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GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)
- Thread starter drum118
- Start date
Megaton327
Senior Member
Yes, as I mentioned a page or two ago it is returning, identical to what was offered last year, beginning Saturday June 25th. Check the GO Schedule for the line, set the date to any Saturday/Sunday/holiday after the 25th and before Labour Day.
Many on this forum have stated that they have information that the service will be made permanent as of this summer, i.e. it will continue on weekends instead of ending Labour Day; confirmation will presumably come, or not, closer to September.
TOareaFan
Superstar
My wife came downtown for lunch today....becoming the first person in our family to ride one of those mid day trains on the Kitchener line. She got on at MP and was feeling very lonely by the lack of passengers.....then, bam, it got to Bramalea and a "whole whack of people got on" (maybe Bramalea is not as bad a transit hub as some think? 
)....never filled up like a rush hour train but was "well used" at that point. The negative observation she made was (fair comment) "how come that train takes a whole hour when it is normally about 55 minutes?"....she thinks it has a lot to do with the (very) long stopover/wait at Bloor.
)....never filled up like a rush hour train but was "well used" at that point. The negative observation she made was (fair comment) "how come that train takes a whole hour when it is normally about 55 minutes?"....she thinks it has a lot to do with the (very) long stopover/wait at Bloor.cbrown2009
Active Member
I use the midday service regularly, mostly from Bramalea, occasionally from downtown Brampton. Maybe twice from Mount Pleasant. My schedule varies so I'm on at various times throughout the day. Generally I've seen a steady upward trend in ridership whenever I ride, which is positive. Each week there seems to be a few more riders.
I think ridership would go up even more with evening service as people who would take a train later on in the day but end up on a bus on the return trip see trains extended into the evening. And I myself tend to drive to Port Credit or Long Branch on the weekends/holidays when heading in for work or social activities and have met others who do the same so, imho, service at those times could bring some relief to the Lakeshore trains, especially pre and post sporting and special events. So hopefully evening/weekends come on line by September as well, if not before (Yes I know it may be too late for "before" but one can dream, can't he)...
I think ridership would go up even more with evening service as people who would take a train later on in the day but end up on a bus on the return trip see trains extended into the evening. And I myself tend to drive to Port Credit or Long Branch on the weekends/holidays when heading in for work or social activities and have met others who do the same so, imho, service at those times could bring some relief to the Lakeshore trains, especially pre and post sporting and special events. So hopefully evening/weekends come on line by September as well, if not before (Yes I know it may be too late for "before" but one can dream, can't he)...
mdrejhon
Senior Member
Grasa fire as a GO train delay excuse? That IS a new one.
Does that qualify for a refund?
wopchop
Building Toronto
My Mother has been delayed before due to grass fires on the line in the King City area.Grasa fire as a GO train delay excuse? That IS a new one.
Does that qualify for a refund?
reaperexpress
Senior Member
People might not think they want to go to Bramalea, but they actually do. Going to Bramalea means taking the 407, which avoids the worst parts of the 401.
For passengers headed downtown, the train portion then lets them avoid traffic on the 427 and Gardiner. In the end, the 10 minutes spent transferring at Bramalea are more than offset by the time saved by avoiding traffic on the 401, 427 and Gardiner. In theory, Greyhound is scheduled at 1h40 from Kitchener to Toronto, but in practice it rarely sticks to that schedule. Meanwhile, GO's current Kitchener Train + Route 30 bus combo is scheduled as fast as 1h45, and that's a schedule it actually keeps. In fact, westbound buses often arrive in Kitchener as much as 10 minutes ahead of schedule.
Then there's the fact that not everyone wants to go downtown. I, for example, travel often between K-W and North York. For me, Greyhound is basically useless, but GO's Waterloo-407 routes (30 and 25F) are perfect, except that they only run a couple times per day, and a couple days a week, respectively. If I'm on route 30, which terminates at Bramalea, I can easily transfer to the 407 East service (45,46,47,48), which runs every 15 minutes or better all day. Thanks to the more direct route and avoidance of the 410, the routes via Bramalea save me 10-20 minutes compared to the typical transfer at Square One.
