GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

[reaperexpress]

Because there are 65-ish trainsets in service today, with a locomotive roster of 91. That's almost at the limit of the number of units that can be used in service every day - they might be able to manage another 5 units each day. Unlike a bus, there are regulatory restrictions to the operation of locomotives and railcars. The same goes for cab cars although to a lesser degree, and so the spare ratio can be lower - and the refurbished cab cars will help this.

The additional 20 or so locomotives that are projected to be purchased will help ameliorate this.

I don't doubt your expertise, but I'm still struggling to understand how rolling stock is the key factor preventing us from increasing peak service, when just a few months ago we were running far more service than today. As far as I'm aware, we have not sold off a bunch of cab cars and locomotives.

Is it though?

Ridership has been coming back quite strongly in the off-peak hours when there is no express service. And the off-peak ridership was very, very robust prior to COVID.

Pre-COVID there also wasn't any off-peak express service so of course operating all-local service now will restore a high proportion of that ridership. Because long-distance trips were already underrepresented in the "base case" ridership. In the case of Lakeshore West, note the popularity of Route 16, whose sole purpose is to bypass the slow local train service. Also note that the current weekend service is exactly the same as pre-pandemic, except that one hourly train now extends to West Harbour, and the schedule is a couple minutes faster (due to lower ridership during the pandemic).

During peak periods where former express services have now been eliminated, ridership has not recovered as well. There is a much bigger difference in attractiveness between the current service offerings and the pre-COVID offerings, particularly for long-distance trips. Whereas off-peak services are (nominally) faster than pre-COVID, peak services are slower due to the loss of express service.

Strongly disagree.

The higher the frequencies we make the operation, the more likely that people will view the service like a subway, where one simply just shows up at a station - they don't need to think about a schedule. The less time people spend waiting for the service, the more likely they are to use the service.

The time spent in transit isn't as important because at that point they feel that they are already in motion, and so it isn't felt as "time wasted".

The relative importance of frequency versus travel time is highly dependent on the trip distance and particular station. If you're starting from Clarkson, then clearly 4tph local will be better for you than 3tph local. But if you're at Oakville or Port Credit, there would be 4 tph either way, it's just that you have a 1/4 chance of getting an express train.

Regional bus connections such as routes 12, 15 and 18 operate hourly and are timed to meet a particular train, so if there were an hourly express service, all of those connecting passengers would benefit directly.

15 minute headways are not short enough that it is convenient to randomly show up at the station. Doing so would result in an average wait of 7.5 minutes and a maximum wait of 15 minutes. People checking the schedule before heading to the station will commonly aim around 5 minutes before departure, so the threshold for "subway-like" behaviour nominally kicks in around 10 minute headways. What going from 30-minute headways to 15-minute headways does is increase the flexibility of people's scheduling. For example, if they have an appointment at a specific time, they could avoid getting there 15 minutes earlier than necessary. But if their exact arrival moment doesn't particularly matter (e.g. job with somewhat flexible start time, leisure trips, etc), then increasing the frequency has relatively little impact on their experience. Faster service, however, always benefits them regardless of the flexibility of their schedule.

 

[reaperexpress]

^ I hope that Union Station to Oshawa express train in the AM comes back. I wanted to ride it just for fun but didn't get the chance pre-covid.

I don’t think this is coming back for years due to construction.

They'll be no regualar Lakeshore east express trains for at least 2 years, though more likely 3+ based on how much GO projects usually get delayed

GO suspends express Lakeshore East train service during three-year construction period

Additional trains making all stops between Oshawa and Union Station added

www.durhamregion.com

Despite what Metrolinx has said, it is still technically possible to run express trains on Lakeshore East despite the track closures related to Ontario Line construction.

Construction has narrowed the line between Union and Danforth to 2 tracks, but there are still 3 tracks in service from just west of Danforth to just east of Guildwood. That's a 12.8 km segment in which local trains make 4 more stops than express trains, which is enough for express trains to overtake the local train in front.

Existing Lakeshore East timetable, with hypothetical express trains added. Some of the existing local trains would need to be cut back to Pickering or Whitby due to turnback capacity limitations at Oshawa.

In general that third track is used by VIA to overtake GO trains, but the only VIA train currently scheduled during the AM peak hour is VIA 52/62, which departs Union eastbound at 08:32.

Such a service pattern would be much less robust than the current all-local service pattern due to the short headways between local and express trains. But it is technically possible.

 

[smallspy]

I don't doubt your expertise, but I'm still struggling to understand how rolling stock is the key factor preventing us from increasing peak service, when just a few months ago we were running far more service than today. As far as I'm aware, we have not sold off a bunch of cab cars and locomotives.

