Is the energy transition moving fast enough to meet climate change targets and limit the damage caused by fossil fuels? Two recent reports from global consultants appear to take rather different views...and, as usual, the devil is in the detail... According to consultant Wood Mackenzie, the energy mix is changing only gradually and the world risks relying on fossil fuels for decades to come. Despite great efforts to reduce costs in renewables, electricity, zero-carbon technologies and advanced

A new degree apprenticeship for transport planners in England will be launched this autumn, having received final approval from the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education. Designed by employers, the ‘Level 6’ transport planner degree apprenticeship opens a new route into the profession and combines academic education with practical experience. People who complete the course will receive a BSc (Hons) in transport planning. Employers are now able to recruit candidates

Britain’s railways are going through a tumultuous period, with fundamental questions being asked about the way they are owned and managed. Further uncertainty is added by the political chaos of Brexit and the appointment of a new Prime Minister, who may have different priorities than his predecessor. And could a General Election be that far away?  The Rail Reform Group is a small network of rail professionals. We are non-party political and not linked to any corporate group. We&rsquo

Alleluia, alleluia, just when we thought that Brexit had virtually smothered our national capacity to think ‘other’, up pops a brave new incredible idea set within our little world of UK planning. Savour the moment: only once in a while does such a really worthwhile concept explode within our planning consciousness. Over a hundred years ago there was the commercially improbable garden city concept. Then there was the Abercrombie plan for London of 1944 offering a ‘ring’ o

Oxfordshire County Council has published cost estimates for 12 priority transport projects to support the huge housing and employment growth proposed for the county.  The total estimated cost of the projects is £1.610bn with the  most expensive being the  £570m Didcot to Oxford rail capacity improvement. Major works to increase the capacity of Oxford rail station and replace the Botley Road bridge immediately south of the station have a price tag of £291m. The

Our contributors to Data & Modelling 2019, and this year’s cohort of speakers at Modelling World, all agree that as technological advances and evolving social trends intersect to drive a period of unprecedented change, data and modelling professionals must raise their game in order to take advantage of new opportunities.  Modellers and data professionals will play a key role in ‘Deciding and Providing’ for our mobility futures. As predatory tech an

The ownership structure of Britain’s bus industry is set for a  huge shake-up as FirstGroup prepares to separate its UK Bus operations from the rest of its business empire. First’s 18 operating companies provide thousands of services a day across the country, from Aberdeen to Cornwall and Swansea to Norfolk. The operator is a major provider of services in cities such as Aberdeen, Bristol, Glasgow, Manchester, Stoke, Leicester, Norwich, Southampton, Swansea, Sheffield, Leeds, Br

The Scottish Government’s plan to give councils the power to implement a workplace parking levy has stirred up debate between supporters who see it as a new revenue stream for transport improvements, and detractors who see it is as a tax on work. Broadly the same power is already available to local authorities in England and Wales through the Transport Act 2000. Nottingham City Council is the only authority to have implemented a scheme so far and its experience has been  informing the

Transport for London has launched a demand responsive bus trial in the London Borough of Sutton. A second trial is due to be launched in Ealing later this year.  The 12-month GoSutton project sees the minibuses, with capacity for 14 passengers, operate on-demand over an area rather than a specific route. It is being operated by Go-Ahead and app-based ViaVan. Go-Ahead already operates the similar service, PickMeUp, in Oxford (LTT 12 Apr). ViaVan is the European joint venture between US-bas

The government has launched a competition for 7 to 19 year olds to design the electric vehicle chargepoints of the future, inspiring the next generation of engineers — a key aim of the modern Industrial Strategy. The ‘Eco Innovators’ competition aims to inspire young people to use their creative and engineering skills. Winners will have their designs made into real-life prototypes supported by industry experts. The ‘Eco Innovators’ competition — announced by

Modelling World 2019, 4 & 5 June, Birmingham: Supported delegate places for students Our event partner Jacobs is kindly sponsoring 10 full delegate places for students who are interested in sharing ideas about the key issues to be discussed at Modelling World. Please apply, by 28 May, with a CV and top two preferences for morning and afternoon sessions to: juliana.orourke@landor.co.uk Jacobs will ask all student ambassadors to gather at lunchtime at the event reception desk for a group ph

Right from the moment Enfield became one of TfL’s Mini-Holland boroughs back in 2014, the rumbles of dissent began. Cllr Daniel Anderson, who until recently was the council’s deputy leader, recalls being verbally abused at public meetings: “It’s fair to say we faced considerable opposition. People referred to me - and still do - as the idiot who built the cycle lanes. But I can live with that. If I didn’t believe that it was the right thing to do I wouldn’t ha

Transport for the North’s proposed Northern Powerhouse Rail project may have to be axed if phase one of HS2 goes over budget, the House of Lords economic affairs committee has warned.  The committee, chaired by Conservative peer Lord Forsyth, has just published a highly critical report into the HS2 project.  It does not believe that the full Y-network from London to Manchester and Leeds can be built with the £55.7bn budget.  “The costs do not appear to be unde

Projects submitted by local authorities were among the winning entries in a competition to identify transport schemes that should be funded if HS2 were scrapped. The ‘Great British Transport Competition’ was organised by pressure group the Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA) in conjunction with prominent critics of HS2, including the Labour peer Lord Berkeley and quantity surveyor Michael Byng. Former rail industry manager Chris Stokes, who is also a vehement critic of the Government&rs

The following edited summary of research priorities excludes all projects in the transport security, aviation, maritime, and communications themes. It also excludes the transport appraisal and strategic modelling sub-theme of analysis and science, as they were reported in LTT 26 April. Theme: Energy, technology, innovation  • ‘vehicle to grid’ charging – ongoing £30m initiative (£10m DfT, £20m Department for  Business, Energy and Industrial St

Transport for London is to start capturing depersonalised wi-fi connection data from millions of London Underground passengers’ phones from early July.       TfL ran a four-week pilot of capturing wi-fi data in 2016 and has developed the system in-house. When a device such as a smart phone has wi-fi enabled, it continually searches for a wi-fi network by sending out a unique identifier – known as a Media Access Control address – to nearby routers.  TfL sa

Aimsun has a long working history with TfL, and its software is already licensed to TfL through the city’s Strategic Modelling Framework and the Operational Modelling Frameworks, which were put in place back in 2015 and recently extended to 2020. The idea behind this current project is not only to consolidate existing models into an integrated, multi-level platform for modelling the city’s transport — with all the efficiency, consistency and cost reduction that this implies &m

Immense Simulations, the intelligent mobility software provider, today announced that it has secured $4.6m in Series A funding. The investment will aid the continued growth and development of its AI-driven ‘Simulation as a Service’ platform, which is disrupting traditional transportation modelling. The Series A funding was co-led by global technology investor, Amadeus Capital Partners, one of Europe’s most active AI investors according to Pitchbook, and Global Brain Corporatio

A multi-billion pound investment in rail-based transportation for the Glasgow conurbation has been called for in the final report of the Glasgow Connectivity Commission. Glasgow City Council’s SNP leader Susan Aitken appointed the Commission in 2017 under the chairmanship of David Begg, a transport economist who was the City of Edinburgh Council’s Labour transport committee convenor in the 1990s. The Commission’s first report published in December made recommendations on the

Transport for London should introduce a distance-based road charging scheme, initially for inner and central London but potentially eventually covering the whole of the capital, a think tank has said.   TfL has already said that it is exploring a “next generation road user charging” system as a way of managing road traffic demand and raising funding. Its current business plan describes charging as a “key proposal” in the mayor’s transport strategy to achieving

The plan to build a third runway at Heathrow Airport cleared a legal hurdle last week as the High Court dismissed judicial review challenges brought by councils and environmental campaign groups.  Lord Justice Hickinbottom and Mr Justice Holgate considered five challenges against the Government’s airports National Policy Statement (NPS), which supports construction of a new north-west runway at Heathrow and associated infrastructure. The NPS is Government policy, having been approved

The Welsh Government has agreed to part-fund a Pembrokeshire bus route under its TrawsCymru banner, and says  funding could be available for routes tendered by other councils. The new T11 service began on Tuesday, replacing two previous services tendered by Pembrokeshire County Council. The Government meets 50 per cent of the cost, enabling daytime frequency to increase to hourly, six days a week. The service, branded TrawsCymru Connect, uses four vehicles and links Haverfordwest to Fishg

The gruesome saga of Crossrail and its 40 brand-new trains sitting in sidings at Old Oak Common in West London quietly rusting until 2021 at least, not to mention their nearly 500 drivers with little to do, tells us much about rail project completion dates and budgets (‘Crossrail opening: 2020 or 2021’ LTT 26 Apr). It is not good enough to say it’ll be great when it’s done and everyone will forget; this scale of incompetence must not be forgotten. It is naïve to thi

The DFT has outlined its research priorities for improving the quality of transport analysis to underpin decision-making.   The work programme includes valuing urban realm and other locational impacts of transport improvements, more coverage of active travel modes, and greater use of distributional analysis in appraisal.  Research is underway to inform revised optimism bias values for project costings.  A prototype ‘uncertainty toolkit’ to help scheme promoters asse

London’s transport  commissioner Mike Brown this week rejected calls from the London Assembly’s transport committee to resign for his part in the Crossrail saga. The committee’s new report into the project’s delayed completion and escalating cost concludes that Brown downplayed the problems in briefings given to the mayor, Sadiq Khan, last year.  Crossrail Ltd, a company wholly-owned by TfL, announced last summer that the tunnel between Paddington and Abbey Wo

The Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA) has suggested that a national bus operator of last resort could be established in Wales, to step in where there is no viable commercial market for bus operations. In its recent Improving public transport White Paper, the Welsh Government proposed giving local authorities powers to establish new municipal bus companies (LTT 14 Dec 18).  The powers are aimed at rural areas where tenders attract little or no interest from commercial operators. In

Leeds City Council is to procure a public bike hire scheme this summer, one year on from Chinese firm Ofo’s decision to abandon the launch of a dockless scheme in the city. The council wants the initial scheme to have 1,000 bikes. Procurement will commence in early summer with the intention of launching the scheme next spring. Last February the council chose Ofo as its preferred operator for a scheme focused on the city centre and surrounding area (LTT 16 Feb 18). Ofo, however, abandoned

On 13 April right-wing political magazine The Spectator published an interview with chief secretary to the Treasury, Liz Truss, in which she made a passing reference to the HS2 high-speed rail project that generated a significant amount of ‘follow on’ media interest in other publications. “Might she be tempted to save money by abolishing HS2?” her Spectator interviewee asked, adding that: “Truss had previously hinted that the troubled £56bn high-speed rail pro

Businesses in the North East are being invited to apply for funding totalling £80,000 for projects boosting take-up of electric vehicles. The Electric Vehicle Innovation Accelerator is a new programme led by the Innovation SuperNetwork, which brings together more than 50 partners and 5,000 businesses in the North East, and the utility firm ENGIE. As part of the Go Ultra Low North East campaign, the Electric Vehicle Innovation Accelerator is seeking ideas that reduce the costs and complex

Modelling World, now in its 14th year, is the UK & Europe's best attended, longest-running and biggest conference / annual exhibition for transport and pedestrian modelling professionals, advisory and strategic modellers, data scientists and transport economists. In 2019, we will be introducing an afternoon session, prior to the main conference, to explore the implications and potential of Digital Twins. It will be led by Mark Enzer, Chair, Digital

A software tool has been developed for estimating the  impact road and public transport investments have on property values.  The Government’s National Infrastructure Commission commissioned the Institute for Fiscal Studies to develop the Property Value Uplift (PVU) tool. The IFS says the tool’s results  “can be considered the best short-run estimates available given existing data and the timescale of the project, and an excellent starting point for future anal

Transport for London expects the capital’s bus patronage to fall 2.6 per cent this year as the bus operating subsidy rises 12.8 per cent to a record £722m.   TfL’s central budget forecast is for 2.155 billion bus passenger journeys in 2019/20, down from a forecast 2.213 billion in 2018/19.  This would continue the steady decline seen in recent years: patronage fell from 2.314 billion in 2015/16 to 2.262 billion in 2016/17, and to 2.247 billion in 2017/18. “Th

The Scottish Government is considering a request from bus operators for additional funding  to cover a shortfall of at least £6.4m in the budget for concessionary fares reimbursement in 2018/19.   Transport secretary Michael Matheson met with representatives of the Confederation of Passenger Transport Scotland last week to discuss the matter.  Matheson had earlier revealed to the Scottish Parliament’s rural economy and connectivity committee that the demand for reimb

On 24 March The Manchester Evening News published a lengthy analysis of the allegedly parlous state of the bus network in the Greater Manchester conurbation, describing it in the article’s headline as “patchy, expensive and nonsensical”. “The choice between walking a long or risky route in the dark, getting a taxi, being late or not going out at all will ring true for thousands of Greater Manchester bus passengers,” the paper said after detailing the travails suffe

The West Yorkshire Combined Authority is pressing the DfT for answers as to why some key roads in the conurbation have been omitted from the Major Road Network.  MRN?designation for a road?is significant as it opens up the opportunity for highway authorities to bid for funding of improvements from the DfT’s new National Roads Fund, which commences next April.  Alan Reiss, WYCA’s director of policy, strategy and communication, told the area’s transport committee last

We’re seeing these developments on the ground now, changing the way people travel. Sometimes it’s trial on a small scale with local introductions of new services across a limited area. The flexible on demand driven bus service in launched by Arriva started in an area of Sittingbourne just 4 miles wide and 6 miles long. A single bus route converted by TransDev to ‘pay for how far you travel’ measured by Bluetooth beacons. One Royal Mail depot trialling electric cargo trike

In the ‘frequently asked questions’ section of Derby City Council’s web pages for the A52 Wyvern transport improvement scheme, the question is posed, ‘How did the scheme get to this stage?’ Last week city councillors reflected on a slightly different question, namely, ‘How did the scheme get into this state?’, as they considered the findings of an audit report into the troubled project. When complete, the road scheme is expected to improve travel condit

Northamptonshire County Council is urging transport secretary Chris Grayling to block proposals for two new strategic rail freight interchanges (SRFI) on land south of Northampton.  The Planning Inspectorate is currently holding an examination  into the Development Consent Order (DCO) application for the Northampton Gateway SRFI. The hearing is due to end on 9 April.  The separate Rail Central application is at an earlier stage, with an examination of the DCO application due to

Leicester City Council has signed a partnership agreement with Santander for a bike hire scheme. An invitation for bike hire operators to submit bids will be published next month, with the scheme due to start at the end of this year. The scheme – comprising 500 bikes at 50 docking stations – will cover the city centre and surrounding neighbourhoods, including railway and bus stations, Leicester Royal Infirmary, university and college campuses, major workplaces and sports facilities.

