Possible transit solutions for the Brampton area

[Dan416]

Honestly Hurontario & Burnhamthorpe is not such a far walk that the LRT has to veer off Hurontario. Anyone who can't do that short walk is damn lazy. If Hurontario was a subway, on the other hand, I'd have a stop within the mall.

 

[Panzerfaust]

Honestly Hurontario & Burnhamthorpe is not such a far walk that the LRT has to veer off Hurontario. Anyone who can't do that short walk is damn lazy.

The distance from Hurontario and Burnhamthorpe to the bus terminal is over a kilometre if you follow the sidewalks. Cutting through the mall wouldn't shave off much time either. It would be like Spadina on crack.

Also, I suppose anyone who doesn't want to walk through driving rain or snow in order to make a bus connection is lazy too, right?

 

[RedRocket191]

Basically, we have two sets of choices.

1) Divert the LRT off Hurontario to enter City Centre Terminal.
2) LRT stops at Hurontario & Rathburn, passengers walk to City Centre Terminal.
3) LRT stops at Hurontario & Rathburn, passengers can connect to Transitway at this stop.

My personal preference is for option 1. Second choice is option 3, but that only works if there is a Transitway bus every 60 seconds or less.

Up in Brampton, we can do:

1) Divert LRT off Hurontario to serve Shopper's World Terminal
2) LRT stops at Hurontario & Steeles, streetscape improvements make it easier to transfer to Steeles services.
3) Move Shopper's World Terminal to the corner of Steeles & Hurontario

My preference is option 3, followed by option 1.

 

[urbanfan89]

^ For MCC, Option 1 is pretty much the only way to go. Option 2 would be worse than the interchange at Spadina, and Option 3 is redundant since the strength of BRT is that buses can drive off the transitway. All buses could spend an extra minute to veer off the transitway to access a terminal with local bus and LRT connection (not to mention mall access).

For Brampton, Option 1 simply adds costs when the vast sea of parking lots can be converted (and it should, to present a more welcoming entrance for transit users). The LRT stop could be NW of the intersection, and a crosswalk would guide users to a covered bus terminal on the west corner. If a busway on Steeles is built, the BRT stop should be SW of the intersection with a crosswalk to the bus terminal. This way transfers will be as painless as possible (yes, buses and trains could waste time at intersections, but it saves time for passengers accessing stops).

For Downtown Brampton, there should be an LRT tunnel with the portal just south of the creek with an underground LRT terminal shared with Queen LRTs and integrated with the bus terminal and GO station above. Anything else turns the lines into a glorified streetcar.

 

[Anth]

Diverting the LRT between Burnhamthorpe and the 403 all the way to the terminal in the middle of Rathburn would be crazy with the massive Absolute project and all those office towers on that stretch of Hurontario, never mind what it would do the route itself.

Reminds me of the 26 where you have to get off at Kariya and City Centre and walk quite far to access all the condo towers and office developments on Burnhamthorpe towards Duke of York because the route diverts to the bus terminal. That huge gap looks like it'll be fixed by MT soon though judging by the new bus shelters.

 

[doady]

I hope it doesn't end up like transferring at Spadina...

Basically, we have two sets of choices.

1) Divert the LRT off Hurontario to enter City Centre Terminal.
2) LRT stops at Hurontario & Rathburn, passengers walk to City Centre Terminal.
3) LRT stops at Hurontario & Rathburn, passengers can connect to Transitway at this stop.

What are you talking about? It would be nothing like Spadina. Did you even read what I said??? Obviously not, or your list would have 4 options, not 3. I did not suggest that people walk from the current terminal to Hurontario. I am not going to repeat what i just said, but it is pretty clear and you can continue to ignore it if you want.

 

[RedRocket191]

What are you talking about? It would be nothing like Spadina. Did you even read what I said??? Obviously not, or your list would have 4 options, not 3. I did not suggest that people walk from the current terminal to Hurontario. I am not going to repeat what i just said, but it is pretty clear and you can continue to ignore it if you want.

Okay so it was a bad analogy.

Still, what do you propose for passenger who wish to connect form the Hurontario LRT to a non-transitway bus at Square One?

If I am reading you correctly, then you are suggesting that people take a transitway bus to make that connection. Am I correct?

If not, please clarify. If so, then I respectfully disagree on the grounds that it would take five minutes to make a transfer when it could only take the time needed to walk across the platform.

