What is the Ontario Traffic Council?

The Ontario Traffic Council (OTC), formerly Ontario Traffic Conference, is a corporation without share capital organized to represent the interests of municipalities and traffic professionals through advocacy, consultation, training and the delivery of identified services.

Established in 1950, it was created to improve traffic management in Ontario by drawing on the knowledge and expertise of those in the field of enforcement, engineering and education.

• Vision: A leading voice in multimodal transportation in Ontario, the premier organization offering diverse expertise in traffic engineering, transportation planning, safety and traffic enforcement.
• Mission: To promote excellence in the multi-modal transportation field through education, advocacy, guidance and sharing expertise.

Vision Zero

The Ontario Traffic Council, promotes the adoption of the Vision Zero strategy to municipalities, which states:

• No loss of life is acceptable due to a motor vehicle collision
• Traffic fatalities and serious injuries are preventable;
• People make mistakes so the road system and related policies should be designed to ensure those inevitable lapses do not result in severe injuries or fatalities; and
• Humans are physically vulnerable when involved in motor vehicle collisions.

Vision Zero’s goal is to achieve transportation systems without fatalities or serious injuries.

The Vision Zero Guide promotes transportation safety in Ontario by offering technical guidance on Vision Zero programming and to help municipalities launch their own Vision Zero programs, in order to “shift the culture around road safety to enable systematic changes that will ultimately eliminate fatalities and serious injuries on our roads. In Canada, most traffic legislation and policymaking has been delegated to provincial and municipal levels of government.

The Ontario Traffic Council (OTC) identified a gap in road safety planning and implementation in Ontario, in that there were no consistent or comprehensive resources available for municipalities to consult when developing or actioning Vision Zero-related programs. This has motivated the OTC to develop a Vision Zero Guide that can be used as a reference to implement Vision Zero programs within Ontario municipalities, regardless of the size or the nature of their roadways.

Members

Ontario Traffic Council’s membership is made up primarily of municipal police services (37%), municipalities (32%) and private companies that sell traffic equipment and transportation services (25%):

Member organizations

Member benefits

Board of Directors

• PRESIDENT Adam Bell TMIG (The Municipal Infrastructure Group Ltd.), a T. Y. Lin Company
• VICE PRESIDENT Manoj Dilwaria City of Thorold
• TREASURER Nelson Cadete – City of Brampton
• SECRETARY Chris Day – City of Hamilton
• DIRECTOR Heide Schlegl – Town of Milton
• DIRECTOR Sheyda Saneinejad – City of Toronto
• DIRECTOR John Crass – City of Burlington
• DIRECTOR Joe Rocca – City of Greater Sudbury

Transportation Master Plans

Member municipalities from across Ontario have hired fellow members (consultants) to develop Transportation Master Plans and assessments for their communities, including Mississauga (TMIG), St. Catherines (WSP), City of Waterloo (Alta Planning + Design), London (AECOM) and Regional Municipality of Waterloo (Arcadis IBI Group).

Transportation Master Plans are strategic policy documents developed to provide a framework which guides future transportation-related studies, projects, initiatives and decisions. It sets directions for day-to day transportation programs and connects the transportation vision and transportation planning decisions to the Strategic Plan. The plans also estimate how much the recommended solutions will cost.

The plans also recommend that municipalities implement various solutions, including, among others:

• Paid parking
• Automated speed enforcement
• Automated School Bus Stop Arm Camera
• Traffic signals
• Traffic signal control
• Smart signals at key intersections
• Incident detection and monitoring
• Traveler information systems
• Mid-block speed and volume collection devices
• Road improvements
• Smart Cities / Big Data

Many of these products and services are offered by their fellow OTC members (suppliers).

Ontario road safety statistics

In 2018, Ontario had the lowest traffic fatality rate in all of North America at 0.58 per 10,000 licensed drivers, according to the 2018 Ontario Road Safety Annual Report (ORSAR). 2020 was the 24th year in a row the province was ranked in the top 5 for road safety out of all jurisdictions in North America.

Contact information

• 318-3200 Dufferin St. #18B Toronto, ON M6A 0A1
• Phone: (647) 346-4050
• Email: [email protected]
• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Open Council commentary

There are practical limits to how much a municipality can spend on any given problem, including road safety. The law of diminishing returns suggests that beyond a certain point, the amount of additional benefit gained is less than the amount of money or resources spent.

The opportunity cost of not spending the funds elsewhere should be considered.