Crazy Morning For Go Transit on the Lakeshore Line

It seems that a stalled train at the Burlington station was 1/2 way in the station. Havoc was caused as the station PA announced that the 6:30 train would be coming in on track 2 instead of track 1 and that it was arriving 15 minutes late. This confused passengers that were on the other track where there was a stuck train. The station officials had no idea when the 6:55 train would arrive.

Here is the trail of Go Alerts:

1. Lakeshore East corridor: The 0612 train trip from Oshawa to Union (0712) is PARTIALLY CANCELLED between Oshawa and Whitby. The train is scheduled to depart Whitby on time.
2. Lakeshore West corridor: The 0614 train trip from Hamilton to Union (0722) is PARTIALLY CANCELLED between Hamilton and Aldershot. The train will depart Aldershot on time. Buses will shuttle passengers from Hamilton to Aldershot.
3. Lakeshore East corridor: The 0743 train trip from Union to Pickering (0808) is CANCELLED due to equipment problems.
4. Lakeshore East Corridor: The 0818 train trip from Pickering to Union (0859) is PARTIALLY CANCELLED between Pickering and Guildwood. The train is scheduled to originate at Guildwood on time. The 0746 train trip from Oshawa to Union (0830) will make an ADDITIONAL STOP at Rouge Hill to accommodate passengers.
5. Lakeshore West Corridor: The 0634 train trip from Hamilton to Union (0738) is operating more than 30 minutes late due to equipment problems.
6. Lakeshore East: The 0731 train trip from Union to Oshawa (0826)will operate EXPRESS from Union to Pickering and then ALL STOPS from Pickering to Oshawa.
7. Lakeshore West corridor: The 0704 train trip from Hamilton to Union (0808) is operating 31 minutes late due to equipment problems.
8. Lakeshore East corridor: The 0818 train trip from Pickering to Union is Cancelled due to equipment problems. The 0754 train trip from Pickering to Union is operating 30 minutes late at Eglinton.

Now the question her is how many of these was caused by the train sitting stalled in Burlington station. If only they would have had the 6:30 train come in behind the other one and it could have pushed it to mimico. Then some of the congestion would be solved. Again 40 years go transit has been running on the Lakeshore Corridor and still they do not know how to schedule trains and deal with engine failures.

From other material from Go Transit itself it said that the engines are very sensitive to hot and cold days, so when the warmer weather comes Go Transit should know by now to expect issues and have action plans for such occasions. Just another way Go Transit could look out for us, the Customer.

Toll Roads and Government Giving Money to Other Countries

I saw an article on a poll done on converting high congestion areas to toll areas to stop people from taking their cars. This sounds like a good idea but where would the money from the tolls go? Would it go to helping transit? Probably not if you look at past examples of taxing in this manner.

1) Gas tax does not go to Go Transit and the smaller transit areas. If it did that would be a lot of money that transit is getting.
2) 407, sure make people pay for riding the highway but this highway is not owned by the government and they have no control over how tolls are collected and where the money goes. The 407 is owned partially by Royal Bank and partially by some country outside Canada. Imagine if the profits from 407 went to transit. We would have one heck of a transit system.
3) The new toll road to the airport is supposed to be built but again it will be privatized so the profit will not go to help the transportation issues but into someones pocket.
4) The government is paying for the expansion of rail for the GO Trains to run on but CN will own the rails and have control of them. This is another example of government giving in to private corporations. Go Transit owns the customer service desk and ticket checkers, but CN drives the trains owns the land and Bombardiar runs the trains. All this private profits from public transit.

One thing to note, when CN was on strike we had a lot less delays because of signals waiting for CN trains to shuttle in and out of the freight corridors. As for switching, I have watched as I have been taking the train and just doing a simple switch optimization would save a lot of delays. When I take the 5:43 train and it gets to burlington it arrives in the north track but then close to the station it switches across 1 if not two switches to get in on the middle or south track. If we didn't have to switch and came in on the north track then the delay waiting for a switch would be gone.

Common senses but in 40 years of service Go Transit still has not done switch optimization.

Go Transit Contest For Free Monthly Pass

This may be of interest, for Go Transit's 40th anniversary they are giving away free Go Monthly passes in a contest. The link is below:

http://gotransit.com/publicroot/contest/goingplaces2007.aspx

Good Luck