MiWay expands routes as Mississauga pushes for transit-oriented city 

As demand for transit grows, Mississauga is implementing service increases to meet the network’s needs, but is the City taking the right steps to keep Mississauga moving toward a transit-oriented city? 

Transformational transit projects like the Hurontario LRT — which will run from the city’s waterfront into the southern part of Brampton, looping through Mississauga’s city centre — will shape how residents move around. Connectivity will gradually shift away from the wide boulevards and roadways that accommodate single occupancy vehicles, but the MiWay system cannot replace the current reliance on cars overnight.

Its growth will be incremental.

Supporting the LRT and advancing major transit projects, including Lakeshore Higher Order Transit and Dundas Bus Rapid Transit, has to be done alongside smaller service increases.

MiWay, with the support of council over the last decade, has deftly met ridership expectations, expanding service to meet rising demand. Investments in a greener bus fleet have been made alongside key expansion of routes and other services. Unlike the litany of complaints about the transit systems in Mississauga's two large neighbouring cities where Brampton riders take to social media to constantly highlight overcrowding and under-service while Toronto residents decry the TTC's lack of reliability, MiWay users voice few complaints.

Construction of the LRT downtown flyover, part of the multibillion dollar project expected to be completed in about a year.

(Alexis Wright/The Pointer)

City staff are once again toying with MiWay’s service delivery to expand transit use across Mississauga. With the completion of the Hurontario LRT expected within the next year, the City needs to prioritize a transit system aligned with this new transformative infrastructure which will move people up and down the municipality’s main thoroughfare from Mississauga’s waterfront where several major developments will soon hover over the lakeshore corridor. East-west connectivity and expansion of transit coverage across neighbourhoods that will only move away from cars if it’s convenient to do so, will be critical. 

The City recently announced service increases that include a new Burnhamthorpe Road express route between the University of Toronto Mississauga and the new Kipling Station in Etobicoke (which connects to GO Train routes), service improvements on Routes 44 and 110 to better serve the University of Toronto Mississauga campus, and more buses on busy routes to alleviate overcrowding.

The addition of the Burnhamthorpe route will provide express transit services — operating every 17 minutes at peak times in the morning and afternoon — on weekdays and will connect the University of Toronto Mississauga with the Kipling Bus Terminal in Toronto. The new route replaces Route 76 Burnhamthorpe to avoid service duplication and will complement the existing Route 26 service. To meet the increased ridership demand, several other city routes will have buses coming and going more frequently.

The expansion of Mississauga’s MiWay transit service was part of the budget requests laid out in the City’s 2024 financial blueprint which requested a four percent increase in service hours (totaling 57,000 hours) for 2024. Staff said the increase would help address overcrowding on routes where ridership “has grown significantly and additional capacity is essential.” To accommodate the increase, City Council approved 49 new full-time positions at a cost of $3.94 million as part of its 2024 operating budget. 

“MiWay service growth is planned for 2024 and while it will increase expenses for labour, maintenance and fuel it will also increase service hours and revenue,” the 2024 budget document stated, adding “MiWay is committed to monitoring all routes within the network so that service levels are responsive to customers’ needs and can change with shifts in demand as travel patterns evolve.”

It will be critical that Mississauga’s MiWay system radiate around and support the city’s major projects like the Hurontario LRT.

(Alexis Wright/The Pointer files) 

The expansion builds on the City’s MiWay Infrastructure Growth Plan which highlighted that, in order to support major projects coming to the City, and in response to increasing ridership, MiWay must continuously plan for future increases to transit service. The 2020 report acknowledged, “the addition of more bus service to already congested roads and terminals that are operating at capacity will result in unreliable travel times and inefficient operations and is a possible deterrent to adding service to respond to ridership growth,” adding, “The customer experience, whether on the bus or at stops and terminals, will be affected by insufficient transit infrastructure.”

In response, the growth plan was initiated with the intention of identifying a 10-year capital investment strategy for transit infrastructure that would augment the benefits of added MiExpress service, facilitate route connections, make transit more reliable, and enhance ridership experience. It would capitalize on future projects “to minimize throw-away costs while achieving the City’s direction towards a transit-oriented city.” 

Transit has historically accounted for the largest investment in the City’s capital budget, with the 2024 budget putting the dollar amount at $144.2 million (or 27 percent) of Mississauga’s spending for the year. Although still a significant portion of the City’s budget, it marked a decrease from the $168 million approved in 2023. Staff also predicted a surge in future revenue anticipated from fare-rate increases approved by council in October (after prices were frozen during the pandemic), which came into effect earlier this year. 

The fare increase — prompted by the increase in ridership — saw a 6.2 percent increase in PRESTO adult fare (ages 20-64), an 8.2 percent increase in PRESTO youth fare (ages 13-19), and a 6.3 percent increase to cash fare as of April 1. Staff have anticipated these increases will generate an additional $3.2 million in 2024. Prior to April, when fare increases were implemented, Mississauga had one of the lowest city transit fares across the GTHA, reducing the City’s ability to increase service capacity due to lost revenue. The latest fare increases put Mississauga’s transit system slightly above the average GTHA fare rates for adult and youth riders, but below its neighbour in Brampton.

