Toronto 2015 Pan Am Games

With over 10,000 athletes and 1.4 million spectators descending upon Toronto, the province turned to IBI Group to answer the unprecedented transportation challenge presented by the nearly two-month event taking place across the Greater Golden Horseshoe.

A wide-ranging strategy was critical to ensure that athletes and officials would reliably arrive to competitions on-time – not to mention the fans. At the same time, we needed to keep this already-busy region moving at a smooth pace to reduce the impacts on businesses and residents. IBI Group’s integrated transportation strategy was delivered through nine key elements:

1. Project Management: IBI Group developed and managed an integrated Transportation Delivery Plan with input from 30+ organizations including 12 different transit agencies, 8 specialized transit providers, police forces, and Games organizers.
2. Local Area Plans: We led the creation of multi-modal transportation plans for the areas surrounding each competition venue, including strategies for spectator walking routes, expanded bike storage, shuttles, and parking.
3. Wayfinding and Signage: Our intuitive wayfinding and signage strategy ensured uniform, easy-to-understand directions for spectators trying to find various competition venues.
4. Games Route Network and HOV Lanes: IBI planned over 1,500km of routes connecting the Athlete’s Village in Toronto’s downtown core with venues across the Golden Horseshoe region. This was achieved through a range of traffic measures, including the installation of 235km of temporary HOV lanes.
5. Spectator Parking Operations and Control Centre: We organized, designed and operated 13 parking lots as well as a central control centre that utilized mobile reporting, dashboards, live streaming UAV video, and an online reservation system.
6. Transportation Demand Management and Communications: This included pre-event analysis and capacity quantification to determine the Games’ impact on the region’s transportation network, as well as customer-facing materials that informed visitors of the multi-modal options available during the event. We also designed and delivered the 2015 Games Trip Planner app and specified functional requirements for the associated Triplinx planner.
7. Unified Transportation Coordination Centre: IBI designed a collaborative control space that united the real-time systems operations of local, regional, and provincial transportation agencies for the first time.
8. Games Transit Operations: We designed the inter-jurisdictional Games Transit Network comprising accessible transit routes that connected major regional hubs in the Golden Horseshoe to all venues.
9. Performance Measures & Real-Time Monitoring: IBI developed a comprehensive framework to monitor and analyze the Games’ transportation network using real-time data.