While transit satisfaction in neighbouring Toronto & Brampton craters, it’s a different story in Mississauga 

Last year, riders stepped onto a Mississauga bus 59 million times.

“In 2023, MiWay experienced remarkable growth in demand for transit service. The rate of growth presented challenges to service delivery, leading to a number of instances of closed doors and reduced reliability for customers on overcrowded routes,” a recent report on MiWay stated.

City Hall is paying close attention. 

Since the pandemic The Pointer has reported ridership numbers that have recovered to, and exceeded, pre-lockdown levels. A report presented to council nearly a year ago revealed MiWay ridership was up to 109 percent of what was reported in 2019 — a recovery that came two years sooner than staff had expected and quicker than other GTA transit systems. Compared to 2022, ridership was 158 percent higher. The City also recently reported an 85 percent increase in PRESTO users.

A recent customer experience survey prepared by the City found that 59 percent of MiWay riders do not have alternative options for transportation and that 52 percent of riders intend to use MiWay over the next one to three years. It also reported that 79 percent of riders are under 35 and 35 percent of them are students.

While the numbers are trending in the right direction, surging demand for transit often spells trouble for systems that are not supported by commensurate investments.

In Toronto and Brampton, residents have been complaining of a lack of reliability, overcrowding and routes that simply are not serviced properly. 

Mississauga is trying to avoid the same problems, especially when more and more people in the once car-dominated city are looking for alternatives.   

In the post-pandemic world people’s commuting behaviour has been changing. MiWay’s annual report, presented to Mississauga’s transit committee on Tuesday, highlighted that with high inflation causing cost of living increases including the excessive price to purchase and maintain a car (estimated at $16,000 annually) there has been a shift to more affordable transportation options. It also highlighted that “more people are adopting urban lifestyles and making environmentally conscious choices to support sustainability.”

Mississauga resident Daniel Oranu told The Pointer while he usually drives to work for convenience, he often relies on transit to get around other parts of the city. He is increasingly using transit to avoid the high price of fueling up to drive himself. The decision takes him back to middle school days when he learned how to navigate Mississauga by bus.

“At first it was a lack of car as a young kid… but then after that, I still stuck with transit more because I’m trying to save more money with gas and car maintenance. [Transit] is better if you’re trying to save more for other things you want to do. So far I’ve had no problems with the transit whatsoever. I think I’ve been pretty lucky.”

Travel patterns have also changed, with more transit riders moving between municipalities. The staff report pointed out that MiWay’s busiest terminals were those shared with other transit systems, especially the TTC, GO Transit, Brampton Transit, and Oakville Transit.

Mississauga’s MiWay system continues to see increases in ridership with the city reporting an 85 percent uptake in PRESTO users.

(2023 MiWay report) 

Brampton residents Navjit Kaur and Tanisha (her first and last name) are among those that rely solely on transit to move between cities. As students, transit is far more affordable than owning a vehicle, which is simply out of reach. 

While they have no complaints about their experience using MiWay, they have encountered frustrations trying to get from place to place using Brampton’s beleaguered transit system, which has suffered from under-investment since the election of Patrick Brown, who ran for mayor in 2018 on a promise of cutting the budget. Kaur said she often has to adjust her schedule to make sure she arrives at her destination on time.

“Some routes, not all, but some routes get delayed so many times. They’re rescheduled or they’re delayed,” she said of her experience in Brampton.

It’s a common story there.

“Sometimes they don’t even stop the bus,” Tanisha added.

With a booming population and ridership rising with it, transit pressures have hit Brampton hard, as Brown has choked off money to properly fund transit growth. The lack of investments have been more noticeable due to rapid population growth in Brampton, where many transit users are left with no options, forced to ride overcrowded buses on certain routes.

Riders left stranded at stops as cramped buses pass by with people standing shoulder to shoulder, prompting concerns around safety and accessibility, along with buses arriving late or not showing up at all have residents frustrated over Brown’s failure to invest in the system. Reports from Brampton staff earlier this year showed nearly 41 million people used the city’s transit system in 2023. It marked a record that represented an approximately 31 percent surge from 2022 and exceeded staff projections by nearly 5 million riders. The growth has created significant challenges for an underfunded transit system that sees more than a hundred thousand rides daily.

The City of Toronto is facing its own set of challenges. Between streetcar congestion, overcrowding along subway and bus routes, an increase in violence and regular service disruptions causing long wait times, Toronto’s transit system continues to struggle with a lack of confidence among many residents. Subway delays, for instance, force more and more people into cars, as arriving late for work is not an option.