But Cameron MacLeod, executive director of the transit group CodeRedTO, previously told The Pointer these fare increases alone will not be able to expand the City’s transit network, which relies on fare revenue, property taxes, and municipal reserves to fund the service. The 2024 budget allocated $102 million for transit operations, but despite a need to increase service levels, the operating budget marked a 3.2 percent decrease from 2023. This budget, according to the latest financial strategy, is set to increase each year until it reaches $115 million in 2027.

Since the pandemic that made Mississauga’s transit system look like a ghost town, with empty buses that rode past deserted bus stops as people changed their commuting patterns to avoid the risk of getting infected by the virus, MiWay ridership numbers have recovered to, and surpassed, the numbers reported prior to the pandemic. A staff report in October revealed MiWay ridership has recovered to levels well beyobd pre-pandemic numbers, to 109 percent of what was seen in 2019 as of last August and by 158 percent compared to 2022, with ridership expected to continue increasing through the remainder of 2023 and into 2024. The recovery came two years sooner than staff had expected and much quicker than other transit systems in the GTA. 

“MiWay is experiencing greater pressure as ridership continues to grow, necessitating increased investment to improve and expand service levels,” a staff report highlighted. January and February of 2023 saw 107 percent and 110 percent ridership respectively when compared to the same months in 2019.

City staff revealed in October 2023 Mississauga’s transit system had returned to, and exceeded, pre-pandemic levels.

(The Pointer files)

Public transit suffered for nearly two years as the City saw revenue losses as ridership slowed and sluggish to ramp back up after the pandemic when people began to reacquaint themselves with their routines as a sense of normalcy returned. Staff reports in the early days of the pandemic and in the years following revealed how MiWay fare revenues were negatively impacted due to a reduction in transit riders. An August 2021 report from City staff revealed that at the height of the pandemic in 2020, MiWay ridership had decreased by 75 percent.

But the return to normalcy meant the City could revert its attention towards improving the level and quality of service delivery to its residents, the taxpayers that help to fund the service. As part of the 2024 budget, staff projected $99.6 million in revenue — a surplus of $9.6 million compared to the City’s 2019 revenue.

“The fare structure is a critical component of transit service delivery. It needs to strike a balance between providing affordable fare options for riders, consistency with other GTHA transit systems and contributions towards a reasonable cost recovery ratio for taxpayers,” the October report explained. “Considering the escalating costs and additional investments necessary to improve services and support expanding customer demands, it is recommended that a fare increase be implemented.”

City Council also extended Mississauga’s MiWay fare discount pilot program that provides free child fares and $1 all-day senior fares until the end of this year. The trial program was met with hesitancy from council members during the City’s 2023 budget deliberations as staff were floundering to keep spending tight in light of other budgetary pressures such as inflation, pandemic recovery and the financial burden of the PCs Bill 23. The program, which came into effect in May 2023, was previously meant to run until April of this year but staff extended the program in April to allow MiWay to gather and analyze more data to inform whether it will continue delivering the program in the future.

Although children eligible under the program account for only 0.3 percent of overall ridership and seniors represent 3.5 percent of riders, a staff report revealed MiWay anticipates a decrease in transit revenue of $950,000 over the eight-month extension of the pilot program, with $200,000 attributed to child fares and $750,000 to seniors’ fares. It added child and senior ridership did not return to pre-pandemic levels in 2023 despite the City introducing fare discounts in May last year.  

City Council and staff extended Mississauga’s discounted fare pilot program to the end of the year to allow MiWay to gather more data on its effectiveness.

(The Pointer files)

Meanwhile, as Mississauga tinkers with its own ways to promote transit and increase ridership, the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) has been in turmoil, thrashing to stay afloat. In recent years, it has been plagued as a service that is overcrowded and unreliable, with increased threats of danger, all while being alarmingly underfunded. Despite fares increasing in recent years, service has decreased and wait times have surged. Transit report cards released in July 2023 by the Toronto Region Board of Trade found Toronto had the least reliable transit at 58 percent, compared to other municipalities in the region, which all scored over 70 percent. A 2023 analysis from the City of Toronto revealed that between 2014 and 2022, the total minutes of delay for all the transit methods across its system was more than 13 million minutes.

A report presented in November 2023 also showed the transit service was still trying to get back to pre-pandemic ridership levels, with the City only recording ridership at 78 percent prior to the pandemic. Amid all of the service’s controversy, in June this year, the head of the transit agency Rick Leary, who has been criticized for his lack of transparency on transit issues, resigned from his senior position — adding to the already mounting turbulence.

But as the City of Toronto continues to face its own set of challenges, Mississauga has laid out a five-year strategy to continue to transform its transit vision. The City’s MiWay 5 Transit Service Plan, meant to guide the expansion of Mississauga’s transit network to grow the system and improve connectivity, lays out several objectives, including building on the existing network, integrating and strengthening connections and enhancing service delivery. This includes aligning MiWay services to support and integrate with the future Hurontario LRT; expanding service hours in response to growing ridership demand; improving service to major terminals identified in the MiWay Infrastructure Growth Plan and the City’s planning; enhancing inter-regional connections with neighbouring service providers like Brampton Transit, TTC, Oakville Transit, Metrolinx/GO Transit; and connecting to higher-order transit services, such as the subway and GO Rail service. The City’s previous five-year strategy focused on moving Mississauga’s transit system from a design that radiates from the city centre to a grid network, allowing for more frequent and direct service along main roads. 

Email: [email protected] 

Twitter: @mcpaigepeacock

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