GO Transit

[ijmorlan]

Buses are noisy, dirty and offer poor ride quality.  Trains are quiet, fast and smooth.  Kind of a no-brainer to me!  But whatever floats your boat...

Maybe in a city built from scratch around the public transit network, it might be possible to have everything as rail (trains, LRT, streetcars). But in an existing city, it’s hard to imagine there being no routes that make more sense as a bus every few minutes. How are you going to provide service to random residential neighbourhoods other than with buses? I don’t mean iXpress-like service, but all those local buses that drop off much closer to many people’s houses. It’s all about ridership levels and cost-effectiveness.

Of course, a higher transit mode share pushes the equation towards the rail side.

[ijmorlan]

Both have their place. I'm trying to think of a city that has trains but does not also have buses, and can't come up with one.

Just like there aren’t any cities with expressways but no local roads. It simply doesn’t make sense in most situations.

[yige_t]

Buses are noisy, dirty and offer poor ride quality.  Trains are quiet, fast and smooth.  Kind of a no-brainer to me!  But whatever floats your boat...

Propulsion and speed/acceleration have nothing to with mode. Ride quality is the only inherent benefit of rail you listed here, but there are exceptions even for that. Electric buses on smooth roads can be just as clean and fast and can have similar ride quality as rail. Diesel trains running on poorly maintained tracks can be just as bad as your "dirty buses".

The whole point, as others have said, is that rail cannot possibly cover every corner of any city. Buses make it possible to expand transit to a cover larger areas without the high capital/maintenance costs of rail. Do you want every local GRT/BusPlus route to be replaced by trains too?

This kind of negative attitude towards buses (or any specific transit mode) is disgusting, toxic and frankly has no place in any intelligent discussions about public transportation. See how defensive you get when others question the viability of monorail/AGT/maglev technology:

Sorry, too many years on the defensive with all the monorail haters out there (it's exhausting). Every transit technology has advantages and disadvantages. 

So why do you treat buses any differently?

[chutten]

So we have some vocal minorities while the majority is like "Whatever, man, just so long as it's frequent and stops where I want to get on and off"

[kps]

There have also been tramlike guided buses like the Alstom Translohr and Bombardier (there I said it ;-)) GLT. Those are somewhat behind what could be built now, such that the disadvantages of those systems mostly wouldn't apply. Today you wouldn't need to build a physical guideway; occasional radio beacons would be enough to keep multi-articulated or coupled buses on route, or, in case of obstacles, with all trailing wheels exactly tracking the driver's wheels.

[tomh009]

This kind of negative attitude towards buses (or any specific transit mode) is disgusting, toxic and frankly has no place in any intelligent discussions about public transportation. See how defensive you get when others question the viability of monorail/AGT/maglev technology:

We all have preferences whether it comes to transit, cars, bicycles, food or clothing.  Iain loves trains, and I think we all know that, but I really don't think that makes his comments "disgusting and toxic."

Let's just accept that different people have different opinions and preferences.

[SammyOES2]

I also think we have to realize that many (a majority of?) people are much more intimidated by buses than by trains.  For better or worse and legitimate concerns or not.  

The thing for me is that a bus is fine if I know the area really well.  But I hate being on a bus and not knowing where exactly I'm suppose to get off - especially in a non busy area/time when I might completely miss my stop.  I can get on an unfamiliar train in almost any city of the world and figure out where I'm going and get off at the right stop.

[yige_t]

We all have preferences whether it comes to transit, cars, bicycles, food or clothing.  Iain loves trains, and I think we all know that, but I really don't think that makes his comments "disgusting and toxic." 

I respectively disagree. There's nothing wrong with preferring trains over buses. I like trains too. But a "train or nothing" attitude is different, and this is the same toxic mentality that got us our auto-centric cities (car is the king), wasteful projects like the Scarborough extension (subways or nothing), and politicians wanting to scrap all transit in favour of new tech (autonomous Ubers will save our city). I'm sorry, technophilia is a very real threat to sound transit planning and I will call it out when I see it, even if means everyone here will hate me afterwards. 

Again, it's only a vocal minority that thinks this way. But they also tend to be the ones showing up at public meetings or, even worse, they're the decision-makers themselves.

This is my last post on this subject.

[DKsan]

RER New Stations Initial Business Case: Breslau Station

Just released today.

[tomh009]

It's nice to see that it's at least on their radar and being considered.

Interestingly there is no mention at all in the report about connectivity to the airport.

[dunkalunk]

Also interestingly, a connection from the GO station to Fountain St is not being considered at this time. What his means is that any bus route connecting to Breslau would have to travel a circuitous route, making local transit access even more of a challenge than it would be otherwise.

[Markster]

Transit access to the Breslau station, as planned, is abhorrent.

Buses will never be "on the way".
They have to make a more circuitous trip (go farther east) than private cars.
They will be unable to serve the new Breslau neighbourhood efficiently, as the neighbourhood will be centred around "Street A", but bus service must travel on Greenhouse to reach the station.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Future <a href="https://twitter.com/Metrolinx">@Metrolinx</a> Breslau <a href="https://twitter.com/GOtransit">@GOtransit</a> Station for instance, has poor highway access, and will not be &quot;on the way&quot; for buses <a href="https://twitter.com/RegionWaterloo">@RegionWaterloo</a> <a href="https://t.co/B1JLARXqen">pic.twitter.com/B1JLARXqen</a></p>&mdash; TriTAG (@TriTAG) <a href="https://twitter.com/TriTAG/status/809109604965687296">December 14, 2016</a></blockquote>

[Viewfromthe42]

This is why the report rates the station connectivity as "neutral", which is to say that you can't possibly make connectivity to a system worse by adding a GO transit station. In reality, it should be rated as "negative" for how poorly and completely-not-thought-out connectivity to transit is. This all but ensures that only drivers will use the station, and it will only be used as outbound station.

[Markster]

Yeah!

GRT will be compelled to serve the station, in the end. But it will actively harm their ability to run a future Kitchener-Guelph bus. Either there will be service duplication to Greenhouse, or trips to Guelph will end up going via the Breslau station, adding 10 minutes to every trip!

[KevinL]

I'm just guessing, but perhaps the new Fountain connection was agreed upon after this Metrolinx report was comissioned, thus it does not include it? In other words, it's still possible it will be built.