The Big Bike Revival – a project that aims to help people get their unused bikes back on the road – is to take place for the fifth consecutive year. The DfT is giving the charity Cycling UK £1m, double last year’s amount, to stage events across England.  The project offers free cycle checks, maintenance advice and tips on how to get cycling, along with training events to get people cycling again or for the first time. Cycling UK targets people on low incomes, those

Councils in southeast Wales have criticised the Welsh Government’s plan to introduce new bus powers of enhanced partnerships and franchising, saying existing bus powers are adequate.  The Government’s Improving public transport White Paper (LTT 14 Dec 18) proposes giving Welsh councils enhanced partnership and franchising powers that English authorities already have access to via the Bus Services Act 2017. A Public Transport Bill is expected to be published by the Welsh Governm

Welsh finance minister Rebecca Evans has admitted she has not yet discussed with First Minister Mark Drakeford how the proposed M4 Relief Road round the south of Newport could be funded. The controversial project is estimated to cost £1.4bn, and some Assembly Members believe the actual cost would be significantly higher. Evans replaced Drakeford as finance minister in December, after Carwyn Jones stepped down as First Minister. The report of the M4 relief road public inquiry was delivered

Liverpool City Region mayor Steve Rotheram is setting up a commission to explore the idea of a new rail station in Liverpool city centre to accommodate HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR) services. The mayor said Liverpool Lime Street would not be able to cope with the extra services that the two proposed major rail projects would bring to the city.  The commission will be chaired by Professor Denise Barrett-Baxendale MBE, the chief executive of Everton Football Club. Sub-national tra

The removal of a large roundabout in Waltham Forest, north-east London, marks the final phase of the borough’s Mini Holland programme. Waltham Forest was one of three outer London boroughs – along with Kingston upon Thames and Enfield – to receive funding from the then Mayor of London Boris Johnson in 2014 to create cyclist and pedestrian friendly routes. A new T-junction, with signalled crossings for pedestrians and cyclists, and bus interchange (pictured above) has replaced

The estimated outturn cost of the Wednesbury to Brierley Hill Midland Metro extension has jumped by £47m to £449.5m, the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) has said. The 6.7-mile light rail line will run from the existing Wolverhampton-Birmingham line at Wednesbury to Brierley Hill in the south, via Dudley town centre and the Waterfront/Merry Hill retail/business area. Just over four miles of the route will be on a disused rail alignment and about two-and-a-half miles will be o

Peninsula Transport,  the shadow sub-national transport body (STB) for the south-west of England, has outlined the road projects being considered for submission to the Government’s Major Road Network and Large Local Majors funding streams. The Government has asked STBs to submit their investment priorities this summer for the first five-year period of the National Road Fund (2020/21-2024/25).   Peninsula Transport covers five  local transport authorities: Somerset, Devon,

On 5 March the chairs of two House of Commons select committees, Lilian Greenwood (the Labour chair of the transport committee) and Neil Parish (the Conservative chair of the environment, food and rural affairs committee), co-authored a ‘Red Box’ column in The Times which asserted that it is: “Time we taxed cars in proportion to how polluting they are. “The current vehicle tax system should be made much fairer through reflecting each vehicle’s individual contributi

Eleven London councils have secured funding for projects to make their streets more people-friendly. The Mayor of London and Transport for London (TfL) is providing a total of £53m in the second phase of its Liveable Neighbourhoods programme. Seven boroughs were awarded a total of £33m towards phase one projects in 2017.  TfL received 22 bids for phase two funding. The winning bids comprise a range of projects designed to cut rat running, make junctions safer, implement new wal

The outcome of a hearing into a community transport provider’s use of Section 19 and Section 22 permits will hinge on whether the services provided are “exclusively” non-commercial. The decision by Welsh traffic commissioner Nick Jones will be of interest to community transport organisations and bus operators around Britain eager for greater clarity on how the permits can and cannot be used. At the end of the one-day hearing this week, Jones reserved judgment on Accessible Ca

Proposed Sweeping reforms to Britain’s complex system of rail fares will allow local politicians to maximise the benefits of devolved rail powers, says the Rail Delivery Group. The RDG has just published its proposals to reform rail ticketing following a consultation held last year.   A two-stage approach to reform is proposed. First, the Government, industry and other stakeholders would work together to replace the outdated Ticketing and Settlement Agreement (TSA) with a new set of

On 22 February former transport secretary Andrew Adonis painted a dire picture of the post-Brexit landscape for transport vehicle manufacturing in the UK in The New European magazine. “Honda this week gave its 3,500 staff the same notice of closure – two years – as the UK gave of its intention to leave the EU,” he began. “Two years seems to be the going rate for deliberately planning an economic and social catastrophe. It takes much longer to build afresh. Witness t

Local authorities in Greater Manchester plan to introduce a charging clean air zone covering the whole conurbation but want the Government to provide at least £116m of grant  to minimise the negative impact on residents and businesses.  The councils’ preferred option for achieving compliance with illegal concentrations of nitrogen dioxide includes a Greater Manchester-wide charging clean air zone (CAZ) implemented in two phases. From 2021 it would cover  buses, taxis

The Office for Low Emission Vehicles has awarded more than £6m to 17 local authorities across England to help fund the installation of almost 300 rapid chargepoints and 46 fast chargepoints for use by taxis and private hire vehicles.  The biggest award goes to Transport for Greater Manchester, which will receive £1.8m for 160 rapids. Other awards are: • Bath and North East Somerset Council: £412,500 for ten rapids  • Brighton and Hove City Council:  

Last year, MTR Corporation signalled its clear intention to develop opportunities under its Rail + Property model with the appointment of John Robinson, a speaker at the Rail Stations and Property Summit on February 27, as Head of Property for the European business. MTR Europe already runs rail services in Sweden through MTR Nordic, and has set the tone of its ambition by launching MYHeadsapp this week, a new travel app that sends personalised public transport updates to travellers in Stockholm

Hostility towards the HS2 project within the Cabinet is growing, according to media reports this week. Channel 4’s Dispatches programme, ‘HS2: The Great Train Robbery’, reported a Government source claiming ministers were “increasingly minded to kill-off” the project. One option being considered was only to build the London-West Midlands leg, it said.  Meanwhile, The Spectator quoted an unnamed minister saying: “In the next Tory leadership contest the w

Lancashire County Council has deferred a decision on raising bus station charges to allow further talks with operators.     The council’s cabinet was to have considered the plans this month but the paper was withdrawn at the last minute. A council spokesman told LTT: “We deferred this item while we look again at these proposals. Our aim is to make the charges the same for all county council-owned bus stations in Lancashire, rather than the current system where these vary.&

The DfT is consulting on creating a new pay-as-you-go (PAYG) zone for rail travel in the south-east of England.  PAYG systems automatically charge the fare for the journey without needing the customer to buy a ticket.  The system already operates in London through Oyster and contactless ticketing, and the DfT has provided Transport for the North with £150m to develop a multi-modal PAYG programme for the north of England. It has also agreed with South Western Railway to develop

Suffolk County Council will lose £77.5m of DfT grant after the council scrapped plans for a new road crossing of the River Orwell in Ipswich, saying it is unaffordable.  The then chancellor George Osborne gave Suffolk the grant towards the £96.6m Upper Orwell Crossings project in March 2016. The award from the DfT’s  £475m Large Local Majors Fund raised eyebrows because no councils had been invited to bid to the funding pot at that stage. It was widely regarded

Advances in technology may provide new opportunities in metropolitan railway finance, says Joseph Potvin, Executive Director, Xalgorithms Foundation It is common knowledge that commercial and residential properties within an easy walk of metropolitan train stations are in relatively greater demand, which tends to be reflected in their significantly higher lease and sale values. This mobility premium has long been the basis for so-called Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) initiatives.&nbs

Zipcar, a company that helped define the sharing economy, has released the findings of its 2018 Impact Report. For the first time, the report comprehensively captures key findings gathered over Zipcar’s eighteen years of mobility leadership. The findings, combined with objective third-party research, offer tangible evidence that car sharing continues to provide both members, and the cities they live in, with significant and distinct social and environmental benefits, at a time when new mob

Shared mobility modes have great potential to address congestion and poor air quality challenges, but the practical delivery of an integrated shared mobility strategy is complex. The Shared Transport Masterclass on February 22 will bring together operators, local authorities and potential mobility users to take the first steps in creating a practical framework, based on 'mobility pledges', that can guide the set-up for successful shared mobility. The mobility pledges are rooted in work tha

Between 31 May 2018 and 31 July 2018, the Department for Transport held a 'Call for ideas' in respect of rail market-led proposals (MLPs); essentially a call for proposals that were 'financially credible without government support'. There was a strong response to this call for ideas, with the department receiving 30 submissions, although DfT has not yet commented on the relative merits of these. An MLP is defined as 'a project promoted by the private sector which addresses an opportunity not ne

Waltham Forest council has launched a £20,000 fund to help local community projects encourage more active travel.   Organisations can bid for up to £2,500 from the Community Walking and Cycling Fund to deliver projects with residents in the London borough over this spring and summer.  The council hopes the fund will lead to more community led guided walks or rides as well as bike maintenance classes for community groups.  Funding will come from the £27m Mini H

A project is underway to explore the possibility of re-opening a rail station at Soham in East Cambridgeshire. The new station would help to reconnect the town with the Ipswich to Peterborough line, as well as help improve prospects for economic growth, jobs and investment in the area. The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority has commissioned Network Rail to assess the viability of re-opening the station.  The early design work factors in the potential for a second platform

On 19 January the lead story on the front page of The Times informed readers that they could soon be charged “£1,000 to park at work” because “motorists face new charges as councils prepare plans to tackle pollution”. After explaining that: “A workplace parking levy is being considered by at least ten councils in England and Scotland to reduce traffic and pollution and to raise money for public transport”, The Times’ story then led with strong cri

Transport for the North has published the final version of its strategic transport plan (STP), setting out proposals for tens of billions of pounds of investment in the North’s transport infrastructure over 30 years. But it admits the plan’s vision will not be realised without major reforms to how transport is funded.  The STP identifies a funding requirement for strategic transport of around £60bn-70bn (current prices) during the period to 2050. TfN describes this as &ld

The end of 2018 and beginning of 2019 have seen a host of consultations, reports and inquiries into why it’s so necessary to boost walking and cycling levels; both through securing long-term investment and fully integrating quality cycling and walking infrastructure with public transport, homes and work. First, the Department of Health and Social Care launched its ‘Prevention is better than cure' vision, which specifically mentions the need to 'coordinate transport, housing, educat

A few years ago, Future Systems Catapult and Grimshaw Architects ran a competition to ask ‘What new civic function might a rail transportation hub play in the next 10-25 years?’ Participants were asked how station operators could dynamically re-direct travellers around disruption, how neighbouring businesses could be increasingly integrated with station environments, and what the service function around urban, suburban and community rail stations would be. Such is the time lag betwe

A new national planning framework is urgently needed to place public transport, rather than car-based “low density sprawl”, at the heart of policy for new developments, says a new report by the Urban Transport Group. This would enable the “agglomeration” of economies – where firms benefit from close proximity to each other – and meet housing demand without making congestion and air quality worse, according to The Place To

