Direct bus route from Brampton to UTM

A new direct bus route from Brampton to UTM will be offered to students starting this Tuesday.

A pilot project for a new route, Route 199, will be implemented between the Brampton Gateway Terminal and the UTM campus. The route is intended to save students 30 to 40 minutes of travel time.

The UTMSU’s U-Pass is not associated with this new service, and the cost for the new route will be the standard Brampton Transit fare.

Students can pay using their PRESTO cards, cash, or their PRESTO-embedded weekly/monthly passes.

There will be three morning and three evening departure times from UTM and the Gateway Terminal, respectively.

No further departure times are expected to be offered as of this time.

“This is still just a trial, and it’s really to figure out what the ridership is,” said Mark Overton, the dean of student affairs.

“It’s not like the shuttle service, where we have backup buses available. This is just the capacity of the scheduled buses,” he said.

The overall ridership of the new route will be used to determine if this service will be offered in future years.

Brampton Transit will be responsible for recording the number of riders on each run the route makes.

The statistics received will be monitored throughout the school year, but the final decision and review of the route’s success will take place at the end of the 2016-2017 academic year.

“The goal of the trial is to see if the route can sustain itself in terms of cost. That’s one of the measures we’re using,” Overton explained.

Due to the limited amount of buses, Overton stated that students who are unable to be accommodated by the buses can still transfer between Brampton Transit routes that stop at the Square One Transit Terminal and the standard MiWay buses.

“This results in a longer travel time, but offers more flexible schedule options,” Overton said. “[The route is] a time-saver rather than a money-saver.”

Route 199 will only run on weekdays and excludes holidays.

No new shelter is being built for the route. The pick-up and drop off area is located in front of the Student Annex building, located beside the current MiWay bus stop on Inner Circle Road.