It is engaging in fantasies. Brampton is primarily a city of low density dwellings with single family homes that don't back directly onto arterial streets. The employment centres are the same. The list of improvements you have provided is not going transition a meaningful amount of trips onto transit. Sure, you might get some marginal gains, but not enough that changes behaviour in a meaningful enough way that you can avoid the need for the GTA West corridor, which is what this thread is all about.
And that's what frustrates me about transit enthusiasts. There's this idea that the modal shift is just around the corner.
In the 70s the modal shift was just around the corner with the development of Advanced Light Rail Transit -- didn't happen.
In the 80s the modal shift was just around the corner with the trains developed by the Urban Development Transportation Development Corporation that led to the Scarborough RT -- didn't happen.
In the 2000s the modal shift was just around the corner with Viva Rapidways -- didn't happen.
At what point do we not start paying attention to reality?
Modal shifts are indeed happening, and have picked up significantly over the last decade.
This is mostly happening because of changes to land use demand, not actual transportation solutions however. The GTA's modal share is shifting towards transit and active modes because more growth is occuring in Toronto where that mode is preferred. Specifically, a huge portion of new employment growth in the GTA is happening within 1 kilometre of Union Station. Which is an area that sees 70-80% transit modal shares.
Brampton has managed to see a marginal increase in transit modal shares through it's quite successful bus frequency enhancements. But yea, it's still a very small amount of modal share.
I've done detailed posts on the required modal share targets to offset new road infrastructure on this board before, and it's essentially impossible. The 905 of the GTA basically needs to be tripling to quadrupling transit ridership to offset all the new auto trips that will otherwise be generated over the next 30 years. It's just not going to happen. The 905 would have to be posting auto modal shares at lower rates than the 416 does today.
I would be surprised if Brampton actually went through with cancelling the widening as well. The city has invested a ton into its bus network which has paid off but ultimately is still extremely car reliant. It's built form means that is likely not to change in any significant way either. Bus...
urbantoronto.ca
If we double the rate of auto modal share reductions already occurring, there will still be about 33% more auto trips in 2051 than today in the GTA.
We would need a modal share below that of New York's metro modal share to offset all new trips. In order to do that, not only does new development have to generate essentially 0 new auto trips, you need to convert significant amounts of existing trips to transit or active modes.
I just don't see it happening. And even if we do achieve it, I imagine it will come from outsize gains in the city of Toronto with more marginal gains in the 905. There is simply no way we are going to get flat auto trip growth in the 905 over the next 30 years.
Can we reduce the auto modal share? Absolutely. And we should try to aggressively. We can't do it to the point of offsetting new auto infrastructure though,
especially in new growth areas like Caledon and west Brampton, which have very low amounts of infrastructure today and are going to experience huge population booms in the next few decades, whether this highway gets built or not.
