Managing road disruptions is becoming an increasingly complex task in many urban areas. Road closures are planned and implemented for road improvements, road repairs, and special events such as sporting vents and parades. These activities are often managed independently by different organizations, or levels of government. Coordinating these various types of road closures is a significant challenge. A lack of coordination can often significantly disrupt road users, create unnecessary traffic congestion, and also embarrass the agencies involved. The City of Toronto partnered with Transport Canada to create a system to address these problems. The City of Toronto has now successfully implemented a user-friendly, coordinated system to plan and manage congestion created by road disruptions. The key to the system is “ROADMAP”, a web-based software application consisting of a GIS-based Graphical User Interface, and a sophisticated database. ROADMAP is a planning and tracking tool that allows users to identify potential road closure conflicts, and opportunities to link activities early in the planning process, and also manage track the disruptions on a daily basis. The system provides an inventory of a wide variety of road disruption activities in various stages of development; Planned, Approved, Active and Complete. The system is also used to disseminate road closure reports to emergency services, local media outlets and other agencies. This paper will describe how the ROADMAP system was designed to meet the needs of the City of Toronto traffic engineers, how successful it has been during the construction season, and “lessons-learned” for future improvements.
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