Each year, the Transportation Association of Canada (TAC) honours outstanding technical achievements by its member organizations with nine awards:
- Active Transportation Achievement Award
- Climate Action Achievement Award
- Environmental Achievement Award
- Infrastructure Achievement Award
- Mobility Achievement Award
- Road Safety Achievement Award
- Small Municipalities Achievement Award
- Technology Achievement Award
- Workforce Development Achievement Award
We congratulate this year’s recipients and thank the dozens of organizations that applied. We also recognize the many volunteers who reviewed award applications.
Each award-winning project will be featured in a free webinar in June or July.
The 2025 Award Recipients are:
The Active Transportation Achievement Award goes to the City of Kitchener, Ontario, for its Downtown Cycling Grid.
Webinar with winner and finalists: Tuesday, June 10 | 13:00-14:15 ET
Kitchener’s Downtown Cycling Grid is transforming how people move around the city. Ten kilometres of new and upgraded infrastructure connect major destinations, trails and transit, and represent a complete and cohesive All Ages and Abilities network. Consultation with 5,700 residents and community stakeholders for the city’s 2020 Cycling and Trails Master Plan confirmed the need to prioritize active connections in the downtown, and helped identify the location and design of new facilities. City staff co-led the design process, and their intensive involvement ensured that the results met local needs. The construction process, which included the installation of two new protected intersections, began in 2021 and was substantially completed in 2024. The grid is maintained and used year-round, and saw a 164% increase in cycling even when it was only 70% complete.
The Climate Action Achievement Award goes to Yukon Highways and Public Works, in partnership with Stantec, for its Yukon Highways Climate Risk Assessment and Action Plan.
Webinar with winner and finalists: Tuesday, June 17 | 13:00-14:30 ET
Yukon is warming much faster than southern Canada, and the impacts of climate change on transportation infrastructure are an urgent concern. To help it create more resilient, safe and reliable highways, the Territorial government undertook an assessment of climate change impacts and geohazards on 3,700 km of highways and secondary roads, 130 bridges and 7,100 drainage culverts. The geohazards considered were permafrost thawing, flooding, erosion, landslides, avalanches, wildfires, and overflow ice formation on highways. After the study team calculated future risks to infrastructure as a function of exposure, likelihood and consequence, they developed a comprehensive set of geohazard exposure maps, a climate risk profile for future decades, an action plan with 16 adaptation measures, and a prioritization framework. Notable project innovations included the integration of material flow methods, safe-to-fail design, and adaptation pathways for infrastructure decisions.
The Environmental Achievement Award goes to Alberta Transportation and Economic Corridors, in partnership with DIALOG, for its Bow Valley Gap Wildlife Overpass.
Webinar with winner and finalists: Wednesday, June 25 | 13:00-13:45 ET
The Trans-Canada Highway east of Banff National Park restricts wildlife movement in the Bow Valley and has experienced many collisions involving deer, elk and bears. In response, Alberta Transportation and Economic Corridors built the Bow Valley Gap Wildlife Overpass—the first such structure in the province outside national parks. Its design visually blends into the landscape, uses native vegetation to encourage use, and protects existing plants and habitat connectivity. Landscaping and fencing direct wildlife away from the highway and toward the overpass, while the width of the overpass and soil berms along its edges attenuate the impacts of traffic noise and headlights. Animal movements were tracked during construction to ensure no species were negatively impacted, and surveillance revealed that some animals started using the overpass a year before it was completed. Based on similar structures in Alberta, the overpass is expected to prevent up to 80% of local collisions with large mammals.
The Infrastructure Achievement Award goes to the British Columbia Ministry of Transportation and Transit, in partnership with Kiewit, for its Highway 1 – Nicomen River Bridge Replacement.
Webinar with winner and finalists: Thursday, July 17 | 13:00-14:30 ET
After unprecedented flooding in 2021, a major bridge over the Nicomen River in southern British Columbia had to be replaced. Several key innovations and adaptations enabled by the Alliance delivery model allowed the project team to overcome cost and schedule challenges related to high-risk steel demolition and erection, as well as expectations for weak soil conditions, and led to the project finishing early and under budget. The bridge design reduced ongoing maintenance requirements by using weathering steel, eliminating deck joints, and locating piers to minimize the risk of scour; an adjustment to the grade of the bridge improved regional freight mobility by increasing clearance under a nearby railway underpass; and riprap design helped safeguard sensitive fish habitat while reducing delay. During construction, the project team also surpassed stretch diversity goals for employment and successfully built a strong working relationship with the nearby Nlaka’pamux First Nation community.
