Will Go Bus to London Ever Be A Thing?

[Djeffery]

With Greyhound's announcement that the are shutting down Canada services, and that the few routes that the will operate into Canada from the US apparently doesn't include Detroit-Toronto, I would say the odds of GO buses coming to London have increased dramatically. Way too many people rode those buses, in normal times anyway, to ignore the market.

[GreatTallNorth2]

I don't think GO bus will be an easy sell in London seeing how slow it is. I think some kind of express rail would be ideal.

[Djeffery]

No reason a GO bus from London can't replicate the Greyhound routes. Rail would be ideal, but doubtful VIA can ramp up to serve that market themselves.

[haljackey]

Yet another downtown business bites the dust.

If the government wants to establish a bus service for this area, I doubt it would be GO / Metrolinx. SW Ontario would probably have it's own network and infrastructure.

However it would need to be subsidized. If a private company can't make money, there's no way a government one would. With the current government in power and the deficits, I doubt we will see something.

VIA rail is somewhat cheap if you can book a month in advance lol. It's either that or fly, taxi, uber, etc which are all crazy expensive. Finding a carpool or ride share is probably your best option now.

(So how about that high speed rail?)

[ericmacm]

Don't forget that the Ontario government announced last year that they are in discussion and doing tests regarding the introduction of GO Rail service to London. With the death of Greyhound Canada, I think this just continues to build a stronger case for GO Rail and Bus in the region.

[jammer139]

Go Bus can only compete with VIA rail based on price between London and Toronto. VIA gets you downtown to downtown in around 2:20hrs. A bus can't touch that level of service. GO is heavily taxpayers subsidized and if a private company couldn't make it work well there is your answer.

[MolsonExport]

Canada has (along with the USA) the worst passenger rail service* of any developed country. Not VIA's fault, mind you. The service has died by a thousand cuts. We subsidize Air travel and particularly, highway travel with enormous sums (which never get talked about because of being spread over many places, whereas with VIA the sum is attributable to a single entity).

*anecdotally based on my intercity rail travels in Japan, Korea, China, Australia, Italy, Portugal, Spain, France, UK, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Norway, and Hungary; as well as many years of rail traveling in the USA and Canada

[Djeffery]

Originally Posted by jammer139

Go Bus can only compete with VIA rail based on price between London and Toronto. VIA gets you downtown to downtown in around 2:20hrs. A bus can't touch that level of service.

Only if you were wanting to travel when 1 of the 3 or 4 trains a day was going to Toronto. Whereas you had practically hourly or every 2 hour choice with the bus.

[GreatTallNorth2]

I am not sure why we would expect VIA or GO or any system to "make money". Are we making money building, plowing, policing 16 lane highways? They cost multiple billions.

And yes, Canadian passenger rail is terrible. When I lived in the UK, I could catch a train from Bath (much smaller than London, Ontario) to London 54 times a day whereas London to Toronto was 7 a day?

[jammer139]

You do understand that road infrastructure generates billions of dollars a day in commerce and the taxes they create. The 401 alone carries over a billion dollars a day worth of trade and all the taxes and jobs that creates.


Comparing our rail system to Europe is pointless. Europe benefits from orders of magnitude higher population density in tiny geography. The land mass of the UK would fit in Southern Ontario in a line from just north of Sault St. Marie to Marten River just a hour north of North Bay. That's 65 million people.

Originally Posted by GreatTallNorth2

I am not sure why we would expect VIA

or GO or any system to "make money". Are we making money building, plowing, policing 16 lane highways? They cost multiple billions.

And yes, Canadian passenger rail is terrible. When I lived in the UK, I could catch a train from Bath (much smaller than London, Ontario) to London 54 times a day whereas London to Toronto was 7 a day?

[Innsertnamehere]

Southern Ontario is actually denser than many parts of Europe. The densest parts of Europe are obviously far denser.. but Southern France manages to have a robust rail network despite lower densities.

Southern Ontario is actually the perfect density for regional rail services, especially from London to Quebec City. That corridor has large cities every 50km or so along the route, creating consistent ridership drivers across the entire route.

The Feds seem to be gearing up to finally build a robust rail network, if not high speed rail, east of Toronto - and GO is expanding its services to be quite robust to Kitchener now. The gap just needs to be closed to London.

[ericmacm]

It does seem that we are generally putting greater focus on rail these days, which is a good thing. I think GO Rail for London is the optimal solution so far - getting it to London wouldn't be all that difficult in theory, with the greatest challenge likely being negotiating the use of rail lines. It could either be an extension of the Kitchener Line through Stratford, going south to London, or it could be a spur of Lakeshore West, going through Brantford, Woodstock, and Ingersoll, arriving in London.

