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GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

robmausser said:
I don't mean to derail this thread (hehehe) but all this talk about Cottage country and GO trains got me thinking.

What does everyone think the next major extension of the GO train will/should be and why?

Richmond hill line north? Niagara year round service? Milton train to Cambridge?Stouffville line to Uxbridge?

What do you think the next entirely new line will be?

Bolton line? Peterborough line? Seaton line? Orangeville line? GO midtown line?

I'm curious to hear everyone's thoughts.

I'd bet on a Niagara extension first, as the local municipality is asking for it and the train already runs there seasonally. That or an extension of Richmond Hill line.
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Well, if the municipality in Niagara is asking for it then sure it should be them....no other municipality has ever thought of the bold step of asking for service ;)

The answer to your question is, clearly, "where the votes are needed"......anyone who has ever studied transit planning knows that the first factor in any transit plan is vote buying. :)
 
robmausser said:
I don't mean to derail this thread (hehehe) but all this talk about Cottage country and GO trains got me thinking.

What does everyone think the next major extension of the GO train will/should be and why?

Richmond hill line north? Niagara year round service? Milton train to Cambridge?Stouffville line to Uxbridge?

What do you think the next entirely new line will be?

Bolton line? Peterborough line? Seaton line? Orangeville line? GO midtown line?

I'm curious to hear everyone's thoughts.

I'd bet on a Niagara extension first, as the local municipality is asking for it and the train already runs there seasonally. That or an extension of Richmond Hill line.
Click to expand...

I'd like to see the next one-stop extension actually be Kitchener West. GO is going to need to boost their numbers west of Georgetown a little bit, and building a Park N Ride station in the west end of Kitchener (probably at Ira Needles), may provide that boost. The current Kitchener station will be great for transit connections, but pretty lousy for anyone who chooses to drive to a station. The lack of parking, plus the not-yet-arrived great transit connections, is really hampering ridership IMO.

The next entirely new line I think will be a service to Woodbridge/Bolton. Seems like one of the few 905 areas without GO service.

Planning work is already underway for the Lakeshore East diversion and extension into Downtown Oshawa and onto Bowmanville, so I guess from an infrastructure perspective that's probably the next major work.
 
The GO network could benefit from a lot of extensions, and thankfully more than a few are already in the cards (barring disaster come June 12). Of all of them, the extension of Lakeshore East through Oshawa proper to Bowmanville is probably a big one. Kitchener West, the Niagara extension, and a Woodbridge/Bolton Line (like Gweed mentioned) are all vying for next place, although a Bolton line I think should be high up there if only for bringing proper GO service to that particular underserved northwestern corner.

Seaton, some day down the road, would be a nice network addition, but I personally take a pretty great issue with the Seaton development so I'm not a big supporter of it. That, plus Seaton is currently still empty fields.

Peterborough is an interesting thought as well. I'd love to see GO service to there, although I doubt it's coming for a while.
 
salsa said:
Recently I rode the Lakeshore East train on the weekend, and there were almost no people on the train. It's nice that the service is now 30 min (with further improvements planned) but I have to wonder if it's really necessary.
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I take it all the time too and think "wow what a waste of diesel".

Its not that the service isnt used, it just doesnt need a 12 car bi-level train to do it.

I dont understand why they cant just have a 3 or 4 car train. Why don't they take off bilevel cars as demand changes?

Maybe its too much of a hassle?
 
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its easier and cheaper to simply pay the bit extra for the additional diesel than to spend hundred of millions of dollars on an off peak fleet.
 
salsa said:
Recently I rode the Lakeshore East train on the weekend, and there were almost no people on the train. It's nice that the service is now 30 min (with further improvements planned) but I have to wonder if it's really necessary.
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That's not my observation on the weekend. What time of day did you arrive and leave Union?
 
salsa said:
Recently I rode the Lakeshore East train on the weekend, and there were almost no people on the train. It's nice that the service is now 30 min (with further improvements planned) but I have to wonder if it's really necessary.
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nfitz said:
That's not my observation on the weekend. What time of day did you arrive and leave Union?
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My personal observations are limited to TFC matches. I train in (from the west) on the one that gets me there around 1/2 hour before kick off and it is very well used. Similarly, the first one that leaves after the match is jam packed........if, as I sometimes do, I hang around and have a meal in LV then take the train......it is very, very, sparsely populated.
 
nfitz said:
That's not my observation on the weekend. What time of day did you arrive and leave Union?
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Sunday May 11, 6:05 pm: Rouge Hill GO --> Union
Tuesday May 13, 7:55 pm: Eglinton GO --> Union

On sunday there were just a couple of people in my carriage upstairs. On Tuesday I was the only person in my carriage for the entire ride. The only other time that I used Lakeshore East was before the introduction of 30 minute service.
 
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you are using counter peak services on really low use times.. its obviously going to be pretty empty. Those trips are probably some of the emptiest trips in the day. If you had even been riding in the other direction, the amount of people that were on board would have been much higher. Peak direction mid day trains are usually quite full. (I.E. 10am from Pickering heading into Union)
 
I see. I haven't yet used the train during those busier times. I've done Oakville to Union once on a midday weekend, and it was well used.
 
salsa said:
Sunday May 11, 6:05 pm: Rouge Hill GO --> Union
Tuesday May 13, 7:55 pm: Eglinton GO --> Union

On sunday there were just a couple of people in my carriage upstairs. On Tuesday I was the only person in my carriage for the entire ride. The only other time that I used Lakeshore East was before the introduction of 30 minute service.
Click to expand...

I'd expect that a lot of people would have boarded those trains at Union to ride to Exhibition/Aldershot.
 
interesting factoid on CTVToronto's news at 11:30 tonight.

They did a piece on the combined Gardiner and Lakeshore construction projects and the effect on driving commutes. At the end of the bit they mentioned that the traffic congestion may be moving more people to public transit based on a comment from GO that they are "getting 500 more trips a day on the Lakeshore line".

Aside from making some sense, that comment also points out how important trains are over buses.....while people served by the LS lines have a way of avoiding those roads, the rest of us are getting very regular text messages from GO telling us just how delayed their schedules are because of the heavy traffic.
 
yesterday, on twitter, Glen Murray released (for the first time as far as i can tell) how the 15 minute GO service will be rolled out.

Glen Murray ‏@Glen4ONT May 23
@GTAMOVEnetwork #GO lakeshore would be electrified & operating on a 15 min schedule by 2017-18 if we r reelected. Entire system by 2024-25.

So, again, additional service on the line with 30 minute service 7 days a week has priority over the rest of the system.
 
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