wopchop
Building Toronto
As someone who used to ride these trains regularly its too many stops.
Wyoming, Woodstock, Ingersoll, Glencoe stops are a joke.
You can't just stop at every town, you gotta cross reference projected potential ridership of said stops versus how many riders you will dissuade from taking the train.
Like me for example, they added more and more stops and got rid of any 'express' service until it was no longer worth it taking the milk-run 5 hour train to Sarnia. So I bought a car.
I don't disagree that some stops might have to be eliminated. But ssiguy should cut out the hyperbole. There aren't a huge number of stops at all. Even with the stops that you mentioned, Ingersoll & Glencoe are only served by 2 trains a week.
I also disagree that the stops are the biggest hindrance on VIA's schedule. I believe that there was a good analysis done on this (maybe in this very thread) by reaperexpress. The CEO himself admitted that trains currently average 112 km/h, and that poor infrastructure is preventing them from traveling closer to their top speed of 170km/h. The best way to speed up the service would be to invest in the infrastructure, which the managers of the railway seem to agree with.
To see this, all you need to do is look at the schedule, compare train #71 to train #83. Train #71 makes all station stops to London and takes 2:10 minutes. Train #83 skips 2 station stops (Oakville & Ingersoll) and takes 2:12 minutes. Obviously the two trains are operating at two different times of the day, but to me, that only reinforces the point that the schedule is limited by the infrastructure. The PM Peak Train #83 is competing with local GO PM Peak service for track time.
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