Jennifer Smith

About twelve years ago, I got myself a part-time typesetting job up near Martin and Steeles. My husband was commuting to Toronto every day and we only had one car, but it wasn't a problem because there was a bus stop right across the street from my house. It ran straight up Commercial Street, crossed Main, and went up Martin to Steeles. My commute was less than ten minutes.

That was the last time I sat on a Milton bus.

Let me be clear: I love public transit. I grew up in Toronto where transit is simply a way of life. Even now I prefer to take the GO bus or train to Toronto rather than drive - but within Milton there just isn't anywhere I want to go that is easily accessible on the bus any more.

The difference is, transit routes in large cities are quick, convenient, and easy to understand. In smaller, lower-density towns like Milton, routes are inevitably circuitous, inconvenient, and nearly impossible to navigate. All of which leads to a familiar catch-22: low service levels discourage ridership, and low ridership discourages municipalities from improving service.

Happily, all that is starting to change here in Milton.

On March 8th, Milton Transit started its contract with PW Transit, a Western Canada-based school and municipal bus service provider experienced in serving mid-sized towns like Milton. The change means new buses, new drivers, and the beginnings of a whole new route system.

The first stage of this transformation is a new rush hour bus route that runs through the Scott Boulevard neighbourhood on the east side of town. This is a welcome development for the residents down there who are already cut off from the rest of town by construction and the level rail crossing over Derry Road.

The buses themselves have several distinct advantages over the old ones. The most obvious is the wide door and low floor, which make it a breeze getting strollers and carts on and off. They also have bike racks on the front, and will eventually have GPS tracking so you can tell exactly where your bus is and when it will arrive.

But the new buses and the Scott Express route are only the beginning. Starting in September, a whole new route system will be implemented - one which starts to transition away from the loop system we have now to a more sensible grid-based, two-way route system. Which means that you won't have to take a driving tour of Milton just to get from one end of Main Street to the other.

The whole plan was presented at an open house on Wednesday, complete with maps and detailed service standards. Unfortunately none of that is available online yet (soon), but here's a photo of the current version of the proposed route map, and a separate one of the new Downtown Route 2:





Yes - Ward 2 residents will now be able to get to the movie theatre and the Wal-Mart on just one bus!

We still have quite a ways to go. To start, we need to extend the east end routes past the GO station through to downtown along Main, and more needs to be done to coordinate with the GO train schedule. Still, it's worlds better than what we have now.

And to think it very nearly didn't pass the vote on council.

In honour of the first day of service for the new buses and the new Scott route, I took a ride with Ward 8 Council candidate Zeeshan Hamid. Zeeshan serves on the Transit Advisory Committee so he takes particular pride in this new route, which practically stops at his front door. Lucky guy. We had a nice chat along the way, mostly about the differences between his neighbourhood and mine, their relative advantages and disadvantages, and what the old and new areas of Milton can learn and gain from each other.

I also took a ride to the GO station on the current Route 2 bus, which is the closest to my house. I still have to walk several blocks to Main and Martin to catch it, and in the time it takes for it to wind around the entire perimeter of town to the GO station I could probably have walked there.

September can't come soon enough.