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VIA Rail cuts services in Southern Ontario

reaperexpress said:
There's no doubt that Greyhound is subsidized. I'm just saying that it's less subsidized than VIA.
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Surely, it's more subsidized than VIA. VIA just about breaks even on the major corridor routes (Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto), but has to pay huge amounts for upkeep of rail, etc.

Greyhound is using the roads for free, and has sweetheart deals on their terminals.
 
reaperexpress said:
While VIA is in the "cut, cut, cut" mode, why don't consider getting rid of some underperforming intermediate stations?

For example, all but one of the Windsor-London trains stop in Glencoe Ontario, a tiny town in the middle of nowhere.

Decommissioning service to that station would eliminate the station's operating costs, increase ridership to and from Windsor due to shorter trip times, and save a bit on train operating costs due to shorter trip times.
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It should happen soon. The former MP for the riding, Rose-Marie Ur, came from Glencoe. But she retired in 2006. Sooner or later VIA will notice that and then it'll be gone. :)
 
nfitz said:
Surely, it's more subsidized than VIA. VIA just about breaks even on the major corridor routes (Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto), but has to pay huge amounts for upkeep of rail, etc.

Greyhound is using the roads for free, and has sweetheart deals on their terminals.
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Yes, it's quite hard to compare the level of subsidy between the two. VIA might run a high cost-recovery ratio on the Windsor-London service (though that's not what they've been saying recently), but that would be due to the passengers from Windsor, Chatham and London, not Glencoe.
 
reaperexpress said:
Yes, it's quite hard to compare the level of subsidy between the two. VIA might run a high cost-recovery ratio on the Windsor-London service (though that's not what they've been saying recently), but that would be due to the passengers from Windsor, Chatham and London, not Glencoe.
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Probably not ... never heard of Glencoe ... don't see why it would get more than one train stopping a day.
 
Some responses...

Kitchener (Cambridge) already enjoys bus service to Hamilton via Coach Canada. Guelph lost its Coach Canada to the Hamilton due to ridership (at least that is what they said despite the number of students etc) Currently they get 2 buses a day via Abouttown.

Greyhound holds the license from the ONT Govt to operate express service to and from Toronto. This is why you do not see express GO buses between Guelph/Kitchener and Toronto. Instead they (GO) are forced to operate out of Bramalea GO express to/from Kitchener & Guelph respectfully. This may be the reason they do not operate to Hamilton but IMO they could go around that via Aldershot GO.

In terms of trains between Guelph (Kitchener) and Hamilton - it could be done but would require a lot of work and I do not think anyone wants to spend the money. It is also too bad that the tracks to Owen Sound via Guelph end north of Guelph now. Would have been nice to see a train go there and maybe scoot across to Barrie maybe.
 
nfitz said:
Dropping a relatively unused stop in the middle of nowhere, that they only added recently, without dropping any service, is an improvement to most travellers. It's not that far to the Cambridge stop.
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If you look at GH schedule, not all the buses actually go to into the Dt Charles St terminal directly. There is no GH booth at Charles Street either. There is a real possibility, as said to me from a Greyhound driver last year, to see a reduction on GH buses since they want GO to "pick up the slack". GO so far has hit GH in the pocketbook with those always full GO buses from Waterloo U/WLU (Students) to Missy and now will do the same in Guelph. I know all about the so called "express" issues, but if GH did pull up services, GO COULD apply to run more express from Kitchener to Toronto, but that is all a who knows at this point.
 
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How can Greyhound expect GO to pick up the slack when their monopoly prohibits the operation of express buses on the Kitchener-Toronto corridor? One of few options available would be to run more train-bus service via Bramalea, Increase the number of express runs to Square One or to run a route via Highway 6 to Aldershot/Burlington/Hamilton, all of which while good options take an extra hour.

Despite all of this, I still think GO is the better option for getting into downtown Toronto from Kitchener as the hour I would have been waiting at Charles Street or on the platform at the Toronto Terminal (yuck) I'd be moving in a properly cleaned bus.
 
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royalrivers said:
If you look at GH schedule, not all the buses actually go to into the Dt Charles St terminal.
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All the Kitchener service stopped there on the last schedule I picked up. I don't see a PDF of the Kitchener schedule on their website though ... so hard to say much about these runs that don't go to downtown; are they just runs that leave Toronto at the same time, with one bus going to Cambridge/Sportsworld and a second bus going to downtown?

Their on-line schedule thing is difficult to use, as it doesn't show in between stops, but looking at tomorrow's departures from Toronto to Sportsworld and Toronto to Charles Street, the departure times and fares are identical for both, so I'm not seeing how this claim that not all service goes to downtown stands up.
 
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nfitz said:
All the Kitchener service stopped there on the last schedule I picked up. I don't see a PDF of the Kitchener schedule on their website though ... so hard to say much about these runs that don't go to downtown; are they just runs that leave Toronto at the same time, with one bus going to Cambridge/Sportsworld and a second bus going to downtown?

Their on-line schedule thing is difficult to use, as it doesn't show in between stops, but looking at tomorrow's departures from Toronto to Sportsworld and Toronto to Charles Street, the departure times and fares are identical for both, so I'm not seeing how this claim that not all service goes to downtown stands up.
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I would know because I have TAKEN the damn bus lol and it only stopped at Sportsworld without doing to Dt
 
royalrivers said:
I would know because I have TAKEN the damn bus lol and it only stopped at Sportsworld without doing to Dt
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And yet there isn't currently any single scheduled weekday departure from Toronto that doesn't go to downtown Kitchener. Perhaps that was during the short period of time that Greyhound was in some kind of battle with Kitchener, and trying to shift services to Sportworld. Presumably now that the situation with Greyhound and Kitchener seems to have normalized, the Sportsworld stop, in the middle of nowhere, that never existed until relatively recently, is simply surplus, and only slows down travel times.

I too have taken the damn bus many times over the last 25 years, and also taken people to the Toronto terminal many times to take it, and not once has there ever been buses not going to downtown ... unless there were multiple buses departing, and some were expresses to other points. Nor have I seen such a trip on any schedule which I've possessed.
 
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royalrivers said:
Plus Greyhound is making cuts....http://www.therecord.com/news/local/article/756177--greyhound-to-cut-sportsworld-stop-july-31
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That's not so much a Greyhound cut as GO / MTO buying out the terminal and thus forcing GO to eliminate a stop most people dislike. According to CTV and elsewhere, Sportsworld is going to be a GO terminal (or stop?) and a carpool lot as of this fall. It's likely going to be a stop on the 200 iXpress, so people will probably also use the free parking lot to commute into K-W.
 
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