Transport for London is to procure a data as a service (DaaS) contract to improve real-time understanding of how the capital’s road network is being used.  “Real-time (less than 60 seconds latency) journey time and speed data will enable TfL to generate information relating to delay/congestion and journey time reliability,” says a prior information notice (PIN) issued to  alert the market to an upcoming  tender exercise, due to start in the spring. “Data

Major improvements to Greater Manchester’s transport networks will play a vital role in supporting the conurbation’s spatial development over the next 20 years, according to the area’s new draft spatial plan. The revised draft Greater Manchester Spatial Framework includes two major ‘development corridors’ to improve the north of the conurbation’s socio-economic fortunes. These will require hundreds of millions of pounds of investment in roads and public trans

New roads, bus rapid transit corridors, tram-trains, and light rail extensions all feature in the list of projects to be developed over the next five years to support Greater Manchester’s growth.   Transport for Greater Manchester’s draft delivery plan for 2020-2025 says business cases will be prepared for projects including:  • extending the Atherton branch of the Leigh-Salford-Manchester busway westwards to Wigan • a new road linking the M61 to the new A49 li

Eurotunnel has threatened the Government with legal action over its decision to award contracts to three ferry companies for additional services as part of planning for Brexit on 29 March. The DfT awarded contracts for additional roll-on/roll-off freight services to Brittany Ferries, DfDS and UK start-up Seaborne Freight just before Christmas. Services will operate from the ports of Ramsgate, Portsmouth, Poole, Plymouth, Felixstowe and Immingham. The Government says the services are necessary t

Rail stations are changing, as any traveller who uses Birmingham, Sheffield, London St Pancras or London Bridge stations, will clearly see. They don't feel like stations. They feel like upmarket retail malls and grand food courts with trains (and buses, bikes and taxis) added, imposing city gateways, art exhibits, pianos and, increasingly, the centrepieces of new communities and developments. Stations' evolving role as new 'city centres' is driving development activity, growth and revenue. Gl

The action plan to turn Crewe railway station into an ‘HS2 hub’ is being refined by Cheshire East Council following a consultation with local residents, landowners and businesses. The hub station will support regeneration for the town and wider region, says the council. The consultation, which ended last month, was carried out to help develop the key planning document for the hub.   As part of the government’s high-speed rail line (HS2) plans, Crewe would link with Greate

England’s sub-national transport bodies (STBs) will prepare prioritised lists of council bids to two DfT funding streams for major road improvements.  The improvements will be funded from a chunk of the new National Roads Fund that is being created by ring-fencing Vehicle Excise Duty revenues in England. The fund, to be launched in April 2020, will be worth £28.8bn in the first five years (2020/21-2024/25). The vast majority will be allocated to the Highways England network but

Further cuts to bus routes  in inner and central London may be necessary to reduce unsustainable levels of subsidy, Transport for London has said. TfL’s new business plan forecasts that the operating deficit on the capital’s bus services will rise from £638m in 2017/18 to  £723m in 2020/21.  “This will be the highest annual bus subsidy in our history and represents an increase of more than 25 per cent since 2015/16,” it says, blaming the rise

There is strong private sector interest in delivering new rail links to Heathrow Airport from the west and the south, consultants have told the Government.  The DfT appointed consultants Agilia and Nichols to hold market sounding exercises on both projects last summer. The western rail link is the more advanced of the two. The project involves building a four-mile line to connect Heathrow to Slough and Reading and beyond. From the west, the line would leave the Great Western Main Line bet

LTT’s office is never awash with festive gifts in the run-up to Christmas so we were intrigued this year to receive a ‘limited edition’ calendar of international toll road photographs from RBconsult Ltd (aka Robert Bain).  As an occasional contributor to LTT, readers may be familiar with Rob. An ex-modeller who subsequently moved into financial services (Standard & Poor’s), he established RBconsult ten-years ago with a focus on reviewing road and rail projections

I recently attended a course on behavioural economics (run by Anthony Tasgal on behalf of the Chartered Institute of Marketing) and of all the principles discussed the one that stuck in my mind was the ‘power of context’. What occurred to me was that while we are aware that context is important in the transport world, this is not acted upon as a matter of course, with the key considerations being journey time, cost, maybe comfort and perhaps personal characteristics such as age, gend

On 17 December the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme Panorama devoted half an hour to a highly critical analysis of the proposed HS2 high-speed rail network between London, Birmingham and then further north to Leeds and Manchester. After initially focusing on the allegation that the Government’s budget for the first phase of HS2, between London and Birmingham, is wildly unrealistic and will actually cost many billions of pounds more than the current official estimate, Panorama

London’s business community will have to pay up to £1.3bn more towards the cost of Crossrail as the Government raised the project’s budget to £17.6bn this week. The financial package agreed with mayor Sadiq Khan could also delay the Crossrail 2 project. Transport minister Andrew Jones told MPs the project’s funding envelope had risen by £2.8bn, from £14.8bn to £17.6bn. He also revealed that the plan to open the central tunnel section next autumn &

A £15.4m plan to improve the public realm in front of York’s railway station has moved forward, with councillors approving the submission of a full planning application. The project includes removing the Queen Street Road Bridge that carries the city’s inner ring road and rebuilding the road at grade. The Victorian bridge was built when trains used the lines through to the old railway station, and so has been redundant since the 1960s. Bus stops and taxis pick-up/drop-off wil

HS2 lines to central London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds should all be axed, with the project’s purpose reduced to a capacity relief scheme between Old Oak Common and Crewe, a peer has told MPs. Labour peer Lord Berkeley wrote to every MP this week saying the Government will find it impossible to deliver the whole project, from London to Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, within the official funding envelope of £55.7bn (2015 prices). He says ministers face three choices for the

A four-route bus rapid transit network for Cambridgeshire could be delivered over the next seven years, under plans of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority and the Greater Cambridge Partnership (GCP).  The network, dubbed CAM, would feature surface routes and  a tunnelled section in the inner city and city centre. A map shows  routes radiating from Cambridge to serve Cambourne to the west, Waterbeach to the north, Newmarket Road and Mildenhall to the east, and t

Proposals for a light rail network serving Leeds and the wider conurbation have been published by the West Yorkshire Combined Authority. It wants the system up and running in time for HS2 reaching the city, supposedly in 2033.  Alan Reiss, WYCA’s director of policy, strategy and communications told councillors: “Based on analysing the evidence around the current and forecast levels of demand, especially into Leeds city centre, by the time of HS2 opening in 2033 there is a need

Transport for London was already facing unprecedented financial challenges before the news came this summer that the opening of the central tunnel section of the Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) between Paddington and Abbey Wood would be delayed from December until next autumn, and that additional cash was needed to complete the project.  A combination of the ending of the Government’s revenue grant, which had been worth £876m four years ago, the fares freeze imposed by mayor Sadiq K

Hire schemes for electric scooters could be one of the next urban mobility innovations to hit the UK, according to shared transport association CoMoUK. E-scooter hire schemes already exist in other parts of the world, including the United States. They operate on similar principles to public bike hire schemes. US e-scooter app-based sharing firm Bird is running a trial on private land this month in East London. Escooters run on battery power, with users pressing a button or using a ‘twist

“Why build HS2 for £403m per mile when a road costs £10m per mile?” motoring journalist Mike Rutherford asked rhetorically in Auto Express magazine on 18 November. “With HS2 – the proposed alternative to normal trains, cars, buses, coaches and planes – normality goes out the window. “The crackpot project has barely begun, yet we’re already seeing financial anomalies, lack of logic and annihilation of the homes/communities in its path,”

Tower Hamlets Council is making over £120,000 available to community groups, schools, local businesses and housing associations who want to in reducing air pollution in the east London borough. To be eligible for funding, projects must be related to either reducing air pollution emissions, reducing air exposure to pollution or increasing awareness of air pollution; be directly relevant to actions in the council’s Air Quality Action Plan (AQAP); have a measurable impact; and have wid

Covered cycle parking has been created at Dundee Railway Station. The 120-space cycle park, which is owned by Network Rail and maintained by ScotRail, is located to the north west of the railway station next to the car park. Access to the free facility, which is covered by CCTV, is via automatic doors. It was designed by Jacobs and Nicoll Russell Studios and was built by Tayside Contracts.  The £400,000 project was financed by Dundee City Council, TACTRAN and Abellio ScotRail. 

Suffolk County Council  is grappling with a major funding gap for the Upper Orwell Crossings project to improve road access in Ipswich. The project comprises two new bridges and refurbishing a third. It is intended to relieve east-west routes and the A14 across the Orwell Bridge, as well as open up development land.  The estimated cost was £96.6m in 2015 and the Government pledged £77.5m to the project in March 2016 from the £475m Large Local Majors Fund. This  

A proposed new bypass in Northamptonshire has been shelved after the South East Midlands Local Enterprise Partnership (SEMLEP) withdrew its funding for the scheme. The proposed dual carriageway A509 Wellingborough Development Link phase one, formerly known as the Isham bypass, is part of a wider plan to improve the A509 between the A14 south of Kettering and the A45 south-west of Wellingborough.  Northamptonshire has spent £2.9m developing the phase one scheme and estimates that con

The Welsh Government will give the National Assembly of Wales a binding vote on the controversial M4 Relief Road early next month. In a separate development, the UK Government said in its Budget last week that it would consider raising the Welsh Government’s borrowing cap by £300m at the next spending review to enable delivery of the road. Welsh finance secretary Mark Drakeford welcomed the prospect of a higher borrowing limit but said a decision on uses for the borrowing should be

The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority is drawing up plans to reorganise transport delivery arrangements in the area. A reorganisation is seen as necessary to support Conservative mayor James Palmer’s ambitions for a number of big transport investments, including the bus-based CAM system (see opposite) and road and rail improvements. Combined authority transport director Chris Twigg said a review of the area’s client-side transport capabilities by consultant Arup ha

The Government has loaned the mayor of London £350m to help meet additional costs of the Crossrail (Elizabeth Line) project.  The project’s funding envelope of £14.8bn was breached this summer when the Government confirmed £590m of extra funding: £300m for Crossrail Ltd works and £290m for Network Rail works (LTT 03 Aug). The £300m of Crossrail Ltd works is being funded 50/50 by the DfT and Transport for London.  The new £350m loan will

The City of London Corporation has backed Transport for London’s plan to reduce bus services in the Square Mile. The changes are part of a wider shake-up that will cut bus mileage in inner and central London by nine per cent. Bus numbers in the Square Mile will be cut by 5 per cent. The City says this will reduce congestion and improve air quality and road safety.  The number of buses crossing London Bridge will reduce by 11.5 an hour in each direction, and the number using Bishopsg

Everyone needs transport to move around and to access everyday needs, but for each individual those needs are different, and they change over time and space: herein lie the seeds of inequalities in transport. In light of the current DfT review on transport and inequality, it is important to estimate the nature and scale of transport inequalities in Great Britain and how this impacts on quality of life, and then to discuss the implications in terms of transport investment and subsidy decisions.&n

New innovations can pave the way to smarter mobility on better quality roads and footways, offsetting the impact of funding cuts. This is one of the chief findings of a new report by the Local Government Technical Advisers Group (LGTAG).  The report says that “new techniques and low cost interventions” can help ensure the efficient repair of roads in England. The DfT’s local highway maintenance funding for English authorities is about £1bn a year, which is matched b

Prevention is a vital health topic for government and the health sector – and it’s also the focus of a new public health vision document, launched this week by Health Secretary Matt Hancock. The 'Prevention is better than cure' vision, which sets out how we can use policy, new technology, workplace strategies and the power of local communities to prevent worsening health, will also be a key focus for the Public Health & Sustainable Transport Summit to be held on 27 March 2019 in

Leicestershire County Council will cut £400,000 from its budget for supporting bus services while allocating the same amount to mitigating the impacts of HS2 construction in the county. The council spends about £2.3m a year on supporting passenger transport, and says some services receive £17 of subsidy per passenger journey. Last week the cabinet agreed to adopt a draft Passenger Transport Policy and Strategy (PTPS), which will save about £400,000 a year, as required un

Paul Hammond, global practice leader for economics at Mott MacDonald, an event partner for Smarter Travel LIVE!, echoed the calls from Mayors Rotherham and Burnham for better integrated transport infrastructure across the North, and is ready to support delivery. 'As many of the presenters at Smarter Travel LIVE! pointed out, the challenges and solutions are myriad and should not be seen in isolation. Active travel, for example, is a key aspect of a healthy community and an integral part of the

In the run-up to the publication of expressions of interest for the future Oxfordshire Strategic Traffic Model (OSM) on October 23, Smarter Travel LIVE! hosted a workshop session with Oxfordshire County Council, innovation hub MoBox and Oxford-based im23, the smarter mobility agency, to outline new ways for local authorities and the tech community to collaborate. In a first for UK local authorities, Oxfordshire County Council is using its OSM procurement to demonstrate how to leverage innovation

Liverpool City Region's Mayor, Steve Rotheram, speaking at Smarter Travel LIVE!, last week, referred to the Office of Road and Rail’s report into a summer of rail chaos which found “systematic failures from government, Network Rail and the rail operators” leading to collapsed services and missed chances to avoid disruption. “Can you honestly imagine chaos on that scale being allowed to happen in London and the South East without major government intervention,” he as

