By increasing the amount of service and updating its scheduling and routes, the city of Kingston was able to induce demand for buses.
Unlike other cities around North America, Kingston, Ontario is gaining bus ridership. In 2013, the city added express service to Queen’s University, St. Lawrence College, and Kingston General Hospital. "The new service was supposed to be direct and frequent enough to compete with cars in terms of travel time. Kingston Transit now offers several express routes, all of which provide service every 15 minutes or less during rush hour," David Rockne Corrigan writes for TVO.
New routes and new service has translated in to a jump in the number of trips from 3.2 million in 2013 up to 6.4 million in 2017. Updates to the service have meant some trade-offs. The service no longer serves as much of the city, but observers argue the trade-offs are worth it, because the infrequent service was too patchy to be useful for the number of riders they now serve. Now by offering more service in some of its most popular routes they're better able to compete with car travel.
Other Canadian cities, like Guelph and Halifax, have looked to officials from Kingston to try to learn from the city's success.
FULL STORY: Why Canadian cities are asking Kingston for public-transit advice
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UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Mpact (formerly Rail~Volution)
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
City of Piedmont, CA
Great Falls Development Authority, Inc.
HUDs Office of Policy Development and Research