[amnesiajune]

What about the Stouffville Line and the fact that midday trains sit at Unionville for almost an hour, every hour, instead of running up to Mount Joy and back (plenty of time in the schedule for this easy win schedule improvement) but mysteriously left undone in spite of the loud and numerous complaints from riders of that line.

I can think of a couple of reasons for this:

1. With the single track section, they need to make sure there aren't any late departures. Any delay propagates throughout the day, and there are only 20 minutes built into the schedule after mid-day trains clear out. Stopping trains at Unionville gives them about 45 minutes of padding in the schedule. Sending them up to Mount Joy reduces that to ~15 minutes.

2. Maintaining local service on Highway 7, Bullock and Markham Road.

 

[smallspy]

I can think of a couple of reasons for this:

1. With the single track section, they need to make sure there aren't any late departures. Any delay propagates throughout the day, and there are only 20 minutes built into the schedule after mid-day trains clear out. Stopping trains at Unionville gives them about 45 minutes of padding in the schedule. Sending them up to Mount Joy reduces that to ~15 minutes.

2. Maintaining local service on Highway 7, Bullock and Markham Road.

And yet, they run - or try to rue - the service up to Aurora where they only have a 12 (soon to be 10) minute layover before they need to come back southbound.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.

 

[amnesiajune]

And yet, they run - or try to rue - the service up to Aurora where they only have a 12 (soon to be 10) minute layover before they need to come back southbound.

Okay. That addresses one of the things I said.

In any case, I'm sure that the people at Go Transit have some good reason for having trains wait at Unionville for 45 minutes. They're actually qualified to do this work; we're random people on the internet.

 

[TOareaFan]

Okay. That addresses one of the things I said.

In any case, I'm sure that the people at Go Transit have some good reason for having trains wait at Unionville for 45 minutes. They're actually qualified to do this work; we're random people on the internet.

Not sure the poster you are corresponding with (Smallspy) is as random as you and I.

 

[cbrown2009]

I can think of a couple of reasons for this:

1. With the single track section, they need to make sure there aren't any late departures. Any delay propagates throughout the day, and there are only 20 minutes built into the schedule after mid-day trains clear out. Stopping trains at Unionville gives them about 45 minutes of padding in the schedule. Sending them up to Mount Joy reduces that to ~15 minutes.

2. Maintaining local service on Highway 7, Bullock and Markham Road.

Also service to Mount Pleasant has about a 10 -12 minute turnaround time...
And this point only addressed one of the few issues I mentioned.

 

[smallspy]

Okay. That addresses one of the things I said.

In terms of maintaining local service - what about local service on Kennedy, Denison or Steeles? Or any other the level crossings to the south? Do they not matter?

In any case, I'm sure that the people at Go Transit have some good reason for having trains wait at Unionville for 45 minutes. They're actually qualified to do this work; we're random people on the internet.

You're absolutely right. And I will be the first to contend that while it may not be perfectly obvious at first glance, there is going to be logic based in their decision somewhere.

My point though was that using the excuse of turn-around time is not a valid one.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.

 

[amnesiajune]

In terms of maintaining local service - what about local service on Kennedy, Denison or Steeles? Or any other the level crossings to the south? Do they not matter?

There never was any local service there. Before the train, buses ran nonstop between Unionville and Union using the 407, 404 and DVP.

 

[Allandale25]

There was another announcement in Waterloo Region this afternoon about HSR. It included some details about the EAs between Georgetown and Kitchener and for the freight bypass. Details here and copied below (emphasis added with the specific details). Going to cross post this to the Bypass thread and the GO service thread.

Two-Way, All-Day GO for Waterloo Region Takes Next Steps Forward
Ontario Commits More Than $11 Billion for High Speed Rail and Takes Next Steps to Deliver Two-Way, All-Day GO Regional Express Rail Service to Kitchener
April 6, 2018 3:32 P.M.
Office of the Premier

Premier Kathleen Wynne was at Vidyard in Kitchener today to announce a series of actions Ontario is taking to dramatically expand regional transit for people in Waterloo Region.

As announced in the 2018 Budget, the government will make an initial investment of more than $11 billion to support construction of Phase One of Canada's first high speed rail line. This will create a fast route between Toronto's Union Station, Pearson International Airport, Guelph, Kitchener and London as early as 2025. Electric-powered trains moving at up to 250 kilometres per hour will slash travel times to an estimated 48 minutes between Kitchener and Toronto Union Station.

The Premier also announced key advances in bringing two-way, all-day GO train service to Kitchener by 2024, as part of the GO Regional Express Rail project (GO RER). Ontario is moving ahead with two environmental assessments (EAs), which are required to provide faster, electrified, two-way, all-day train service on the Kitchener line. One EA is to provide electrified service between Georgetown and Kitchener, and the other EA is the next step for the freight bypass to provide unrestricted rail access for passenger trains between Toronto and Kitchener. To help guide this work and deliver a near-term increase in service and faster travel times for customers, the province is hiring a technical advisor.

