GO Transit

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Everybody’s Got a Plan

The agenda for the July 27 GTTA Board meeting includes overviews of the transit plans from all of the GTA regions plus an GO Transit’s schemes.  This material has been updated to reflect the MoveOntario2020 announcement, but not the current budget crisis at the TTC.  In the timescale that these plans operate, that crisis will only be a memory long before any of this is actually built.

Queen’s Park is looking for “quick success” stories, projects that can show some concrete return in very short order.  They actually hoped, at one time, to be able to have photo ops before the election, but that’s not very likely.

Having all of these plans in one place is useful both for people who are not familiar with what each region has been thinking, and to show just how far the entire GTA has to move to make any serious dent in the rising car traffic.  Some regions don’t plan to be above 10% transit share by 2031 and, given their development and travel patterns, how that can be improved is a mystery.  We can extend the reach of GO Transit, but travel within and between regions travel is quite another matter. Continue reading →

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GO Ottawa? (Updated)

On July 27, David Cavlovic passed on another Ottawa Sun article in this thread.  He comments:

Well, NOW it’s getting really ridiculous.

That’s all we need. It’s not enough that resources are stretched in the GTA, let’s stretch it in other cities as well.

Toronto Transit CORPORATION. Oh dear. Harbinger of the future?

[The article’s author is not in touch with Toronto’s transit system as we saw yesterday.]

 Fortunately, there is a bit of good sense on Council:

River Coun. Maria McRae, who is also the chair of the city’s transportation committee, said there is no reason why GO Transit and OC Transpo can’t work together.

“We can do both,” said McRae. “We should pursue that GO model for outside the city, but not lose focus on Ottawa’s transit issues.”

[Original post follows] 

David Cavlovic passed on the following item of interest from the Ottawa Sun.

Ottawa could be moving from the O-Train to the GO Train.

With Mayor Larry O’Brien mapping out an ambitious inter-regional commuter transit plan for Eastern Ontario, the province’s biggest regional commuter carrier, GO Transit, is expressing interest in helping the city with its plan.

“It’s definitely something we would look at,” said Jamie Rilett, communications director for Ontario Transportation Minister Donna Cansfield, whose department operates the Government of Ontario (GO) network in the Greater Toronto Area.

“When it was first brought up to us and we discussed it with various mayors and members from the Ottawa area, it was made clear to them we would look at any proposal they had and if they were interested in having GO participate in whatever way then it’s definitely something we would consider,” said Rilett.

[The full article goes on to talk about how wonderful GO is, and manages to get some of the facts wrong.]

Amusingly, this is yet another situation where a comment comes not from the GTTA but from the Minister’s office.  At tomorrow’s GTTA meeting, maybe they can discuss a small eastward expansion of their territory.

More to the point, Ottawa has to decide whether it wants a commuter rail network providing relatively infrequent service oriented to peak demand, or a transit network.  These are two completely different things.

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GO Transit’s Addiction to Parking Lots

The GO Rail system has for years depended on parking lots small and large to bring riders to its trains.  Local bus services do some of the work, but the parking lots are the mainstay of GO ridership.

With the recent announcement of substantial increase in GO capacity and reach, especially on the Lake Shore corridor, the linkage between parking lot construction and GO rail service must be drastically reduced.  There is an upper limit to the amount of land available for parking, and huge lots poison the land around stations — natural focal points for communities — by limiting development.  I have even heard a politician complain about the opening of a GO station because of the traffic it will generate through her community enroute to the parking lot down the road.

GO has started to think about developing the land around its stations, but this is still in the context of even more parking.  Garages are expensive, and GO hopes to defray this cost by including them in condo developments or office buildings.  This is a very short-sighted view.

A major gap in MoveOntario is the absence of funding for local transit operations, especially lines that will feed new and expanded regional services.  Many families cannot afford to have enough cars that each person can drive to the GO station as and when they need to use the service.  GO’s ridership is already at a level where they cannot provide parking for everyone, and even before MoveOntario was announced demand was expected to double over the next 20 years.

Today, I learned that about one third of the riders boarding at Oakville Station come by transit.  The rest drive in either to park or be dropped off.  As the Lake Shore line becomes a frequent, all-day service, accessing GO by car will not be a realistic way to travel because the lot will be full early in the morning.

MoveOntario forces all of the GTTA to change the way it thinks about transit both regionally and locally, although I’m not sure Dalton McGuinty’s advisors thought that far down the road when they cooked up this scheme.

GO must break its dependence on parking if it is to grow out of its role as a peak-period commuter network, and the local systems must expand to complement the regional improvements.  I am not saying we should close GO parking lots, but we have to think hard about stopping expansion plans, especially on heavy routes with present or soon-to-come all-day service.

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MoveOntario 2020 : GO Transit Section

With the growth in the comment string on the original post, it’s getting rather unwieldy.  Therefore, I am setting up new subsections to continue the threads on separate major topics.

This one is for GO Transit.  Any comments related to GO that are left on the other thread will be copied into this item.  In a few days, I will close off comments in the old thread on the assumption that everyone will have relocated to this one.

I have not yet decided whether to have a thread just for Swan Boats since Dalton didn’t announce any funding for them.

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MoveOntario 2020 [Updated]

The Ontario government is announcing a huge program of transit improvements and funding.  Details are available on the Premier’s website.

