[JJTheJetPln]

Jan and February ridership numbers in 2026 actually show decrease compared to 2020. So ridership is lower than pre-pandemic. Budget was based on 2 million decline in 2026, but maybe end up 7-8 million decline, back to 2018 levels.

Month 2018  2019  2020  2024  2025  2026
Jan   2394k 2429k 2823k 3516k 3237k 2420k
Feb   2284k 2106k 2544k 3435k 2788k 2293k

And it seems Brampton Transit has cancelled their APTA membership as a cost-saving measure, so we cannot do city vs. city thing with Mississauga. MiWay rejoined APTA last year after cancelling membership in 2004. Winnipeg Transit just joined too, so we could have compared Mississauga, Winnipeg, Brampton Transit, too bad.

This makes me wonder what caused the lower ridership. I don't want to look at TFW's/PGWP's/LMIA's not being granted or renewed, I'm actually curious about other indicators. Like people buying vehicles, carpooling, walking to work where possible, and so on.

Is there any data for 2021-2023?

 

[zoomzoom1010]

Also sort of interesting: Argo seems to be replacing Routes 25 (Caledon portion), 41, and 81 for a 15-month pilot project beginning October 1st. Makes me wonder if this is in response to low ridership, as well as if this will take off well. Routes 30 and 18 will not be affected as these are moreso extremely limited employment-based shuttles. They are aiming for a response time of 20 minutes or less.

Which is a pretty big increase for all these service areas.

Minor edit to ensure clarity: The 25 Edenbrook in and of itself will not be cancelled, but it will be shortened back to what it was before April 2025 to operate solely to Mayfield Road and Queen Mary Drive (via Edenbrook Hill Dr).

Current frequencies:
25 Edenbrook: 36 minutes, rush hour only
41 Bolton: 45 minutes, rush hour only
81 Mayfield West: 45 minutes during all time periods of operation (peak, midday, early evening, 7 days a week)

 

[JJTheJetPln]

Also kind of interesting, Argo seems to be replacing Routes 25 (Caledon portion), 41, and 81 in for a 15 month pilot project. Makes me wonder if this is in response to low ridership, as well as if this will take off well. Routes and 30 and 18 will not be affected as these are moreso extremely limited employment-based shuttles. They are aiming for a response time of 20 minutes or less.

Which is a pretty big increase for all these service areas.

Current frequencies:
25 Edenbrook: 36 minutes, rush hour only
41 Bolton: 45 minutes, rush hour only
81 Mayfield West: 45 minutes during all time periods of operation (peak, midday, early evening, 7 days a week)

That's really interesting. Makes me wonder what the union is going to say about that.

 

[ShonTron]

Ugh. The INsauga website is garbage. Worse than BlogTO. There’s no link or source for the information and so many ads cluttering the post.

That said, it’d be nice to see ARGO take over Valleyfield as well, because it’s just outside walking distance to any of the existing fixed routes. Combining that with the 81 service area makes sense.

I don’t understand switching Route 41 over though because of the big employment areas it serves, unless it was to provide new off-peak service in Bolton.

 

[JJTheJetPln]

I don’t understand switching Route 41 over though because of the big employment areas it serves, unless it was to provide new off-peak service in Bolton.

I think what may be happening is employment in those areas may have times that do not work with transit, and it may have affected ridership count.

I would imagine that the Canadian Tire and Amazon warehouse in the area have work schedules that don't coincide with transit, so people are carpooling or taking ubers or getting dropped off.

The other thought is that with the layoffs that have happened, certain routes were affected and Argo's taking over the routes that had low ridership.

 

[MiExpress]

That's really interesting. Makes me wonder what the union is going to say about that.

I think what may be happening is employment in those areas may have times that do not work with transit, and it may have affected ridership count.

I would imagine that the Canadian Tire and Amazon warehouse in the area have work schedules that don't coincide with transit, so people are carpooling or taking ubers or getting dropped off.

The other thought is that with the layoffs that have happened, certain routes were affected and Argo's taking over the routes that had low ridership.

The routes/services proposed for takeover by Argo on-demand were being contracted by Caledon and they were paying Brampton Transit for the service; the union may have their thoughts but they do not and should never have any influence over transit service levels as those are strictly business decisions.

