| Brampton, Ontario, is a lot like many low-density suburbs across North America, with wide roads, strip malls and neighborhoods full of single-family homes — features that often make public transit less appealing to residents. Yet this Toronto-area city of about 700,000 boasts roughly 226,500 bus riders on an average weekday. (Compare that to Orange County, California, with 3.2 million people and just 112,000 daily bus riders.) Just 20 years ago, Bramptonians were as reluctant to take transit as most American suburbanites, contributor Jonathan English writes. It wasn’t until the city began making upgrades to its existing bus network, with more frequent all-day service and better bus shelters, that it started seeing transit usage tick up. Now its formula for robust ridership stands as a possible model for other low-density communities. Today on CityLab: How Did This Suburb Figure Out Mass Transit? — Linda Poon |
