In creating safer street design for cycling and walking, junctions consistently prove to be the greatest challenge for many designers and engineers. Dutch transport consultancy Mobycon

The Landor LINKS Annual Survey of Mobility as a Service is now in its third year. Whatever sector of transport you work in, MaaS is now having an impact either as a planner, providing public transport, bike share, car hire, leasing, payments, operational support, TRANStech. We'd like to hear from you, so please complete the survey to gauge how MaaS – and our hopes and fears for it – are developing. Take part in the survey today Last year we had more interest from the automotive se

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

The Annual Survey of Mobility as a Service is now in its third year. Whatever your work in transport, either as a planner, providing public transport, bike share, car hire, leasing, payments, operational support, TRANStech please complete the survey to gauge how MaaS – and our hopes and fears for it – are developing. Take part in the survey today Last year we had more interest from the automotive sector than public transport – but there are developments coming through now whi

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

Aruna Sivakumar, acting director of the Urban Systems Laboratory at Imperial College London, writes: “Professor John Polak, was a larger than life, charismatic, inspiring – and often intimidating – academic. His way with words, and his ability to cut through to the core of complex issues, yielded him immense respect from his students – undergraduate and postgraduate alike. As a mentee when I was his postdoc, and as a colleague later, I discovered a fiercely private person

Paul Campion will be the new group chief executive of the board of TRF, the holding company of transport research body TRL. Campion was until recently the chief executive of the Transport Systems Catapult where he worked with government and industry partners developing collaborative investment projects to deliver innovation and growth in the smart mobility sector. The Transport Systems Catapult was merged with the Future Cities Catapult to create the Connected Places Catapult. Prior to headin

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

The City of Edinburgh Council is consulting on a ten-year plan to reduce vehicular traffic on city centre streets.  Delivery of the ‘city centre transformation’  programme is expected to commence next year. Proposals include: a pedestrian priority zone of car-free streets; segregated cycle routes; a free city centre bus route; lifts or other forms of vertical connections between streets; a new walking and cycling bridge across the Waverley valley; reduced on-street car par

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

My words this time are directed squarely, and I trust fairly, at transport practitioners.  They’re prompted by the fact that, every year since 2011, May has been celebrated by Living Streets as National Walking Month. Living Streets is, of course, the UK charity for everyday walking and its purpose is to achieve a better walking environment and inspire people to walk more. That ought to be a doddle, no? After all, barring a very few exceptions, everyone walks. And walking’s d

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

London mayor Sadiq Khan’s plan to tighten the amount of car parking that can be provided in new developments came under the spotlight at the public examination into the new draft London Plan this week. The mayor says the restrictions are necessary to deliver his objectives of reduced car trips and more walking, cycling and public transport use. But some of the restrictions on new residential development have not gone down well with outer London boroughs or the Ministry of Housing, Communi

The draft London Plan’s transport infrastructure priorities will prove to be nothing more than a “wishlist” unless a way can be found to fill a £3.1bn a year funding gap, a borough has said. The London Borough of Bexley says there is little likelihood that all the schemes listed in table 10.1 of the draft plan will be delivered during the plan period to 2041. “The draft plan states that ‘most of the schemes in Table 10.1 are currently unfunded’ and tha

In the aftermath of the Extinction Rebellion climate change protests in London, towards the end of April, there was a significant backlash in the media from those who claim to see no inherent contradiction between the two aims of reducing carbon emissions and supporting economic growth, in particular when it comes to the aviation industry. “It’s time to stop arguing about expanding Heathrow and get on building,” said Jasmine Whitbread, the chief executive of the London First bu

Transport planners spend a lot of time looking forwards, forecasting change and working out ways to mitigate future-year scenarios. We have all attended events on the future of mobility and on the disruption of emerging trends and technologies. This is all vital to the profession and the civic role that transport planners play in land development and infrastructure design. However, we suggest that a good way of dealing with new challenges is to learn lessons from the past. To paraphrase one reno

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

The DfT’s new document, Appraisal and modelling strategy: informing future decisions, outlines the Department’s priority areas of work to improve the quality of transport analysis for decision-making. The work is grouped under five themes as follows: People and place  Quick wins: Locational attractiveness and urban realm: a scoping study will explore options for new guidance on incorporating locational attractiveness and urban realm into appraisal. The DfT says the consultati

This year more major road schemes will be considered by the national infrastructure consenting process than ever before. They will be judged against the not-so-snappily-titled National Policy Statement (NPS) for national networks, which supports a major road-building programme to tackle congestion. With transport innovations making the news almost every week, how up-to-date is this? Let’s hope more so than the 2011 Energy NPS that still gives outline policy approval, immune from direct leg

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

The opening of Newport’s rebuilt bus station in 2015 has failed to boost passenger numbers, according to Newport Transport, the city’s dominant bus operator. The central bus station was rebuilt by Newport City Council, which owns Newport Transport. In the company’s annual report for 2017/18, filed last month, company secretary David Jenkins said on behalf of the board: “Disappointingly the opening of a new central bus station in Newport in December 2015 has failed to pro

Reimagining Waverley: preliminary proposals for a major redevelopment of Edinburgh Waverley station have been published for consultation by Network Rail and the City of Edinburgh Council. An upper mezzanine floor could be built featuring retailing and a new concourse, and there could be better street level access from all sides. Consultation closes on 26 April. Visit: http://tinyurl.com/y4o2558y

Leicestershire County Council has criticised a borough council’s proposals locations for new major housing and economic development, saying they undermine the campaigns to improve the A46 and A5 roads. The campaigns for major improvements to the A5 connecting Staffordshire to Northamptonshire, and the A46 connecting Gloucestershire to Lincolnshire, are backed by councils, MPs, businesses and shadow sub-national transport body Midlands Connect. The A46 campaign wants a new road round the s

Councils in Cambridgeshire are at odds over the best route for the Bedford to Cambridge section of the East West Rail (EWR) project.  The Government’s East West Rail company has just ended a consultation on five route options across Cambridgeshire, two taking a northerly route via Cambourne and three taking a southerly route via Bassingbourn (LTT 01 Feb).  All route options would enter Cambridge from the south, serving a proposed new Cambridge South railway station on the West

West Yorkshire Combined Authority has voiced concern about the DfT’s emerging plans for the Transpennine rail upgrade, saying they may not meet the journey time and capacity aspirations of Transport for the North and local authorities.  Alan Reiss, director of policy, strategy and communication, reminded WYCA’s transport committee that transport secretary Chris Grayling had been expected to announce details of the first stage of the upgrade programme last April, with delivery e

Local authorities are pressing EDF Energy to commit to a rail-based strategy for bringing in materials for the construction of the proposed Sizewell C nuclear power station.  Suffolk County Council and Suffolk Coastal District Council had been pressing for a marine- or rail-based strategy, and have voiced disappointment at EDF’s recent decision to abandon the  possibility of the sea-based approach. The company says a marine-led strategy is “not feasible due to the impacts

Leicester City Council has signed a partnership agreement with Santander to sponsor a bike hire scheme in the city. Firms will be invited to bid for the operating contract next month, with the scheme due to start at the end of the year. The scheme – comprising 500 bikes at 50 docking stations – will cover the city centre and surrounding neighbourhoods, including the railway and bus stations, Leicester Royal Infirmary, university and college campuses, major workplaces and sports faci

Swindon Borough Council is to bid to the Government’s £675m Future High Street fund for cash to turn a dual carriageway road between the rail station and town centre into a ‘bus boulevard’.  The council wants £25m to help turn Fleming Way into a bus interchange, which would allow the nearby “tired, poor quality” existing bus station to be redeveloped as part of the larger mixed use Kimmerfields development. Swindon says the proposal would “c

The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority has published more detailed  plans for its Cambridgeshire Autonomous Metro (CAM) public transport system. The strategic outline business case, prepared by consultant Steer, envisages an 88-mile network extending to towns such as Huntingdon, St Neots, Mildenhall and Haverhill. At its heart would be 7.5 miles of twin-bore?tunnels beneath Cambridge, which would remove buses from the city’s streets. Underground stations would serve t

Tributes have been paid to the architect and street designer Ben Hamilton-Baillie who has died from cancer at the age of 63. After studying architecture, Hamilton-Baillie spent the early part of his career in the social housing sector before joining Sustrans in 1995 to work on designing parts of the National Cycle Network. Subsequently, while travelling on a Churchill fellowship, he came to know the Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman. Monderman, who died in 2008, was critical of traditional t

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

The biggest review into transport in a generation will pave the way for transforming the way people and goods move around our cities, the government has announced in its Future of mobility: urban strategy. Also, in a boost for sustainable transport, the government has announced the first winners of the Transforming Cities Fund and awarded £60 million to 10 city regions for schemes supporting low-carbon vehicles, cycling and walking projects, and smart traffic controls. The Transforming Cit

