GO Transit

[MidTowner]

I believe it's nine Toronto-bound and 10 Kitchener-bound.

Hopefully there is significant ridership on this new weekend service, and more trains are added Saturday and Sunday as well.

9 Toronto bound and 10 Kitchener bound?

Are they dead heading one train back to Toronto? That would be rather....stupid.

No clue, that's just what I counted when I looked at the new schedules when they were released.

ijmorlan's point was, we started with poor service, and now we have a lot of service. No reason to believe the same won't wind up being the case on weekends as well.

[ijmorlan]

The PDF schedule I found at https://assets.metrolinx.com/image/uploa...ABLE31.pdf seems to have the first part of the Eastbound weekday schedule (pp4-5) duplicated at pp10-11 in place of the second part of the Westbound weekday schedule one would expect to see there.

This annoys me in part because it is wrong, and in part because schedule documents like this should just be sophisticated database reports, not manually-maintained, and should therefore never have that kind of error in them but should always faithfully represent the contents of the schedule database.

This doesn’t explain the 9 vs 10 trip thing. Perhaps a miscount?

[danbrotherston]

9 Toronto bound and 10 Kitchener bound?

Are they dead heading one train back to Toronto? That would be rather....stupid.

No clue, that's just what I counted when I looked at the new schedules when they were released.

ijmorlan's point was, we started with poor service, and now we have a lot of service. No reason to believe the same won't wind up being the case on weekends as well.

Yeah, definitely a good point, service has been gradually increasing.

But I also think it's reasonable to demand better. We've been waiting a decade for weekend service...

Either way, the 9 vs 10 thing is strange.

[MidTowner]

Well, no more waiting for weekend service, we now have it. Time to demand better weekend service, but the best way is for people to actually use it. From some posts on social media, there was a lot of excitement about the first trips, and a lot of riders. Hopefully that keeps up.

[bravado]

I just hope that GO Transit has the internal feedback loop of (busy route -> add more capacity). Some days it doesn't seem like they do. Here's hoping.

[tomh009]

So, stupid drivers are not only in Waterloo Region ...
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/ce...i-AA1QU359

[danbrotherston]

The fact that Metrolinx fails to invest when demand is high is annoying/bad/whatever.

But really, this shouldn't actually be the way things are done. We should invest when we think something is a good idea. If the service is bad and people don't use it, we should make it better...not worse. The fact that we don't do this, to me, is an argument against doing things if they're not being done well.

[neonjoe]

The agreement with CN to allow for Metrolinx to build their own dedicated trackage between Silver Junction and Mount Pleasant should allow them to open up a log of operational flexibility since the current limiting factor is CN's ownership of this stretch.

Buried in the news about the minimal weekend extension to Kitchener is that service between Bramalea and Union is now every 30 minutes on weekends. This is all Metrolinx owned track. Weekrnd service on the Kitchener line started in the spring of 2022.

Hopefully they can get to work quickly on filling in the Gap to allow for the full flexibility of being the dedicated track owner along the entire Kitchener line. (But we'll see)

[ZEBuilder]

I just hope that GO Transit has the internal feedback loop of (busy route -> add more capacity). Some days it doesn't seem like they do. Here's hoping.

GO doesn't have anymore locomotives to run, unless they use the spares they have in the yard but that'll cause problems when locomotives breakdown. You will continue to see more RFPs for train sets as GO attempts to get more capacity.

[neonjoe]

^ This explains why they purchased second hand locomotives from Metrolink

[danbrotherston]

I just hope that GO Transit has the internal feedback loop of (busy route -> add more capacity). Some days it doesn't seem like they do. Here's hoping.

GO doesn't have anymore locomotives to run, unless they use the spares they have in the yard but that'll cause problems when locomotives breakdown. You will continue to see more RFPs for train sets as GO attempts to get more capacity.

I mean this conversation is about weekend service. Given they run 9 or 10 trains on weekdays they obviously have the equipment to run more weekend trains. 

For weekday trains I have no idea how tight their equipment situation is but I do think locomotives should be the priority.  Their trains are huge more service with shorter trains would be better.

[tomh009]

^ This explains why they purchased second hand locomotives from Metrolink

Yes. An inexpensive stopgap until they make a decision on new trainsets.

[Momo26]

What a colossal oversight

.https://www.reddit.com/r/waterloo/s/dw7INVmQpO

[Rainrider22]

What a colossal oversight

.https://www.reddit.com/r/waterloo/s/dw7INVmQpO

That's what happens when the people in charge don't actually utilize the service they are in charge of....   No big surprise here. When you aim for mediocre, and still cant achieve your goal !!

[nms]

How much warning did the Region have that the service was starting and was it far enough in advance to make operational changes? Was GRT given more information before the news reports a month ago? Given that GRT updates their operating schedule every four months (or so), is is possible that connecting service would be added on or about January 1, 2026?