RC110 JanFeb 2024 - Magazine - Page 9
Matt Pinder received the Transportation Association of
Canada (TAC) Young Transportation Professional Award
in 2022. It is one of only five awards presented by TAC
annually, in recognition of individual excellence in
both professional and volunteer capacities.
TRANSPORTATION ASSOCIATION OF CANADA
What are some key themes of each of the projects
you’ve worked on that will lead to more efficient infrastructure delivery?
A key theme of the projects I’m most proud of is that
they are all pushing the envelope in terms of engineering
design. We’ve spent the last 70 or so years developing
good engineering guidelines for how to build roads and
highways for cars. But when you talk to communities
now and look at how things are changing there’s a growing interest to revisit walking and cycling as modes of
travel. Unfortunately, we haven’t done enough to develop
engineering guidance for active transportation, and we
don’t have nearly as much ingrained experience. What
really excites me about all these projects is that we’re not
able to go to an engineering cookbook—rather, it’s an
opportunity to investigate the newest academic research,
share the latest data on health and environmental bene昀椀ts, and essentially help change the client culture. Where
I really thrive is on the cutting edge where we are given
challenging problems, and we get to apply an engineering mindset to solving them.
What projects are you currently focused on for WSP?
I can tell you about a couple of exciting ones that I’ve just
wrapped up. One was for the Ontario Tra昀케c Council on
how to design Protected Intersections. These intersections
are designed to provide pedestrian and cyclist comfort
and safety, to make clearly designated areas in intersections, to help prevent potential motor vehicle con昀氀icts
and reduce crossing distances for pedestrians and cyclists.
Municipalities across Ontario are interested in building
more protected intersections, and we’ve already seen an
RENEWCANADA.NET
uptake in Kingston, Toronto, Burlington,
and London. WSP was hired to provide a
design guide for these. My team spent the
last year coming up with an interactive,
step-by-step guide with comprehensive considerations and user-friendly graphics.
The other interesting project I’d like to
highlight is cutting edge in the context of
bus stop designs. The conventional way of
building bus stops has not been very safe
from a cycling perspective, so we’re now
adapting designs, but we’re also addressing concerns of people with sight loss. The
Canadian National Institute for the Blind
(CNIB) received a national grant to do
this research, so WSP was hired to take on
this task, visiting 昀椀ve sites across Canada.
We visited Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg,
London, and Montreal. Our sta昀昀 met with
up to six participants who are experiencing site loss at
each site and went through the motions with them of
embarking and disembarking from public transportation
and navigating existing infrastructure. We analyzed the
results, and, in the fall, we released a report on solutions
to address these challenges.
What are your goals as Chair of the TAC Active Transportation Integrated Committee?
I’m fortunate to have had predecessors who provided the
foundational work and it’s already quite operational, but
I am bringing a new passion and an ardent desire to lead.
I’m aware that people are volunteering their time to come
to our meetings so it’s important to make the most of that
time and to provide an inclusive experience. Some municipalities can be insular, but we need to share best practices
and collectively come together. We are already planning
for next year’s TAC conference. There has been a growing
interest in active transportation. For instance, two years
ago there were just a few active transportation sessions at
TAC, this year there were eight and for the next one we’re
putting in a proposal for double that.
In a recent post on your blog, you stated that pedestrians are not at fault for “jaywalking” because current
design practices are to blame. Which design practices
do you blame the most?
It goes back to that 70 years of experience we have in designing for car travel. Meanwhile, we’ve neglected other
modes of travel. We have standards that dictate how often
you should build intersections to manage tra昀케c, or you
need this many cars at an intersection in order to justify
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024 – RENEW CANADA 9
