Discounted Student Passes

This fall, DRT will be offering DDSB students the chance to buy October, November, and December student passes for $43.00, which is a savings of $22.00 over the normal price. This deal applies to “restricted” passes that are valid from 6:00 am to 7:00 pm on weekdays.
Now, here’s the catch. This is a [...]

407 ETR extension

The 407 ETR extension Environmental Assessment team has released the proposed route for the extension into Durham Region, and you can see it at http://www.407eastea.com/map_pop.html.
From a transit perspective, the interesting thing is that a right of way has been reserved along both the 407 and the two north-south connector highways (one in western Whitby, the [...]

Yet more new buses

DRT seems to be on a bit of a roll this year. Durham Regional Council, in their June 20th meeting, approved the purchase of an additional 6 New Flyer buses through the Joint Transit Bus Procurement Initiative. The “Initiative”, in case you’re wondering, is a group of about six transit systems in [...]

Mr. Anderson, where are you?

It’s now been almost a week since Premier McGuinty announced MoveOntario 2020, including funding for a Highway 2 rapid transit line of some form. And yet, there has been no public comment from Regional Chair Roger Anderson that I’ve seen in either the Metroland papers or the Region’s own web site.
Given that Anderson was [...]

New DRT schedules/maps

DRT has now updated their site with the information for their upcoming service changes, including the new 915 Taunton, 916 Rossland, 302 Brock/Brooklin, and 308 Whitby Shores routes, as well as the service changes to R20/M20 Westney, R20/M20 Applecroft, and the discontinuing of R23 Nottingham (merged into Westney and Applecroft). If you expect to [...]

More thoughts on MoveOntario 2020

Well, I’ve had a chance to mull things over a bit, and here’s what I think:
First, the general picture. Obviously, this is a pre-election promise from a premier who will face the electorate in October. But before we dismiss it as just that, this is a clear statement that McGuinty has realized [...]

Provincial announcement details

Here is the full list of projects, with the Durham projects in bold:
GO Transit Commuter Rail

GO Lakeshore West rail line capacity expansion by adding a third track from Port Credit to Oakville
GO Lakeshore West rail line capacity expansion by adding a third track from Burlington to Hamilton
GO Lakeshore East rail line capacity expansion by adding [...]

Major Provincial Transit Announcement

The Globe and Mail and Toronto Star are both reporting a major provincial Transit announcement was made minutes ago. The province is planning to fund 52 transit projects over the next 12 years, including:

extending the TTC’s Yonge subway line up to Highway 7
– electrifying the GO Lakeshore lines, which will make [...]

GO To The Rescue

In my previous entry, admittedly two weeks ago, I wrote about my frustrations with my commute. Some of these frustrations were the direct result of GO scheduling changes made back in April. Most of the changes to GO’s Oshawa bus services were good, but the specific schedules were not working well for me.
GO [...]