the Milton line, or that the Georgetown line is any better than the Barrie line.

And I doubt that a lot of Mississauga residents would be happy taking a bus down Hurontario to Dundas, then switching on a bus to get to Kipling, then taking the subway over to St. George and taking the YUS downtown. There are certain trips that make a lot of sense taking the local bus, and some that make more sense taking the Go train.

The reason you might think that Go shoves over local transit is that due to the different riders for both, Go's service might just make more sense. How many people do you know would rather take the bus to a Loblaws than just drive? Now how many people would rather take the Go train than waste away an hour and a half sitting on the Gardiner alone? With our current mindset, the longer a trip is, the more likely you're going to not wanna drive if a convenient option is available.

 

[dunkalunk]

I always thought that the Go Station should have been at the Delta interchange (8 and 24) as it allowed for more parking and had much greater urbanization potntial, but apart from that, It's about time trains returned to Cambridge. I also don't see GO trains to Kitchener and Cambridge as an either-or issue. Living in Waterloo without a car, there is no way i'm going to spend an hour on the iXpress just to save a few bucks getting into Toronto. I'm sure Cambridge residents would feel the same way. about a sole GO station in Kitchener. Many would continue to use the Greyhound as they currently do.

 

[EnviroTO]

As a resident of Mississauga and regular user of MT, I am strongly opposed to any sort of improvement for the Milton line, as it would just reinforce the car culture in Mississauga. MT has by far the highest ridership in 905, and had 20% ridership growth in the past 5 years. GO expansion will just negate that and kill the system. MT will become like Oakvile Transit if these plans go through.

That makes no sense to me. You are basically concerned that fast convenient transit will kill local transit. GO costs more than local transit, and car ownership and gas is expensive. If you think preventing convenient fast transit options like GO will be helpful for local transit then think again. Transit can't possibly reinforce car culture... only infrastructure which cars use can. If you were against road and parking lot improvements in Mississauga in general you would have a point. A lack of Milton GO line improvements would simply have more people drive.

 

[drum118]

Knowing GO, the Cambridge station will be location on the outskirts surrounded by parking and farms, similar to the Barrie station. GRT has been improving so much too, a GO station in the middle of nowhere would just encourage people to take the car and hamper GRT's progress.

As a resident of Mississauga and regular user of MT, I am strongly opposed to any sort of improvement for the Milton line, as it would just reinforce the car culture in Mississauga. MT has by far the highest ridership in 905, and had 20% ridership growth in the past 5 years. GO expansion will just negate that and kill the system. MT will become like Oakvile Transit if these plans go through.

As a Resident of Mississauga, I support more expansion and service on all lines.

What needs to be address is the fare structure so it can help to develop local transit service to stop people driving their cars to the GO stations.

A few more stops along the line will help riders to get to/from fast where they are going and connecting with local transit a lot easier. This means GO needs to look at more local service on top of what out there today.

MT will not become Oakville with expansion as Oakville transit is reinventing itself now and not relying upon GO as in the past.

The old Galt CP station is a good transit connection for Cambridge and has room for a GO parking lot if you want to go that route. You can store the trains overnight there also.

CP becomes a winner as it gets a 2nd track at no cost to them. If you are going to run more than peak service, the line will have to be 3 tracks and that will be an issue in some places.

Need to run more off peak service, but not using current equipment.

 

[unimaginative2]

It's absolutely right to say that GO is a commuter service today, and in a few years it will hopefully improve to be a genuine regional transit service that will serve longer-distance trips. What I'd also like to see is for the GO routes to become a genuine rapid transit backbone for areas (particularly in the 905) that aren't currently served by rapid transit. For example, people travelling from Streetsville to Cooksville should be able to catch a bus to the Milton line and make an easy transfer just like a TTC rider uses the subway. This is more of a German model of regional rail transit.

I just realized that somebody will undoubtedly trot out the "But people aren't going to pay a double fare!" argument. Just to be perfectly clear: if GO is to stop being a commuter service, it will have to become part of the local transit system. That means that transfers from buses and subways to the regional rail network would be as seamless as transfers from TTC buses to the subway are today.

The key to this is the introduction of a separate express level of service and the addition of more frequent stops for the local service. The S-Bahn in Germany has stops that aren't much less frequent than a subway. They also have regional express trains for longer stops. Obviously we're not talking B-D level spacing here, but it wouldn't be unreasonable to have a stop at each concession, combined with an express service with more comfortable seating that would stop only at major points.

