[PHOTO] Family Day visitors to the Union-Pearson Express to the left, paying customers to the right

[rfmcdonald]

The Union-Pearson Express was exceptionally popular yesterday. I was lucky enough to get there at 11:30 in the morning, waiting only an hour and a half. As Toronto Star's Geoffrey Vendeville noted in "UP Express a huge hit — when it’s a free ride", the line got much longer after that.

Thousands of people crammed into Union Station and spent much of Family Day lining up for a train ride to the airport, even if they had no flight to catch.

Metrolinx, the provincial transit agency that oversees the Union Pearson Express, waived the shuttle’s fares during the holiday and NBA all-star weekend to introduce more people to the eight-month-old train service.

The UP Express usually gets between 2,200 and 2,500 riders per day, well short of its first-year goal of 5,000 passengers daily, said Anne Marie Aikins, a Metrolinx spokeswoman.

But ridership increased almost fivefold this weekend. About 10,000 people boarded trains on Saturday, and 13,500 did on Sunday.

On Monday, the queue for the airport shuttle from Union snaked all the way from the east wing of the train station’s Great Hall to the UP Express terminus in the SkyWalk. There was a separate, much faster line for people hurrying to catch a plane.

In this photo, you can see the Family Day visitors lined up to the left, leaving space free for these paying customers to the right. There was a lot of space to the right.