How GO Transit Plots and Schemes and Rips Off Its Customers

The goal was to meet at the Appleby’s Restaurant out at Meadowvale Town Centre on Saturday afternoon. The planning on Friday was straightforward – scoot over to GO Transit’s web site and locate the best way to get to Meadowvale Town Centre a little before my scheduled time for the meeting.

To my delight the GO Transit web site showed TWO buses leaving Union GO Bus Terminal on the half hour every half hour, and one bus was a non-stop express to Meadowvale Town Centre. Maybe GO Transit is improving. You think?

Heading Out

I left home at 10:54 for the sunlit walk down Bay Street to Union GO Bus Terminal arriving there at 11:20, enough time to check the balance on my Presto card and top it up with a $20 bank note should I need to.

No Buses!

The Gardiner Expressway is closed for repairs all weekend, so I have to trudge over to the York Concourse and catch a GO Train for Port Credit and then transfer to a modified GO Bus service – same route number – to get to Meadowvale Town Centre. I say “trudge” because as I have previously documented, you have two choices. (1) walk out of the Union GO Bus Terminal and negotiate the streets and intersections and road traffic on foot and then re-enter the Union Station terminal or (2) hike up two flights of stairs, walk along platform 3, and then descend stairs and attack York Concourse from the rear. I chose option (2) and within five minutes was staring at the screen that said a train west would leave at 11:43.

I checked the balance on my Presto card and found I had $30.60, plenty, I knew, for a short trip out to Mississauga and back.

I was ticked off that when I used the interactive schedule doo-dad on the web site yesterday, there had been no easily recognized caution along the lines of “Although we are telling you it’s a forty-minute trip at 11:30, it doesn’t exist on account of schedule changes”.

It would have been nice to see the real-time interactive schedule change, but if nothing else, at minimum, a link to a page that detailed the effects of the closures.

Something.

So I went to the York Concourse ticket booths to ask for a complaint form, and the lady in the wicket assured me that all I needed to do was hop on the train, hop off at Port Credit, and hop on the 21B bus I would find waiting for me there.

I made my way towards the platforms 5&6 area and lined up to check with an Information Officer who was helping another couple in the concourse, but when it came to my turn, he said to me “I have to go” and scooted off without a backward glance.

I would come to regret his action.

At 11:43 the train grumbled out of Union Station, but only after I had tapped my Presto Card and learned that $5.30 had been taken off it, and so the balance was reported now as $25.30.

This is how Ontario has implemented Presto. At the start of your journey there is deducted from your balance the cost of the maximum fare on this line. Since I am tapping in the vast York Concourse, the maximum fare is (probably) the maximum fare on the Lakeshore Corridor, since that is the only line running on weekends.

We slid in to Port Credit at 12:09, thus about nine minutes after my planned arrival time at Meadowvale Town Centre. I hopped on the bus and tapped my card under the eagle-eye of the bus-driver. I asked him how I could find out the new balance – for I figured it must be less than $25.30 by now – but he said it didn’t show, so I sat down.

Vroom-vroom we trundled, me and the bus, out of Port Credit at 12:14, north up Highway 10 to the QEW, west along the QEW to Erin Mills Parkway, then North up Erin Mills Parkway until we reached MillCreek Drive.

I know the area around MillCreek Drive and Meadowvale Town Centre, for thirty years ago I worked for a firm called Comark at 6789 MillCreek Drive. At the time it was the last building before the GO Station where sat a large water-tank atop a spindle base, a landmark visible for miles from all around. I was always ticked off that trains ran IN from Meadowvale GO station, but not out in the mornings. through Kipling subway station where I lived, and ran out but not in in the afternoons. I was forced to spend an hour and twenty minutes aboard what was then a #19 Mississauga bus which provided a scenic tour of Streetsville.

I jump off the bus at 12:48. I have been carried one stop beyond Meadowvale Town Centre because I was slow in pressing the strip, so the driver sailed past the stop and dropped me off five minutes walk away. Five minutes walk is not a bad thing for me; I need the exercise.

