Typically an "Audit" is a methodical examination, review of, or an assessment of the compliance with, a set of established rules, standards, conditions or situations often associated with financial issues. In this case the formal definition above is applied to Freight Movement. To add to our difficulty in presenting the need for an audit of how well freight can move on a road system, rules, standards or accepted guidelines currently do not exist upon which to base an "Audit". Nor is there a definition of a "Freight Audit" in current use in the freight industry or for the use of its Municipal planning partners. There are no guidelines for Planners and Engineers, who play a major role in creating and establishing the various Master Transportation Plans governing Goods Movement in, through and between Municipal jurisdictions. Within the context of a draft document being prepared for the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario on developing "Freight Supportive Land Use Planning Guidelines", it became all too obvious that there was a great need to come up with criteria to address challenges associated with the efficient transportation of goods using the road infrastructure system, hence this paper. Information in this paper is largely drawn from work prepared for the Ministry of Transportation on the subject matter. For the covering abstract of this conference see ITRD number E211395.
Samenvatting