October 2023 marked the end of the two-year “pilot” of GO train service to London, which extended a single weekday Kitchener Line round trip beyond Kitchener. Because the service was introduced without any infrastructure investment, it was too slow and infrequent to be at all useful and therefore failed to attract any significant ridership.
In the 2022 provincial election, the Progressive Conservative party promised $160 Million in railway upgrades between London and Kitchener to make the service actually practical. The party was elected, now holding a majority of the seats in the Legislature, but they seem to have forgotten about this promise.
The reason GO Transit cited for the termination of service was that Via was asking GO to vacate London station in preparation for their $25 Million project to renovate it. But this does not explain why train service could not be continued at least from Stratford to Kitchener.
Ridership on the train was around 1800 passengers per month, which works out to an average of 45 passengers per train, which is certainly not enough to support a rail service. However, it is enough to support a daily bus service.
If the Ontario Government were actually interested in developing a GO Transit corridor between London and Kitchener like they promised in the election, surely they would want to retain the ridership they built using the pilot train service, by introducing a GO bus service between London and Kitchener. Such a bus would be faster than the train was anyway, so most of the ridership would likely be retained.
At the same time that the GO train service was ended, VIA Rail added new round trip between London and Toronto via Brantford. Nearly all news coverage of the cancellation mentioned this service as if it were an alternative, but that is not the case. The purpose of the GO train was never to connect London and Toronto with each other, since it took 4 hours end-to-end whereas those cities are already connected in less than 2.5 hours by Via Rail, Flixbus, Megabus, Onex Bus, Intercity Bus, and Trailways. The purpose of the GO train was to connect London to cities such as Kitchener and Guelph, and to connect Stratford to those cities as well as Toronto. The new Via Rail service does not serve any of those intermediate cities.
The fact that the train was cancelled without any replacement bus service, and that we have not heard any announcments about railway upgrades since the PC party was re-elected, both suggests that the idea of a reliable GO train service to London was never more than a gimmic to buy seats in London during the 2022 provincial election.
Ontario Traffic Man 