Mississauga Transportation Master Plan

The City of Mississauga’s legacy Traffic Control system was installed with the primary goal of providing central monitoring and control capabilities along the City corridors. However, given the growth that has occurred over the past several decades, the City of Mississauga and surrounding area have experienced increased and changing traffic demand, resulting in increased congestion. To address this, the replacement of the legacy Traffic Control System, in conjunction with the transitioning of 777 intersections, served as the initial phase in the implementation of the City’s Advanced Transportation Management System (ATMS). This was completed this past summer. In addition, the City recently constructed a new Traffic Management Centre and upgraded the City’s traffic signal communications, using the City’s fibre and Wi-Fi network to support the management, monitoring and control needs of an expanded and enhanced transportation network.

The next phase of the ATMS project, which is currently underway, involves the demonstration of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) initiatives like traffic detection smart technology to enable adaptive/responsive traffic controls to automatically adjust traffic signal timings, a Travel Time System to measure travel times, Portable Variable Message Signs (PVMS) for displaying travel times or construction related activity, Closed Circuit Television Cameras (CCTV) to monitor traffic incidents and Event Management to manage incidents along the corridor. In addition, the ATMS Demonstration will provide a framework and allow staff to complete the following tasks:

• To trial the technologies (Installation maintenance reliability)
• To evaluate the effectiveness (of each technology deployed)
• To evaluate the impact on traffic flow
• To provide reliability in performance
• To be able to build business cases for future deployments

For additional information relating to Mississauga’s ATMS, please refer to the following link.

http://www.mississauga.ca/portal/residents/trafficsignals

The Lakeshore Connecting Communities study is ongoing and is guiding the planning and investing in the transportation network in the Lakeshore Corridor, including decisions about optimizing roadways, improving transit, and enhancing cycling and walking connections. With these potential improvements, transit, cycling and walking become more viable modes of transportation along the corridor. As part of the Lakeshore Connecting Communities study a series of higher order transit improvements are being considered, including provision of dedicated transit lanes in the vicinity of the Lakeview development site. Further information on the project can be found on the project website at www.connectlakeshore.ca. 

Decisions about improving transit along the Lakeshore corridor will help the City in building a network of higher order transit lines. This includes connecting the proposed higher order Lakeshore transit service to north-south running transit routes both to the east and west of the Lakeview site. To the west of Lakeview the improved transit service would be connected to the future Hurontario LRT which will have a stop at Park Street next to the Port Credit GO Station. Connections to the Hurontario LRT will also provide rapid transit service north towards the Mississauga transitway and to proposed higher order transit on Dundas Street as part of the Dundas Connects study. To the east of Lakeview the improved transit service would be connected to the TTC network, including the 944 Kipling South Express bus route which provides limited stop service north to Kipling Subway station.

GO Train station and service planning and operations are the responsibilities of Metrolinx, an agency of the Government of Ontario. Metrolinx has asked that inquiries about parking at the Port Credit GO Station be directed to: https://www.gotransit.com/en/contact-us/contact-us

MiWay riders who wish to report an issue that they have experienced, provide feedback about a MiWay employee’s performance, or find information about our services, are able to contact MiWay by any of the following means: 

-  Submit Online Feedback Form at www.miway.ca  

-  Call MiWay Helps at 905-615-INFO (4636) 

-  Email miwayhelps@mississauga.ca

-  Tweet the Twitter handle @MiWayHelps

-  Visit the Customer Service kiosk at City Centre Transit Terminal

In addition to the Customer Service offered on the channels listed here, MiWay has a Customer Experience team whose work is focused  how to improve on riders’ experience with MiWay services. This team uses tools like the annual MiWay Customer Satisfaction Survey, the MiVoice online forum, and a forthcoming Customer Charter.

Thank you for your question. The City is committed to continual improvement and optimization of transit service. Please refer to the answer to the question below that begins “What are the plans for Miway after 2021?” for information about upcoming transit service planning projects.

Union Station West, also termed the Regional Transit Centre, is a proposal by the Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA), to provide among other things better connections to Pearson Airport for travellers and airport employees. The GTAA is consulting with the City of Mississauga on this transformative project.  Providing transit connections to Pearson Airport has always been a priority for the City of Mississauga and this is demonstrated with the recent addition of the MiWay Route 100 Airport Express, a limited stop express service along the Transitway from the Winston Churchill Transitway Station through Mississauga’s downtown core  to Terminal 1 and 3. The City is also actively involved in the Eglinton West LRT Extension project that will connect the Eglinton Crosstown LRT along Eglinton Avenue in Toronto to Pearson Airport through the Airport Corporate Centre in Mississauga. In addition to these studies, future corridor studies on roads in the vicinity of the airport will be undertaken namely Derry Road, Airport Road, Dixie Road and Eglinton Avenue.

