GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

[ShonTron]

Coruscanti is dead on.

The reason why its called Milton is because that's the name of the corridor. All buses and trains go in that west by northwest direction, towards Milton. Some go farther, to Guelph and Waterloo. Georgetown - many, if not most buses in the corridor don't go to Georgetown. Most terminate somewhere in Brampton (if including the local buses to Yorkdale/York Mills). Some go to Bolton and Woodbridge. Others go to Orangeville. Some trains don't even reach Georgetown, but start or end at Bramalea or Mount Pleasant. Is anyone from Brampton getting its knickers in a knot because it is not called the "Brampton Corridor"? No.

In fact, it will be renamed the Kitchener Corridor even though only two trains will go that far (and more trips to/from Kitchener, albeit buses, will originate from the Milton corridor), which is a bigger deal than some silly argument about Mississauga-Milton nomenclature.

QuickTables do the job if you are only concerned about point-to-point trip times.

 

[Dan416]

I do have to add that one thing that has annoyed me about the Milton corridor schedules is that it shows the Milton corridor as "Milton - Mississauga - Toronto"....writing Meadowvale in there is redundant as Meadowvale is in Mississauga. Why single out Meadowvale like that? It's a minor irritation though, and I'm not sure how the other corridors are written, but I would think it should simply say Milton - Mississauga - Toronto, because those are the only cities covered.

http://www.gotransit.com/publicroot/en/PDF/Timetables/CurrentBoard/Table21.pdf

 

[doady]

I do have to add that one thing that has annoyed me about the Milton corridor schedules is that it shows the Milton corridor as "Milton - Mississauga - Toronto"....writing Meadowvale in there is redundant as Meadowvale is in Mississauga. Why single out Meadowvale like that? It's a minor irritation though, and I'm not sure how the other corridors are written, but I would think it should simply say Milton - Mississauga - Toronto, because those are the only cities covered.

http://www.gotransit.com/publicroot/en/PDF/Timetables/CurrentBoard/Table21.pdf

I think Meadowvale is singled out because the bus service split between trips serving Milton and Meadowvale, and trips serving the other parts of the line.

 

[FutureMayor]

RELAX! It's Called Customer Service

I'm not sure what Coruscanti Cognoscente and ShonTron are hyperventilating about.

Nobody is proposing that the "Milton" Line be renamed.

GO Transit is simply creating seperate dedicated timetables for select major stations along the Milton Line to make it easier for commuters to read and understand.

A great example is Square One, which is strickly a GO Bus terminal and NO GO Trains from the Milton Line stops there.

However, I don't think you can argue that Square One isn't a major transit hub on it's own with several major GO Bus Lines: Union, Oakville, Hamilton, York University, Guelph, Waterloo and Finch.

Instead of forcing customers to look through an ever expanding Milton timetable, it only makes sense to provide a simpler solution by providing a dedicated timetable for a station like Square One.

It's something called improving Customer Service.

Louroz

 

[TOareaFan]

I'm not sure what Coruscanti Cognoscente and ShonTron are hyperventilating about.

Nobody is proposing that the "Milton" Line be renamed.

GO Transit is simply creating seperate dedicated timetables for select major stations along the Milton Line to make it easier for commuters to read and understand.

A great example is Square One, which is strickly a GO Bus terminal and NO GO Trains from the Milton Line stops there.

However, I don't think you can argue that Square One isn't a major transit hub on it's own with several major GO Bus Lines: Union, Oakville, Hamilton, York University, Guelph, Waterloo and Finch.

Instead of forcing customers to look through an ever expanding Milton timetable, it only makes sense to provide a simpler solution by providing a dedicated timetable for a station like Square One.

It's something called improving Customer Service.

Louroz

Well....just because someone disagrees with you does not mean they are hyperventilating!

....as mentioned by others, GO already creates easy to read, pdf, quicktables for most (all?) major stations....maybe Square 1 just needs one of those? (oops, they already have two http://www.gotransit.com/publicroot/en/PDF/Quicktables/UNION/CurrentBoard/S1TM.pdf http://www.gotransit.com/publicroot/en/PDF/Quicktables/YORKU/CurrentBoard/S1TMYU.pdf)

 

[Mapleson]

Ahh, so they improved service since I left. Good for them. There are many bus routes in Toronto that run with a 15 minute or better frequencies.

A Metrolinx takeover would be in name only. 90% of the staff total staff will have been former TTC employees and will bring current TTC culture with them. That culture would be spread to all Metrolinx operations as former TTC staff redistribute through the system. I.e. Centralize all train operations into existing TTC control centres.

