GO Transit

[danbrotherston]

I don't think that it is right to say that they are 100% focused on commuters into downtown Toronto. I regularly take the GO bus/train to and from Richmond Hill and don't go anywhere near downtown.

100% was definitely rhetorical exaggeration, but I think the point is valid that Go is "focused" on the commuter market. It's not they don't offer other services, but their raison d'être remains commuters.

But not just commuters, generally Toronto bound commuters. All their rail lines except the lakeshore are focused almost entirely in that direction. Lakeshore is oriented that way, but at least reverse commutes are pretty reasonable.

The bus network is also fairly strongly oriented to Toronto bound commuting.

If you replace "Toronto" with GTA, the answer is even stronger, there are very very few trips even possible between non-GTA destinations without going through the GTA.

And few companies are going 100% remote. An outlook of 20-40% remote seems fairly typical from where I sit. But it's early days still.

20-40% remote is still 60-80% lower commuter volume. KW to Toronto is just too far, absent true HSR that could do it in under an hour I just don't think we're ever going to see significant commuter volume.

I'm actually on the whole fairly remote work skeptic, I personally want to be in the office 5 days/week (though I want flexibility to work remotely when desired). But I have a 10 min walk for a commute, for anyone with a two hour commute I think they'll take full advantage of remote as many days as possible, with a corresponding drop in ridership.

I think the pandemic will long term fundamentally alter Go travel patterns, with less commuter volume and more leisure volume. People heading into Toronto for the evening, rather than the full work day. At a minimum though, I think the logic is fundamentally faulty to predict the ridership of the 2pm train based on the 7am train. They serve entirely different markets, and aren't substitutes for each other.

The moving forward 2020 master plan studied intercity trips:

https://www.regionofwaterloo.ca/en/regio...nities.pdf

Relevant info on page 42 and 43.

The highlights as I see them.

Only 5% of trips are outside the region (i.e., we're a city, not a suburb (although, we are a suburban city)).

The biggest destination is Guelph, which makes sense given it's proximity.

But what I would consider mostly "GTA" includes Halton, Peel, and Toronto, which combined outstrip even Guelph generating over 16 thousand outbound.

I generally agree with the points made, but I do think that extremely long commutes to GTA destinations aren't just accepted, but considered normal. KW isn't really a whole lot further than some of the farther suburban developments up the 400 and traffic is going to define travel time more than distance for a lot of destinations. Context matters, while people in KW might find it crazy, people in Toronto probably see this as more normal given that most of their non-neighbourhood trips involve sitting in a lot of traffic for a long time anyway.

I do think that it's a self destructive (to say nothing of environmentally destructive) decision to live that far away from your workplace but it is still a fairly common thing to do.

I also enjoyed a 10 minute walk commute, but I enjoyed working from home...but that was mostly because of liking the quieter working environment of home better than our less than ideal noisy open concept office. I also enjoy the flexibility to travel and to schedule my day around errands. FWIW...if I was close to my workplace (if I had one) I think I would enjoy a hybrid model, but I'm fine either way.

Surprising Bonus Fact:

While county of Brant and Brantford are similar distances from Cambridge as Guelph is from Waterloo, they don't have anywhere near the inter-regional trips, only about 1/3rd of Guelph. More strange, while more Waterlooites go to Guelph than reverse (which makes sense) significantly more people from Brant come to the region than the reverse, despite Cambridge alone being the size of Brantford. I suspect that some of Brant county is acting like a township of Waterloo region in housing and travel trends. I know someone in this situation exactly.

This pattern follows for the City of Hamilton which also makes sense given that the term "City" doesn't really make sense for the large rural agglomeration that happens to include the urban area formerly known as the city of Hamilton as a small portion of it's land area.

Double Bonus Question?:

The demonym for residents of the City of Waterloo is Waterluvian (according to the authoritative source: Wikipedia), does it make sense to use a different demonym for Region of Waterloo residents?