The new MiWay Airport Express route 100 travels on the Mississauga Transitway between Winston Churchill Terminal and the Toronto Pearson Airport, including a stop at City Centre Transit Terminal, every 16 minutes between 4am and 7pm Monday to Friday. Route 100 will be operated with a standard 40ft bus initially.  There will be no special provision for luggage onboard, although passengers are welcome to bring suitcases onboard (please be aware that for the safety of all customers onboard MiWay buses, aisles cannot be blocked). See schedules and learn more at www.miway.ca. GO Transit also operates bus service between Square One and Pearson Airport. See schedules for GO Bus route 40 and learn more at www.gotransit.ca.

Frequency improvements are typically based on ridership demand. Schedules are designed based on this demand to ensure sufficient capacity is available. As demand along routes or sections of routes increase, Service Development staff work towards increasing frequency to ensure the service levels provided continue to respond to customers’ needs. Along the Dundas corridor, our most recent ridership data indicates that a significant amount of the ridership occurs between east of Erin Mills Parkway. As such, when designing both local and express services along the corridor, two variants were implemented so that when combined, both variants together provide a higher level of frequency along the portion of the corridor that experiences greater passenger volumes. Extending both variants to Laird/Vega Loop would result in additional travel time being added to the route(s) which consequently would result in wider frequencies.

MiWay operates with limited resources and as such we are obligated to use them as efficiently as possible. We constantly monitor ridership levels along all our routes to determine ridership demand. This information is reviewed and based on this data, improvements to routes (routing changes and/or schedule changes) are implemented.  Please rest assured that we are monitoring the Dundas corridor very closely as this is one of our busiest transit corridors. Should demand increase, we will surely take steps to improve service.

The issue of sidewalk snow clearing and the possibility of creating and implementing a by-law pertaining to related residential responsibilities is being reviewed by the City this year (2019).

With regards to traffic signal coordination, City of Mississauga staff develop and optimize signal timing plans which are designed to progress traffic, reduce overall delays and therefore reduce vehicle emissions through the network of traffic signals  As part of the City’s Advanced Transportation Management System (ATMS), staff are demonstrating traffic detection smart technology to enable adaptive/response traffic control to automatically adjust traffic signal timings.

Red light cameras are a traffic safety initiative that is operated by the Region of Peel to help reduce the number of motorists running red lights.  The Region installs red light cameras only at signalized intersections under their jurisdiction that meet qualifications.  Currently, the City of Mississauga does not have a red light camera program.  The City recognizes the safety issues associated with aggressive driving, including the running of red lights, and is participating in an inter-regional working group to consider future implementation of a red light camera program.. 

The Mississauga Moves project will deliver the City of Mississauga’s first Transportation Master Plan, that will document the City’s understanding of the role transit can play in making Mississauga better. The City also considers transit provision in the MiWay Five: 2015 – 2020 Service Plan. Opportunities for improvement in specific areas happen through dedicated studies; the Lakeshore Connecting Communities project is actively looking at transit improvements on Lakeshore now. The Plans associated with each of these projects is subject to approval from Mayor Crombie and members of Council. 

MiWay continually monitors bus routes using data from several sources, including: ridership numbers (fares and Presto); manual passenger counts; and feedback from the operations team, the public and councillors. Bus routes are prioritized for addition of extra resources based on the monitoring program. Typically, priority is placed on routes that are suffering overcrowding where passengers are unable to board the bus, or routes with rapidly growing ridership. Route 29 is not identified as priority route for frequency improvement at this time.

Some MiWay routes, including Route 29, are designed to connect to GO trains, and so may not have an even headway (the time between buses). We try to minimize the difference in departure time between buses wherever possible, but in some cases it is not possible to avoid uneven gaps. In the case of Route 29, the average headway is approximately 25 minutes between buses, but the actual gap between departure times can vary from 12 to 30 minutes to enable connections with the GO train at Clarkson.

Regional connectivity is a priority for Mississauga. In partnership with Metrolinx and neighbouring municipalities, the City of Mississauga seeks options for regional connection, such as the Mississauga Transitway that enables MiWay to run express bus services from Islington subway station to destinations in Mississauga, including Square One (route 109) and Meadowvale Business Park (route 108), as well as providing a congestion free path for regional GO Bus routes, including route 19 that connects Square One to the TTC subway service at Yorkdale.

A subway extension west of Kipling was considered as part of the Dundas Connects project (a land use and transportation plan for Dundas Street) however future projected ridership in this corridor did not meet the threshold to make a subway financially viable. Metrolinx has initiated the Eglinton West LRT project, an extension of the Eglinton Crosstown from Mount Dennis Station to Pearson Airport, with connections to the Mississauga Transitway at the Renforth Station.  City of Mississauga staff are participating on the project team along with the City of Toronto, TTC and Greater Toronto Airports Authority. Extension of the Eglinton Crosstown to Pearson Airport is also included in the Metrolinx draft Regional Transportation Plan.Pearson Airport and surrounding area is the second largest employment centre in Canada outside of downtown Toronto, and frequent transit service is available from Pearson Airport to Square One.