As for merging transit systems, is it really necessary? Mississauga Transit is the third largest municipal transit system in Ontario and has higher ridership than York Region Transit and Durham Region Transit combined. Is it really too small a system? Brampton ridership is equal to York Region as well. Mississauga and Brampton Transit are each both already large enough to provide efficient service.
Ultimately I don't think it really matter much which agencies people use. The important thing is fares and designing routes aren't merely based on arbitrary political boundaries.
I think proper fare integration alone would solve a lot of problems. Imagine if the TTC Steeles buses accepted the same fares as the YRT buses for example. Steeles is the busiest east-west route in York, but right now it is not part of York's system because of the fares. I think that's why York's ridership sucks so bad. But if Steeles becomes part of their system, it would change things a lot. Fare integration would also improve all those bus routes that YRT contracts out to the TTC.
I think you're right and people could not care less what agencies they use to get from A to B. Aside from GO which has a bit of a "bigger seats, more comfortable ride" vibe, I think transit agencies (especially TTC) have very little sense of how little they mean to people. If I'm waiting at a stop to go to point B, I could care less whether it's a TTC bus or a YRT bus or a Zum bus or whatever.
I'm curious if there's anywhere else in the GTA in the same league as Steeles Avenue, where these problems come to a head. I'm guessing not, because of the contgiuous development over such a long border, not to mention the proximity of Finch Station (and Downsview). But I've always lived pretty close to Steeles and the inability to deal with the distortions it causes are just fascinating. Maybe that makes the fare integration problem seem bigger than it is, but I figure that as long as you have people in Thornhill paying a double fare or biking or walking 20 minutes to avoid that fare and get on a TTC bus instead of a much easier YRT bus, you have a problem that exists at a network level.
It's possible that full-on integration isn't required but I think it will be in some form. I'm not familiar with that many transit systems on our scale but when I think about obvious World Class(TM) systems like Paris, London and New York, they're all integrated under a single authority operating multiple systems.
I don't know if TTC thinks we've figured out something they haven't, but I'm pretty sure no one has slides about the GTA in their Powerpoint presentation about regional transit best practices.
John Tory has been talking about how eye-opening his trip to London was and how he wants our system to be more like theirs. Well, IMHO, the two biggest lessons to be learned there are:
1) They have far more revenue sources, including a downtown congestion charge
2) They have a single authority whose power far transcends and exceeds that of the City of London, proper
If the Mayor of Toronto is willing to start charging drivers to fund transit, and to put Toronto's transit operations in the hands of a body with a far wider mandate, while still recognizing the primacy of the central city, that trip will be worth every dollar taxpayers paid, and more.
But I'm skeptical...