I promise this isn’t a column about Brexit, though I can’t help it if you feel there’s a resonance. It’s about a new philosophy I learned of last month when I joined Twitter (after a nearly unbroken record of turning my back on social media, which I found intrusive and distracting, apart from Second Life, in the early days, which was sweet).  It was a short tweet from a young American academic, with a heavy load of grading, i.e. marking, student scripts. She wrote &

Barry Hutton, a teacher, researcher, and polemicist, has died, aged 83. With a degree in geography from Nottingham (in 1957) and a masters in highways and traffic engineering from Birmingham (in 1962), Barry started his career in transport planning working for a Yorkshire firm of architects and planning consultants, but soon moved into teaching in the town planning department of Leeds College of Art.  In 1968 he moved to the University of Wales in Cardiff, and then, in 1972, to Bristol Pol

Councillors in Edinburgh are expected to give final approval later this month to extend the city’s tram line from the city centre to Newhaven in the north.   The 4.6km extension should have been built as part of the original tram line from Edinburgh Airport but the project’s massive cost overrun forced the council to truncate the line at York Place in the city centre. Councillors heard this week that the extension had an expected outturn cost of £207.3m. The actual cost

Motor traffic dominates road-based travel and the bicycle, invented in 1817, remains an under-valued mode. Machines resembling modern bicycles with chains driving the rear wheel were developed in the 1880s. By the mid-1890s there were a million cyclists in the UK. Cycling’s heyday was in the 1930s, but the growth of motoring led to what Cycling magazine described as “carnage on the road”.  Thinking in relation to cycle traffic and pedestrian provision generally assumes th

Road charges may be necessary in Newcastle city centre for some types of vehicle under proposals to improve air quality being published for consultation next week.   The consultation is expected to feature a Class D charging clean air zone (CAZ), which would impose charges on cars, buses, coaches, taxis private hire vehicles, light goods vehicles (LGVs) and HGVs. It will also suggest  tolls on city centre bridges connecting Newcastle and Gateshead over the Tyne.  Views will

The most effective way to combat the threat of gridlock as self-driving cars become more common is through congestion pricing, states new research. The ability of autonomous vehicles (AVs) to cruise will blur the boundary between parking and travel, says the study by transportation planner Adam Millard-Ball, an associate professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Parking charges will no longer be an effective congestion management tool, warns Millard-Ball. &

The DFT has issued a call for evidence on opportunities to deliver new light rail and other rapid transit systems in towns and cities in England.  In the foreword to the report, transport minister Jesse Norman says such systems could not only play a vital part in meeting the needs of urban areas, but create a new manufacturing industry in the UK. “A key further element is the need to look at how we can build industrial capacity for a new generation of light rail and related systems i

The Cardiff Capital Region Transport Authority (CCRTA) says that comparing the value of spending on rail versus other modes of transport is impossible because the available rail statistics are too general. Giving evidence to a National Assembly for Wales committee this week, CCRTA said: “It has been publicly stated that the value of the 15-year new Wales and Borders rail franchise will be in the region of £5bn.  “It is not known how this money will be distributed and use

On 3 Februay The Guardian’s economics editor, Larry Elliott, indirectly criticised the Government’s planned HS2 high-speed rail project by suggesting that the money earmarked for the scheme could be far more productively spent improving the country’s bus infrastructure. “Britain has a productivity problem,” he began. “And a lot of it has to do with buses. Public transport really matters.” Taking the city of Birmingham as an example, Elliott observed th

I’m not really an aficionado of The Simpsons, but there are one or two moments from the episodes I’ve seen that have stayed with me. The one I’m thinking of right now is a scene when Homer is standing outside Moe’s bar with Moe himself, as a low-loader pulls up with an industrial-sized piece of kitchen machinery. Moe says, “I got it used from the Navy. You could flash-fry a buffalo in 40 seconds”; to which Homer replies, whining, “40 seconds? But I want

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

Shadow transport secretary Andy McDonald has appointed transport academic Phil Goodwin to advise on reforming how UK transport provision is paid for and funded.  Goodwin’s recommendations are likely to inform what McDonald calls a “new social contract for transport” that will be a key plank of Labour’s next General Election manifesto. The work will look at “who benefits from transport provision, including indirect beneficiaries as well as travellers themselve

Five route options for the Bedford to Cambridge section of the East West Rail project have been published for consultation by the Government’s East West Railway Company. Three take a broadly southern route through South Cambridgeshire via Bassingbourn and two take a northern route via Cambourne. All enter Cambridge from the south, with the potential to serve the proposed Cambridge South station. The consultation also features options for new stations in Cambourne, St Neots, Sandy, Tempsf

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

Transport for the North has ruled out trying to spread road investment funding “fairly” across the region, saying funding will instead be directed where it is most needed. Responding to feedback to the proposed Major Road Network (MRN) in its draft strategic transport plan, TfN says: “Some respondents wished to be assured that investment will be fair and shared evenly across the North. “TfN does not believe that the allocation of resources should start from the viewpoin

Just about every major change to spatial planning that has occurred in the last 20 years, with the exception of the regional spatial strategies, has made it more difficult for transport planners to be able to deliver cohesive strategies and ones that give due weight to environmental protection.   With the establishment of Regional Assemblies in the late-1990s came regional transport strategies (RTSs) as part of regional spatial strategies (RSSs). This enabled transport planning across loca

Your feature on Manchester’s spatial masterplan is of necessity a summary (‘Greater Manchester’s spatial plan sets transport agenda’ LTT 18 Jan). However, in a quick skim through the document’s 443 pages I could see no reference to one of the city’s biggest problems – Platforms 13 and 14 at Piccadilly station, which are the only through platforms, one in each direction. This affects us here in the North-East because TransPennine Express (TPE) trains run

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

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

THE DfT should not lead on active travel policy but should instead be the delivery arm for other client departments, MPs have been told. The Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS) makes the comments in evidence to the House of Commons transport committee’s new active travel inquiry.  PACTS believes the DfT will struggle to orchestrate cross-departmental active travel initiatives. “The DfT is not a powerful department in Whitehall. PACTS has seen how diffic

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

Wales’ Future Generations Commissioner has accused transport consultants of failing to  understand how the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 affects transport scheme development. Too often they jump to the conclusion that road schemes are the solution to transport problems, she says. Sophie Howe said Wales’ transport appraisal guidance, WelTAG, had been revised as a result of her team’s work with the Welsh Government’s transport department. “We

The new draft local transport plan for the West of England area (Bristol and surroundings) features transport investments costing at least five times more than those in the area’s spatial plan, even though the documents cover the same geography and time horizon. A public examination is currently underway into a statutory joint spatial plan covering the four unitary authorities of Bristol, Bath and North East Somerset, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire. Once adopted, the plan will p

Greater Manchester’s Metrolink light rail system could be routed beneath the proposed  HS2 terminal station at Manchester Piccadilly, under plans being explored by HS2 Ltd, Manchester City Council and Transport for Greater Manchester.  Manchester City Council’s strategic director for development, Eddie Smith, told councillors last month that the DfT had instructed HS2 Ltd “to consider the integration of a realigned and expanded Metrolink at Piccadilly station beneath

It’s become fashionable, of late, both to decry the work of experts and to decry the fact that the work of experts is decried. You may also have noticed that many who decry the work of some experts also hold fast to the work of other experts. Strange, that.  This may have led you to conclude that what’s actually at play here is the fact that people generally welcome the conclusions of experts who agree with their instinctive or otherwise firmly-held beliefs, and generally esche

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

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

Glasgow City Council should rethink the purpose of its city centre grid road network and give more space and priority to active travel and public transport, an independent panel of experts has recommended. Council leader Susan Aitken set up the Glasgow Connectivity Commission to advise on the future transport priorities for the city. The Commission is chaired by Professor David Begg, a Labour transport committee convener in Edinburgh in the 1990s who also advised the UK Government on transport

The ‘Gilets Jaunes’ who rioted on the streets of Paris and forced the French Government to abandon its fuel tax increases have a message for transport planners, one that we – as well as politicians – ignore at our peril. Britain may not have suffered violence on that scale (three dead so far) but we have been there before. The fuel tax protests of 2000 and the successful campaigns against road pricing from 2004 to 2007 should remind us of how rising transport costs can tr

A three-year DfT research study into area-wide signed-only 20mph limits has failed to find compelling evidence that the schemes reduce collisions or casualties in residential areas. The DfT this week said the final report’s headline findings presented a “mixed picture” about the performance of schemes, which many councils have implemented in recent years. The Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS) said the findings were “disappointing but not surpris

