Get real saying management fail for getting engineers. You go and apply for that position and see what happens as well find out when you will be a qualify engineer to operate a train on your own.
As soon some of these engineers get on line, CP, CN and VIA will try to take them from GO. See what happens to you if you are involved in a fatal rail accident as I have known a few of them and have seen what it did to them to the point they quit. These are non GO engineers.
I won't be applying for an engineer's position any time soon.....and the public should be thankfull for that. That said, any time managment put forward a business plan (in any business) that proposes expansion, personell issues are (and have to be) part of that plan. The advantage that GO/Metrolinx have over most businesses is that their expansion needed a lot of capital work/construction long before the personnell were needed....so they had/have lots of lead time to deal with those issues.
I, obviously, cannot speak to what recruitment efforts they have undertaken since they put forward the expansion plan but if they are going to, at the end of the day, fall short of their expansion plans because they are short of needed personnell then I do stand by the statement that this is a management fail.
When did the work start on the Georgetown South/West Toronto project? 2009? If the goal was to deliver full service by 2015, is 6 years enough to recruit and train crews/engineers? I would say it should have been and, if so, then "lack of crews" is not a valid reason/excuse in 2015 if the expanded service falls short (as we are "promised" it will) at that time.
You cry over service to Brampton is the same as me calling for 30 minutes service on the Lakeshore that was promise years ago and may show up finally in 2013. Live with it.
I may be complaining but I am not crying. They are, however, similar wishes (in that they are "old promises") and I was responding to someone that said (paraphrase) the promise of 30 minute Lakeshore service is older than the other promises so it should have priority. The environment has changed and will change and promises/expectations have to evolve with that. As an example, to say that the promise to expand the Lakeshore service dates back to the 60s and early 70s may be true but, at that time, the Lakeshore line was the only rail service GO had, so that promise can not be taken in the same context now that there are 5 non-Lakeshore lines, each of which has far less service than Lakeshore and some of which (through time and changing demographics) serve higher population areas and, therefore, the potential fare recovery of expanding their service likely far exceeds doubling the off peak service on the Lakeshore line(s).
If anything, those "old" promises just show how valuable managing expectations (with fully thought out expansion plans - which include staffing) is. I am not making it up when I say the "old" promise to GTown riders was (paraphrase again) "if/when we get the money to do the corridor upgrades (including, but not limited to, the west Toronto Diamond and Union Station upgrades) the GTown line will get full service....until then, we will do the best we can".
So the day that work is complete in 2015 and the, now, K-W line does not get full service, that "old" promise is not deliverable and is as valuable as someone in the late 60s early 70s saying the service on Lakeshore will increase to 30 minute all day service.
If the reason that (or any) promises are broken is that they have not used their years (decades?) of lead time to resolve their crew/staffing issue(s) then, again, that is a failure of management.
Obviously, I have a "tie" to the K-W line but take that one out of the equation.....are we to actually believe (in the context now of system with 5 rail lines not on the Lakeshore) that increasing the service on Lakeshore to 30 minutes all day, 7 days a week, has a greater need and priority over any other line getting to the same service level as Lakeshore already has?
