GO Transit

GO trains and buses serve the inner and outer suburbs of Toronto, adjacent cities and satellite towns.

Beware of GO Transit Timetables

GO Transit Transit Times

How GO Transit plots and schemes to rip off its customers

HV> Dutch Railways has an incentive to let trains run on time: the higher the percentage of trains that arrive at the final destination with no more than a couple minutes of delay, the higher the government subsidy they receive.

So if a train is delayed more than a few minutes, the solution is simple: cancel the train at the penultimate station. Since it never arrives at the final destination, it doesn't count in the statistics (compare Excel: the AVERAGE function ignores blank values)

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

So, where have I been this year, traveling by GO Transit?

Friday, October 30, 2015

In a pointless fit of enthusiasm I decide to check with finality a trip to St Catherines by GO Transit and give up; I end up trotting off to the GO wickets at the York Concourse.

Problem (1): Since I live near College Subway station and want to travel to St Catherines I don’t care whether I go by Train (Union Station) or by bus (Union Go Bus Terminal) or by bus (York Mills subway station). It makes little difference to me.But the GO transit web site insists that you pick one of the three.

Which means you have to pick the first one, evaluate a trip, then pick the second and evaluate and then the third and evaluate.

Problem (2): GO Transit suggests trying their Go-link trip planner, but the same problem rears its ugly head.

You have to KNOW which is the best way to go before you start asking.

Problem (3): Try looking up the  schedules; if you don’t know which bus route you need, how can you select a bus route schedule. And do you really go by GO bus, or is it a train? Or is it a Train/Bus combination?

Problem (4): GO Transit suggests trying Google’s trip planner, but the same problem rears its ugly head.

You have to KNOW which is the best way to go before you start asking.

The nice lady at the ticket-wicket agrees that the web site is hopeless and drags out a small pamphlet which shows that I should travel by GO train to Burlington and then switch to a bus. I find this odd. If I am going to Hamilton I travel by train to Aldershot, the other side of Burlington, and then switch to a bus, but if I am going to St Catherines – much further than Burlington, Aldershot or Hamilton, I don’t switch at Aldershot but descend prematurely ay Burlington

The ways of GO Transit are designed to confuse the user.

I am now trying to dream up a reason for NOT switching at Aldershot; the only reason I can come up with is that by switching at Burlington we can go straight to the Skyway bridge that cuts across the mouth of Hamilton Harbour.

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

I had planned to take the 15:30 Lakeshore West train to visit my friend in Clarkson. The 15:30 Lakeshore West is titled “Express” (to Clarkson) and was leaving from Track 7/8. I mounted the stairs and saw to the right my train, with passengers already seated, and to my left on Platform 6 the 15:15 all-stops train.

I asked myself “Why would people sit in a train that leaves fifteen minutes later, saves ten minutes by not stopping at stations, but still ends up being five minutes behind this train on platform 6?”.

I had planned for the 15:30 so I boarded The Express, but while I was walking to the eastern end of the train, the 15:15 pulled out. No worries.

As soon as I was seated on the 15:30 I realized I should have boarded the 15:15 milk-run. I was heading out for supper in the home of my friend, so she doesn’t care if I roll up five minutes early, and I appreciate an extra five minutes of her company.

The 15:15 milk-run visits all stops as far as Oakville, and then goes out of service.

The 15:30 runs non-stop to Clarkson, and then visits all stations beyond, through Oakville and on to Aldershot. (yes, Virginia, there is still only one train a day to Hamilton)

The people already seated on my 15:30 Express were almost certainly traveling beyond Oakville, and so they were bound to board this train at some time. Why not board it in Union instead of standing on the wind-swept platform at Oakville? That makes sense.

Still and all I mused as we ran alongside the cars streaming west on the Gardiner expressway:-

(1) To my mind “express” means “fast”, or “faster”, as in “express lanes on the 401 highway”, but we all know that the highway express lanes can be locked solid in the event of a collision or a cautionary braketest, and the Passing lane isn’t necessarily where you get to drive past Ontario drivers.

The GO “Express” is no faster than any other Go Train. It travels at 100 Km/hr, or thereabouts, just like any other Go Train or Go Bus.

The express trains clip 2m30s off each station that they ignore. The trip from Union to Clarkson clips four stations, ten minutes, off the trip to Clarkson, but as we have seen, for all stations up to Clarkson and Oakville, you can get there sooner if you catch the 15:15, and you can’t get to stations beyond Oakville any earlier at all.

(2) To my mind “non-stop” means that the train does not stop, but Go Trains do stop, or slow down to running-pace, because of slight delays in the train ahead of them.

That is, if the 15:15 is delayed getting out of Long Branch station then of necessity my 15:30 must slow right down, or come to a stop, because Go Trains aren’t allowed to crash into each other.

The Transilean network has, I believe, duplicated tracks so that a non-stop express can scream past a disabled milk-run train.

(3) A line such as that running south-east from Gare de Lyon towards Monterreau has sixteen stations on the first leg (to Melun) and another eight stations thereafter (to Monterreau). In that case, the non-stop express flies through all 16 stations until it gets to Melun, then limps 8 stations, one at a time, until it reaches the 24th station, Monterreau. Regardless of where you board the train, you are never more than sixty minutes from Paris. The same applies going home. Of course, you must wait for the appropriate train to depart.

The GO transit system of express/non-stop appears to mimic this approach, but GO has only ten stations on its Lakeshore West line, less than two-thirds the first leg of the Transilean line, and the “express” has only five stations on its second leg.

Child’s play!

Given that one must wait an extra fifteen minutes for the train that saves ten minutes (net loss: Five minutes!), it seems to me that it would make more sense to make both trains run to Hamilton.

Between 15:15 and 18:00 we see that thirteen trains leave Union Station heading west along this Lakeshore West line.

Only one of the thirteen trains struggles as far as Hamilton (the 17:15).

Six of these thirteen trains manage to escape Aldershot and struggle a bit further before expiring.

Why not populate the existing tracks with the existing rakes of carriages and send all thirteen trains to Kitchener, stopping at all stations?

There is no increase in capital costs. You make the time-payment costs regardless of whether the train is in motion or not

There is no increase in labour costs. You pay the driver, co-driver, and conductor no matter what the train is doing. Or not doing.

There is a shuffling of timetables to be sure, but that is what computers are for.

Thirteen trains running between 15:15 and 18:00 means a train every 12.69 minutes, but lets not quibble here. Let’s call it a train every fifteen minutes.

And for what it’s worth, a train every fifteen minutes coming back into Toronto with all those theatre, ballet, opera and sports fans.

Or we could carry on with our heads in the sand.

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