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.

[Doady]

Upper Middle is Oakville's most prominent east-west corridor but it ends right at the Mississauga border. There is also a provincial park separating Burlington and Oakville which prevents Upper Middle from being extended into Burlington.

Of course, buses are important to the transit discussion. Most of the transit ridership in Toronto is on buses after all. It's important for a rail system to have lots of buses feeding suburbanites into the stations.

Getting people to take the buses in the suburbs is easy because they can't walk or bike anywhere. The bus is the only alternative to the car. We can see what happened in Etobicoke, North York and Scarborough, and we can see what's happening in Mississauga and Brampton right now. But suburbs can't exist in isolation, that's why they are called suburbs, and Oakville Transit is just isolated right now.

[Build.It]

An expanded GO bus route map is probably the most realistic option.

Again using the Burlington/Oakville/Mississauga example:

Dundas route: Brant, Guelph, Walkers, Appleby, Bronte, Third Line, Neyagawa, Trafalgar, Ninth Line, Erin Mills, Mississauga Rd, Hurontario, Cawthra, Dixie

Drop people off at the intersections rather than some desolate carpool lot.

Same can be applied to:
- Rebecca/New
- Upper Middle/N Sheridan

These are very busy commuter routes by car, so it's not a stretch to think a lot of people would prefer to use the GO bus if such a route was available. Then you can have municipal buses handle the N-S for wherever people get off.

[Build.It]

This map shows AADT for Oakville - just a small percentage of those car trips would need to be replaced by bus trips for the numbers to work. IIf the routes were more useful, and didn't have a massive detour and half hour interruption at the GO Station, I think lot more people would actually use it.

https://www.oakville.ca/getmedia/b00...olumes-map.pdf

I remember when I was a teenager and worked at McDonald's it would take me 5 minutes to drive there, 15 minutes to bike, and 30 minutes to bus there.

Similarly when I wanted to go the YMCA it would take 10 minutes to drive, 20 minutes to bike, and 45 minutes to bus.

As far as I know nothing has changed to improve those times and it's been over 20 years since then.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Doady

Getting people to take the buses in the suburbs is easy because they can't walk or bike anywhere. The bus is the only alternative to the car. We can see what happened in Etobicoke, North York and Scarborough, and we can see what's happening in Mississauga and Brampton right now. But suburbs can't exist in isolation, that's why they are called suburbs, and Oakville Transit is just isolated right now.

It's true that transit doesn't have to compete as much with walking or biking in the suburbs, but it has to compete more with cars since there's a higher rate of car ownership and car trips are usually faster and more convenient in suburbs than in the city. So it kind of balances out with captive riders, people who don't have an alternative, being forced onto transit. But what differentiates a medium or high ridership system from a low ridership system is their ability to attract choice riders. And that is not as easy to do in suburban setting. But that's also affected by demographics as others have mentioned since places with lower incomes tend to have fewer cars.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Build.It

An expanded GO bus route map is probably the most realistic option.

Again using the Burlington/Oakville/Mississauga example:

Dundas route: Brant, Guelph, Walkers, Appleby, Bronte, Third Line, Neyagawa, Trafalgar, Ninth Line, Erin Mills, Mississauga Rd, Hurontario, Cawthra, Dixie

Drop people off at the intersections rather than some desolate carpool lot.

Same can be applied to:
- Rebecca/New
- Upper Middle/N Sheridan

These are very busy commuter routes by car, so it's not a stretch to think a lot of people would prefer to use the GO bus if such a route was available. Then you can have municipal buses handle the N-S for wherever people get off.

Yeah those are great points. I'm not sure why some people keep forgetting that local service providers just provide local service. It isn't a valid criticism to complain that local service providers aren't offering longer distance regional services when there's a regional service provider like GO to fill that role. And if the regional service is lacking it's the regional provider that should be criticized.

[Doady]

Brant St to Dixie Rd would be a 2.5 hour route. Not even GO Transit would be able to provide such a service. If it's over 2 hours, that's what cars are for. Transit is for "live/work" communities.

That traffic volume map shows the real problem in Oakville. Counts of around 10,000 along Lakeshore Road in the downtown. 20,000 along Speers Road. Compare that to Queen St and Steeles Ave in Brampton where the counts exceed 45,000. Oakville is still a "bedroom community".

Oakville will not have trouble getting people onto transit once Dundas Street and their "Uptown Core" gets built up. It follows more the Don Mills neighbourhood model that the rest of suburban Toronto has followed. Oakville's previous major shopping area was deliberately located on the boundary far from any residences. Uptown Core will be Oakville's first "Don Mills".

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

It's true that transit doesn't have to compete as much with walking or biking in the suburbs, but it has to compete more with cars since there's a higher rate of car ownership and car trips are usually faster and more convenient in suburbs than in the city. So it kind of balances out with captive riders, people who don't have an alternative, being forced onto transit. But what differentiates a medium or high ridership system from a low ridership system is their ability to attract choice riders. And that is not as easy to do in suburban setting. But that's also affected by demographics as others have mentioned since places with lower incomes tend to have fewer cars.

I'm not saying suburbs will have higher transit ridership. I'm just saying few of them actually have low transit ridership. Urban sprawl has not had a major effect on transit ridership in Canada. Transit ridership in Canada is the same as in the UK.

There's no such thing as "choice riders" or "captive riders" because people who invested in a car are not going to use transit, period. To reduce car ownership is a goal of transit in the first place. Even in the murder capital of the USA, if people need a car, then they will get a car.

Annual Boardings, 2023
Oakville Transit: 3,955,900
Memphis Area Transit Authority: 3,122,700

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Doady

There's no such thing as "choice riders" or "captive riders" because people who invested in a car are not going to use transit, period. To reduce car ownership is a goal of transit in the first place. Even in the murder capital of the USA, if people need a car, then they will get a car.

That's probably true to an extent when it comes to people who work within the suburbs since there's little to no barrier to car usage there. But there are lots of people with cars who take transit to work in the city. I even know several myself here in an area without rail transit. They cite things like the stress of traffic and the cost of gas and parking. Attracting choice riders in the context of Oakville would likely mean people taking the bus to the GO station rather than driving to the parking garage.

There's also cases where people may not have car access at certain times such as if they share the car in a multi-person household. Such people have the option of either choosing to use transit or waiting until the car becomes available if they don't see transit as a reasonable option. Reducing car ownership would lead to a lot of situations like that where a household may choose to have one car instead of two, or two cars instead of three. Not many households in a suburb are going to have none at all.

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by Doady

There's no such thing as "choice riders" or "captive riders" because people who invested in a car are not going to use transit, period. To reduce car ownership is a goal of transit in the first place. Even in the murder capital of the USA, if people need a car, then they will get a car.

I’m a car owner and a regular user of public transit.

If I go into downtown Vancouver or to my office in another Vancouver suburb, I never drive. Too much traffic and parking costs are too high. I also use public transit if I go anywhere alcohol is involved.