But note well that I have arrived over three-quarters of an hour later than my scheduled time. A forty-five minute delay on a forty-minute trip is inexcusable. GO Transit could have found a faster route, I am sure (see “Questions” below), but as a minimum should have had impossible-to-ignore warnings on the web site.

Heading Back

The 21B bus slid out of Meadowvale GO Station at 17:55. And mirable dictu! We jumped on to Highway 401 Eastbound. Can this mean that the repairs on the Gardiner are finished? Will this be a 30-minute trip back to Union GO Bus Terminal?

No.

At 18:20 we drop off Highway 427 southbound and head for The Queensway. I know this area well, too, for I lived in and around here for thirty years.

We roll westwards along The Queensway (some of you will have figured out that our destination (Union GO Bus Terminal) is east of us, and you may be wondering, as was I, why we are now heading west along The Queensway) reaching Dixie Road at 18:27. Let me not bore you with accounts of the delays at each set of stop lights, but there were many.

South on Dixie to the North Service Road and then Westwards(!) along the North Service Road so that we can wait at the stop lights for Cawthra Road South.

At 18:35 we are on the QEW westbound(!) travelling at 100 Km per hour away from Union Station. We reach Hurontario Street at 18:36, and slide into the bus bay farthest from the train station at Port Credit at 18:41, in plenty of time to see the 18:41 train eastbound to Union Station slide out of Port Credit without us.

This turns out to be a good thing – having half an hour to wait for the next train – because I soak up fifteen minutes of that time arguing with two GO clerks about why my Presto Card should have gotten so low that there are insufficient funds to get me back to Union Station.

I have swiped my card on the little green machine and been informed that I have insufficient funds.

I am not the only unhappy chappy here. Crowds mill about asking questions. It is not an unruly mob by world standards, but it is unruly by Toronto GTA standards.

So, here I am at Port Credit having managed to drain $30.60 from my Presto card on what should have been a $12 day. Where has the money gone? You will find that I have written elsewhere about the idiocy of a card that goes ka-ching each time you use it. In particular I have established comparisons with the Transilien Navigo Card which costs me €73 (regular fare, not seniors fare) for a whole month’s travel across 12,000 square kilometres, an area equal to a semi-circle arcing from Kitchener through Orillia to Cobourg.

I join a line-up at the kiosk to find out what else can have gone wrong.

The young and inexperienced clerk (Jill) takes my card, stares at her screen (of whose edge I have a clear view, but I am not privy to the screen itself) and tells me that I tapped my card twice at Union Station on the way out. Now this is not a satisfactory explanation for exhausting $30 of funds. Ten dollars, maybe, but not an extra twenty.

So I press for more details. Much discussion ensues, and the older clerk next to her gets involved, twice. The usual idiocy ensues: I am not allowed to hear their discussion because they are behind a sound-proof Plexi-glass screen. This is news to Older Guy too, because he turns to me and I am supposed to lip-read what he says, what with the hub-bub arising from the noisy crowd behind me, so Older Guy’s comments are relayed through Jill’s brain and so to a small microphone.

More discussion. I am not happy with all the money taken off my card, but I can see a mechanical process going on here. I don’t agree with it, but still there remains eleven dollars missing over and above Jill’s machinations.

Jill asks me if I would like her to refund “The ten dollars ninety” which corresponds to my rough estimate of eleven dollars. I am tempted to answer “No; let’s ear-mark it for customer service education”, but greed overtakes my higher sentiments and I accept the refund.

Jill has augmented my balance by $11.90, not $10.90. Still and all it is close enough to the eleven dollars that I had calculated in my head.

Note that in the fine tradition of Metrolinx, when money is added to your Presto card, you are not informed of the new balance.

At 18:57 I essay again with my Presto Card, tapping it on entrance to the platform tunnel and note that $5.30 has been deducted. This is the normal heist, and in theory some of this $5.30 will be returned when I “tap off” at Union. The $5.30 is enough to get me to Oshawa.

As if!