Note to those who come to this item after about 10:30 on June 15:  Many comments were posted earlier today before I had added my own review of the announcement.  They reflect the developing level of information (there are still some gaps) as well as some gentle urging that I get on with writing about this.

Whether it’s just an election promise or a real plan for transit improvements in southern Ontario, Queen’s Park’s announcement today raises the bar very high.  Not only will Ontario fund 2/3 of the cost of transit capital works, the sheer number of lines and services, including several nobody ever thought to see in print, sets this apart from all previous announcements.

There have been a few.  Continue reading →

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Tory Plan: Fire the Managers

According to today’s Toronto Star, PC leader John Tory’s solution to GO Transit’s on-time performance problems is to fire managers if they cannot meet the targets.  Although this is a refreshing change from the usual right-wing habit of blaming everything on the unions, it is no more realistic or responsible a platform.

GO Transit operates in the unenviable position where much of the physical plant is not under its control.  If CNR doesn’t have enough switch heaters, or decides that their freight train is more important than GO’s service, there is very little GO can do about it.

Yes, operating contracts could contain penalty clauses for poor performance, but I doubt that CN would ever sign anything with draconian penalties that would actually affect their profits.  Indeed, performance management of “private partners” is a big problem and there is a balancing act between holding the private sector’s feet to the fire and reaching a point where they don’t bother trying to meet their obligations.

We need a much better public accounting and explanation of the reasons why trains don’t run on time so that everyone can discuss what areas (a) provide lots of opportunity for improvement and (b) why some problems will always be with us.

How often is GO service blocked by freight activities?  How often does a train not run because there is no working equipment?  How often does the crew show up late for work?  How often is there a problem with the track or signals?  How often is there a cow on the tracks?

Each of these problems needs its own approach, and there will be different issues on each line. 

John Tory’s simplistic “solution” shifts the blame from where it really belongs — at Queen’s Park and the decades of underfunding — to the managers who try to run an organization under difficult times. 

Tory needs to own up to his own party’s legacy, to changes in funding and downloading of costs to municipalities, and say what he would change.  The Liberals may have left some Harris policies in place for their own convenience, but if there are things Tory would change, he should say so.  He should acknowledge the damage that was done the last time his party ran Ontario and set himself clearly apart from that regime.

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GO Construction News

Robert Wightman sent in this update: 

Since I retired again on May 31st (I do this every 6 months or so) I have been driving around and have a few observations on GO construction:

The three track section on Lakeshore West from Burlington to Bayview Junction is finished and new signalling has been installed. The signals are no longer searchlight but three (or in some cases two) aspect LED signals. They look quite sharp.  The north track only goes up the Dundas sub and the South track only continues into Hamilton whilst the middle track can go to either.

Most of the track on the Barrie extension has been relayed with 115 lb. continuous welded rail. Every level crossing is having crossing gate installed including the one that runs about 200 yds to a farm house. The Station area at Allendale (Barrie) is all fenced off and levelled. There is a concrete foundation for what appears to be a sub station behind BDO Dunwoody. It looks like the parking lot here will be 200 to 300 feet wide and a mile long. Maybe they will have one long loading platform and you can park either beside where you get on or where you get off.  All the new stations on this line are architecturally similar to the original stations which have been completely refurbished. The station in Bradford has, it appears, just been refurbished including the pole that held the train order semaphores. This line is supposed to open later this year.

The track work on the Georgetown line from Bramalea to Mt. Pleasant is proceeding as almost all of the bridges have been widened and in some places grading has started for the additional track. CN has started to replace the existing signals with gantries to hold the signals for the extra track and all the heads are 3 aspect LED signals like on Lakeshore.

They are going to have problems at the Brampton Station — is it is effectively one track east of the station and you very seldom get two trains passing there. People have gotten used to running behind the trains as soon as it has cleared Church Street to get to the train. When it is two tracks some one is going to get killed as they get hit by a through freight going the other way. They have had police out telling people that it will soon be two way all the time but it won’t help.  It will be interesting to see the platform on the South side as it will be at street level at the West end and elevated at the East end, the Brampton EL, or is it L?

I do not venture out to the East end much so I have no idea what is happening there. The GO trains have disappeared from Guelph Junction so I assume the new storage yard in Milton is built. I have seen work going on at the Lisgar Station and it is supposed to be open in the fall.

If I see anything new I will report.

Robert Wightman

Anyone with news of events in the other half of the world is welcome to add to this post.

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Forty Years of GO Transit

Late last week, I did an interview for CBC in anticipation of GO’s 40th anniversary celebrated on May 23rd.  A few clips were used on both TV and radio, but we covered a lot of territory that didn’t get on air.  Hence, this post.

For a detailed history of GO’s many routes, including some ideas that never got off of the ground, please turn to the Transit Toronto website.  My topic here is more “what might have been” and “what might still be”.

GO began in an era when the wisdom of expressway construction was under attack, and the first train ran fully four years before the Davis government would kill plans for the Spadina expressway (not to mention a network of other horrors that would follow).  Clearly, someone understood the idea that just building more and more lanes had its limits and there were better ways to get people into downtown Toronto.  It’s worth remembering this context.  What we now call the 905 was largely rural, and there were still a few farms in outlying parts of Metropolitan Toronto. Continue reading →