A plan to double the length of the National Cycle Network (NCN) that is traffic-free, from 5,000 to 10,000 miles, has been announced by Sustrans, following a major review of the network. The charity has also raised the prospect of deleting from the network some lightly used on-road sections that are substandard. Since the network was launched 23 years ago, the active travel charity has installed more than 5,000 traffic-free miles but it now wants to double this by 2040. In all, the NCN, which c

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

For over 30 years Adrian Davis has been at the forefront of the drive to connect and carry forward the disciplines of public health and transport planning. As he observes, for much of this time he has been paving a way into new territory: “In terms of my own journey, there has not been a route map, because the job had previously not been invented.”  His work has recently taken a new turn with his appointment to the part-time post of professor of transport and health in the Tran

The DfT is currently involved in the assessment and/or delivery of schemes and programmes such as Crossrail 2, High Speed 2 and the Oxford to Cambridge Expressway that are expected to have transformational impacts on local and regional economies. Although a scheme’s size is not a pre-requisite for it to have transformational impacts; indeed a relatively small scheme can unlock land for development, the Department’s future work programme has raised the challenges of capturing such imp

The continuing emphasis given to benefit:cost ratios (BCRs) in transport appraisal and decision-making leads project promoters and their consultants to abuse the system by artificially boosting BCR values, the Transport Planning Society has told the DfT.   “The real world production of BCRs is seriously flawed,” says the TPS, adding that, at an appraisal conference this summer, “practitioners made wry comments about how they had to work very hard to achieve their client&r

Combined authorities with strategic planning powers will be given the power to implement a strategic infrastructure tariff (SIT) to help fund transport and other infrastructure, the Government has announced. A SIT would be similar to the mayoral CIL in London, which has been used to part-fund Crossrail, will be additional to the community infrastructure levies (CIL) that individual councils operate to fund infrastructure.   The SIT idea featured in a consultation held earlier this yea

Bath and North East Somerset Council (B&NES) is consulting on a clean air zone (CAZ) for Bath city centre that would see charges imposed on almost all non-compliant vehicles, including cars.  The Class D charging zone would be implemented at the end of 2020 and operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The charge for non-compliant vehicles would be £9 a day for cars, taxis and vans, and £100 for buses, coaches and HGVs.  Charges would not apply to: Euro 4+ petrol veh

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

People born more recently display lower rates of driver licence holding, car access and mileage compared to earlier generations, according to a new DfT report.  Car travel econometrics draws on data from the National Travel Survey to study factors affecting licence holding, car ownership and use.  “Being born more recently is associated with lower rates of licence holding, car access and mileage relative to those born earlier than 1955,” says the DfT. “This could in

Locational information about many bus stops in a dataset used by journey planning apps is inaccurate to some degree, according to a public transport app and website company. Journey planning apps such as Traveline, Citymapper and Google Maps all take data from NaPTAN (the National Public Transport Access Nodes) dataset. NaPTAN identifies all 400,000+ public transport points including bus stops, coach stations, railway stations, taxi ranks and ferry terminals. Public transport app and website b

My title this month is the conflation of two matters arising from events over the past two days. The first of these was a talk on road pricing by a chap called Paul Buchanan. The second will take me a little longer to explain. But here goes… The Tuesday after this episode of Local Transport Today is published will be the first ever Transport Planning Day (13 November). Great credit for the initiative is due to Lynda Addison, chair of the Transport Planning Society. The core purpose of TP

In a week that General Motors reveals two innovative, integrated and connected eBikes, it’s clear that the cycling industry is set to become a much bigger global player in the shared mobility markets, and is finally demanding a level playing field in terms of government and EU support for industry innovation and R+D. The new Brussels-based Cycling Industries Europe (CIE) is ‘redefining the cycle industry’ in its new business model. It has been created to enable European cycling

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

The Local Transport Summit takes place at the Mercure Letchworth Hall Hotel in Hertfordshire on 29-30 November.  It can seem at times that having begun to make progress with one set of issues, those concerned with local transport will almost inevitably have another batch dropped in their lap. Traffic management, accessibility, maintaining roads and public transport, encouraging sustainable travel, regulating new modes and technologies, embracing shared mobility, addressing air quality

The inauguration of tram-train services between Sheffield and Rotherham on Thursday was a milestone in the development of light rail in the UK. Tram-trains are common in continental Europe but a UK pilot was deemed necessary because some characteristics, such as station platform heights, are different in Britain from overseas. A short new connection enables the seven tram-trains to leave Sheffield’s Supertram system and run on Network Rail track to Rotherham Central, where a new spur line

In 2010 Eric Pickles, that intellectual giant of the Coalition Government, scrapped the planning guidance on raising the densities of new housing development, which he had inherited from his predecessors. He also outlawed maximum parking standards and (later) delivered a rant about “penalising motorists” into the National Planning Practice Guidance. At the time I wrote: “Sooner or later housing shortages will force both [central and local government] to look again at urban inte

In the second in a series of reports on workshops hosted by the DfT to explore ways of improving its WebTAG modelling and appraisal tools,  Richard Batley sets out the chief findings of discussions which considered the premise that “uncertainty may be fundamentally unquantifiable – but it needs to be addressed early in the scheme development process”. Back in June, the DfT published its consultation on priorities for a new ‘Appraisal and Modelling Strategy’, s

On 18 October an editorial in The Times waxed lyrical about plans to convert a second runway at Gatwick Airport, which is currently only used in emergencies, into full time operational use. “The plan is relatively cheap,” the paper said. “Half a billion pounds is not small change but, given that the benefit will be a significant upgrade to a prime driver of national prosperity, it would be money well spent. “The Government has urged all airports to make maximum use of th

Wigan’s new bus station will open more than two months ahead of schedule, Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) has announced. Bus services will start using the station on 28 October. The £15.7m project, on the site of the old bus station on Hallgate, was delivered by TfGM and contractor VINCI. It features a fully enclosed concourse, step-free access, covered cycle parking and improved pedestrian links to the town centre. Mark Aldred, chair of the TfGM, said that local apprentices

The point of traffic forecasting is to appraise transport policies and projects, and as usual the new DfT forecasts intend to describe the future before allowing for the feedback effects of the new policies and schemes. This is tricky, and there are many continuing controversies and unresolved arguments. But in this column I want to ask a simple question. Taking the forecasts as they are, how should transport professionals use them in practice? My proposition is that a simple application could h

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 French philosopher Voltaire reportedly said: “Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one.” The transport sector is becoming increasingly alive to how uncertain the future is. There is significant or ‘deep’ uncertainty about the extent to which existing trends, relationships, technologies, economic and social forces, preferences and constraints will carry into the future.  Uncomfortable though it may be, there is a need in transport

The last issue covered the LTT seminar on the future of transport investment appraisal, which raised wide-ranging issues about professional practice and the way transport projects are looked at in their wider context by other parties. The discussion included current DfT consultation on potential revisions to WebTAG – the DfT’s guidance on preparing the economic case for transport investment. The DfT has also been holding a series of specialist theme-based workshops. Tom Van Vuren (pi

The transport appraisal event, held in London last week, aimed to place in context the current DfT consultation into transport appraisal methodology – and particularly the WebTAG processes – and also to extend its range by exploring views on how the appraisal process could be both broadened and simplified. Place quality, the environment and public wellbeing are assuming greater priority for many decision-makers, and appraisal frameworks must provide a better fit between local circums

Road traffic volumes in England and Wales are forecast to rise by between 17 and 51 per cent from 2015 to 2050, according to the DfT’s new road traffic forecasts. This represents the lower and upper results from seven scenario tests designed to reflect the uncertainty in the key drivers of road traffic demand such as population growth, trip rates, GDP and income, the cost of driving, young people’s driving habits and licence holding, the demand for goods, and technology. The forecas

Three episodes back, if you recall, I got all exercised concerning the fact that, despite much excitement in the past decade or so concerning the benefits of de-cluttering, we’re still either putting too much stuff into our streets that either doesn’t need to be there at all, or putting the stuff that needs to be there in the wrong place. I specifically cited my old friends the ‘Keep Left’ bollards and a new menace: electric vehicle charging pillars. This time round, I&r

Reports published by the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) rarely attract significant amounts of media attention but there was an important exception to this on 20 September when no fewer than three national daily papers (The Daily Mail, The Times and The Guardian) featured details of the latest ORR report on their front pages. “Passengers are routinely being failed by a chaotic rail industry, a damning official report concludes today,” The Mail said. “Bosses, ministers and regula

Sustrans has welcomed the launch of the Safer Streets Bill, which seeks to make 20mph the standard speed on residential streets in Scotland. John Lauder, the sustainable transport charity’s national director for Scotland, argued the Bill is great news for people who walk and cycle. “When it comes to saving lives and reducing injury on our roads, the benefits of 20mph speed limits are well known but worth repeating,” Lauder wrote in his blog on the charity’s website. 