As part of this EA phase, Ontario is now working with the Greater Toronto Airport Authority (GTAA) to explore options to connect two-way, all-day service on the Kitchener GO line to the proposed multimodal transit hub at Toronto Pearson International Airport. The major transit hub the GTAA is proposing to build at Pearson will offer seamless connections between trains, buses, airplanes, light rail vehicles and high speed rail along the Toronto-Windsor corridor.

High speed rail and two-way, all-day GO RER will strengthen transit connections across Central and Southwestern Ontario and help create jobs and economic growth. The new and expanded services will give people a faster and greener way to get to a good job, and will help businesses attract talented workers from across a wider area.

Expanding transit options in Waterloo Region and across Southwestern Ontario is part of the government's plan to support care, create opportunity and make life more affordable during this period of rapid economic change. The plan includes free prescription drugs for everyone under 25, and 65 or over, through the biggest expansion of medicare in a generation, free tuition for hundreds of thousands of students, a higher minimum wage and better working conditions, and easier access to affordable child care.

 

[timio]

GO's new website has emerged from beta.

Thankfully they seem to have gotten the message the PDF schedules are useful to their customers (https://www.gotransit.com/en/trip-planning/seeschedules/full-schedules) using links that can persist across schedule changes even.

 

[Leo_Chan]

GO's new website has emerged from beta.

Thankfully they seem to have gotten the message the PDF schedules are useful to their customers (https://www.gotransit.com/en/trip-planning/seeschedules/full-schedules) using links that can persist across schedule changes even.

This might be nitpicking, but the thing I dislike most about the new GO website is that the menu button is on the right and it slides out from the right. Really should be both on/from the left.

 

[Sandpit]

This might be nitpicking, but the thing I dislike most about the new GO website is that the menu button is on the right and it slides out from the right. Really should be both on/from the left.

Most people pay more attention to things on the right. This is why Reddit puts the sidebar on the right. Also, on most Android browsers, the drop-down menu (with settings, bookmarks, history etc.) is on the top right.

My pet peeve with the new GO website is how the GO logo is in a white box, even when you're not on the home page (where it blends into the trip planner).

 

[nfitz]

GO's new website has emerged from beta.

Thankfully they seem to have gotten the message the PDF schedules are useful to their customers (https://www.gotransit.com/en/trip-planning/seeschedules/full-schedules) using links that can persist across schedule changes even.

That is one extremely ugly website. My gosh - I hadn't checked out the new one. It's nice to have a simple link ... but ... miles of white space between each row of text. The entire page looks like it's built for a portrait-sized screen - I haven't seen one of those for years!

And what font is that? A san-serif font, that has serifs on the number 1? Polaris I'm being told by Acrobat ...

Am I getting a mobile version of this by accident or something. It's beyond pathetic on a laptop - it must really suck on a proper monitor!

Is this what other people are seeing - I zoomed out to 67% to see a more than a few entries

To see the whole thing ... I can't even do it at 25%

... this can't be real. I'm getting a mobile version somehow? And where's the Table 10 schedule - the only one I regularly use?

 

[robmausser]

That is one extremely ugly website. My gosh - I hadn't checked out the new one. It's nice to have a simple link ... but ... miles of white space between each row of text.

Its an AODA WCAG 2.0 requirement

The entire page looks like it's built for a portrait-sized screen - I haven't seen one of those for years!

Its an AODA WCAG 2.0 requirement

And what font is that? A san-serif font, that has serifs on the number 1? Polaris I'm being told by Acrobat ...

Its an AODA WCAG 2.0 requirement

As someone who builds websites for the government, good design is impossible now. AODA and disability/accessibility take 100% precedence or else they will get sued into oblivion.

 

[nfitz]

Its an AODA WCAG 2.0 requirement

This is not true. The text spacing perhaps (or perhaps not ...)

But there's nothing in the AODA WCAG 2.0 requirement that forces a website to use a very long narrow portrait (portrait ... more like ticker-tape) size onto a 16:9 screen. That's just lazy, cheap, and incompetent programming, going for the lowest common denominator of screen, rather than detecting what the user is using, and providing appropriate output. There's certainly AODA WCAG 2.0 websites that don't do this. Or require the use of Polaris.

Your response sounds more like the standard Metrolinx BS response to any issue that they don't want to bother to answer.

 

[robmausser]

This is not true. The text spacing perhaps (or perhaps not ...)

But there's nothing in the AODA WCAG 2.0 requirement that forces a website to use a very long narrow portrait (portrait ... more like ticker-tape) size onto a 16:9 screen. That's just lazy, cheap, and incompetent programming, going for the lowest common denominator of screen, rather than detecting what the user is using, and providing appropriate output. There's certainly AODA WCAG 2.0 websites that don't do this. Or require the use of Polaris.

Your response sounds more like the standard Metrolinx BS response to any issue that they don't want to bother to answer.

WCAG 2.0 AA has a maximum screen width limit of 1024px.

If a WCAG 2.0 website isn't doing this, it is not level AA, which is required by the government, OR its breaking standard.

You can be creative with it however, for example the Canada.ca website

https://www.canada.ca/en.html

See how the header and footer blocks span outside of the website? Thats OK, because it doesnt actually contain any site information.

Read up on your WCAG 2.0 AA standards.