Mississauga Mississauga Transitway | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx | IBI Group

[DKsan]

KW is the only place I think is building new transit through a buried tower hydro corridor. Was something like $10 million for a short, 1 km, length?

The difference here though in unlike a Finch hydro corridor BRT that some suggest, there isn't actually any stops. It's just the fastest, most direct way to get between the southern most two stops without ripping up a few roads in the process.

 

[smallspy]

First of all, the York Busway was built in a different time frame than today as well having an expiry date. The busway is to be removed upon the opening of the Spadina Subway extension in 2017/18 now that was schedule to happen this year. So 2018 or 19 will see the road remove unless something changes before then. This goes for the busway on York U lands as well.

There are no plans to remove the main length of the York U busway between Keele and Dufferin.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.

 

[gweed123]

Don't count out the idea of burying lines through hydro corridors once Hydro One is privatized. The new owners are going to want the most return for their investment. Burying hydro corridors and selling the land for development or transit projects is the only way to unlock the value of that asset. Hydro One can potentially become a major real estate player by selling off this land, or even simply leasing it and collecting regular income from the leases. It won't need to cost rate payers a cent, as it will likely be able to fund itself.

Very good point. There would obviously be some sections where the economics of burying the hydro corridor wouldn't make sense, but there are several stretches where right now it certainly does. The corridor through Mississauga adjacent to the 403 and the central portion of the Finch corridor come to mind.

The Finch corridor especially is or will be crossed by numerous rail routes, be they subway or GO RER. Nodal development at those locations could make a tonne of sense. There would also be the option of running a new arterial roadway through that corridor, which would serve as a bypass route for Finch, reducing traffic levels and making it easier to implement LRT on Finch proper. That new roadway would provide the frontage for new development in between the denser nodal development.

 

[salsa]

I bought two Pan Am tickets to watch Karate this Friday evening. The venue is Mississauga Sports Centre (also known as Hershey Sports Complex), which opened in 1998 and is described as "Mississauga’s flagship sport and recreation facility" and "one of the premier sports and entertainment facilities in the GTA". So when I check the address to see where it is, I find out that it's in the middle of an industrial park. Who is the genius that thought it's a great idea to put it here?

Without the Pan Am games this venue is accessible by two infrequent bus routes that only operate off-peak (on weekends it's only one bus route, and it doesn't go to Square One). No matter where you commute from it easily takes well over an hour or two to get here by transit, and probably several buses. There is no train station or major bus terminal nearby, but in Mississauga they always make sure to provide maximum driver convenience by having lots of surface parking and locating everything next to a highway. Since I'm not a driver, all I get is a little pole where I can wait a long time for the bus while gazing at butt-ugly suburbia and high speed traffic. There's not even a bus shelter, bench, route map or schedule, but that's par-for-the-course in this city.

With that being said, I went on google maps to see what's the best way to get there from downtown by transit. Looks simple enough; just take the Lakeshore West train and then transfer to bus 95 which is a special Pan Am limited-stop express route. I wanted to use the Milton train instead and then transfer to the 95 so that the bus ride would be a lot shorter, but this bus doesn't stop at Cooksville GO. It only stops at Port Credit --> Square One --> Mississauga Sports Centre, so I have no choice but to take the longer route.

Then when I checked the bus schedule I was even less impressed. On weekdays, trains arrive at Port Credit 10 minutes and 40 minutes after the hour. However the bus runs every 30 minutes all day, and it departs Port Credit more than 20 minutes after a train has arrived. In other words, no matter what time I get off the train at Port Credit, I will have to wait over 20 minutes for the bus to depart.

If there was any coordination going on, it shouldn't even take 10 minutes to do the transfer. At Aldershot GO station for example, it always takes just 8 minutes to transfer to a GO bus toward Hamilton. I'll report back on how well it goes, but given how infrequent the bus is I expect it to be super crush-loaded when my train arrives with a bunch of people, and even more so after the event when 5000 people go home at the same time. Miway should learn from the TTC on how to run proper bus service during the games:

If this is the best MiWay can do during the biggest ever sporting event in the GTA where everybody is being urged to take transit, then this city will continue to have a crappy transit system for a very long time.

