Honestly why not more toll road in GTA ?

babyme

Driving in GTA is just terrible.  Only 10 am to 2 pm is acceptable on the highway.

Why not a Second level express toll road on top of DVP (Bloor to 401 first phase, then extend north to 407 second phase), going ONE WAY following the direction of major traffic (South morning North afternoon).
Driver will pay extra few dollors to save half an hour.

It is ridiculous to find HOV always got SINGLE driver using it and NO COP to make sure that they are caught.  Just putting a camera there will help and require TWO passengers got to be BOTH sitting on the front seats, so baby may not count using camera to enforce the law.  Many times I am tempted to go HOV with single driver too as no cops are doing anything.

茶树菇

I don't think the city has any more money to improve the highway.
Ignore the number of people in the car, I just feel that the HOV is not useful, because sometimes a slow car will block the lane...

dragondick

This is the likely scenario:

City Councillors will say, "Hey, this is a good idea, let's sit down and talk about it."

After 20 years, a new group of Councillors will say, "Have we covered all the angles?  If not, let's look deeper into it".

O Canada!  

babyme

All the city needs to do is to build the cost and benefit analysis, price the toll that is acceptable (of course any fee will NOT be acceptable, but no free lunch to save half an hour though).
If deficit is too much, then now is not feasible, get the plan ready and revisit the price every year.

Main issue is to avoid the costly evaluation of Environment or People impact in terms of construction and noise level etc.  There is some intangible costs for speedy transportation.  Look at China large cities, non stop construction of infrastructure ,  will pay back big time too.

babyme

Looks like there is improvement in HOV monitoring being test NEXT 2 Years with contract signed for pilot.

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Drones to monitor some Ontario highway carpool lanes
Jane Stevenson
More from Jane Stevenson
Published:
November 9, 2017

Updated:
November 9, 2017 8:22 PM EST

Filed Under:
Toronto SUN News Ontario
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The Sky Guys partnering with American technology company NVIDIA, IBM and the University of Toronto to develop and test drones for the MTO.Supplied
Remember those reports of single drivers using mannequins to drive in carpool lanes during the Pan Am Games in Toronto?

Well, the province thinks they’ve come up with a hi-tech solution to combat the problem.

The Ministry of Transportation is going to work with Toronto-based The Sky Guys over the next two years to develop and test artificially intelligent-enabled drones to enforce the rule of two or more passengers for cars using High-Occupancy Vehicle/High-Occupancy Toll (HOV-HOT) lanes on Ontario’s 400-series highways.


HOV lanes on the QEW in Oakville on Dec. 7, 2015.
“Our solution is a long range drone,” said Jeremy Wang, the CTO of The Sky Guys.

“The idea is that the drone is flying just off the side of the highway. It has an onboard camera and snaps pictures from the front, side and back views of each car. Basically we have our own proprietory software that can count the number of people inside and then a report gets sent to police if there’s less people than they’re should be. (A ticket) is linked to your licence plate.”


The $750,000 contract was awarded to The Sky Guys, in partnership with American technology company NVIDIA, IBM and the University of Toronto, by Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) as part of the Small Business Innovation Challenge (SBIC).

Wang says for the pilot project they are looking at using just one drone, with a four-metre wingspan, to fly between 100-to-200 metres overhead during rush hour along the QEW between Oakville and Burlington later in 2018.

Economic Development and Growth Minister Brad DuGuid said in a statement that “all solutions developed will need to adhere to the relevant regulations, including privacy regulations.”

Still, Dr. Ann Cavoukian at Ryerson University, one of the world’s leading privacy experts, has some concerns about the use of drones in this way.

“I can see a number of privacy concerns arising from this,” said Cavoukian.  “So I’m not going to say it’s a good idea. They’ve got to do a very careful privacy impact assessment with the privacy commissioner. Are they breaching any law? I mean we do have privacy laws in Ontario. You can’t just jump into this stuff.”

Wang admits they still have to go with several regulatory approvals including that all-important privacy impact assessment.

But he said the drone technology in this case, “in terms of protecting people’s identities, before any data is stored anywhere, it’s already automatically censored by our software. For example, the eyes are already blacked out and any information that’s not relevant is censored.”