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Thursday, September 20, 2018

Ontario PC government takes credit for 15-minute GO train service on Lakeshore East and West lines. Service set to begin September 24

As the Toronto Star pointed out, Metrolinx has been adjusting its operations for months in order to add service to the Lakeshore corridors; these initiative predates the Conservatives’ election victory in June.

We all knew this. The Liberals promised us all day GO train service years ago.

The PC MPPs touting this announcement as a "Promises Made, Promises Kept" on Twitter is eye-rolling. Albeit, at least it wasn't cancelled.

So there is that.

7 comments:

Ed said...

What? Politicians taking credit for things they haven't done? Inconceivable!

Bicky said...

I'm happy with this news. I think it's awesome. I've been told it's something the new CEO had been working on for a while.

Anonymous said...

Great for them
Now how about evening or weekend service on the other lines that don't even have hourly service?

CJ Smith said...

Hi Anonymous

It's easier to adapt service on lines you own. GO doesn't own the track most of its corridors run on, which means sharing with freight. If those schedules can't be adjusted, GO can't run a train. GO owns the rail lines east of Pickering.

Anonymous said...

CJ
There is minimal freight use of the Kitchener line in the evenings and virtually zero use on weekend.

GO would benefit from reducing the number of buses currently operating weekends and evenings and add occasional trains. GO managed to add trains to try and encourage commuters to travel to the Caribbean festival on Saturday, August 4, 2018.

It is not an unheard of request.

CJ Smith said...

Interesting... I got nothing!

Robert Wightman said...

The added service was done as a last minute deal with little notification as they had just printed a lot of new timetables dated Sept. 2018 and I could not find any of the service in them. It would seem that someone told them to get as much extra service on the Lakeshore as possible mid day. Not that there is 15 minute service to Oshawa mid day but not to Aldershot. There is one extra train per hour to Oakville so the service is 0:15, 0:15, 30 and repeat with only half hour to Aldershot.

While there may not be much freight traffic on the Kitchener line west of Georgetown train need to run on CN's main line from Bramalea to Georgetown to get to those tracks and that is where the bottle necks are. GO is also in the process of upgrading the tracks between Georgetown and Kitchener to higher speed and I think that they are in Guelph going west from he train station. Go needs to put in a couple of long passing tracks on the line so GO trains can pass each other or the couple of freights that use it each day.

The other problem with increasing service is getting enough qualified train crews. It takes two years of service on a railway before you can train as an engineer or conductor. Be nice to your CSA as he maybe operating the train in a few years.