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GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

Krypto98 said:
I saw a train deadhead to Georgetown yard last night around 9:30 pm. Anyone know why?
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Assume equipment move, prob a lot of 'em with all the train cancelations. Just going by the website the number of cancelations in the morning and evening don't always match up for each line so they'd have to send out a train after hours to be in position for the next days rush.
 
Look at the Jan 10th schedule..........

1641810179810.png


And the current schedule:

1641810393931.png


What timing adjustments have we seen?

@reaperexpress
 
Northern Light said:
Look at the Jan 10th schedule..........


And the current schedule:



What timing adjustments have we seen?

@reaperexpress
Click to expand...

At a quick glance:
- There are no longer any express services or counter-peak local services
- They haven't accounted for the upgraded tracks between Stratford and Guelph, which should have cut the travel time by about 6 minutes.
- Due to the above two items, the travel time from London to Toronto has increased from 3h53 to 4h01 eastbound and from 3h58 to 4h04 westbound.

The fact that they kept the London service (which almost nobody used) while eliminating the counter-peak services (which were moderately well used) is an illustration of how GO's operations are influenced by politics rather than being simply based on transport planning objectives.
 
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reaperexpress said:
At a quick glance:
- All express services and counter-peak local services are gone
- It looks like they haven't accounted for the upgraded tracks between Stratford and Guelph, which should have cut the travel time by about 6 minutes.
- Due to the above two items, the travel time from London to Toronto has increased from 3h53 to 4h01

The fact that they kept the London service (which almost nobody used) while eliminating the counter-peak services (which were moderately well used) is an illustration of how GO's operations are influenced by politics rather than being simply based on transport planning objectives.
Click to expand...

You would think it would be canceled given the lack of staff at the moment.

Surprise, Surprise.
 
Richard White said:
You would think it would be canceled given the lack of staff at the moment.

Surprise, Surprise.
Click to expand...
This entire schedule change is due to lack of staff. That's exactly my point.
 
reaperexpress said:
At a quick glance:
- There are no longer any express services or counter-peak local services
- They haven't accounted for the upgraded tracks between Stratford and Guelph, which should have cut the travel time by about 6 minutes.
- Due to the above two items, the travel time from London to Toronto has increased from 3h53 to 4h01 eastbound and from 3h58 to 4h04 westbound.

The fact that they kept the London service (which almost nobody used) while eliminating the counter-peak services (which were moderately well used) is an illustration of how GO's operations are influenced by politics rather than being simply based on transport planning objectives.
Click to expand...

No kidding. Keeping the London service is completely ridiculous and I bet most the vast of Londoners would agree. If the service where to end tomorrow and no one told the media, absolutely no one in London would even notice.
 
ssiguy2 said:
No kidding. Keeping the London service is completely ridiculous and I bet most the vast of Londoners would agree. If the service where to end tomorrow and no one told the media, absolutely no one in London would even notice.
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Fun fact: one of my friends that has lived in Brampton for 20+ years didn't know that there was a train to downtown Toronto. So they always drove downtown or to the subway at finch.
 
Krypto98 said:
Fun fact: one of my friends that has lived in Brampton for 20+ years didn't know that there was a train to downtown Toronto. So they always drove downtown or to the subway at finch.
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I don't find that surprising at all. The terminus for future 15 min service barely even touches the core of Brampton and the 2 stations that are more deep into the city are really under-utilized for what they are.
 
reaperexpress said:
At a quick glance:
- There are no longer any express services or counter-peak local services
- They haven't accounted for the upgraded tracks between Stratford and Guelph, which should have cut the travel time by about 6 minutes.
- Due to the above two items, the travel time from London to Toronto has increased from 3h53 to 4h01 eastbound and from 3h58 to 4h04 westbound.

The fact that they kept the London service (which almost nobody used) while eliminating the counter-peak services (which were moderately well used) is an illustration of how GO's operations are influenced by politics rather than being simply based on transport planning objectives.
Click to expand...
Although if the issue is based off staff, I fail to see what cutting the London service would do.

Pros: You save money... that's about it. Since the morning trip is so early, you can't strategically cut down the London trip to reposition a staff member elsewhere, and as such there's no benefit to cutting the service in the midst of a staff shortage. The only thing I can think of is maybe you can use that staff member to potentially run a counterpeak service in the evening? That's about it though.

Cons: You completely kill any faith in the extension. You're basically admitting that the pilot failed, and you potentially kill any chance to bring GO to London anytime in the near future.

In other words, even if we ignore the politicking, there is quite a bit of logic to keep the London service.
 
ARG1 said:
Although if the issue is based off staff, I fail to see what cutting the London service would do.

Pros: You save money... that's about it. Since the morning trip is so early, you can't strategically cut down the London trip to reposition a staff member elsewhere, and as such there's no benefit to cutting the service in the midst of a staff shortage. The only thing I can think of is maybe you can use that staff member to potentially run a counterpeak service in the evening? That's about it though.

