Special to This Crazy Train
By Chris P. Bacon
The Bus Stop from Hell — St.
Catharines
My original experiences boarding buses in
the Garden City were Greyhound and Coach Canada at the downtown bus terminal in
2002. GO Transit bus service was
introduced in 2009 with better pricing, so I switched. The local media covered GO’s arrival as
follows:
GO Transit coming to Niagara by September
MARLENE BERGSMA
Standard Staff
GO Transit is
coming to Niagara.
St. Catharines
MPP Jim Bradley and St. Catharines MP Rick Dykstra announced Sunday [April 5, 2009] $2.5 million in federal and provincial
infrastructure funding to build four new park and ride GO bus stations in
Niagara.
Construction on
the first station at Casablanca Boulevard and the QEW in Grimsby will start in
June, with service to St. Catharines and possibly two locations in Niagara
Falls by September.
Grimsby got a MASSIVE park and ride station, and
smaller ones were brokered for Stoney Creek (Barton & Nash) and Niagara
Falls (Hwy 420 & Stanley). Even
though MPP Jim Bradley was Minister of Transportation at the time, St.
Catharines got NOTHING — nada, rien,
zip, zilch.
Searching for what happened to the funding
for St. Catharines, I found the following on Twitter:
There is a Route 12 bus stop in the Garden
City, but it’s not a Park+Ride station; it is located on YMCA
Drive behind Fairview Mall. In
reality, this is a St. Catharines Transit facility that GO Transit started
using — much to the vexation of the local drivers. And why is that you ask? There are four local transit routes and two
regional bus routes that stop there. Add
to that GO Transit’s regular Route 12 buses plus dedicated St. Catharines buses
(12C and 12D), and the bus stop can become quite busy.
There are safety issues to this
congestion. The bus at the tail end of
the queue sometimes has its back end sticking out into the traffic lane. Impatient bus drivers will “double park”
their bus in the traffic lane and then discharge or take on their passengers. I’ve been at the stop to witness two accident
investigations after the approaching local bus cut in too close and clipped the
parked GO bus’ side mirror.
The St.
Catharines stop also seems to be where GO Transit’s double-decker buses breakdown
and wreak havoc on the flow of buses.
The following bus died in the wee hours of the morning and sat at the
Fairview Mall stop until it was extricated by three tow trucks at the end of
the day:
It should be noted that even though The
Falls receives all the publicity because of the demand for train service to Niagara,
as well as the seasonal weekend train, it is St. Catharines that has carried
Route 12 over the years. Metrolinx has
invested no money to support this station.
Intending passengers who drive to this location and leave their vehicles
at Fairview Mall or the YMCA across the street, risk having their vehicles
towed.
Metrolinx committed $1.4 billion for
transit in York Region. Taj Mahal bus shelters like the one in the following
photo were built:
Meanwhile, in St. Catharines, all
passengers must share the local transit’s cramped and aging amenities — and/or they
are left to weather the elements:
It should be noted that this bus stop is NOT accessibility compliant. The bus shelters encroach on the minimum
setback distance from the curb. GO
Transit is aware of this deficiency and has known about it for some time — one
of their staff who was tabulating passenger counts in 2013 told me.
Another glaring deficiency at this stop is
GO Transit’s botched attempts to post the Route 12 timetable as the following
collage illustrates:
1. Initially, timetables
were taped to the bus shelter, but vandals kept ripping them down, which
required repeated visits by staff from GO Transit Station Ops.
2. GO Transit’s solution was to hide the schedule inside Fairview Mall
on the community bulletin board some 100 metres away — protected, yes, but of
no value to passengers.
3. Next was a Plexiglas
frame. Perfect!
4. But the timetable became too big. The bottom portion was unprotected and fell
victim to vandalism. (Back to square
one.)
5. It was recommended that
GO Transit acquire the same display case used by St. Catharines Transit. Voilà!
6.
One day, the Route 12 timetable disappeared, replaced by a Cogeco
advertisement, which vandals defaced promptly, and it, too, was removed.
The mini-schedule for St.
Catharines—Burlington—Union was posted near the pole with GO Transit signage,
but Station Ops was challenged to ensure it was for the same board period as
the main timetable inside the bus shelter.
Eventually, GO Transit gave up posting any
schedule in St. Catharines. Some drivers
would pick up a number of printed timetables at Burlington station and
distribute them to passengers as required.
To my knowledge this practice has stopped, too. What the Metrolinx Ivory Tower doesn’t realize
is that passengers now pester GO Transit drivers for timetable
information. Drivers do not need another delay departing this location!
Travelling Greyhound and Coach Canada was
always an orderly process — buy a ticket from the agent at the station, get in
the queue on the platform, surrender my luggage to the driver for loading into
the cargo bay, and finally, board the bus.
