GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

[Metroscapes]

I'm just glad we're far past that ugly pale yellow 1990s MSPaint-looking map.

 

[Metroscapes]

More from Michael Lindsay on LinkedIn.

Monday’s incident in the Union Station Rail Corridor had a significant impact across our network - requiring significant work to bring four platforms back into service.

On top of that, we experienced two separate incidents last night on the Lakeshore lines around 17:30, with two separate trains encountering main engine reservoir failures, delaying roughly 2,300 customers for hours as we sought to fix trains in place to allow for service to continue around these trains.

 

[cplchanb]

The 8:09 stoufville train got totally jammed up for a mysterious reason at unionville... they claim it's for a northbound train but there's no scheduled train going north until 940.... it finally started moving 30 min later. See.... this is what happens when they lag on finishing double tracking and trains need to go zig zag across eachother....

 

[PShells]

The 8:09 stoufville train got totally jammed up for a mysterious reason at unionville... they claim it's for a northbound train but there's no scheduled train going north until 940.... it finally started moving 30 min later. See.... this is what happens when they lag on finishing double tracking and trains need to go zig zag across eachother....

The “well will run express from Milliken to Union” doesn’t materially change much given the slow order at Finch, crawling through Agincourt, slow order at Progress and crawling through Kennedy before getting into queue to crawl into a platform at Union because we missed our original slot.

 

[cplchanb]

The “well will run express from Milliken to Union” doesn’t materially change much given the slow order at Finch, crawling through Agincourt, slow order at Progress and crawling through Kennedy before getting into queue to crawl into a platform at Union because we missed our original slot.

Didnt help my cause since I had to get kicked off to the next train for agincourt.....

 

[JasonParis]

Personally, I am not in favour of abandoning the GO naming scheme where the ref and name reflect where the train goes... I think it would be very boring to do so too
The only reforms I think I would bring onto GO is to change naming from terminal -> corridor (So that if it ever gets extended it doesn't need renaming) and to put different services as part of the naming scheme, as an example, LW-HA for trains that terminate to Hamilton GO, or LW-NI for Niagara, or LW-EX for express. Granted, LW has too many service patterns which really should be coalesced.

The current scheme prevents any potential naming conflicts with local transit, which is good.

That said, the nomenclature isn’t always consistent. Many lines aren’t named after their terminal stations at all—Lakeshore East and West, Barrie, Richmond Hill, and Stouffville among them. Kitchener is the main exception. You could argue that Lakeshore West should be the Niagara Line and Lakeshore East the Oshawa Line. The apparent logic seems to be naming lines after what they’re best known for, but the result is uneven.

I’m not religious about this, but I do think lettered designations still make sense, especially when GO appears on other system maps. A simple lettered emblem at a TTC–GO interchange is far cleaner and more legible than a long line name.

Branching introduces another layer of complexity. Do you designate an A1 to Hamilton Centre and an A2 to Niagara Falls? That could also apply to Kitchener, with a C1 to Kitchener and a C2 to Pearson. It’s workable, but it opens up a lot of edge cases.

Interlining complicates things further—and some lines already effectively interline today. If you’re travelling from Hamilton Centre to Oshawa, is that an A1–F service? Is a Malton to Unionville train a C1–E? At that point, the system risks becoming more confusing than helpful.