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GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

reaperexpress said:
Okay then what do you propose to do with the 1500 passengers when they arrive in Niagara Falls? WeGo can't muster up 30 buses, so there is always a large crowd stranded at the station after the last of WeGo's 2-3 extra buses has departed.

Part of the justification for the weekend passes has been to get people to try out GO Transit in the hopes of creating new regular riders. But getting stranded at Niagara Falls station for an hour while you've already bought a GO+WeGo ticket is not an experience which will convince anyone to ride transit more regularly. If anything it may confirm their impressions of delays and overcrowding.

Whether it be limiting demand using pricing, or dispersing demand among multiple morning trains (e.g. 2 trains with 800 passengers each), something needs to change. Dumping a full 12-car train at once is simply too much for the Niagara's last-mile options to handle.
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Like I said before, make it a full fare service and watch how quickly demand drops. 80 dollars return for 2 adults is not cheap.

Having kids ride for free isn't helping matters any either. People end up bringing 3-4 kids, strollers, etc with them causing even more crowding.

A nice idea, albeit impractical would be to make an exception to the kids ride free policy for Niagara trains. The policy was intended to increase ridership but it is being taken advantage of heading to Niagara. Again, if you had to pay 20 dollars return for each child, that would ease some of the crowding.

I am all for increased tourism but if GO cannot increase service, they have to be realistic.

I wonder how much money they are losing with all the discounts and limited service.
 
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Willybru21 said:
Once again rode the Niagara train today, this will probably be my 6th round trip on it since it restarted, and only the very first train that reinstated the service after a 6 month hiatus was overloaded. The rest had plenty of space after the first 5 coaches.
These trains are not overloaded, especially if you walk the entire length of the train, like I have. The main issue is bunching near the cab car at Niagara VIA which is closest to the WEGO terminal, and Union Station which is where the York Concourse staircases are.
There’s no need to change the weekend passes, they just need better passenger dispersion.
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When I went in June it was crammed end to end. I boarded at the eastern end of the train. As we arrived at Niagara I walked to the cab end.

Further to my point in another post, the sheer amount of SUV strollers is problematic on the train. In every car there had to be at least 2 massive strollers.

GO considers bikes to be a hazard requiring special storage but what about these strollers? 1500 people plus all these strollers.. no wonder WEGO has a tough time keeping up.

When the service first originated, before WEGO had dedicated shuttles I used to walk to the falls. It was a 45 minute walk but so much easier.

I hope at the end of the year Metrolinx does a service review for the Niagara trains. They really need to take a hard look at how they operate them. They are losing alot of money and bungled operations.
 
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reaperexpress said:
Good thing full fare and insanely cheap are not the only two options.
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True. There can't be a discount of any kind if you truly want to bring the crowding under control however.

You can't encourage ridership by offering free rides to kids and discount fares to adults if you want to make things more manageable.

I've said many times before, when the service originated in 2013 there were no discounted fares and kids paid a fare. The service was lightly used and the crowds were manageable. Back then you couldn't take the family there without spending around $150 return on transportation.

I'm all for tourism but there is a need for sustainable tourism. Right now, Niagara is a disaster in the summer and I look to avoid it. The local infrastructure simply cannot handle the amount of people that come in the summer.

This isn't a Niagara problem generally speaking however. Many European cities are having issues keeping up with the number of tourists due to cheap flights in the EU. Places like Venice are now charging tourists to enter the city.
 
lenaitch said:
Which would make it even less financially realistic.
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The point in time for this decision is when (I’m sure it’s a “when”, not an “if”) the QEW is considered “full”, and a highway expansion is proposed. A new rail bridge, tunnel, whatever will look a lot cheaper in comparison to the cost of adding highway capacity and a better way frward.

Occupying the CN bridge may be OK for now, accepting its limitations, but I can’t imagine this area finding that limited service adequate as traffic and density grows. Putting all our eggs in CN’s basket is not the best way forward - dedicated GO tracks would be better n the future.

And having said that, I can easily buy the concept of a St Catherines hub, with trains terminating there or as suggested bending south to Wellandish, and a much-enhanced bus network linking everything from Fort Erie to Niagara on the Lake If we had 15-minute 2WAD that far, and really good bus links, we’d be serving the Niagara tourism and day trip markets well without creating the problem of 1500-person crowds taxing the transit system so badly.

- Paul
 
Undead said:
If we care about sustainable tourism, why on Earth would we price out people from the GO train and encourage them to drive their big, stupid SUVs to the falls??
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Entirely on-point.

If we can't make the trains work as well as we would like, in the near-term, then we should double, triple or quintuple buses making the run, and give them a dedicated lane on the QEW while we're at it.
 
Undead said:
If we care about sustainable tourism, why on Earth would we price out people from the GO train and encourage them to drive their big, stupid SUVs to the falls??
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THIS. If we don't make the cost of transit competitive with the marginal cost of driving, people are just going to drive. Even with the gas prices today, the marginal cost of driving will be less than the full GO Transit fare for 2 people. That's why the train was empty when it was $40 per person round trip.
 
Northern Light said:
Entirely on-point.

If we can't make the trains work as well as we would like, in the near-term, then we should double, triple or quintuple buses making the run, and give them a dedicated lane on the QEW while we're at it.
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Are WE GO bus operators and Niagara transit part of the same pool? Can't they borrow some busses from Niagara transit for GO shuttles? Or since Metrolinx funds everything just have 3 superLO go buses on standby for those GO meets and drop them off at the closest stop to the falls.
 
Bordercollie said:
Are WE GO bus operators and Niagara transit part of the same pool? Can't they borrow some busses from Niagara transit for GO shuttles? Or since Metrolinx funds everything just have 3 superLO go buses on standby for those GO meets and drop them off at the closest stop to the falls.
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I think it is a Viva/YRT situation
 
Niagara Region is in the process of amalgamating all its local transit properties into one system. That’s encouraging for the growth of a network to connect to a better GO service.. See here. PS and here.

PPS - According to the docs put before Niagara Regional Council here, WEGO is not part of the amalgamation.

- Paul
 
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crs1026 said:
The point in time for this decision is when (I’m sure it’s a “when”, not an “if”) the QEW is considered “full”, and a highway expansion is proposed. A new rail bridge, tunnel, whatever will look a lot cheaper in comparison to the cost of adding highway capacity and a better way frward.

Occupying the CN bridge may be OK for now, accepting its limitations, but I can’t imagine this area finding that limited service adequate as traffic and density grows. Putting all our eggs in CN’s basket is not the best way forward - dedicated GO tracks would be better n the future.

And having said that, I can easily buy the concept of a St Catherines hub, with trains terminating there or as suggested bending south to Wellandish, and a much-enhanced bus network linking everything from Fort Erie to Niagara on the Lake If we had 15-minute 2WAD that far, and really good bus links, we’d be serving the Niagara tourism and day trip markets well without creating the problem of 1500-person crowds taxing the transit system so badly.

- Paul
Click to expand...
No doubt. Given the clearances required and grades allowed, I would think that, if direct access to the river is desired, a tunnel would ultimately be cheaper and consume much less real estate.

Perhaps by then, GO/Metrolinx and its government will have formally figured out what it wants, and is mandated, to be. Is it to be a GGH/GTHA/etc. commuter transit service? VIA-Ontario? Via-Southern Ontario? Ontario Tourist Railway? Some of the above? All of the above. People looking for progress in reliable, regular and affordable ways to get to work every day must wonder about this foray into tourist rail.
 
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