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 DfT has revealed the broad corridor for a new expressway road between Oxford and Cambridge, provoking anger from wildlife groups who say it is the most damaging of the three corridors assessed. The DfT said that, after detailed review of the three options by Highways England, corridor B offered the greatest benefits to the region, “outperforming the other options by providing better links to jobs, education, leisure and health services”. The new road would cut the journey time b

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

W hy do transport projects so often seem to end up costing much more than originally forecast? Professor Bent Flyvbjerg, of the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, has spent a lot of time researching this question and his work has shaped the thinking of the DfT and Treasury. He says there is clear evidence that the costs of the vast majority of projects are underestimated at the point the decision is made to proceed with them. As for why this should be so, Flyvbjerg says the

Sheffield city region mayor Dan Jarvis has rejected criticism by the Greens of his support for a major new railway station at Doncaster Sheffield Airport. Sheffield Greens said there were more pressing local transport needs than building a line off the East Coast Main Line to serve the airport located south-east of Doncaster town.  The idea of a station features in the draft airport masterplan published for consultation earlier this year by airport owner Peel. It proposes safeguarding lan

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

On 22 August Guardian columnist George Monbiot focused his attention on a nationally significant transport infrastructure project that has hitherto received scant attention in the mainstream media – the ‘Oxford-Cambridge expressway’ – a major road scheme between the two university cities. “Where democracy counts most, it is nowhere to be seen,” Monbiot began, bemoaning an alleged lack of democratic consultation on the Government’s plans. “The numb

I am sitting in the plane flying from Gatwick to Basel. I am slightly irritated that the announcements are in French and not in German. After arrival it becomes clear, the airport is located in France. In fact, this airport is serving three cities in three countries: Basel, Mulheim and Freiburg. The next morning I have breakfast outside somewhere in the town centre. Even before ten o’clock, the massive trams are half full. No way could I imagine that any English town would have agreed to t

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

Hundreds of new housing developments across the country could be delayed for months because of the DfT’s request that councils “pause” design work on street schemes with level surfaces – i.e. no kerbs.  Transport minister Nusrat Ghani wrote to councils in England at the start of this month “asking” that they “pause the introduction of new shared space schemes that incorporate a level surface, and which are at the design stage”. The Department

The development planning system in England has an in-built bias towards building new housing estates on greenfield sites that are heavily car dependent, a new report concludes.  The Transport for New Homes project was funded by the Foundation for Integrated Transport, an environmental transport grant-making charity set up in 2014, and with help from the RAC Foundation. The project team visited scores of new housing developments in England and three in the Netherlands to assess their locati

Whether it’s planning inquiries into new housing developments or new pieces of transport infrastructure, or calculating bus operators’ entitlement to concessionary fares reimbursement, the job of many transport planning consultants is to represent clients in a debate about numbers. The work usually goes unnoticed to the public at large but, in an illuminating account, the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) has documented the technical debate that arose over an open access train operator&r

With profound apologies to The Temptations, and to those of you who – with every justification – think that I’ve already written too much about this topic in these pages, I’m afraid I’m going to spend a few hundred more words on the subject of so-called ‘Shared Space’ (henceforth ‘SS’).  What precipitated this turn of events is the DfT’s publication, last month, of The Inclusive Transport Strategy. Just three paragraphs of this 76

The Government has threatened to intervene to prevent London mayor Sadiq Khan imposing strict limits on car parking in new developments as part of the new London Plan.   The warning from communities and local government secretary James Brokenshire came as the Greater London Authority this week released the consultation responses to the draft plan published last December (LTT 08 Dec 17), and minor amendments to the draft plan in light of the feedback. A public examination of the plan is lik

Remember the first day at sustainable transport boot camp? That’s right: we marched up and down, shouting “Bus good! Car bad!” until we were hoarse. On day two we genuflected before the (now ubiquitous) image from Münster in Germany that shows the relative amounts of road space taken up by the same number of people travelling by bus, car or bicycle.  The evil of the car was so obvious; our response so visceral. At our passing-out parade, we swore we would give our all

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

The revised National Planning Policy Framework has been published, and sets out the government’s planning policies for England and how these are expected to be applied. The revised framework replaces the previous National Planning Policy Framework published in March 2012. Building attractive and better-designed homes in areas where they are needed is at the centre of the new planning rules, says Government, as Secretary of State Rt Hon James Brokenshire reveals the new framework. The consu

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

Painting a picture of the changing use of our transport system is not easy. A picture composed only of averages or aggregate change amounts to clumsy brush strokes. The finer detail in the picture comes from the artist’s ability to reflect the diversity of components of change – the distributions from which the averages arise. The Department for Transport's latest statistical release, 'Road Traffic Estimates: Great Britain 2017'  attempts to paint a picture, including fine

‘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

Councillors in Cambridgeshire have been presented with the early results of demand management investigations that are taking place despite the mayor of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority, James Palmer, being opposed to  road charges (LTT 08 Jun). Peter Blake, director of transport at the Greater Cambridge Partnership (a joint committee of Cambridgeshire, Cambridge City and South Cambridgeshire district councils) updated the partnership’s executive board this month

Colin Brader explains Integrated Transport Planning’s approach to consultancy. “We don’t see ourselves as a commercially-driven organisation, ever. I’m quite adamant that we shouldn’t be like that. We’re philosophically driven, we want to achieve things, and we’ve always managed to see the commercial side following and supporting that. We’ve been profitable every single year of our existence. During the recession we came down to a few per cent and

The DfT is expected to announce the preferred corridor for a new expressway road between Oxford and Milton Keynes within the next few weeks. It has rejected a plea from the England’s Economic Heartland (EEH) shadow sub-national transport body to delay the announcement (LTT 11 May). The new road would form part of the proposed Oxford to Cambridge dual carriageway expressway. Three corridors for the western end of the route have been explored by Highways England, working with the DfT and ot

After a period where the environmental impact of expanding Heathrow Airport seemed to barely get a mention in the press (Media Monitor, LTT 22 Jun), on the eve of the crucial Parliamentary vote on the plans for a third runway the environment suddenly returned to the top of the media’s agenda for some reason. Writing in The Independent on 24 June, the day before the vote, for example, Clive Lewis, Labour MP and shadow Treasury minister, said that: “Before we look at the social and eco

If you’re James Brown, of course, It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World (at least, that’s the title of his 1966 hit). And, while I wouldn’t want to build a philosophical position on that song’s lyrics, many of its words are pertinent to my theme. Firstly, as many of you will know, Mr Brown did also point out that this ‘man’s world’ would be ‘nothing without a woman’. Secondly, as hardly anyone knows, the song was jointly wri

The Charter for Parks, launched by the National Federation of Parks and Green Spaces, and a coalition of national organisations, has called on on Prime Minister Theresa May and First Ministers Nicola Sturgeon, Carwyn Jones and Arlene Foster, to celebrate these spaces and take action to safeguard them. The Charter calls on the UK’s four political leaders to: Endorse a legal duty for all public greenspace to be managed to a good standard Ensure adequate long-term resources for maintenanc

The DfT is consulting on priorities for the next round of reforms to its transport appraisal and modelling framework.  The Department says the environment for appraisal has changed considerably in the last five years, citing:  the Government’s industrial strategy; new institutions such as sub-national transport authorities, combined authorities, and the National Infrastructure Commission; changes to travel behaviour that are not fully understood; and the development of new techn

All local authorities in Scotland will be given the power to implement bus franchising, under powers contained in the Scottish Government’s new Transport (Scotland) Bill. The Bill also includes powers for the creation and enforcement of low emission zones, ticketing schemes, and parking.   The draft legislation is split into six parts, and the buses section (part two) contains a wide range of new powers, including a new form of partnership – Bus Service Improvement Partnerships

Opponents of HS2 have seized on reports that tender prices for the phase one construction have come in over budget and that HS2 Ltd has underestimated the cost of purchasing land for the line.  New Civil Engineer reported that the target cost for contracts on the phase one route between London to West Midlands line were £1.2bn over the £6.6bn announced by the Government last summer. The Government awarded seven two-part design and build contracts last July for the phase one rou

In early June the news that a Parliamentary vote on the expansion of Heathrow Airport was imminent produced an entirely predictable rash of commentary pieces in the media. What was perhaps not so predictable, however, was the amount of analysis focusing on the effect of a third runway at Britain’s largest airport on the rest of the UK, i.e. areas of the country other than the South East of England where, of course, the runway will be located, should it ever be built. Writing in The Guardi

Readers may wonder where certain core ideas in transport planning have come from – in many cases their roots are in the work of Stephen Plowden, who died last month aged 85. He played a key role in creating the idea that more and bigger infrastructure was not always the answer to meeting people’s travel needs or their aspirations for the places they inhabit. His pioneering work on managing demand and on the pursuit of safe, active and sustainable transport was reflected in a career s