 

[doady]

I was referring to the huge park-and-ride lots and their effect on local transit. They cause a huge amount of traffic congestion and it is the local transit riders who suffer the most from traffic congestion. And GO Transit actively encourages this by their fare policy and the way to they place most of their stations as to discourage local transit connections and pedestrians.

Unlike the TTC and MT and any other local transit system, GO Transit is not urbanizing force in the GTA. GO Transit is a suburbanizing and exurbanizing force. All GO lines are anti-urban, no better than a freeway really. Again, just look at the areas in the 905 that the Lakeshore lines serve, including south Mississauga: these all just happen to be the sprawliest areas in the GTA and have the worst transit service.

 

[doady]

That makes no sense to me. You are basically concerned that fast convenient transit will kill local transit.

Local transit and regional transit do not really compete with each other.

GO costs more than local transit, and car ownership and gas is expensive.

GO transit may reduce gas use, but it does not reduce car ownership, it only encourages car ownership.

 

[DavidJamesTO]

Unlike the TTC and MT and any other local transit system, GO Transit is not urbanizing force in the GTA. GO Transit is a suburbanizing and exurbanizing force. All GO lines are anti-urban, no better than a freeway really. Again, just look at the areas in the 905 that the Lakeshore lines serve, including south Mississauga: these all just happen to be the sprawliest areas in the GTA and have the worst transit service.

So what's your solution? Abolish GO transit? I have news for you: people aren't suddenly going to jump on fast ferries running along Lake Ontario or jump on a bus that will get to Toronto in twice the time the train would take. They'll drive. Instead of parking on miles of tarmac in their own towns, they'll be parking in mile-high parking towers in Toronto. Not much of a solution.

The evolution of GO Transit from what it is to what it could and/or should be won't happen overnight. NOT expanding service isn't going to help in the slightest.

Sure, companies could move some of their offices to the 'new towns' in Mississauga or Oakville, but that's not always going to happen. And a lot of the suburbanites have zero interest in moving to Toronto. People are going to live where they want and work where they want. We have a better alternative in GO than the QEW or 401; why should the people wanting to use it to get to work be told that they shouldn't?

And, out of curiosity, how 'sprawly' is Port Credit? Or downtown Hamilton?

 

[EnviroTO]

Local transit and regional transit do not really compete with each other.

Agreed. So GO Transit can't possibly harm local transit. They serve different markets.

GO transit may reduce gas use, but it does not reduce car ownership, it only encourages car ownership.

Transit cannot encourage car ownership. Land use plans which do not support transit, poor transit options, and infrastructure which moves cars promotes car use. If MT could get people from their home to all the places they go efficiently in terms of time and cost then people wouldn't need their car.

If you expect me to believe that there is a significant number of people who have bought cars simply to go to the GO station when a reasonable transit option was available I will say I am almost certain you are wrong. Most people in Mississauga already have cars for all the other trips they make because their neighbourhoods are designed in a way that requires it. People downtown often walk to grocery stores, most people in Mississauga will not. Nothing GO Transit does will change this. This means a car is in the garage already so the choice is about driving it downtown or driving it to the GO station. The choice is not about selling the car and taking MT to grocery stores and on a long journey to Kipling station to transfer to the subway to get to work.

 

[Second_in_pie]

^^ Totally agreed.

I think everyone should agree that taking 1000 cars off the QEW or DVP per train is a good thing. I don't understand how that would encourage car ownership. If GO didn't exist, people would have essentially no means of getting to work by Transit. Now, they can in most cases easily take the bus to their local Go station, and enjoy a short trip downtown.

And if only more people could ditch their cars and instead bike and take transit. It's really not as hard as it's made out to be, even in the suburbs.

 

[waterloowarrior]

Unlike the TTC and MT and any other local transit system, GO Transit is not urbanizing force in the GTA. GO Transit is a suburbanizing and exurbanizing force. All GO lines are anti-urban, no better than a freeway really. Again, just look at the areas in the 905 that the Lakeshore lines serve, including south Mississauga: these all just happen to be the sprawliest areas in the GTA and have the worst transit service.

Looking at historical aerials, most of south Mississauga was there before GO even existed... how is that GO's fault?

 

[RedRocket191]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition