Commuters GO Mad at Rush Hour Chaos
If you hadn't heard it on the news already, there was mass crowding and chaos at Union Station as Toronto Police and GO officials faced the consequences of a nasty pedestrian fatality near Eglinton station earlier today.
Trains beginning at around 4pm were delayed or canceled outright just as rush hour passengers poured into Union Station only to face red and yellow text across the departure screens. Many sighed and cursed as they knew they were in for long delays, and because this wasn't a first-time occurrence for many. In fact, it happens all too often both on GO Transit's lines and the TTC's subway tunnels. Why are we so acclimatized to this kind of thing happening that it barely even makes front page news in the papers?
I'll get it out of the way and say that my thoughts and best wishes are with the family of the pedestrian who was struck earlier today, as well as the driver of the train who likely will now have to live with this for the rest of his life. Obviously my thoughts and/or best wishes aren't going to do anything to make things any easier for them, but let's not forget that this was a tragic death, intentional or not.
That being said, this is just another indication to me that our transit system in the GTA is absolutely broken. Today's accident resulted in not only the Lakeshore East trains facing serious delays and cancellations, but in fact every other line, including Lakeshore West, Milton, Georgetown, Bradford, Richmond Hill, and Stoufville all facing similar issues (see system map below). All things considered, this was a fairly minor accident on the tracks. What kind of problems would the system have faced had there been major damage to infrastructure on one of the lines?
I'm a 905'er, love me or hate me for it, but this where I was born, and this is where I'll be until I make my way downtown early next year. For myself and thousands of others, the GO Train remains the only reasonable (and relatively environmentally friendly) way to get to and from downtown employment on a daily basis. Yet we face countless rather inexcusable delays throughout the year, due to crewing, signal malfunctions, and even crews playing hookey, not taking into account the innumerable cancellations and problems faced in the winter due to the track switches freezing.
Simply put, GO Train passengers put up with a lot of crap from this entirely antiquated system, and at $181 a month for a Pickering-Union monthly pass (one of the cheaper routes, even), they're paying dearly for it as well. While provincial candidates are busy making worthless and entirely transparent promises about greener trains, it would be great to hear about some practical solutions to the province's transit issues.
For one, can we please forget about hydrogen as a solution to anything? We have a lot to learn from many European light rail systems, where trains start and stop quicker, provide more regular service, and are in fact better for the environment that our lumbering diesel tubes we've got at the moment. Sure, Hydrogen is a great solution, but so are flying cars.
Let's get our head out of the clouds here and start hunting with spears before we move on to rifles. What do you say, Dalton?
Top photo by blogTO Flickr pooler --Steve--. Bottom image care of GO Transit
Comments (11)
I feel your pain both for the family and frustration with the transit system. And with the provincial election just days away you'd think you would hear more talk about it. There is a great documentary coming out on CTV(I think) called 'Just Around the Corner' that compares GTA transit system to other systems around the world.
There's another big reason why things like this do not get reported. Most news agencies have policies against reporting suicides unless they are particularly significant. They don't want other people who have been considering suicide to look at the news and say "Hey, look at all the attention that person got." and try the same thing.
I'm not sure if it was a suicide in this case, perhaps that is still up for debate, but I still see news outlets avoiding it for the most part.
i feel your grief. i've been a GO customer since university and i've never been pleased with their service.
i understand that all systems will have issues at some point or another, but it seems the GO transit is doing very little to prevent them from re-occurring. every year the problems are the same and there doesn't appear to be preventative measures in place. they know the switches will freeze and their trains suck in the winter, yet they don't plan ahead for it. if they were a corporation, they would've been out of business a long time ago.
I didn't find out about this until I arrived at the Oakville GO station at 8:25 p.m. for the [supposedly] 8:30 train. The Oakville station doesn't have a monitor to inform travellers about delays. Thank God for my Blackberry and GO's email alert system.
Realistically, I'm not sure what they can do if people decide to wander onto the tracks. The GO trains run through urban areas. There are limited places to shunt a train onto a siding.
This is the second time in 4 months my train back to Toronto has been delayed because of a pedestrian fatality on the tracks. Maybe better track security is what we really need, but I don't know how that could be feasibly provided.
OR we could all simply live closer to work and the places we need to be. how healthy is it that you must commute from pickering everyday? Is this how you envisioned spending your life? Go live downtown, or go work in pickering, or learn how to bike.
This is why we need the new station in midtown sooner rather than later so that at least some trains could be diverted rather than waiting until the midtown station will be jammed from day 1 of operation. Unfortunately there will be significant problems with getting CP's agreement and overcoming NIMBYs.
As for Dalton's "hydrogen trains" Steve Munro tore it apart. Electrification will make trains faster and be compatible with future electric freight and VIA. If McGuinty wants to throw another Scarborough RT/CLRV experiment at Bombardier and sending Toronto transit dollars to a rail plant in Northern Ontario, let him build them for Ottawa where if it goes wrong he will face hometown consequences.
James - with the new Toronto taxes it's more likely people will move out of 416 than into it.
*Sigh* as much as I love my bike, I don't think it would make a pleasant commute to Bloor Street every day.
James, read again above, I'll be a downtown resident soon, thanks for the suggestion :)
I for one see a real trend in major transit systems being repeatedly shut down "due to a police investigation".
This fatality happened at 10 a.m. and they still had to cancel evening trains? Why we they not allowed to divert trains to the parallel track?
It's been happening on the highways too, where a serious accident is cause to close the 401, express and collector lanes, in one or both directions (previously unheard of), stranding hundreds of thousands "due to a police investigation".
Do the police have some motive for this we are not aware of?
I was there waiting for my 6:45 train back to Brampton after having rushed from my internship to make it on time. Talk about irritated! Union also needs a better way of broadcasting messages other than over a lousy PA system in a train overflowing with (loud) bodies.
How does a fatality east of Union affects westbound trains?
I was on the 4:25 pm train Eastbound to Pickering and sat on the train at Union till a little after 6. I know around 6:30 ish when the train drove past Eglinton I saw several police and the body (covered) still on the side of the track about to put it in the body bag. I still have visions of it and makes me feel sick. As much as I disliked waiting at Union there are certain situations where appointments , making dinner, going to the gym can wait a few hours so that proper investigation can be done. Those things are so insignificant to what this persons family is going through right now .
I was on the train heading to the Jays game and was in the front car that the man had jumped into. The sound of him hitting the front of the train is such a chilling memory to have and I remember looking out the window where there was a woman who was out on the platform when the man had jumped. She was telling the police what happened and she looked so lost. Reading her lips as she said "It happened so fast, he was there and then he was gone." I feel for her. It keeps playing over and over in my head ever since it happened and I'll never forget it. For everyone who is mad about this because of the delay in the trains, there are so many other ways to get around town. I am not from Toronto but I still managed to find other ways around this and get to where I needed to go. Why is it that everyone is so selfish, worrying about getting home to feed their faces when there is going to be a family out there somewhere grieving the loss of a family member in an unthinkable way. You may have been held up for a few hours but a whole family will be held up for the rest of their lives. Your life goes on.
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