Transport planning is a very new profession. I know the Romans built roads (and speed humps!) and more recently Britain built canal, railway and motorway systems, but these were basically single purpose feats of engineering, however impressive.  Transport planning as we know it is new and thoroughly modern, in that the answers to many of the complex problems we currently face are less clear-cut than how strong does a bridge have to be? Or even how fast can a legion march on Londinium? &nbs

Transport secretary Chris Grayling has asked Office of Rail and Road chairman Stephen Glaister to lead an inquiry into why last month’s new timetables for the Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) and Northern franchises were implemented with such disastrous results. Both operators’ timetables were meant to deliver major service improvements on the back of infrastructure investments – the £7bn Thameslink capacity programme and the Manchester-Preston-Blackpool electrification. I

A programme of improvements to the West Midlands’ motorway and trunk road network, including a new Western Strategic Route connecting the M5 and M6 (LTT 25 May), has been proposed by pan-Midlands transport partnership Midlands Connect.  The summary report of the Midlands Motorway Hub study by consultant Atkins makes ten recommendations:  • installing ‘estimated time savings’ signs on the M6 to encourage use of the M6 Toll during incidents and peak times &

Transport for Greater Manchester is working on new plans to enhance the conurbation’s rail stations following transport secretary Chris Grayling’s decision to refuse the full transfer of stations to Greater Manchester Combined Authority’s control (LTT--05 Jan).  TfGM submitted plans to the Government last March that would have seen the full devolution of stations to GMCA over a period of 150 years. TfGM said this would deliver improvements such as greater investment in st

A long-term plan for Britain’s railways, involving expenditure of hundreds of billions of pounds on new lines and upgrades, has been published by Greengauge 21, the think tank-cum-lobby group that helped put high-speed rail, in the form of HS2, on the political map. Timing is important in politics and Greengauge may be rueing its decision to release the report when some operators cannot run today’s timetable. It will be hoping the National Infrastructure Commission, which is currentl

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

“When I hear someone say they have a data platform I reach for my shotgun,” Professor Jonathan Raper declared earlier this year. Raper was in a Q&A session with Graham Hanson, the DfT’s Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) policy lead, at the Catch! showcase event at the Future Cities Catapult in Clerkenwell Green. Raper reflects mounting concern amongst transport data experts that people have a misplaced understanding of what data platforms should provide to qualify as use

Transport for London is pitching to deliver more transport project work on behalf of boroughs, undertaking activities that are currently done by council officers or consultants. It is also advising boroughs against using “costly consultants” to prepare bids for a TfL funding stream. TfL’s offer is set out in a letter sent to boroughs last week by Penny Rees, head of network sponsorship in the surface transport directorate.  “I am pleased to confirm that we have ded

The economic case for a new motorway around the west side of the West Midlands conurbation is being explored by pan-Midlands transport body Midlands Connect.   An illustrative map prepared by Midlands Connect shows the  ‘Western Strategic Route’, described as a motorway, connecting junction 4a of the M5 near Bromsgrove, south-west of the conurbation, with junction 2 of the M54 and junction 11 of the M6, both to the north of Wolverhampton. Intersections are shown with the A

Planners are calling on the Welsh Government to strengthen active travel messages in its revised Planning Policy Wales document.  Responding to a consultation on the new version of the planning statement, the Royal Town Planning Institute Cymru says the document “must be amended so that it explicitly requires accessibility by active travel modes to be prioritised over access by other modes both in the location and design of new developments”. RTPICymru says it is surprising th

Transport for London has appointed WSP consultant Helen Murphy to lead a new consulting directorate, whose revenues will be reinvested in the capital’s transport network. Murphy moves from her position as WSP’s UK operations director, to lead a new directorate known as TfL Consulting (LTT 15 Sep 17). Her job title will be director of commercial consulting and international operations.   Graeme Craig, TfL’s director of commercial development, said: “Our role in deli

“You can never have too much government,” said no-one, ever. Yet Cambridgeshire is groaning under the weight of local government. There’s a county council, a unitary, five districts, and 260 town and parish councils. A local enterprise partnership was formed in 2010; the Greater Cambridge Partnership (GCP) of Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire in 2014; and a mayoral combined authority in 2017. The LEP is being resurrected as a business board within the combined authority after

The government is being urged to ban cars from the immediate vicinity of school gates during drop-off and pick-up times by Living Streets. The walking and sustainable transport charity has produced a report, Swap the school run for a school walk, in which it sets out 21 recommendations designed to enable more children to walk to and from school.  The charity delivered the report to the transport minister Jesse Norman at the start of Walk to School Week. More than 2,000 primary schools in

Disabled pedestrians and people living in low-income households are much more likely than non-disabled and richer people to be injured by a motor vehicle, suggests a new study. The study, titled ‘Road injuries in the National Travel Survey: under-reporting and inequalities in injury risk’, was conducted by Dr Rachel Aldred, reader in transport at the University of Westminster.  The study highlights that for every mile walked, a low-income pedestrian is three times more likely

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

Transport policy and planning approaches the question of future travel demand in too rigid a way, failing to reflect recent trends or the huge uncertainties surrounding forecasting, according to the Commission on Travel Demand.  The Commission has just completed a 12-month inquiry into future travel demand and its implications for policy and planning. The final report was launched at an event in London last week sponsored by consultant Jacobs. It makes ten recommendations (see panel for an

Electric vehicles, hydrogen vehicles, driverless vehicles, Mobility as a Service, open data, ride-hailing apps, public bike hire schemes... a bewildering array of disruptive transport technologies and mobility products have emerged in recent years. But how should local authorities respond? Help pioneer each one? Embrace just one or two? Or let others take the lead? Hertfordshire County Council’s cabinet member for highways recently summed up the choice in the context of road technology dev

The disappearance of “Garden City principles” from the new draft National Policy Planning Framework does at least seem to have succeeded in provoking more people into wondering whether the currently-intended mass of huge developments in the countryside, hitherto masquerading as something unchallengeably beautiful, will really be such a wonderful thing.  Even regular countryside defenders seem so far to have been bewitched into silence by the mere mouthing of the ‘garden&r

As a major supermarket joins the trend for using electric cargo bikes for its delivery services, changes in general travel trends need much more careful scrutiny, say researchers. Increases in levels of home deliveries, and the rapid growth in light van traffic, for example, are poorly understood. In April this year, Sainsbury’s began its innovative new trial of grocery delivery services by electric cargo bike. A fleet of five zero emission bikes is making deliveries across South London,

Academics in Australia have launched an extraordinary attack on the work of a British-based academic whose research has shaped the UK Government’s approach to costing  transport and other infrastructure projects.  Peter Love and Dominic Ahiaga-Dagbui say Bent Flyvbjerg’s research, which attributes project cost overruns to the  behavioural issues of optimism bias and strategic misrepresentation (lying), is “akin to being fake news”. “No evidence at a

Academia may appear civilised to outsiders but the rivalries and feuds seen in other walks of life can be just as prevalent in universities. Even so, it’s unusual when they spill out in papers published in academic journals.  That, however, is what is about to happen in the subject of transport project management, with two Australian-based academics having had a paper accepted for publication that reads like a demolition job on the research of Bent Flyvbjerg, the BT professor and cha

No services will be provided at least initially on one of the core parts of the Bristol area’s Metrobus network because the councils have been unable to find an operator willing to run the route without subsidy.   Bristol, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset councils have spent £230m on the Metrobus project, including £113.9m from the DfT. A core part of the investment was construction of the three-mile South Bristol Link road connecting the A370 at Long Ashton with

A plan to re-open Manston International Airport in Kent has been submitted to the Planning Inspectorate.  Manston, near Ramsgate on the Kent’s east coast, closed in 2014 but RiverOak Strategic Partners wants to re-open the facility, primarily for freight but also with passenger flights.  The company says the UK needs more air freight capacity. Heathrow currently handles the most freight (1.5 million tonnes in 2016), largely carried in the hold of passenger aircraft. East Midlan

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

Councils in the North East of Scotland are proposing to quash developer interest in building new retail and commercial developments beside junctions on the new Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route (AWPR). Construction of the 29-mile dual carriageway AWPR is nearing completion, with opening scheduled for the autumn. The Aberdeen City and Shire Strategic Development Planning Authority (SDPA) says the new road is already attracting interest from developers.  “Recent planning applications

Birmingham City Council is preparing a £16m public realm and traffic management programme for the Snow Hill area of the city centre.  Nine individual projects are proposed for delivery in three phases of works. Phase one is expected to commence in October and phase two next April. Phase three is dependent on securing further funding. Phase one includes reducing traffic flows on Colmore Row by banning right turn movements into the street from Livery Street, which runs down the west s

Transport for the North should change the way it presents the Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR) project so it is not perceived as a solution searching for a problem, Lancashire County Council has said.  The NPR concept envisages the creation of fast intercity connections between the north’s major cities. The project was originally championed by the then chancellor George Osborne and is now being led by Transport for the North, which became England’s first statutory sub-national tr

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

Bath and North East Somerset Council has shortlisted three options for a charging Clean Air Zone in the city.  The council was one of the 28 ordered by the Government last year to prepare an action plan to bring nitrogen dioxide concentrations down to within EUlimit values in the shortest possible time. Bath says the zone must be in place by 2020. The three zone options all cover the same city centre geography (see map) but differ in the vehicle types covered: • Class B: charges wou

Strong backing for the tram as an efficient mode of public transport in the UK appeared in a rather surprising source on 9 April – the high technology magazine Wired. “The UK used to be covered in trams, with networks in virtually every city and town, but now just eight (or six, depending on what you include) British metro areas use a light-rail system,” technology journalist Nicole Kobie began. “[But] could they be set for a comeback? “The popularity of Edinburgh

The student of ‘how not to do public transport planning’ continues to have a sure-fire test case in Bristol’s Temple Meads station, the city’s intercity and local rail focus that is bursting at the seams. While taxis jam the forecourt and taxi queues lengthen, it’s rather hard to spot any city bus, though they do exist (a handful of routes terminate way down the station approach road).  The problem is a lack of any masterplan for this essential transport hub.

