About the Waterloo Public Transportation Initiative

The Waterloo Public Transportation Initiative (WPTI) is an interdisciplinary research group at the University of Waterloo, under the School of Planning and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. We seek to expand sustainable transportation for urban centres, with a focus on applied research that impacts public policy, economics, and design.

WPTI embraces the ideology of emphasizing pedestrians, cyclists, and transit users in transportation networks, who are the most sustainable and vulnerable. Our research encourages shifts from a car-dependent culture to a society where travellers have multiple acceptable options. We develop innovative and equitable transportation solutions that create safe and convenient options for everyone.

Our group is involved in multiple on-going projects with local municipalities to improve the equity and efficiency of their transportation systems, including:

Using smartphones to track travel patterns in Edmonton
Collecting cyclist behaviour from video data in Toronto
Studying how free transit passes impact student and household travel mode choices in Kingston

The work we do is enabled through our public and private partners that provide funding to our group, our projects, and our students.