Exhibition Place envisioned as ‘living lab’
Proposal would make area a testing ground for transportation technology
Exhibition Place is best known as a fairground, but soon the sprawling 192-acre site on Toronto’s lake shore could also become a testing ground for forward-thinking transportation technology.
A proposal to create a “transportation innovation zone” (TIZ) at Exhibition Place is outlined in a city report going to council’s infrastructure and environment committee next Thursday.
It asserts that city-owned Exhibition Place, a semi-closed off, low-traffic environment featuring eight kilometres of roadways and 30 intersections, is “an ideal place” to create a “living lab” that would “help the city of Toronto learn about, and facilitate the local development of, emerging transportation technologies.”
The idea is to create a realworld testing environment that could be used by researchers and industry, whose findings could help improve Toronto’s transportation network. The report states the innovation zone could also generate economic development by attracting tech companies to the city, particularly small- and medium-sized ventures that can’t afford to build their own testing facilities.
City staff say technologies that could be tested in the zone include driverless vehicles designed to move people or goods, smart traffic signals and sensors, new paving materials, and strategies to improve the safety of pedestrians and cyclists.
Don Boyle, CEO of Exhibition Place, said the plan would be in keeping with the site’s history as a venue used to showcase new technology. He noted that the Automotive Building was built on the grounds in 1929 to demonstrate early automobiles, and went on to host the Canadian national motor show for the next four decades. Exhibition Place also hosted the demonstration of Toronto’s first electric streetcar, and is home to its first wind turbine.
The transportation innovation zone plan “builds on the history, and on many of the things that we’re already doing at Exhibition Place,” Boyle said. “It’s something that we’re really excited about.”
The plan could also aid efforts to regenerate Exhibition Place. The board there was already looking for ways to modernize the storied venue even before he COVID-19 pandemic hit and forced the cancellation of touchstone events like the annual Canadian National Exhibition.
Exhibition Place normally attracts more than 5.5 million people per year to conventions, football and soccer games, and other events, but its success depends on the type of large gatherings that aren’t possible during the pandemic.
In some aspects, the proposal to use a city-owned asset as a testing ground for private technology ventures echoes Sidewalk Labs’ controversial Smart City plan, the Quayside development that fell apart earlier this year when Sidewalk, a sistt er company to U.S. tech titan Google, pulled out, citing the effects of COVID-19. Much of the criticism of that plan focused on concerns Sidewalk would use city land for its own benefit at the expense of the public good.
The city would manage the transportation innovation program at Exhibition Place, ingc
g any call for private participants. Asked how it would ensure the innovation zone produces benefits for Torontonians and not just private companies, Ryan Lanyon, manager of strategic policy and innovation in transportation services, said that if the program is approved, details of how it will be implemented will be laid out in a report coming back to the committee in December.
The experience of other cities that have set up innovation zones indicate “that a call for proposals from a municipality to trial technologies that have the potential to address existing challenges works well to generca a the intention of the TIZ program is to both address transportation challenges and support local economic development,” Lanyon said.
According to the staff report, Exhibition Place would host the “flagship” transportation innovation zone, but Lanyon said the city could establish similar zones in other parts of the city, on either a permanent or temporary basis.
There are no costs associated with the plan so far. Lanyon said financial impacts will be included in the December report.