GO Route 25 already provides hourly or better all-day service to Square One. During peak periods (friday afternoons during the school year), there are buses every 10 minutes between Waterloo and Square One, most of which operate express. That's in addition to service every 30 minutes from Waterloo to York U via Bramalea which is not timed to meet trains there.
Sure, let's think about that.
A train trip from Bramalea to Union takes 37 minutes, while a trip from Milton to Union takes 64 minutes.
Since there isn't currently a Kitchener-Milton express bus, I'll use Google Maps to estimate the bus travel times times. Without any traffic, it takes 38 minutes from Kitchener to Milton, and 51 minutes from Kitchener to Bramalea.
Assuming a standard 10 minute transfer* and an arbitrary 10 minutes of schedule padding** for both buses, we get:
Kitchener-Toronto via Bramalea:
61 min bus + 10 min transfer + 37 min train = 1h48
Kitchener-Toronto via Milton:
48 min bus + 10 min transfer + 64 min train = 2h02
So even if we were okay with dumping even more passengers onto our most crowded line (which we aren't), and if the Milton Line had all-day train service (which it doesn't), it would be substantially slower for most passengers.
*Technically, GO generally schedules 15 minutes in the eastbound direction but only 10 minutes westbound, since buses will hold for late trains, but trains will not hold for late buses. The resulting travel times are therefore only realistic for westbound trips. Eastbound travel times would be about 5 minutes longer.
**The existing Route 30 Kitchener-Bramalea express bus bus trips are scheduled for between 55 and 75 minutes depending on time of day. The arbitrary 10 minutes of padding roughly aligns with an off-peak trip: the two existing westbound off-peak train+bus trips via Bramalea are scheduled for 1h45 and 1h46, very close to the 1h48 estimate found here.
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crs1026
Superstar
I'm not really opposed to Bramalea per se - if the connections work, and if the ridership turns up, that's compelling. It would be nicer if the train connection ran all day and evening, every day.
I was reacting more to the realization that there is no such thing as travelling 'Express' into Downtown Toronto any more. I'm old enough to remember Gray Coach making it downtown to downtown in 1:20 or less. The new service is appropriate for today's 401 realities. However, until we have an express something, we have sure fallen behind.
- Paul
I was reacting more to the realization that there is no such thing as travelling 'Express' into Downtown Toronto any more. I'm old enough to remember Gray Coach making it downtown to downtown in 1:20 or less. The new service is appropriate for today's 401 realities. However, until we have an express something, we have sure fallen behind.
- Paul
denfromoakvillemilton
Senior Member
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I hope so. Should be Mount Pleasant as promised.
steveintoronto
Superstar
This isn't Kitchener, but Guelph, June 26, 1927. The express, which isn't on this schedule, made it on faster time than GO does today. And this was an Interurban!
http://www.trainweb.org/oldtimetrains/TSR/guelph_radial.htm
Times would be faster still if the distance over the local Guelph tram system to the C.N. station wasn't included. End of the Interurban's track where it joined the Guelph system was immediately north of today's Guelph University, and there was a station and unused transformer station there, the latter for an extension to (then Berlin) that was never built.
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reaperexpress
Senior Member
I'm confident this route will do fine. Route 30's ridership is currently fairly low, but steadily growing. Five years ago, I would sometimes be the only person on the bus, but nowadays there's generally around 10-20 people. And many of them are visibly not going to/from downtown Toronto, but rather to/from Brampton, Vaughan or North York. Last time I took the 14:33 from Bramalea, almost a quarter of the passengers were waiting at the stop before the connecting train pulled in.
Of the people I've spoken to, hardly anyone considers GO for Kitchener-Toronto trips other than the two train trips. With all-day service, I expect Route 30 to get a much bigger presence in people's consciousness. The response I've heard to the all-day bus announcement has almost entirely been "this is long overdue", or "I can't wait till September". This improvement is far more exciting than the two extra peak direction train trips.
Indeed. On that topic, the one disappointing revelation from the recent Kitchener announcement is that the two new peak-direction trips will be extensions of existing Georgetown trips. That means it's unlikely that any of them will operate express from Bramalea, as had been suggested in an earlier announcement. And if they convert the 18:50 westbound train+bus trip to a direct local train, they'll be adding a whopping 20 minutes to the journey.
