Pathways to Transit Equity in the Suburbs: A Study of Brampton, Ontario

Public transit has been identified by scholars, urbanists, and activists as foundational to developing equitable cities. However, the acute impacts brought on by COVID-19 clearly exposed public transit’s current vulnerability to crisis. This research takes an equity lens to critically probe the inequities present within Brampton’s auto-centric transportation network. Public transit occupies a central node in public life, and its value transcends simply transportation. By rejecting the neoliberalization of public transit and the ensuring the provision of substantial public funding, public transit’s role in the city and in the everyday lives of urban residents can be reimagined. Equitable public transit provides riders with fair and just access to mobility and the ability to more fully participate in collective life, irrespective of gender, race, class, and ability. My research reveals the barriers to transit access experienced by Brampton’s transit riders, demonstrates how COVID-19 has intensified such inequities, and proposes a series of measures to begin to address the barriers unevenly faced by transit-dependent residents. This paper will analyze Brampton and how it interacts with the surrounding urban region to examine if the city’s transportation infrastructure and transit service standards produce and contribute to inequitable outcomes for transit-dependent residents. The express intent of public transit should be to provide an equitable baseline public service to all, fare free. However, under neoliberal governance models, publicly owned and operated transit is subjected to market factors and thus the risk of deterioration and privatization.