City of Hamilton staff recently released a revised management update regarding the progress made on the recommendations set out in the Red Hill Valley Parkway (RHVP) Inquiry Report.
To date, nine of the 36 action items (25 per cent) have been completed. The city says that the remaining action items are in progress and set to be completed by quarter one of 2026.
They also note that some of the action items have been delayed due to the city’s 2024 cyber incident.
The Red Hill Inquiry, which cost the city $28 million, was ordered by the city in 2019 after a number of fatal crashes on the roadway.
The inquiry was written by Justice Herman Wilton-Siegel and released on Nov. 29, 2023. Wilton-Siegel determined that “relatively low RHVP friction levels were a likely contributor to collisions” before 2019, when the road was repaved.
The inquiry also provided 36 recommendations which the city grouped into eight categories: traffic safety, delineating the roles and responsibilities of city staff, the culture within the Public Works Department, information sharing and communication among staff, staff reporting obligations, staff communications with the media and public, consultant engagements and assignments, and staff reports.
Much of the RHVP Inquiry centred around the actions of the now-retired City of Hamilton Director of Engineering Services, Gary Moore, who kept a document called the Tradewind Report, which involved friction testing, relatively secret.
The Tradewind Report raised questions about the friction on the RHVP and recommended “a further examination of the pavement surface, composition, and wear performance” of the parkway.
In order to see through the 36 recommendations in the RHVP Inquiry, the city formed an interdepartmental working group and an action plan to manage the city’s response.
So far, to address traffic safety, the city has completed three key actions.
Those include developing an Annual Collision Report with a section specific to the city’s parkways, creating a Parkway Management Committee with safety as a standing agenda item, and the appointment of a Chief Roads Official and subsequent merger of that role into the Director of Transportation.
To address the culture within the Public Works Department, the city has updated the Public Works Departmental Training Procedure to ensure that staff complete Code of Conduct training as required and the inclusion of specific competencies related to collaboration, cooperation, transparency, and accountability in performance documents of Public Works staff.
To improve staff communications with the media and the public, the city has reportedly updated their Media Relations Policy to ensure city staff “shall endeavour to be truthful and accurate at all times when speaking with the media and public.”
To address consultant engagements and assignments, the city has added to the Public Works Standard Operating Procedure to track and share consultant reports, recommendations, and actions.
The next update regarding the city’s progress will be provided to Council by September 2025.
Based in Hamilton, he reaches hundreds of thousands of people monthly on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. He has been published in The Hamilton Spectator, Stoney Creek News, and Bay Observer. He has also been a segment host with Cable 14 Hamilton. In 2017, he received the Chancellor Full Tuition Scholarship from the University of Ottawa (BA, 2022). He has also received the Governor General’s Academic Medal. He formerly worked in a non-partisan role on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