The mobility options on offer to meet users’ personal travel needs have significantly diversified over the last few years. While the traditional analogue options of walking, driving or cycling with your own car or bike, or using a timetable and catching a fixed route bus or train still exist, they are now augmented (and in some cases are being replaced) by digital ways to identify, book and use a much wider range of transport modes, including those adopting very different, and much more fl

Leeds City Council is set to introduce a Clean Air Charging Zone (CAZ) across more than half the city in January 2020. The worst polluting buses, coaches and HGVs that fail to meet the council’s minimum emissions standard will pay a £50 daily charge. A Leeds City Council spokesman told LTT: “Our proposals are that the worst polluting taxi and private hire vehicles that don’t meet our minimum emissions standard would only be required to pay £12.50 a day or alternati

Stockholm’s congestion charge scheme has proved remarkably effective at suppressing traffic levels and encouraging a shift to other modes of transport in the ten plus years since its launch. After initially facing widespread public opposition, it now has majority support, even among those who regularly pay the charge. One of the scheme’s architects, director of the Stockholm City Transport Administration Jonas Eliasson, vividly recalls the uproar around its launch in 2006: “It

The Government is setting up a central payment system that drivers will use to pay charges for entering Clean Air Zones across England. Ministers’ decision to set up a national system follows months of talks with local authorities planning to introduce charging CAZs. Some authorities, such as Birmingham, had wanted to run the payment system themselves.  The DfT outlined its plans to  LTT this week. “Central government is developing a central payment and enquiry function t

Compensating train operators for disruption during engineering is a routine activity for Network Rail. Every operator is eligible, even those that will directly benefit from the work being done. Meanwhile, when unplanned line closures occur, passengers can receive compensation for the consequential delays. Highways authorities, on the other hand, are not obliged to make any compensation payments to road users, regardless of the scale of delays caused by roadworks.  Could these polar opposi

Network Rail has agreed terms with Telereal Trillium and Blackstone Property Partners for the sale of its commercial estate portfolio. Proceeds from the £1.46bn transaction will be used to fund the railway upgrade plan. Telereal and Blackstone will hold equal ownership stakes and intend to be long-term owners of the estate. Telereal will oversee the day-to-day property management of the portfolio. Both parties say they will adopt ‘tenants first’ approach, cemented in a tenant

Transport for the North wants a five-year funding envelope for strategic road and rail projects, which it would choose how to allocate. It is also exploring how it can increase overall funding levels, with one idea being to devolve Vehicle Excise Duty.   A discussion paper setting out the case for TfN taking control of the North’s strategic road and rail budgets was presented to the sub-national transport body’s board meeting in Sheffield this week.    The paper warn

The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority’s plan for a new rapid transit system funded by land value capture have been called into question in the final report of the Cambridge & Peterborough Independent Economic Review. The review, chaired by the economist Dame Kate Barker, was commissioned by James Palmer, the elected mayor of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority. Palmer is championing plans for a rapid transit network for the county. Consultant Steer

The Government should use a portion of the new National Roads Fund for local road maintenance, the National Infrastructure Commission has said. The National Roads Fund will be launched in April 2020 by  ring-fencing Vehicle Excise Duty in England.  Ministers originally proposed that all the funding would be ringfenced for Highways England but the DfT has since announced that a portion of the funding will be used for improvements to the Major Road Network of the most important local a

Dockless bike hire operator Mobike has carried out its threat to withdraw from Manchester and is reducing its operating territory in London, though the company insists the latter is only a temporary measure.  The Manchester scheme was launched last July and marked the Chinese firm’s first foray into  Europe. The operation has been blighted by theft and vandalism, prompting Mobike to warn last month that the scheme could be withdrawn.  Confirming the end of the operation, J

Go-Ahead Group has reported a fell in profitability on its regional bus operations for the year ending 30 June.  Group revenues were £3.46bn, down from £3.48bn in 2017. Profit before tax was £145.7m, up from £136.8m.  UK Bus operating profit pre-exceptional items rose from £90.7m to £91.4m. The contribution from the regional bus business dropped from £47.1m last year to £45.8m, with the profit margin falling from 12.5 per cent to 11.9 p

With many commentators calling for the alleged ‘white elephant’ project HS2 to be cancelled, economics commentator Will Hutton was something of an exception in The Guardian on 2 September in calling for far more government spending on transport infrastructure, not less. “The longstanding reproach is that Britain can’t do grand projects,” he began. “Crossrail, now christened the Elizabeth line, is proof that we can. “Suddenly, a success story is being tr

New funding of more than £100m for R&D into low and zero-emission vehicles in the UK has been announced by Prime Minister Theresa May at the Zero Emission Vehicle Summit in Birmingham. The £106m funding package covers projects developing innovative green battery, vehicle and refuelling technology. The Prime Minister referred to her “ambitious mission” for the UK to become world leader in low emission technology as part of a drive to keep the country green. She&n

The government has announced £2m to support the uptake of e-cargo bikes. The funding is designed to help pave the way for electric delivery vehicles to replace older vans, improving both the environment and reduce congestion. The announcement is part of the international Zero Emission Vehicle Summit being held in Birmingham this week. The event brings together policy makers, industry experts and opinion formers from around globe to tackle carbon emissions and to explore ways to impro

Dock-based bike hire operators this week spoke of their enthusiasm to set up schemes in Greater Manchester as dockless operator Mobike said it may pull out of the area because of continuing vandalism and theft to its fleet of bikes.   Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) has already hinted that it is preparing a tender for a conurbation-wide bike hire scheme (LTT 20 Jul) and dock-based operators Nextbike UK and Serco told LTT this week they were keen to bid. Chinese-owned Mobike launch

The pace of change in the UK mobility landscape is arguably now the fastest ever. Even the arrival of the railways took a couple of decades to begin to change the face of our countryside and urban geography. Likewise the impact of the motor car, which began with driving being a very minority activity amongst the well-off for quite a long time. In contrast,the past twelve months, let alone the last few years, have seen major developments in all parts of the personal mobility sector. From shared b

Clean air zones and low emission zones, safer lorry schemes, alternative fuels, Brexit... Central and local government is presenting the road freight sector with a plateful of policy challenges, making life busy for industry bodies such as the Freight Transport Association. “The workload is certainly increasing greatly, particularly in the areas of the environment and Brexit,” says Natalie Chapman, the FTA’s head of urban policy and the South of England.  Think about the

HS2 is, in its minor way, an illustration of the corruption that besets the West (‘Politicians didn’t see adviser’s damning assessment of HS2’ LTT 03 Aug). No brown envelopes perhaps. Instead vast salaries for supporting politically sensitive decisions however stupid those decisions may be. The Times reports that 25 per cent of HS2 staff earn over £100,000 per annum for heaven’s sake. The most fundamental fraud associated with this, and most rail projects, is

In the run up to the annual ritual of outrage at the announcement of above-inflation rail fare increases (see below), the viability, or otherwise, of the HS2 high-speed rail network briefly occupied the minds of some leading media commentators. Writing in The Times on 8 August, for example, transport commentator Christian Wolmar observed that: “Every time the spotlight is focused on HS2, the project’s basic viability seems to be increasingly questioned. It has had a reputation for pr

A shared pedestrian and cycle path linking Bognor Regis to Littlehampton in West Sussex has been officially opened. The 4.5km shared cycle and walking route cost £2m to construct. The new path runs alongside the A259 and was funded by the county council and Coast to Capital Local Enterprise Partnership.  Rupert Chitty, chief executive at Coast to Capital, said: “Improving transport links has been identified as a priority in our newly-published Strategic Economic Plan – Ga

The Mayor of London is being urged to make better use of the River Thames, which is currently an underutilised transport resource running through the heart of the capital. The London Assembly Transport Committee has written to Sadiq Kahn asking him to champion the expansion of river transport services. Though passenger journeys have been increasing, the committee believes a number of issues need to be addressed to achieve the Mayor’s and the Port of London Authority’s (PLA) target

A damning assessment of the HS2 project was prepared by a Government-appointed adviser just two months before MPs passed the hybrid Bill for the phase one London-West Midlands line, a leaked report reveals.  The confidential report from January 2017 rated the project as between ‘amber-red’ and ‘red’, and said HS2 was likely to go  over budget, which could have negative consequences for spending by other departments. The project was also likely to be judged a fa

Britain’s energy regulator Ofgem is consulting on reforms to how consumers are charged for using electricity that would smooth the path to electrifying road transport. The consultation has been launched alongside a new report looking at the challenges electric vehicles pose for the electricity network. Ofgem says two principles should drive the electricity industry’s approach to facilitating electric vehicles (EVs): system costs for all consumers should be minimised by making more e

A widespread view in Parliament that London has received too much of the Government’s recent transport spend could hamper the battle to secure funds for further major schemes in the capital, Sadiq Khan’s new deputy mayor for transport has warned.   Heidi Alexander, the former Labour MP for Lewisham East, highlighted the problem in her confirmation hearing before the London Assembly’s confirmation hearings committee last month.  “From my time in Parliament, I k

The government will put up to £300m into extending the Access for All programme, making railway stations more accessible, including through step-free access. The funding commitment was announced alongside publication of the Inclusive Transport Strategy, which seeks to improve accessibility across all types of travel for those with both visible and less visible disabilities. The Department for Transport said the new measures and funding will help ensure disabled people can travel confiden

The National Grid’s annual Future Energy Scenarios report  finds that electric vehicles will will play a major role in delivering a low carbon future. Electricity demand is expected to grow significantly by 2050, driven by increased electrification of transport and heating. There could be as many as 11 million electric vehicles (EVs) by 2030, and 36 million by 2040.  In the same month, the Automated and Electric Vehicles (EAV) Act, which has now passed through Parliam

The Automated and Electric Vehicles (EAV) Act, which has now passed through Parliament, is set to be a significant step towards improving air quality, cutting congestion and boosting road safety, claims Government. The AEV Act will see a 'massive improvement' in electric chargepoint availability, and gives the government new powers to ensure motorway services are upgraded with plenty of points, and even allowing mayors to request installations at large fuel retailers in their areas. I

Researchers have published a comprehensive report on private- and public-sector big data policies affecting transport in EU countries and abroad. The travel behaviours and transport preferences of city dwellers are changing. Transport researchers and policymakers are therefore faced with numerous challenges as they strive to create efficient, safe and sustainable transportation systems, notes CORDIS, the EU Research and innovation news service. In order to address these issues, the EU

The National Infrastructure Commission has called for a shake-up of the local transport funding system in England outside London, and for the DfT to increase urban transport funding.  The NIC’s first National Infrastructure Assessment says local transport authorities should be awarded “stable, devolved infrastructure budgets”, just like Highways England and Network Rail.  “The devolved budget should comprise of five-year settlements, with fixed annual budgets

The National Infrastructure Commission is to explore how to engage stakeholders and the public at large with the topic of road pricing, saying reforms to the way we pay for road use are “inevitable”. The Commission’s National Infrastructure Assessment says  road pricing could protect motoring tax revenues. Fuel duty revenues will decline sharply if, as the Government expects, sales of low/zero emission vehicles grow rapidly.  “Reforming how road use is paid fo

With the House of Commons breaking up for the summer recess next week, opponents of HS2 will be hoping MPs find time to browse two critical reports into the project while in their holiday villas. The Government says phase one of HS2, the London-West Midlands section, will open at the end of 2026 at a cost of £27.2bn. Lord Berkeley, the former chair of the Rail Freight Group, and quantity surveyor Michael Byng disagree. This week they sent every MP two papers, one setting out why the Govern

A model for estimating the effect of transport investment on the wider economy and Treasury tax revenues could help open up a new route to financing transport infrastructure, according to the tool’s promoters.  The Greater London simulator model is intended to provide insights into the long-term social, economic, environmental and fiscal impacts of infrastructure investment. It has been developed by Swiss consultant Greenwood Strategic Advisors working with the Greater London Authori

The government should introduce new local funding  mechanisms to help local authorities raise funds for transport and other infrastructure, the National Infrastructure Commission has said.  The Commission discusses a variety of ways to raise additional  funding locally in the National Infrastructure Assessment published last week.  “Local funding for infrastructure can strengthen local accountability, sharpen the incentives for scheme designers to maximise local benef

‘Diversion factors’ and ‘elasticities’ may sound like dull jargon but they are crucial to demand forecasting, providing estimates for how transport investments and changes in fares or journey times influence people’s travel choices. Diversion factors are used in transport appraisal to estimate the source and extent of new traffic on one mode resulting from an intervention (such as an investment, improvement/deterioration of a service, fare change, or policy change

At first glance, bus stations might seem an unlikely saviour in the battle to save our town centres. Yet that’s precisely what forward-thinking councils are pinning their hopes on as they seek to stop the inexorable shift from the high street to out-of-town developments.  Bus stations are symbolic of the decline of our town and city centres. These transport hubs have all too often fallen into a state of neglect that mirrors the depressed, dilapidated areas in which they are located.