The overall and major problem with the London Assembly transport committee’s report on cycling is that it is right to say Transport for London processes are much too slow but the committee has not suggested how to speed up delivery (‘Cycle superhighways brand is ‘past sell-by date’ – Assembly’ LTT 30 Mar). There are several unnecessary causes of delay: 1. TfL may only own 5 per cent of London’s roads but it manages 100 per cent of the capital’s s

MPs have called for more clarity on the costs and surface access plans associated with the Heathrow Airport third runway project. They have also warned about several aspects of the Government’s airports National Policy Statement that, if left unchanged, could make the NPS vulnerable to successful legal challenge. The draft airports NPSsets out the Government’s case for supporting a new northwest runway at Heathrow. The House of Commons will vote on the document this summer. If, as e

Transport for the North becomes England’s first statutory sub-national transport body (STB) in April.  The change from a shadow body to a fully-fledged STB will take place alongside its first board meeting in public in Liverpool on 5 April. At the meeting, elected leaders from the North’s 19 local and combined authorities who are constituent members, together with co-opted representatives from the six Rail North authorities, will invite business leaders from the region’s

The possibility of Crewe becoming a major hub for HS2 and conventional rail has moved a step closer with the Government approving an alteration to the station plans. The change will also permit a direct HS2 service to Stoke-on-Trent. The DfTannounced last week that phase 2a (West Midlands to Crewe) of HS2 would be modified to include 400-metre platforms at Crewe, to allow for the splitting and joining of 200-metre long HS2 trains. This follows last summer’s consultation on the proposals f

Major changes to the developer contributions system for transport and other infrastructure in England have been published for consultation by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG). The reforms affect both the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) and Section 106 planning obligations.  The MHCLGplans to remove the restriction of no more than five S106 obligations being pooled to fund a single piece of infrastructure for authorities who already have a CIL in place,

Heathrow Airport’s owners appear to be backtracking on a pledge that a third runway will see no more airport-related traffic on the roads than today, according to the London Borough of Hounslow.  Hounslow says the pledge is “barely mentioned” in the consultation documents concerning the third runway proposal published by Heathrow Airport Ltd in January (LTT19 Jan). “We are concerned that the much-heralded pledge to ensure that expansion does not lead to any more ai

What’s going on at Ebbsfleet in Kent? Not a great deal, it seems. A decade ago LTT was given a tour of the Fastrack bus system in the area, and shown the big chalk quarries that would one day be home to thousands of new homes. Nowadays the Government talks of building an Ebbsfleet Garden City. Yet, in practice, few homes have been delivered and Ebbsfleet International station – which is supposed to lie at the heart of the city – remains surrounded by a sea of car parking (5,000

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

The National Infrastructure Commission’s first Annual Monitoring Report finds the Government 'slow in taking decisive action to address several of the UK’s major infrastructure needs'. The report finds that further action is urgently needed to improve mobile phone coverage and digital connectivity on the UK’s roads and railways. It also raises concerns about the Government’s failure to establish a firm timetable or funding plan for either Crossrail 2 or the Northern Powe

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

Researchers at the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) found reduced speed limits have led to a reduction in the number of fatal, serious and slight injuries from road traffic collisions - including statistically significant reductions in average traffic speeds of 2.7mph. - equating to estimated cost savings of over £15 million per year. Walking and cycling across Bristol has increased, both among children travelling to school and adults travelling to work. The introduction of

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

An artificial intelligence system designed to help clear the best route for ambulances is set to have its first live trial in Oxford this year. Computer modelling in Liverpool indicates that the AI could reduce response times by 40%, but the Oxford trial will be the first live test on the road. It is due to start by the end of the spring and is expected to last a year. Ambulance services across the UK are required to meet 75% of life-threatening cases within 8 minutes to guarantee NHS funding an

An autonomous vehicle that emulates human driving behaviour will be taking to the full range of Britain’s roads.  The HumanDrive project will seek to take autonomous technology to the next level in terms of ride comfort and adaptability, covering a number of different UK road scenes with natural road positioning. It will culminate in what is claimed to be the most complex journey yet attempted across the UK without driver input. The HumanDrive project vehicle will be expected to dea

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

“There’s more demand for transport modelling than ever before!”  “There just aren’t enough experienced modellers to do it!” I would be surprised if there are any transport professionals who have not had this conversation over the last few years. For transport modellers it’s almost an everyday occurrence, with each new piece of work prompting hard thinking about how to marshal stretched resources to keep up with demand. Fred Ewing’s piece (LT

Merseytravel is commissioning consultants to help prepare an outline business case for rail station devolution.  The possibility of station devolution features in the Liverpool City Region devolution agreement and Merseytravel’s initial focus is on the stations served by the devolved Merseyrail Electrics franchise. Consultant KPMGwas appointed in 2016 to explore six options, with each involving progressively more devolution (LTT29 Apr 16). The options were:  • MELalliance

The Bus Services Act 2017 features three regulatory frameworks, each giving English local transport authorities outside London progressively more influence over the market: advanced quality partnerships, enhanced partnerships and franchising. Guidance on enhanced partnerships and franchising were published last November (LTT08 Dec 17), and the Department has now released guidance on the last of the three, advanced quality partnership schemes (AQPS).  Although AQPSs are the weakest of the A

The Welsh Government wants Transport for Wales to become the owner or operator of Wales’ bus and rail networks. At the National Assembly for Wales last week, transport secretary Ken Skates reiterated the Government’s view that Transport for Wales (TfW), wholly owned by the Government, should eventually resemble Transport for London.  “The Government’s economic action plan commits that Transport for Wales will work with the Welsh Government’s new regional team

A new statistical release for January 2018 from the Department for Transport presents four pieces of analysis using National Travel Survey data.  Key findings include:  There have been substantial changes in travel behaviour since 1975. The total number of trips per person per year increased from 1975 until 1990 and has been falling since 1995. The basic unit of travel in the NTS is a trip, which is defined as a one-way course of travel with a single main purpose. In 2011-2014, dis

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

The achievements of women working in the transport and logistics centre will be recognised by the FTA everywoman in Transport & Logistics Awards. Currently in its eleventh year, the awards are designed to showcase the role women play in the future of transport and logistics. Maxine Benson

It’s been (literally) years in the making, but the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation’s much-needed review of so-called ‘Shared Space’ has finally been published. Entitled Creating better streets: Inclusive and accessible places, the review marks an important and positive step away from the confusion that has dogged a phrase that has come to mean different things to different people with different perspectives. Those objecting to the idea are most often

In 1999, after an exhaustive review, SACTRA (the Standing Committee on Trunk Road Assessment) found a “strong theoretical expectation” that transport investment could boost economic growth but that direct evidence was “weak and contested”. By 2013, when George Osborne unveiled a radical change in spending priorities (Investing in Britain’s Future), all doubt had evaporated. Henceforth, roads, rail and airport expansion would help us build our way out of the worst re

The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation could have far-reaching consequences for companies and public authorities of all sizes, from central government all the way down to sole traders. Any entity that collects, holds or uses personal data must comply with stricter governance policies and provide information about data on request. Data breaches will be punishable by substantial fines. For the past two decades, the UK’s main legislation in this area has been the Data Protection A

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

The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority is to delegate some of its transport functions to Cambridgeshire County Council and Peterborough City Council. The change comes as the combined authority (CA) admits that the current administrative landscape for transport is confusing. In a report to the combined authority board, officers said there was currently a “complex environment with a variety of bodies with different powers and responsibilities promoting, developing and delive

