GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

[Bureaucromancer]

If the Fergus Spur is the "the only realistic chance", maybe it's time to dismiss the idea of passenger rail to Cambridge. The proposed routing to Pinebush has very poor connectivity, and as noted by others, busses would provide a vastly better service at a much lower cost.

The reality is that some places will never have passenger trains, even in Southern Ontario. Cambridge is just plain in the wrong place to make it a worthwhile addition to the GO rail network, as it lacks the size and ridership potential to justify the cost for its own branch.

Metrolinx needs to learn to tell smaller communities like Brantford and Cambridge agitating for rail "no". Busses will always be sufficient for them.

I hope the update to council in the Spring on this project will basically be to shelve it permanently and move on to something that will address the region's transport needs. Wasting resources on such a pie in the sky helps nobody.

I really don't even know where to begin on this, but suffice to say it grotesquely misses the local context of Fergus.

Pinebush really is quite well positioned for where Cambridge's growth actually is, and integrates well enough with Ion that my actual position is that all efforts should be made to get authorization to operate down Hespeler as a Tram Train. In urbanist terms Fergus also brings rail directly to Hespeler and locks in a higher order transit service on Hwy 24 which is all but certain to urbanize in my view (frankly I'd guess sooner than later; at most the line might be held until Cambridge's developable land around Fountain street is largely built out).

Even taking the Stage 2 study at face value, ridership modeling was on the order of 600,000 low end to 1.8 million high end. These aren't spectacular numbers, but are very far from bad for an American system. A lot more money than it would take to get a good DMU service on Fergus has been spent on the likes of eBART, TexRail and SMART. These aren't GO numbers, but Dillion & Hatch were clearly more attracted to the DMU option than through running bi-levels, and my inclination is that while some Metrolinx support would be nice this should first and foremost be a Region of Waterloo project.

I would take the GO trains up to Cambridge & Brantford but no further than that. But then people in Woodstock and Stratford are going to want GO trains. Where does Metrolinx draw the line? Where does VIA rail step in? Every city can argue they're a "rail city". GO trains are meant to be reginal not intercity. I'm sure there's people on this forum that would argue Peterborough should be served by GO trains.
I also think Metrolinx should really focus on improving what we currently have, versus constantly extending the lines. I would rather have seen more funding going towards improving Lakeshore East rather then spend that money on extending the line to Bowmanville.

I'd be inclined not to bother with Brantford given what an awkward branch of Lakeshore it would create. If there is a place to make a showy demonstration that VIA can be made to work, this is it.
Stratford is also a bit of a special case imo; not because GO Trains to London are the ideal service, but in organizational terms putting the entire corridor under Metrolinx makes an awful lot of sense. Clearly the Kitchener - Stratford - London corridor needs more service, and service timed for things other than Toronto bound passengers. Neither VIA nor Metrolinx seem interested, though for rather different reasons. If we can work with VIA great, but if not I don't think a GO run intercity optimized service to London via Kitchener is the worst thing either... Nor for that matter would be Ontario directly operating some intercity service on a brand other than ONR or GO.

 

[Bojaxs]

I'd be inclined not to bother with Brantford given what an awkward branch of Lakeshore it would create. If there is a place to make a showy demonstration that VIA can be made to work, this is it.
Stratford is also a bit of a special case imo; not because GO Trains to London are the ideal service, but in organizational terms putting the entire corridor under Metrolinx makes an awful lot of sense. Clearly the Kitchener - Stratford - London corridor needs more service, and service timed for things other than Toronto bound passengers. Neither VIA nor Metrolinx seem interested, though for rather different reasons. If we can work with VIA great, but if not I don't think a GO run intercity optimized service to London via Kitchener is the worst thing either... Nor for that matter would be Ontario directly operating some intercity service on a brand other than ONR or GO.

I think the reason why so many people push for GO trains is because GO is just about the only rail operator around these parts who seems to take expansion seriously. VIA has 4 trains departing daily from Woodstock and 1 from Stratford - I think it's rather generous to call that a service.

I don't know the politics of the lines serving these towns, but if VIA ran more often, perhaps the calls for GO expansion to there wouldn't exist.

