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wopchop said:
It would be interesting to see ridership by station, and how that had changed.

Oakville GO for example appears very empty still of car commuters. The south lot is closed. The main lot maybe 25% full on a weekday. Same with the garage. The lot east of Trafalgar was closed all winter, not sure if it has reopened.
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Ridership from Kitchener has got to be at an all-time high, daily usage of the station is probably close to 1000 boardings and 1000 alighting's when it's not a student migration day. For those, see:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1591167989834915842
ssiguy2 said:
It will take longer for a commuter system like GO to recover its ridership and this is similar to what has happened in nearly every other city with their commuter rail systems.

Commuter rail is very much focused on getting people from the suburban homes to downtown offices. White collar work is, by far, the biggest candidate for working from home and hence a huge number of those trips are no longer needed. As GO slowly turns into a more suburban & rapid transit system, the percentage of riders strictly going from their suburban homes to Union will decrease as a proportion of trips provided. GO's recent complete fare integration/reduction and free 905 transfer will greatly expediate this process.
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Ironically, in some US cities, regional rail ridership recovery is actually exceeding that of local service recovery (ie bus and subway). NYC has been dealing with this. https://new.mta.info/coronavirus/ridership

In other news: GRT's ridership now exceeds that of pre pandemic ridership.
https://twitter.com/x/status/1592173936003149825
 
Streety McCarface said:
Ironically, in some US cities, regional rail ridership recovery is actually exceeding that of local service recovery (ie bus and subway). NYC has been dealing with this. https://new.mta.info/coronavirus/ridership
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Interesting - similar to GO, it's only on weekends (and only on Metro North). I'd assumed GO was somewhat driven by the much cheaper weekend fares. I wonder what other factors are helping Metro North and not the LIRR.
 
nfitz said:
Interesting - similar to GO, it's only on weekends (and only on Metro North). I'd assumed GO was somewhat driven by the much cheaper weekend fares. I wonder what other factors are helping Metro North and not the LIRR.
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It seems to also be during weekdays. Their commuter lines are looking at ridership closer to 65-75% pre pandemic ridership, meanwhile the subways are stuck at 60%. My guess is more stringent office work requirements. Of course, we don't have day by day comparisons so it's hard to cross check.
 
Streety McCarface said:
It seems to also be during weekdays. Their commuter lines are looking at ridership closer to 65-75% pre pandemic ridership, meanwhile the subways are stuck at 60%. My guess is more stringent office work requirements. Of course, we don't have day by day comparisons so it's hard to cross check.
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Likely people "discovered" that a GO train could take them downtown and back faster.
 
Streety McCarface said:
It seems to also be during weekdays. Their commuter lines are looking at ridership closer to 65-75% pre pandemic ridership, meanwhile the subways are stuck at 60%. My guess is more stringent office work requirements. Of course, we don't have day by day comparisons so it's hard to cross check.
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Ah, I see - I was thinking "exceeding pre-Covid" rather than "exceeding the recovery of bus and subway pre-Covid".

Perhaps the difference is more related to how difficult it is to get through the bridges and tunnels - which have already fully recovered. So any additional recovery is pushed to rail rather than driving.

It will be interesting to see where trends go in the next decade.
 
nfitz said:
Ah, I see - I was thinking "exceeding pre-Covid" rather than "exceeding the recovery of bus and subway pre-Covid".

Perhaps the difference is more related to how difficult it is to get through the bridges and tunnels - which have already fully recovered. So any additional recovery is pushed to rail rather than driving.

It will be interesting to see where trends go in the next decade.
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People just like driving, and if anything this kind of shows that people will drive unless transit is faster. Once the roads are clogged people will take transit.
 
nfitz said:
Interesting - similar to GO, it's only on weekends (and only on Metro North). I'd assumed GO was somewhat driven by the much cheaper weekend fares. I wonder what other factors are helping Metro North and not the LIRR.
Click to expand...
Anecdotally, Long Island is more car-oriented than the towns along the Hudson. Also, given that you’ve to transit all of Brooklyn/Queens to get into Manhattan, maybe there’s just less incentive to travel to the city? Pure speculation.

Personal opinion: I always preferred going into the Hudson towns - either by car or train - because it was far, far less hassle than Long Island.
Streety McCarface said:
It seems to also be during weekdays. Their commuter lines are looking at ridership closer to 65-75% pre pandemic ridership, meanwhile the subways are stuck at 60%. My guess is more stringent office work requirements. Of course, we don't have day by day comparisons so it's hard to cross check.
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Anecdotally (again!), companies are starting to have more parameters around remote work. Implementation varies by company and industry and some implementations just suck. I think we’re just starting figure out a new normal.
 
Allandale25 said:
Latest GO and UP ridership stats:

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Interesting. I bet Pearson recovery would be near 100% if they were at 15 minutes a day, compared to 30 minutes a day.

1676072398682.png


1676072439158.png
 
It's not written in any of the June board reports and it was just mentioned verbally in the CEO report the positive increase for weekend GO train service for part of the Kitchener Line.

From the transcript:

The new weekend [train] services [on] the Kitchener [Line] started in April and the[re] is [30 new] new weekend trains between Toronto and Brampton [Mount Pleasant] which has increased our ridership on that line by 58 percent.
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Mentioned here:

 
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Allandale25 said:
... mentioned verbally in the CEO report the positive increase for weekend GO train service for part of the Kitchener Line...
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I think there's been noticeably more people using it overall this year, not just weekends. I've used the GO Bloor station sporadically over the last several years, and there had always been only a very small number of people getting on or off. I got off the westbound train from Union at Bloor at 9:44 pm tonight, and had to push through the crowd of people waiting to get on, which I had never seen before.
 
reaperexpress said:
Does anyone know where I could find Via Rail boardings and alightings per station? I've been looking around online and I can't find the ridership per station
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I've seen those numbers posted before, and they got cross-posted to the CanPassRail list on eGroups in the past. A lot of that info should still be in the group's archives.

Dan
 
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