The government must start to lay the foundations now for the altered streetscape of 2050 when all cars and vans will be electric as well as mostly autonomous, argues the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) in a new report. The first National Infrastructure Assessment, published this week, sets out a long-term strategy for the UK’s economic infrastructure from 2020 to 2050. Electric vehicles will soon have the same range and be cheaper to buy and maintain than fossil fuel vehicles, t

The government has stated its aim of making all cars and vans on the UK’s roads zero emission by 2050. The sale of all new petrol and diesel cars and vans will end by 2040, as set out in the government’s Air quality plan. “By then, we expect the majority of new cars and vans sold to be 100% zero. By 2050 we want almost every car and van to be zero emission,” says the Road to Zero strategy. The government previously stated in its

The Welsh Government’s annual funding and work allocations are creating inefficiencies in the maintenance of the Government’s own roads, according to the local authorities who undertake the task. They also say traffic congestion is exacerbated by the roadworks “spike” in the last months of the financial year. Two regional agents, consisting of local authorities, look after the Government’s 1,050 miles of trunk roads, including the Welsh section of the M4. This enab

The monetised value of travel time savings often forms the most important component in the economic justification of transport projects. The DfT published the findings of a major research project into the value of time savings in 2015, conducted by the Institute for Transport Studies at the University of Leeds and consultant Arup. The values have since been adopted in appraisal.  Last year the DfT asked the same contractors to advise on a maintenance and development programme to keep the v

Wide-ranging reforms to the way active travel programmes are funded and delivered in Scotland have been recommended by a taskforce set up by Scottish transport minister Humza Yousaf. Yousaf asked Roy Brannen, the chief executive of Transport Scotland, to chair the task force   to examine ways to deliver ambitious walking and cycling projects. The group’s formation in 2016 followed decisions by two councils to remove a segregated cycle path and halt the delivery of further phases of a

A fleet of refurbished former London Underground trains will be delivered to the Isle of Wight if the Government accepts franchise operator South Western Railway’s costed plan to revitalise the island’s railway.  The Island Line between Ryde and Shanklin currently uses former Tube stock dating from the 1930s. The track and the third rail power supply is also life-expired.  South Western Railway, which is run by FirstGroup and MTR, consulted on the line’s future last

The announcement of First’s annual results on 31 May  launched an avalanche of press articles, due to the large loss and resignation of chief executive officer Tim O’Toole (‘FirstGroup’s chief steps down as annual results disappoint’ LTT 08 Jun). I frequently find myself at odds with the usual financial analysts when results are reported as often what I think is good news they think as bad news, and vice versa. In this case my initial look at the numbers led m

If any budding student of project management had the time, then Edinburgh has been the place to be for the last nine months as the inquiry into the city’s tram debacle took oral evidence from scores of witnesses. In all, the inquiry, chaired by Lord Hardie, took evidence for 59 days. The hearings came to an end last month with closing statements from legal representatives of some of the main participants. Hardie is now preparing his final report, drawing not only on the oral and written ev

On 26 May The Times’ economics editor, Philip Aldrick, called for the HS2 high-speed rail project to be scrapped to provide funds for the National Health Service, which could be in need of as much as £56bn extra a year by 2033. After briefly outlining how the NHS is likely to suffer in the future unless additional money is found from somewhere, Aldrick noted that: “Wouldn’t it be handy, then, if the Government was already spending £56bn on a white elephant project t

There are concerns in Wales that marginal bus services could be threatened by a new requirement for second-hand buses to be fitted with audio/visual next stop displays. One council transport officer said the change suddenly introduced by the Welsh Government on 1 April had “driven a coach and horses” through the agreed quality standards that are linked to payment of Bus Services Support Grant.  BSSG replaced Bus Service Operators’ Grant in Wales in 2013, with the total f

Funding is being offered to schools and local authorities in Scotland to help them create safe, traffic-free routes. The Safer Routes to School scheme is being funded by the Scottish Government and delivered by the charity Sustrans. Sustrans hopes that creating safe zones around schools will encourage children and their parents or guardians to travel to school on foot, by bike or scooter. As well as helping schools develop traffic-free zones, Sustrans plans to target further education colleges

Most of us played with Lego as children, but I was more likely to leave lines of toy cars around the house, which is somewhat ironic given my current line of work. But I still play with Lego today, as I tidy up my children's efforts when they’re not looking. But I think the two are linked in my line of work.  I like to imagine transport models in a similar way: a number of blocks that are interconnected to produce a replica of how people and goods move around our real cities. All the

How is the advent of big data influencing the way we build our models? How can Virtual Reality allow us to better visualise, and thus better understand, pedestrian experience in crowds? Driven by the necessity to develop ever larger and accurate models, Atkins' pedestrian modelling team has explored an innovative approach that involved the adoption of both traditional survey methods as well as the monitoring of WiFi-enabled devices. Virtual Reality was also adopted as a tool to aid the design pr

A bus operator that uses the easyCoach and easyBus brand is suing Shropshire Council in the High Court. The news comes as the company expands its operations with a new route between Shrewsbury and Liverpool John Lennon Airport. Shrewsbury-based TSL Ltd has the rights to use the easyBus and easyCoach brands of Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou’s easyGroup outside London. It operates several commercial and tendered local bus routes, including one under contract to Shropshire Council. Director Andre

“Pity the baffled passenger from Edinburgh, Newcastle or Leeds as the train painters get to work on yet another rebrand on the East Coast main line,” Simon Calder, The Independent’s travel correspondent, began an article entitled “Is rail doomed to fail?” on 16 May. “The average passenger will not care [what colour the trains are], so long as the train is on time, affordable and staffed by the same excellent men and women who are losing count of the number of

CAVs and MaaS will radically change the mobility landscape of the next decade. But they are not 'easy to deploy' silver bullets. The future of modelling and policy making looks set to get very interesting, says Luis Willumsen, Director, Kineo Mobility Analytics Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) and Mobility as a Service (MaaS) have been proposed as game changers in transport in the next decade. Indeed, the combination of both, a MaaS system using CAVs, will probably reduce costs by half

Over the past few months I have seen repeated references to the image of the Gartner Analytic Value Escalator, or the Gartner Analytic Continuum. I haven’t found an original reference, and the image is sometimes drawn slightly differently, but the message is always the same: adding value to data, moving from hindsight via insight to foresight, by progressing from Descriptive to Diagnostic to Predictive to Prescriptive Analytics. There’s a good version of the image here Isn’t t

Transport secretary Chris Grayling visited Yorkshire to officially open an £400m scheme to upgrade of the A1 between Leeming and Barton. Almost 70,000 drivers each day will use the new stretch of dual carriageway in Darlington. This is the sixth scheme to be completed as part of the government’s £15bn road investment programme. The A1 upgrade scheme is one of several on the journey between Newcastle and London, which is being upgraded. Other elements include: the M1 wide

Greater Manchester’s bus network could be split into five to ten large franchises, complemented by as many as 25 smaller ones, under proposals being studied by Labour mayor Andy Burnham. Transport for Greater Manchester’s (TfGM) detailed thinking on how a bus franchising system would work is set out in a questionnaire that has just been sent  to 35 local, national and international bus operators. No decision has yet been made to move to a franchising system and talks about an

The England’s Economic Heartland grouping of councils has written to transport secretary Chris Grayling voicing concerns  about the Oxford to Cambridge expressway study. EEH criticises Highways England’s engagement with stakeholders; says the objectives of the road are unclear; and calls for this summer’s announcement of a preferred corridor to be deferred.  “We appreciate that the expressway is a complex and sensitive project,” says the letter from Bucki

The Lake District National Park Authority is exploring the potential to replace car access to a popular visitor attraction with a gondola system. The idea is being explored for the Whinlatter Forest Park area, about four miles west of Keswick and close to the A66 east-west trunk road.  The forest visitor centre is a popular destination for activities such as mountain biking, walking, and its adventure play trails for children. Access to the visitor centre is via the steep single track B52

The Welsh Government is to reduce Network Rail’s role in the troubled upgrade of the Ebbw Vale line in South Wales. The upgrade will now be delivered with the help of the winning bidder for the 15-year Wales and Borders franchise operator and development partner (ODP), who is due to be announced this month. The Government has already taken the unprecedented step of negotiating the removal of the Core Valley Lines (the rail branches north of Cardiff) from Network Rail’s hands because

The West Midlands Combined Authority has an ambitious agenda to build a healthier, happier, better connected and more prosperous region in the broadest sense of ‘build’ – not just the urban fabric and infrastructure, but also in our industrial capability, community well-being and environmental resources.   When we talk about strategic transport modelling we mean modelling that connects transport forecasting to the higher-level aims outlined by the Mayor: economic pro

The DfT has declined to offer any explanation for specifying the use of the Retail Prices Index for fare increases in several future rail franchises. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) says RPI is a “very poor measure of general inflation” and any continued use of RPI should be “closely scrutinised”. The RPI ceased to be a National Statistic five years ago and is only published by the ONS for legacy reasons. However, it has now emerged that the next Wales and Bord

The Second Severn Crossing is to be renamed The Prince of Wales Bridge at a ceremony later this year, the Secretary of State for Wales, Alun Cairns has announced. The renaming of the crossing, which was opened by Prince Charles in 1996, will mark both the Prince of Wales’ 70th birthday year and the 60th anniversary of The Queen ‘creating’ him Prince of Wales at the closing ceremony of the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Cardiff in 1958 when he was nine-years-old. Alu

The Welsh Government has accused the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales of making “wholly unwarranted” suggestions that the M4 relief road plans are at odds with the  Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. The criticism of commissioner Sophie Howe features in the Welsh Government’s closing submission to the M4 Relief Road inquiry, which has been considering the Government’s favoured “Black Route”, a new 14-mile motorway around the sout

The DfT is reviewing funding arrangements for surface access improvements to airports, and asking who should own the roads and railways that serve airports – the  airports themselves, or local or national government.  The investigations are explained in a discussion document on aviation, which will be followed by an aviation Green Paper in the autumn and a new aviation strategy early in 2019. On funding surface access improvements, the DfT says:  “The aviation indust

A Labour Government would fund free bus travel for under 25 year olds – but only in parts of England that adopt bus franchising or take on the public ownership of bus services. Labour said the policy would be funded using money ring-fenced from Vehicle Excise Duty. The Conservative Government has already promised to ring-fence all VED revenues in England for a new National Roads Fund from April 2020. Labour’s free bus travel policy would only be available in areas where the local a

Government company Transport for Wales will operate Cardiff’s new bus station in another sign of the organisation’s growing ambitions.  The convoluted saga of the bus station’s delivery may now be drawing to a close, with the Welsh Government deciding to take the leasehold on the site.  The previous bus station, immediately north of Cardiff Central railway station, was closed in summer 2015 because the BBC wanted the site for its new Welsh headquarters. Cardiff Coun

Transport for Greater Manchester is to purchase more than 20 new Metrolink vehicles with funding from its share of the  DfT’s £1.7bn Transforming Cities Fund.  Of the £243m allocated to Greater Manchester, £160m will be used to deliver walking and cycling infrastructure (LTT 05 Jan) and the remaining £83m will fund additional trams for Metrolink.  The Metrolink fleet currently consists of 120 vehicles, of which 108 are required to deliver peak hour

FirstGroup is to sub-contract the operation of one of the three new Metrobus routes in the Bristol area to a community transport operator. Bristol Community Transport (BCT) was this week named as the operator of the M1 Metrobus route, connecting Cribbs Causeway to Hengrove Park via the University of the West of England and Bristol city centre. BCT will operate the route under contract to First West of England, which will operate the other two Metrobus routes directly: the M2 (Long Ashton park-

Nextbike has won the contract to operate a dock-based bike hire scheme featuring 5,000 bicycles across the West Midlands conurbation. A soft launch this summer will see about 100 bikes delivered to Birmingham, with 2,000 bikes introduced to Birmingham, Coventry and Wolverhampton in  September. A further 3,000 will  be introduced by September 2019. These will be delivered to the other four districts of Solihull, Walsall, Dudley and Sandwell, as well as supplementing the initial deploym

The Government has responded to the West Yorkshire Combined Authority about the masterplan to redevelop Leeds railway station to accommodate HS2, Northern Powerhouse Rail services, and more local services. The HS2 station will adjoin the existing station to form a T-shape. A masterplan, drawn up by parties including the city council and the WYCA, was launched last autumn (LTT10 Nov 17).  It includes plans to create a single concourse for the existing station and HS2 services, three million

Transport for Wales is hoping to electrify more than 100 miles of railway track for light rail operation for less than £500m, LTT understands. The Welsh Government has repeatedly stated that £734m is available for modernising the Core Valley Lines, but TfW is planning to retain £300m of this as contingency, in case unexpected cost increases occur. If the conversion of existing lines to light rail can be achieved for £434m or a similar amount, the contingency would be ava

A new model for forecasting the impact of transport investment on land and property values will inform the outline business case for Northern Powerhouse Rail, the project to speed up rail connections between the North of England’s biggest cities.  The Northern Property Market Model is being developed by the Institute for Transport Studies at the University of Leeds in a project funded by Transport for the North (£112,000), ITSLeeds (£77,000), West Yorkshire Combined Autho