View attachment 405468

So, I had a discussion with a number of my buddies at Metrolinx last night, and I need to walk back my earlier contention.

Turns out that there are 49 trainsets in service each day right now. So yes, there is easily enough equipment.

Pre-COVID, there were 71 trainsets in service each day, including the 6 6-car trainsets. There would be no way to increase that number.

The issue stems from this - there are 91 locos in the fleet. They are the limiting number when it comes to how many trains can be run on any given day. There needs to be a higher spares ratio than in the transit world - 25% is seen as minimal - due to the various regulatory checks that are required by Transport Canada, such as the 92 day inspection. Coaches and cab cars also have their own regulatory inspection cycle, but they are not as stringent as that for the locos and so they can run a lower spares ratio.

Pre-COVID there also wasn't any off-peak express service so of course operating all-local service now will restore a high proportion of that ridership. Because long-distance trips were already underrepresented in the "base case" ridership. In the case of Lakeshore West, note the popularity of Route 16, whose sole purpose is to bypass the slow local train service. Also note that the current weekend service is exactly the same as pre-pandemic, except that one hourly train now extends to West Harbour, and the schedule is a couple minutes faster (due to lower ridership during the pandemic).

Specifically speaking of route 16/QEW Express, part of it stems as a holdover from the early days when GO was handed the service from Grey Coach. GO has been trying for many years to get rid of it, despite it's popularity.

During peak periods where former express services have now been eliminated, ridership has not recovered as well. There is a much bigger difference in attractiveness between the current service offerings and the pre-COVID offerings, particularly for long-distance trips. Whereas off-peak services are (nominally) faster than pre-COVID, peak services are slower due to the loss of express service.

Cause and effect? Ridership hasn't recovered as well because a lot of the jobs that are working downtown in the 9-to-5 office industry haven't returned to "normal" yet. If you look at the stats, the rate of work-from-home for those kinds of white-collar jobs is far higher than in most. Express services haven't come back to the same levels because of that, not the other way around.

Conversely, off-peak services - for which have not really had any express service options - have returned to almost "normal" ridership levels, according to some of the preliminary internal numbers at GO.

The relative importance of frequency versus travel time is highly dependent on the trip distance and particular station. If you're starting from Clarkson, then clearly 4tph local will be better for you than 3tph local. But if you're at Oakville or Port Credit, there would be 4 tph either way, it's just that you have a 1/4 chance of getting an express train.

There is a bit correlation, yes.....but it's not nearly as cut-and-dried as you think it is.

The TTC has used a weighting scale to determine the various effects on ridership caused by things like waiting at a stop, transfers, etc. And it's not a perfect science by any means - they've had to update it a couple of times over the years. But it does seem to do a reasonably accurate job of quantifying what people feel about those things. An old version of that scale can be seen on the last page of this report: https://ttc-cdn.azureedge.net/-/med...ards.pdf?rev=be660330001244f1ae3fd427796a29d4

15 minute headways are not short enough that it is convenient to randomly show up at the station. Doing so would result in an average wait of 7.5 minutes and a maximum wait of 15 minutes. People checking the schedule before heading to the station will commonly aim around 5 minutes before departure, so the threshold for "subway-like" behaviour nominally kicks in around 10 minute headways. What going from 30-minute headways to 15-minute headways does is increase the flexibility of people's scheduling. For example, if they have an appointment at a specific time, they could avoid getting there 15 minutes earlier than necessary. But if their exact arrival moment doesn't particularly matter (e.g. job with somewhat flexible start time, leisure trips, etc), then increasing the frequency has relatively little impact on their experience. Faster service, however, always benefits them regardless of the flexibility of their schedule.

I know the theory behind it. But the reality is that people were just walking up to stations that had the 15 minute service pre-COVID without much worrying about the schedule. Despite the concept of the threshold of 10 minute headways, a doubling of service/halving of headways to 15 minutes - and maybe coupled with their advertising campaigns - resulted in riders exhibiting that same behavior.

Dan

 

[Richard White]

Was just looking at a GO train schedule for Niagara Trains this weekend. I did not realize how bad the service was until I just looked at it.

Yeesh. I cannot believe they got rid of the late trains. Great way to strand people in the falls.

 

[reaperexpress]

Was just looking at a GO train schedule for Niagara Trains this weekend. I did not realize how bad the service was until I just looked at it.

Yeesh. I cannot believe they got rid of the late trains. Great way to strand people in the falls.

They are only stranded if they refuse to take a coach bus. Route 12 runs every hour to Burlington Station, and I'm guessing they also run unscheduled 12B express buses during busy periods.

