Public service organizations have a responsibility to ensure that their decision-making processes will select policy pursuits that provide the greatest possible value to their constituents. This is particularly true for decisions regarding transportation, as, in addition to wasted public funds, improper decision-making can create safety risks to road users and pedestrians, adversely affecting the local economy by impacting the effective movement of people and goods. Employing a data-based decision-making approach ensures that the selected alternative is supported by factual information and accurate metrics. Employing data driven decision making processes will ultimately achieve the agency’s strategic and administrative objectives. However, in the case of smaller municipalities and rural communities, there may be little, if any, existing data concerning transportation infrastructure within their jurisdictions. Funding and personnel constraints prove to be significant obstacles in generating such data when compared to the greater administrative capacity available to higher levels of government. Therefore, there is great value to be found in cost effective data-gathering solutions that provide a wide range of utility to assess a variety of possible transportation concerns. The BC Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure’s Vancouver Island District have been piloting a Traffic Radar System program that is flexible, effective, and provides accurate data for a relatively low startup cost. These tools have proven useful in circumstances ranging from speed control to emergency response, and it is the opinion of the Ministry that these systems could prove immensely valuable to small municipalities, regional districts, and rural communities as a convenient and cost-efficient method of validating decision-making regarding transportation.