GO Transit offering Intercity rail service? There's something to consider. I think VIA rail does have a desire to expand and improve frequency, but their often hamstrung by so many other factors. Like the state of their equipment/ rolling stock and their extremely high labour costs. VIA's high labour costs come from the fact that most of their trains offer full service. Is it profitable for VIA to run more frequent trains in & out of London and pay higher wages to staff members who simply hand out drinks and snacks? Maybe VIA should offer trains that provide intercity service that don't offer "full service". Something similar to GO trains with only two conductors and one "customer care" staff member for the entire train.

 

[Bureaucromancer]

GO Transit offering Intercity rail service? There's something to consider. I think VIA rail does have a desire to expand and improve frequency, but their often hamstrung by so many other factors. Like the state of their equipment/ rolling stock and their extremely high labour costs. VIA's high labour costs come from the fact that most of their trains offer full service. Is it profitable for VIA to run more frequent trains in & out of London and pay higher wages to staff members who simply hand out drinks and snacks? Maybe VIA should offer trains that provide intercity service that don't offer "full service". Something similar to GO trains with only two conductors and one "customer care" staff member for the entire train.

My thinking is that yes, that is absolutely something VIA should do, but given all the factors in play I have real doubts that they can, or would. What tempts me at the moment is tacking a few more Charger sets on to the ONR order with the intent of operating exactly that type of stripped down but definitely intercity service under Metrolinx or ONR authority with some kind branding other than GO (Borrow the UPX design language maybe? OnXpress?); I'd skip any prospect of in seat service, but suggest they at least look at the cost/benefit on a cafe car option.

The full range of possibilities are pretty obvious, but I'd suggest that an initial rollout would be supplemental to VIA rather than full replacement. with Niagara Falls (weekday)/Hamilton super express, London via Brantford (more or less clockface) and North Main (I'm tempted to say clockface, but more realistically would suggest a London oriented schedule) are the best candidates for a pilot program. This level of service also seems perfect for Sarnia trains, be they through run or terminating in London.... Eventually taking over the Windsor leg is tempting as well, but the desire to get the trains through to Michigan Central is strong enough in my mind, and the short term demand low enough, that I don't hate the idea of services west of London being a lot less frequent and staying with VIA (so long as there is some level of integrated scheduling).

 

[Sunnyside]

I would take the GO trains up to Cambridge & Brantford but no further than that. But then people in Woodstock and Stratford are going to want GO trains. Where does Metrolinx draw the line? Where does VIA rail step in? Every city can argue they're a "rail city". GO trains are meant to be reginal not intercity. I'm sure there's people on this forum that would argue Peterborough should be served by GO trains.
I also think Metrolinx should really focus on improving what we currently have, versus constantly extending the lines. I would rather have seen more funding going towards improving Lakeshore East rather then spend that money on extending the line to Bowmanville.

I would agree that that Mx should focus on improving service to where they already serve/own track. But we must wonder if we’re going about rail operations right- I think buses are a piece of clear tape on a policy watermelon with 100 elastic bands on it.

First, what I meant by “rail city” is essentially a place that was historically a freight rail destination (customers, other RRs, etc); It made sense to converge passenger and freight trains there. Take away responsibility for passenger service, and that connectivity is to it’s expense. Nowadays, we work around CN and CP in a very literal way- mostly by avoidance. This paradoxically incentivizes serving places ‘out of the way’ of the core rail network, because it’s very difficult to serve the well-connected ones.

So, we have completely inverted where more trains can go. Now, RRs (including Metrolinx) are entitled to act this way, but it is a terrible policy failure that coordination is not smooth and seamless- and It is likely costing us money. The RRs might have deliberately trimmed down, but we compromised the utility of what’s left.

I won’t pretend this is all the root trouble for this case, but it is part of why passenger service is so hard to deliver; the system is not merely disadvantageous to passenger rail- it has completely distorted it.