That said, the service certainly is very unattractive on paper. If they want to just use trains to handle the ridership surges during the busiest periods (e.g. 08:51 leaving Toronto) that's fine, but then they actually need to handle that surge (i.e. move the 12:51 train earlier to 09:51), and they need to consistently run express buses throughout the rest of the day and show them in the timetable.

Currently the only express bus shown in the timetable is the Route 12E express from Niagara Falls to Union, departing at 23:20 and taking 2h05 (same as the train).

 

[WB62]

So, I had a discussion with a number of my buddies at Metrolinx last night, and I need to walk back my earlier contention.

Turns out that there are 49 trainsets in service each day right now. So yes, there is easily enough equipment.

Pre-COVID, there were 71 trainsets in service each day, including the 6 6-car trainsets. There would be no way to increase that number.

The issue stems from this - there are 91 locos in the fleet. They are the limiting number when it comes to how many trains can be run on any given day. There needs to be a higher spares ratio than in the transit world - 25% is seen as minimal - due to the various regulatory checks that are required by Transport Canada, such as the 92 day inspection. Coaches and cab cars also have their own regulatory inspection cycle, but they are not as stringent as that for the locos and so they can run a lower spares ratio.



Specifically speaking of route 16/QEW Express, part of it stems as a holdover from the early days when GO was handed the service from Grey Coach. GO has been trying for many years to get rid of it, despite it's popularity.



Cause and effect? Ridership hasn't recovered as well because a lot of the jobs that are working downtown in the 9-to-5 office industry haven't returned to "normal" yet. If you look at the stats, the rate of work-from-home for those kinds of white-collar jobs is far higher than in most. Express services haven't come back to the same levels because of that, not the other way around.

Conversely, off-peak services - for which have not really had any express service options - have returned to almost "normal" ridership levels, according to some of the preliminary internal numbers at GO.



There is a bit correlation, yes.....but it's not nearly as cut-and-dried as you think it is.

The TTC has used a weighting scale to determine the various effects on ridership caused by things like waiting at a stop, transfers, etc. And it's not a perfect science by any means - they've had to update it a couple of times over the years. But it does seem to do a reasonably accurate job of quantifying what people feel about those things. An old version of that scale can be seen on the last page of this report: https://ttc-cdn.azureedge.net/-/med...ards.pdf?rev=be660330001244f1ae3fd427796a29d4



I know the theory behind it. But the reality is that people were just walking up to stations that had the 15 minute service pre-COVID without much worrying about the schedule. Despite the concept of the threshold of 10 minute headways, a doubling of service/halving of headways to 15 minutes - and maybe coupled with their advertising campaigns - resulted in riders exhibiting that same behavior.

Dan

There may be 49 in service each day, but right now 73 consists are put together.

46 are 10 car trains
24 are 6 car trains
2 are 12 car trains
1 is a 4 car train.
632 cars are being used right now.

 

[beatle04]

There may be 49 in service each day, but right now 73 consists are put together.

46 are 10 car trains
24 are 6 car trains
2 are 12 car trains
1 is a 4 car train.
632 cars are being used right now.

Where's the 4 car train being used?

 

[reaperexpress]

Where's the 4 car train being used?

On the Richmond Hill line.

 

[WB62]

Where's the 4 car train being used?

Probably nowhere, it’s currently in Whitby Rail Yard.

 

[WB62]

On the Richmond Hill line.

They were all replaced with 10 car sets back in April.

 

[ShonTron]

Where's the 4 car train being used?

I don’t know if it’s still the case, but I was on a 4-car train on the Richmond Hill line last year.

 

[smallspy]

Was just looking at a GO train schedule for Niagara Trains this weekend. I did not realize how bad the service was until I just looked at it.

Yeesh. I cannot believe they got rid of the late trains. Great way to strand people in the falls.

Apparently those trains were averaging 12 people per trip last year.

They were busier pre-COVID, but those were also the most lightly-used of the trips.

Dan

 

[smallspy]

There may be 49 in service each day, but right now 73 consists are put together.

46 are 10 car trains
24 are 6 car trains
2 are 12 car trains
1 is a 4 car train.
632 cars are being used right now.

If you're getting the same document that I'm getting, you need to re-read it slightly.

Any trainset indicated with a 900-series number doesn't have a loco and is marshalled together for the sake of that document.

Dan

 

[Richard White]

Apparently those trains were averaging 12 people per trip last year.

They were busier pre-COVID, but those were also the most lightly-used of the trips.

Dan

It makes sense but the fact that the 19:15 trains last summer were standing room only says something.

You would think GO would schedule a train a hour or so later to pick up the slack but then again...

Even my father commented about how 19:15 was early to be leavint Niagara Falls in the evening.

 

[Richard White]

Regarding the Plexiglass dividers...