GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

[Northern Light]

Like it or not, standing room at the expense of seats is the trend. I guess now someone will post a picture of a streetcar somewhere in gaudy paint that has that. And then blame horror of the paint scheme on the seating arrangement.

Ya know....I just can't get there.

If transit is overcrowded, the answer is not reducing rider comfort, its increasing service!

I appreciate that has not been the choice made here lately, but the fact government has cash-starved transit is not a case for reducing comfort.; its a case for more cash.

 

[yrt+viva=1system]

This is great.

Wonder how much Metrolinx spent on this

 

[WillTo]

Wonder how much Metrolinx spent on this

Worth every penny!

 

[steveintoronto]

I appreciate that has not been the choice made here lately, but the fact government has cash-starved transit is not a case for reducing comfort.; its a case for more cash.

And that's coming from where exactly? Dream about it as you're left waiting for the next train that might have seats on it. Fantasy is everyone having seats. Reality is having a ride, seat or not, and being lucky.

In case the point was missed:

Other growing cities around the world face the same question: how do you balance the needs of commuters making long journeys to and from the city, with the need to deliver more frequent, “turn up and go” stopping services inside city boundaries?

Toronto’s GO commuter system has seen significant overcrowding in recent years, with many travellers in the Greater Toronto area forced to stand on 30-minute journeys downtown. The GO operator’s goal is to provide seats for 80% of its peak time passengers, but it achieved only 66% at the most recent count.

Cattle-class: are Thameslink's new 'tube-style' trains the future of commuting?

As the UK south-east’s rail nightmare continues, a new class of commuter trains has been quietly revealed – long, metro-style carriages without tables, built to accommodate as many standing passengers as possible. Is this the new normal?

www.theguardian.com

Meantime:

Have you guys been on the new Metrolinx GO trains yet? The seats are so crammed and uncomfortable. I can’t imagine 4 people fitting face to face.

Discussion

https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/9iyivq

See that utility raceway underneath the window seats? Tell me folks, those with two legs...what do you do with the leg closest to the window?

And if you're a woman in a skirt? Hike one leg on top of it, and the other down, and hold a newspaper in front of the view? Or just a guy with pants? Do you shove your legs into the person's space next to you, or shove them across to the woman sitting opposite whose trying to find space for her legs too? Maybe you could interleave your legs with hers? Unfamiliar women just love that I'm told. Saw it on #MeToo.

Seriously, answers please.

Or do you take your legs off and carry them in a backpack? Claim funding is the answer to those standing on the platform who can't get seats. Brilliant logic there...

 

[crs1026]

^Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Standees are not going away, but overcrowding is a symptom of insufficient supply. One might not expect to get a seat at peak hours, but if we are at the point where we are reconfiguring the trains to add standee space, then we need more capacity. It’s a nice problem to have, but let’s solve it constructively rather than degrading the ridership experience to an extreme.

- Paul

 

[nfitz]

It’s a nice problem to have, but let’s solve it constructively rather than degrading the ridership experience to an extreme.

Is it extreme though? How many more seats are there per car? The spacing doesn't look that different to me.

Certainly more generous than elsewhere ... I was quite surprised riding the train between New York City and Newark Airport recently how much tighter the seating is. It's pairs on one side and triples on the other in some cars. And sitting in a quad, the space was so tight, that you had to make sure your knees didn't line up with the knees of the person on the opposite side, because there just wasn't space!

 

[steveintoronto]

if we are at the point where we are reconfiguring the trains to add standee space, then we need more capacity.

Of course we need more capacity. But that's not forthcoming at this time. The fiasco of the K/W service makes that clear. But some haven't been paying attention it seems. The DD's have already added standing space by the doors, and removed seats to do it. It renders an excellent space to stand a lightweight bike vertically if the front wheel is popped off (takes a fraction of a second with quick release wheels) and stood on the handlebars with the rear wheel tucked into the corner for stability. Far better use of space than blocking the bench seat under the stairs.

