Streety McCarface
Senior Member
As for parking, similarly as has been discussed to death, parking is the means by which the majority of GO commuters access trains. It's all well and good that you think it shouldn't be a consideration, but GO has to deal with reality, and the reality is that people like to park at GO stations. We can either build parking and get cars off the road, or we can not build parking and those cars can drive all the way to downtown Toronto and clog up streets there even worse. I don't understand why so many people hold this mistaken belief that if you stop building GO parking people will just walk, cycle, or take local transit to their stations--no, they'll just drive downtown. I think the choice is clear, and GO does too.
The big issue I find with people not taking transit, especially in the morning, is the fact that bus service is atrocious. Here in Waterloo, I cannot catch the first 2 trains in the morning to Toronto (including the express train), and of the 2 I can catch, the bus arrives near the station 2 minutes before the train is scheduled to leave. One time in November I had to catch the train to Pearson and arrived at the station 2 minutes before the train had to leave. My PRESTO card had not been tapped off earlier accidentally so my card was locked. Luckily, I managed to pay the fine with CS, tap my card, and catch the train within 1 minute before the train left (I made it with the doors literally closing on my luggage). In essence, the third train is inaccessible to commuters as well. The only real option is the car for a lot of people. Instead of focussing resources on building parking and maintaining, I would invest in bus routes that serve stations earlier with better transfer times so that it is a viable option.