- The Toronto Star
No one got 40 cm of snow last night.
Yet, GO Transit went ahead with its head-scratching plan to eliminate all morning express service on its system. Better safe than sorry they protested on social media. SO WHAT ABOUT ALL THE YEARS BEFORE?
Is this the new normal?
Apparently we can expect the same for the ride home. But there's now conflicting information about whether there will be express trains leaving Union for the rush hour ride home. GO Transit's website is showing all stops. Yes, folks, no express service for tonight's ride home because it snowed nine centimetres.
Meh, at the time GO made its decision the forecasts were still calling for up to 20cm in some areas, and we all know what a s*hit show GO becomes with that amount. I was actually happy that for once they actually thought ahead and made some logical decisions that would help keep the trains on schedule in the event of a heavy snowfall. Avoiding track switches, for example, seemed to be a prudent move even it if eliminated express trains this morning. While I'm giving GO some (rare) kudos, I'll also say that the Oshawa lot was well-cleaned and salted by the time I arrived about 6:30 this morning, which was also a pleasant surprise.
ReplyDeleteNormally Environment Canada is pretty good at not exaggerating. I know I shoveled about 1.5" last evening and another 4" this morning. May have a bit to do tonight when I get home because of asshat neighbours who think it is kosher to either shovel their snow on my sidewalk or stop short because heaven forbid he shovel a tiny bit at the property line.
ReplyDeleteBut I am not looking forward to the gong show that is tonight. I hope they realise that the snow is over with and all trains go back to their normal schedule.
Applause all around.
ReplyDeleteNot happy tho about the hour long train ride home tonight.
We only got 5 cm in Courtice.
ReplyDeleteAll I am asking for is consistency. If this is how they planned for this snowfall, this should now become normal operating procedure for any snowfall expected to exceed 15 cm. This way, we call all plan for our commute to take longer and get up at 4:30 am instead of 5:30 am and plan to leave the office earlier than normal so we can be home at times that are "regular".
ReplyDeleteI can't argue with that, although this is the first time I can recall them doing something like this so they'll probably evaluate the statistics to determine whether it was a success or not. Of course it's also complicated by the fact that the snowfall wasn't nearly as bad as predicted, so it's hard to evaluate whether the plan worked.
ReplyDeleteHow hard is it for them to revert back to normal service? Obviously we do not need the snow contingency plan anymore. It is baffling how they operate GO. If I had any other choice I would have stopped years ago.
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad I made the decision to not adult today and rolled over for another couple of hours before working from home. I've gotten so much done already and it's only early afternoon.
ReplyDeleteI just called GO and they confirmed that they will NOT be switching back to the normal schedule. Apparently the fact that the warning has been lifted for hours now is none of their concern.
ReplyDeleteSo yay! all stops trains! And getting home late! Personally, I am hoping I don't have to wait too long at my station to catch my bus home.
Maybe I'm feeling overly charitable to GO today, but I'm not surprised nor angered that they aren't able to switch the schedule back. I assume that the change involved a lot of personnel changes that aren't easy to undo. They also did a lot of communication about the changes and, arguably, it would only add more confusion to switch everything back to normal.
ReplyDeleteSo they plan on packing the 17:05 and 17:10 together? That will should be fun.
ReplyDeletei got an email alert yesterday evening indicated go would be cancelling the 9:20am southbound richmond hill train and the 19:40 evening northbound train...... just those two.....im still scratching my head why the last morning train and the last evening train? there was no forecasted snowfall to justify the last evening train getting cancelled..... i guess they decided to plan for the worst case scenario .......
ReplyDelete