Dear Ms. Smith,
I wanted to follow up with you regarding the experience your reader had with the Route 12 service on August 16th. I appreciate that this would have been a frustrating experience for him and the other riders and I was very sorry to hear of it.
Unfortunately, we had a significant increase in our ridership that day because of VIA train passengers transferring onto our service. This caused unplanned overcrowding and because of this, all buses that departed from Niagara Falls were full and could not service St. Catharines. We are currently working with VIA to ensure there is extra equipment available for those times that VIA may need assistance.
I’m also sorry to hear that your reader’s experience with the Contact Centre did not meet his expectations. The representative he was speaking with could have contacted the Supervisor on his cell phone to let him know that his attention was needed right away. As well, it’s very important for us to provide timely and accurate updates to our passengers and I’m very disappointed that this service disruption was not communicated appropriately.
In order to ensure that we are able to provide more reliable service to our passengers for the remainder of the summer, we requested additional stand-by drivers each weekend, dedicated to the Niagara/St. Catharines area. We are also looking into supplying service every 30 minutes instead of hourly service to meet the higher ridership demands during the summer months.
We will be monitoring this service closely and we remain committed to improving our communications.
Sincerely,
Matt Baynie
Vice President, GO Operations, GO Transit
For Summer 2016 hourly express buses (12-B) between Burlington and Niagara Falls are running on weekends. (Also, Niagara Falls to Burlington express buses).
ReplyDeleteGood thing, too. On July 3 I was travelling to St. Catharines on GO. Noticed that the express 12-B bus appeared to be at (or near) capacity.