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GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

Thanks for the reply! Oh, I could probably believe some of the stories, given I have to ride with the same nutters. :) Though I tend to find the real nutcases on TTC, rather than GO.

Maybe it's just the clientele of the two services, being as TTC serves a wide cross-section of society whereas GO tends to be primarily middle-class and above businesspeople and families, but I have to agree that the TTC makes for the more...eye-opening...experiences.

I ride both every day and I've never had anyone come up to me at random and bless my soul on GO, for example.

Anyhow, I understand how we can't always expect GO to be able to refund us, though I do make as much use of the service guarantee as I can. After all, when warranted, if the money is available for a refund then yes please I would like said refund. What's really confusing me is how the switch problem on LSW was considered in GO's control and therefore refundable, but not the signal problems that delayed LSE earlier this week.
 
I believe that those on the Richmond Hill train that got flooded a couple of years ago got refunds.

Not just refunds. They also got things like dry-cleaning and taxis paid for.

But that's also a very unusual, one-off case, and certainly not applicable to the larger discussion about refunds for delayed trains.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
 
Bear in mind that when you get a refund, your ride wasn't free.....you just paid for it through some other taxation vehicle. Personally, I would rather not receive the refund rather than see GO having to drain revenue out of other priorities to make good on the guarantee.

GO's 15-minute threshold is ridiculously generous, but that wasn't GO's doing....it was thrust upon them by good old Dalton "Buy voters favour with their own money" McGuinty. I have no problem with some consideration shown to people after a major, ie hour or longer, delay. I would also rather see no refund than a policy that is so encumbered with loopholes as to resemble out of country health insurance :)

- Paul
 
It's worth noting that it's also a voluntary refund.
There's at least one time where I skipped getting a refund (delay was forgiveable, and I was enjoying my extra time reading or working), though I did at another time once (when I was in a hurry or anxious). I realize it's a taxpayer burden, while at the same time it is a worthy mechanism of incentive to Metrolinx to keep maintaining the system to prevent lateness.
 
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It's worth noting that it's also a voluntary refund.
There's at least one time where I skipped getting a refund (delay was forgiveable, and I was enjoying my extra time reading or working), though I did at another time once (when I was in a hurry or anxious). I realize it's a taxpayer burden, while at the same time it is a worthy mechanism of incentive to Metrolinx to keep maintaining the system to prevent lateness.
I hadn't bothered claiming a refund on one leg of a return-trip (returns that start under 3 hours are part of the same trip), because the return trip was fine - so I assume I wasn't eligble.

Then later on, my return trip was quite late, so I claimed the refund. However, because the 1-way Danforth-Union was $4.82 and the return trip was $4.95, all I got was a 13¢ refund (hmm, I got 14¢ - someone's been tinkering with the GO Fare Calculator - used to work).

Probably not worth the effort for 14¢ - but next time I'll know to claim the first leg!
 
GO's 15-minute threshold is ridiculously generous, but that wasn't GO's doing....it was thrust upon them by good old Dalton "Buy voters favour with their own money" McGuinty. I have no problem with some consideration shown to people after a major, ie hour or longer, delay. I would also rather see no refund than a policy that is so encumbered with loopholes as to resemble out of country health insurance :)

- Paul
It was actually promised as a 10 minute guarantee. It changed to 15 after the election.
 
Today I made a comparison table for the frequency of Canadian commuter rail lines as of January 2015.

(Link to Google Spreadsheet)
Excellent table. It would be interesting to compare American commuter rail as well. I wonder how well Toronto compares to Boston and Chicago for example.

As promised, here is a new table comparing the service frequencies of all commuter rail lines in North America that radiate from a city with >1M metro population:
(Link to new Google Spreadsheet)

The main things I noted:
- Canadian lines really stand out as having higher ridership for a given number of trains.
- The Lakeshore line is actually among the top in the continent. Of the 104 lines, only 10 have half-hourly or better base service, and 2 of those are the Lakeshore lines.
- No American commuter rail lines mention any associated bus service on their schedules. While GO may only run a few trains per day on most lines, most stations actually have frequent connection to Union all day. So we aren't doing quite as badly as it appears on chart.

