🍁🏙️ City of Toronto publishes new transportation datasets that highlight travel trends and support traffic management actions 🚘

Wednesday, 19 February 2025 12:00.PM

The City of Toronto published additional transportation datasets to the City’s Open Data Portal, reinforcing its commitment to transparency, openness and data-driven transportation planning. The datasets include motor vehicle and bike lane counts.

The City uses this data, along with transportation studies, public consultations and other data points and insights to inform the planning and design of new and upgraded transportation infrastructure. Monitoring this data helps the City analyze the performance of its transportation initiatives and identify opportunities to enhance mobility, manage traffic congestion and improve safety for all road users.

Motor vehicle speed, volume and classification counts

This dataset includes one-day to one-week counts of motor vehicles and their travel speeds since 1993. With more than 1.2 billion vehicles counted in the dataset, the City uses this data in a variety of safety, infrastructure and traffic management initiatives such as speed limit reductions, traffic calming measures and designing safer streets.

The dataset can be found on the City’s Open Data webpage: https://open.toronto.ca/d.../. It will continue to be updated regularly with the data from thousands of studies that are completed across the city each year.

Permanent bicycle counts

This dataset includes the number of people cycling that pass by one of the 15 permanent bicycle counters operating 24/7 in dedicated bicycle lanes and multi-use trails. The dataset includes sites on Sherbourne, Bloor and Yonge Streets and multiple sites within the York University and Downsview neighbourhoods. This data allows the City to monitor trends in people choosing to cycle, including the seasonal use of bike lanes.

The City is planning to install additional counters this year and data from those counters will also be added to Open Data as it becomes available.

Multi-modal intersection counts

This release is a major update to an already-published dataset which includes counts of motor vehicles, pedestrians and people cycling as they move through an intersection during an eight or 14-hour period. This dataset is updated regularly, and this most recent release reflects updated and improved summary data for all counts from 1984 to present. This includes more than 30,000 counts that observed nearly 500 million motor vehicles, 4.5 million bicycles and 56 million pedestrians.

The City uses this data to improve traffic flows through signal timing adjustments and when designing future roadway improvements

Micromobility cordon count

In fall 2022, the City conducted one-day studies to count the number of people cycling as they enter and exit the downtown core to better understand the different purposes of their travel (e.g., commute, food delivery and exercise) and where they ride (e.g., bike lane, sidewalk and roadways).

Key insights from the 2022 dataset include:

The illegal and unsafe use of sidewalks by people cycling was significantly lower on streets with bike lanes.

Most people rode standard bicycles (69 per cent), followed by Bike Share Toronto bicycles (12 per cent), electric bicycles (10 per cent) and kick-style e-scooters, which are illegal on Toronto’s streets (four per cent).

Close to 10 per cent of all trips were for food delivery and 43 per cent of these trips were made using an electric bicycle.

These findings provide insight on the evolving characteristics of people cycling while helping to inform micromobility policies and the planning and design of cycling infrastructure.

A new count was conducted late last year and a will be released this year after the data undergoes processing, data verification and analysis. The micromobility cordon count will be repeated every two years to monitor for trends.

Each data set can be found on the City’s Open Data Portal: https://open.toronto.ca/.

About Open Data

Toronto’s Open Data Program makes City data easily available to the public, businesses, institutions, academics, media and other orders of government through the Open Data Portal.

The Open Data Portal contains more than 500 datasets with information about the City, its operations, assets and services. Making data freely available supports the City’s commitment to transparency and accountability, while enabling research, innovation and democratic participation.

More information about Open Data is available on the City’s website: https://www.toronto.ca/ci.../

“As Mayor I am committed to getting Toronto moving again, including with 100 traffic agents and coordination of different constructions. Open Transportation Data is an invaluable tool for managing congestion, keeping pedestrians, cyclists, transit users and drivers safe through evidence-based transportation planning.”
– Mayor Olivia Chow

“As we work to manage congestion, it is more important than ever that we share and use data to create and strengthen initiatives that will help residents get around the city quickly and safely. I’m proud to see the City share the data driving their decision-making process and continue to make data-driven decisions to help improve our city.”
– Deputy Mayor Jennifer McKelvie (Scarborough – Rouge Park)

SOURCE: City of Toronto

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