Why Lakeshore West GO train line was shut down between Port Credit and Clarkson

TORONTO, ON, November 1, 2021 – Thousands of GO train customers were impacted this past weekend (Oct. 30 and 31) because of a major track issue on the Lakeshore West Line. Metrolinx News posted a release explaining exactly what happened, how it was fixed.

Here is what happened during the super busy Halloween weekend starting this past Saturday (Oct. 30) with the combination of Halloween festivities, sporting events, and concerts all drawing people to downtown Toronto.

Basically, during a routine GO transit track inspection, crews discovered a section of the tracks between Port Credit and Clarkson GO stations were unstable, “so much so that trains could no longer pass through the area safely.”

As a result, the difficult decision was made to shut down the GO train along that specific section.

Metrolinx says a plan was implemented to keep people moving and crews got started immediately on the repairs. As part of the plan, extra GO buses were called in to shuttle people between Port Credit and Clarkson, and Lakeshore West train service was also reduced to hourly to avoid further delays.

Initially GO transit told customers the repairs could take 24 hours but the Crews worked through the night – during the rain – on Saturday to get the repairs done as quickly as possible, in hopes of reducing the impact to people on Sunday.

Metrolinx says , “once the initial repairs were made, a large machine known as a DynaCAT was brought in to smooth and stabilize the tracks. Finally, GO had to run a test train over the repaired section at slow speeds to make sure everything was good to go.”

Come Sunday morning regular GO train service was able to resume.

Metrolinx officials can’t say for certain that the tracks became unstable because of the recent rainstorms, but they are confident it may have contributed to the issue.  

Transit officials say “this kind of track problem is rare, and in the end, it came down to putting customer safety ahead of everything else.”

And if you need guidance in the future in keeping track of changes on GO, or planning a journey, just GO here.

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