On your mark, get set…GO!

Posted on October 21, 2008 at 10:36 pm by Shawn Smith

Rutherford GO Station

During the evening rush, a race plays out at every GO Transit train stop. Commuters preparing to exit the train line up at their cabin door, elbows out, sometimes a few stops before their own to get the front position. Then, the doors open and the race is on: ladies in heals and men in suits break into a full sprint for their car! They jump in, almost Dukes of Hazzard style, and peal the tires in an effort to beat the rush and save a few precious minutes exiting the parking lot. But can you blame them? Most GO stations are massive parking lots that contain too many cars to manage the traffic effectively.

GO Transit ridership is up, there’s no doubt about it. I first took the GO train from Maple Station to Union Station about four years ago. Back then there were three trains in the morning, and three returning in the evening, and I had no trouble finding a seat. Now there are four trains each way, the line has been extended to Barrie, and extra cabins have been added, and it’s increasingly more difficult to get a seat in the morning. Parking is at capacity. In fact, cars park illegally at the nearby cemetery and line the road all the way to Major Mackenzie.

I think there exists a great opportunity at the local level to increase cycling, walking, and transit use to connect with a GO Transit trip. Most people using the train probably live within 5 km of the station, but the overwhelming majority decide to get there by car. By building stations that cater to cars, is GO Transit achieving it’s ultimate objective of getting people out of cars?

Consider the Maple GO Station:

There is a “kiss and ride” area for passenger drop-off and pick-up. However, some people choose to illegally block a lane on McNaughton to wait for their passenger. I guess they figure it’s better than getting stuck in the traffic jam exiting the parking lot.
Some people do walk to the station. GO Transit is currently installing some stairs to get up and down to the sidewalk on Major Mackenzie Drive. This is much needed, because it is a treacherous hill and the detour adds several minutes to someone’s walk.
Transit isn’t very good. YRT buses run every 15-20 minutes. At Rutherford Station, buses wait until the train arrives before departing. At Maple GO, there isn’t even a bus stop on site.
When I take my bike to the Maple GO Station, there is sometimes one other bike in the rack. But usually, the rack is empty.

Stairs to Major Mackenzie Dr under construction at Maple GO Station

The GO Train is a great service and I love using the Barrie line. It is fast, affordable, and convenient. The people using it are “the converted”–the transit users. Yet, most still choose to start and end their trip by car, even despite the rat race to get out. Automobile use is deeply rooted in York Region.

Tags: Barrie line, Commuters, GO Stations, GO Transit, Major Mackenzie, Maple GO, McNaughton, Rutherford GO, York Region, YRT

9 Comments »

Unfortunately, for a place built in the fashion Maple has been built, I can’t foresee anything more than an incremental change to the drive-to-the-station mentality. If we had a time machine and changed Vaughan’s building laws 15 years ago, then maybe we;d have a shot.

Comment by Triceratops — October 21, 2008 @ 11:23 pm
[...] Sean’s post on biking to the GO station reminded me to post this image which I photographed earlier in the fall. This is the sign at the entrance to the parking lot which I encounter when I take the GO train between Aurora and Union station. This GO station has multiple lots but clearly, my preferred entrance does not encourage me to bike. Tags: Bike, GO, parking [...]

Pingback by Metronauts » What a sign says — October 22, 2008 @ 11:43 am
I have to admit, during the downtime when Viva was on strike, I would take the GO bus from Unionville Station (mainly because it gets more frequent service and is actually cheaper than going to Centennial Station).

I would get a ride to and from the station every day for a number of reasons:

1. The distance to bike to the station is too ridiculous, and includes trying to trudge through a major construction zone (Downtown Markham / Markham Centre). Essentially, I’d be run over 43 times before I would make it to the station.

2. The only way to get there by bus at any decent hour is by taking the 16th Ave bus and then transfer to the Kennedy bus. Unfortunately the YRT has scheduled these buses to NEVER make a proper connection. Ever. Going to the station, I’d HAVE to wait 30 minutes, guaranteed. Coming back, I would HAVE to wait 20 minutes. No way around it, because that’s just how the schedules were made. Genius, I know.

3. There was a slight hope when I discovered a bus route that would service Unionville GO and would require me to take only one bus. But then I discovered that it is a peak only bus, that runs ONLY between the hours of 6am and 7:30am, and then in the afternoon between 5pm and 7pm. Useless to everyone else who dare bother to take the day time bus service out of that station.

Overall, I’ve just accepted the fact that they just don’t want to make it easy for me to get to the station, so I’ve since gone back to using the Viva as per usual. I was prepared to switch, but they just don’t seem to care about people like me who don’t live in a convenient location to get to any one particular GO station. Oh well.

Comment by Raffi — October 22, 2008 @ 1:06 pm
Right now VIVA is more set up to feed the subway, not the GO train stations. (Which kind of makes sense for a lot of the York Region stations — VIVA is meant to be a relatively “anytime” service, and GO trains only run during commuting hours.)

GO stations have a lot of potential as transit hubs, if only because (1) those who use it have to go there twice every day anyway, and (2) they have lots of empty land courtesy of parking lots.

