challenges facing express delivery services in canada's urban centres

Institute of Housing & Mobility
Challenges facing the EDS industry in Canada's urban centres
This report also concludes that various stakeholders are ignorant of the magnitude of operations
conducted by couriers in Canada. It comes as no surprise that most transport planners and
municipal politicians in Canada are not fully aware of the fact that couriers and same-day
messengers deliver 700 million packages and parcels per year. In downtown Toronto, which
serves as the financial hub for Canada, almost 80,000 parcels, packages, and letters are
delivered by couriers and same-day messengers each day.
This report concludes that municipal transport planners are not well-versed with freight and
logistics planning in general and couriers and same-day messenger services in particular. The
response from transport planning authorities across Canada suggests that the planning community
is yet to focus its attention on freight and couriers and same-day messenger services in particular.
This report finds that transport planning authorities do not collect information about couriers and
same-day messengers and hence their planning activities are not based on empirical analysis. In
worst case scenarios, the planning authorities do not consider couriers and same-day messengers
as a transport planning issue.
It therefore seems that modern transport planning, as it pertains to regulating couriers and sameday
messengers, has become dependent upon issuing parking tickets or banning commercial
vehicles from business districts in Canada as solutions. The practice of banning commercial
vehicles goes back to ancient Rome when Julius Caesar promulgated the Law of Municipalities in
44 BC banning wagons from sunrise to sunset on the streets of Rome. It is high time that innovative
solutions are proposed, which should be better than the ones deployed in ancient Rome, to
facilitate traffic flow in large urban centres in Canada.
This report also found that property managers in downtown Toronto, which served as a sample
for this study, do not recognize improving couriers' services as a value-added service to their
tenants. The survey of property managers revealed no specific actions being taken in downtown
Toronto to improve delivery and pickup of express delivery packages, letters and parcels.
This report did not find a silver bullet to improve freight and logistics in large urban centres. The
literature review presented in this report did not discover a relevant and pragmatic solution to
improving couriers and same-day messenger deliveries as well as the LTL freight transportation in
large urban centres. The practice of using freight consolidation centres, restricting deliveries to
downtowns during peak periods, and using rail to deliver freight are not practical for the courier
industry. The proposed alternatives reviewed in the literature are likely to increase delivery times
and costs, which are likely to reduce competitiveness of businesses located in downtowns.
Already, businesses have started to shy away from the central business districts because of the
excessive burdens resulting from higher taxes, restrictive planning practices and the like. The
results from a recent market study in February 2009 suggest that 50% of all industrial real estate
transactions in the Greater Toronto Area in fact occurred in Mississauga and not in the City of
Toronto.
This report recommends the following:
1. The municipal transport authorities should improve their understanding and planning of
freight transportation in general, and couriers and same day messenger services in
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