Increased ridership and soaring gas prices attribute to parking additions at Whitby GO station
Jul 11, 2008 - 05:17 PM
By Parvaneh Pessian
WHITBY -- The Whitby GO station will be squeezing in room for a new multi-storey parking garage to help ease congestion, officials say.
The topic was one of the items on GO transit's agenda Friday during the board's monthly meeting.
The three-level parking lot will add 900 spaces to the 2,458 existing parking spaces and cost nearly $30 million. It will be located at the northwest corner of the south parking lot.
Members approved a contract for the structure that will alleviate capacity issues at the Brock Street location, GO spokesman Edmund Shea said.
The need for a parking garage has been in the planning stages for years and has become a priority as an increasing number of people turn to transit, he added.
A ridership report released in May showed an average weekday ridership increase of 7.2 per cent across the GO system. There was a monthly ridership spike of 7.7 per cent compared to 2007. That's more than about 14,000 riders daily, which is equivalent to the capacity of eight additional 10-car train trips.
The Lakeshore East corridor alone faced a ridership increase of 7.3 per cent this year. The only higher corridor ridership increases were for Bradford at 14.5 per cent, Hwy. 407 at 13.4 per cent and Stouffville at 12.9 per cent.
GO runs 181 train trips and 1,826 bus trips daily, carrying about 205,000 passengers on a typical weekday. The first GO train service in 1967 carried 2.5 million passengers in its first year of operation. Today the train and bus system combined have more than 50 million riders annually.
"This is a trend we've been seeing for the last four months and a lot of it is probably due to rising gas prices, but other factors such as population growth also contribute," Mr. Shea said. "We are constantly building and investing and there's been lots of improvement over the past few years."
Other development plans Whitby GO station include a new elevator that will be installed in place of the existing tunnel escalator to provide a barrier-free access to the tunnel and a new enclosed walkway that will connect the parking structure to the tunnel.
Construction for the entire project is slated for completion in fall 2009.
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