TORONTO

Every major highway through the Toronto area will have a dedicated lane for Pan Am Games officials, media and athletes this summer.

Motorists will only be allowed to access the High Occupancy Vehicle lanes if there are three or more occupants in the vehicle.

Police will enforce the temporary HOV lanes, but Transporation Minister Steven Del Duca said he expects that the decision to allow carpooling vehicles into the lanes will ease any public discontent.

“I’m not too worried about driver rebellion,” Del Duca said Monday.

The HOV lanes will be installed on sections of Highways 427, 404, 401, the Don Valley Parkway, the Gardiner Expressway, and along Lake Shore Blvd. in Toronto and Jane St. in York Region.

The 235-kilometres of HOV lanes will operate from 5 a.m. to midnight from June 29-Aug. 18.

Drivers in the GTA can also expect new parking restrictions, road-turning bans, traffic signal timing changes and road closures.

People trying to get around the Toronto region — usually a gridlock nightmare even without a major international sporting event — will be encouraged to carpool, shift travel times to avoid rush hour, cycle or walk to work, use public transit to attend meetings and generally avoid busy areas near scheduled Pan Am events.

Mayor-elect John Tory was briefed on the Pan Am Games traffic plans on Monday afternoon.

“I will be repeating to the officials ... We want the Pan Am Games to be a success in every single way but we also have to carry on business in the city, people have to carry on with their lives and that whatever the plans are, they are certainly going to have to be passed by me as the mayor-to-be and I would think by other public officials to make sure that we’re not grinding the city to a halt,” Tory said.

“I will look for that kind of balance in the plans that we see from the traffic and transportation and transit officials.”

Del Duca said ministry staff have been working on a Pan Am Games transportation plan with more than 30 municipal and transit partners.

“The goal, of course, is to keep the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area moving,” he said.

Getting people around the GTA during the games was identified early as one of the greater challenges to hosting the Pan/Parapan Am Games.

Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk is scheduled to report Wednesday on a second major concern, the escalating security budget.

antonella.artuso@sunmedia.ca