Jon Orcutt, director of communications and advocacy at Transit Center, NYC, talks to Transport Xtra about the need for NYC's proposed congestion charging policy and why Uber and Lyft are currently a menace to the city. Jon talked with Andy Salkeld, Leicester City Council Transit Center is a national Foundation dedicated to improving public transit. We are based in New York City, specifically in Lower Manhattan, and were closely involved with the major positive changes that took place under th

A £400,000 fund to help make Scotland’s rail stations more cyclist-friendly is being offered to councils and community organisations. The Scotrail Alliance – a partnership between Abellio ScotRail and Network Rail – is offering £100,000 a year to cycle-rail projects, which must provide at least 50% match funding. The Deadline for applications to the fund is 20 April 2018. The Scotrail Alliance says the fund will contribute to its vision of providing a ‘doorst

Transport for London is cutting its operating costs at a faster rate than the decline in its operating income, and on course to make a larger operating surplus than budgeted for in 2017/18. Performance in 2017/18 up to 3 February was reported to this week’s meeting of TfL’s board. Passenger income is £87m (2 per cent) below budget, at £3.956bn versus £4.043bn. Other operating income is £55m (8 per cent) below budget, at £616m versus £671m. Total

Bus passenger journeys fell across Great Britain in 2017, according to statistics published by the DfT.  The number of passengers carried in England fell 1.8 per cent, a reduction of about 79 million journeys. Passenger journeys outside London fell 4.3 per cent and there was a 0.6 per cent fall in the capital.  Patronage in Scotland fell 2.1 per cent and in Wales 4.1 per cent.  The local bus fares index increased by an average of 3 per cent in England in 2017, with a 1 per cent

Cumbersome industry processes are preventing railway investment that would support local housing and economic growth and improve modal integration, local authorities in the south-west of England have said. One example quoted is a £5,000 cycle parking scheme at a station that was abandoned because securing rail industry permissions would have cost £20,000. In their responses to the DfT’s consultation on the next Great Western franchise (LTT 08 Dec 17), local authorities stress

The DfT is likely to make changes to its WebTAG transport appraisal guidance following this month’s release of the Treasury’s new Green Book guidance on project appraisal and evaluation, a transport economist said this week.  The Green Book provides the analytical framework for all Government departments. Many of the updates contained within the new version actually reflect advances in appraisal and evaluation that individual departments and agencies have made since the last ve

The Government’s plan to designate a Major Road Network of the most important local authority roads in England should be accompanied by a performance specification and funding for the network’s maintenance, councils and road interests have told the DfT.  The comments come in response to the DfT’s consultation on the MRN, which ends on 19 March (LTT05 Jan). The DfT has proposed an MRN of about 5,000 miles. Councils will be able to bid to the new National Roads Fund, being

The Welsh Government will whittle away at the new Wales and Borders franchise so that Transport for Wales increasingly delivers ancillary activities itself over the 15-year term. Before embarking on procuring a new operator to replace Arriva Trains Wales, Welsh ministers asked the UK Government to amend the Railways Act 1993 to allow the trains to be operated by a company owned by the Welsh Government. The UK Government declined, and Welsh transport secretary Ken Skates said in 2016 that his Go

The Treasury has rejected London mayor Sadiq Khan’s request for a proportion of Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) revenues to be devolved to Transport for London to help pay for the capital’s roads.  The Government is to ringfence VED in England for a new National Roads Fund from 2020/21 to fund Highways England and the new Major Road Network (MRN) of the most important local authority roads.  But the mayor and Transport for London say a portion of the fund should be devolved to

Network Rail expects to hear from the DfT this month about which of many rail enhancements deferred from the existing five-year control period  (CP5) will be delivered in CP6. NR’s strategic business plan documents released last month (LTT16 Feb) show many CP5 (2014/15-2018/19) schemes still await authorisation or funding.  The strategic business plan sets out Network Rail’s spending plans for control period 6, covering 2019/20-2023/24. It is based on the DfT’s stat

The Campaign for Better Transport is searching for a new chief executive following Stephen Joseph’s decision to retire later this year after 30 years in post.  Joseph told LTT he was planning to leave in October, after a handover period to his successor. Having worked for the organisation for three decades, he said now felt an appropriate time to leave. “I’ve seen far too many organisations where people have gone on for too long,” he said, noting that  sometime

Talk about transport with any of the new metropolitan mayors and one of the hottest topics for debate will probably be bus franchising. It seems that, ever since Margaret Thatcher’s 1980s Government deregulated the buses, there have been calls for some form of re-regulation. Let’s not forget that transport ministers at the time were happy to provide the climate for a free-for-all, as long as it didn’t include the streets of London. Since then, local authorities have looked wist

Property developers and landowners should be required to pay more towards public infrastructure projects at rail stations, according to Chelsea Dosad, associate director at professional service company KPMG. Speaking at Rail Stations and Property last week, Dosad said that Land Value Capture (LVC) would help make rail station developments possible in the face of limited government support. LVC would involve projects taking a share of the windfall gains received by private interests, said Dosad.

The Campaign for Better Transport has announced it is looking to appoint a new chief executive office to replace Stephen Joseph, who will be stepping down at the end of Autumn. Joseph was appointed executive director of Transport 2000 in 1988, the same year Michael Palin was appointed President, and received an OBE in 1996 for services to transport and the environment. Transport 2000 changed its name to Campaign for Better Transport in 2007. During his 30-year tenure with the charity, Joseph

A new form of developer funding for transport infrastructure looks unlikely to be applied in London because a feasibility study has concluded it is unviable for the capital. The Treasury announced last spring the formation of a task force to explore the use of a Development Rights Auction Model (DRAM) for funding major infrastructure in London (LTT17 Mar 17). The task force included representatives from Government, the Greater London Authority, Transport for London, and borough association Lond

The Welsh Government has shed light on the proposed arrangements for the transfer of the Core Valley Lines to its ownership, including a transition period when liability for “latent defects” will remain with the UK Government. Updating Assembly Members this week, Welsh transport secretary Ken Skates said: “Welsh Government, HM Treasury and Department for Transport officials are developing the process for the transfer of owners, which is purely an administrative process between

Transport for Greater Manchester plans to spend £11.5m next year exploring the case for franchising bus services.  The funding will be used to: • prepare a business case of a  franchising scheme alongside other realistic options for improving bus services • obtain a report from an independent auditor on the assessment  • carry out a public consultation on the assessment of franchising  • publish a report on the outcome of the consultation 

None of the possible reforms to the HGV road user levy will deliver noticeable benefits for society and ministers should therefore leave the existing system unchanged, the Freight Transport Association has told the DfT.  A consultation on possible reforms to the HGV levy closed at the end of January (LTT 24 Nov 17). The levy was introduced in 2014 as a way of ensuring overseas hauliers make a contribution to the costs of the UK’s roads. Domestic hauliers  pay the levy but are co

The next generation of data and modelling pioneers will be given the chance to present and exhibit at Modelling World 2018, 6th June at Edgbaston Cricket Ground, Birmingham.  Technological developments and disruptive business models will have a significant impact on how people and goods move around in coming years, and Modelling World’s aim is to help policy makers deal with uncertainty around the future of transport.   Each year, the data and modelling community gathers a

A new Institute for Government (IfG) report has targeted three key aspects of policy to improve infrastructure decision-making in the UK. Over the past year, the Institute for Government has explored how the UK can improve infrastructure policymaking in areas including transport, energy, flood defences, digital communication, waste and water. Pulling together the findings of our work, this report identifies how competing needs and perspectives can be balanced to improve three vital aspects of

The government is being urged not to jeopardise the Stonehenge World Heritage Site as proposals for a new road through the site are opened in a public consultation. The public are being asked to oppose the scheme by Stonehenge Alliance, which comprise the Ancient Sacred Landscape Network, Campaign for Better Transport, Campaign to Protect Rural England, Friends of the Earth and RESCUE: The British Archaeological Trust

Plans are being drawn up for five new stations across England and Wales, which will receive a total of £16m funding from the Department for Transport towards the projects. All the stations – in County Durham, Warrington, Reading, Ceredigion and Bristol - are due to be completed by March 2020:  Horden Peterlee in County Durham will receive £4.4m of DfT funding towards a scheme worth £10.55m. The area has low levels of car ownership, and it is hoped the station will

Cambridge is a wonderful city with a world-leading reputation for technological innovation, but it’s vital that we address our ever-increasing problems of congestion and mobility which, if not tackled, will hold back economic growth across the region. To achieve this we need to get more of our residents and visitors out of their cars and onto public transport.  People increasingly rely on getting information through their phones and they have much higher customer expectations from di

Lincolnshire county Council is looking to bring in a new contractor to complete the A15 Lincoln Eastern Bypass following Carillion’s liquidation. Carillion was awarded a £52.9m target cost contract for the 6.4-mile road in 2016 (LTT28 Oct 16).   Following Carillion’s demise last month, the council has brought in Galliford Try to ensure progress on the road continues. “While Galliford Try will be keeping things moving in the immediate future, we’ll be working

A major probe into the changing travel behaviours of young people has been published by the DfT. The DfT commissioned the report from  researchers at the Centre for Transport & Society at the University of West of England, and the University of Oxford. The research team was led by UWE’s Kiron Chatterjee. The team’s focus was the 17-29 age group but the researchers also explored how travel patterns in this age cohort change as they grow older.   The trend for young ad

Plans to extend the Metropolitan Line to Watford Junction have collapsed amid a dispute over who should pay for additional project costs.  The scheme would have featured two new stations in Watford on a disused railway alignment. The existing Metropolitan Line terminus in the suburbs of Watford would have closed.  Hertfordshire County Council originally promoted the project but the plans were beset by cost rises and delays. In 2015 the Government brokered an agreement with then Londo

All £429m of funding awarded so far through the DfT’s £475m Large Local Majors Scheme Fund has gone to projects in parliamentary constituencies with Conservative MPs who are vocal supporters of the projects.  The Government has promised six projects a contribution from the fund, which was announced by the then chancellor George Osborne in his March 2016 Budget. The fund was presented as a way of delivering projects that were too big to be paid for via the Local Growth Fun

Sustrans is inviting cities and local authorities to take part in a project to collect cycling data relating to infrastructure, travel habits, public attitudes and air quality. As an extension of its Bike Life initiative, the charity says the project will help participating cities build the case for cycling and inform planning at a local level while shaping the political and funding landscape for active travel across the UK. For example, Greater Manchester’s cycling commissioner Chr

Modelling World is the UK & Europe's longest running, best-attended and biggest annual exhibition and conference for transport and pedestrian modelling professionals.  This must-attend annual fixture is the highlight of the modelling calendar and attracts more than 300 attendees each year.  The 13th Annual Modelling World Conference & Exhibition for data and modelling professionals will return to its roots in Birmingham on Wednesday 6 June at Edgbaston Cricket Ground

The Cooperative Automotive Research Network (CARNET)* has implemented a cutting-edge simulation environment for the Barcelona Metropolitan Area in the form of The Virtual Mobility Lab. The aim of the lab is to show how it can analyse and assess the impact of smart mobility projects in Barcelona, and how the results can be extrapolated before the implementation of a pilot test. The new model will support those who make decisions on mobility policies, transport operators and new companies that are

After a dramatic decline during the financial crisis in the latter part of the last decade, the UK motor vehicle industry has made a strong recovery. November 2016 saw a 9.6% increase in the number of cars produced in the UK compared to the previous year and a record number of cars were exported during 2016 – representing 77.3% of total production. Like the rest of the manufacturing sector, the automotive industry is currently in the process of digitalisation, a journey that introduces th

Although he remained in post after the Prime Minister’s cabinet reshuffle on 8 January, transport secretary Chris Grayling has become the target of a veritable barrage of personal criticism from the media in the early weeks of 2018. On 5 January, for example, Times columnist Edward Lucas suggested that: “Chris Grayling’s gimmicks have failed rail users. The transport secretary’s decision to bail out Virgin and Stagecoach shows his inability to see what the network needs.

