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GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

Re: Niagara, it takes a little foresight, but it's forseeable.

When the forecast a week out says highs of 20+, and the leaves are starting to look good, a reasonable person responsible for service scheduling should be able to know that there will likely be some demand. And perhaps they have past data to rely on.

If you tell me it takes over 5 days to book an extra coach or two, fine. If not, I don't see an excuse.
 
Richard White said:
The Niagara services have always been prone to overcrowding.

@smallspy Dan, is there any operational reason you know of that these services always have issues? I am starting to wonder if people just don't like the work for some reason (runtime, etc).

As I said many times before, they need to stop subsidizing the cost to Niagara Falls with weekend passes, WEGO packages, etc. If people had to pay the true cost of this journey it would not be as packed.

When they first started this service in 2015 it was just over $20.00 each way for a total of $40.00 or so return. Back then the trains were not as packed because of the high cost.

Now you can get a $10 weekend pass to go to Niagara and back again. As a result the trains are overloaded to the point where it is a borderline safety hazard.

I get that this is primarily a tourism driven service but they need to match the prices of Megabus, Flixbus etc if they want to bring things like this under control.
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There really should be a seasonal inter-city Toronto-Niagara Falls service run by Ontario, similar to the Northlander. Would be aimed at seasonal tourism, higher priced, but more comfortable journey. Say from April-October. And a parallel GO Transit service for regular users.

We've got one of the natural wonders of the world in our backyard that is major global tourist attraction and we service it with mediocre transportation connections.
 
guavadelic said:
There really should be a seasonal inter-city Toronto-Niagara Falls service run by Ontario, similar to the Northlander. Would be aimed at seasonal tourism, higher priced, but more comfortable journey. Say from April-October. And a parallel GO Transit service for regular users.

We've got one of the natural wonders of the world in our backyard that is major global tourist attraction and we service it with mediocre transportation connections.
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Remember there is a capacity limitation (the Canal lift bridge) for which GO only has so many slots available. So they could probably do more, but only so much more once you count 2 Amtrak movements a day plus GO’s.
 
dowlingm said:
Remember there is a capacity limitation (the Canal lift bridge) for which GO only has so many slots available. So they could probably do more, but only so much more once you count 2 Amtrak movements a day plus GO’s.
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I think that you're conflating Metrolinx's agreement with the Canal Authority regarding their two "closed" slots (which represent the times for the weekday morning inbound and afternoon outbound rush hour trains) with there being an actual limitation on trains over the canal.

Metrolinx is allowed to run as many trains as they want, insofar as CN is willing to let them. CN has no limitations to the number of trains that they are allowed to run on that line.

The agreement with Metrolinx and the Canal Authority is solely in regards to ensuring that there are no ship crossings of the bridge at the times that coincide with those two rush hour trains. Beyond that, Metrolinx is bound by the same limitations as CN - ships have right-of-way.

Dan
 
Not sure if this is new news.

Screenshot_2024-10-21_102451.jpg
 
smallspy said:
I think that you're conflating Metrolinx's agreement with the Canal Authority regarding their two "closed" slots (which represent the times for the weekday morning inbound and afternoon outbound rush hour trains) with there being an actual limitation on trains over the canal.

Metrolinx is allowed to run as many trains as they want, insofar as CN is willing to let them. CN has no limitations to the number of trains that they are allowed to run on that line.

The agreement with Metrolinx and the Canal Authority is solely in regards to ensuring that there are no ship crossings of the bridge at the times that coincide with those two rush hour trains. Beyond that, Metrolinx is bound by the same limitations as CN - ships have right-of-way.

Dan
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Ah - thanks for the clarification Dan. I was under the impression that the closed slots reflected all current GO scheduled services.
 
Achemarci said:
We're now at November 2019 train service levels on the Milton line 5 years later... yay? Only 1 more train than 30+ years ago in October 1990-May 1991 during which there were 19 trains per day compared to 20 thirty years later. Wow what a benevolent government.
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The off-peak service on other lines is far above what was offered 30, 15, 10 years ago (maybe not 5 years ago).

Milton GO should be on the priority list for 2030s projects, but Metrolinx is short on project management capacity and competence as it is. Milton GO Expansion would be billions in any country, let alone this one, and there are other transit projects ongoing. As long as Milton remains a peak-in-peak-out service, there won't be significant expansion above current levels. While Doug's governance is questionable at best, return to pre-COVID commuter service is not even close to what causes me to roll my eyes.
 
DirectionNorth said:
The off-peak service on other lines is far above what was offered 30, 15, 10 years ago (maybe not 5 years ago).
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The Milton information seems to be new news, and it's good to see that they've finally reversed there Covid cuts on that line.

But they still haven't restored about 50% of their mid-day and reverse-peak service on the Lakeshore line. Hopefully once Alstom sorts out their staffing and training scheduling mess, we'll see that sometime in the New Year.
 
crs1026 said:
There's scheduling and there's ridership. I rode the Milton line last week and while the train was pretty full, I had no trouble getting a seat at Kipling.

I wonder how ridership compares to 2019?

- Paul
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Take this with a grain of salt as I’ve literally never ridden the Milton Line, but, ridership is likely in line with how peak demand has changed since the pandemic. That is to say, the Milton line’s overall ridership likely mirrors systemwide peak figures of 70-90% of prepandemic ridership. That’s still quite impressive, seeing as it is/was the second-most ridden line even as a peak-only service.

Concrete numbers would be nice, though, as this would highlight how much AD2W has become a necessity for good ridership post-pandemic across the network. But without data, the real question is…

WHERE is the TTS 2021?!
 
crs1026 said:
There's scheduling and there's ridership. I rode the Milton line last week and while the train was pretty full, I had no trouble getting a seat at Kipling.

I wonder how ridership compares to 2019?

- Paul
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Empirically one would expect Milton to lag behind Lakeshore W and Kitchener in ridership recovery even if service frequencies were equal. We know that generally peak period commuter ridership to downtown is much lower than in 2019 but off-peak ridership across the region is higher. The land use and transit connections around the Milton line are not well suited to off-peak or counter peak travel even if there were such train service, since there aren't many destinations along the line. It's effectively a shuttle from Mississauga to downtown Toronto.

In contrast the Kitchener and Lakeshore lines have substantial trip generators all the way along the line, like KW, Guelph and Hamilton, which fuel all-day two-way ridership.

So I don't think it's concerning that Milton ridership is still lower than 2019. It means that we don't need to run the trains very close together to handle the peak surge. Pre pandemic, AM peak service was every 11 minutes, but now we will have the same number of departures at 15-minute headways, producing a longer span of service.
 
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