Cambrian College students win provincial competition for transit planning

Faith Greco · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 01, 2025 5:24 AM EDT | Last Updated: 7 minutes ago

A squad of planetary concern analytics students from Cambrian College successful Sudbury won archetypal spot astatine a caller provincial contention for their data-driven solutions aimed astatine improving nationalist proscription and connectivity successful the metropolis of Hamilton. 

The 3 students — Aderlly Lopez Lobato from Peru, Rohan Reddy Tirumalareddy and Chaitali Jani from India — competed against astir 39 teams from post-secondary institutions crossed Ontario astatine the Higher Education Analytics Data competition, with the apical 8 teams competing in the last held at at Mohawk College.

Each radical was fixed a scope of information sets and asked to research ways to amended municipality mobility and infrastructure.

Using information connected existing sidewalks, the radical developed walkability and bikeability scores for each ward successful the city, ranging from 0 to 100, Tirumalareddy explained. 

"We were amazed by however uneven the connectivity was crossed Hamilton's 15 wards," Jani said. "Some areas had large sidewalk sum and motorcycle lanes scoring adjacent to 100, portion others were overmuch lower, sometimes beneath 30."

The squad utilized a grid-based visualization to representation transit access, highlighting occupation areas wherever high-density regions lacked capable autobus service. 

Their investigation of connectivity to cardinal locations similar hospitals, schools, arenas, and tourer sites led to recommendations for caller autobus stops and routes to amended entree successful nether served areas.

"I deliberation the astir important portion of our attack is that we didn't see lone 1 oregon 2 databases. We focused connected taking, similar three, 4 databases that were meaningful to those spots, and we calculated wrong those spots, what benignant of connectivity they had," Lobato said.

Key takeaways

The students present spot imaginable for a akin investigation successful Sudbury.

"If we analyse Sudbury's proscription system, we would decidedly find a connectivity gap," Jani said, noting that the city's harsh winters marque autobus halt organisation a captious issue. 

She said their attack could assistance place areas wherever residents look agelong walks to transit successful hard conditions.

The squad explained that their cardinal takeaway is the value of visualizing information and findings, arsenic it makes analyzable proscription challenges much accessible and helps adjacent non-experts recognize infrastructure gaps and imaginable improvements.

"Our visualization would assistance Sudbury leaders and residents to cognize precisely wherever connectivity is weak, similar if an arena oregon schoolhouse lacks transit access, and usher them connected wherever to put first," Jani said. 

Beyond the competition, the students are considering applying their analytical skills to real-world municipality planning. 

Tirumalareddy is looking for opportunities successful information analytics, perchance successful the proscription sector. Jani hopes to research careers successful data-driven municipality planning, portion Lobato is funny successful staying successful Sudbury if the close occupation comes up. 

The squad is adjacent considering launching a consulting concern to assistance cities amended their proscription networks.

For their first-place finish, the Cambrian squad earned a $1,500 currency prize — wealth that Jani jokingly said volition spell toward tuition fees for their adjacent semester.

"I deliberation this triumph is simply a immense validation of our hard enactment and teamwork," said Jani. "[The competition] has shown maine however almighty information tin beryllium successful solving existent satellite problems."