GO Transit vows to improve after snow woes
Commuters fume over delays, website outage on Monday
GO Transit is promising its customers a better commute Wednesday morning after a blizzard and a website failure created a perfect storm of anger for many commuters, who faced train delays, cancellations and a fare hike on Monday.
The snowfall forecast by Environment Canada for overnight Tuesday, into Wednesday, was expected to be heavier and stickier than the huge dump of drier precipitation that fell within a relatively short period on Sunday and Monday.
The type of snow makes a big difference to train operations, said GO president Greg Percy on Tuesday.
Monday’s drier, fluffier flakes are “insidious” when it comes to infiltrating the moving parts on track switches and train doors, he said. When snow and ice build up on the switches, the signals that tell train operators to move down the track don’t work.
GO brings in hot air blowers to keep its switches clear of ice and snow but “they’re not a panacea,” said Percy.
A failure at CP Rail’s Hamilton switch plant meant delays from the outset of Monday’s commute on the busy Lakeshore West line. Four trains that are stored in Hamilton overnight couldn’t move.
“Whenever you get trains backed up, they get out of their service window and that cascades into the other trains. You can handle that except at the convergence point, which is Union Station,” he said.
On Monday, trains were lined up outside the station waiting for a turn at the platforms to unload passengers.
“That’s a real frustrating point, because people can see where they want to go and they can’t get there,” said Percy.
In an effort to reduce the risk of snow snarling switch movements for the evening rush, transit officials later cancelled nine trains and modified two express runs to make all stops.
Most train delays on Monday were in the 20- to 25-minute range, said Percy. But GO’s average 94-per-cent on-time performance plunged to 50 per cent on Monday morning. Many GO bus runs that day were abbreviated or modified as road con- ditions made the schedules effectively meaningless. On Tuesday, two switches on the Lakeshore West line actually broke and others froze, making for a second difficult day on the rails.
The operational issues were compounded by the absence of service updates on GO’s website. The site’s failure “took us by big surprise,” said Percy, who admitted it was a shocking lapse caused by an overwhelmed search function.
“Until we can build in the search demand capacity, we’ll keep doing a manual update, which is not something we can sustain in the long term but will probably get us by,” he said.
That interim solution means service updates will be entered manu- ally by staff in time for Wednesday’s commute, according to GO.
GO is also testing new doors less prone to failure.
“We’re prototyping a new technology, because there’s too many moving parts in this design,” said Percy. “We’re hoping to do a technology shift — assuming this prototype works.”