Politics will remain essentially the same. Operating subsidies, presumably paid directly by the province, will be 1) competing against health care and education funding, and 2) be directed toward vote buying likely distributed based on population of a region rather than ridership or road congestion level.

The actual cost to provide service would increase dramatically. Toronto's amalgamation has shown us that all transit workers would be awarded the best contract out of the group. Bargaining also becomes more interesting as a strike takes out everything across the region OR the entire thing is an essential service.


All of that to get an integrated fare system? We can implement fare zones or fare by distance without integrating operations under a single umbrella.

First, why would TTC culture so dominate GO culture? There would be a ton of infighting for the first while, but given time we could see integrated groups delivering services.

Transit subsidies have already been getting the squeeze from health and education. Putting the system into provincial hands means it actually has a place in the conversation, instead of the City begging for a pittance.

Actually funding transit based on population makes sense to me. If Barrie has 1/20 of the population of Toronto, it has the potential for 1/20th of the transit ridership, regardless of the current relative usage levels.

The issues around unionization are the same regardless of the controlling party. Toronto has a growing obligation for transit employee pension and benefits. Uploading this future cost will keep budget pressures down for the City, while giving Ontario the opertunity to get some economy of scale in rolling the TTC pensions in with other public sector workers. Regardless, the power of the union needs to be challenged in order to achieve any sort of efficiences system-wide.

Finally, we get an integrated fare system through Presto without uploading the TTC.

Toronto can't afford to build the TTC network, so the Capital budget always is squeezed and deserving, cost-saving projects are deferred due to lack of funds. Ontario doesn't have the same restrictions on debt and deficits, so can build what we need and pay for it in decades to come.

 

[Dan416]

I'm not sure what Coruscanti Cognoscente and ShonTron are hyperventilating about.

Nobody is proposing that the "Milton" Line be renamed.

GO Transit is simply creating seperate dedicated timetables for select major stations along the Milton Line to make it easier for commuters to read and understand.

A great example is Square One, which is strickly a GO Bus terminal and NO GO Trains from the Milton Line stops there.

However, I don't think you can argue that Square One isn't a major transit hub on it's own with several major GO Bus Lines: Union, Oakville, Hamilton, York University, Guelph, Waterloo and Finch.

Instead of forcing customers to look through an ever expanding Milton timetable, it only makes sense to provide a simpler solution by providing a dedicated timetable for a station like Square One.

It's something called improving Customer Service.

Louroz

As I already mentioned, GO already makes QuickTables and I have zero problem with them improving them with non-weekday times. What I have an issue with is what you describe as creating "separate dedicated timetables for select major stations". There are NO MINOR STATIONS ON THE MILTON LINE except for Lisgar and Dixie.

(Ten points to whoever gets that reference).

 

[FutureMayor]

New Printed Timetables for Cooksville, Square One and Meadowvale

The fact remains that GO Transit *IS* going to release a set of new printed timetables for all cooridors.

I had a preview of the new design when given one of the first mock copies and asked for my opinion on the look and layout.

Georgetown and Milton corridors are GO's most complex schedules as a number of routes are displayed into a single table. GO is restructuring them into logical, targeted routes with the release of new printed timetables for Cooksville, Square One and Meadowvale Stations.

Louroz

 

[drum118]

I have stated that GO does not use the A, B, C after the route number and stick to a number given the fact that you have a 1000 numbers to use now. This will be less confusing to riders even though some of those routes will end up at the final point together. Milton 100, 101, 102, 103

As Louroz stated, Georgetown and Milton time table is a mix bag and hard to read as a whole. If you have buses running to only X station on one of these lines, why have all the X stations in that corridor in that schedule when most riders will not need that info in the first place?

Have said that, there will be people who want that info for various reasons and some could be due to breakdown of a bus/train, travel a lot to different places from time to time, new to the system etc.

The name of Rail corridors will not change. Some bus routes may change for the corridor because of X station loctation. You could have a Union-Sq One in place of Milton-Union-Sq One since it finish long before Milton that may service 3-2 or no stations at all on the Milton line in the first place.

This is in testing and we have to wait until the near completion product is ready for final impute or when it is release to have a more detail converstion on this.

 

[Dan416]

The fact remains that GO Transit *IS* going to release a set of new printed timetables for all cooridors.

I had a preview of the new design when given one of the first mock copies and asked for my opinion on the look and layout.

Georgetown and Milton corridors are GO's most complex schedules as a number of routes are displayed into a single table. GO is restructuring them into logical, targeted routes with the release of new printed timetables for Cooksville, Square One and Meadowvale Stations.

Louroz

It still sounds to me like you basically would have to make a schedule for every single station. Why single out Cooksville, Square One and Meadowvale? What about Milton? What about Erindale and Streetsville? The way you've explained it doesn't make sense to me.