 

[reaperexpress]

GO Transit offering Intercity rail service? There's something to consider. I think VIA rail does have a desire to expand and improve frequency, but their often hamstrung by so many other factors. Like the state of their equipment/ rolling stock and their extremely high labour costs. VIA's high labour costs come from the fact that most of their trains offer full service. Is it profitable for VIA to run more frequent trains in & out of London and pay higher wages to staff members who simply hand out drinks and snacks? Maybe VIA should offer trains that provide intercity service that don't offer "full service". Something similar to GO trains with only two conductors and one "customer care" staff member for the entire train.

I think there's a strong case for some kind of intermediate type of service between GO's regional trains and Via's intercity trains, largely due to the service and operating cost issues with Via's current operating model and the limited average speed and extent of GO's services. I wouldn't go so far as to call it Intercity rail, it's more like Regional-Express (between Regional and Intercity).

For such a service to be politically viable, I think it needs to be funded at the provincial level. Federal funding for VIA service expansion is perpetually put on the backburner due to the competition between the provinces, notably because VIA has negligible political relevance outside of Ontario and Québec. But GO Transit is a strong and growing political force within Ontario. Its service area already covers the majority of Ontario's population. With about 8.9 Million people, the GO service area has a larger population than Switzerland. If GO were to expand into longer-distance services it could conceivably reach as much as 62% of Ontario's population. With 9.7 Million people, the GO service area would be more populous than Hungary:

We're never going to get federal operating funding for relatively short-distance travel within Ontario like commuting by train from Stratford to Kitchener. Which is fair enough because the main competition is highways which are also funded at the provincial level.

So either we introduce more intercity-style services to GO, or we introduce more regional-style services to VIA that are funded by the Province of Ontario. In the latter case it would presumably be similar to Amtrak California, a State agency that is integrated with the national Amtrak ticketing system.

Personally I think that it makes sense to just expand the scope of GO Transit rather than to create a new 'VIA Rail Ontario' agency. It is more useful to integrate the Regional-Express trains with the existing GO regional trains which would also have similar operations, than to integrate with VIA which has reserved seats, variable princing and very low frequency.

 

[C_Johnson_1995]

I really don't even know where to begin on this, but suffice to say it grotesquely misses the local context of Fergus.

Pinebush really is quite well positioned for where Cambridge's growth actually is, and integrates well enough with Ion that my actual position is that all efforts should be made to get authorization to operate down Hespeler as a Tram Train. In urbanist terms Fergus also brings rail directly to Hespeler and locks in a higher order transit service on Hwy 24 which is all but certain to urbanize in my view (frankly I'd guess sooner than later; at most the line might be held until Cambridge's developable land around Fountain street is largely built out).

Even taking the Stage 2 study at face value, ridership modeling was on the order of 600,000 low end to 1.8 million high end. These aren't spectacular numbers, but are very far from bad for an American system. A lot more money than it would take to get a good DMU service on Fergus has been spent on the likes of eBART, TexRail and SMART. These aren't GO numbers, but Dillion & Hatch were clearly more attracted to the DMU option than through running bi-levels, and my inclination is that while some Metrolinx support would be nice this should first and foremost be a Region of Waterloo project.

Again, I don't really see what this does that a dedicated bus lane running from Hespeler to Guelph couldn't do.

I still feel like it is a bad decision relying on the ION so heavily to draw population to the service. The ION is a slow, glorified streetcar and the fact that Pinebush is so far out from where people actually live in Cambridge (in spite of future growth potential) will make a connection to the train using ION completely non competitive with driving or a one seat bus ride. When you considered where the population in Cambridge actually is, and where ION connectivity is still retained, Delta Station is a much better option due to its proximity to Preston and Galt if this poor value for money project is actually carried out.

Though, this all assumes ION stage 2 is carried out in the face of escalating costs.

 

[chrisw]

But the January schedules show no time differences.

I am not sure from where else they are getting 10 min off.

According the GO Transit schedule, beginning with the 6 a.m. train out of the Milton GO station, trips that were taking 74 minutes will be down to 64 minutes.