I still see no answer about the leg space for the pic provided above. Where are you supposed to put your leg next to the windows with the service raceway taking half that seat's floor space? "Manspreading" albeit vertically is the only way I can see (and do, and it gets painful after a while). Is it time for Womanspreading in the name of equality?

Suggestions? Btw: Quad seating is a very poor way of maximizing leg room. Take a look at the space wasted under the seats. That space alone would allow seats facing in one direction to offer vastly more leg room. As is almost always done, one way facing seating would change direction mid-point along the seating section of the coach. Quad seating was always premium in most cases on trains, and on the US layouts of the same BBD cars, they provide a table at every other space. The Coaster and Utah Express do this also. Frankly, I think it's very inefficient use of the space with coaches that are packed to standing room only, but that's exactly my point. GO is only meeting 66% of seating demand by their own stats.

Bombardier BiLevel Coach - Wikipedia

 

[cplchanb]

And that's coming from where exactly? Dream about it as you're left waiting for the next train that might have seats on it. Fantasy is everyone having seats. Reality is having a ride, seat or not, and being lucky.

In case the point was missed:

Cattle-class: are Thameslink's new 'tube-style' trains the future of commuting?

As the UK south-east’s rail nightmare continues, a new class of commuter trains has been quietly revealed – long, metro-style carriages without tables, built to accommodate as many standing passengers as possible. Is this the new normal?

www.theguardian.com

Meantime:

https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/9iyivq

See that utility raceway underneath the window seats? Tell me folks, those with two legs...what do you do with the leg closest to the window?

And if you're a woman in a skirt? Hike one leg on top of it, and the other down, and hold a newspaper in front of the view? Or just a guy with pants? Do you shove your legs into the person's space next to you, or shove them across to the woman sitting opposite whose trying to find space for her legs too? Maybe you could interleave your legs with hers? Unfamiliar women just love that I'm told. Saw it on #MeToo.

Seriously, answers please.

Or do you take your legs off and carry them in a backpack? Claim funding is the answer to those standing on the platform who can't get seats. Brilliant logic there...

could they not use seats with seatbacks that can flip from side to side based on direction of travel so that you dont need have fixed seats facing eachother or quads?

 

[smallspy]

could they not use seats with seatbacks that can flip from side to side based on direction of travel so that you dont need have fixed seats facing eachother or quads?

Transport Canada is not crazy about walkover seats, as there is always the possibility of having the seat move and throw the passengers out if it is not latched properly. (Of course, this is also possible with rotating seats as well, but they seem to have ignored that for the time being.)

Dan

 

[DonValleyRainbow]

I took my annual winter/spring evening/morning commute in and out of Guelph. As I used to do the commute on the regular a year and a half after service was extended to Kitchener, it's interesting to do it again on an annual basis to see how things continue to evolve (or not). I took the 3rd train (7:11 AM) from Guelph this morning, some commentary below:

• Boy, lots of slow orders. Overall, lots of bouncing between 5, 15, 45 and 60 mph between Guelph and Mt Pleasant, but ~15 mph slow orders:
  • Just as you pull out of Guelph Central until Victoria.
  • Halfway between Guelph and Rockwood.
  • Through Rockwood.
  • West of Limehouse.
• Getting through Silver and Georgetown is still such a painful drag. The train starts slowing down just before Trafalgar Road, right down to a crawl (~5mph) just before the junction. This is as slow as the old days when the switch was located on a the banked curve of the Halton sub, before they reconfigured the entire junction. The widening of the enbankment over McNabb Street and the creek may still be a factor, but not until you go through the switch. Then you still grind through to the Georgetown platform; still no sign of upgrading to a mainline platform anytime soon. We had a pretty short dwell (~45 seconds) and didn't conflict with CN freight until west of Mt Pleasant, so I timed the trip between Trafalgar and the Credit River, and I think it's a pretty good sample: 11m 55s over 4.1 km, or an average speed of 20.6 km/h (12.8 mph). For comparison, Mimico to Long Branch is 8 minutes over 4.8 kilometres; an average speed of 36.0 km/h (22.4 mph), or 75% faster. Just a brutal stretch that has not improved since opening day.
• We conflicted with CN west of Mt Pleasant. That was about a 5 minute wait.
• Alighting still eats up some time at Brampton and Bramalea, due to shear volume. Not a big factor, but perhaps some seconds saved when we get to RER service levels.
• The Torbram Road grade separation is still going; was originally scheduled to be complete by May 2017, and is now projected for December 2018. This article points blame at midday GO service, an unidentified Bell utility chamber, design changes by Metrolinx, winter weather, and 'other unforeseen site conditions.'

