Mississauga receives $112M over next decade for transit as MiWay ridership levels grow

As transit demand in Mississauga continues to grow, the city is finally seeing the funding needed to transform the municipality away from its traditional dependence on the car.

MiWay ridership has grown beyond pre-pandemic levels and demand is trending in the same direction as more vertical density defines parts of the city that previously featured sprawling suburban environments dominated by single occupancy vehicles. In August 2023, MiWay ridership had recovered to 109 percent of what was seen in 2019 and 158 percent compared to 2022. 

“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 September staff report highlighted. 

MiWay ridership increased by 14 percent in 2024 and is expected to grow an additional seven percent in 2025, according to Mississauga’s latest pre-budget submission to the provincial government. City officials say the growth allows council to keep transit fares steady while also supporting the continued expansion needed to accommodate an anticipated population boom. Annual boardings on MiWay buses were 5.7 percent higher in 2024 compared to 2023, a presentation to Mississauga's Transit Advisory committee last week revealed.  

While the city’s top ten routes that experienced the highest ridership saw thousands of people using the service daily, overall overcrowding was 24 percent lower than in 2023. This is the result of council decisions over the last decade and strategic service changes by MiWay that have exceeded ridership expectations and led to far fewer complaints from Mississauga commuters, while also accommodating the rising demand. 

“Traffic and congestion are already at high levels in Mississauga, and as the City works to meet the housing targets, investing in transit service and capacity will be crucial,” the City’s 2025 pre-budget submission emphasizes. 

The surge in ridership and the need to increase service comes at a cost. 

“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 September staff report detailed. High-level cost projections for this work were estimated between $70 million and $80 million. 

MiWay continues to see increases in ridership year over year, requiring increases in service to accommodate the demand.

(The Pointer files) 

Earlier this year, Mississauga’s pleas for more funding were answered. Just as the provincial election was being called, the federal government announced $112 million in funding over 10 years starting in 2026 for Mississauga’s transit system as part of its Canada Public Transit Fund. Unveiled in July, it was dubbed by Ottawa as the “largest public transit investment in Canadian history” and will see $30 billion flow to municipalities over the next decade to expand public transit. The program will invest an average of $3 billion per year to help municipalities deliver better public transportation across the country.

“This investment, beginning in 2026 through to 2036, will help increase Mississauga’s housing supply and affordability, developing more complete, transit-oriented communities and contributing to the fight against climate change,” a release from the federal government outlined.

Starting in 2026, the City of Mississauga will receive an annual allocation of $11.24 million over the next ten years under the Baseline Funding stream to “help advance key improvements to Mississauga’s transit system, including assistance with long-term planning as well as updates to public transit and active transportation infrastructure,” a City spokesperson told The Pointer. They noted the “amount was determined based on a formula that considers both Mississauga’s ridership and population metrics.” The recently announced funding will contribute toward upgrading, replacing, or modernizing the city’s public transit infrastructure, and help to maintain a state of good repair. The Baseline funding is conditional on the City submitting a capital plan, and the subsequent signing of a funding agreement.

The federal funding is being granted to municipalities that take action to directly jumpstart housing supply, including introducing measures that eliminate all mandatory minimum parking requirements within 800 metres of a high-frequency transit line; allow high-density housing within 800 metres of a high-frequency transit line or a post-secondary institution; and the completion of a housing needs assessment for all communities with a population above 30,000. These measures were recently outlined in the City’s Mayor’s Housing Task Force Report, which set out a strategy to get housing built, including removing parking minimums for affordable housing, mid-rise developments, and projects in transit-accessible areas (outside of Major Transit Station Areas).

In the same breath, Ottawa also announced $10.9 million through the Zero-Emission Transit Fund to support the City’s Hydrogen Fuel Cell Electric Bus project. Launched in September, the project is aimed at deploying electric hydrogen fuel cell buses in Mississauga in an effort to move towards more sustainable public transit. The funding will allow MiWay to purchase 10 hydrogen fuel cell buses, and install equipment at its Malton transit facility to fuel them, making Mississauga the province’s first municipality to pilot hydrogen fuel cell buses in its transit fleet. 

The City of Mississauga has been working to green MiWay’s transit fleet to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, which accounted for 61 percent of the City’s corporate emissions in 2023, 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 and scaled back greenhouse gas emissions by 5,134 tonnes.

MiWay greenhouse gas emissions accounted for 61 percent of the City’s corporate emissions in 2023.

(City of Mississauga) 

This funding is critical for Mississauga, which has been significantly underserved by major transit investments from Ottawa and Queen’s Park. Councillor Alvin Tedjo, who sits on the transit advisory board and has been an advocate for transit, recently acknowledged that transit has been largely underfunded compared to other regions where population growth is substantially lower than Peel’s. 

Despite the historic underfunding, he also previously recognized that elected officials must 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 previously 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.” 

The City has allocated $108.9 million into its transit system for the year ahead, a notable decrease from $144.2 million in 2024. Key investments included $33.2 million in buses and $34.1 million in high order transit as the City moves to electrify its fleet after MiWay announced in 2022 it would no longer purchase any new diesel buses as part of its green sustainability initiatives and the ambitious emissions reduction target the City has set.

Service hours are projected to increase by eight percent (120,483 hours) in 2025 to meet growing demand for transit service. Following through with this budget promise, the March 4 presentation to the City’s transit committee highlighted a slew of service increases across several routes that will be completed between now and 2026 as federal funding begins to flow. 

But the latest funding announcement only scratches the surface of what is needed to accommodate Mississauga’s booming ridership growth. 

To allow Mississauga’s public transit to expand, the City has requested $500 million in funding from the provincial and federal governments to build a new transit facility. To meet the demand, “MiWay needs to expand its fleet, which requires a new transit garage,” the City’s pre-budget submission states. “The cost however, to building a new facility to accommodate a zero-emission fleet is substantial and exceeds the City’s current budgetary capacity.”

MiWay’s existing fleet of approximately 500 vehicles is currently housed at its two existing facilities (Central Parkway and Malton) “where capacity has been maximized and is not able to accommodate future fleet growth,” the submission noted. “To bring buses online, [the City] will require more space to house and service them. At the same time, as MiWay brings on more zero emissions buses, it will need the right space to house and repair them.” While the details of the new transit storage facility still need to be determined, preliminary designs indicate the potential to house between 170 and 280 40-foot buses at this site with an estimated capital cost of more than $500 million.

As much needed funding begins to trickle down from Ottawa, a $65 million request to the Province to cover the operating costs to run what will be the largest transit infrastructure project in Mississauga continues to be overlooked. Though the Province signed a $4.6 billion contract with the transit consortium behind the project, Mobilinx, for the construction and total capital cost of the line, the City has been told it is on the hook for covering the additional costs associated with operating the line over the next 30 years once the LRT is up and running. Having received no indication from the PCs that the City will be alleviated of the financial burden, the request was reiterated in the City’s 2025 provincial pre-budget submission.

With approximately 85 percent of trips in Mississauga still taken by car, Tedjo previously told The Pointer that, in order to make transit a more attractive option, the City needs to expand rapid transit lines into major corridors. 

The City’s latest pre-budget submission to the Province featured a request for a new funding deal for Mississauga, as has been done in Toronto and Ottawa — an agreement that “must ensure financial support” for the first three years of the Hurontario LRT’s operating costs. It also requested funding for the Lakeshore bus rapid transit project, the Dundas bus rapid transit line, and a new transit storage facility, to “support long-term infrastructure growth and regional development.”

Email: [email protected] 

Twitter: @mcpaigepeacock

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