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GO Transit

Ontario regional public transport agency

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 21, 2026
Entity authorityQ1357727
Source-derived summary

GO Transit (pronounced "go") is a regional public transit system serving the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area and the Greater Golden Horseshoe region of Ontario, Canada. With its hub at Union Station in Toronto, GO Transit's green-and-white trains and buses serve a population of more than seven million across an area over 11,000 square kilometres (4,200 sq mi), stretching from Stratford in the west to Peterborough in the east, and from Barrie in the north to Niagara Falls in the south. In 2025, the system had a ridership of 79,165,600. GO Transit operates diesel-powered double-decker trains and coach buses, on routes that connect with all local and some long-distance inter-city transit services in its service area.

GO Transit began regular passenger service on May 23, 1967, as a part of the Ontario Ministry of Transportation. Since then, it has grown from a single train line to seven commuter rail lines. GO Transit has been constituted in a variety of public-sector configurations. Today, it is an operating division of Metrolinx, a provincial Crown agency with overall responsibility for integrative transportation planning within the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area and is projected to grow dramatically with electrification, increased frequency and new stations through GO Expansion, which is scheduled to be completed in phases through 2025–2032.

History

Early days

Cities in and around the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) expanded greatly during the 1950s, influenced by growth in immigration and industrialization. Much of the existing commuter service was provided by the Canadian National Railway (CN), which faced mounting pressure to expand its service beyond the Lakeshore trains it ran between Hamilton in the west and Danforth in the east, to Toronto; however, CN lacked the financial and physical capital to do this.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “GO Transit” is ontario regional public transport agency. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Transit, Ontario and regional, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2025, 1967, 2032—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1967, 1967-05-23—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. For this dossier, Transit, Ontario and regional is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “ontario regional public transport agency” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1357727. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2025, 1967 and 2032.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “GO Transit”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow GO Transit primary sources, GO Transit archive and Transit research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “GO Transit”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from GO Transit” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.