The lack of reliability and inconvenience this causes are transit killers.

A TTC report released in April revealed only 55 percent of customers say they are proud of the city’s transit and that Toronto’s buses are not meeting their performance targets for being on time. It found buses were on time for 87 percent of trips between January and February, falling short of the 90 percent goal, which still allows buses to leave one minute earlier or five minutes later than the scheduled departure time. Customer complaints were primarily due to service timeliness and missed stops. The analysis found streetcar performance also fell short of meeting the 90 percent target with an on-time rate of 82 percent.

In contrast to its two neighbours, Mississauga’s MiWay system is not facing the same level of complaints from its riders.

The City’s customer experience survey found that overall rider satisfaction increased from 66 percent in 2023 to 80 percent in 2024. Customers reported the service was reliable and on time, with satisfaction increasing from 58 percent in 2023 to 78 percent in 2024. MiWay also saw improvements in rider experience with safety, customer service and the system’s ability to keep residents informed when trips were altered.

A recent customer experience survey found rider satisfaction with Mississauga’s MiWay service saw an increase from 66 percent in 2023 to 80 percent in 2024.

(The Pointer files) 

Unlike Brampton, transit in Mississauga has seen major increases in investment and has traditionally made up the largest portion in the City’s capital budget, with $144.2 million (27 percent) allocated in 2024. In 2023 it was even higher, $168 million, an investment now paying dividends as riders report increased satisfaction thanks to many of the funding priorities to meet the surging demand.

Mississauga previously had one of the lowest transit fares across the GTHA, reducing the City’s ability to increase service capacity due to depressed revenue at the box. The need to expand service delivery to accommodate recent demand prompted an increase in fares, which came into effect in April. A regular adult fare is now $4.25, 25-cents more than what it was, and one of the highest rates in Ontario. Staff have anticipated the fare-rate increase will generate an additional $3.2 million in 2024.

As staff were reporting in the final months of 2023 that ridership was expected to continue increasing into this year, they warned the spike required “increased investment to improve and expand service levels”. The expansion of MiWay was featured in the budget requests outlined for this year which called for a four percent increase in service (totaling 57,000 hours) for 2024. Staff said the added service hours would help address overcrowding on routes where ridership had “grown significantly”.

The City announced in August that it was expanding service along several of its routes, including 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. Several other  routes were funded for more frequent bus service.

According to a spokesperson with the City, last year MiWay saw an increase in ridership specifically along Mississauga’s major transit corridors. Due to significant employment growth, for example, in the Derry Industrial area, it saw increased demand; staff also pointed to a spike in customers travelling south from Brampton to Mississauga’s industrial areas. A map inside MiWay’s annual report highlighted routes that experienced the greatest increase in weekday ridership: Drew, Mavis, Courtneypark, McLaughlin-Derry, and Derry. The report noted that employers “have added evening and weekend shifts that attract workers to use MiWay’s services during these traditional off-peak periods contributing to overall increased ridership.”

The City’s survey revealed that 42 percent of non-riders do not use MiWay because it is too time consuming and 37 percent would need to make multiple transfers before getting to their destination.

Madi Dowell and Zoe Oliver don’t use MiWay. They talked to The Pointer inside the city’s crowded Square One Mall food court. They enjoy the convenience of getting around the city by car, but also don’t know how to navigate the transit system.

“I feel like it's too complicated for me, knowing what train to take or what bus to take,” Dowell said.

“[The car] is just more convenient. Where I grew up there was no public transit… so cars have always been easier and accessible,” Oliver said. “I think if I lived in the city more then I’d be more open to it but again with more safety features for it because you always hear someone got hurt or something else.”

Both Dowell and Oliver said if there were more safety precautions such as increased security, it would make transit more appealing for them.

Madi Dowell (left) and Zoe Oliver say they would be more compelled to take transit if there were increased safety measures.

(Paige Peacock/The Pointer) 

Tommy Qiu said he would like to see more connectivity between Mississauga’s MiWay and other GTA transit networks. As a Toronto resident who works in the city’s downtown core, he said his only option is to take a GO Train from Union, which still only gets him to Lakeshore at one of Mississauga’s GO stations before he needs to hop on a MiWay bus connection to get up to the city’s centre.

“It's too much of a long commute for me to switch to commuting by transit on a daily basis or even like three days a week, so I end up just preferring to drive my car. Transit is still stuck in traffic like private vehicles so why am I going to take transit?”

