Introducing Matt Pinder!

I grew up in a rural subdivision north of Kingston, Ontario in Canada. While it may not seem like the typical environment for a future multimodal transportation planner to grow up, I fondly remember the freedom that I had as a child to move independently around my community – freedom made possible thanks to my bike. I would ride all over my neighborhood, venturing along four-wheeler trails with my dog at my side darting in and out of the bushes. As young as eight, I was cycling to my friends’ houses and eventually venturing as far as the nearest convenience store 7 km away to get milkshakes on hot summer days. 

Cycling stayed with me throughout my years of high school and university, but it wasn’t until my post-grad trip that I started to see a career for me in transportation. I spent a month travelling down the west coast, cycling in Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. In visiting these cities (particularly Portland) I suddenly realized what a consciously planned cycling network looks like and realized that there are people paid to plan and implement these. I set my sights on one day becoming a “bicycle planner”.  

I moved to downtown Toronto for my graduate degree and relished in the feeling of living blissfully car-free in a highly urban environment. It seemed that everything I needed was seamlessly within reach, whether by bike, on foot, or by transit. I caught the Dutch bug when, as part of my degree, I spent three months in Amsterdam doing a course called Planning the Cycling City. I discovered that in the Netherlands it is not only possible to travel everywhere by bike, in most cases it is simply the easiest, most convenient way to do so.  

In 2019 my dream came true, and I was officially anointed as a designer at Alta Planning + Design in Ottawa, ambitiously designing and re-designing streets to be more multimodal. Wanting to invest more in my engineering skills, in 2021 I moved to WSP and spent three years learning from a wealth of engineering knowledge and contributing to dozens of projects big and small across Canada.  

I’m incredibly proud of what I’ve been able to achieve in my career so far. My efforts have been recognized by awards from the Transportation Association of Canada, the Institute of Transportation Engineers, the Association of Bicycle and Pedestrian Professionals, and the Ontario Traffic Council. I’ve contributed to three major design guidelines and trained over 600 practitioners on their use.  

When the opportunity came to join Mobycon, it truly felt like the natural next step in my career. I’ve been Dutch inspired for many years and am passionate about transforming the mobility landscape in Canada and the US – both in my individual projects as well as reforming the engineering profession overall. I am very excited to soak up even more knowledge and help clients across North America with their most challenging and pressing mobility problems.  

If you would like to discuss upcoming projects or opportunities in your community, please reach out. My colleagues and I would love to help! 

">

Matthew Pinder

Senior Mobility Consultant

“I’ve spent much of my life dependent on a car and a large part of it without one (by choice). My lived experience of both has taught me much about what it takes to design communities where car ownership and use is an option, rather than a necessity.” 

LinkedIn profileEmail