Brantford already has had GO Bus service for a few years now (I'm not sure of ridership numbers), I wouldn't be surprised if they were happy enough with it to consider expansion to a full rail service, with an eventual end goal of reaching London.

[haljackey]

I could see GO trains come to London, but not buses.

As for the rail network in the area, I've been a long proponent of getting service back up and running from London to St. Thomas. That way you can live there and commute downtown (although working from home has diminished this need). A further extension to Port Stanley could generate tourist trips to the beach.

London's just too far away from the Golden Horseshoe to qualify for anything more than a spur line from Metrolinx. Kitchener is in the Greater Golden Horseshoe and thus qualifies for some more infrastructure.

London's location is more of a 'hub' city like Toronto. Kitchener is more like St Thomas being a commuting destination. In fact if you reduce the populations by a factor of ~10, this sorta makes sense. Just a mini version lol

[MolsonExport]

Passenger rail is going to be part of addressing our commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The habit in Europe for many is to take the train when going intercity. In North America? Almost nobody considers taking the train (because it is so shoddy/unreliable/infrequent) and we all just jump into our cars. Governments make decisions to invest in airports (remember how much the new Pearson terminal cost?), but lamentably, we cannot even earmark 10% of that amount to passenger rail infrastructure.

[GreatTallNorth2]

Originally Posted by haljackey

I could see GO trains come to London, but not buses.

As for the rail network in the area, I've been a long proponent of getting service back up and running from London to St. Thomas. That way you can live there and commute downtown (although working from home has diminished this need). A further extension to Port Stanley could generate tourist trips to the beach.

I'm with you on that. I think the tracks are probably 90% already there and you could easily create a commuter style train from St. Thomas to London and make a few stops in London, creating more of an express service to downtown.

[north 42]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

Southern Ontario is actually denser than many parts of Europe. The densest parts of Europe are obviously far denser.. but Southern France manages to have a robust rail network despite lower densities.

Southern Ontario is actually the perfect density for regional rail services, especially from London to Quebec City. That corridor has large cities every 50km or so along the route, creating consistent ridership drivers across the entire route.

The Feds seem to be gearing up to finally build a robust rail network, if not high speed rail, east of Toronto - and GO is expanding its services to be quite robust to Kitchener now. The gap just needs to be closed to London.

Why would you leave Windsor out of the Windsor to Quebec City corridor? It’s a major city at the beginning of the corridor with 430K people, not some tiny town, and just as dense as the rest of the region.

[Dengler Avenue]

I guess it’s time to put HFR (all the way to Windsor) back on the table then.

[haljackey]

Originally Posted by north 42

Why would you leave Windsor out of the Windsor to Quebec City corridor? It’s a major city at the beginning of the corridor with 430K people, not some tiny town, and just as dense as the rest of the region.

My guess is once you get west of London the population centres get smaller. East of London you have get some large-ish cities like Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge-Guelph, Brantford, and then into the Golden Horseshoe hitting Milton and Hamilton. Smaller cities also dot the line like Ingersoll, Woodstock, Stratford, Paris, Etc.

West of London, Chatham is really the only population centre along the way to Windsor-Essex-Leamington (basically the same distance as Toronto from London). Although Sarnia is sizable but that's via the 402 (and Strathroy is your smaller connector city).

So if you're doing any kind of passenger bus and/or rail network outside of the Greater Golden Horseshoe, London is the place to go to first. Once London is connected, it then be expanded towards Windsor (and hopefully continue to Detroit and beyond).

[GoTrans]

Originally Posted by haljackey

My guess is once you get west of London the population centres get smaller. East of London you have get some large-ish cities like Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge-Guelph, Brantford, and then into the Golden Horseshoe hitting Milton and Hamilton. Smaller cities also dot the line like Ingersoll, Woodstock, Stratford, Paris, Etc.

West of London, Chatham is really the only population centre along the way to Windsor-Essex-Leamington (basically the same distance as Toronto from London). Although Sarnia is sizable but that's via the 402 (and Strathroy is your smaller connector city).

So if you're doing any kind of passenger bus and/or rail network outside of the Greater Golden Horseshoe, London is the place to go to first. Once London is connected, it then be expanded towards Windsor (and hopefully continue to Detroit and beyond).

This is a corridor where rail service improvements make more sense. Back in the late 1970's there were 11 trains in each direction to/from London. We need to get back to that and improve the speed and on time performance.

[MolsonExport]

^second that. London is double the size it was, and so is Toronto, KW, Guelph and many other cities. Yet service has been halved. Meanwhile more lanes get added to the 401 by the hour. We are moving in the wrong direction, and we have been for decades.