If you're going to the trouble of creating new schedules individually for Cooksville, Square One and Meadowvale you might as well do all the stations individually. Although I don't see much point in that either. Seems like a lot of wasted effort for not much benefit.

I take the Milton line frequently, and the vast majority of my trips just came from Streetsville and go on to Square One and Cooksville. So basically that ONE bus trip will end up in THREE different schedules. Not efficient.

To be honest, most of these problems will vanish when GO grows some balls and actually runs proper train service on this line instead of a million express buses for each station during peak hours.

 

[FutureMayor]

Cooksville, Square One and Meadowvale are MAJOR Stations.

Simply put and the most obvious reason is that Cooksville, Square One and Meadowvale have more routes and commuters compared to the other stations along the Milton line.

Louroz

 

[Dan416]

Simply put and the most obvious reason is that Cooksville, Square One and Meadowvale have more routes and commuters compared to the other stations along the Milton line.

Louroz

I looked for ridership numbers but couldn't find them, but I remember Cooksville is the busiest station, but the rest aren't far behind, except Lisgar and Dixie.

That said, based on the info I read on CPTDB, I see no reason to separate the Train schedules from the Bus schedules. Technically the bus services are the same as the train service but run by buses due to the fact that we can't get more trains on Milton at this point.

Trying to split up MILTON by Cooksville, Square One and Meadowvale seems rather arbitrary to me and doesn't make much sense. The same buses serve all three stations, so why split it up? I really don't get it. The only time that the buses get a little confusing is on the shoulders of the peak hours when there's lots of express buses traveling direct to stations, e.g. direct from Erindale to Union and nowhere in-between. But that's what the QuickTables are for.

I'd have to see these new schedules to make a proper judgment. Although I would like to quote drum118's post from CPTDB here for those interested:

No they are not getting rid of the paper schedule yet, but down sizing them as well streamline them.

For rail lines, it will be 4 pages with the schedule inside showing all the stations and the times for all the runs. Fonts are larger on some of the ones I saw. The schedule itself is about 3.5" x 7" or a little smaller. How the front and back is to look like is under testing, but a cleaner look as well paper feel. Could see all the stations layout like the route or in a column on the front.

Buses will have the similar look like the existing ones, but the same sizes of the rail one. There will be schedule for only rail or buses along with a combination of both rail/bus. This way, riders can choices what schedule they want.

There is a new website being developed as well as various apps. There will be a trip planner also, but it still in development. Do you want it from your home, station, line, location and where too. There is a lot of unknown at this time.

The one thing I like to see for the station map is all the bus routes that service each station regardless which transit system is using it. This way you can show how riders can leave their cars at home and use local transit to get to the station assuming the service is up to pare. It will also help riders to get home if GO has to shut down the line for what every reason or the train dies at the station.

Station address with cross streets needs to be added. If someone needs to be pickup at a station that new to them or the person picking them up doesn't know the area, they can supplied that info to them so they can find it on the map.

Even those station trip cards are being change.

There is a lot of new stuff coming within the next year.

To me it sounds rather convoluted to have to choose between even more schedules than before. Right now there are what, 7 or 8 schedules to choose from? With this change it's gotta be at least double or triple the number of schedules to choose from. Imagine the fun keeping each of those schedules in stock.

 

[doady]

And there's the fact that all the stations are linked by bus service in evenings and on weekends. Giving each station its own schedule seems unnecessary and overly complicated.

 

[mattbg]

For suburbanites heading to LV or LV residents heading to the suburbs? I don't know what the actual numbers are, but taking the train on Lakeshore West, there don't seem to be a whole lot of people getting on/off at Exhibition.

I'm confused by this request for an LV station, too... what's the point? If I lived in LV and worked near Union, I'd be walking it every day. It's hardly worth waiting for a train.

 

[TOareaFan]

I'm confused by this request for an LV station, too... what's the point? If I lived in LV and worked near Union, I'd be walking it every day. It's hardly worth waiting for a train.

It is not to get people from LV to union.....it is to enhance the likelihood that off peak service (when it ever arrives) on those 3 lines have destination points to use the off peak service for. The LV/Exhibition area is an event filled area and putting a simple station there would drive usage on the three lines in question during off peak.

Just as people crowd the platforms of Exhibition stop on the Lakeshore line before/after TFC matches or the Honda Indy....so would people on the Milton and Georgetown lines. Forcing them onto eastbound lakeshore trains to switch at Union for a westbound train home after an event (or even worse, seeing the event they are headed to out of their window as they go to Union to switch to train to bring them back again before the event) makes no sense if it could be avoided by building a small station to serve all three lines in the LV area.