Transportation Group

Community Transportation Research Lab (CTRL)

Dr. Hanson and his research team presenting research findings on location

Dr. Hanson and his research team presenting research findings on location

There is a need for more research in Canada on the transportation planning needs outside of the largest urban centres, where automobile dependence is high but the availability of sophisticated transportation planning tools and data to support the development of other modes (like transit) is limited.

Improving transportation planning practices

The Community Transportation Research Lab (CTRL) aims to change this by bringing an engineering lens to partner with communities to help improve their transportation planning practices, with the goal of supporting effective alternatives that can help reduce our dependency on cars while maintaining or enhancing personal mobility.

CTRL focuses on the issues facing smaller urban areas (< 200,000 people), and regional and rural areas. It is currently working in four key areas in transportation research:

  • Small city, regional and rural transport planning (including active transportation and transit)
  • Accessible and on-demand transportation and the built environment
  • Post-secondary education travel demand and tourism and employment travel demand
  • Older adult health transportation travel demand

Leveraging university settings for new ideas

The CTRL at the University of New Brunswick (Fredericton) is inspired by other Canadian transportation research labs that leverage their location within a university setting to explore new research ideas developed through partnerships.

The CTRL aims to partner with transportation planning entities within regions and municipalities and involve public, private and non-profit sector transportation providers. It brings together data from partners where innovative analysis techniques will help lead to new discoveries from existing data.

It will help look at “what-if” scenarios, including developing the models and analysis to support these scenarios. It will help collect more data in areas where data is limited, and study datasets that have yet to be fully analyzed for transportation planning purposes.

Student trainees will form the core of the Lab, with small-scale projects undertaken by BScE students, with progressively more complex research being undertaken by MEng, MScE and PhD students.

About us

Dr. Trevor Hanson, P.Eng, Professor of Civil Engineering
Coordinator, UNB Transportation Group & CTRL
thanson@unb.ca | LinkedIn

Abby Cartwright, BScE, MScE Candidate
Research area: Accessible on-demand transportation

Madeline Whitehouse, B.Eng, MScE Candidate
Research area: Understanding travel for persons with a mobility disability

Daniel Higdon, BScE student - Summer research assistant (2024)

Indya Michaud, BScE student – Summer research assistant (2024)


CTRL partners include those that provide funding support for lab activities (foundational partners) and those that provide in-kind support (supporting partners).

Funding includes research grants to support specific research projects led by Dr. Hanson


The following is a partial list of university research labs in Canada focused on transportation engineering and planning research (organized east to west).