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GO Transit Timetables

A recent trip to Hamilton brought me a surprise on the return journey. By accidental comment I discovered that train-via-Aldershot isn’t the only way to travel between Toronto’s Union Station and Hamilton’s train station. Although if the truth be told, in this case is travel between a spot across the other side of Bay Street from Union Station to a point in Hamilton where, in general, passenger trains don’t run. But that’s another story ...

For 30+ years I had thought that the only regular way to travel was by GO Train from Union (Toronto) to Aldershot-GO, and then transfer to a GO Transit bus and ride to Hamilton. The return journey being by GO bus from Hamilton to Aldershot, then transfer to a train for Toronto.

It turns out that there is a non-stop express bus service every 30 minutes in both directions. Who knew?

I took the bus home, a 50-minute trip (this time of day) which is significantly less than one and a half to two hours!

These figures from a previous essay give you an idea. The bus ride cuts the trip in half, literally.

So the next day I hied me back to Union Station and asked a clerk at the Ticket-Wicket why these superb bus trips weren’t shown in my copy of “Lakeshore West Go Train and Bus schedule” on which “Hamilton Go Centre” is a prominent feature.

After all, you’d think that if you were reading something about “Bus” and “Hamilton” that you could learn about buses running to and from Hamilton.

No.

There is a separate timetable “Hamilton/Toronto Express GO Bus Schedule” which describes the buses.

“Why not merge the two timetables into one convenient form for people who plan a trip between Toronto and Hamilton?”

Because there’s too much information and it wouldn’t fit!

So I examined the two timetables.

	Lakeshore West Go Train and Bus schedule	Hamilton/Toronto Express GO Bus Schedule
Sheets of paper	3	2
Pages	6	4
Cover page	Yes	Yes
“How to read our schedules” (Eng)	Yes	Yes
“How to read our schedules” (Fr)	Yes	Yes
Monday-Friday eastbound	2 pages	1 page
Monday-Friday westbound	2 pages	1 page
Saturday & Sunday eastbound	1 page	1 page
Saturday & Sunday westbound	1 page	1 page
Notes (blank, lined)	2 pages	None
Map showing BOTH routes	1 page	1 page

You can see photos of some of the pages below.

In terms of data content, merging the Bus-Express timetable into the Train/Bus timetable would add four pages of data, the four pages highlighted in the rightmost column of the table above.

But clearly “Notes” pages aren’t an essential component of the timetables – they are a space-filler, and don’t appear in the Bus-Express timetable, so there needs be in effect only two extra pages.

But for that you need a complete sheet anyway, so just add a sheet to the Train/Bus timetable and eliminate one sheet of paper.

Overall Impact:-

(1) One timetable booklet instead of two; better data for passengers who are planning a trip.

(2) Save one sheet of paper from production costs.

(3) Reduce complexity all the way from Inventory Control, Re-ordering, to the display stands scattered across the Province of Ontario

I’m just sayin’ ...

The two covers, train/bus on the left, express bus on the right

Train/Bus: “How to read” pages, identical in all schedules. (There’s a thought: How about a compact all-our-service catalogue, like Amtrak does!)

Train/Bus: Mon-Fri eastbound

Train/Bus: Mon-Fri westbound

Train/Bus: Sat-Sun eastbound and westbound

Train/Bus: Space-filler pages

Train/Bus: map

Bus/Express: “How to read” pages, identical in all schedules. (There’s a thought: How about a compact all-our-service catalogue, like Amtrak does!)

Bus/Express: Mon-Fri eastbound and westbound.

The bulk of these two pages of data tell us that buses leave both terminals every half-hour on the hour and at half-past the hour. In the morning peak eastbound (“Going to work in Toronto”) the afternoon peak westbound (“Going home to Hamilton”) the schedule to every ten or twenty minutes.

Still and all you could do worse than just memorize “I should be at the terminal before the hour or half-hour” and you wouldn’t need a timetable.

Bus/Express: Sat-Sun eastbound and westbound

Bus/Express: map

If all of this is too complex for GO Transit to put into effect, they might at least print on the cover of each schedule pamphlet “Please note that there is another pamphlet that might interest you”, or similar!

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Bonavista, Wednesday, June 03, 2020 12:02 AM

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