Petition to bring back GO bus service to York’s Keele campus tops 11,000 names

Thestar.com
November 8, 2018
May Warren

The Line 1 subway extension was supposed to make life easier for students and staff at York’s Keele campus. But more than 11,000 members of the university community don’t see it that way, lending their names to a petition calling out Metrolinx for cancelling GO bus stops at the university.

The school announced on its website this week that GO buses would no longer be stopping at the Keele main campus as of Jan. 5, instead ending routes at the Highway 407 station, part of the new subway.

York University said on its website this week that GO buses would no longer be stopping at the Keele main campus as of Jan. 5, instead ending routes at the Highway 407 station, part of the new subway.

Students and staff taking the GO bus will have to board the subway and pay an extra fare to get to campus. Although, like all TTC customers coming off the GO or UP express, if they have a Presto card they’re eligible for a discounted ride of $1.50 each way.

Tianna McFarlane, a York staff member who takes the GO bus from Pickering every day, is “frustrated” with the added leg of her commute.

“It’s really inconvenient and really unfortunate,” she said. “I’m really worried to see how it’s going to go on the first day. I just don’t know how the timing’s going to work because there’s going to be so many of us.”

The change will add at least 10 minutes of subway time to her commute and require her to catch an earlier GO bus to make it to campus for the same start time, McFarlane said.

She’s also done the math and estimates it will cost her about $60 more a month, even with the Presto discount.

Asked about the change, York University spokesperson Janice Walls wrote in an email that the university is “disappointed by Metrolinx’s decision to remove GO bus services to campus before full fare integration has been implemented.”

“The various student and staff organizations that put the petition together have raised some serious and important concerns,” she wrote, adding the university has “directly expressed” its concerns to the president of Metrolinx.

But Metrolinx spokesperson Fannie Sunshine said the move was “always part of the plan” with the new subway.

“We know that there are some time issues but we do feel that this is a still a better option as far as taking a subway, more reliable service than perhaps getting stuck in traffic along Steeles,” she said.

Metrolinx’s Anne Marie Aikins added the agency is “aware of the petition,” and said about 4,300 students and staff take the GO buses to York daily.

“We appreciate their concerns for sure and we’re going to continue to work with York U,” she said. “They’re partners of ours, but at this point in time I don’t have any action as a result of it.”

Aikins noted Metrolinx has been working on fare integration “for a long time.”

“We have been implementing things like the discounted double fare, things like that, we have the two hour transfer for TTC that’s in place now, which people are really liking. There’s a variety of things that we have been doing, so we’re continuing to do that,” she said.

“We’re not reducing the amount of service, they’re still going to get the same amount of buses.”

York students and staff were already facing transit interruptions when York Region Transit buses stopped coming to the Keele campus in September, ending routes instead at the Pioneer Village station north of campus at Steeles Ave., as part of the plan to harmonize transit with the new subway.

The petition to bring back GO also calls for York Region Transit service to return to campus, and for fare integration between transit providers so that there would be, for example, one flat fare across GO and the TTC.

“The bottom line is the fact that we are making commuting to campus less and less accessible,” said Sébastien Lalonde, a political science student and vice-president of campaigns and advocacy for the York Federation of Students.

Lalonde noted the majority of students at York don’t live on campus, and many come from places such as Brampton, Mississauga, Pickering and Barrie, and aren’t hopping on the subway from downtown Toronto.

But he feels it’s an issue that goes beyond the York community.

“I think this is a very important conversation to start having,” he said. “Simply because fare integration would be something that would benefit everyone.”