TORONTO — The Ontario trucking Association once again succeeded in stopping a government body from implementing an arbitrary rule that would negatively affect the trucking industry.

The City of Toronto’s Works Committee voted this week to cancel the proposal from Councilor Michael Walker to prohibit deliveries in the downtown area between the hours of 7:00 am and 10:00 am and between 3:00 pm and 6:00 pm.

The price of every box unloaded in TO’s downtown core
would go up if the city voted for truck restrictions, OTA told council

After hearing deputations from Ontario Trucking Association, the Courier Association, and the Canadian Council of Grocery Distributors, the Committee voted to note the motion but take no further action on it, effectively killing the proposal, OTA reports in a press release.

Although there’s undoubtedly congestion in Toronto’s core, “for every complex issue there is a simple, easy, and ultimately completely wrong answer, and this is the wrong answer for the city’s traffic woes,” OTA Manager of Government Relations Doug Switzer told the committee.

“Every cup of coffee, every piece of paper in a printer, every beer sold in a bar, every steak sold in a restaurant and every pair of jeans sold at the Eaton’s Centre comes in by truck. The restrictions that you are considering placing on trucks, you are really imposing on businesses,” Switzer continued.

He added that such restrictions, if green-lighted, would mean higher costs for deliveries because trucking companies will have to purchase additional equipment and hire more drivers in order to deliver the same amount of goods in a much smaller window of time. And local businesses will be forced to pay for additional staff to be there in off peak periods to receive goods, he said.

“The root of congestion problem is not the fact that trucks need to make deliveries, it is the volume of traffic combined with a lack of appropriate loading and unloading areas,” Switzer concluded. “What we need to do is look at issues like building design, as well as street and sidewalk design, to find ways to allow necessary deliveries to be made without impeding the flow of traffic during rush hour.”