More trains, a couple that are express, is nice. Metrolinx has also been sinking some money into the corridor, but it seems it is still not bearing fruit in terms of time benefit.

One thing that was a good improvement was coming in. I needed to get from Guelph Central to the university, and Guelph Transit now has a frequent spine route (99) that runs every 10 minutes. It happened to come 2 minutes after I got off the train, so I was at the university less than 15 minutes later. Superb, now all they need to do is get Presto.

Took my annual Guelph trip for 2019, this time I took VIA back the same night instead of GO the next morning. Some differences from my post last year:

• Not so slow in Guelph, but certainly still some slower spots through Acton and Rockwood. At times I wasn't sure if the train was superelevated or the track had an unnecessary lean.
• Silver is very strange. On the GO westbound, it went super slow just like last year. However, taking the VIA back, we flew through Silver at whatever the limited speed for the switch was. So I'm not exactly clear what is restricting the GO to a slower speed westbound than a VIA train eastbound (at least through Silver; grinding in and out of the GO platform is what it is).
• We had a couple conflicts with another GO train terminating at Bramalea. The line (and the trains themselves) seem very congested. Then there was a hiccup with the doors at Bramalea too, but somethign to do with the platform construction I think.

 

[WillTo]

Frustrates me so much that there is empty, unused space underneath the seats, but no leg room.
True, one could maybe fit small suitcase there, but people generally travel light on GO Trains.

A problem with having paired seating is the alignment with the windows might be off, but I'd happily accept that.

 

[TOareaFan]

Frustrates me so much that there is empty, unused space underneath the seats, but no leg room.
True, one could maybe fit small suitcase there, but people generally travel light on GO Trains.

A problem with having paired seating is the alignment with the windows might be off, but I'd happily accept that.

pretty sure I am not the only person putting my work bag behind my calves and under the seat. Seems pretty common practice from my observation.

 

[timio]

Took my annual Guelph trip for 2019, this time I took VIA back the same night instead of GO the next morning. Some differences from my post last year:

• Not so slow in Guelph, but certainly still some slower spots through Acton and Rockwood. At times I wasn't sure if the train was superelevated or the track had an unnecessary lean.
• Silver is very strange. On the GO westbound, it went super slow just like last year. However, taking the VIA back, we flew through Silver at whatever the limited speed for the switch was. So I'm not exactly clear what is restricting the GO to a slower speed westbound than a VIA train eastbound (at least through Silver; grinding in and out of the GO platform is what it is).
• We had a couple conflicts with another GO train terminating at Bramalea. The line (and the trains themselves) seem very congested. Then there was a hiccup with the doors at Bramalea too, but somethign to do with the platform construction I think.

Funny, a few weeks ago I took a look outside in Rockwood and realized we were moving at a pretty good clip, ~110 km/h and had been going that speed since just west of Acton and didn't slow down until we were pulling into the east end of Guelph.

The slow order over the Eramosa River in Rockwood was lifted 1-2 months ago, so things seem to move pretty good through there now.

 

[Krypto98]

Just a question, has anyone found when the 4:32 train deadheads and where does it go to?

 

[Allandale25]

Speaking of conflicts....

https://twitter.com/x/status/1096553311032000512

CC @DonValleyRainbow