GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

[gophojo]

WTF were they smoking with the 21 changes?! So someone who wants to travel from Milton to Meadowvale can... go all the way down to the lake and then back up???? Or are these bozos going to institute all day service to Milton on the 27???

What a shockingly terrible organization. Get these fucking people away from our transit projects.

What was a 30 minute max bus ride from Milton to Meadowvale GO (21B) is now at least an hour or more with 2 decently unreliable bus transfers compared to the 1 bus... And of course the stops before Meadowvale GO station, such as the ones on Derry up to Meadowvale Town Ctr/GO aren't directly passed/serviced without a transfer to local or GO (Milton 21->GO 21B). What bothers me most was the removal of the seamless connection from a 21B to a 27F, which gave Milton customers more off-peak freedom to head to major Toronto terminals without having to go through downtown and pay TTC fares. This of course is much more tedious to access now.

Not sure if this was a complete oversight by them, but extending most, if not all 27Fs into 27As on both weekdays/weekends would completely alleviate this issue, and ensure this corridor remans intact. Would even be more beneficial since the previous transfer from a 21B->27F, or a 27F->21B, would no longer be needed.

 

[T3G]

And what is the ratio of people who travel from Milton to Meadowvale, versus those from Milton that head to downtown?

There is one organization who has those numbers, and its Metrolinx. If they are making the change, it's not to get fewer people onto the buses, it's to get the maximum that they can.

Fair enough, but the redirecting of the Milton service to Oakville is just a quasi-revival of the old route 20 which was discontinued due to "low ridership" 4 years ago.

What's changed now that we've gone from axing the service, to having all service from the station in that form? According to Triplinx, those services are going to run every half an hour during weekday midday. For a service that ran only every hour at the best of times, and every 2 hours off-peak pre-2019, that seems like a staggering change of course.

I was against the discontinuation of the 20 when it happened, for the same reason I'm against discontinuing through service on Derry Road now. Not everyone who has the misfortune of living up here has a car, or more than one car. A bus that runs every hour is better than no bus at all.

 

[crs1026]

For the Stouffville corridor a lot of the track has been laid for years. They could have opened it in sections but they never did. The section from Kennedy to Steeles could have been opened a long time ago.

Not without the West Highland Creek bridge and the stations, it couldn't.

The work was oddly sequenced, since the track contract was placed first and is largely complete - but without the platforms being ready at Milliken and Agincourt, and the bridgework at West Highland Creek, all that new track and sound walls and grading have not led to any new capacity.....yet.

Something had to be finished first, I suppose... not good planning nor good cash flow to delay it all until the last critical path item gets done.

I'm sure there is a back story to why the creek bridge has taken this long, but with the station work plodding along perhaps it has always been moot. There was talk that the contractor wanted work windows for the bridge, but ML was not in agreement - it's likely proven to be a pay me now, pay me later proposition with ML having no choice at this point but to allow them. Let's hope that last bridge now gets done promptly, as the stations appear to be close to completion. Oh, and let's hope that the added service doesn't have to wait for track capacity west of Scarborough Jct is restored as the Ontario Line work gets done.

I especially agree with @Northern Light that regardless of the past, at this point there ought to be a detailed and transparent explanation of the timelines and milestones towards 30 minute or less service.

- Paul

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

Agreed - it's fantastic that they're finally adding this route, but the brutal travel times will be a challenge for generating ridership.

On the Kitchener end the bus is indeed slower than the 25, but it does take the fastest route from Waterloo to Guelph, and from Guelph to Highway 6. The route will be very valuable for Kitchener-Guelph trips and Guelph-Hamilton trips, even if it fails to attract many Kitchener-Hamilton trips.

The real issue is on the Hamilton end, where it tries to do too many things at once:

View attachment 464006
This is not three branches of a route, this is a single bus which does a solid half hour of deviations before going to Hamilton Centre.

Rather than serving 3 destinations poorly, we ought to serve one or two destinations well. Especially since there is already regular bus service from McMaster to Aldershot, McMaster to Hamilton Centre, and Aldershot to Hamilton Centre.

