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Ontario Northland/Northern Ontario Transportation

tmlittle said:
@micheal_can in my mind the Northlander/North Bay route is a different case because the Richmond Hill line is unloved and will clearly be one of the "losers" of the GO Expansion era, while the Barrie line is one of the clear winners.
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Illustrative of the difference between a line you own and only have limited obligations to CN, and a line where CN tolerates your presence.
 
dowlingm said:
Illustrative of the difference between a line you own and only have limited obligations to CN, and a line where CN tolerates your presence.
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Actually, in that particular case it's due to where the people live and where they are going, versus where they aren't.

Dan
 
tmlittle said:
I'm glad people are keeping up the pressure, and it's just local news, but I wish there was more clarity in the article. "Muskoka-Parry Sound area" doesn't make much sense in the context of north-south routes. I'm guessing they're referring primarily about Northlander restoration/Metrolinx takeover, but I'd be extremely surprised if any new service materialized to/through Parry Sound. That said, given what happened with Niagara, it's possible there could be summer excursion trains to Parry Sound or something, which might be useful to cottagers even if it's not that useful for northern residents. I'd love to see an actual regional rail connection from Toronto to Sudbury that operated at frequencies and times actually useful to most people (as opposed to the Canadian), but that would be a major endeavour.
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I think "Parry Sound-Muskoka" is a general collective used by some groups and agencies; much like 'Grey-Bruce' or 'Haliburton-Kawartha'. If they do bring back some version of the Northlander, they need to do a better scheduling job on Friday and Sunday/Monday to attract cottager traffic.
 
tmlittle said:
@micheal_can in my mind the Northlander/North Bay route is a different case because the Richmond Hill line is unloved and will clearly be one of the "losers" of the GO Expansion era, while the Barrie line is one of the clear winners. Single seat rides are great and I know linear transfers are a bit disfavoured, but with the quid pro quo of the ONTC potentially being able to put more buses on the road between Sudbury and Barrie and save resources, it could be a very valid decision. With where GO service to Barrie will be in 5-10 years there will be less and less point in running half-empty buses to the new Union bus terminal. It would be a different case if there was real intercity rail service to Sudbury (not the Canadian), but I don't think anybody expects that any time soon.

I'm from the North and have taken this and other routes a number of times. I'm glad the ONTC is experimenting with stuff like commuter-style routes, flex tickets, and getting a fleet of smaller buses, since it seems like a sign of transitioning slowly away from the antiquated and widely hated Greyhound model of service that should have died out in the 2000s. In the future I'd love to see it play even more of a role providing "intercommunity" style service similar to the new rural-oriented systems like LINX in Simcoe County, feeding into hubs like Sudbury and North Bay, and providing more frequent service that would let more people live car-free in the North without having to live somewhere like downtown Sudbury. In my opinion it should be Via Rail's responsibility to provide intercity service such as from Sudbury to Toronto, but of course nobody is listening to Northern municipalities' demands for improved rail service. I just don't see the point in having ONTC coaches unnecessarily duplicate higher-order transit within the GTA when those resources could be allocated to the north itself, such as reconnecting Sudbury and Thunder Bay properly (which is urgently needed), serving more small communities, or adding frequency to existing routes.
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You can't get there from here.

There is no way a train from North Bay can get to Barrie unless you build new track and cross over somehow. The tracks are gone and the ROW is no longer intact.
 
micheal_can said:
You can't get there from here.

There is no way a train from North Bay can get to Barrie unless you build new track and cross over somehow. The tracks are gone and the ROW is no longer intact.
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Apologies if I was unclear, but I'm talking specifically about the Highway 400 corridor coach route, not the ex-Northlander coach route from Toronto to North Bay. The former is 3/day, the latter is 4/day - I've never seen route breakdowns for ridership, and I doubt that's publicly available. While the latter (at least presumably, I've never taken it) gets higher ridership, the former is important in its own right, and would become even more so if real connections existed to points west post-Greyhound (other than the expensive, infrequent, and often delayed Canadian). A trip to Thunder Bay, for example, isn't very easy or clear, yet it's as much a part of the north as Sudbury or North Bay are. Sudbury's ONTC terminal is much more of a hub now that much more service has been added to the west of the city (like the Manitoulin route). While resuming the Northlander would be great, ONTC passenger services are hardly just the Northlander or even the ONR, and my guess is in the future it will be planned even more network-style rather than corridor-style. I don't see a point in GO and Northland networks overlapping excessively - the Northlander route along the Bala sub is a different matter, in my opinion, as it (at least in final form) doesn't really overlap with GO services. I think both North Bay and Sudbury each deserve strong transit connections to Toronto, but not when it's needlessly duplicating GO and other Southern Ontario services, especially when it's higher order transit (GO trains).

I've also noticed that a number of North Bay trips don't originate from Bay St, but in fact leave from Yorkdale, and I doubt many passengers suffer excessively from it.
 
The reason Yorkdale works well is it is on a Subway route and a major bus station. By pushing it up to Barrie, it gains nothing.
 
Allandale25 said:
No new news in this but posted today. Overview of where things stand.

www.northbaynipissing.com

Fate of returning passenger rail looming for Almaguin, Muskoka

ISSUE: Lack of passenger rail LOCAL IMPACT: Advocates say residents, visitors, local economy would benefit with its return
www.northbaynipissing.com www.northbaynipissing.com
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I think the mention of frequency is pretty significant near the end. Services like this should really be daily/weekdays or not at all, or else there's no real chance at building up ridership, and they'll just get killed again in the future.
 
Great news for ONTC! From the fall economic update, page 83:

Transferring Responsibility for the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission:

The Province continues to improve transportation services in the North. Over the next few months, the government will explore the feasibility of transferring the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission to the Ministry of Transportation from the Ministry of Energy, Northern Development and Mines. This could allow the Province to centralize ministerial oversight of all government agencies with a mandate to deliver transportation services and create opportunities to improve services.

In parallel with this work, the Province will explore options to enhance intercommunity bus services provided by the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission, to ensure underserved and unserved northern communities are connected and people have access to jobs and critical services.
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That PDF took a long time to load for some reason!

For those interested, here is the Screenshot of Page 83

ACAB4CD8-DA5F-4B43-91D0-E643B78DCAD9.png
 
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This is unfortunate but pretty typical of the way Ontario Northland gets shafted by the province, and the way in turn that ONTC screws northern communities. Cutting a bus route that serves three reserves that form its core ridership, with absolutely no warning and giving local communities no time to come up with a substitute (which would be on their own dime anyway) is a microcosm of the way all levels of government and their agencies have always treated First Nations. Freedom of mobility is a human right, and arbitrarily taking it away from the most vulnerable and disadvantaged people in Canadian society is just a small piece of Canada's ongoing genocide against indigenous peoples. This is why there needs to be transit controlled by indigenous people, such as with the Mask-wa Oo-ta-ban bear train proposal, whose decisions aren't being guided by the Province of Ontario. And more than anyone else, indigenous people deserve free transit. If you've ever been on highways up north and seen the number of teens hitchhiking, I think you'd agree.
 
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