GO critic has 8,000 aboard
Patricia Eales will take a petition of 8,000 names to a GO Transit board meeting next week. She wants partial refunds when trains are 20 minutes late.
Oakville rider who began online petition criticizing rail service has become a powerful voice for change
They’re late for work and late coming home to pick up the kids from daycare.
Now GO riders are going to be charged more for what many are calling “atrocious” and “abysmal” service, says an Oakville woman who has become the voice of frustrated commuters across the region.
Pat Eales will take an 8,000-name online petition to the March 14 meeting of the GO board of directors. She plans to ask the board to postpone the fare increase planned for March 15 until GO can run its trains on time.
“Most of the people I rode the trains with, we felt our complaints were being dropped into a bottomless bucket. Now at least people think there’s a collective voice,” said Eales yesterday.
The petition asks GO to refund 50 per cent of fares when trains are late by 20 minutes or more, and to provide better notification of delays.
“We don’t mind paying a good fare for a good service. Just give us good service,” she said.
Eales started the petition Feb. 11, after train delays made her late arriving to work five days in a row, at a job she’d only started in November.
A busy single mother, Eales says an earlier train would put her at the office more than an hour ahead of her start time, but she wouldn’t be able to leave early.
Driving doesn’t make sense because by the time she learns of delays, she’s usually on the train platform, having paid her fare.
“There are obviously people who agree with her,” said GO spokesperson Stephanie Sorensen. “GO and the board are taking her concerns very seriously.”
The transit agency reported that 83 per cent of its trains ran on time last year, down from about 90 per cent in 2006.
Although it’s adding 27 faster locomotives that can pull an extra two cars, that won’t have an impact until later this year, after crews are trained and platforms lengthened throughout the system.
The only new locomotive running so far is temporarily assigned to the Lakeshore line.
Twelve-car trains that can accommodate an additional 300 people each won’t be in service until the summer and will be brought onto the Milton line first, Sorensen said.
Eales’s petition has helped “because now people are paying attention to the situation,” said Oakville MPP Kevin Flynn, who has persuaded Queen’s Park to appoint a customer service expert to a vacancy on the GO board.
“We need somebody who knows how to deal with people. We need somebody at the decision-making level looking at this through a customer service lens,” he said.
“You can’t have an economy the size of Toronto’s and not have a good train system. It doesn’t make any sense.
“If you look at any other jurisdiction around the world, it’s just not optional,” said Flynn.
– By Tess Kalinowski, Transportation Reporter for the Toronto Star
UPDATE: GO SAYS NO 11,000 TIMES
Board refuses to grant fare rebates for delayed trains despite petition from dissatisfied riders
They listened, but Pat Eales isn’t convinced GO Transit’s board of directors heard the deafening hue and cry of frustrated commuters demanding better service and a refund when trains are late.
“They just kept bringing up the same old excuses – the weather, the switches – and that it wasn’t their fault,” the Oakville mother of two said after tabling copies of an online petition at yesterday’s board meeting, supported by almost 11,000 dissatisfied riders.
The petition called for a 50 per cent refund on fares when trains are delayed 20 minutes or more. Eales also asked the board to freeze fare hikes until trains run as scheduled.
But her requests fell on deaf ears. A 15-cent-per-ride fare increase on a single adult ticket goes into effect today. Board chair Peter Smith confirmed there will be no refunds, something he said would spell disaster for the system in the throes of a major expansion.
GO Transit relies on the fare box for operating funds, so essentially riders themselves would be picking up the cost of the refunds.
Eales, however, did walk away with assurances that an advisory board will be established to handle service and reliability issues.
Smith later invited Eales to join that committee. She hasn’t yet decided if she will.
A plan for an improved communication system to advise riders of cancellations and delays was also approved.
During her presentation, Eales called on the board to fix glitches, even those that are out of its control. Tracks, switches and crews are under the jurisdiction of CN and CP, which own the rails GO uses.
“Stop thanking us for our patience and apologizing for any inconvenience you may have caused us. `Sorry’ doesn’t help when we are late for work or late home at night.”
Eales, a single mother of two teens who lives in Bronte, told the Star her patience with the transit system ran out in February after GO problems made her late five days in a row for her new job as an executive assistant at a not-for-profit academic research centre. She had tried emailing GO Transit authorities to complain about the system but got the run-around. She filled out a ridership survey but no one contacted her.
Unless the system becomes more reliable, she warned the board, transit users will get back into their cars.
Eales urged riders to take advantage of the “silent rebate” available at the customer service kiosk at Union Station. Staff offer vouchers when riders complain about late or cancelled trains.
With ridership increasing by 10,000 a day over last year, “we’re the victims of our own success,” Smith said in response, noting that improvements are on the horizon to ease the crunch.
About 170,000 people ride the trains on a typical weekday. “We don’t have the capacity on our trains or lines,” he said. “We’re building that capacity, but it takes a long time.”
Frances Chung, GO’s director of financial services, reported on major work underway to improve the aging signal and switching system. A 33-kilometre third track is being built on the Lakeshore corridor from Hamilton to Oshawa to increase capacity and reduce delays. New locomotives capable of pulling 12 cars are coming on board, as are new bi-level coaches. Crew staffing is also being increased.
Eales’ petition is to go to the Ontario Legislature next week.
– by Leslie Ferenc of the Toronto Star