Cons: You completely kill any faith in the extension. You're basically admitting that the pilot failed, and you potentially kill any chance to bring GO to London anytime in the near future.

In other words, even if we ignore the politicking, there is quite a bit of logic to keep the London service.
Click to expand...
I'm heartened to see that there are also people in this forum who actually grasp that a major metric of efficiency is how many revenue-km you can extract from a single shift. This is why unit labor costs (e.g. per revenue-km or per seat-mile) are lowest for metro services (which operate at high frequencies throughout the day) and highest for how most Commuter Rail networks still operate in North America (which is several inbound trips in the morning and outbound trips in the afternoon, as exemplified by GO's Richmond Hill and Milton services).

Which is why in times of staff shortage (and especially in times where overall demand is low), you would be much more inclined to cancel a 28-km-run like Bramalea-Union (which primarily runs to relieve overcrowding on the Kitchener-Union trains) and make the Express trains all-stop (which is exactly what happened yesterday) than a 195-km-run like London-Union. But, like in all corners of society, arguing against the conspiracy theorists among passenger rail fans (which are deeply entrenched in their believes that any changes to the frequency of trains are determined by political, not commercial or operational priorities) is like fighting wind mills...
 
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Urban Sky said:
I'm heartened to see that there are also people in this forum who actually grasp that a major metric of efficiency is how many revenue-km you can extract from a single shift. This is why unit labor costs (e.g. per revenue-km or per seat-mile) are lowest for metro services (which operate at high frequencies throughout the day) and highest for how most Commuter Rail networks still operate in North America (which is several inbound trips in the morning and outbound trips in the afternoon, as exemplified by GO's Richmond Hill and Milton services).

Which is why in times of staff shortage (and especially in times where overall demand is low), you would be much more inclined to cancel a 28-km-run like Bramalea-Union (which primarily runs to relieve capacity on the Kitchener-Union trains) and make the Express trains all-stop (which is exactly what happened yesterday) than a 195-km-run like London-Union. But, like in all corners of society, arguing against the conspiracy theorists among passenger rail fans (which are deeply entrenched in their believes that any changes to the frequency of trains are determined by political, not commercial or operational priorities) is like fighting wind mills...
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Essentially what happened with the London train (trip 3760) and the local trip from Bramalea (3110) is that they were merged together (3710). This makes it so 3 less people are needed to operate an extra trip. Also I've taken 3110 from Bramalea several times and it's usually completely empty with maybe maximum 45 people on board. Why hasn't the TorontoStar complained that only 15 people are getting on at Bramalea for a train. While the London train being added might be seen as political I can't help but think that the TorontoStars article is also political. Pre-pandemic, Kitchener Go's ridership was 320ish with 8 round trips. This averages to 30-40 riders per train

There are also few crews qualified at the moment the London trains. I see the same Engineer on the afternoon run almost every time.

Also a reason off peak trips to Kitchener were shortened was that the next trip would require a deadhead which means an extra crew.
 
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Krypto98 said:
Fun fact: one of my friends that has lived in Brampton for 20+ years didn't know that there was a train to downtown Toronto. So they always drove downtown or to the subway at finch.
Click to expand...
They drove all the way to Finch! Not even Vaughan or Downsview? Someone needs to give that person a transit map.
 
Urban Sky said:
I'm heartened to see that there are also people in this forum who actually grasp that a major metric of efficiency is how many revenue-km you can extract from a single shift. This is why unit labor costs (e.g. per revenue-km or per seat-mile) are lowest for metro services (which operate at high frequencies throughout the day) and highest for how most Commuter Rail networks still operate in North America (which is several inbound trips in the morning and outbound trips in the afternoon, as exemplified by GO's Richmond Hill and Milton services).

Which is why in times of staff shortage (and especially in times where overall demand is low), you would be much more inclined to cancel a 28-km-run like Bramalea-Union (which primarily runs to relieve overcrowding on the Kitchener-Union trains) and make the Express trains all-stop (which is exactly what happened yesterday) than a 195-km-run like London-Union. But, like in all corners of society, arguing against the conspiracy theorists among passenger rail fans (which are deeply entrenched in their believes that any changes to the frequency of trains are determined by political, not commercial or operational priorities) is like fighting wind mills...
Click to expand...
When I suggested that the London trip/extension would be a likely target for a cut, I was simply looking at the trips which carry the fewest passengers per staff-hour. Hardly a deeply-entranched belief or conspiracy theory...

To operate the AM London-Kitchener component of the London service, the crew needs to drive (a car) 1.5h from Kitchener to London, set up the train (0.5h?) and drive 2.2h back to Kitchener. That's 4 hours of crew time to carry 30 passengers one-way. In that same time, they could operate 5 trips (2.5 round trips) from Union to Bramalea, each of which carries more than 30 passengers each way. The peak-direction components of those trips are not a huge loss given that ridership is currently very low and the former express trains are now operating local, but the counter-peak components of those trips were a big time saver for passengers connecting to other services at Bramalea (e.g. the Kitchener bus, 407 buses).
 
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