MiWay is focused on service frequency to increase reliability and reduce overcrowding to attract non-traditional riders.

On-time rates for buses have improved significantly to 73 percent in 2024, up from 64 percent last year, but the numbers reveal the difficulty in meeting schedules when the overall transportation network is still dominated by cars. Overcrowding and instances of buses having to pass by stops due to capacity are seeing a significant decrease with 5,845 incidents reported so far in 2024, down from 11,886 in 2023.

The City’s spokesperson said MiWay is requesting additional funding through the 2025 budget to increase service levels, improve off-peak and weekend frequency, introduce new express services, and reduce overcrowding. New initiatives highlighted in a pre-budget presentation on Wednesday include improving transit by proposing an increase to MiWay services by 8 percent, which would translate to expanding the service by an additional 120,000 transit service hours to improve capacity on major routes that have been challenged by increased ridership. MiWay’s annual report highlighted $2 billion in capital work over the next decade to build more enhanced bus stops and shelters, maintain and expand transit infrastructure and advance key transit projects, including Lakeshore Higher Order Transit and Dundas Bus Rapid Transit.

“The City is prioritizing and investing in transit to develop Mississauga as a transit-oriented city and meet the growing ridership demand,” the spokesperson said. “The City frequently reviews transit needs to ensure adequate support and investments in the network to serve a growing population and ridership.”

In order to get more people out of their cars and using transit, Councillor Alvin Tedjo, who sits on the transit advisory board and has been an advocate for transit, said elected officials have to prioritize smart growth and the city’s urban agenda.

“We want to make sure we can increase service as much as possible to make it even easier and more reliable for transit users to rely on the system,” he told The Pointer. “There's certainly still challenges that we have in the system to make sure that we have routes that cover everywhere in the city, and we want to make sure that we have as few occasions as possible where our buses are so full that they have to pass riders with closed doors.”

With approximately 85 percent of trips in Mississauga still taken by car, Tedjo said that, in order to make transit a more attractive option, the City needs to expand rapid transit lines into major corridors, such as the Dundas BRT, which has been identified as a priority project in the past several budget asks to upper levels of government. Getting the downtown loop portion of the Hurontario LRT added back into the project and finally having two-way all-day service along the Milton-GO Line are also key higher-order transit needs.

Mississauga Councillor Alvin Tedjo, who sits on the City’s transit advisory committee, says council has to prioritize transit investments.

(Alexis Wright/The Pointer) 

“These are projects that people have been talking about for 10-15 years and we need to start seeing significant progress to get people the options that they need to get around the city better,” he said. “Once transit becomes a more attractive option and we can be more reliable and faster, then we get more people switching to the transit system.”

“I think we're doing pretty well on major routes, but it's the sort of secondary routes that could use more, and also to make sure that those major routes have the right number of buses and drivers, so that they're not always full and actually missing people.”

The City’s MiWay Infrastructure Growth Plan, developed in 2020, outlines a 10-year capital investment strategy for transit infrastructure that includes added MiExpress service and improved route connections to make the system more reliable and enhance ridership experience.

The strategy acknowledges, “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.”

The City of Mississauga has also been working to green MiWay’s transit fleet to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, which account for 62 percent of corporate emissions, as part of the City’s Climate Change Action Plan to reduce corporate emissions by 40 percent by 2030, and 80 percent by 2050. The City has been working to do this through efforts to buy hydrogen fuel cell buses to adapt its fleet. Nearly 60 percent of MiWay buses are currently hybrid-electric, which has reduced annual diesel fuel consumption by 30 percent.

A report to general committee on Wednesday also highlighted that the City is currently preparing an application for the federal government’s Canada Public Transit Fund, a permanent resource for municipalities to support public transit and active transportation. Announced in July, the fund will be distributed through three streams but money will not start flowing until 2026.

“As service grows and as ridership continues to increase, MiWay will require funding to support the customer facing infrastructure projects that can include new and/or upgrades to transit stations/terminals, transit priority infrastructure and customer amenities at bus stops and terminals,” the report details. High-level cost estimates for this work are between $70 million and $80 million. The funding would be critical for Mississauga, which has been significantly underserved by major transit investments from Ottawa and Queen’s Park, while cities that are smaller have received more money for transit.

The City is currently waiting for more funding guidelines under the Metro-Region Agreement stream. In the meantime, the report lays out potential projects under consideration, including a new priority east/west corridor, expanding the rapid transit network and developing a new multi-system transit terminal in Mississauga’s downtown.

Email: [email protected] 

Twitter: @mcpaigepeacock 

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