10

TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE

Road Transportation Infrastructure

Classification of road networks

Canada has a dense network of streets and highways that covers virtually every part of the country. Roads are built to different standards depending on the type of traffic and the intended use. In general, they can be classified into four broad categories.

• Local roads - Local roads provide access to private property or close-proximity public facilities in urban and rural areas. These roads are characterized by short trip lengths, low volume, low speeds and restricted through-traffic movement. A good example is a street in an urban subdivision. A large proportion of rural local roads are gravel-surfaced.
• Secondary acgd/urban collector streets - Secondary highways provide access to smaller towns and cities and links to the primary arterial system. Movement is largely restricted to the county as opposed to the provincial level. A good example of a secondary rural highway is any type of county or regional road. In an urban setting, collector streets provide access to residential neighbourhoods funnelling traffic from local roads to higher volume roads.
• Primary acgd/urban arterial streets - Primary highways handle corridor movements between the larger urban areas in Canada. They are the principal means of interprovincial and intraprovincial movement. They typically handle larger traffic volumes than secondary highways and are characterized by much longer trip lengths. Examples include Highway 1 in Saskatchewan, Highway 97 in British Columbia, Highway 17 in Ontario, Highway 138 in Quebec, and Highway 2 in New Brunswick. Urban arterial streets carry through-traffic and most of the traffic entering or leaving urban areas. They provide continuity for all rural primary highways that meet at urban boundaries.
• Freeways - These are high-volume controlled-access highways in urban and rural areas that permit long-distance movements between major population centres. Highways of this type are characterized by multiple lanes and high speeds, and are restricted to long-distance through movements. Examples include Highway 401 and Autoroute 20, which connect the dense population areas in southern Ontario and central Quebec.

This chapter calculates the length of road networks in two different ways.

• Route-kilometres - The simplest method of measurement uses route-kilometres to measure the total length of a road segment between a start and end point without regard for the number of lanes. The measurement is equivalent to the driving distance. Using this definition, a kilometre of multi-lane road would count the same length as a kilometre of two-lane road. This concept is used in this chapter's section on "Primary Provincial/Territorial Highways."
• Two-lane equivalent route-kilometres - This measure calculates route-kilometres on a two-lane highway basis. For example, a one-kilometre section of four-lane highway would count as two kilometres on a two-lane equivalent basis, since the facility has a pair of two-lane highways in each direction. A one-kilometre section of an eight-lane highway would count as four route-kilometres. This concept is used to compute the extent of the Canadian road network in the following section, "Canada's Road Network."

Canada's Road Network

As shown in Table 10-5, Canada's road network is over 1.4 million kilometres in length (two-lane equivalent basis). Over 1.2 million kilometres, or 85 per cent of the total network, are classified as local roads. The balance, about 200,000 kilometres, is made up of primary and secondary highways under provincial/territorial jurisdiction and major urban arterial and collector roads under municipal/local control.

The largest networks are in the Prairie provinces, which together account for over 40 per cent of the local and total network. Saskatchewan has the single largest network, at over 256,000 kilometres, with most of these roads being unpaved. Ontario and Quebec, with their dense populations, possess nearly two thirds of the freeway network.

Primary Provincial/Territorial Highways

The most significant network for analysing national road transport issues is the network of primary provincial/territorial highways. This network of arterial highways and freeways connects all the major cities and towns in Canada and supports the major east-west and north-south trade corridors. It also includes the National Highway System (NHS), a network of high-volume roads connecting provincial capitals and significant border points with the United States. As Table 10-6 shows, the primary highway network is over 80,000 kilometres long, with about 30 per cent represented by the National Highway System. Ontario, with over 16,000 route-kilometres, has the single largest share of the primary network, or 20 per cent of the total. Saskatchewan follows with 16,000 route-kilometres, or 19 per cent, then Alberta with close to 14,000, or 17 per cent, Quebec with over 11,000, or 14 per cent, and British Columbia with 10,000, or 12 per cent. The five remaining provinces and two territories account for the rest of the network with about 15,000 route-kilometres, or 18 per cent of the total.

