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Ontario Expanding GO Train Service Across the Greater Toronto Area​

Province adding more than 300 new weekly trips to support two-way, all-day GO
April 15, 2024
Premier's Office
MILTON — The Ontario government is moving ahead with the largest GO train service expansion in more than a decade, adding more than 300 trips per week on the Milton, Lakeshore West, Lakeshore East, Kitchener and Stouffville lines. The 15 per cent increase in weekly trips will give commuters more choice to get where they need to go faster.
“As part of our work to get it done on the largest public transit expansion in North America, our government is adding hundreds of additional GO train trips each week for communities across the GTA,” said Premier Doug Ford. “Today’s announcement, along with our recent introduction of free transfers between different transit systems through One Fare, will help get people across the region where they need to go faster, while saving the average transit rider $1,600 every year.”
Starting April 28, 2024, weekend train service will increase from every 30 minutes to every 15 minutes in the afternoon and evening on the Lakeshore West and Lakeshore East lines between Oakville GO Station, Union Station and Durham College Oshawa GO Station. For the first time, riders on the Kitchener line will also benefit from new 30-minute weekday service during midday and evenings between Bramalea and Union Station.
“As Ontario’s population continues to grow, our government is investing in a world-class transit network that connects communities and people to good jobs and affordable housing,” said Prabmeet Sarkaria, Minister of Transportation. “We’re delivering on our plan to bring more reliable, convenient two-way, all-day GO train service to commuters in the Greater Golden Horseshoe.”
The province is also adding evening train service seven days a week on the Stouffville line, as well as an additional morning rush hour trip to Union Station for commuters in Milton and an afternoon rush hour trip from Union Station to Milton GO. For transit riders going to and from Pearson Airport, every second UP Express train (every 30 minutes) will be non-stop between Union Station and Pearson Airport, providing commuters with a more direct and convenient option for airport transfers seven days a week.
“Investing in GO rail service and infrastructure is critical to advancing Milton’s long-term complete community vision,” said Mayor Gordon Krantz, Town of Milton. “Additional GO rail service trips in Milton further connects people to jobs, students to learning, stimulates our economy, fosters housing builds in our transit corridors and improves connections to other transit services. We thank the Government of Ontario for this investment, demonstrating a positive step forward in the shared two-way all-day GO service vision for 2031.”
 
Back pre-covid, the addition of seat-miles of service was a metric that ML put a lot of emphasis on.... I wondered if it was even in some execs' bonus scorecards. It had some silly consequences ie the addition of late-night equipment moves as regularly scheduled trains..... few passengers but plenty of seat-miles added.

I wonder if that metric is still tracked. Certainly, these improvements will add a lot of seat-miles to the plan.

- Paul
 
crs1026 said:
Back pre-covid, the addition of seat-miles of service was a metric that ML put a lot of emphasis on.... I wondered if it was even in some execs' bonus scorecards. It had some silly consequences ie the addition of late-night equipment moves as regularly scheduled trains..... few passengers but plenty of seat-miles added.

I wonder if that metric is still tracked. Certainly, these improvements will add a lot of seat-miles to the plan.

- Paul
Click to expand...
The metric being focused on then and now was not seat-miles, but revenue trains, and specifically trains/day and trains/week. Each one of those deadheads that were converted to revenue runs counted as 7 trains/week.

It's such an important metric that there needs to be a specific number of revenue trains/week - higher than is currently being run, and still higher than will be run after April 28th - upon the handover to OnExpress on January 1st.

Dan
 
Last edited:
ShonTron said:
Edit: there's a new Route 22 between Milton and Oakville, weekdays only, with a limited schedule.
Click to expand...
Ah, so on weekends, which is exactly the time when you'd most want to avoid the Gardiner and take the train instead, there's nothing. And I'm sure there's not going to be any confusion caused by the fact that the service that was provided by the 21 will now be provided by the 22, and people won't get on the wrong bus because they expect a 21...

The schedule for the 22 is also appallingly bad. 2 hour frequencies even during evening rush hour? That is worse than even the old route 20 schedule.

How does Metrolinx manage so consistently to get it so completely wrong all the time? Can we disband them and get literally anyone else to run GO? Please? Thank Christ I'm moving out of the province this year, with friends like Metrolinx, who needs enemies?
 
denfromoakvillemilton said:
good. about time.

yes!!! no more lakeshore trips doubling travel time.
Click to expand...
How exactly did the Lakeshore trips double the travel time? I think you're needlessly romanticizing the old 21 schedule.

On paper, it should be 1 hour 35 by 21A + LW, vs anywhere from 1 hr 10 to 1 hr 35, depending on the exact trip, according to the last pre-covid schedule (link). Any traffic would have made this number go up, especially on the Gardiner, so you'd be lucky if you just about broke even.
 
