Get me to the track on time! - Traffic management for the 2015 PanAm/ParaPanAm Games in the Greater Toronto Area

The 2015 PanAm/ParaPanAm Games are scheduled for July and August 2015 in the Greater Toronto Area. Due to the overall level of congestion on area highways and the fact that the Games venues are distributed across a wide area, with the Athlete’s Village being located on the Toronto Waterfront, travel time reliability for athletes and officials is a key issue. The Ministry of Transportation of Ontario was assigned the responsibility of planning and implementing a traffic management strategy to ensure that athletes and officials could be at their venues “on time” while minimizing the impact on the travelling public. To facilitate the development and evaluation of traffic management strategies, a large multi-level traffic simulation model was developed using AIMSUN. While the “macro” and “meso” levels of the model were used at various stages in the process, the principal tool for operational analysis was the “hybrid” level, featuring “micro” operation on key expressway corridors and “meso” operation on the remaining expressways and arterial roads. The model includes 345 kilometres of expressways, 135 interchanges, approximately 2,000 km of surface streets, and 920 signalized intersections. In addition to the evaluation of Transportation Systems Management (TSM) strategies, the simulation model was used to evaluate the potential role of Travel Demand Management (TDM) in mitigating the traffic impacts of the Games.