Abstract Manager

We are beginning to see municipalities move away from traditional road widenings to address traffic capacity concerns in urban municipalities in the GTA. While there may be a time and place for road widenings, we see that municipalities are beginning to rethink how to improve transportation in their communities by focusing more on Transportation Demand Management (TDM), Complete Streets, and active transportation.

There is an increase of projects that focus on corridor improvements that include localized improvements to lanes and intersections, road safety and comfort, and active transportation that align with a Complete Streets approach without additional lane capacity. We have examples from various projects in municipalities such as the City of Brampton, Peel Region, and Niagara Region. We will discuss our experiences and lessons learned from these types of road improvement projects. This includes technical design experience and lessons, such as working in constrained right-of-ways, opportunities to improve other aspects of the road, cost effectiveness and determining scope. We'll also explore the application of the Municipal Class EA process and how these projects fall under a Schedule A/A+ (Exempt) process but there is still merit in completing typical EA requirements such as evaluation of alternatives and public consultation depending on the complexity of the corridor improvements.