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Golden Horseshoe's local transit systems comparisons

denfromoakvillemilton said:
That's dissapointing. It seems outside of Toronto, Brampton, Mississauga and Ottawa, transit is lacking. What about bus routes from Cambridge to Kitchener.
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There's the main one, iXpress 200 (LRT precursor), which is every 10 minutes peak and mid-day Monday through Saturday. Another trunk-ish route (52) is every 15 minutes on weekdays between Galt, Preston, and Fairview Park Mall in Kitchener.

Along with the LRT plans, Grand River Transit is steadily adding new iXpress cross-town routes (which have relatively wide station spacing), and realigning the network away from the terminals to form more of a grid with the LRT along the spine. Its ridership growth since 2005 averages ~8% per year, so I wouldn't be surprised to see it make its way to the top of the ridership per capita chart.
 
mpd618 said:
There's the main one, iXpress 200 (LRT precursor), which is every 10 minutes peak and mid-day Monday through Saturday. Another trunk-ish route (52) is every 15 minutes on weekdays between Galt, Preston, and Fairview Park Mall in Kitchener.

Along with the LRT plans, Grand River Transit is steadily adding new iXpress cross-town routes (which have relatively wide station spacing), and realigning the network away from the terminals to form more of a grid with the LRT along the spine. Its ridership growth since 2005 averages ~8% per year, so I wouldn't be surprised to see it make its way to the top of the ridership per capita chart.
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That's good to see. I would also like to see expansion to later hours, as Kitchener is a major Canadian city.
 
St. Catherines really is surprising. It isn't a huge university town like Kitchener to boost ridership, and is generally a fairly sprawly city.

Amazed Durham isn't lower actually, riding the bus in Durham is still tied to being "poor", a sense that doesn't seem to prevail as much in York which has very similar numbers.

Mississauga probably has the best system currently, but I would say that York has the best "bones" for a proper system. Though between crappy service levels, high fares, and insane amounts of wealthy people with no will to use transit, it just doesn't get that much use.
 
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40 rides per capita is pretty typical for smaller, self-contained Canadian cities. Oshawa Transit Commission had around 30 riders per capita back in the day. So St-Catharines isn't that surprising. Manufacturing towns usually have crappy ridership so I guess it is impressive in that sense.

I think places like Mississauga, Brampton, Oakville, etc. are at the most disadvantage because they are not self-contained cities, so their transit systems cannot serve all their residents needs by default. So regional systems like York and Durham are important to overcoming that problem (but on the other hand, both York and Durham have really crappy ridership...).

I think one of the main reasons Mississauga has the most ridership and service in the 905 is simply because it is the most self-contained (55% of Mississauga residents work in Mississauga, compared to 27% who work in Toronto). 46.8 ridership per capita is good considering, but it sucks compared to an entirely self-contained city like for example Winnipeg (79 riders per capita). If 100% Mississauga residents worked in Mississauga, its local transit would be even better.

Btw, I added Oakville to the list. Check it out.
 
When I was 15 I got a job by Dorval/North Service, and had to come from West Oak, so about 4km. The bus ride was about 25 minutes due to the major detour it took. That, in addition to the half hour wait, meant that I often walked instead, cause I'd get there faster. Everything is well-maintained, everyone has a lot of space. But you absolutely can not survive without a car.

When I moved to Hamilton for university I took the bus everywhere, since most routes are 10-15 min waits vs 30-60 min in Oakville. Up until that point I thought Toronto was the only city in the Golden Horseshoe that can offer that level of frequency.

Doady, that's an interesting point you made about the suburbs not being self-contained and therefore not being able to provide convenient transit for their residents. Leads one to wonder how much different the statistics would be if all of the GTA had one transit system as opposed to each city basically having its own.
 
doady said:
40 rides per capita is pretty typical for smaller, self-contained Canadian cities. Oshawa Transit Commission had around 30 riders per capita back in the day. So St-Catharines isn't that surprising. Manufacturing towns usually have crappy ridership so I guess it is impressive in that sense.

I think places like Mississauga, Brampton, Oakville, etc. are at the most disadvantage because they are not self-contained cities, so their transit systems cannot serve all their residents needs by default. So regional systems like York and Durham are important to overcoming that problem (but on the other hand, both York and Durham have really crappy ridership...).

I think one of the main reasons Mississauga has the most ridership and service in the 905 is simply because it is the most self-contained (55% of Mississauga residents work in Mississauga, compared to 27% who work in Toronto). 46.8 ridership per capita is good considering, but it sucks compared to an entirely self-contained city like for example Winnipeg (79 riders per capita). If 100% Mississauga residents worked in Mississauga, its local transit would be even better.

Btw, I added Oakville to the list. Check it out.
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Would a merged Peel system work?
 
Peel Region Transit would just be Mississauga and Brampton. Not exactly what I would call a "regional" system. Even if Caledon actually wanted transit, all it needs is one or two bus routes from Bolton into Brampton. And you don't need Peel Region Transit for that.

Perhaps if Peel Region was an actual region, there would be more incentive for a regional transit system. It probably would have made more sense for Brampton and Mississauga to be part of Halton Region, and Caledon part of Dufferin County...
 
Well Peel County used to have more municipalities: Port Credit, Streetsville, Clarkson, Malton, Toronto Township, Chinguacousy, etc. But yes, now it's just got 3. And I agree Caledon could easily become part of another Region.
 
Politically, how could a merger between HST and Burlington Transit, or similar merger options with transit agencies in Peel/Halton happen?
 
I think London has the highest per-capita ridership in Ontario after the TTC and Ottawa.
 
^ Just did a little digging and London is doing quite well against it's pier cities.

In 2012 here are the following riderships: Ott....925k 100mil, Miss...735k, 34.8mil, Ham....545k, 21.8mil, Lond.....380k, 22.5mil

London's figure look even more impressive when you consider that all those other systems get additional riders from buses coming in from other cities ie Hull, TTT/Bram/Oak, Burl while London has no other cities and/or transit systems to bump up it's numbers.
 
Though just outside of the Golden Horseshoe, Niagara and Erie County have combined their transit authority. It is possible to use local transit to go between the Fashion Outlet in Niagara Falls, NY and Walden Galleria in Buffalo. That transit authority also operates the Buffalo MetroRail.
 
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