T3G said:
How exactly did the Lakeshore trips double the travel time? I think you're needlessly romanticizing the old 21 schedule.

On paper, it should be 1 hour 35 by 21A + LW, vs anywhere from 1 hr 10 to 1 hr 35, depending on the exact trip, according to the last pre-covid schedule (link). Any traffic would have made this number go up, especially on the Gardiner, so you'd be lucky if you just about broke even.
Click to expand...
Fair enough. It was just going to Port Credit and transfer that I was against. Residents of Milton should be able to get downtown with ease.
 
I agree that residents of Milton should be able to get downtown with ease, but as someone who uses the route on a quasi-regular basis, I have found the current arrangement, mostly, to be more convenient.

It took some doing. When they first rerouted the 21 to Oakville, there was no midday service along Derry Road and it took them eons to wake up and run all the 27s to Milton, but now that all of them do so, it is a marked improvement. The biggest problems with the current 21 in Oakville is that it doesn't run during rush hours (which is a complete joke), and that it runs every hour for most of the day (30 minutes would be much better). Transferring in Oakville was fine, there's normally a train along within 10 minutes or so, but the reverse direction is brutal, sometimes you could be stuck waiting an hour for the next bus. So of course, instead of working at these issues, Metrolinx are reverting the changes and throwing us into Gardiner traffic.

If you gave custody of transit in Ontario to a bunch of strung out crackheads, I doubt very much they'd do any worse than ML does.

🤬
 
T3G said:
I agree that residents of Milton should be able to get downtown with ease, but as someone who uses the route on a quasi-regular basis, I have found the current arrangement, mostly, to be more convenient.

It took some doing. When they first rerouted the 21 to Oakville, there was no midday service along Derry Road and it took them eons to wake up and run all the 27s to Milton, but now that all of them do so, it is a marked improvement. The biggest problems with the current 21 in Oakville is that it doesn't run during rush hours (which is a complete joke), and that it runs every hour for most of the day (30 minutes would be much better). Transferring in Oakville was fine, there's normally a train along within 10 minutes or so, but the reverse direction is brutal, sometimes you could be stuck waiting an hour for the next bus. So of course, instead of working at these issues, Metrolinx are reverting the changes and throwing us into Gardiner traffic.

If you gave custody of transit in Ontario to a bunch of strung out crackheads, I doubt very much they'd do any worse than ML does.

🤬
Click to expand...

I took that Route 21 between Milton and Oakville a few times. The transfer to the Highway 407 bus services at Trafalgar Road Park & Ride was a busy stop. The new schedule doesn't help with that.
 
I used the 21 between Mississauga and Toronto frequently about 13 years ago, and even then it was very unreliable certain times (Saturday afternoons especially) due to heavy traffic in Mississauga and on the QEW/Gardiner. It must be substantially worse now. The new 21 schedule has lots of weird non-clockface headways, and the runtime between Square One and USBT varies from ~40 minutes to over an hour for different trips. Probably Metrolinx is using software like Hastus to "optimize" run times based on the typical traffic levels for specific times of the day. A lot of the Square One - USBT trips probably probably aren't time competitive vs. the Miway 109 to Kipling, especially if your final destination isn't near Union station,

The actual solution needs to be a service that doesn't get stuck in traffic. Anything else is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
 
T3G said:
I agree that residents of Milton should be able to get downtown with ease, but as someone who uses the route on a quasi-regular basis, I have found the current arrangement, mostly, to be more convenient.

It took some doing. When they first rerouted the 21 to Oakville, there was no midday service along Derry Road and it took them eons to wake up and run all the 27s to Milton, but now that all of them do so, it is a marked improvement. The biggest problems with the current 21 in Oakville is that it doesn't run during rush hours (which is a complete joke), and that it runs every hour for most of the day (30 minutes would be much better). Transferring in Oakville was fine, there's normally a train along within 10 minutes or so, but the reverse direction is brutal, sometimes you could be stuck waiting an hour for the next bus. So of course, instead of working at these issues, Metrolinx are reverting the changes and throwing us into Gardiner traffic.

If you gave custody of transit in Ontario to a bunch of strung out crackheads, I doubt very much they'd do any worse than ML does.

🤬
Click to expand...
Actually the new 27 schedule just removed half of the recent gains... there is now only 1 round trip on weekends to Milton and it stops at Meadowvale after 8pm on weekdays. I really would like them to just move to the 407. During rush hour, the 27 sometimes goes all the way up to the 407/400 interchange to avoid 401 traffic. It's so annoying it can't stop at Highway 407 station when it's right there! I think the route would be far more competitive if it went on the 407 and stopped at Highway 407 subway and Finch instead of Yorkdale and Finch. Meadowvale already has this with Route 48, but Milton doesn't :(
 
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