Richard White
Senior Member
Yes but taxpayers should not be subsidizing tourism to Niagara Falls. Unfortunately as many of us know that train is overloaded with people that the Falls cannot easily support.
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- Thread starter drum118
- Start date
Yes but taxpayers should not be subsidizing tourism to Niagara Falls. Unfortunately as many of us know that train is overloaded with people that the Falls cannot easily support.
E•MO•TION
New Member
That's a shame. Regular GO fares remain terribly expensive compared to driving from my end of the GTA, more so once I add a travel companion or two.GO has sneakily removed the $15 weekend pass from their website. That's too bad...sometimes I'd get the weekend pass even though I only needed a day pass, so that I could go to more places on the 2nd/3rd day.
Weekend Passes with GO
Travelling on a weekend? Buy your $10 One-Day Weekend travel pass now!www.gotransit.com
T3G
Senior Member
Taxpayers subsidise so many offensive wastes of money, I'm not sure a tourist train should be anywhere near the top of the list of things to be upset about.
LNahid2000
Senior Member
They're already subsidizing tourism to Niagara Falls via car. Why should it not be subsidized via train?
Northern Light
Superstar
As soon as there are tolls on the QEW, you will have a point.
Level playing field.
LNahid2000
Senior Member
The $40 yearly Niagara Parks parking pass is also one hell of a subsidy.
Richard White
Senior Member
Not to mention the WEGO-GO Transit Pass
reaperexpress
Senior Member
The question is not whether transit should be subsidized. The question is whether the best use of transit subsidies is to provide absurdly cheap weekend getaways to Niagara Falls, rather than making GO Transit actually affordable for travel within the GTA and for travel between cities near each other, like Kitchener and Guelph.
The issue is the use of a flat rate regardless of distance. $10 for a 260 km round trip from Toronto to Niagara Falls is $0.04/km, which is absurdly cheap. $10 for a 34 km round trip from Downsview Park to Union is $0.29/km, which is just as expensive per km as driving your own personal vehicle (excluding parking).
The issue is the use of a flat rate regardless of distance. $10 for a 260 km round trip from Toronto to Niagara Falls is $0.04/km, which is absurdly cheap. $10 for a 34 km round trip from Downsview Park to Union is $0.29/km, which is just as expensive per km as driving your own personal vehicle (excluding parking).
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Northern Light
Superstar
Essentially agree with you; though would add........
I think it depends on which budget the Niagara subsidy comes from; if it comes from the Ministry of Tourism, then I think that works fine.
Its a comparatively cheap investment in total dollars, and the spin off in sales tax revenue and/or casino earnings, on average, more than covers that cost.
By contrast, a weekday commute, in most cases, occurs whether or not the fare is reasonable; which means there is not the same net economic spinoff and revenue recovery.
Of course, this is not entirely true, as expensive daily commutes can determine where people live and what jobs they obtain, and therefore can carry benefits and consequences both personal and social. These, however, are probably more challenging to measure.
reaperexpress
Senior Member
Sure, if the Ministry of Tourism wants to subsidize Niagara trips from their own budget that's wonderful, as long as that subsidy actually gets used to address the catastrophic overcrowding that WEGO faces everytime a train dumps 1700 people at Niagara Falls station. For example, trains to Niagara should be limited to 8 coaches max, and to provide the necessary capacity during the summer additional round trips will be required (notably a second trip from Toronto to NF in the morning).
Personally I doubt there would be enough economic benefit to justify that level of subsidy, given that even if they doubled the cost of the train it would still be cheaper than any of the alternatives, and the ridership loss would likely be quite modest. I suspect that there was some form of tourism subsidy for the GO+WEGO packages people used to use before the $10 weekend pass and eliminating that double-fare seems like a good use of tourism-supporting funds.
The question of weekday commutes is irrelevant to the discussion of a weekend day pass.
Northern Light
Superstar
We're not in disagreement.
I was specifically addressing your comparison to a less subsidized, shorter, 'commuter route' as alternative way to spend subsidy.
And again, I agree with you; I was simply pointing out that the specific benefit lowering the cost of that alternate route may harder to define. (hotel occupancy, and retail sales in NF are by comparison easy to quantify)
reaperexpress
Senior Member
And I'm pointing out that trips within the GTA are not 'commuter routes' on the weekend, they have a major recreational function just like the trip to Niagara Falls. People head to downtown Toronto to see sports games, theatres, go shopping, visit friends, go to the pub, etc.
For clear evidence of how important fares are to intra-GTA ridership, just look at the weekend ridership from the inner 905 to downtown via the subway, compared to GO Transit. Sure, the subway is more frequent, but it's also much slower and less comfortable, so that doesn't explain the entire discrepancy. The remainder of the difference is attributable to the high cost of riding GO Transit, especially when you need to connect to the TTC for your last mile. On those trips, taking the GO train is more than double the cost of taking the subway.
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Northern Light
Superstar
Fair.
I think its probably still much harder to measure the impact.
For argument's sake, we cut the cost of weekend service on the GO Barrie Corridor from Downsview Park to Union (which I'm all in favour of)......
Can we measure the tangible impact on retail sales or restaurant sales or sales of Jays tickets?
I suspect the data would be very hard to pull out.
One would have to show a net uptick; which also presumes that people willing/able to go to these things are currently taking a pass due to the price of said fare, as opposed to driving or taking TTC.
That's not a suggestion that we shouldn't lower than fare/increase that subsidy; just that it would be harder to pull that from a tourism envelope.
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anb
Active Member
First of all they made it mandatory to use the passes 7 days from when you purchased it, to now doing this.GO has sneakily removed the $15 weekend pass from their website. That's too bad...sometimes I'd get the weekend pass even though I only needed a day pass, so that I could go to more places on the 2nd/3rd day.
Weekend Passes with GO
Travelling on a weekend? Buy your $10 One-Day Weekend travel pass now!www.gotransit.com
This is kind of shady but at least weekend passes are 24 hours from when you activate it and not just end of day. So if you activated the pass at 6PM on Saturday, it expires 6PM on Sunday.
anb
Active Member
There probably will never be tolls on the QEW. Keep in mind that this serves as a multi purpose highway. Yes there is the popular demand from the GTA to Niagara Falls itself, but then you have people going elsewhere and/or travelling locally in NR, then crossing the border into the US, and this is one of the 3 big highways along the way connecting Toronto to NYC.