 

[JayBeeGooner]

Mississauga is a car-happy suburb. It's easily accessible by car.

 

[TOareaFan]

I bought two Pan Am tickets to watch Karate this Friday evening. The venue is Mississauga Sports Centre (also known as Hershey Sports Complex), which opened in 1998 and is described as "Mississauga’s flagship sport and recreation facility" and "one of the premier sports and entertainment facilities in the GTA". So when I check the address to see where it is, I find out that it's in the middle of an industrial park. Who is the genius that thought it's a great idea to put it here?

Hershey is a great facility in an interestingly bad location. Interesting because you can see it clearly from the 403 and if you look closely enough you can see it from the 401....so it gives the impression that it is "right there".......but it is confusingly "between" ramps and even by car it is really difficult to access from the East.

I used to attend a lot of Junior hockey games....and often that meant Thursday nights at the Hershey and Friday nights at the Powerade Centre in Brampton. From my office downtown (even though it was a bit further) the Powerade was much, much, easier and quicker to get to....it was/is a lot easier to do 401 to 410 to Derry to Kennedy for the Powerade than it is to access the Hershey from the highway.....the irony, from a Pan Am games perspective, is that one of the reasons given for using the Hershey but leaving the Powerade empty was ease of access/transit....I suspect the organizers just looked at a map and said "Hershey is closer....let's put something there"....although they could not explain why, if they were clustering (as they claimed) the two could not be clustered and what cluster Hershey was actually part of.

Hope you enjoy your time because, once you get there, it really is a good arena.

Another alternative transit route to there is subway to Islington....miway to central parkway station on the expressway then the Kennedy 53 bus (which I think goes into the Hershey)......a few transfers and I have never timed/scheduled it but it might be worth looking at.

 

[jeicow]

I wanted to use the Milton train instead and then transfer to the 95 so that the bus ride would be a lot shorter,

You could take the Milton train or Line 2 to Kipling and transfer to MiWay's Route 96- Pan Am Special which serve PBL and MIS. If you wanted the fastest, taking GO Bus 21 to Square One would probably be the quickest with the HOV lanes on the Gardiner and QEW then connecting with the 95 from there. I'd also recommend using TripLinx for Pan Am trip planning since Google is spotty on the extra service.

 

[drum118]

If the city had kick-in another $1.5 M for land, It would where Cinpelex is now.

Unless you drive, its the only way to get there, as transit suck trying to get there.

 

[doady]

MiWay still provides no two-way service along Matheson, so it makes getting to any location along Matheson, such as Hershey Centre, a lot more complicated than it should be, especially coming from the east. The north-south route, 53 Kennedy, only goes as far as south as Burnhamthorpe, and 8 Cawthra doesn't go past Rathburn, which makes things even more difficult. But then again the 53 arguably should not be serving Hershey Centre in the first place.

 

[Tuscani01]

Completely unrelated to the thread, but is the Rogers owned land in MCC big enough for a new arena? It would be a great location for an arena and probably instantly improve attendance, which in turn increases revenue for the city.

 

[salsa]

Another alternative transit route to there is subway to Islington....miway to central parkway station on the expressway then the Kennedy 53 bus (which I think goes into the Hershey)......a few transfers and I have never timed/scheduled it but it might be worth looking at.

You could take the Milton train or Line 2 to Kipling and transfer to MiWay's Route 96- Pan Am Special which serve PBL and MIS. If you wanted the fastest, taking GO Bus 21 to Square One would probably be the quickest with the HOV lanes on the Gardiner and QEW then connecting with the 95 from there. I'd also recommend using TripLinx for Pan Am trip planning since Google is spotty on the extra service.

