Comment 67740

By Willy Wonk (anonymous) | Posted August 09, 2011 at 17:22:50

According to StatsCan, the lions' share of Hamilton workers live in Hamilton (145,480). The next 11 sources for commuters into Hamilton, in declining order, are:

Burlington: 8,000
Haldimand County: 5,845
Grimsby: 3,660
Brantford: 2,495
St. Catharines: 1,935
West Lincoln: 1,595
Oakville: 1,595
Lincoln: 1,575
Mississauga: 1,485
Toronto: 1,220
Brant: 1,125

(Full list can be found at http://goo.gl/uEO71)

Of those, only four cities (with a Hamilton-bound commuter population of 12,300) would be included in the West Lakeshore service between James North and Toronto. Drop Burlington from that sample (it’s close enough to be an easy drive and already has 50+ bus connections daily via Burlington Transit and 20+ more via GO Bus, plus the morning/evening rush hour GO Train connections) and you’ve got 4,300 commuters inbound from points east along the rail line. Round it up to an even 5,000 just for the hell of it.

Now consider the top dozen work destinations for Hamilton commuters (http://goo.gl/RsR78):

Hamilton: 145,480
Burlington: 24,270
Oakville: 7,090
Toronto: 6,925
Mississauga: 6,810
Brantford: 1,925
Milton: 1,860
Cambridge: 1,850
Guelph: 1,105
Haldimand County: 1,070
Brampton: 1,055
Grimsby: 960

Of those, six cities with a Hamilton-bound commuter population of 46,150 would be included in the West Lakeshore service between James North and Toronto. Drop Burlington from that sample (it’s close enough to be an easy drive and already has 50+ bus connections daily via Burlington Transit and 20+ more via GO Bus, plus the four morning and four evening rush hour rail connections) and you’ve got 21,880 commuters outbound to Oakville, Brampton, Mississauga and Toronto. Round that up too. Now top that up with the inbound commuters for around 27,000 commuters heading back and forth between Hamilton and Toronto daily.

Wikipedia puts GO Train seating capacity at 162 people per coach, or 1,620-1,944 per train depending on the locomotive.

Even if you could convince every last one of those commuters to take the GO Train, how many would not be well served by existing service levels into and out of Hunter? Is the remainder the kind of latent ridership crying out for all-day service on the hour?

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