I would cut Aldershot off the route, saving 15 minutes per direction (half hour round trip) for people heading to McMaster of Hamilton Centre. People heading from Kitchener, Guelph or Aberfoyle to the GTA can just as easily take the buses via Highway 7 or Highway 401. The more valuable connection on this end is to the City of Hamilton itself, as well as GO Route 18K from Hamilton Centre to St Catharines and Route 15 from McMaster to Brantford.

The kitchener - Hamilton bus is great, but damn is it slow. Over 2 hours for Hamilton to Kitchener. If heading from Hamilton Centre you'd be better off taking Burlington Transit and catching the bus at Aldershot. Similarly it may be faster for some trips to transfer at Aberfoyle to the 25 if going to Waterloo..

edit: example:

6:50am departure from waterloo gets you to Hamilton Centre at 9:20. If you take the 7:10 Route 25 departure instead, you can connect to the same bus in Aberfoyle. Then get off at Aldershot at 8:43 and connect to the 8:51 train to West Harbour, arriving at 9:05. Comparatively, the 17 bus would arrive downtown at 9:20.

That would make the trip a total of 35 minutes faster than just sitting on the bus the whole time.

Just break it up into 5 branches. One serving each destination, and a 17X Express from Hamilton GO Centre to Kitchener GO and UWaterloo on Highway 8 And a 6th daily bus from Hamilton to Guelph.

 

[denfromoakvillemilton]

WTF were they smoking with the 21 changes?! So someone who wants to travel from Milton to Meadowvale can... go all the way down to the lake and then back up???? Or are these bozos going to institute all day service to Milton on the 27???

What a shockingly terrible organization. Get these fucking people away from our transit projects.

They're trying to avoid the gardiner work during the summer. We'll see if it works.

 

[anb]

They're trying to avoid the gardiner work during the summer. We'll see if it works.

If that was the case, they should’ve considered going to Bramalea as there’s way more capacity there. Now with weekend trains and more frequent 407 service its a whole lot easier to get directly to certain parts of Toronto from there. The Oakville detour isn’t all that bad, but they might as well should’ve just brought back the 20 if they really went out of their way to also do stops like Trafalgar/407 and Sheridan College instead of going straight to the station, and have the 21 go from Milton to Bramalea or even Kipling (remember its also a Milton line station too!). It just felt like they wanted to justify going this route so they pushed these stops in.

21B and 21C makes more sense as they’re more thought out but only for Mississauga riders. Now all these people who wanted to go from Sauga-Milton needs to either take Milton’s local 21 bus from a terribly timed transfer point at Lisgar or go to Oakville or Trafalgar/407 via another transfer to access yet another one to get there. There’s the option of getting the 27 to have all its trips go to Milton, but it only makes sense if they’re permanently keeping these 21 diversions until something like all day Milton train service gets here.

 

[Bordercollie]

What was a 30 minute max bus ride from Milton to Meadowvale GO (21B) is now at least an hour or more with 2 decently unreliable bus transfers compared to the 1 bus... And of course the stops before Meadowvale GO station, such as the ones on Derry up to Meadowvale Town Ctr/GO aren't directly passed/serviced without a transfer to local or GO (Milton 21->GO 21B). What bothers me most was the removal of the seamless connection from a 21B to a 27F, which gave Milton customers more off-peak freedom to head to major Toronto terminals without having to go through downtown and pay TTC fares. This of course is much more tedious to access now.

Not sure if this was a complete oversight by them, but extending most, if not all 27Fs into 27As on both weekdays/weekends would completely alleviate this issue, and ensure this corridor remans intact. Would even be more beneficial since the previous transfer from a 21B->27F, or a 27F->21B, would no longer be needed.

Is it not possible to get track rights from Union to Meadowvale from CP? I don't think they have that many trains, which would create conflict?

 

[gabe]

Agreed - it's fantastic that they're finally adding this route, but the brutal travel times will be a challenge for generating ridership.

On the Kitchener end the bus is indeed slower than the 25, but it does take the fastest route from Waterloo to Guelph, and from Guelph to Highway 6. The route will be very valuable for Kitchener-Guelph trips and Guelph-Hamilton trips, even if it fails to attract many Kitchener-Hamilton trips.

