Stantec Smart(ER) Mobility team wins 2025 ITE Sandbox Competition

Stantec’s Smart(ER) Mobility team has been awarded this year’s top prize in the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Sandbox Competition. 

Each year, the ITE Annual Sandbox Competition brings together professional and student design teams with the goal of solving a mobility challenge within a specific community around the country. This year, the competition focused on communities surrounding Orlando, Florida. Teams were tasked with creating a plan and approach for a new mobility hub along the existing SunRail Commuter Line. The rail line currently operates over 61 miles and 17 stations through Volusia, Seminole, Orange, and Osceola counties and supports more than one million riders annually.

Ashley Thompson, Freddy Thomas, Frank Domingo, Rory Weilnau, Bob Williams, Rachel Young, and Mrunmayee Pawar led Stantec’s submission. Some members of this team also participated in Stantec’s previous ITE Sandbox win in 2022.

The five key considerations for mobility hub site suitability assessments from this year’s submission are:

• Safety and security: Access to and circulation within the project site
  • Analyzing pedestrian, cyclist, and vehicular crash data.
• Reliability and performance: Innovative multimodal integration opportunities to enhance operational performance and create a resilient set of modal options.
• Access and connectivity: A qualitative assessment of surrounding multimodal infrastructure and barriers to access with a quantitative understanding of nearby populations and demographics.
• Health and environment: Impacts to natural resources within and around the site and ability to connect to healthy places, such as parks.
• Investment and economy: Redevelopment opportunities and other catalysts for economic growth, such as presence of surrounding active frontages.

Learn more about what makes a mobility hub.