Advisory Services for Commercial Vehicle Pre-Clearance/Pre-Screening Technology

The trucking industry is a major user of Ontario’s highway system to move goods across the province, and Ontario has Canada’s busiest border crossings: Every day more than $860 million in goods cross the Ontario-U.S. border on trucks. Using the Highway 401 corridor as an example, the Ministry of Transportation (MTO) is projecting the number of commercial vehicles operating on the corridor to increase by 79 percent by 2031. Current truck volumes on the Highway 401 corridor exceed the capacity at MTO truck inspection stations (TIS), and the number of “conditional” operators, where no information about their operations is easily accessible, is growing rapidly. Due to the growing gap between the levels of commercial vehicle traffic and Ministry enforcement personnel resources, MTO sought assistance with provincial-wide implementation in two areas of advanced technologies:

• Pre-clearance technologies – those which focus on linking the vehicle to the operator of record and querying operator data records to determine current registration status, past safety record, inspection history and compliance history; and,
• Pre-screening technologies – those which focus on the real-time condition of critical vehicle components, such as tires and brakes, as well as vehicle compliance with size and weight regulations.

MTO contracted with Quetica for advice on developing the technical specifications and writing the Request for Bids (RFB) for the $10 million procurement.