Route Number 14 Is Back In Town

Mississauga Transit doesn’t retire numbers – not like the Leafs retiring the number of a hockey legend. I learned this fact last month when I saw a Route #14 bus pull out of Clarkson’s transit terminal for the first time since 1982.

Through the 1970s each new month, it seems, brought with it a new bus route and a new number as Mississauga doubled its population during its first 15 years. The original #14, and its “teen” and “pre-teen” sisters tell the story of the formative years of a city and of its transit system.

The first of Mississauga’s familiar orange-and-white buses opened its pneumatic doors to passengers in September 1969, but Toronto Township first considered the idea of starting a transit system in 1965. That’s because in the previous decade the township’s population had doubled from 46,000 to 94,000.

There had been a number of small, family-run bus routes in the township dating back to the 1920s. Brothers Joe and Al Monks ran a bus hourly along the “Number 10 Highway.” Bruce Rundle charged 25¢ for a lift from Streetsville to Brampton. These local chauffeurs picked up waving passengers anywhere along the side of the road.

But with the population nearing 100,000, the newly-formed Town of Mississauga was in need of something more formal. Council called for bids from private bus companies to provide a six-month test service on three scheduled routes linking the commuter suburbs of Lakeview and Dixie with Toronto’s subway.

A company called Charterways (which up to then had only operated school buses) was selected to run the trial service, much to the chagrin of Robert Mushet who had just recently mortgaged everything he had to start Great Lakes Lines to carry commuters along Dundas Street to the recently-completed Islington subway station. A Dundas Street service was one of the town’s three trial routes. A year later this line became Route #1. The Dundas bus is still Route #1 today.

The original #2 Route (initially known as the “Credit River Line”) followed a meandering route between Long Branch and Clarkson. Back when the Town of Mississauga was a long, narrow city which extended 15 km westward from Toronto, but which hadn’t yet expanded much farther north than Bloor Street, Route #2’s job was to zig-zag up the short section of Dixie Road, along Dundas, and then back down Hurontario, before wandering through the neighbourhood streets of Lorne Park to the newly-completed Sheridan Mall. As the city grew northward, Dixie Road and Hurontario Street got their own buses, and this ambling #2 route was canceled. There is still no Route #2 in the city today.

The third route in the town’s trial service ran from Islington along Bloor Street, but only as far west as Cawthra Road. West of here, the town was still open farmland. The Bloor line travels to Square One today, but it’s still the #3 Route.

The three-route trial service was a huge success. Traffic doubled monthly over the six months and the town agreed to run a permanent bus service in 1970.

Disappointed that town council had not initially considered a fourth route connecting commuters in Applewood Acres with Toronto’s subway, Gordon Shipp prepared to hire Mushet to serve the residents of his housing project. But with the success of the trial, Mississauga Transit responded with more buses and a new Route #4 route to serve Applewood. This service is still Route #4 today. As Mississauga grew northward, a fifth route was added along Dixie Road. It’s still Route #5. Burnhamthorpe became Route #6, which continues to serve part of Burnhamthorpe Road in 2010.

A #7 route was added to extend rush hour service along Dixie to the airport. This route travels to Square One now, but its still the “Airport #7.” To fill in the last north-south gap in the growing town, an eighth bus route was added along Cawthra Road.

Streetsville, Port Credit and the eastern suburbs of Malton became part of the new City of Mississauga in 1974, and new routes were added to connect the former separate towns with the transit system. Route #9 connected the recently-opened Square One to Streetsville (it still does) and the #10 linked Streetsville’s suburbs to the #9.

As they still do today, the #11 connected Malton to the subway and the Route #12 linked Malton’s large Westwood residential area (of the former Toronto Gore Township) with the #11.

Three years after amalgamation, Mississauga Transit had nearly doubled to 22 routes – although the first of these new routes didn’t follow the logical order of numbers. For the same reason that most Mississauga high-rises don’t have a 13th floor, or why for 77 years no one on the Toronto Maple Leafs wore jersey #13 (until Mats Sundin), Mississauga Transit apparently feared that buses on this bad-luck route would have to drive under ladders or meet up with too many black cats along the way. And so Mississauga’s 13th bus route became Route #14.

This new #14 was the westernmost remnant of that wandering #2 Credit River Line from the first days of the transit trial. The Hurontario Street section of the old #2 continued to get busier as that street marched northward, while the Lorne Park section stayed pretty much the same (as Lorne Park tends to do). So the #2 became a Hurontario-only line.

A few years later, the #14 Lorne Park was joined with the #8 Cawthra and the number “14” dropped. And so it remained until this past December. Like Hurontario, years before, Cawthra Road has become a busy north-south street while Lorne Park is…well, still Lorne Park. So, just before the end of 2009, the Cawthra Road section of Route #8 was split from its western half, and instead of assigning a new number to the remnant Lorne Park section, Mississauga Transit revived the old #14 number that had been last used for buses on the same route 28 years earlier. No sense in throwing out a perfectly good number.