What Do I Have and Where is it Located? Quantifying Ontario’s Municipal Lane Kilometres

An essential requirement of a good asset management plan is data. There are many benefits to
having good data: trust, reduced liability, improved asset knowledge, improved budgeting, and
improved customer service. Without this, it is impossible to make strategic asset management
decisions.

In 1995, the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario ended the Conditional Grant Program that
provided partial funding for municipalities to support maintenance, rehabilitation, and
reconstruction of their roadways. This decision also impacted the collection of road inventory,
condition and performance data. At this time, it was estimated that Ontario municipalities
owned and maintained approximately 275,000 lane kilometres of road. Since this time, there
have been numerous changes within the province that would affect the lane kilometre value:
downloading of provincial highways to local municipalities; municipal amalgamations; and
system growth/development.

In an attempt to recapture some of this missing road infrastructure data, the Municipal
Performance Measure Program (MPMP) was created in 2000. Under this program, Ontario
municipalities are required to report efficiency and effectiveness performance measures for the
services they are responsible for delivering as part of their Financial Information Return (FIR).
Although mandated, there has never been 100% compliance by Ontario’s 444 municipalities.
Fast forward to 2012, 343 Ontario municipalities (77%) submitted lane kilometre data through
MPMP. Recognizing the importance of this value in an asset management context, the Ministry
of Municipal Affairs and Housing (MMAH) initiated the Roads and Bridges Data Improvement
Project. The goal of the project was to fill in the missing gaps and to create a complete data set
for the number of Ontario lane kilometres that are under municipal jurisdiction and confirm the
accuracy of the information being provided. Through rigorous follow-up with individual
municipalities, MMAH was able to obtain 100% participation and determine that Ontario
municipalities are responsible for 301,886 lane kilometres of road.

The paper focuses on five key areas of the Roads and Bridge Improvement Project: context and
goals; the data improvement process; projects results; data verification; and
observations/lessons learned. The results of this effort is an accurate starting point to begin
collecting important road infrastructure data that can be used to make strategic asset
management decisions at both the provincial and municipal levels of government and allow for
accurate benchmarking comparisons to take place.

Author

J. Smith

Session title

Asset Management: Reinventing Organizations for the Next 100 Years (B)

Organizers

Asset Management Task Force

Category

Asset Management

Year

2014

Format

Paper

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