Which GO line gets all-day service next?

A rail line that runs one direction in the morning and the other at night is not transit. It is a commuter shuttle, and it only serves people whose lives run on the exact schedule it was designed around: downtown office, nine to five, weekdays.

Everyone else is driving: shift workers, students, anyone travelling outward from Toronto, anyone who needs to come home at two in the afternoon because somebody is ill.

Lakeshore already runs all day, both ways, and the difference it makes to how people in Oakville and Ajax organise their lives is the whole argument for doing it everywhere else.

Where each of these stands: Bowmanville broke ground in January: 18.7 kilometres and four stations east of Oshawa, promised at every half hour in the peak and hourly the rest of the day, late this decade. Kitchener is being rebuilt for hourly two-way service through Brampton. Milton still runs inbound in the morning and outbound at night, and nothing on weekends, because it sits on CPKC’s freight track; Richmond Hill has the same problem on CN’s.

That is the obstacle on the remaining corridors. It is not money in the ordinary sense. It is track the province does not own, shared with freight, and buying or building the capacity is where the timelines go.

Sources: Metrolinx, the Bowmanville extension · Daily Commercial News, Bowmanville breaks ground · Metrolinx, the Milton line · Metrolinx, GO extensions