The National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) has invited organisations to enter a prize competition to propose how road design, traffic management and road rules and regulations should be changed to accommodate connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs).  The five best entries to the Roads for the Future competition will each receive £30,000 to develop their ideas, and the final winning entry will receive a prize of £50,000. Entries should cover one or more of three broad themes

Lancashire’s Local Enterprise Partnership has granted conditional approval to a £161m (outturn prices) new road in Preston.  The 2.7-mile Preston Western Distributor dual carriageway will connect the A583 Preston to Blackpool road at Lea with the M55 Preston to Blackpool motorway at a new junction 2 at Bartle.  Lancashire County Council says the road will open up land in north-west Preston for about 5,000 new homes and facilitate a new parkway rail station at Cottam on th

New and upgraded railways and upgrades to major road links feature in Transport for the North’s (TfN) draft transport plan released this week.  TfN, which will become England’s first statutory sub-national transport body in April, said the 30-year (2020-2050)  investment programme was “ambitious but realistic”. All the projects are subject to further development work but the programme has an estimated cost of £60bn-£70bn in today’s prices. Thi

Look at the headlines and it’s tempting to think everything is rosy for cycling in the capital: soaring volumes of trips, record numbers of hires on the Santander cycle scheme, and mayor Sadiq Khan has just pledged a 28% increase in funding for  borough cycling schemes over the next five years (LTT05 Jan). Yet Andrew Gilligan, who served as cycling commissioner to Khan’s predecessor, Boris Johnson, says the picture is a lot bleaker if you scratch below the surface. ‘He wou

The liquidation of construction and contracting company Carillion this week sent shockwaves through the transport sector, with some rival companies warning of losses because of their involvement with Carillion in joint infrastructure contracts.  Public sector officials expect Carillion’s work to continue without significant interruption, but some of the specialist subcontractors engaged by Carillion have been plunged into financial difficulties and have started to make staff redundan

The National Infrastructure Commission is exploring the transport investment needs of England’s cities outside London,  and using a new method to assess priorities.  A £90,000-£100,000 consultancy study to inform the work will get underway next week. The Commission will make its recommendations to Government in the National Infrastructure Assessment (NIA), due for release this summer.  The NICwants to explore how  available funding should be prioritised be

As government and local authorities grapple with the housing shortage, this year’s Rail Stations and Property Summit offers a timely look at how best to deliver new homes around rail stations.  The event, to be held at 15 Hatfields in London on 21 February, will explore how local authorities, the property sector and the railways can work together to enable the development and improvement of rail stations, attract funding and make new housing around rail stations work.  Rail S

The economic benefits of modernising Preston railway station are to be explored in a study commissioned by Lancashire Enterprise Partnerships (LEP). Last week the LEP approved proposals by its Transport for Lancashire committee to assess the case for transforming the station. “Specialist consultants will need to be engaged to undertake this work, which will also need to include forecasts of future passenger demand, particularly for when HS2 services begin operating in 2026.” 

A new safer route for walkers, cyclists and horse riders, connecting the villages of Okeford Fitzpaine and Shillingstone in north Dorset, has officially opened to the public. The route, known as the Little Lane Trailway, had been largely impassable for the last 30 years. The project was wholly funded by the EU’s LEADER Rural Development Programme through the Northern Dorset Local Action Group (LAG). The Little Lane Link Project secured an award of £44,200, due to

Heathrow Airport Ltd (HAL) wants to recover up to £5.8m a year from Transport for London and Heathrow Express for running trains over the airport’s rail link. The Office of Rail and Road is consulting on the proposed charge for trains using HAL’s  8.6km rail link between the airport and the Great Western Main Line at Airport Junction.  HAL’s application envisages a charge for ten years commencing on 1 January 2019. It would apply to both TfL’s new Elizab

A £300m plan to improve transport interchange facilities at Birmingham International railway station has been unveiled by Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council.  The proposed “integrated transport hub” would provide interchange between rail, high-speed rail, bus, Metro, air, cars, taxis, walking and cycling, with connections to the proposed nearby HS2 Interchange station, the National Exhibition Centre, and Birmingham Airport. The plans have been drawn up by Mott MacDona

The forecast cost of the  M4 Relief Road has increased by £190m to £1.32bn because the original proposals did not include suitable mitigation measures for Newport docks. The opening date for the road has also slipped.   The Welsh Government submitted revised plans to the road’s public inquiry just before Christmas outlining £190m of additional works at Newport docks. The Government hopes this will prompt port owner ABP to drop its objection to the scheme. ABP i

Rail patronage on London and South East services was 1.3% lower in the second quarter of 2017/18 compared with the same period of 2016/17, according to the Office of Rail and Road. This is the fifth successive quarter of decline.  GB-wide rail passenger journeys in the second quarter fell 0.4% to 424 million. Long distance passenger numbers grew 1.1% and patronage on regional operators (i.e. outside London and the South East) rose 2.0%.  In London and the South East, the South Wester

Network Rail’s new method for allocating fixed costs between train operators could prompt a renewed debate about the future of secondary routes and branch lines, the Urban Transport Group has warned. The method, developed by Brockley Consulting (LTT10 Nov 17), loads more of the industry’s fixed costs onto regional operators and freight, with a reduction in costs borne by intercity operators (see table). Network Rail has been consulting on whether to use the method to allocate fixed

Highways England is developing a national macroeconomic model to forecast the impact of proposed major road enhancements?on economic activity.  HE says the model “will be capable of informing both the strategic and economic cases for investment by producing estimates for changes in both economic activity and social welfare”. It will capture “some of the key mechanisms by which road improvements impact the economy, including raising productivity (agglomeration), enabling n

Transport for London has cut its expectations of public transport fare revenues over the next five years by £1.6bn.  The organisation’s new business plan to 2022/23, published just before Christmas, features markedly lower fare revenue projections than those in the business plan to 2021/22 published in December 2016.  The December 2016 plan projected fares revenues of £4.877bn in 2017/18. The new plan forecasts revenues for the year of £4.638bn – £

The government says key ‘A’ roads across the country could benefit from up to £100m each of funding as government releases consultation on the Major Road Network (MRN). The MRN consultation proposes that 5,000 miles of ‘A’ road are brought into scope for new funding from the National Roads Fund for upgrades and improvements.   Upgrade schemes which could be considered are bypasses, missing links between existing routes, road widening, major junction improveme

The Department for Transport has unveiled an investment of almost £200m to help improve the condition of local roads and encourage cycling, transport minister Jesse Norman has announced. The funding will be used for highways maintenance, repair potholes, developing technologies to improve highways resilience and the provision of cycle parks. The £200m includes: £46m to help repair potholes £151m for the local highways maintenance incentive fund a £500,000 com

We need to talk about freight and in particular managing road freight transport more efficiently. Heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) only accounted for 5.1 per cent of overall road traffic, doing 17.2 billion vehicles miles in 2016. But they have a disproportionate impact on the road network and other road users because of their scale and weight. For example, in busy road conditions they can take up the space of four passenger car units after their extra braking and manoeuvrability space is allowed for

The Northern, Arriva Trains Wales, ScotRail and Merseyrail franchises all make operating losses exceeding £5 per train mile before the fixed costs of running the rail network are taken into account, according to analysis for the Office of Rail and Road (ORR).  Cambridge Economic Policy Associates (CEPA) and SYSTRA  compared passenger revenues  and operating costs per train mile for every franchise using data from 2015/16. Operating costs considered were staff, fuel, rolling

Coventry City Council has given more details of its plans to pioneer Very Light Rail technology, in a report seeking £12.2m of funding for development work from the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA). The programme to develop lightweight rail vehicles and lightweight track is being promoted by Coventry City Council, Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council, the Warwick Manufacturing Group at the University of Warwick, and  supported by Transport for the West Midlands. Of the £

The DfT is understood to have asked Network Rail to find further cost savings in the next phase of the East West Railway between Bicester and Bedford, including removing capacity for new freight traffic.  The East West Rail (EWR) project will eventually re-establish a railway line between Oxford and Cambridge via Bletchley and Bedford.  There are different views about what the line’s primary purpose should be. The Greater Cambridge Partnership (including Cambridgeshire, Cambridg

Freight traffic should be switched from rail onto lorry platoons, a move that would free up capacity on the rail network for more passenger trains, the Government’s infrastructure adviser, Lord Adonis,  has said. The proposal has caused uproar in the rail freight sector, with operators said to be “hopping mad” at Adonis, the former Labour transport secretary who now chairs the Government’s National Infrastructure Commission (NIC). Operators are concerned that Adonis

The Government should cease funding for the Transport Systems Catapult if the organisation cannot articulate a clear plan for how it will deliver economic benefits to the UK, consultants have recommended. The need for a new approach at the TSC is highlighted by a report published alongside the Government’s industrial strategy last week. Consultant EY was appointed to review the catapult network andidentifies the TSC as one of three that must prepare a detailed plan of activities for the n

Such has been the rapid and pervasive growth of the ride-hailing app Uber that the word ‘Uberisation’ has entered the language as a shorthand expression for a distinctive mix of operational and working practices. Although the Uber smartphone app forms the technological basis for the company’s business, it is its ambitious and relentless worldwide growth, driven by its co-founder and former chief executive Travis Kalanick, which is the trademark feature of this Silicon Valley di

Working with the UK charity Sustrans, independent environmental consultancy Eunomia has developed a model that measures air quality benefits from reducing motor emissions due to shifting to walking or cycling and changes in personal exposure to air pollution. The model aims to support local authorities in making the case for investment in boosting walking and cycling and estimates the contribution of active travel in reducing levels of particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide – and the sub

A new publication has been released providing user guidance on using the Health Economic Assessment Tool (HEA

Business and energy secretary Greg Clark has announced that Coventry and Warwickshire will be the home of the new National Battery Manufacturing Development Facility (NMDF). The facility will receive £80m of funding from the government’s £246m investment programme for battery technology – the Faraday Battery Challenge. A part of the Automotive Sector Deal, the new centre will build on the West Midlands reputation as a locus of automotive expertise and research and deve

The government hopes that its Industrial Strategy will place the UK at the forefront of development of autonomous vehicles (AVs), artificial intelligence (AI) and innovative approaches to shared mobility services. The draft Industrial Strategy, titled “Building a Britain Fit for the Future”, outlines how the government intends to boost businesses and worker productivity through investment in the skills, industries and infrastructure of the future. The White Paper confirms governmen

A £13.4m initiative to create a driverless transport testing area based in Greenwich, south-east London, is due to be up and running by spring 2019. Loughborough University (LU), the lead academic partner, has been awarded £500,000 as part of the project to develop a research programme enabling a real-world working testbed for connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs). The Smart Mobility Living Lab: London will enable companies to trial their ideas, technology and services within co

Policies that seek to ban diesel and petrol cars from towns and cities is a knee-jerk reaction that ignores the efforts the automotive sector has made to produce less polluting vehicles, the president of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) has said. Tony Walker used his speech at the SMMT’s annual dinner to address the issue of air quality. He focussed on the automotive sector’s efforts to invest in new technology and improve air quality in towns and cities.  

Travel in the arc between Oxford and Cambridge today and a few things are instantly striking. West-east public transport is sparse – indeed, there are no end-to-end rail services so the traveller has to go into London and out again. The end-to-end road journey is also to a poor standard, with most of the journey made on single carriageway A roads.      All this looks set too change, however, as the Government promotes the Oxford-Milton Keynes-Cambridge arc as the UK’s

Dockless bike share operator Mobike is revising its service in Manchester/Salford after learning lessons from the pilot scheme launched this summer. The scheme was Chinese firm Mobike’s first foray into the UK market. The scheme was launched this summer with about 1,000 bikes. It quickly attracted negative publicity after bikes were left in inappropriate places and vandalised.  Steve Pyer, general manager of Mobike UK, said this week: “Manchester has been a hugely valuable lea

The future of a rail link to Glasgow Airport is once again in doubt, with councils studying a critical report into the project.  The original plan for a Glasgow Airport Rail Link was scrapped by the SNP minority government in 2009. But the Glasgow City Region city deal revived the plan, allocating £144m for a tram-train service from Glasgow Central, sharing the existing rail lines to Paisley and then branching off on a new spur to the airport.  The Herald reported last week tha

The DfT should abandon its emphasis on time savings in transport scheme appraisal and instead assess the likely impact of transport investments on land values, a leading transport economist has said. Paul Buchanan, a partner at consultant Volterra, told the Local Transport Summit in Manchester last week that the DfT’s appraisal system was “bust”. He endorsed the argument put forward by academic and former DfT chief scientist David Metz that time savings, which typically form t

Network Rail has announced the sale of its commercial property business in England and Wales. The majority of properties will be sold on a leasehold basis, reflecting that access to these properties will be required for the future operation of the railway. Private bidders are being sought to purchase Network Rail’s commercial estate portfolio, which is expected to create a significant injection of cash to the taxpayer-owned railway infrastructure company as it focuses investment on p

A survey of seven UK cities has revealed that 75% of residents want to see more investment in cycling. Cycling and walking charity Sustrans carried out research in the cities - Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Greater Manchester and Newcastle – two years after an initial survey.  The new reports showed a rise in the number of segregated cycle lanes and bike parking spaces in the past two years, but also a rise in concerns about safety. Only 30% of respondents think c

A £1.7bn Transforming Cities Fund to improve transport links and promote local growth within city regions was announced today by the government. This will include a £250m project to extend the Metro service in the West Midlands.  The government also unveiled plans today for more public and private research & development investment, which will projects to develop ‘big data’, artificial intelligence and self-driving cars. A Department for Business Energy and Indus

Improving local transport connections between Oxford and Cambridge could lead to the creation of both new jobs and housing, says Lord Adonis. The chair of the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) is urging ministers, and council leaders across the arc covering Oxford, Milton Keynes, Bedford, Northampton and Cambridge, to “seize the opportunity” and harness the area’s economic potential. Lord Adonis has launched Partnering for prosperity: a new deal for the Cambridge-Milton

