All-day GO Train service to Hamilton’s West Harbour station starts Aug. 7

After getting little use for most of the past six years, action is about to pick up at Hamilton’s West Harbour GO Station.

Minister of Transportation Caroline Mulroney says daily, hourly passenger rail service will start Aug. 7 between Toronto’s Union Station and Hamilton’s west harbour.

For Hamilton commuters, Mulroney says it will “finally provide surrounding communities with easy access to a station by walking, biking and local transit, meaning you no longer have to drive or take a bus to Aldershot GO Station, just to get on a train.”

The extension of service will provide 28 new trips to and from Hamilton and Toronto on weekdays, with 14 trips in both directions, and 35 trips on each weekend day, with 16 eastbound departures and 19 westbound departures.

Metrolinx CEO Phil Verster says track modifications at the Bayview Junction, where three of the country’s busiest rail lines intersect near the Hamilton-Burlington boundary, were “crucial” to realizing all-day GO Train service.

Verster says those modifications “allowed us to separate, in more clear and defined flows, freight from passenger rail.”

Hamilton Mayor Fred Eisenberger says funding from a recent $370 million federal-provincial transit announcement, will be used to improve the “frequency and volume” of connecting HSR bus service to the West Harbour GO station.

An expansion to hourly GO Train service is a dramatic increase for the GO station on James Street North, which currently experiences just two departures each weekday.