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Enzo Aquarius

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23 minutes ago, John Oke said:

I saw a double decker today on the 93 on Taunton road in Whitby a little bit before 5:00 this afternoon. Most GO buses along Taunton are NIS usually deadheading to DC/Ontario Tech. I’m assuming it was on a diversion. The bus was heading for DC/Ontario Tech

Looking at the schedule for route 93, the official routing uses Simcoe-Taunton-Thickson-401. However, since there are no stops other than Scarborough Centre and DC/Ontario Tech, bus drivers have the freedom to take whatever route they want (so long as their bus is cleared for it). Pretty sure I've been on a 93 that used the 412 before.

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1 hour ago, Articulated said:

Looking at the schedule for route 93, the official routing uses Simcoe-Taunton-Thickson-401. However, since there are no stops other than Scarborough Centre and DC/Ontario Tech, bus drivers have the freedom to take whatever route they want (so long as their bus is cleared for it). Pretty sure I've been on a 93 that used the 412 before.

I saw it west of Thickson it was at Garden

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55 minutes ago, 110B West Pickering said:

Prior to September 2019, the route officially used the 407/412/401. It made more sense. Post September 2019, I’ve only ever seen them use Thickson. Not sure why they chose a less efficient route.

There are no stops along the way?

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  • 2 weeks later...

Go Transit has released it's list of coronavirus related service cuts. A lot of frequency reductions, some highlights are a return to weekend hourly service and the elimination of weekday express services on Lakeshore, the elimination of the Niagara trains, the apparent elimination of the Hamilton-Toronto express with the exception of a few late night trips (willing to bet this one doesn't come back), and weekend Milton buses going hourly for each branch.

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5 hours ago, IRT_BMT_IND said:

Go Transit has released it's list of coronavirus related service cuts. A lot of frequency reductions, some highlights are a return to weekend hourly service and the elimination of weekday express services on Lakeshore, the elimination of the Niagara trains, the apparent elimination of the Hamilton-Toronto express with the exception of a few late night trips (willing to bet this one doesn't come back), and weekend Milton buses going hourly for each branch.

Why reduce Niagara trains? Because it's close to the border?

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32 minutes ago, Shaun said:

Why reduce Niagara trains? Because it's close to the border?

No, because of low ridership. Niagara Parks Commission have closed all of the tourist attractions under their purview (including the WEGO Green Line), and with people being encouraged to stay at home there's no need to continue running a tourist-oriented service. GO still continues to service the region through the route 12 bus, which is being maintained at hourly service.

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29 minutes ago, Articulated said:

No, because of low ridership. Niagara Parks Commission have closed all of the tourist attractions under their purview (including the WEGO Green Line), and with people being encouraged to stay at home there's no need to continue running a tourist-oriented service. GO still continues to service the region through the route 12 bus, which is being maintained at hourly service

Ah. Makes sense.

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9 hours ago, IRT_BMT_IND said:

Go Transit has released it's list of coronavirus related service cuts. A lot of frequency reductions, some highlights are a return to weekend hourly service and the elimination of weekday express services on Lakeshore, the elimination of the Niagara trains, the apparent elimination of the Hamilton-Toronto express with the exception of a few late night trips (willing to bet this one doesn't come back), and weekend Milton buses going hourly for each branch.

I took a quick look at the schedules.  The 16 QEW Express is a sea of red cancellations.  It looks like they halved the number of trains to West Harbour and Hunter St. in addition to making them all local all stops runs.  So, with the already scarce train service to Hamilton getting whittled down and the QEW Express pretty much completely abandoned, that means the link service between Aldershot and Hunter St. with the 18 bus is going to be even more crucial.  I saw that schedule had changes too so I took a quick look at it but in the time I had to look it over, couldn’t see what the changes were.  Does anybody know?

I’d love to use public transportation.  I really would.  But with the fares skyrocketing, bad connections that keep getting worse, the attitude that the paying customers are to be treated like a bunch of deadbeats, and these changes that’ll make travel times off the charts, combined with the employer requirement of shift work, I just can’t do it.

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9 hours ago, Wayside Observer said:

I took a quick look at the schedules.  The 16 QEW Express is a sea of red cancellations.  It looks like they halved the number of trains to West Harbour and Hunter St. in addition to making them all local all stops runs.  So, with the already scarce train service to Hamilton getting whittled down and the QEW Express pretty much completely abandoned, that means the link service between Aldershot and Hunter St. with the 18 bus is going to be even more crucial.  I saw that schedule had changes too so I took a quick look at it but in the time I had to look it over, couldn’t see what the changes were.  Does anybody know?

I’d love to use public transportation.  I really would.  But with the fares skyrocketing, bad connections that keep getting worse, the attitude that the paying customers are to be treated like a bunch of deadbeats, and these changes that’ll make travel times off the charts, combined with the employer requirement of shift work, I just can’t do it.

I'm not sure if you understand that there cuts are due to reduced ridership because schools are closed, and a lot of people are working from home. 

Once things get back to normal, so will the service.  You make it seem like the end of the world.  

