Storm Causes GO Train Delays, Angering Riders
Posted November 22, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Thursday’s winter storm caused frustration and headaches for GO Transit riders as trains were delayed at the height of the morning rush.
Frozen signal switches were blamed for the slowdowns. The problem initially affected trains coming into Union Station from the east but the impact was felt on both eastbound and westbound lines. Riders arriving at the transit hub late for work weren’t impressed.
“The size of GO Transit, the amount of money we pay, there should be a way around it, whether it’s freezing or whatever the case may be,” noted peeved passenger Maggie Scallen. “They should be able to come up with some kind of electrical, I don’t know, some kind of switch, something to heat it up to keep the tracks from freezing over.”
It seems this is the time of year when GO Transit starts to experience more problems, with the cold and snow gumming up the lines.
Riders, however, expected them to be better prepared for the onslaught of winter weather.
“By now they should have figured it out how to get, you know, the systems going,” said rider Dorothy Soares.
Charmaine Hyltone complained it was, “Very frustrating. Now I’m half an hour late for work.”
“It’s only November, and this is the time of year that I start thinking it’s not good to take the GO train,” added Susan Fox.
GO is frequently plagued with such problems in the cold, but was supposed to have solved the problem by installing heaters near the sensitive switches. But some pointed out that the sources of warmth near Union Station weren’t even connected on the coldest day of the year.
“They always freeze up,” shrugged one worker. Shouldn’t they have been connected? “At this time of year, yeah,” the crewman agrees. “But it wasn’t snowing up until today, was it?”
It’s hard to say what GO brass thinks about all this. They refused interviews to talk about the situation.