Now most of this discussion with Jill comes under the heading of a joke, something to be laughed at, you know, these-things-do-happen, but the trouble is it is not a joke, because these-things-do-happen far too often with GO Transit.

“There’s been a lot of confusion with the Gardiner being closed” says Jill, in this year’s claim for the most self-evident statement, but this double-dipping into my Presto card is nothing to do with today’s Gardiner closure. The bus routes could have been streamlined. Better notice could have been made on the web site. Information Officers armed with special knowledge for the bus shuttle could have been set in place.

In particular, Computer Systems are well able to be programmed to recognise a series of taps or swipes in real time as being a journey that progresses from Union Station through Port Credit and onto a special-shuttle bus to Meadowvale as being the equivalent of a single bus journey from Union GO Bus Terminal to Meadowvale, and to levy the correct charge. It is called “Programming Computers” and it has been going on for at least fifty years.

It’s just that GO Transit appears to be incapable of supporting a system that works.

At 19:11 the next GO train glides giddily out of Port Credit station and I reflect on my great wisdom in not setting up an auto-top-up scheme for my Presto Card. I make a point of handing over a twenty-dollar bank note when I see that the balance has fallen below twenty dollars.

People using the auto-top-up scheme would find two failings:-

(1) I believe the web site warns that it may take a day or two (business days?) for the top-up to take effect. My Presto Card would have dipped below any preset limit during this Friday, so an auto-top-up would not have taken effect in time for my trip home this night.

(2) I would have to monitor my Presto Card balances and my credit card payments (two accounts to monitor instead of one) to catch errors like today’s as they are entered. That would of course, mean a telephone call at a later date, trying to reverse credit-card charges from up to a month before, for a trip that by then would be fading into memory. Unless I kept detailed travel notes of each trip, in pen or pencil in my hard-backed paper notebook.

Note too that if I were not monitoring my Presto card, GO Transit would have effectively stolen $28.60 from me this day.

At 19:37 we arrive at Union and I make my way to the ticket counters for yet-another-long-conversation with a clerk.

Note that my trip from Meadowvale Go Station has taken the best part of two hours for what should have been a forty-minute trip. This morning’s trip out should have been 42 minutes but took an hour and eighteen. This evening’s trip should have been 55 minutes (why not 42?) but took an hour and forty minutes.

The clerk at Union Station was gracious, calming, patient, and wonderful.

As best as I can make out, here is a summary of the problems I caused or encountered.

(1) I should NOT have tapped my card to board the train at Union Station. I should just have hopped on the train without tapping. Nowhere and at no time was this made clear to me. It goes completely against GO recommendations, and had I done it I would have sat in fear of the ticket-police.

(2) Jill claimed that I tapped twice in Union Station. I think I didn’t, but the system says I did. I am not sure what happened here. Did I take two simultaneous trips to Port Credit?

(3) Because I tapped on the train and didn’t tap off (remember: “just hop off at Port Credit, and hop on the 21B bus”) I got dinged for the entire train trip all the way to Hamilton.

(4) Jill claims that I didn’t tap ON the bus at Port Credit on the way out. I know that I did, because I asked the driver where I could read out my new balance, and he said it wasn’t possible. (Don’t get me started ...) So when I tapped OFF the bus one stop beyond Meadowvale Town Centre the system would have read that as me tapping ON the bus, and since I didn’t tap off that phantom bus ride, I would have been dinged for the entire 21B route, which is a trip between Union GO Bus Terminal and Milton Go Station.

(5) I should NOT have tapped my card to board the train at Port Credit Station on the way home. I should just have hopped on the train without tapping. Nowhere and at no time was this made clear to me. It goes completely against GO recommendations, and had I done it I would have sat in fear of the ticket-police.

Nice-Clerk at Union Station has augmented my balance by $16.70. I am still (the next day) not clear on where this refund arose.

Note that with an initial balance of $30.60, and $28.60 refunded, there must have been only $2.00 left on my card when first I tried to swipe it at Port Credit station on my way home.