Heathrow Airport Ltd is exploring options for road user charges as part of plans to limit road traffic and air pollution if a third runway is given the green light.      The options are outlined in  the informal consultation into the airport’s expansion that was launched this week.  The consultation is being run in advance of the formal consultation that HAL must hold before submitting a development consent order  (DCO) application to the Planning Inspectora

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

The Woodland Trust and Community Forests in the north of England have been working together on developing the concept of a new Northern Forest, which will accelerate the creation of new woodland and support sustainable management of existing woods right across the area. Many more trees, woods and forests will deliver a better environment for all by: improving air quality in our towns and cities; mitigating flood risk in key catchments; supporting the rural economy through tourism, recreation and

Planning ahead to take advantage of future opportunities is vital – but so, too, is confronting the here and now. The difference is striking in terms of our road infrastructure, so vital for the efficient, safe mobility on which our economy depends. Autonomous vehicles and disruptive technologies dominate public debate and government research. We had more of the same on a recent front page of The Times, previewing the latest Highways England progress report with a piece about fibre optic

Since our industry came out of the recession proper in 2013, we have seen a great demand for transport modelling across the UK. In my role as a specialist search consultant within transport modelling this has created both fantastic opportunity, but also great challenges. It’s a thought that would be echoed by all of the clients we work with. My position puts me in a unique position to see how the demand is affecting the industry across all companies and locations; to see the effect it is h

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is reviewing the future of the Exhibition Road single surface scheme, but has voiced caution about the idea of full pedestrianisation.  The single surface scheme on Exhibition Road, completed in 2012 at a cost of £29m, has won a number of design awards. But the directors of the three museums on the road – Victoria & Albert, Natural History, and Science – wrote to the council last summer calling for the section of the road ou

The Scottish Government has started talks with ScotRail over the provision of carriages with space for outdoor equipment, including bicycles, on some of the nation’s scenic railways. The Government’s programme for 2017-18 committed to taking forward work on “introducing dedicated carriages for cycles and other outdoor sports equipment on rural routes in the north and west”.  ScotRail and Transport Scotland were unable to comment on suggestions that single-carriage

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

Poor air quality and physical inactivity are the public health issues of our time. In political circles, we hear plenty of strategic posturing: the new £220m Clean Air Fund has been announced, although details are not yet forthcoming. Integrated transport and spatial planning is back on the agenda, this time to improve health, rather then economic, outcomes. In reality, a combination of appropriate measures is needed to get more people moving, and to do so in clearer air. Plans for air qu

A new report has argued that the government should create a new commission to involve the public in major infrastructure projects. The absence of a national strategy for infrastructure has serious implications, says the independent Institute for Government (IfG) in its report How to Design an Infrastructure Strategy for the UK, the fourth in a series of reports on improving infrastructure decision making in the UK. New projects are ‘dreamt up, reframed, scrapped and reinvented, seemingly w

Housing and planning minister Alok Sharma has announced that the Planning Delivery Fund is open for bids. An initial £11 million will be available to bid for as the government aims to have 300,000 homes a year built. The Planning Delivery Fund prospectus invites local authorities and third sector organisations to submit bids for an initial £11 million of resource funding. Funding is intended to support ambitious authorities in areas of high housing need to plan for new

ON 24 NOVEMBER The Guardian suggested that the “future of dockless bicycles [is] under a cloud amid concerns there are too many bikes and not enough demand”. The article in which this suggestion was put forward made little reference to the situation in the UK, however, but, rather, concentrated on the state of play in China. “Customers are charged just pennies per 30 minute ride, but competing companies have flooded cities with bikes to ensure cycles are always available,&rdquo

A tightening of parking standards for new developments  features in London mayor Sadiq Khan’s draft London Plan.  Housing developments in the parts of London that are best connected by public transport will be expected to be car-free, with no parking provided, other than for disabled people. The areas are: the central activities zone; inner London opportunity areas; metropolitan and major town centres; all areas with Public Transport Accessibility Level (PTAL) scores of 5 or 6;

The current UK physical activity guidelines were published by the Chief Medical Officers (CMOs) in 2011, and offer evidence-based recommendations for physical activity related health outcomes. Starting at the end of 2017, a review will be conducted to provide updated practical public health guidelines and develop potential implementation pathways for all groups, from healthcare to communication professionals.   Access the UK physical activity guidelines review pages  Over t

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

Research undertaken for the recently published Urban Mobility Innovation Index suggests that whilst most cities do have an established strategy for urban mobility, these are frequently a statement of ambitions and guiding principles rather than a roadmap set out to address concrete local challenges, informed by comprehensive data. Coverage of mobility options relating to health, fairness and accessibility is ‘quite diverse among cities’, as is the quality of the service provided

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

Groupe Renault has produced a 1,000 cars enabled to participate in a European trial of connected and autonomous vehicle technologies. The Méganes will be provided to fleet customers taking part in SCOOP, an European Union pilot project for the deployment of cooperative intelligent transportation systems. The EU project facilitates trials of future vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2X) connectivity solutions under real-world driving conditions. SCOOP features a ran

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

As so often, my reason for looking at the issue I’m about to raise is that it’s one I’ve encountered in different ways over the past few weeks. I’ll refer to three ‘case studies’ that all reflect on the same question: how is public opinion taken into account when making decisions about the public realm? As Exhibit A, I present the edited highlights of a series of tweets from a journalist at a classic public ‘consultation’ event. ‘I’m a

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

Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council is opposing a Swansea Bay Metro investment programme, which it fears would demote Neath to “branch line status”. The programme was floated recently by Mark Barry, professor of practice in connectivity at Cardiff University. The Welsh Government has already committed to his earlier proposals for a South East Wales Metro investment programme, based on the regional transport plan of the erstwhile regional transport consortium Sewta. Barry envis

Idealised visions of ‘The City of the Future’ are often presented as a symbol of progress. Whilst specific visions differ, the common element is the notion that in the future, the world’s most concentrated populations will occupy city environments where a digital blanket of sensors, devices and cloud-connected data are brought together to enhance the living experience for all. Smart concepts encompass key elements of what enable effective city ecosystems – from traffic c

Older cars in urban areas not to blame for harmful emissions, claims the RAC Foundation. The motoring research body says that a study it commissioned shows that scrapping the oldest cars owned by people living in towns and cities would only have a negligible effect on air quality. An analysis of MOT information for 22 million individual cars has enabled a team of academics, led by Professor Jillian Anable of the University of Leeds, to use mileage, emissions and registered keeper data to map ex

The Year of Engineering will see government and industry offer young people across the UK direct experiences of engineering in a push to tackle skills gap during 2018. Industry partners include companies in technology, healthcare, food production, energy, culture and transport. Partners such as Siemens, the Science Museum Group, Ocado, Usborne, BAE Systems and Crossrail have already pledged their support. Activities will include large-sale outreach program

Shadow sub-national transport body Transport for the South East has revealed more details of its work programme and administration.  TfSE covers an area with a population of 7.5 million people  and 16 local transport authorities: Kent, Medway, East Sussex, Brighton, West Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire, Portsmouth, Southampton, Isle of Wight, Reading, Bracknell Forest, Slough, Windsor and Maidenhead, West Berkshire, and Wokingham.  Itis currently identifying a major road network for t

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

When it comes to mobility, innovation tends to focus on new technical leaps forward – innovation represents a world where driverless cars and smart infrastructure tell us where to go and then take us there, as if human choice were an afterthought or a non-consequential part of these new intelligently mobile systems. The intelligent mobility practice at Atkins is, however, all about exploring new ways of finding smart solutions to complex problems. One exciting new approach is to employ cyb

Dockless bike share schemes will not be welcome in the West Midlands conurbation, as the combined authority focuses on procuring a single dock-based system.   Transport for the West Midlands (TfWM) will commence the procurement of a scheme with between 3,000 and 5,000 bikes later this month/early next month. A contract should be awarded next spring. The decision to pursue a dock-based system follows an options reviewcommissioned from consultant ITP this summer. Nine suppliers of dock-base

Cars powered by electricity emit 50% less greenhouse gases than diesel-powered vehicles, according to a European study. The report suggests that even where coal-fired power stations are used to generate electricity, electric cars are more beneficial than diesel ones.Belgium’s VUB University has calculated the total lifecycle emissions of an electric car, including its manufacture, battery build, and all its energy consumption. The university found that: “Electric cars emit significan

While the push to deliver new homes and retrofit existing communities is high on the political agenda, if not actually happening in practice, we need a conversation about the kind of places that we build. Research carried out by Local Government Information Unit (LGiU) and the Ramblers found that local authorities want to build places that encourage walking and active travel. Developers do not always share these priorities, however, and many councils feel the mismatch is a challenge in achieving

