The bus terminal is fine; relatively; its 'Downtown Mississauga' that's in the wrong place!
Some mistakes are hard to fix.
You are saying a terminal that was built in the 90's to handle 25,000 riders a day for a city of 250,000 by 2000 is fine when it had to be expanded 10 years later for 50,000 riders in a city of 600,000???
In the wrong location for everything is correct.
Given the fact that the city is on course to see 1,2 million by 2045 with 150,000 riders at CCTT, the terminal is dead where it is today. Current model split is only 16% and if we move it to 24-30% by 2040, where do you put those riders at CCTT??
I honestly think they should have moved the bus terminal to Hurontario and Burnhamthorpe on the NW side, which is a huge parking lot. They would have had to expropriate that land, but whatever. Then keep the Hurontario LRT only on Hurontario, and build a Burnhamthorpe line for people west of Hurontario. Diverting the LRT through smaller streets is going to add a lot of travel time for people that don't need to go through the loop. It's going to cause more traffic and slow downs for transit and cars in that area for sure.
Welcome to my world of beating your head against a brick wall for the last 15+ years for not having the right size of terminal in the right location as the city wasn't willing to spend a few more dollars for the land back then. The same applies for the Hershey Centre that was to be over by Confederation and Rathburn that it ended up in car only land and still a bitch to get to using transit today.
I have call for a new terminal to handle 150,000 riders along with a underground terminal for GO and the BRT in the north- east corner of Sq One or on the land where the plaza is between City Centre and Hurontario. Provision would be made to allow the future extension if TTC Line 2 or a branch line off the Milton Line as either the end of the line or a bypass for the line. Various councilors were calling for a branch off the line coming from Milton to Sq One. Don't need 10-12 cars trains for this bypass when you can use 6 car EMU's/ Battery-powered trains. Mississauga wouldn't be the only city in NA to have trains go under the city with a station in it.
Hazel has stated a number of times before she past away that this was one of her many mistakes along with council not spending extra money to do things right from the start. She and council refused to build things until all the funds for them were in the bank account to build it as they weren't willing to carry any debit cost for it. The living Art Centre turn out to be not only a debit cost and a money pit until the city wrote the cost off after a few decades.
The loop will serve all the massive development on the west side of square one.
And will probably be the most used stops ont he line in the future
At what great cost to riders who are force to spend more extra travel time so a small group of residents get a short ride to Sq One?? The ridership will be a drop in the bucket compare to a number of stops currently on Hurontario today.
The old route 19 was seeing an 45/55 split at CCTT that was taking an extra 15-30 minute to go off route. Today, route 2/17 where doing the same thing until the 17 started to see longer headway where riders are now spending 20-35 minute extra travel time.
When the LRT goes into service in 2025, you will be back to the 15 minute off route extra travel time until the loop is built. Once the loop is built, you will be back to 25 minutes extra travel time.
Midtown Mississauga over the next 2 decades will see 10 time more people living on the LRT line with a good chunk wanting to get to either the Cooksville GO Station or Dundas BRT.. Those who are going to Cooksville GO Station will drive and not take the LRT due to the extra travel time unless there are trains bypassing the loop.
There been talks within the consortium for the LRT of splitting the line in 2 based on ridership that will bring us back to the current route 2/17 setup.
The only thing saving me and other riders who have no need for Sq one or CCTT is using the 103 that save us 13 minutes of travel time on Hurontario today,
If you want to use the Loop, run it as a loop only service with 10-15 minute headway base on the time of the day and the day of the week as a free service that take place in many cities in NA today.
But it's not.
If you think about what the plans were back in the 1980s and 1990s, there was going to be a busway that ran parallel and to the south to the 403 from the east and met with the bus terminal, before crossing underneath the highway and running alongside its north to the west. Putting the bus terminal on the north was the closest and easiest way for the busway to interface with all of the local buses.
Fast-forward 30 years, and sure, it may seem awkward now. But I'm also not convinced that putting the terminal on the east side against Hurontario would make things easier for all of the buses that are traveling to/from it that don't run on Hurontario.
Dan
The plans RT like the SRT where the province, not the city that never made sense back then to the point Hazel and council rejected the free system and never had any regrets doing so. The BRT only ended been partly built due lack of funding on the City side that there was to be a tunnel from the 403 to CCTT current lower level and a tunnel to the east side of Hurontario.
The tunnels were scrap in 2 phases starting with Hurontario as the city didn't have the $20 million to do it when construction started, Hazel would walk into chamber crying the blues or the cost of building Phase 1 from time to time and requested staff to cut corners to save money or find away to do things cheaper or a better way to what got built. Phase 2 & 3 were built by GO with only have of phase 2 been built due to cost and NIMBY groups.
The missing section of Phase 2 is supposed to be under review with the removal of a few stations as well how to get to the new north terminal underground including connecting to the east leg underground. A lot of things will depends on OMERS who own the lands in the first place as well $$$.
