GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

[Deadpool X]

Yes. Apparently it’s a lot of work to remove. So they’ll stay until other work comes up that necessitates the car being removed from service for an extended period of time.

Metrolinx is not removing these barriers because they are known to be a visionary and they know that there could be another pandemic 50 years later. They are already prepared for that pandemic.

 

[LNahid2000]

At least 3 busloads for the 5:52 express bus from Niagara to Burlington today even though there's a train 2 hours later. More trains are sorely needed.

EDIT: Glad I caught the first one! There was so much traffic that the others didn't even make the train connection.

 

[anb]

A similar experience for the 6:35 bus from Bramalea to Waterloo. We need more weekend service overall. The amount of bikes I have seen on jointed up on just one side alone per train car has become ridiculous.

Increasing the trains from 6 car to 10 car at least would help tremendously. Hopefully this gets more demand to warrant for a full Kitchener trip. Even if its just every 3 hours like the Allandale trips on the Barrie line, that could help a lot more than what is happening right now.

 

[RU479]

Increasing the trains from 6 car to 10 car at least would help tremendously. Hopefully this gets more demand to warrant for a full Kitchener trip. Even if its just every 3 hours like the Allandale trips on the Barrie line, that could help a lot more than what is happening right now.

What's odd is that it seems now the Barrie Weekend Train trips are alternating between 10 and 12 cars respectively.

But I agree hopefully we see extensions of train lengths.

 

[wopchop]

Yes. Apparently it’s a lot of work to remove. So they’ll stay until other work comes up that necessitates the car being removed from service for an extended period of time.

This could be removed in less than 30 seconds.
They are just locked together with screws through the chairs.
I would do it right now if I had a drill.
It is only a lot of work in the sense that there are thousands of these.

 

[anb]

We need more weekend service overall. The amount of bikes I have seen on jointed up on just one side alone per train car has become ridiculous.

Increasing the trains from 6 car to 10 car at least would help tremendously.

Well it looks like they did something about it and gave us a 10 car train, seen on the 5:51 train to Mount Pleasant. In the morning they were still running 6 cars so its not fully expanded yet but this is the step in the right direction for sure.

 

[lenaitch]

This could be removed in less than 30 seconds.
They are just locked together with screws through the chairs.
I would do it right now if I had a drill.
It is only a lot of work in the sense that there are thousands of these.
View attachment 474890

So, self-contradictory. Thirty seconds x thousands of barriers = a lot of work.

I see no bit head on the pins into the armrest so they might be bolted from underneath.

Seeing as trainsets need to be out-of-service (or broken up) for the removal, maybe holes filled, any burred edges finished, etc. perhaps MX could spend a pile 'o' dough on overtime to do it overnight at the various yards. I'm sure the overnight crews are just drinking coffee anyway. /s

 

[T3G]

Didn't Metrolinx just close a tender for repainting a few hundred BiLevels? Instead of throwing away dollars like that, they could instead use those funds to pay someone to remove the plastic barriers from the entire fleet (not just the cars that are being repainted; because removing screws costs much less than painting a giant rail car does) and materially improve passenger comfort in a way a new livery never will.

 

[APTA-2048]

Didn't Metrolinx just close a tender for repainting a few hundred BiLevels? Instead of throwing away dollars like that, they could instead use those funds to pay someone to remove the plastic barriers from the entire fleet (not just the cars that are being repainted; because removing screws costs much less than painting a giant rail car does) and materially improve passenger comfort in a way a new livery never will.

Maybe the plan is to do both? The way I interpreted the explanation from Metrolinx was that it’s wasn’t so much a matter of funds, but minimizing the time a car is out of service.

 

[T3G]

Maybe the plan is to do both? The way I interpreted the explanation from Metrolinx was that it’s wasn’t so much a matter of funds, but minimizing the time a car is out of service.

I would assume (hope) that the cars that are being repainted will lose the barriers, but the tender only calls for a couple of hundred cars to be done. What I meant is that instead of paying for paints and materials for a couple of hundred cars, it would surely be better to use that money to instead remove the barriers from the whole fleet and leave the paint as-is, since the only costs there would be labour and tools.

 

[Northern Light]

So, self-contradictory. Thirty seconds x thousands of barriers = a lot of work.

I see no bit head on the pins into the armrest so they might be bolted from underneath.

Seeing as trainsets need to be out-of-service (or broken up) for the removal, maybe holes filled, any burred edges finished, etc. perhaps MX could spend a pile 'o' dough on overtime to do it overnight at the various yards. I'm sure the overnight crews are just drinking coffee anyway. /s

Just because you inspire me to be silly sometimes........

I went and looked up the seating capacity of the current generation of bilevels (136) I then assumed there would be one divider for every 2 seats (there will be less, but just for simplicity) .....

So that's 68 dividers per car; I then looked up the GO fleet size; as at Nov'21 it was 949 cars; though I don't believe the entire fleet actually got the dividers. But again, to keep it simple, using those figures I get
64,532 dividers to be removed.

Assuming @wopchop 's estimate of 30s each is accurate, 32266 minutes of labour which is 537.76 hours.

So, allowing for 1 hour of paid break time per shift, you get 76.82 person shifts; which with a crew of 4 doing the job would work out to 19.2 days to complete the project.

Isn't everyone glad they asked? Oh wait............ LOL

 

[nfitz]

Metrolinx is not removing these barriers because they are known to be a visionary and they know that there could be another pandemic 50 years later. They are already prepared for that pandemic.

The one next to me on the train yesterday, had a broken rivet, and was coming loose. I'd think they'll be gone sooner than later once failures become common.

 

[lenaitch]

since the only costs there would be labour and tools.

And possibly contract termination costs, depending on the terms.

 

[wopchop]

So, self-contradictory. Thirty seconds x thousands of barriers = a lot of work.

I see no bit head on the pins into the armrest so they might be bolted from underneath.

The problem is not necessarily that there are thousands of them, the problem is that thousands of them are spread over hundreds of train car, which cannot be out of service at once, or probably even in a convenient order. So it will take a lot of shifts to remove them all.

If Metrolinx did cite the reason for not doing this as it being "a lot of work", that really says a lot about the ambition and competence of the organization. After all, they presumably clean and maintain these same thousand or so cars on a regular basis, but removing some plexiglass is a big problem?

 

[T3G]

I'm not suggesting they should terminate the contract now, I'm suggesting they should have thought of passenger comfort before entertaining the idea of repainting the coaches. The fact that they didn't tells me a lot about the culture of thinking at Metrolinx... not that any of that wasn't obvious to me even beforehand!