The real issue is on the Hamilton end, where it tries to do too many things at once:

View attachment 464006
This is not three branches of a route, this is a single bus which does a solid half hour of deviations before going to Hamilton Centre.

Rather than serving 3 destinations poorly, we ought to serve one or two destinations well. Especially since there is already regular bus service from McMaster to Aldershot, McMaster to Hamilton Centre, and Aldershot to Hamilton Centre.

I would cut Aldershot off the route, saving 15 minutes per direction (half hour round trip) for people heading to McMaster of Hamilton Centre. People heading from Kitchener, Guelph or Aberfoyle to the GTA can just as easily take the buses via Highway 7 or Highway 401. The more valuable connection on this end is to the City of Hamilton itself, as well as GO Route 18K from Hamilton Centre to St Catharines and Route 15 from McMaster to Brantford.

Hopefully in time KW and Guelph get their own direct bus routes to Hamilton. For now this still a huge improvement!

 

[Bordercollie]

Hopefully in time KW and Guelph get their own direct bus routes to Hamilton. For now this still a huge improvement!

But it's on the way

 

[TTCdinosaur]

The more I think about it, the more its like they were like "hey we're going to cut huge chunks of train service on Barrie and Stouffville, but here's a list of massive changes we'll make to other parts of the region that has nothing to do with the area that will severely affect you to compensate for this circumstance". Its still nice to see these changes be mostly positive, even if its mostly on the west end of the GTA that will see a bigger benefit to all this however. But then we have to be reminded that this is Metrolinx and with every win they have, there most always has to be a compromise.

Then they're not building an actual system - just borrowing Peter to pay Paul.

Buy a car is the message, again and again.

 

[reaperexpress]

Yes it's borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, but that's because Peter happens to have a bunch of spare cash at the moment. Given that they cancelled Stouffville line weekend train service in an effort to speed up track construction, then suddenly they have a bunch of crews who could run Kitchener line weekend trains instead.

The message isn't "buy a car", it's "we have finite resources, particularly when it comes to crewing".

 

[Northern Light]

Then they're not building an actual system - just borrowing Peter to pay Paul.

Buy a car is the message, again and again.

Just stop w/the endless trolling. You say complete and utter nonsense endlessly, repetitively, as if it were effective propaganda.

 

[reaperexpress]

They added a new shoulder-peak express train from Kitchener and corresponding local train from Bramalea, extending the peak service a half hour later.

But the missed opportunity here is that they didn't shift the departure from London to be less absurdly early in the morning. If London departure were shifted 30 minutes later to tack onto the new express train, it would depart London at 05:44, arriving in Kitchener at 08:08, and Guelph at 08:25, which are ideal times for a commuter service into KW and Guelph.

 

[SaugeenJunction]

Then they're not building an actual system - just borrowing Peter to pay Paul.

Buy a car is the message, again and again.

This was not a thought-out post lol.

 

[smallspy]

Fair enough, but the redirecting of the Milton service to Oakville is just a quasi-revival of the old route 20 which was discontinued due to "low ridership" 4 years ago.

What's changed now that we've gone from axing the service, to having all service from the station in that form? According to Triplinx, those services are going to run every half an hour during weekday midday. For a service that ran only every hour at the best of times, and every 2 hours off-peak pre-2019, that seems like a staggering change of course.

I was against the discontinuation of the 20 when it happened, for the same reason I'm against discontinuing through service on Derry Road now. Not everyone who has the misfortune of living up here has a car, or more than one car. A bus that runs every hour is better than no bus at all.

I'm not in disagreement with any of your points. (But keep in mind that the 20 was axed due to low ridership because of all of the other options that were available. These changes are those options.)

But it also ignores a very major factor, and that's that trip times - and operating costs - have increased greatly due to traffic.

If you live in Milton, what's the better option? Having a bus travel all the way, but have a variance in travel time of an hour or more, or to have to deal with a transfer but have a reasonably reliable (and most of the time, quick) trip?

Dan