Driver -free delivery vehicles should hit the streets of Toronto this spring as part of a provincial pilot program.
In a report to City infrastructure and environmental committeeBarbara Gray, director general of transportation services, said the program, managed by Magna International Inc., will start at one time in the second quarter of 2025.
Magna three-wheeled vehicles from Magna, Magna delivery vehicles will produce small packages in several West End and downtown districts over time, including all Ward 9 Davenport and Ward 4 Parkdale-High Park, Ward 5 York South Weston, Ward 11 University-St. Ward 12 Toronto-St. have received a permit under federal law which allows them to be used in Canada up to a year.
Each vehicle will have constant human surveillance of a “prosecution vehicle”, said Gray, with a supervisor capable of immediate intervention. In addition, a remote human operator can assume control during “complex scenarios”.
“Important security measures include a maximum speed of 32 kilometers per hour, traveling only on the roads with a displayed limit of 40 kilometers per hour or less, no use of left turns and membership of internationally recognized cybersecurity and confidentiality standards,” said Gray in the report.
Vehicles are roughly the size of a large cargo bike with the average height of a typical sedan, the report indicates. It will have space to transport small packages stored in separate locked compartments, which are secure with a code with several figures known only to the receiver customer.
A photo not dated to Magna’s “Last Mile Delivery Device” is presented during Michigan operations. The image is contained in a report to the Toronto infrastructure and environmental committee, which is informed that these vehicles arrive in the city streets as part of a pilot project.
City of Toronto / Photo
The report has come into more detail on the vehicle and cited Magna’s piloting on roads near Detroit, Michigan, from 2022 to 2023 “without security incident”.
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The Committee is informed that the City has no regulatory authority on the provincial pilot, but the Ontario Ministry of Transport invited city staff to examine Magna’s request in the Ontario automated vehicle driver program and provide comments.
Gray said that city staff had not offered an opinion on the capacity of the automated navigation of the vehicle, but focused on “measures on the operational side” to improve security and ensure the city’s opportunity to learn from the pilot.
Magna plans up to 20 vehicles during the pilot program, but he needs approval from the ministry before deploying more vehicles, said Gray.
“Based on experience in the United States, it seems clear that the pressure will increase over time to deploy vehicles with different types and levels of automation in the streets of Toronto,” Gray wrote in the report.
“This modest driver with low -speed vehicles is an important opportunity to increase our knowledge of the state of technology.”
The Ontario automated pilot program is a 10 -year initiative that started in 2016 and was updated three years later to allow the test of automated vehicles on provincial roads in strict conditions, including an obligation to have a driver for security reasons.
The Infrastructure and Environment Committee will plan to ask the Municipal Council to direct the Director General of the Transport Service to write a report to the Committee on Conclusions and Lessons learned from the Magna pilot. This report should be due at the latest to the fourth quarter of 2026.
This is not the first time that driverless vehicles have been presented in Toronto; In 2021, Toronto tried to launch an automated shuttle driver in Scarborough, but due to factors outside of its will – as the company contracted to provide bankrupt shuttles – it canceled the program the following year.
The committee should meet on May 7.
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