trainiart
New Member
Richmond Hill is fortunate to have an alternative direct bus to the subway.
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Brampton, of course, had no easy alternative that Richmond Hill had, and had to deal with a forced transfer that added 20-30 minutes to the trip.
I hear you regarding Brampton troubles. Let's hope the situation improves after Georgetown line upgrade.
For getting to the downtown core, VIVA is most valuable for Thornhill residents, and maybe for those in the very Southern part of Richmond Hill. Riding from anywhere north of Major McKenzie it's a joke. I missed an homebound bus once, decided not to wait for one hour for the next one and take the TTC/VIVA combo instead. Bad decision, took me longer than a wait would have.
But even if VIVA was viable. If the only reason why GO is introducing this train is to push people off GO buses into VIVA and driving, it would've been cheaper just to cancel them and announce "use VIVA guys". Doesn't take a PHD to calculate that the ridership on this train is likely to be lower than that of the cancelled buses combined. If single track on Bala sub prevents them from supplying a deadheaded train to RH earlier, it would be smarter of them to wait till the Bethesda layover is finished and introduce some reasonable train schedule after that, it's only half a year left to complete.