Legislation that will make Transport for the North (TfN) the first statutory sub-national transport body with its own legal powers and duties were laid in Parliament. The move to put TfN on a statutory footing means that its recommendations must be formally considered by the government. The Department for Transport (DfT) also confirmed the award of £18.5m from a £150m government fund for TfN’s smart ticketing programme. TfN will use this to introduce paper

The House of Commons Transport Committee has launched an inquiry looking into whether or not the current system of planning and delivering investment in rail infrastructure. Currently, most rail infrastructure funding in Britain is channeled through Network Rail. The Government funds Network Rail in five-year cyc

A scheme that enables local communities to adopt under-used stations and rail lines is set to receive a multi-million pound boost from the Department for Transport. Around 60 Community Rail Partnerships (CRPs) have been set up around the country since 1993. They have helped to revive and reshape more than 80 routes and stations, thanks to the efforts of volunteers and community engagement. The most successful projects have seen passenger numbers boosted, while others have recreated railway sta

The Welsh Government is budgeting for a large reduction in rail subsidy as soon as the new Wales and Borders franchise begins next year. The news came as incumbent operator Arriva announced its withdrawal from the competition for the new franchise.  The subsidy reduction appears to equate to about a third of the current franchise’s support, although the Government says this depends on the outcome of the on-going procurement process and negotiations with the UK Government. Welsh tran

A Preliminary business case for a new road bridge across the River Thames east of Reading has been published by Wokingham Borough Council.  Consultant WSP has prepared a strategic outline business case for the two-lane bridge, which would connect the roundabout for Thames Valley business park on the south side of the river (adjacent to the Great Western Main Line), with the A4155 Henley Road/Caversham Park Road junction north of the river.  The new crossing would relieve traffic on t

Consultation has been launched on a draft masterplan to redevelop Leeds railway station to accommodate HS2, Northern Powerhouse Rail services, and more local services.   HS2 will approach the city from the south and the HS2 station will adjoin the existing east-west-aligned station to form a T-shape.   The stations will share a single concourse and an over-bridge will be built within the existing station shed to link with HS2.  The stations will have multiple pedestrian entranc

Anyone who responded to the consultation earlier this year on the Government’s draft airports national policy statement (NPS) may well feel they have better things to do with their time than respond to the revised draft NPS that has now been published for a fresh consultation. The new document reflects revised air passenger forecasts and is accompanied by a new appraisal of the Airports Commission’s three shortlisted options for expanding airport capacity in the South East, and a rev

The regulatory environment for road transport needs to be overhauled to make it fit for emerging forms of mobility products and services, Michael Hurwitz, Transport for London’s director of transport innovation, has told the London Assembly’s transport committee inquiry into future transport.    Said Hurwitz: “The regulations were set in the 1970s and the 1990s, and the world of transport in those days was crudely speaking as follows: you had a car or you took a priv

New registrations of electric vehicles (EVs) hit record highs in 2016, with over 750,000 sales worldwide. But this still represents just 0.2% of total vehicle sales and, although the number of electric vehicles is going up, the rate of growth has been slowing in recent years, a report by the International Energy Agency reveals.  In 2016 the EV market increased by 60%, compared with 77% in 2015 and 85% in 2014. EVs have a long way to go before reaching deployment scales capable of making a

Shell Oil has announced the launch of a new on-forecourt Electric Vehicle (EV) rapid charging service - Shell Recharge. The service is available at three petrol stations, one in the London area, Shell Holloway, Shell Whyteleafe, in Surrey, and Shell Derby, with a further seven opening within Greater London and Reading by the end of 2017. Shell describes the move as the very start of its entry into the alternate fuel market, acknowledging that the chargers will be available at just 10 of its 1,0

Local authorities will face longer-term repercussions if they award bus contracts solely on price, one of Britain’s traffic commissioners has warned.  Nick Jones was appointed traffic commissioner for Wales a year ago, after the UK and Welsh governments agreed terms for a full-time commissioner. Previously Wales was an adjunct of the West Midlands traffic area, where Jones was commissioner. In his first annual report to the Welsh Government, he reveals that he asked all 22 Welsh unit

Network Rail has surprised Oxford City Council by objecting to development plans for the city’s railway station. It has expressed concerns over several aspects, including financial viability and flexibility for future track alterations to meet passenger growth. The council recently consulted on its Oxford Station Supplementary Planning Document (SPD), which brings together proposals for comprehensive redevelopment of the station area to create an integrated transport hub and to counterbal

A new set of road use rules devised specifically for London is among the ideas proposed by an independent commission studying ways of making the capital’s highways work more efficiently. A ‘Movement Code’ is one of a series of policies proposed by the Commission on the Future of London’s Roads and Streets, convened by the Centre for London think-tank with the aim of developing new thinking on what can be done to manage the conflicting pressures on the capital's surface t

More than £400m extra each year could be spent by councils on improving local roads if government funding mirrored rising income in fuel and motoring taxes, claims the Local Government Association (LGA). The LGA's call comes ahead of the Autumn Budget statement, which takes place on 22 November. The LGA statement picks up themes from its recent report, A country in a jam: tackling congestion in our towns and cities. Council leaders are calling for the government to implement a full

The Transport Committee has launched an inquiry into the licensing arrangements for community transport minibuses and the broader sustainability of the community transport sector. Community transport provides services to vulnerable and potentially isolated people. Service operators range from small community groups with a single vehicle to large community transport organisations (CTOs), whose sole purpose is the provision of transport services, often delivered through competitively tendered con

Four projects across five locations have been awarded a total of £51m in funding for creating the environments needed to fully test connected and automated vehicle (CAV) technology. The projects are the first to be funded from the government’s £100m Connected and Autonomous Vehicles testing infrastructure programme announced in November 2016 and will be matched by industry. The consortia selected selected in this first round are led by HORIBA MIRA, Millbrook Proving Ground, T

Smarter Travel LIVE! 2017 offers an expertly-crafted overview of need-to know people, initiatives, products and services – all in one place Resources are squeezed, time is precious and expectations upon local authorities and transport professionals increase.  The travelling public assumes that everything about their travel experience can, and should be, improved through the smart (and positive) implementation of technological innovation.  But is it really that easy? The t

Scottish transport minister Humza Yousaf has told Transport Scotland to look into re-opening a six-mile disused rail line between Leven in Fife and a junction with the Edinburgh to Dundee line. Officials will undertake a GRIP 4 study, the ‘single option development’ stage in Network Rail’s standard process for developing schemes. Levenmouth Rail campaigners envisage a half-hourly passenger service calling at new stations at Leven and Cameron Bridge. During a debate on the sch

Investigating a diverse mix of regional rail services would not only represent high value for money but would also act as an “effective conduit” for regeneration, economic growth and improving the envirorment, says a new study from the Urban Transport Group. The group builds on its previous research to highlight the benefits on investing in four different types of regional rail services. “Obviously, there isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ formula so we have develop

Proposals for a very light rail (VLR) service in Coventry have been unveiled. The WMG research and development group at the University of Warwick delivered early vehicle concept designs to representatives from Coventry City Council. The £6m project would be funded by the Government’s Local Growth Fund through the Coventry and Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership and West Midlands Combined Authority Devolution Deal. VLR would be a cheaper, quieter and more friendly alternative t

The first draft Assessment Report from the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) warns that the current state of the UK’s infrastructure risks hindering the economy if action is not taken quickly. The report contains local transport content, including concerns about air quality and the needs of cycling and public transport within cities, as well as the more obvious comments on airport capacity and national road and rail corridors. Set up two years ago,  the commission was

The Department for Transport has this week published its Summary Report on the Impacts of the Local Sustainable Transport Fund (LSTF), which indicates that the Fund successfully supported projects that reduced car use, increased walking and cycling levels, boosted bus patronage, supported local economies and cut carbon emissions. Published figures suggest that LSTF investments 'achieved high value for money', says the report. In 2011, the Department launched the £540 million LSTF to i

More than 300 delegates attended Healthy Streets at Walthamstow Assembly Hall last week to explore the connections between public health and transport strategies. The event, organised by Landor LINKS and hosted by Waltham Forest Council, brought together council officers, urban designers, public health specialists, transport planners, consultants, academics, equipment developers, innovators and campaigners. The programme encompassed health-led street design, re-allocation of road space, behavio

It’s a depressingly familiar story: a transport project runs millions of pounds over budget and is delivered years late. Yet Edinburgh’s first tram line managed to excel in the fiasco stakes. In 2008 councillors awarded the construction contract for an 11.5-mile route connecting the city’s airport in the west with Newhaven in the north via Edinburgh city centre. The project’s expected costs were £508m and opening was scheduled for 2011. But problems mounted, delays

Longer semi-trailers (LSTs) have cut lorry mileage and there are no signs they lead to more injury accidents, according to the latest report on the trial.  The Government launched the LSTtrial in 2012, initially permitting 1,800 of the trailers, which  can be up to 2.05m longer than the current standard semi-trailers  (15.65 metres instead of 13.6 metres). In January, the Government announced it would allow a further 1,000 LSTs to operate. Consultant Risk Solutions says the firs

The Welsh Government has released passenger usage statistics for its trial of free weekend travel on TrawsCymru bus services. In a press release hailing the pilot scheme’s “fast start”, the Government said: “When compared with data from the previous year, increases of well over 100% have been recorded across the network, with the T4 service between Newtown and Cardiff currently boasting the greatest increase.”  Asked by LTT for clarification, a spokesman said

A new model of partnership working lies at the heart of proposed legislative reforms to the bus industry published for consultation by Transport Scotland.  Service improvement partnerships (SIPs) would replace  statutory quality partnership powers and feature three important differences: • no requirement for the transport authority to invest in infrastructure (it could instead implement policies on parking, for example)  • the inclusion of a wider range of features, i

A draft plan for connecting the proposed East Midlands HS2 hub station into the area’s local road, rail and light rail networks has been published.  Nottinghamshire County Council leader Kay Cutts told councillors that the East Midlands Hub station, due to open as part of the West Midlands-Leeds HS2 route in 2033, would “be the best connected on the high-speed network outside London”.  The draft strategy has been prepared by a team led by East Midlands Councils, wit

The Government’s push for electric cars could flounder unless it acts to improve the poor state of the country’s electric vehicle charging point network, the RAC Foundation has warned. A new report for the Foundation describes the current network of public charge points as  “unattractive to use and unsuitable for encouraging the next wave of electric vehicle customers”.   A snapshot of the country’s electric vehicle charging points this summer revealed t

UK engineering company Dyson has revealed it is developing an electric car that will be on the road by 2020. Best known for developing innovative vacuum cleaners and hand-driers, Sir James Dyson has revealed that 400 staff been working on the vehicle project for the past two years at his company’s headquarters in Malmesbury, Wiltshire. In an email sent to staff by Sir James revealed about £1bn would be spent on developing the car, and £1bn on creating the battery. The spending

Companies are being invited to compete for up to £15m of funding to develop technology to reduce harmful emissions from freight. The government hopes the projects it backs could see materials that make vehicles lighter, or improve the efficiency of engines or batteries. “We have made important progress in lowering emissions and are always looking at further ways of improving air quality,” said transport minister Jesse Norman. “Lorries cause a third of the UK’s

The TransPennine route will be the first digitally controlled intercity rail line in the country, transport secretary Chris Grayling has announced. Network Rail will develop options to make the TransPennine route the first digitally controlled intercity rail line in the country. Network Rail will receive up to £5m to develop proposals for embedding digital technology between Manchester and York, to help us deliver a more reliable and safer railway. This includes looking at a system o

An internal report shows that a decision to shelve a 2km railway line in New South Wales was taken without an assessment of costs and benefits, it has been reported in the Australian press.The Sydney Morning Herald reported as a state government decision to "burn cash" a $200m "sunk cost" that came after no assessment was made of the costs of a light rail replacement for the Sydney to Newcastle rail link. It reported that transport minister Andrew Constance defended spending $200,000 i

An international business campaign designed to fast-track the uptake of electric vehicles (EV) and infrastructure was launched by The Climate Group in New York, as business and government leaders gather at Climate Week NYC. Baidu, Deutsche Post DHL Group, Heathrow Airport, HP Inc., IKEA Group, LeasePlan, METRO AG, PG&E, Unilever and Vattenfall were the 10 first members of EV100, the only initiative of its kind to encourage global business commitments on electric transport, with members swap

Businesses are suffering anxiety about the investment required to deliver the electric vehicle infrastructure to support the alternatively fuelled fleets of the future, suggests a report. In five years, 63% of businesses expect to be using alternative fuels to power their business vehicles, according to the second annual Operational Fleet Insight report produced by the AA and BT’s Fleet Solutions. Nearly half of the report’s respondents felt government organisations should be lobby

Five active travel schemes have been awarded funding totalling £22.5m by the Scottish government. The shortlisted projects, to be delivered by charity Sustrans, will receive 50% of the total costs. Two of the schemes are in Edinburgh while the others are in Glasgow, Stirling and Inverness. Work on each project is due to begin in the next two months, with Inverness City Active Travel Network (Highland Council) set for completion by summer 2020. Meanwhile, Walk, Cycle, Live (Stirling Counci