Traffic Levels

To get an estimate of annual vehicle-kilometres driven, daily traffic counts (all vehicles taken together) collected by provincial/territorial transport departments are applied to defined sections of road, and the product of volume and distance is aggregated. Table 10-6 reveals that in 1996 over 140 billion vehicle-kilometres were driven on the primary highway network, an annual average of 4,700 vehicles per day. The four largest provinces accounted for nearly 85 per cent of the total. Ontario, with more than 50 billion vehicle-kilometres, accounted for over one third of the total, while Quebec, with nearly 35 billion vehicle-kilometres, accounted for one quarter. These provinces were followed by British Columbia, with nearly 20 billion vehicle-kilometres, or more than 13 per cent of the total, and Alberta, with almost 15 billion, or 10 per cent. The remaining eight jurisdictions generated the balance, with a little over 20 billion vehicle-kilometres, or 15 per cent.

The busiest primary highways were in Ontario and Quebec, where average volumes exceeded 8,000 vehicles per day. The next busiest system was Nova Scotia, whose 100 series highways averaged nearly 7,000 vehicles per day. All other jurisdictions had daily volumes at or below 5,000 vehicles per day.

Table 10-6 also illustrates how concentrated motor vehicle travel is on the National Highway System portion of the primary system. Although it makes up only 30 per cent of the primary network, the National Highway System accounts for 55 per cent of the traffic. Its annual average daily traffic (AADT) was three times that of the rest of the primary system (9,000 AADT versus 3,000 AADT). Some provinces have very low volumes on primary highways outside the National Highway System. Based on AADT, Saskatchewan has only about 1,000 vehicles per day on its non-NHS primary highways, four times less than its NHS highways; Alberta also had similar concentrations, with 6,500 on its NHS highways but only 1,700 on the rest of its system. This pattern also applied in Quebec, which had an average of 18,500 AADT on its NHS highways but less than 5,000 AADT on the rest of its system.

Traffic between Canada and the United States

Vehicle traffic between Canada and the United States has been characterized by two separate trends in car and truck movements since the mid-1980s. As Figure 10-3 shows, car trafficNote 3 grew very strongly during the late 1980s, peaking at 100 million two-way movements in 1991, but has since declined and levelled off during the mid-1990s. Much of these oscillations in car traffic can be tied to variations in the value of the Canadian dollar relative to the American dollar. Substantial appreciation in the Canadian currency during the late-1980s resulted in unprecedented crossborder shopping activity by Canadians that increased the number of border movements by over 60 per cent between 1986 and 1991.

Car traffic fell below 80 million movements per year and stabilized at approximately 77 million crossings during the mid-1990s as a result of a serious recession in the early 1990s compounded by depreciation in the Canadian dollar. In 1998, car movements fell appreciably for the first time since 1994 to 74 million movements, although this was still about two million trips more than in 1988. By 2000, the number had dropped to less than 73 million movements.

Truck traffic, in contrast, has grown substantially during the 1990s. During the 1980s, truck traffic was stuck at about seven million two-way movements per year, but since the coming into force of the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement in 1989 and then the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, truck volumes have surged forward, increasing at an average annual growth rate of over seven per cent since 1991 to the current level of about 13.6 million crossings per year.

Annual Vehicle Traffic at Major Border Crossings, 1998-2000

Crossborder traffic is heavily concentrated among a small number of sites. As Table 10-7 shows, almost 90 per cent of total truck movements passed through the 20 busiest truck sites in 2000. In terms of total vehicles, the 20 busiest crossings accounted for 73 per cent of total vehicle movements. As Table 10-7 shows, of the 20 busiest truck crossings, the four busiest, and seven in total, were in Ontario: the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, the Peace Bridge in Fort Erie, the Blue Water Bridge in Sarnia, and the Queenston-Lewiston Bridge in Niagara Falls alone handled 7.5 million trucks in 2000, or 55 per cent of the total. British Columbia and Quebec each had four crossings in the top 20, with their largest crossings, Pacific Highway and Lacolle, rounding out the top 6. New Brunswick had two crossings in the top 20 and the Prairie provinces had one crossing each in the top 20.

TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE

Rail Transportation Infrastructure

Road Transportation Infrastructure

Marine Transportation Infrastructure

Air Transportation Infrastructure

NOTES:

3 The car traffic includes a very small number of crossings by buses and other non-commercial vehicles. These other vehicles account for less than 0.4 per cent of the "car" total..