How Much More Money is Needed for Brampton Transit?

Brampton | Ontario | Latest News |

Published November 6, 2018 at 10:45 pm

As the newly elected Brampton mayor, Patrick Brown has made it a point to say that the city needs to “get back on track.”

As the newly elected Brampton mayor, Patrick Brown has made it a point to say that the city needs to “get back on track.”

Despite the challenges in transit and infrastructure, which is not only a Brampton problem, the mayor-elect did sound more optimistic in a recent phone call he had with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

But Brown also pointed out how the city does not receive its ‘fair share’ of funding for transit, infrastructure, education and health care.

He also tweeted out some numbers showing the difference in capital funding for transit in Brampton alongside other jurisdictions:

Funding for Brampton’s Zum transit service was $95 million in 2008, subway projects in Toronto and York Region received over $600 million.

There’s no doubt that ridership on Zum is growing, judging from the city’s most recent stats on how many people rode the bus dating back to 2014. Ridership has only gone up from over 20 million in the year 2014, to over 27 million last year.

To break that down even further, the average ridership for Brampton Zum:

  • Average weekday ridership: 105,000 (from September to November 2017)

  • Average weekly ridership:  614,000 (from September to November 2017)

  • Average monthly ridership: 2,282,657 (average of 12 months from 2017)

With such increasing usage of the system, it’s no wonder the mayor-elect feels the need to drum up more dollars for Brampton’s transit needs.

Do you think the federal government should pony up more transit cash for Brampton?

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