Improve Goods Movement
Desired outcome: Reduced congestion on high volume truck routes at peak hours.
Measurement: Average travel time on high priority goods movement routes.
Importance
While the goods movement industry is vital to Peels economy, it is a contributing factor to traffic congestion on the roads, which is a key concern of Peel residents. With a growing population, the demand on Peels road network will continue to rise. Currently, there are 698,000 trips daily in the morning peak period. With an increase in population to 2 million by 2041, the Regional road network is expecting 1,001,000 trips in the morning peak period each day. To manage the increase in trips in a more sustainable way, the Region is working towards a goal of half of these trips being reduced through sustainable modes by 2041.
While the issue of traffic congestion is complex and will not be solved by any one strategy alone, the Region is taking proactive and innovative steps to contribute to reducing congestion and travel time on high volume truck routes during peak hours in order to benefit both residents and the goods movement industry.
Over the last four years, we:
- Installed 22 Permanent Count Stations (PCS) to enable 24/7 data collection to accurately determine traffic trends on the Regional road network.
- Undertook an Advanced Traffic Management Systems (ATMS) project to proactively manage traffic on the Regional road network. It consisted of (i) design and construction of a new Traffic Management Centre (TMC), (ii) replacement of the existing Traffic Signal System, (iii) upgrade of the existing communication infrastructure and, (iv) installation of CCTV cameras.
- Improved efficiency (travel time, congestion, and CO2 emissions) in 2018 on five routes by 12.9% on average through the coordination of signal timings (Queen Street, Bovaird Drive, Steeles Avenue, Dixie Road, and Airport Road).
- Established the Smart Freight Centre, which is a collaborative network with the Region and three major Ontario universities to work on regionally significant goods movement issues and projects to improve the ongoing economic vibrancy and reduce community and environmental impacts of moving goods.
The average reduction in travel time has been decreasing over time as most corridors were already operating close to peak efficiency and any further adjustments had no impact to travel time.