Dundas connects: BRT for now

NRU
July 19, 2017
By Dominik Matusik

Mississauga wants Dundas Street to become an urban spine, complete with high-density nodes and a BRT that could, in the future, become an LRT.

Staff were directed to prepare a master plan for the Dundas corridor - from its western border with Oakville to its eastern border with Toronto - to identify transit needs along the corridor.

Based on engineering and planning studies, and public consultation, staff recommend developing a BRT along Dundas with a potential future conversion to LRT.

Additionally, staff identify seven focus areas along the corridor with the best redevelopment potential in order to encourage transit ridership and meet provincial growth targets. The seven areas are the Dundas Street intersections with Dixie Road, Cawthra Road, Hurontario Street, Erindale Station Road, Erin Mills Parkway, and Winston Churchill Boulevard, as well as the area around Etobicoke Creek.

Staff recommends mid-rise development for all seven focus areas with some high-rises at Dixie and Hurontario to take advantage of existing GO Transit service and future light rail. The city partnered with a consultant team led by AECOM and supported by SvN and Swerhun. Ward 1 councillor Jim Tovey told NRU that directing growth to the Dundas corridor could help relieve development pressure on the waterfront.

“We’re all really excited...about shifting some of the density through the Dundas Street Corridor [which] certainly will take pressure off our waterfront for inappropriate development,” he says.

Regardless of the mode of transit along Dundas, Tovey says that investment in the corridor will be spurred by already high property values, and infrastructure already there, such as the Dixie GO Train station. He adds that BRT is currently the most cost-effective option, provided it is built in a way to accommodate later conversion to LRT.

“I think if we do BRT and it’s in a dedicated lane and we’ve engineered the foundation of it...so that in the future it would be convertible to an LRT, I think that’s certainly the most prudent way to go at this point. The ridership numbers just don’t support a subway...I don’t think it matters as much what the mode is as much as what the frequency of the transit is,” Tovey says.

Mississauga strategic leader Andrew Miller agrees that BRT is the most feasible option at this time. He told NRU that an LRT is no more likely to encourage investment and redevelopment than a BRT.

“We wanted to know if LRT or BRT, [was more likely to encourage] development, infill, and intensification. And what we found, on the basis of our studies, is that no, it’s not the presence of steel rails or the lack of them that affects developer behaviour. [It] is the presence of infrastructure and higher-order transit. The busways that we’re planning to build aren’t going to be just a pole on a curb that says ‘bus stop’. We’re putting in new dedicated rapidways, a whole lane of traffic for the benefit of buses with stops in the street. There will be no confusion on anyone’s part that this is a bus stop and it’s here to stay for years or decades to come...There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that busways are just as good as LRT at promoting development.”

Miller says that there was near-unanimous support for higher-order transit along Dundas from the public, with nearly no support for the status quo - local bus service running in mixed traffic. He says that while there were some calls for an extension of the Bloor-Danforth line along Dundas into Mississauga, this would be extremely expensive and result in nearly no new transit ridership, as a significant number of riders would be coming from existing GO service.

Ward 7 councillor Nando Iannicca told NRU that Dundas is undergoing a transformation into a more intensified spine.

He says that in the future, he would expect an LRT and even a subway, though a BRT is an
appropriate first step.

“We realize in [Dundas Street’s] next iteration, it will become far more urbane. It’s going to go from the waystation, automotive use, things of that sort, to really a mixed-use retail, commercial, residential corridor,” he says.

“The first iteration of higher order transit along Dundas should be a BRT for now.”

City staff anticipates that the final Dundas Connects plan will be considered by council no later than October.