City of Windsor – Transport Terminal Land Use Study – 2020 November 16

Transport Terminal General Provisions

As part of Housekeeping Amendment 2017-3, additional use provisions for a Transport Terminal were added to B/L 8600 and B/L 85-18 to address a regulatory gap in the Zoning By-laws and to ensure that the outdoor areas of a Transport Terminal are properly designed, drained and constructed. See Appendix C for the Transport Terminal provisions in B/L 8600 and Appendix D for the Transport Terminal Provisions in B/L 85-18.

This was the first time that specific Transport Terminal provisions were included in the Zoning By-laws. As previously mentioned, the lack of specific definitions and provisions meant that staff applied different provisions, such as parking area or outdoor storage yard, for transport terminals. Sometimes, no provisions were applied. There is considerable variation in parking area and outdoor storage yard requirements, which made for inconsistent transport terminal development across the City of Windsor.

A definition – Transport Storage Area – was created for that portion of a Transport Terminal where trailers are stored and where tractors or trucks are parked.

The new provisions are based on the Parking Area provisions in Section 25 of B/L 8600 and require minimum setbacks, grading, draining and paving, curbing, controlling ingress to and egress from the Transport Terminal, provision of a screening fence, controlling the location of a refuse bin and the type of lighting. The provisions are similar between B/L 8600 and B/L 85-18, save for modification for specific wording and setback provisions in B/L 85-18.

Zoning Concerns

After Housekeeping Amendment 2017-3 was implemented, it became clear that there were issues regarding the operation of Transport Terminal in the MD1 and MD2 zoning districts and M1 zones. Some zoning districts or zones permitted Transport Terminal, some only allowed it as an accessory use to a permitted main use, and some completely prohibited the use.

Allowing Transport Terminals as an accessory use only in the MD1 zoning districts presents interpretation challenges. For example, some operations would set-up a one-room trailer as a ‘business office’ and the ‘main use’ of the parcel and then operate a Transport Terminal as an accessory use to the business office despite the Transport Terminal being the only use on the lot, which is inconsistent with the definition of accessory use.

There is also overlap between Transport Terminal and similar uses such as a Warehouse or those industrial uses and activities that have significant warehouse and/or transport terminal activities like a motor vehicle assembly plant. Cross-dock operations, where goods and materials are unloaded from an incoming tractor-trailer and then loaded onto an outgoing tractor-trailer with little or no storage in between, are becoming prevalent among physical and online retailers and are used by large manufacturing facilities such as an automotive assembly plant.

Some of the MD1 zones that permit Transport Terminals are near residential and institutional uses causing, or could cause, negative impacts on those uses. Complaints were received concerning unpaved lots, dust, draining, lighting, ponding of water, and noise from trucks and tractor-trailers.