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By GO Transit to Barrie for the day - Execution

Monday, May 25, 2015

A success; a learning experience too.

I left at 7:10 and walked down to Union passing through Ryerson which had no papers at 7:15 so I treated myself to a copy from the kiosk in the bus station.

I goofed and at 7:46 paid $27 for my ticket when I ought to have asked for a Senior’s ticket at roughly half-price. Next time ...

The bus pulled in, we boarded and left on time. So I settled back and read the paper after phoning a friend in Bradford to see if she was going to be in Barrie that day. No, but why don’t I drop in for supper on the way home and break my trip; it is an all-day ticket after all. Maybe. We’ll see ...

Non-stop to Aurora than several stops on the way to the GO bus terminal in Newmarket. Roadside stops are common, passengers flag down the bus, and when there is a York region Transit bus with us passengers have to indicate which bus is to stop. Both buses were cold, with the air-conditioning running full, it seemed, blast. I was glad to hop off in Barrie.

I hopped off the bus in Barrie and made straight for a little diner and breakfast for $4.99 – two eggs, bacon, toast, jam and coffee. A good start to my day’s stroll and it kept me going until about five o’clock.

Here is an All-Day Ticket; it is not a Return Ticket. I have friends in Bradford, and the bus goes through Bradford; I call up and make tentative plans to meet for supper on the way home. The all-day ticket lets me ride between Union Station and Barrie until midnight, and I can get off an explore wherever I want.

I foresee that a trip to, say, Peterborough could be broken early on for breakfast and a quick wander (buses are every two hours) and then continue up to Peterborough. Even break at a different town on the way back (supper and wander) before heading home.

We zoom up the 404 and I try to take a photo of green fields. By the time I realize that the auto-focus doo-dad in the camera will never be satisfied I am in a cutting; with the results you see here.

Sigh.

I try again. Waddyaknow; the scrub looks like scrub anywhere in Canada or Australia. Parts of the sky look blue, but that won’t last ...

We head north out of Bradford along Yonge Street. I can’t resist this shot.

Not two hours ago I was walking down Yonge Street, dusty, dirty, gritty, noisy Yonge Street, heading for Ryerson University to collect a newspaper. Now here we are in green field country.

After breakfast I wander the main street. We’ve had a rain shower before my arrival.

The main street boasts wooden walkways around patios where the restaurant has occupied the entire concrete sidewall. This lends the main street a cosmopolitan air.

At least, it would lend the main street a cosmopolitan air if there were any people around to BE cosmopolitan.

Dunlop street in the vibrant heart of vibrant downtown Barrie is deserted at eleven in the morning.

You can see another wooden bypass on the far side of the street near the end of the block.

I look back, across the western end of this walkway; not a soul in sight.

The bus terminal is off to the left, past the traffic-lights.

I make my way to the Town Hall, or City Council Building, whatever it is. It is here that you pay your bills, check on the date/time of your court appearance, and if you are a tourist, hope to receive information about the town.

I am not disappointed.

First off a transit map which was small enough to fit into my shirt pocket, but so large and detailed that I needed to fold it in half to follow my route on the bus.

There are eight local bus routes in Barrie; I rode two of them. Each route is a different colour on the map, so if you are on the Orange #7 it’s easy to see where you are going (“I bet we make a shallow right turn after the next lights ...”).

The schedule is easy to read. In essence a bus every thirty minutes.

Now if you are late for an appointment, 30 minutes is a deal-breaker, but when you are just going to the library or riding around like me, you know that f you can get to the terminal by ten past the hour, you’ll have ample time to find the 1A bus, and that if you are too late to catch that :15 bus, you can catch the 1B at :25 past the hour.

Neat. Clever. Thoughtful.

(I learned later that there are 10 buses on the #8 route at any time, five travelling Northwards, and five traveling southwards).

Something I had not realized was this: I think I could have hopped off the GO transit bus on my arrival and hopped straight on to a local bus without needing to pay the $2.60 senior’s fare.

I don’t begrudge my $2.60 contribution towards Barrie; it is a small price to pay for an hour or so riding around chatting with the local inhabitants.

And anyway, I wanted to consume an all-day breakfast by the time I arrived at 10:30.

More amazement: Barrie is a “Gateway To The North”; I could hop on to a Greyhound or similar coach service vehicle from here and explore more of the province.