 

[doady]

Okay so it was a bad analogy.

Still, what do you propose for passenger who wish to connect form the Hurontario LRT to a non-transitway bus at Square One?

If I am reading you correctly, then you are suggesting that people take a transitway bus to make that connection. Am I correct?

If not, please clarify. If so, then I respectfully disagree on the grounds that it would take five minutes to make a transfer when it could only take the time needed to walk across the platform.

Hmm, sorry. Perhaps this does need clarification after all.

I was talking about a secondary bus terminal at Hurontario/Rathburn to serve both the LRT and the BRT.

There would be no need for riders of the LRT to transfer to get to Square One. If people want to get to Square One, they can get off at Robert Speck, which many riders of the 19 already do.

If routes 6, 9, 28, and 61 are extended to the secondary bus terminal, then there would be absolutely no reason for riders of the LRT to get to the current bus terminal. Because every other route, including the GO/BRT routes, can continue to serve the current terminal and they would still all connect to the Hurontario LRT at the same time, at various points. For example, the 53 connect to the LRT at Robert Speck, the 3 and 8 at Elm, the 20 and 65 at Rathburn, etc.

And as I pointed out before, the current terminal is overcapacity anyways, and taking out 6, 9, 19, 28, and 61 would help a lot. All of them, except the 19, which would be completely eliminated by the LRT, would still serve the current terminal, but would not enter it, stopping on the street only.

This is the best solution for both MT and the riders. It is the cheapest and it would be the most convenient.

 

[RedRocket191]

Thanks for clarification. That's a really good idea, and I would support that.

 

[yin_yang]

possible transit solution: a subway or LRT from kipling to missisauga, and then uphurontario to brampton! would be truly amazing for both cities.

 

[Transportfan]

This is the problem with having independent cities.

You are the mayor of (insert regional centre name). Why would you build a subway line to (insert independent suburb name)? People in there cannot vote for you and they don't pay your salary. It may sound scummy, but its the reality of politics in ontario.

This is why I support:

a) people actually cooperating and serving the greater good.

b) if this is not possible, a strong regional authority that can make them cooperate

c) if that is not possible, amalgamating the systems

That makes sense. York and Durham have done it. Peel especially needs it because of its size. That's why the 7 Kennedy should continue south to Miss., athough there should be a branch to Shoppers World as well.

 

[Dan416]

I think York and Durham made regional transit authorities to benefit from economies of scale; their individual transit systems were all too small on their own. Furthermore, MT alone is bigger than YRT. I'm not sure on BT's size in comparison to YRT though.

 

[JasonParis]

I wouldn't mind seeing a combined Halton-Peel Transit. I know the area is huge, but for convenience sake you'd then have six agencies in the GTAH: TTC, HSR, GO, YRT, DRT and HPRT. That would be much easier for Metrolinx to coordinate and people could somewhat visualize it as you'd have one serving the northern suburbs, one serving the eastern, one serving the western, GO serving the entire region and of course Hamilton and Toronto on their own.

 

[ShonTron]

I might amalgamate Burlington Transit with HSR, though, or combine Oakville, Burlington and Milton into one agency and combine MT, BT and Caledon and Halton Hills into a second.

I would also pick a relatively neutral name instead of Halton-Peel Transit: Credit Valley Transit. The Credit runs through Mississauga, Brampton, Georgetown and Caledon and is also the name of the railway that connected Toronto to Streetsville, Brampton, Caledon and Orangeville (now CP and OBRY). This was the basic idea behind Grand River Transit when Kitchener and Cambridge Transits were regionalized (the river and the old interurban railway name).

You could only pick this name if Oakville was separate, and would ignore the fact that much of Brampton and Caledon (and parts of Mississauga) are in the Etobicoke Creek, Mimico Creek or Humber River watersheds.

 

[DENTROBATE54]

Wait a minute, isn't Oakville and Mississauga already fare integrated, like at Clarkson GO and South Commons?

MT has so much on its plate as is, it'd be hard to imagine it incorporating additional routes from adjacent cities. Brampton, Geogretown and Caledon however could combine into a single transit entity which is sort of where I was going with Option 7: extending BT service to outlying areas.

Underneath the Metrolinx umbrella, the GTA would more or less become a EU-type community: one transit currency, many municipal transit sovereigns (operators). As such who cares which city runs what, barriers like Steeles Ave and Etobicoke Creek would become merely arbitrary and in-name only.