To be fair the city had been trying for ages to secure funding for the Transitway. Unfortunately, only after two decades of axe swinging later was the city able to secure funding for the Transitway, albeit a brutally severed Transitway.
Now that's not to say the Transitway is a completely useless piece of infrastructure. The Airport Corporate Centre is one of the largest employment centres in the GTA and traffic is an absolute nightmare in the afternoon. Try getting from Creekbank/Eglinton to Square One/Hurontario in less than half hour at 5PM. It's next to impossible, yet the Transitway will get you there in 10 minutes. Currently MiWay operates a combined frequency of 3 minutes at rush hour (21, 107, 109). With the transitway saving 30+ minutes of round trip time, that means 10 less buses an hour are needed to provide the same level of service.
Even at the current service levels overcrowding is a serious problem during rush hours. So this whole idea that there is barely any ridership on it is nothing short of misleading. The stations may not appear crowded, but the buses running on the Transitway are indeed and there is much more service to come.
As for speed limits, the majority of the transitway is in fact 80 km/h, the section east of Dixie to Etobicoke Creek Station is 50km/h due to the curvature of the line. Although I do wish those curves were canted to improve ride quality and speed in that section. However, even with the station speeds of 40km/h the idea that half of the Transitway is posted at 50km/h or averages out to is pure rubbish.
The same poster pointed to the fact that the GO buses are now taking a much slower route. This is not untrue, however, the final eastern piece of the Transitway is not yet complete and buses currently take a much slower route to/from Renforth. It is also important to note that Renforth between the 401 and Carlingview has been under construction for the last month and has really impacted travel times along there, further skewing this very limited observation. While in the end the GO bus may be a little bit slower, the opportunities for boardings as a result of the two additional GO stops should have a very positive impact on the productivity of these routes.
Lastly we need to talk about MiWay service as a whole. In 2007 the city was embarking on a very ambitious five year service expansion in preparation for the opening of the Transitway. Annual service hours were to grow to 1.5 million by 2012. Unfortunately, then director of transit—Bill Cunningham—who was leading the charge retired as the first year of expansion was coming to a close. This was untimely for a number of reasons, transit ridership in Mississauga was about to be hit badly by the recession and the new director of transit—Geoff Marinoff—didn't make the push to stay on course. I presume because in his first year subsidies shot right up as the first year of major service increases collided with the loss of ridership as a result of the economic climate. Geoff Marinoff would prove not to be the champion of transit that Bill Cunningham was and MiWay's ambitious growth plans were locked away in a closet even after ridership had fully recovered. Instead the approach was very modest service increases along with a more aggressive marketing approach, hence MiWay. In 2017, 5 years later than planned in 2007, MiWay's annual service hours would finally reach the envisioned 1.5 million mark. One can only imagine what this meant for getting transit in Mississauga ready for the opening of the Transitway.
The problem is people have their preconceived ideas of this transitway. They then make an observation or two that happens to fit their thoughts of the project and quickly pass judgement and frankly that's just lazy and ignorant.