The Mobility Achievement Award goes to the British Columbia Ministry of Transportation and Transit for PlanningTogetherBC.
Webinar with winner and finalists: Tuesday, July 8 | 13:00-14:30 ET
PlanningTogetherBC (PTBC) is a collaborative, systems-based approach for the Ministry and its partners to reach a shared vision of smart, coordinated growth by aligning transportation and land use planning. The framework includes four key goals—complete and connected communities, safe and integrated transportation systems, economic competitiveness, and resilience and climate action—and applies the strategic lenses of equity, diversity and inclusion, and reconciliation. As part of PTBC, the Ministry has created a guide, an assessment tool and other resources to help staff and partners make integrated planning a reality. The approach has been applied to policies, programs and projects across the province and at all scales and stages of the planning process; initiatives in Saanich, Kamloops, Central Okanagan and the Fraser Valley are just a few of the successes so far.
The Road Safety Achievement Award goes to the Saskatchewan Ministry of Highways, in partnership with Associated Engineering, for its Highway 16 Restricted Crossing U-Turn Intersection.
Webinar with winner and finalists: Tuesday, June 3 | 13:00-14:15 ET
Canada’s first restricted crossing U-turn (RCUT) intersection is on Highway 16 near Saskatoon. It has improved safety on a four-lane divided highway where a two-way, stop-controlled junction with a busy commuter route had seen many serious and fatal collisions. Following an in-service safety review and extensive options analysis, an RCUT was recommended to reduce right-angle collisions. The new design eliminates serious conflicts by replacing minor road straight-through and left-turn movements with a combination of right turns and U-turns; it also replaces one left-turn movement from Highway 16 with a U-turn and right turn. The novel project required extensive technical evaluation, stakeholder engagement and driver education, and has significantly improved safety by reducing the estimated number of right-angle intersection conflicts by 96.4%, from 91,000 to 3,200 each year.
The Small Municipalities Achievement Award goes to the Municipality of North Grenville, Ontario, in partnership with Left Turn Right Turn and Mobility Transportation Services, for its NGtransit On-Demand Transit Service.
Webinar with winner and finalists: Thursday, June 5 | 13:00-14:15 ET
This on-demand, curb-to-curb transit service in a rural municipality with 18,000 residents was launched in January 2024. The fully accessible service runs seven days a week to help overcome barriers faced by the many individuals who have limited access to employment, healthcare, education and daily necessities. The service uses advanced technologies to optimize shared-ride groupings in real time, and riders can receive trip updates via a mobile app, web portal or phone. In addition to offering a variety of payment plans, the municipality partners with community organizations to provide free fares for needy residents. In its first year, NGtransit provided more than 10,000 rides with levels of reliability and efficiency that earned it an average user rating of 4.7 out of 5. North Grenville has shown that small municipalities can successfully implement flexible, scalable, inclusive and demand-driven alternatives to traditional fixed-route transit services.
The Technology Achievement Award goes to the Ministère des Transports et de la Mobilité durable du Québec for its Pavement Marking Durability Measurement System.
Webinar with winner and finalists: Thursday, June 19 | 13:00-14:15 ET
The Ministère des Transports et de la Mobilité durable (MTMD) has developed an automated pavement marking durability measurement system that could replace the labour-intensive annual inspection of 90,000 kilometres of line markings on provincial highways. The key elements of the system are instrumented vehicles that collect line marking images and location data, and an artificial intelligence model that classifies line markings into five categories ranging from new to barely visible. The system can simultaneously detect up to four longitudinal marking lines of any colour or design, meaning that it needs only one pass to scan the lines on 98% of highways. During testing, the system received positive ratings for its agreement with individual experts, and for the statistical robustness of results for runs made with different vehicles and on different days.
The Workforce Development Achievement Award goes to Pier Solutions, in partnership with Step Up Construction, for Bridging the Gap – Building Construction Careers for Inner-City Youth.
Webinar with winner and finalists: Tuesday, July 15 | 13:00-14:00 ET
A transformative partnership between a bridge engineering and construction company (Pier Solutions) and a social enterprise (Step Up Construction) is empowering young people in Winnipeg’s North End. Through training, mentorship and hands-on experience, the initiative is building construction career pathways for Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth. By pairing youth with mature, empathetic project leaders including Indigenous mentors, Pier Solutions and Step Up Construction are creating an environment where skills are taught, confidence is nurtured, and meaningful relationships are built. The partnership has successfully completed multiple bridge rehabilitation and construction projects, and in the process of overcoming significant challenges it has provided critical lessons around the importance of communication, trust, vulnerability and celebration. It offers a transferable model for other organizations that want to create sustainable, community-driven workforce initiatives.