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The Context

Montréal stands as one of North America's most dynamic cities in sustainable mobility innovation. As Canada's second-largest city and a major economic hub, Montréal has demonstrated its commitment to progressive transportation policies through the creation of the Agence de mobilité durable, a para-municipal organisation dedicated to innovative mobility solutions. The Agency's mission of equitable street sharing and sustainable urban mobility has positioned Montréal as a leader in reimagining how urban space can be better managed for all users.

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The Problem

Like many global cities, Montréal has experienced a significant surge in commercial delivery activity, creating new challenges for urban mobility. While the Agency had strong visibility into most transportation modes, including public transit, cyclists, and pedestrians, it lacked comprehensive data about commercial vehicle behavior at the curb.

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Traditional methods of data collection, relying on costly and non-scalable field observations, were insufficient to address the growing challenges of traffic congestion, safety hazards, and increased pollution from delivery vehicles. Without a complete understanding of logistics patterns, the city struggled to effectively manage curbside space and ensure safe coexistence between delivery vehicles and other street users, particularly cyclists.

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With better insights into commercial vehicle activity, the Agency could fulfil its vision of making the city accessible to all while supporting economic vitality. Understanding delivery trends and patterns would enable strategic deployment of parking enforcement, enhance safety for vulnerable road users, and support the Agency's mission of equitable space sharing.

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Methodology and Data Validation

Vianova partnered with the Agence de mobilité durable to implement its Curb Analytics data product, providing unprecedented visibility into commercial vehicle activity. By sourcing and enriching a datasource representing approximately 20% of commercial vehicles in the city, Vianova created a comprehensive view of the types of vehicles operating in the city and delivery patterns across 64,000 street segments.

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The data set’s accuracy was validated by comparing it with a baseline dataset that was manually collected in the field on 12 key commercial street segments; demonstrating impressive representativity rates of 31% overall (up to 47% on certain segments) and almost identical vehicle profiles.

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A custom-built geo-analytics solution was then developed by Vianova’s Professional Services team to make this data accessible to all Agency team members, regardless of technical expertise, enabling them to further explore and validate the data’s relevance. This was also the opportunity for users to provide valuable feedback that Vianova leveraged to develop its next-generation Vianova Intelligence Platform.

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Use Cases and Results

Found below are the following use cases and results:

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Logistics Profiling

The different analyses carried out by Vianova’s Professional Services team revealed crucial insights about Montréal's delivery ecosystem, profiling the behaviour of over 30,000 vehicles in terms of their size, vocation, industry and delivery patterns by location, time of day, duration, and seasonality.

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The Agency was more specifically interested in understanding the vehicle profile and delivery patterns in the designated commercial areas throughout the city, otherwise known as SDC zones (Sociétés de Développement Commercial). Benchmarking the share of number of stops for these zones against the global logistics profile in the city uncovered a number of interesting insights to drive future regulatory, infrastructure and enforcement initiatives on those zones.

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Commercial Hotspots

Thanks to the geo-analytics custom solution, users were also able to pin-point at where the activity of commercial vehicles was causing congestion. Out of the 3,896 road segments in the SDC commercial zones, 231 were identified as hotspots, with an extrapolated daily average number of stops higher than 25.

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The popular Avenue Laurier especially was cause for concern, and had been the object of multiple unsuccessful on-field traffic observation initiatives. The analysis revealed that there were 5 true bottleneck segments along the avenue (with stops averaging 15 stops per day), towards which the Agency was then able to direct their efforts and improve traffic flows.

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Curb Inventory

Further to the initial validation and audit, the newly-launched VIP (Vianova Intelligence Platform) was implemented to provide Montréal users with a much more comprehensive and integrated analytical experience of the logistics activity in the city.

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One of the key and foundational features of the VIP is the ability for users to integrate all types of datasets themselves onto the platform. This was the basis for a complete inventory of how the different modes of transport share the curb space and interact with each other. Users gained a 360 degree view of the 168,046 parking sign posts, 126,951 parking locations, 8,982 bus stops, 590 bus lines, 232 reserved bus corridors and 9,058 cycling segments in the city to contextualise their analyses of commercial vehicle stops.

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The Vianova Intelligence Platform enables seamless integration of geolocation data files, so that users can store all their information in one place and run contextualised geospatial analyses.

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Safety for Cyclists

Another aspect that the Agency was looking to urgently resolve, was the safety of vulnerable road users in areas with high logistic activity. Snapping the non-protected cycling lanes data with the commercial vehicle stops data on the Vianova Intelligence Platform, 14 critical segments were identified where delivery activities (more than 10 delivery stops per day) was posing particular safety concerns for cyclists.

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The Agency leveraged these insights to optimise delivery zone placements, to enhance the safety infrastructure around the cycling lanes, and was then able to measure the impact of those changes directly on the Vianova platform.

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Enforcement Optimisation

The solution can also be leveraged on a regular basis to guide and optimise the efficiency of the parking enforcement patrols, particularly on corridors reserved to public transport, where delivery vehicles parked all too often, again causing congestion and safety issues.

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By dynamically isolating corridors where commercial vehicle activity is significantly higher, Montréal is now able to prioritise those specific areas to deploy their enforcement patrols for optimal impact.

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Identifying the Boulevard Crémazie as the best area to direct parking enforcement in a few clicks on the Vianova Intelligence Platform.

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About Vianova

Vianova is the data analytics solution to operate the mobility world. Our platform harnesses the power of connected vehicles and IoT data, to provide actionable insights to plan for safer, greener, and more efficient transportation infrastructures.

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From enabling regulation of shared mobility to transforming last-mile deliveries, and mapping road risk hotspots, Vianova serves 150+ cities, fleet operators, and enterprises across the globe to change the way people and goods move.

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Ready to learn more?  Visit our page to get in touch.