The Region of Peel is Canada's largest multi-modal freight hub. Located just west of Toronto, Peel is home to nationally important freight facilities, notably Pearson International Airport, intermodal rail terminals and several expressways. Peel also has some of the country's largest manufacturing and assembly plants and distribution centres. Given the importance of its goods-generating infrastructure and industry to the regional and national economies, Peel has championed a public-private goods movement Task Force, which aims to coordinate and improve the efficiency and interconnectedness of the region's multi-modal goods movement network. In support of these aims, in early 2012 the Task Force identified 23 go-forward actions. One of the first of these actions was to develop a region-wide strategic goods movement network (SGMN), which in turn will serve as the framework for coordinating and prioritizing other actions. The SGMN is a holistic approach to developing a goods movement network in a systematic way. The final concept plan respects planning policies (e.g., avoiding where possible routes through residential neighbourhoods and reliance upon proposed BRT/LRT corridors) while promoting direct connectivity and accessibility to goods-generating activity centres. The SGMN concept - essentially a map - is supported recommended 'next step' implementation actions to actualize the network. Together with the criteria and performance indicators, these provide both the basis for implementing the network now and the 'rules' for future updates. For the covering abstract of this conference see ITRD record number 201310RT334E.
Publish Year: 2013
