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. Roads from all jurisdictions (municipal and Regional) were eligible for consideration in the SGMN. The strategic network is the highest level of a hierarchical network, in which goods-generating activity centres are connected with each other and to the regional expressway system in the most direct way possible. At the lowest level, existing truck routes on municipal and Regional roads complement and feed into the SGMN. This paper describes the development of the SGMN. The approach is unique in Canada, in that it combines best practices from across North America and extensive stakeholder consultation. A scan of best practices identified issues that were important to other jurisdictions in the development of their networks. It also identified guiding principles for assessing whether or not a particular link should be in the SGMN, as well as performance indicators for monitoring the effectiveness of the network as the Region grows. This insight from elsewhere informed the stakeholder consultation, which was the basis of the approach. The consultation featured workshops, a web survey and interviews among public and private stakeholders in the goods movement community. 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.