Thanks for the suggestions. TOareaFan, if I were to take the subway then the best option would be Kipling station and then take the 96 Pan Am bus to the venue (no transfers). jeicow, I considered your first suggestion about taking the Milton train to Kipling, only problem is I would arrive at the venue almost 40 minutes early which leaves me with a lot of time to kill. The Lakeshore West train option is 10 minutes longer according to TripLinx but I would have 25 minutes to kill which is more ideal. The only annoying part with Lakeshore West is having to wait 20 minutes for the bus at Port Credit, however transfer times at Kipling is not much better either (16 minutes). As for the GO bus to Square One, they don't operate in the afternoon while the Milton trains are running. Service resumes in the evening which is of no use to me.

 

[TOareaFan]

Completely unrelated to the thread, but is the Rogers owned land in MCC big enough for a new arena? It would be a great location for an arena and probably instantly improve attendance, which in turn increases revenue for the city.

instantly improve attendance for what?

 

[wopchop]

I don't see the point in moving the Hershey Centre. I think it is only about 15 - 20 years old. Maybe if they are looking at building a replacement in the future, sure, it could be a key part of a MCC development, and that might be a good thing to plan and protect for. But now? Doesn't make sense.

 

[TOareaFan]

I don't see the point in moving the Hershey Centre. I think it is only about 15 - 20 years old. Maybe if they are looking at building a replacement in the future, sure, it could be a key part of a MCC development, and that might be a good thing to plan and protect for. But now? Doesn't make sense.

It was built where it is for 2 main reasons

1. City of Mississauga was trying out a centralization strategy for its recreational facilities. Combined with the adjacent health and fitness centre/gyms and the Iceland hockey/soccer/bmx centre to the south, mississauga created a "destination" spot for a large percentage of their recreational facilities....I am not a fan of the strategy but I understand what they were doing
2. they built it on cheap land that, I believe, they owned (or got from the province cheaply as part of the right of ways (eg. Brampton got their land for free from the province in a similar fashion)

Building it somewhere else like MCC or, indeed, moving/re-building it now on such relatively expensive land would/would have made the project much more difficult (impossible?) to do.

Since attendance at most of the events is very local in nature it is reasonably accessible for most people in Mississauga (you could even say Peel Region).....yes, when people from Toronto approach it from the east it is very difficult to get to .....but for most events they ain't coming anyway....so it is not clear to me that attendance at things like OHL games would go up if the arena was at MCC.

 

[Tuscani01]

instantly improve attendance for what?

Mississauga Steelheads (OHL), Raptors 905 (NBA, Development League), various concerts, and any national events that are hosted there every now and then.

I don't see the point in moving the Hershey Centre. I think it is only about 15 - 20 years old. Maybe if they are looking at building a replacement in the future, sure, it could be a key part of a MCC development, and that might be a good thing to plan and protect for. But now? Doesn't make sense.

I agree. It's too late to do anything at this point. It was a decision that was made when the car was still treated as king.

Since attendance at most of the events is very local in nature it is reasonably accessible for most people in Mississauga (you could even say Peel Region).....yes, when people from Toronto approach it from the east it is very difficult to get to .....but for most events they ain't coming anyway....so it is not clear to me that attendance at things like OHL games would go up if the arena was at MCC.

It definitely isn't easy to access for people, even living in Mississauga. It's tucked away in a corner of the city with little transit, and very poor road access. MCC has the benefit of transit coming from every corner of the city, GO Transit, the Transitway, a future LRT, and a huge population base on its doorstep.

It's not just about making it easier for people to access though. Think of what it would do for MCC. Currently, once a game is done, there is absolutely nothing for visitors to do in the area. The arena would be good for businesses in MCC and create more demand for things other than dry cleaners and dentist offices. It can add to the energy in MCC, as well as feed off the existing energy... something which it will never do at its current location.