GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

[nfitz]

I'd guess someone came to their senses, and decided that midnight on New Year's Eve was just about the worst possible time to do a transition. Though perhaps more likely that they simply weren't ready.

Hopefully next time they do it at 4 AM or something.

 

[Bojaxs]

You knew something had to be going awry. It's been months since any type of press release or update on the shift in management to Onxpress.

 

[WB62]

I'd guess someone came to their senses, and decided that midnight on New Year's Eve was just about the worst possible time to do a transition. Though perhaps more likely that they simply weren't ready.

Hopefully next time they do it at 4 AM or something.

I’m pretty sure it was said above that the actual transition was happening at 5am on the 1st, wasn’t it? Someone here will know and can correct me if I’m wrong.

 

[christiesplits]

Love this alley street art wayfinding. 5 stars.

 

[AHK]

As of today, OnXpress and CAD are no longer taking over operations and maintenance of GO from Alstom on January 1st, 2025.

My take - the announcement of Phil Verster's resignation is the preliminary step to the public announcement of OnXpress and CAD no longer taking over from Alstom on January 1. The second announcement, to follow reasonably soon (how could something like this be kept quiet for long) would be phrased in terms of, when announcing the (hopefully) delay, in the takeover, it would be '...due to issues which arose under the tenure of the former CEO of Metrolinx.

 

[smallspy]

My take - the announcement of Phil Verster's resignation is the preliminary step to the public announcement of OnXpress and CAD no longer taking over from Alstom on January 1. The second announcement, to follow reasonably soon (how could something like this be kept quiet for long) would be phrased in terms of, when announcing the (hopefully) delay, in the takeover, it would be '...due to issues which arose under the tenure of the former CEO of Metrolinx.

Before Alstom sent out the email to their employees telling them about the delay in the takeover one was sent to all Metrolinx staff telling them that the delay was 9 months. OnXpress will take over September 1st, 2025.

This has long been expected. What is surprising is that it took them so long to officially notify staff.

Dan

 

[generalcanada]

Before Alstom sent out the email to their employees telling them about the delay in the takeover one was sent to all Metrolinx staff telling them that the delay was 9 months. OnXpress will take over September 1st, 2025.

This has long been expected. What is surprising is that it took them so long to officially notify staff.

Dan

Suprising news hasnt picked it up yet.

 

[northyorker1]

Suprising news hasnt picked it up yet.

Well..they haven't picked up the SSE TBM issue for about a year, so they're either selective in their pickings or they're simply incompetent.

 

[Northern Light]

Suprising news hasnt picked it up yet.

Well..........it should be surprising.......

But I fed the media a couple of juicy ones that they just sat on.........

 

[bearcat]

Well..they haven't picked up the SSE TBM issue for about a year, so they're either selective in their pickings or they're simply incompetent.

BlogTO of all places published something about it today.

Yet another Toronto transit project is now facing construction delays

A booming transit expansion is currently underway in the Toronto area, with a handful of massive projects forging ahead, albeit at quite disparate pa…

www.blogto.com

 

[Sauga89]

Suprising news hasnt picked it up yet.

This is the "news desert" effect in action. I've studied the economics of the advertising business a little. Essentially, the media used to make their money primarily from advertising revenue, not from subscriptions. But nowadays, many businesses prefer to use targeted online ads using data they get from Google and Facebook to directly target their most likely customers. Google and Facebook leverage their data oligopoly to act as a middle men, raising the ad costs for businesses while lowering the price received by news sites. The revenues of media organizations have therefore shrunk dramatically, and many have laid off staff and added paywalls.

The result is fewer dedicated transportation reporters that would pick up on this kind of thing, less accountability and scrutiny, and ultimately worse transit.

You'll notice if you look that most of the coverage of Verster's resignation came from Queen's Park reporters, rather than being tagged "transportation."

Meanwhile, if I remember correctly, Google makes something like $80 in revenue for every dollar it spends on expenses in its advertising business.

 

[chrisw]

Before Alstom sent out the email to their employees telling them about the delay in the takeover one was sent to all Metrolinx staff telling them that the delay was 9 months. OnXpress will take over September 1st, 2025.

This has long been expected. What is surprising is that it took them so long to officially notify staff.

Dan

Well, hopefully more staff can get trained up.

 

[nfitz]

Before Alstom sent out the email to their employees telling them about the delay in the takeover one was sent to all Metrolinx staff telling them that the delay was 9 months. OnXpress will take over September 1st, 2025.

Good grief - but what happens in the meantime? I'd think they have to be hiring a fair amount of staff for the next 9 months of operation - just to account for attrition.

I thought we'd heard that training had stopped?

 

[smallspy]

Suprising news hasnt picked it up yet.

It's not surprising, really.

While OnXpress and the upcoming improvement of services on GO is a big deal to us here, it simply is not to the general populace.

People hear in generalities about the nice things that Metrolinx is doing, and that they may have another train or two that they can take to get to work on time. but they don't know about or understand about the nitty-gritty details that we thrive on. They don't know who the different players are (beyond Metrolinx/GO, of course), and don't realize that there were hard timelines for some of these things - only that improvements were "coming". And a lot of that is by design.

Dan

 

[crs1026]

It's not surprising, really.

While OnXpress and the upcoming improvement of services on GO is a big deal to us here, it simply is not to the general populace.

All the same, the media is hungry enough for bad news to deliver, and I do think there are headline worthy stories out there that the media doesn't realise they have. Somehow they have bought into playing soft with ML.

For that matter, it seems that municipalities such as K-W and London are also playing nice, and certainly if they were more impatient the media would be quoting their mayors and councillors as such.

- Paul