Trip from Milton GO to Toronto will be quicker in new year | INhalton

Beginning Jan. 6, Milton commuters who take the GO Train to Toronto will find the ride a little bit quicker. Metrolinx, the company the runs GO services, announced that the completion of some recent maintenance work will enable trains to run at regular speeds and shave 10 minutes off many trips...

www.inhalton.com

So, the 10 min delay is not reflected in the PDF tables. The current PDF tables show the trip taking 64 minutes. But, the 74 minutes trip time is reflected in the timetable (non-pdf)

Bus & Train Schedules

Find all GO Train and GO Bus schedule information here.

www.gotransit.com

Some Reddit threads from the past couple months.

your timing is bad.
a couple of weeks ago, there was a construction work in Union (electrification or something like that) which delay our arrival by 10 mins.
now there's train work by CP in other part of the track so the train has to run slower (about 10 mins more).
they've revised the schedule to reflect the 10 mins delay now.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gotransit/comments/17m2v4w

https://www.reddit.com/r/Milton/comments/1807xut

 

[Bojaxs]

Trip from Milton GO to Toronto will be quicker in new year | INhalton

Beginning Jan. 6, Milton commuters who take the GO Train to Toronto will find the ride a little bit quicker. Metrolinx, the company the runs GO services, announced that the completion of some recent maintenance work will enable trains to run at regular speeds and shave 10 minutes off many trips...

www.inhalton.com

So, the 10 min delay is not reflected in the PDF tables. The current PDF tables show the trip taking 64 minutes. But, the 74 minutes trip time is reflected in the timetable (non-pdf)

Bus & Train Schedules

Find all GO Train and GO Bus schedule information here.

www.gotransit.com

View attachment 530204
Some Reddit threads from the past couple months.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gotransit/comments/17m2v4w

https://www.reddit.com/r/Milton/comments/1807xut

What sort of maintenance work was taking place that was causing the trains to slow down?

 

[allengeorge]

Interesting: only Lakeshore East and West were mentioned as electrification candidates.

 

[Dan416]

Trip from Milton GO to Toronto will be quicker in new year | INhalton

Beginning Jan. 6, Milton commuters who take the GO Train to Toronto will find the ride a little bit quicker. Metrolinx, the company the runs GO services, announced that the completion of some recent maintenance work will enable trains to run at regular speeds and shave 10 minutes off many trips...

www.inhalton.com

So, the 10 min delay is not reflected in the PDF tables. The current PDF tables show the trip taking 64 minutes. But, the 74 minutes trip time is reflected in the timetable (non-pdf)

Bus & Train Schedules

Find all GO Train and GO Bus schedule information here.

www.gotransit.com

View attachment 530204
Some Reddit threads from the past couple months.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gotransit/comments/17m2v4w

https://www.reddit.com/r/Milton/comments/1807xut

There were certainly delays these past couple months.

I just checked the December schedule again, and they’re magically showing the trip as taking 49 minutes now (versus 39 minutes) from Erindale, which it wasn’t, or rarely was. We’re not actually getting improved service, just removing the buffer time that I had never even seen added in.

 

[generalcanada]

Interesting: only Lakeshore East and West were mentioned as electrification candidates.

not specifically "candidates" per se. but prioritized lines.
Barrie, Kitchener and Stouville lines are being electrified to be clear, but, It basically confirms what UT'ers have been talking about for years now. Lakeshore East and West are the easiest to get electrification going for. Theyre going to be running electrified service before the other lines

 

[allengeorge]

not specifically "candidates" per se. but prioritized lines

Ah - you’re exactly right: they did say that they were prioritized.

 

[chrisw]

Some massive crowding at Union Station for New Years. Pictures from Twitter.

Source 1, Source 2, Source 3.

 

[reaperexpress]

This is similar to my experience during New Years pre-pandemic. I figured that the reason they added so many more NYE trains this year was to prevent this from reoccuring. I guess the additional trains weren't enough, or they weren't timed to line up with the actual peak demand.

 

[WB62]

These people aren’t even heading to GO though, everyone in those photos is heading to the TTC subway

This is similar to my experience during New Years pre-pandemic. I figured that the reason they added so many more NYE trains this year was to prevent this from reoccuring. I guess the additional trains weren't enough, or they weren't timed to line up with the actual peak demand.