Suburban Public Transit

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Doady

There are TOD features all over Oakville, including an abundance of thoroughfares, pedestrian connections to those thoroughfares, and medium-density and high-density development along those thoroughfares.

Bottom line is, the built form of Oakville is little different from the rest of the suburban GTA, which has much higher transit ridership. The low transit ridership of Oakville has absolutely nothing to do with its built form.

The average density in Oakville is about 1500 / km2 while it's about 2500km2 in Mississauga and Brampton. So the latter two are over 60% denser meaning your claim that the built form is little different is not correct. And the transit service of every place is affected by its built form. If ridership is the same as another place with a different built form, it just means that there are other factors at play since built form is just one of several factors.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

The average density in Oakville is about 1500 / km2 while it's about 2500km2 in Mississauga and Brampton. So the latter two are over 60% denser meaning your claim that the built form is little different is not correct.

Oakville is also about 1/4 greenfield, while Mississauga's landmass is entirely built out. Brampton also has unbuilt land, but household sizes are larger (and has a lot more basement apartments, etc). The actual residential development patterns in all 3 don't differ significantly.

[Acajack]

Different demographics.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Oakville is also about 1/4 greenfield, while Mississauga's landmass is entirely built out. Brampton also has unbuilt land, but household sizes are larger (and has a lot more basement apartments, etc). The actual residential development patterns in all 3 don't differ significantly.

Mississauga also has significant industrial areas as well as most of the airport and Brampton has large areas of both greenfield and industrial. Being all built out doesn't mean much for population density when a lot of the built land is non-residential. That land may as well all be greenfield in terms of population density stats. However, those areas can still contribute to transit ridership because of the employment they contain.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Different demographics.

To say the least. And instead of 8 people per household you've got one riterd person in many residences.

[niwell]

This was quite a while ago now but I used both Oakville and Burlington transit a fair bit while working for Halton Region. While neither was exactly great, Burlington's was noticeably the more useful and used of the two. The routes made more sense and connected both the downtown area and GO stations with more suburban neighbourhoods. Oakville seemed more like feeder lines to GO that were used by people who couldn't drive. This can be seen to a degree on the map hipster duck posted where Burlington has more direct arterial routes at a 16-30 min frequency.

While roughly similar demographics Burlington certainly feels like less oriented towards professional jobs in Toronto's financial district. Just a bit more "there" in Burlington.


I've lived in / been to places where private transit carries a significant chunk of commuters. These systems generally don't follow arterials on a regular schedule but pick up people at neighbourhood focal points and take them to employment areas / transfer nodes. Vehicles vary wildly in level of repair/safety and cut a lot of corners to turn a profit. Aside from the points above I imagine both maintenance and insurance costs would be quite significant to run anything in Canada that would meet what we would consider acceptable standards.

I have heard about similar (often illegal) operators that exist in the outer Boroughs of NYC and New Jersey with similar concerns. The population being catered to is generally working class that aren't served adequately by transit, particularly outside peak hours.

[Doady]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

The average density in Oakville is about 1500 / km2 while it's about 2500km2 in Mississauga and Brampton. That's over 60% greater. So your claim that the built form is the same is not correct. And the transit service of every place is affected by its built form. If ridership is the same as another place with a different built form, it just means that there are other factors at play since built form is just one of several factors.

Oakville contains a provincial park and a large amount of farmland. It is not as built out as Mississauga and Brampton. The actual urban density is similar. Oakville actually has more high-rises per capita than Brampton.

Oakville, along with Markham, has actually been the most aggressive 905 municipality in terms of promoting smart growth, especially New Urbanism. It also has the best cycling network in the GTA outside of Downtown Toronto.

Yes, there are other factors, which why I talked about Oakville's small size and isolation from the other GTA systems. As Oakville grows northward, there will be transit corridors north-south into Milton and east-west into Mississauga. Right now, no such corridors exist.

Ridership in 2019
Oakville Transit: 3.0 million
Metrobus (St. John's): 3.3 million

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Doady

Oakville contains a provincial park and a large amount of farmland. It is not as built out as Mississauga and Brampton. The actual urban density is similar. Oakville actually has more high-rises per capita than Brampton.

Oakville, along with Markham, has actually been the most aggressive 905 municipality in terms of promoting smart growth, especially New Urbanism. It also has the best cycling network in the GTA outside of Downtown Toronto.

Yes, there are other factors, which why I talked about Oakville's small size and isolation from the other GTA systems. As Oakville grows northward, there will be transit corridors north-south into Milton and east-west into Mississauga. Right now, no such corridors exist.

While I disagree that they're equally dense, this whole tangent is getting things very side tracked. The initial poster implied that transit service in Canadian suburbs was bad in a general sense and that they were just using Oakville as one example. In fact they thought that suburban bus service was generally so bad that they seemed willing to write it off and consider alternatives that involved totally different service models, vehicles etc. So my response was a very general one about suburban versus urban transit service. My initial comments were not meant to explain the lowridership of any one suburb compared to another or to imply that it's impossible to attract transit riders in a suburban setting.

The very basic concept that transit generally works better in denser, less car friendly environments honestly isn't even debatable. But pointing that out isn't meant to imply that the setting is the only thing that matters since obviously the service being offered is very important. I never said or even implied that there were no differences between the transit provided in different suburbs. The whole point was that the problem is not with transit as a concept requiring a whole new service model for suburbs but with the specific implementation of transit service combined with the challenges of operating in a suburban setting.

Originally Posted by Doady

Ridership in 2019
Oakville Transit: 3.0 million
Metrobus (St. John's): 3.3 million

St. John's urban area density and metro density is lower than Oakville's since as a metro area it also contains low density suburbs and rural fringes. I only mentioned it as a population size comparison to point out that Oakville isn't that small being the size of a whole, nationally significant metro area. So St. John's transit ridership has nothing to do with the topic.

[Build.It]

Oakville has very different demographics than Brampton - this certainly plays a role (much wealthier, presumably higher car ownership rate).

However Oakville is also relatively small (area), and Oakville Transit only covers Oakville. However there are multiple thoroughfares that go through Oakville and either Mississauga or Burlington or all three even. Lakeshore, Plains/Rebecca, Dundas, Upper Middle. This is common for other suburban models as well.

The problem with this of course being that it takes incredibly long to get from somewhere on Lakeshore in Oakville to Lakeshore in Burlington, for example.

I think it would make more sense for transit to at least be uploaded to the Regional Municipality (eg. Halton) and then consolidate routes so you can traverse the entire length of a road, without a transfer, beyond an arbitrary municipal line that is otherwise ignored by those with cars.

And although there are certainly a lot of people in Oakville who work in Toronto, anecdotally this seems to be the minority. Most people I knew growing up worked in other suburban locations, often in Oakville itself (my parents, aunt, uncle, neighbours on all sides worked in Oakville, for example). It's been a while since I lived there so perhaps it's changed, and of course I haven't looked into the commuting patterns.

In general I think buses get a bad rap in the transit discussion, but it's a hell of a lot cheaper to setup a bus route than it is to build LRT.