With consistently high ridership growth over the last few years, Brampton Transit has proven to be one of the Canada’s greatest transportation success stories. The Flower City has proven that transit can be successful and popular in North American suburbs.
Despite the success at improving transit and building ridership, Brampton has also prioritized motor traffic at intersection, making it unnecessarily difficult to cross the street at major bus stops. The intersection of Vodden and Main Streets, just north of Downtown Brampton, illustrates this problem.
If the beg button is pushed in time, the walk signal to cross Main Street will appear for just seven seconds before the countdown begins, giving just 11 seconds to cross five lanes. Anyone who misses that light will have to wait over two minutes to legally cross.
What Brampton — and cities like it — should do is remove the beg buttons at transit stops with the assumption that pedestrians will want to cross. It’s just one step towards building a transit culture and attracting new riders.
I write more about this problem in Bramptonist.
Sean Marshall 