I really do think the next move lies with GO Transit more than with the munis. Especially in the inner-905, relatively dense — indeed, often denser than many 416 — areas, why not consider retrofitting GO stations as destinations? A cafe and a gym at every inner-905 GO train station would be absurdly logical.

Underground parking financed by selling above-ground air rights for carefully-chosen development would make similar sense. Better interconnection with YRT by inviting it in and making it illogical for YRT not to hub there would then be an easy next step.

Comment by Disparishun — October 22, 2008 @ 4:26 pm
Disparishun, you’re being far too logical to make any sense to the politicians who will ultimately make these decisions.

Comment by Raffi — October 22, 2008 @ 11:31 pm
@Disparishun

I agree that a major step is adjusting GO stations from ‘places to make transit connections’ to actual ‘transit hubs.’ However, I think municipalities have a big role to play in this. While the ownership of the parking lot belongs to GO transit, actual planning jurisdiction in the area surrounding the station is in the hands of the municipalities.
Also keep in mind the location of a lot of these stations. Take Bramalea station in Brampton as an example. Located at Bramalea and Steeles, the area surrounding the station is prime industrial land. A developer would have to provide all the amenities of a community – schools, stores, parks – within a relatively small area if they purchased the GO station’s lot. Changing the character of these areas into something liveable is a major challenge; one which has to involve the municipal levels of government as well as GO transit.
On the flip side, there are areas where it makes more sense to amortize the parking lot. Erindale GO station, for example, is bounded by a residential neighbourhood, a strip mall, and is cycling distance from the Credit River. It could easily be transformed in something approaching a community. Maybe the way forward is incremental change at these stations; building up a public preception of GO rail stations as destinations.

Comment by Peter Kucirek — October 23, 2008 @ 1:31 pm
Oh, I don’t disagree that there’s a lot that municipalities can do, Peter. But GO could steam right on ahead without ever consulting a single municipality. Cafes, gyms, underground parking, are all do-able; so is residential. Sure, Bramalea in Brampton — but there are lots of GO stops which aren’t so remote, and those inner-905 stations are the ones I’m talking about. I don’t know Erindale, but that sounds right to me. The only real barrier would be a municipality that decided to fight a zoning war with GO and, aside from being dumb, well, isn’t that why they invented the OMB?

The ironic thing is that this would make Toronto a lot better for so many of us, it makes sense, and it wouldn’t even require any resources, just an enterprising GO employee or twenty. At high levels of the organization. But, still — no money issues (provided clever public financing), no political will issues (provided willingness to go over the head of munis who fought a retrograde battle).

That said, I don’t live in Fantasyland. This will never, ever happen. GO is not a small entrepreneurial user-oriented shop, it’s a behemoth bureaucracy that runs diesel trains on unelectrified rails. Still, we can all dream a little, right?

Comment by Disparishun — October 23, 2008 @ 9:02 pm
I’m sure access to GO stations could be more differentiated. However, I’m not sure how on my priority list this would be. Many people I know who make the GO commute are in their child-raising years. Having their car at the station allows riders to perform errands on the way home. The big sprint for many is to pick up kids from daycare, pick up kids from home to take them to after school activities, etc.

This is why a few minutes delay in GO can be a big deal – (and why the radio stations relay information on seemingly small delays.)

This segment of riders is hard to get to switch from cars – and in reality, most of their journey is by transit, or walking for most at the Union Station end. How much is is worth worrying about getting a small number of riders to not use their cars for the very short journeys at the home end of the trip – vs. worrying about getting more people to switch for the long leg of the trip?

Some stations are located in more commercial/industrial areas. I don’t see that it makes sense to convert the zoning to residential unless the area in question is in disuse. The rail line – and the freight service it provides – may well be the reason why industries are located there in the 1st place.

GO could reserve some portion of some lots for paid parking. The revenues could be used to pay for improved shuttle-bus type services, or more regular bus/train service. The economics for this may or may not work – not sure. There are costs to running a paid parking lot.

Comment by J Albert — October 23, 2008 @ 9:22 pm
The problem with parking-oriented stations is more about how it does in fact limit GO Train use. If GO is not accessible in a convenient manner by transit, walking, or cycling, due to the bleak reality of GO’s parking fetish, then once the parking lot is full, you have a very hard time getting more people to use the station.

For GO’s ridership to increase to the point where it makes sense for them to run more frequent service all day long, it needs to change the environment of their stations and the services around them. Some are in prime locations; Port Credit is a great example. Particularly when the new LRT is running at least as far as Eglinton along Hurontario, Port Credit could afford to lose a good chunk of its parking. For a good example of how some 905 stations can be, I’d advise people to check out Stouffville GO (take a look at it on Google Maps). There’s only around 200 parking spaces, but the station is located in the centre of a small community, putting most people in Stouffville within walking distance of their GO Train. This is a model that future stations must emulate if we are going to see any cultural shifts take place from GO service extensions.

Comment by Karl Junkin — October 25, 2008 @ 1:16 pm