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1 hour ago, Shaun said:

I'm not sure if you understand that there cuts are due to reduced ridership because schools are closed, and a lot of people are working from home. 

Once things get back to normal, so will the service.  You make it seem like the end of the world.  

I’m not sure if you understand that some employers operate essential services with essential staff and some of us still have to go to work.  So I’m driving because getting between here and there has gotten progressively more difficult over the years but wow, these changes, holy crow.  I’m not spending five hours or more a day commuting in some kind of slavish devotion to the foamer cause.  No. Uh huh.  Sorry.  Not doing it.

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Ok, it's a fair question, what would I do differently if I ran Metrolinx?

What I'd do to scale back service would be to retain runs that cover the full lengths of each line and convert them to all stops and trim ones that only partially cover each line.  Example: I'd have kept all Hamilton runs and cancelled an Aldershot run scheduled near each Hamilton service since those would be covering all stops through Aldershot anyways.  The purpose of doing cutailments that way would be to reduce the quantity of service being operated during the circumstances causing the drop in ridership while preserving service to the greatest geographic area possible.  I think that's a reasonable approach to things.  Cutting train service in half as well as discontinuing the bus service to the same place is not the right way to go about doing things.

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On 3/16/2020 at 10:02 AM, Wayside Observer said:

I’m not sure if you understand that some employers operate essential services with essential staff and some of us still have to go to work.  So I’m driving because getting between here and there has gotten progressively more difficult over the years but wow, these changes, holy crow.  I’m not spending five hours or more a day commuting in some kind of slavish devotion to the foamer cause.  No. Uh huh.  Sorry.  Not doing it.

Currently there is an 80% drop in ridership. Are you saying that we should run services at 100% when only 20% of the volume is there?

Not sure what you want here. 

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9 minutes ago, Shaun said:

Currently there is an 80% drop in ridership. Are you saying that we should run services at 100% when only 20% of the volume is there?

Not sure what you want here. 

When you want to enforce the minimum social distancing standards, you do.

service will reduce itself as the employees become ill.

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53 minutes ago, TTC 9701 said:

So far GO Transit has been shipping trains out of Kitchener to Union. Are they being specially disinfected in Toronto? So far two have passed me outside Rockwood.

Normally, trainsets are scheduled so that they rotate through Willowbrook or Whitby every few days for maintenance.

With the new schedules having hourly service pretty much all day (with one or two extra trips per line for rush hour), most trainsets start at an outpost, operate all day, and end at an outpost. This is just a guess of mine, but I imagine that they would be getting shuttled down to Willowbrook to get their regular maintenance done, and to even out the wear amongst the fleet, so a few engines and coaches are not receiving the majority of the mileage for the next couple of weeks to months.

There are crews at every outpost scheduled to fully clean (and now disinfect) trains nightly; there is no need to bring them down to Toronto to do that.

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4 hours ago, TTC 9701 said:

So far GO Transit has been shipping trains out of Kitchener to Union. Are they being specially disinfected in Toronto? So far two have passed me outside Rockwood.

They change to the new schedule tomorrow morning. Until now, all the trains started at the west end, and headed east. But with the addition of reverse-peak runs on Monday, there are only 3 trainsets from Kitchener in the AM, and now there are 3 hourly westbound departures from Union (to Mount Pleasant) before 9 AM!

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Just now, CBlake said:

How will GO transit handle it if someone just has cash, are they going to be denied getting on a train/bus? Hope something like this does not happen. 

I was surprised years ago to see that GO Bus drivers were selling tickets for cash.

I suppose in the long term tap with debit/credit is the obvious. During this crisis, the obvious solution is free rides - whether they do this or not, I don't know.

I haven't use the newer GO ticket machines in station as I have Presto. Don't they take take cash? I assume it's just bus drivers that are the issue here.

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54 minutes ago, nfitz said:

I was surprised years ago to see that GO Bus drivers were selling tickets for cash.

I suppose in the long term tap with debit/credit is the obvious. During this crisis, the obvious solution is free rides - whether they do this or not, I don't know.

I haven't use the newer GO ticket machines in station as I have Presto. Don't they take take cash? I assume it's just bus drivers that are the issue here.

If you are boarding at a serviced station you have to go to the counter or machine to buy a ticket but if its an unmanned stop you buy your ticket directly from the driver and they have only accept cash. I do believe new machines except cash but yes I think the cashless thing will mostly only be an issue with buses

19 minutes ago, 2044 said:

Yes, machines take notes and coins.

Only the new ones right, does every station have them?

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22 hours ago, nfitz said:

 I assume it's just bus drivers that are the issue here.

Bus drivers aren't the issue here.. they're the ones who keep the buses moving.   If you're paying with cash and they don't want to handle the cash they'll just let you on anyways.

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2 hours ago, Byfold said:

Bus drivers aren't the issue here.. they're the ones who keep the buses moving.   If you're paying with cash and they don't want to handle the cash they'll just let you on anyways.

So the machines are also an issue? They are not taking cash any more? 

Are you sure?

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