Boarding a GO Transit bus in St. Catharines is more like a free-for-all
event — jostling for position with luggage, avoiding mall shopping carts and a
large refuse bin as seen in this photo:
The process of boarding is laborious,
because drivers must sell tickets and load luggage (and give timetable
information). Sometimes, if the timing
is right, drivers who are Niagara-bound (or have a disabled bus) will sell tickets for
Burlington-bound passengers in order to help their colleagues. Report drivers dispatched to St. Catharines
in cover buses are supposed to sell tickets, too, but many don’t. I recall one Niagara-bound driver, who after
discharging his passengers on a busy Sunday afternoon, walked up to the cover
bus, rapped on the door, woke up the snoozing driver, and chastised her for not
selling tickets. When working Route 12,
you better bring your “A” game.
Recently, GO transit issued the following
e-mail alert:
Subject:
PRESTO made easier at Niagara Falls Bus Terminal
Date:
16 Mar 2018 17:42:00 +0000
To:
Me
Save time and avoid the line - our
upgraded ticket vending machines make using PRESTO even easier.
Starting March 19, and over the next
few days, we're upgrading the ticket vending machines at Niagara Falls Bus
Terminal so you can instantly load your PRESTO card and check account
information.
One machine will be upgraded each
day, so during this time you can use another ticket vending machine, or visit a
GO or UP Express counter to buy your ticket or load your PRESTO card. You can
also load your PRESTO card online at prestocard.ca or visit a PRESTO customer
service outlet.
We'll be sure to let you know once
you can buy a PRESTO card or begin loading your card at the upgraded machines.
Visit prestocard.ca/tvm to learn
more.
Niagara
Falls already has a ticket agent!! Why does that location warrant ticket vending
machines (TVM’s) — but NOT St. Catharines?
There was a need to offload ticket sales from drivers when GO Transit first
came to town in 2009. Now, nine years
later, Metrolinx management still have their collective heads stuck in the sand
on this matter. Cash management is a
liability for the drivers and, hence, Metrolinx. Why?
Ask GO Transit about the driver who was robbed of their cash receipts on
the busy Friday afternoon of Thanksgiving weekend last year. Fortunately, no one was hurt in the incident,
but what about the next time?
It’s not unusual to see Niagara Region Police
Service (NRPS) at Fairview Mall; the stop is known for its nefarious
characters. Disembarking a local bus one
morning, passengers got to witness multiple police vehicles and a male, bent
over, legs apart, with his arms spread out on the hood of one of the cruisers. When I asked the GO bus driver at the stop
what had happened, she responded, “First he was verbally abusive to me, then to
the officers.”
In another incident, NRPS arrived at the
stop one evening to remove Route 12’s roving drunk — let’s call him ^JM — from
the bus. He had become so boisterous
that he was offending fellow passengers.
The officers emptied his “in progress” bottle of whiskey over the
railing, then found an unopened bottle of Crown Royal in his bag, and emptied
it, too. That brought tears to my eyes.
My personal involvement in a police take
down happened one Friday afternoon. A
male and a female officer were trying to coax a distraught young female in the
nearest bus shelter to come with them to face an allegation of shoplifting by a
store manager in the mall. I walked up
the bus platform, and was past the trio, when the officers shouted,
“Stop!” I turned to see the young female
bolting directly at me! As I whirled to
get out of the way, my backpack caught her and knocked her to the ground; the
officers were on her in an instant.
With all this drama at the St. Catharines bus
stop, why won’t Metrolinx install TVM’s there?
Drivers have shared a multitude of stories for the status quo. One theory is that there is no electrical
feed to the bus platform. This notion is
incorrect, since St. Catharines Transit has a pole-mounted
electronic display of their bus departures.
There is a concern that the TVM’s won’t stand up to the vandalism at
this location. It’s been suggested that
Metrolinx strike a deal with Fairview Mall to place TVM’s in the foyer of the west
entrance. This would provide some
security for the machines when the mall is closed — not the optimum solution
for drivers, but still better than the status quo. Apparently, mall management doesn’t support
the idea.
Why is there so much inertia to provide a
proper bus stop in St. Catharines? It
seems the politicians of Niagara region are fixated on only one thing when it
comes to Metrolinx, namely, bringing the GO train to town. In this regard, the politicians will go to
any lengths for a photo op. Recently, Jim
Bradley was at the
ground breaking ceremony for Centennial GO station, which is some 45 km. to
the west and not in his riding.
The earliest that GO train service can be
expected in St. Catharines is 2023 — five years from now. Metrolinx has toiled longer than that on
Burlington GO station. Do the local
politicians really believe Metrolinx can deliver all the necessary passenger
train infrastructure in five years?
Assuming this can be achieved, it means at least another five years of
hell at the Fairview Mall bus stop. And
once train service begins, there will still be a need for bus service.
So, nine years after GO Transit came to
town, and after the federal government contributed millions of dollars for a
proper bus stop in St. Catharines, what have Metrolinx, MPP Jim Bradley, Mayor
Walter Sendzik, and Regional Chairman Alan Caslin delivered? A
sign…
Enjoy your sign residents of St.
Catharines!