Still wandering through the loot from City Hall: I received a large detailed map of the city. This would have been a great thing to study while eating breakfast, if I hadn’t had breakfast before going to City Hall.

For example, on the index above you can see that Holly Community Centre is identified by “18” on the map.

There it is, down in the south-western corner of the city.

Now I rode both the #7 and the #8 routes, and if I’d done my homework, I could have leapt off the bus at the Holly Community Centre and explored it briefly before continuing my journey around the city.

It would have been child’s play to locate one item of interest on each of the eight bus routes, then no matter which route I picked, there’d have been a mid-trip experience for me.

No wait! There’s more!!

The map contained a schematic map of the downtown core; to scale, I think.

City Hall and the Downtown Bus Terminal are clearly identified and visible across the downtown core, so with this map I can wander around without getting lost AND get an idea of how far it would be to wander to, say, the Allendale Waterfront GO Station.

No wait! There’s more!!

I didn’t make use of this booklet, yet, but will study it before returning to Barrie.

The booklet had a detailed map of the streets at the western end of Kempenfelt Bay.

Here’s the City Hall building at 70 Collier Street. This is a landmark and I could spot it from various spots around the downtown core.

Here’s another of those walk-around pedestrian boardwalks, this time outside a café. That’s the Police Headquarters and Downtown Bus Terminal in the background. The green copper roofing is visible for miles.

Then the rain came pelting down; I jumped on a bus that was just leaving, and here I am trying to get a shot as we trundle (zip, actually) through a rural part of the south-west corner of Barrie.

No matter what kind of speeding bus you are in, a camera will have problems focusing!

Well, a cheap camera like mine at any rate.

I tumbled onto the bus not soaked, but clearly caught in the onset of the sudden downpour; a young man and an old man struck up a conversation that lasted until they got off the bus.

I was struck by their ignorance of GO transit; it is, after all, the life line to Toronto for those without a car, and yet they both seemed to think that GO trains run all day in both directions. It was a surprise to them to learn that seven trains ran into Toronto in the morning, and the same seven trains ran out to Barrie in the afternoon.

Live in Barrie; work in Toronto.

No one ever seems to consider what it must mean to park seven trains to sit idle all day, and the crews?

Consider that to steer the 5:15 train from Barrie you must rise at perhaps 4:15 am. You arrive in Union Station at 7:03. Allow ten minutes to disgorge your load and check no one is sleeping on board, then the train must be shunted out of the way to make room for the next train.

Where does the train go? Presumably a few miles west of Union to the Mimico yards where it will sit until its 15:40 run back to Barrie.

And what of the driver? If he lives in Barrie, how does he get home? [Irony Alert] There are no trains at that hour, and if you’re lucky you could catch the 9:10 bus home that gets you to the Downtown Bus terminal at 11:30. And even then you’re still not home.

This scenario must be true for all GO train drivers excepting those on the Lakeshore Line; except for that line, all GO trains come into Toronto in the morning and leave in the evening.

The Glaswegian wished me well and offered me his Ride Card, which I refused. A nice offer though.

A Ride Card holding 10 rides would have cost me (senior’s rate) $23, and I understand that the card does not expire. If I were travelling to Barrie on a regular basis I could use up the rides over a period of many months; years even.

Or at the end of the day I could just hand it over to a citizen of Barrie.

When I boarded the bus the driver asked me if I wanted a transfer. “Yes Please! As a souvenir”.

We got to the furthest point on the route (the route changes from 7A to 7B) and the driver walked back and gave me a newer transfer, pointing out that since technically this was a new trip I could have a new transfer – valid for another 75 minutes.

It is small courtesies like this that make me want to spend five hours on Go Buses again just to feel so welcome when I get back here!

I love the style of the street signs downtown. They are not quite script, but they are not bring up-and-down letters either.

I felt right at home!

I thought that this was very clever advertising, and to show you how clever it is, I see that you, too, are reading the ad!

Just in case you didn’t get it ...

I visited Kelly’s about six years ago. It has changed.

The basement shelves used to be arranged with all the female authors on one side, all the male authors on the other, an arrangement that made little sense to me then.

Today all that has changed.

In the basement the books seem to be arranged by size - what books will best fit vertically, horizontally, or face-on into a particular space.

