Friday night Toronto bus trek the way to GO

Friday night Toronto bus trek the way to GO

Columns

By: Jim Mason

The Friday night crowd boarded the GO bus at its Stouffville-area stops.

They were headed for the lights of the big city, some in nearby Markham, but most at the end of the line, in Toronto. Several riders were hopping across Bay Street to a Leafs-Penguins pre-season tilt at the Air Canada  Centre.

The stops sounded more like an old-time stage coach route: Lincolnville, Stouffville, Ringwood...

Gotta love Lincolnville, the new train depot and stop that opened at Tenth Line and Bethesda Road last month. To think there was thought of naming the stop Bethesda, which is already a community kilometres away at Bethesda and Warden Avenue.

Lincolnville, technically at Tenth and Bloomington Road, has history of its own. Good on GO and the town for reviving the name.

The Stouffville travellers got on and paid their $7.05. And, if they were lucky, they got a seat. By the time the green and white bus hit Unionville, it was standing-room only.

A good sign, probably spurred on by extra-large gas prices. More people on the bus, and the five GO trains that connect Stouffville and Toronto on weekdays, mean fewer vehicles on the 404/Don Valley Parkway combo and smaller carbon footprints all around.

We did have to endure a 100-minute trek instead of the promised 75 minutes. We can partially thank  the boys who tried to ride to Toronto after only buying tickets to Unionville. (Why they weren’t booted off and fined the way train riders without proper tickets are, only GO knows.)

Heck, if GO had enforced its no-drinking policy on the dudes shotgunning cans of beer, we may still be on the bus.

Delays and imbibers aside, it’s a service we should be thankful for and use as often as possible.

Tabulate the costs of driving, the joys of road angst and the kilometres we’ve already put on the environment and it’s a no-brainer, Stouffville.

Jim Mason is editor of The Sun-Tribune.

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