And having looked at every commuter rail schedule on the continent, my opinion is that GO has the most comprehensive and legible schedules on the continent, though I may be biased from simply being used to them. The worst on the continent is definitely Chicago's Metra.

Metra schedules* are a complete mess, with inconsistent and nonsensical symbology: a train skipping a station is sometimes denoted with a dash, and sometimes with an arrow. Meanwhile, they put dashes even beyond the endpoints of runs, which makes it hard to figure out which trains actually operate in each segment.

*Click "Download PDF" in the upper right

Honorable mentions for poor schedules:

Los Angeles Metrolink does not make a clear distinction between AM/PM (an issue we don't have here in Canada thanks to the 24h clock). For example, in this schedule, I could see someone mistakenly showing up 12 hours early for train 707.

New Jersey Transit simply has too many words on their schedules. For example, the heading "Check the fine print: This line has special conditions" could simply have been "Special Conditions".
 
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As promised, here is a new table comparing the service frequencies of all commuter rail lines in North America that radiate from a city with >1M metro population:
Wow.

Also I hadn't fully appreciated how much we seem to have in common with Chicago (numbers-wise), or just how frequent some of those New York services - perhaps because the line I'm always looking to use down there is the Port Jervis line - perhaps the least frequent.
 
As promised, here is a new table comparing the service frequencies of all commuter rail lines in North America that radiate from a city with >1M metro population:
(Link to new Google Spreadsheet)

Neat spreadsheet. Thanks for that.

This "- Daily frequency is in AM Peak direction" is a little weird as a subnote. I did quick math on Milton line and came up with 3300 people per train, which caused me to jump to the schedule and start making corrections.

Took me a while before I noticed the note. Perhaps that column could be titled "Round-trip trains per day" or something?
 
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This "- Daily frequency is in AM Peak direction" is a little weird as a subnote. I did quick math on Milton line and came up with 3300 people per train, which caused me to jump to the schedule and start making corrections.

Took me a while before I noticed the note. Perhaps that column could be titled "Round-trip trains per day" or something?

That was purely a practicality thing. Some lines have a different number of trips in each direction (the Richmond Hill line, for example), so providing the actual number of round trips would require counting trips in both directions, which represents summing an additional 312 (104 x 3) timetables. I figured that small amount of extra info wasn't worth my trouble. I've changed the heading to "Daily trains per direction" to help clarify it.

The other thing about the Canadian lines is that the ridership includes associated bus service, so it is not possible to calculate an average load per train. I think it's still fairly safe to assume that Milton is among the highest on the continent though.

Wow.

Also I hadn't fully appreciated how much we seem to have in common with Chicago (numbers-wise), or just how frequent some of those New York services - perhaps because the line I'm always looking to use down there is the Port Jervis line - perhaps the least frequent.

Keep in mind that not all trains stop at all stations, so while it may say an impressive number like 18 trains per hour, it doesn't mean that there is a train every 3 minutes between any two given stations. Take for example of the Lakeshore East line during the AM Peak. There are 6 trains per hour:
- 2x local from Pickering to Union,
- 1x express from Whitby to Union (non-stop from Pickering), and
- 3x express from Oshawa to Union (non-stop from Pickering).
So if you're east of Pickering the effective frequency to Union is only 3 or 4 tph, and west of Pickering it is 2 tph.
 
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The main things I noted:
- Canadian lines really stand out as having higher ridership for a given number of trains.

To my chagrin, GO has invested money in extending platforms to accommodate longer trains instead of investing money to run shorter trains more frequently. I'm glad to see their philosophy changing with the overdue push to move towards RER.
 

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