If you’re looking for a particular John Grisham hardback be prepared to spend an hour or so browsing.

Walking back from my first bus ride I spotted what appeared to be a pile of cardboard boxes.

It turned out to be a sculpture outside a Service Canada building.

Security didn’t know what it represented, so I Hied me back to the library.

The reference Librarians didn’t know either, and a couple of phone calls got them no further.

Upstairs the library has a garden reading area. I thought that quite clever. Grab a book from the shelf and sit outside in the sun or in the shade and enjoy the book.

Reading gardens they are called.

And the door tells you who to thank.

Back on the street. This older area of town reminds me of the red-brick towns in New York State, but I gathered that most of these houses house law firms, accountants, and the like.

I am walking down Mulcaster Street heading for the art gallery. The east-west streets II am crossing Collier heading towards Dunlop) seem to built on lake shore terraces, such as we see on Yonge Street from St Clair Avenue southwards.

The drop is evident in this photo.

This is the first wheelchair ramp I’ve met that slopes DOWNhill to the door. It’s not an optical illusion, it really does slope down, and saves walking down the sidewalk only to walk up the steps!

One gallery was given over to a retrospective of my great paintings.

Back on the street and here is a view of the lake side trail that runs eastwards along the north shore of Kempenfelt bay, out into Lake Simcoe proper.

And here’s a look back up Mulcaster Street, past the art gallery (on the right) and through the arch.

That’s the landmark Police Headquarters and Downtown Bus Terminal.

An odd event: The bus terminal security came outside and asked three smokers to move away from the doors, citing the many notices that prohibited smoking near the building.

The smokers moved away, but left me with the thought that it seems particularly stupid behavior literally outside the doors of the Police Headquarters!

Then my day sank to an all-time low. It doesn’t get any worse than this.

Ho hum.

Note that the #3 route city bus stops at bay #3.

And the #8 bus stops at bay #8.

How smart this bus system is!

Not much else to relate. I missed a GO bus by 15 minutes so went into a Pita shop and ordered and received a “Dagwood”. I can’t remember ever ordering a pita before; I’m not that kind of guy, but this pita made me want more next time. Thanks Guys.

So, 17:50 Go bus back to Newmarket, Go bus back to Union, and took the subway home. I was home by 8:30, so 2 hours 40 minutes door, in a manner of speaking, to door.

Conclusions

I did the day trip for under $50, and it would have been under $40 if I’d remembered to ask for the senior rate at the GO terminal.

That included a hearty all-day breakfast (that kept me going all day) and a $7 Pita sandwich before heading home.

Would I do the trip again? Yes. It is a trip that can be done on the spur of the moment, and I’d buy a 5-trip or 10-trip card at the bus terminal because then I could leap on and off, and the unused portion of the card does not expire.

I would catch the earlier GO bus and have an earlier breakfast to give me more time to circuit the city on the buses; and I’d leave later.

The alternative is to rent a car for 14 hours from Enterprise; this works out to about $100, all-up, including insurance, gas and so on. Add in the cost of a couple of meals and for two people renting a car is about as economical as traveling by GO Bus.

Next Time

(1) Examine the local transit system in detail; send an email to the info@ asking if the first bus ride off GO Transit is free..

(2) Check Library hours, in case a smaller library is closed one weekday each week.

(3) Take a lunch in a small plastic bag if a cash budget is in force. Use the (saved) lunch money to buy a second-hand book as a memento.

(4) Ask for Senior’s rates.

(5) Save time and money by taking my own breakfast, lunch, supper.

(6) Increase the fun of being away by not taking my own breakfast, lunch, supper.

(7) Examine intervening towns and consider a break in the trip home for supper.

(8) Locate the bus terminal and major hubs. Enquire about printed transit maps. Ask about multiple-ride tickets.

(9) Locate the City hall and BIA offices. Enquire about printed transit maps.

(10) Study local transit and make a tentative plan for trips around town; especially check the intervals between buses (e.g. “every 30 minutes”)

(11) Study the city map and make a tentative plan for visiting specific places around town. Locate one item of interest on each of the bus routes.

(12) Take a small plastic lidded box for plant samples.

(13) Ask about the transfer system on city buses

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416-993-4953 CPRGreaves@gmail.com

Toronto, Wednesday, July 22, 2015 2:27 PM

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