Driverless delivery vehicles are set to hit Toronto streets this spring as part of a provincial pilot program.
In a report to the city’s infrastructure and environment committee, Barbara Gray, general manager of transportation services, said the program, run by Magna International Inc., will begin at some point in the second quarter of 2025.
Magna’s driverless, three-wheeled “Last Mile Delivery Device” vehicles will be delivering small packages throughout several west end and downtown wards over time, including all of Ward 9 Davenport, and portions of Ward 4 Parkdale-High Park, Ward 5 York South-Weston, Ward 11 University-Rosedale and Ward 12 Toronto-St. Paul’s. The vehicles have received a permit under federal law that allows them to be used in Canada for up to a year.
Each vehicle will have constant human oversight from a “chase vehicle,” Gray said, with a supervisor capable of immediate intervention. Furthermore, a remote human operator can assume control during “complex scenarios.”
“Important safety measures include maximum speed of 32 kilometres per hour, travelling only on roads with a posted limit of 40 kilometres per hour or less, no use of left turns, and adherence to internationally recognized cybersecurity and privacy standards,” Gray said in the report.
The vehicles are roughly the size of a large cargo bike with the average height of a typical sedan, the report reads. It will have space to carry small packages stored in separate locked compartments, which are secured with a multi-digit code only known to the receiving customer.
An undated photo of Magna’s “Last Mile Delivery Device” is shown during operations in Michigan. The image is contained in a report to Toronto’s infrastructure and environment committee, which is being told those vehicles are coming to the city’s streets as part of a pilot project.
City of Toronto/photo
The report went into further detail about the vehicle, and cited Magna’s piloting of it on roads near Detroit, Mich., from 2022 to 2023 “without a safety incident.”
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The committee is being told the city has no regulatory authority over the provincial pilot, however Ontario’s transportation ministry invited city staff to review Magna’s application into Ontario’s Automated Vehicle Pilot Program and provide input.
Gray said city staff did not offer an opinion on the capability of the vehicle’s automated navigation but focused on “operational-side measures” to enhance safety and ensure the city’s opportunity to learn from the pilot.
Magna envisions up to 20 vehicles during the pilot program, but it needs ministry approval before deploying more vehicles, Gray said.
“Based on experiences in the United States, it seems clear that pressure will grow over time to deploy vehicles with various types and levels of automation on Toronto streets,” Gray wrote in the report.
“This modest pilot with low-speed vehicles is an important opportunity to increase our knowledge on the state of the technology.”
Ontario’s Automated Vehicle Pilot Program is a 10-year-long initiative that began in 2016 and was updated three years later to allow the testing of automated vehicles on provincial roads under strict conditions, including a requirement to have a driver for safety reasons.
The infrastructure and environment committee will consider asking city council to direct the general manager of transportation service to author a report to the committee on the findings and lessons learned from Magna’s pilot. That report is estimated to be due no later than the fourth quarter of 2026.
This isn’t the first time driverless vehicles have been pitched in Toronto; in 2021, Toronto tried launching an automated shuttle pilot in Scarborough, but due to factors outside of its control —like the company contracted to supply the shuttles going out of business — it scrapped the program the following year.
The committee is scheduled to meet on May 7.
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