The full report is available here from Caledon's website: https://pub-caledon.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=56137

In other news, Brampton's April 27 schedule feed was posted yesterday and the service reductions continue on:

Routes with full cancellation
33 Peter Robinson
36 Gardenbrooke
55 Elbern Markell
56 Kingknoll

Other service reductions
5 Bovaird - Weekday peak from 13 minutes to 20 minutes; Weekday evenings from 30 to 40 minutes; Saturday and Sunday evenings from 30 to 50 minutes
502 Zum Main - weekday rush hours from 7.5 minutes to 10 minutes
561 Zum Queen West - further reduction of service from 20 minutes peak, 30 minutes midday to 30 minutes all day.

While it's unfortunate to see 33, 36, 55 and 56 cancelled completely they were infrequent local routes and in most cases (especially 32 and 56) have other service overlaying or within walking distance.

From a network connectivity perspective, the evening cuts to 5 Bovaird are brutal and it probably would have been better to just cut 561 completely if they're only willing to run it every 30 minutes given 1 Queen duplicates the entire route.

 

[JJTheJetPln]

The routes/services proposed for takeover by Argo on-demand were being contracted by Caledon and they were paying Brampton Transit for the service; the union may have their thoughts but they do not and should never have any influence over transit service levels as those are strictly business decisions.

I appreciate the information. I was under the impression that Caledon had asked Brampton Transit to do so, but wasn't sure of the funding.

I'm also not surprised to see Elbern Markell being cut.

From a network connectivity perspective, the evening cuts to 5 Bovaird are brutal and it probably would have been better to just cut 561 completely if they're only willing to run it every 30 minutes given 1 Queen duplicates the entire route.

I agree with this as well. I find there's a lot of duplication of routes because of the areas they serve, but in the case of the 1/561, it makes me wonder if they're even aware of the duplication, or if the idea was to create an express bus between Mount Pleasant and Downtown Brampton that skips stops that route 1 stops at.

That being said however, I've heard that Brampton Transit has received one of the many conventional artics that will be rolling out for the new fleet, so hopefully they have an idea of where it'll end up going.

 

[ShonTron]

I took a look at the system map, and if they were junking those four routes – which really are redundant especially as ridership is down – it’d hardly be an issue. But the cut to the 5 is bad, especially when Bovaird should be a core route and the 505 isn’t especially frequent especially off peak.

561 is a weird thing that probably should be junked but as I understand it, it was a funded Züm extension that was premature (development on Queen West is slower than expected) so it has to continue to fly the flag.

 

[zoomzoom1010]

The routes/services proposed for takeover by Argo on-demand were being contracted by Caledon and they were paying Brampton Transit for the service; the union may have their thoughts but they do not and should never have any influence over transit service levels as those are strictly business decisions.

The full report is available here from Caledon's website: https://pub-caledon.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=56137

In other news, Brampton's April 27 schedule feed was posted yesterday and the service reductions continue on:

Routes with full cancellation
33 Peter Robinson
36 Gardenbrooke
55 Elbern Markell
56 Kingknoll

Other service reductions
5 Bovaird - Weekday peak from 13 minutes to 20 minutes; Weekday evenings from 30 to 40 minutes; Saturday and Sunday evenings from 30 to 50 minutes
502 Zum Main - weekday rush hours from 7.5 minutes to 10 minutes
561 Zum Queen West - further reduction of service from 20 minutes peak, 30 minutes midday to 30 minutes all day.

While it's unfortunate to see 33, 36, 55 and 56 cancelled completely they were infrequent local routes and in most cases (especially 32 and 56) have other service overlaying or within walking distance.

From a network connectivity perspective, the evening cuts to 5 Bovaird are brutal and it probably would have been better to just cut 561 completely if they're only willing to run it every 30 minutes given 1 Queen duplicates the entire route.

Great post! Honestly insane that Bovaird is being gutted like this. Service was already questionable before, but this is honestly a lot. Since the local route splits off at Airport Road, it’s going to be quite inconvenient especially on Goreway during the midday waiting 54 minutes (midday service was also reduced to 27 minutes combinded) for a bus. So to me, the sensible option would be to suspend the 5A Bovaird (at least until further notice) and reallocate all remaining resources to the 5 Bovaird since as Airport Road service is feels redundant in the grand scheme of things currently. Similarly with the 561, I feel like reallocating all resources into running the main branch 1 more frequently would be most ideal in the situation, (since as service currently trends upwards of 50 minutes during the midday).