I took the Kitchener train this week, and it seems every time I ride, there's a new slow zone on the Metrolinx Guelph subdivision. There has always been the awful 10 mph through Guelph, and I think the one west of Georgetown is old too (though soon to be eliminated by the current railway widening project) but now there are also slow zones at the bridge over Victoria St. in Kitchener, and at one of the road bridges between Kitchener and Guelph (Shantz Station Rd?).
Greyhound still operates direct buses between Kitchener and downtown Toronto, and the first westbound weekday express trip is in fact scheduled for 1h20, though I doubt they manage to keep that schedule if there's any kind of traffic. Express trips the rest of the day are scheduled for 1h40 to 1h50, probably due to an extra stop in Cambridge.
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steveintoronto
Superstar
Not to mention the train often sitting in Guelph station ostensibly waiting for clearance to proceed to Kitchener. On the second evening run, I'd get off at Guelph, and look back up to ten minutes later, and the train was still sitting there.
I was going to head out to Guelph with bike on Friday to cycle down to Hamilton (all back roads, mostly Valens Rd) but the thought of being on GO train, transfer at Mt Pleasant, then the 33 bus for roughly two hours immediately killed the thought. You can make it back from Hamilton in under an hour on the express bus, (faster than the train from Aldershot) which is really reasonable, albeit it means arriving at Union since it's non-stop, but there has to be better way to Guelph/K-W. I'd consider VIA, except there's no baggage on that route, and even if there was, they'd charge for it. You'd think they cater to carry-on bikes, (they used to in days past) but hey...Canada (with very few exceptions) is still stuck in the past, except the past did a lot better than today in many respects.
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reaperexpress
Senior Member
Yeah, when I took the Kitchener train this week from Bramalea to Kitchener, it was operating on time so I got to see how much they pad the schedules. It arrived Bramalea nearly four minutes ahead of schedule, which is fair enough given the risk of CN-related delays starting there. The dwell at Georgetown is also understandable for the same reason. But it seems a bit odd to have all that time sitting around in Acton and Guelph stations, since there's not as much to go wrong in that stretch. Departing Guelph on time, we arrived in Kitchener almost 7 minutes ahead of schedule, even despite all the aforementioned slow zones. It would be nice if they could cut a couple minutes from Guelph and Acton, to let trains get to Kitchener even earlier when things are working properly.
Until the schedule revamp last year which added the midday trains and local buses to Guelph, there was also a route 39 which operated express from Bramalea to Guelph via the 407, stopping only at Aberfoyle and GuelphU. There is still route 48 which runs via the 407, but it spends so much time wandering around Meadowvale that it undoes most of the time savings from the 407. And it's not timed to meet trains at Bramalea.
steveintoronto
Superstar
I think you're right, it's the padding of the schedule that has them waiting in Guelph, the only possible reason being departure time for those one or two passengers that take the train back to K-W from Guelph. There's no rail traffic at that time, the local GEXR freights long gone earlier in the day back west. It adds insult to injury as to how slow that train can and does move.
That was a great bus! However, only a handful of people used the one run in the morning, and the one in evening from Bramalea. I actually rode it one time as the *only* passenger on board. I had a personally chauffeured express to Bramalea. The scheduled travel time for that bus was exactly the same as the train. That's because it used the 407 and 401, the advantage of Bramalea station over Mt Pleasant for bus connections. It meant if you missed the later morning train into Union, you could still get there an hour later.
Various reasons could be proffered on why ridership was so pathetic, but it bodes poorly for suggested rider demand, at least from Guelph to Bramalea to Toronto. There's a similar express bus, or used to be, to/from K-W to Milton, one run each way each work day to connect with the peak time trains. The only reason I found out about that is the route map shows a connection between Milton Park and Ride (401) and Milton GO train station. It boggles the mind that they don't have some kind of connection between the two stops during the day. If I cycle between the two, and use my Presto card as instructed, it costs me *two trips*. I just buy the paper ticket to get myself through there instead of the long way around. Presto penalizes you for saving them carriage distance and time.
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