Note that in the fine tradition of GO Transit and the Presto Card, when money is added to your account, you are not informed of the new balance.

The bottom line was that nice-clerk racked up another refund, and my balance as I dragged myself out of Union Station was $22.85. Since I began the day with $30.60, the trip to Meadowvale Town Centre and back cost me $7.75, which is about what I would have expected. But note that the day sucked $30 off my Presto Card without me hardly trying.

Note too the problems with this omni-directional tapping scheme. When you tap your Presto card, the system has no way of determining your direction of travel. The Transilien Navigo system uses turnstiles (or their equivalents) so that the system can tell, when you swipe, that you are entering the complex, or leaving it. For example, when I walked into Poissy train station from the street, I had to walk through a one-way turnstile that led FROM the street INTO the station. The turnstile KNOWS that I am entering FROM the street INTO the station, that is, that I am starting a journey.

As an aside, since the Navigo Card was a fixed fee for the month, not a ka-Ching! scheme like Presto, I could swipe my Navigo card and take a shortcut through the train stations without going on a trip.

In a fit of pique I used my Presto Card to ride the Toronto Transit Commission home and noticed that, unlike the swipe stations in the GO stations, the swipe stations in the Toronto Transit Commission appear not to report your balance. More about that later.

Question (1)

Given that we use computers, why does GO Transit not have in place a mechanism that alerts customers to changes. Not a regular-font line of text somewhere on the page, but a bright red (or black or ....) in four times the normal font, flashing, marching red ants etc, better yet, make the scheduled time pulsate. Provide an 800-line, anything at all, but make sure you get the customers attention.

Question (2)

Given that GO Transit knew months in advance that there would be a scheduled disruption, why not place extra staff near the appropriate platform entrances (in my case 5&6) to deal with and re-assure passengers about what to do and where to go. This will seem to have been an essential point for many of the passengers as I develop this tale of woe.

Question (3) 

Why send a make-shift 21B along the QEW from Highway 10 to Erin Mills Parkway? Either the QEW is faster than the train line, or the train is faster than the bus.

If the train is faster, send us all to Clarkson, then bus straight up Erin Mills.

If the bus is faster, then send us to Long Branch and bus us up Highway 427 to the 401 and then Meadowvale Town Centre.

But don’t do this by half-measures. Port Credit is neither one nor the other.

Question (4) 

We already know that this train-bus hybrid route is going to take much longer than the scheduled trip (half an hour non-stop, remember?) but there is no way GO Transit will get to add this trip to its statistics. From GO Transit’s point of view, the trains are running on time (100% on time!), and the modified 21B route is not a regular schedule.

From GO Transit’s point of view, everything is on time.

From the passenger’s point of view, we are hopelessly behind schedule.

But the passenger’s view doesn’t count. It’s the published (and false) statistics that count here.

Why?

Question (5) 

When the bus arrives at the train station as the train pulls in, why is it beyond the competency of the bus-driver to stop immediately and disgorge passengers? Especially on a modified service which is in essence a train-shuttle service?

Why is it necessary to crawl past a line of parked buses to find a spot as far away as possible from the train so that the fleet of foot (not me!) have no chance of saving half an hour of travel time?

The answer is always available here: It is because GO Transit does not consider passenger service as a first priority. The top priority is sticking to an assigned bus bay. That, more than any consideration of passenger’s needs, is GO’s top priority.

Question (6) 

Why, on days of calumny, does GO not make sure to staff points of contention (in this case Port Credit GO station) with experienced staff. Jill was clearly out of her depth. Port Credit GO station should have had no-one but well-equipped staff to deal with the hundreds of problems which arise every time GO service is disrupted. This service disruption was foreseen, for Gardiner closures are planned months in advance.

Question (7) 

While I think of it, why does the bus home deke through all those little suburban streets just to jump on the QEW westbound? It would have made more sense to continue on 427 southbound and take the ramp to QEW westbound.

Question (8) 

Why do I persist in using GO Transit instead of renting a car for the day?

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