Nissan has demonstrated a prototype of its most advanced autonomous driving technology, planned for real-world use from 2020, on public roads in Tokyo. Nissan Motor Corporatti tested its next-generation ProPILOT technology on a modified Infinit Q50 sports sedan. The technology is designed to enables the vehicle to operate autonomously on urban roads and motorways. The prototype’s artificial intelligence uses input from 12 sonars, 12 cameras, 9mm-wave radars, six laser scanners and a high

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

Local transport has long held an important place on the political agenda, though it moves up and down the rankings as other challenges and issues assert their own significance. Global level matters like Brexit, terrorism and international conflicts apart, there are things with a degree of equivalence in the political landscape – the NHS, education, policing and social welfare, for example – jockeying for position with congestion, the state of the roads (or railways), cycling, parking

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

Central London is in the midst of a space/time battle. There are no Doctors, Daleks or Sonic Screwdrivers involved, but it is a very serious situation nonetheless. The intensity of activity means that every bit of space has to work incredibly hard to allow the city to flourish. This is part of the reason behind the ambitious target in the draft Mayor’s Transport Strategy, which aims for 99% of all journeys in the area to be by what is know as ‘active travel’ modes.  This

Replacing private car traffic with new shared mobility services in urban areas can dramatically reduce the number of cars needed, significantly cut CO2 emissions and free public land for uses other than parking – without making it more difficult for users to get from door to door. This latest report from the International Transport Forum at the OECD, presented at Smarter Travel LIVE!, examines how the optimised use of new on-demand shared transport modes could change the future of mobilit

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

US carmaker Ford has launched an innovation office in London that will target the near-term development of smart mobility technologies while focussing on the specific requirements of European cities. The Ford Smart Mobility Office on the Here East campus of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in east London is led by director Sarah-Jayne Williams. The US company said having an office in London offers Ford close proximity to its projects and partners. Ford is currently working on a number of proje

The Mayor of London is working with the Alan Turing Institute to explore ways to improve the modelling of air quality by collating existing and new data sources and enhancing the way it is analysed. The work with the Alan Turing Institute will complement the Mayor’s existing collaborations with institutions such as King’s College London, who work with boroughs and City Hall to undertake local air quality monitoring and to develop the London Atmospheric Emissions Inventory. The

Driverless cars could create a highway to confusion unless training and coaching catches up with the fast pace of change and helps drivers cope with a whole new set of demands. This was conclusion reached by a panel industry experts at a conference organised by road safety charity IAM RoadSmart, the RAC Foundation and tyre-manufacturer Pirelli. The Driver Ahead conference in London looked how the next generation of autonomous cars will record much more information than ever before. This da

The University of Southampton has become the first recipient a £50,000 award to fund PhD research into the training implications for drivers as vehicles become more and more automated. The Human Factors Research Award was created by road safety charity IAM RoadSmart and presented during its Driver Ahead conference.

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

The MOVE_UK consortium has completed the first phase in its three-year fully autonomous vehicles research programme, which is intended accelerate the development of automated driving systems and make them intelligent and safe enough for the UK’s roads. Taking place in the Royal Borough of Greenwich, south-east London, the project has enabled the MOVE_UK consortium to develop a new validation method. It is anticipated that the validation method will reduce introduction time of highly autom

Hugh Wenban-Smith, who died recently (LTT 29 Sep) made significant contributions to transport thinking, policy and practice, as an economist, as a senior civil servant and as a researcher.  He also had a part in the development of the Transport Planning Society, and this appreciation comes from those who knew him in this capacity.   Born in Tanzania in 1941, Hugh spent his early years there, and maintained a lifelong interest and connection with that country. His earliest publication

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

Lancashire County Council is seeking £400m from the Government’s new £2.3bn Housing Infrastructure Fund (HIF) for transport improvements in Preston and Lancaster.  The Government will award up to £250m to successful applicants to its HIF forward fund competition, which is expected to be heavily over-subscribed. Lancashire’s £250m Preston bid is for a new road bridge over the River Ribble west of Preston. This would connect up three road schemes being de

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 floating car concept was named best future concept at designjunction 2017, which took place in London last week. Yuchen Cai was announced as the winning student during designjunction 2017’s opening evening. Cai created ‘The Float’, a vision of a Maglev vehicle car that will provide a new way of connecting with people, a new form of mobility and portrays an idea of how drivers can be more open and social to the outside world as autonomy becomes ever popular. The Float won a

The initial findings of the Electric Nation trial suggest that smart charging could be a key solution to meeting the challenge of the demand from increasing numbers of electric vehicles (EVs) on electricity networks. Electric Nation is investigating the benefits that smart charging could provide for local electricity networks, where additional demand from local clusters of EVs could require reinforcement of these networks. Electric Nation is one of Western Power Distribution’s (WPD) inno

Hertfordshire County Council has written to transport authorities surrounding London to gauge their interest in a capital-region transport body. The idea of a new transport body covering Greater London and its surroundings was floated last autumn by Hertfordshire’s executive member for environment, planning and transport, Derrick Ashley (LTT28 Oct 16).  In a letter to LTT this week, he expands on the case for reforming governance. “The time has come to re-think how public tran

Transport for London has released new details of its plan to create a trading arm to win consultancy and operations work across the UK and abroad.  Recruitment of a directorfor the consulting and international operations unit is currently underway (LTT07 Jul).  Graeme Craig, TfL’s director of commercial development, will present the latest thinking about the unit’s activities to TfL’s board next week.  He says the trading arm, ordered by mayor Sadiq Khan, will

The arrival of Will Norman as London’s first Cycling & Walking Commissioner in February heralded a new approach to reducing car use in the capital. The former global partnerships director at Nike is seeking to develop a comprehensive network of ‘corridors’ that link main roads with Quietways, as set out in mayor Sadiq Khan’s draft Transport Strategy.  Alternatives to superhighways Norman moved to the Mayor’s office on the understanding that his remit woul

Brighton & Hove Buses has teamed up with a local art gallery to take air quality data and transforms it into a visual spectacle that enables people to see the state of the air they breathe. Mephitic Air will run at the ONCA Gallery from 16 September to 1 October as 

Air quality in the Spanish city of Barcelona deteriorates by as much as 48% during public transport strikes, researchers have found. The study found that alterations in public transport could trigger a rise in the number of private vehicle trips, which in turn increases air pollution levels.

Euro NCAP is calling on car manufacturers to implement autonomous technology in new vehicles in a bid to boost road safety. The independent body for car safety has outlined targets for manufacturers to introduce certain levels of autonomous technology into their vehicles in its new Road Map 2025, published to mark its 20th anniversary. The Road Map 2025 challenges vehicle manufacturers to offer the best possible technology as standard in all market segments and countries, protecting not only ca

Last year saw the publication of the Department for Transport’s eagerly anticipated Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy. This has since been accompanied by guidance to local authorities on how they can help double cycling activity by 2025. While the availability of government funding for delivering walking and cycling network improvements remains a topic for debate, the guidance to councils appears sound. The guidance was developed by an expert advisory team, drawing on international

A planned road tunnel running past Stonehenge will be moved to protect views of the historic stone circle, the government has announced. Previously it was planned the upgraded A303 would go south of the stones, but there were concerns this would affect the view of the setting sun during the winter solstice. The 1.8-mile tunnel will closely follow the existing A303 route, but will be 50 metres further away from the monument than previously planned. The government said this means th

Technology to automatically prevent distracting alerts while driving, the coalition warns, is urgently needed to tackle deaths and serious injuries caused by drivers using handheld mobile phones behind the wheel, says a coalition of road charities and organisations. The coalition has written to Android, Microsoft and the GSMA (Groupe Spéciale Mobile Association) urging them to include an ‘opt out’ driving mode as standard across mobile handsets. The letter comes ahead

Start-up businesses with innovative solutions to transport challenges such as congestion, overcrowding, emissions and road safety are being encouraged to apply for a new accelerator programme. The Intelligent Mobility (IM) Accelerator programme focusses on IM areas such as connected and autonomous vehicles, connected infrastructure, customer experience, and transport data and analysis. The programme is a partnership between Transport Systems Catapult and Wayra UK, a start-up accelerator that i

The Transport Systems Catapult (TSC) has launched a data facility that will enable access and analysis of various data sources to help address challenges in transport.  The Intelligent Mobility Data Hub (IMDH) is designed to provide a neutral, secure platform for transport organisations to allow access to and analyse their data. The hub currently stores data sets from government organisations, transport and technology businesses that offer insights into road travel and haulage patterns in

A modified version of Uber's internal demand and usage data has been made available after getting feedback from city transport authorities that "access to our aggregated data will inform decisions to adapt infrastructure to make our cities more efficient". Uber emphasised that "Uber Movement" preserved the privacy of riders and drivers by anonymising the data, with full details outlined in a methodology white paper and said that data on origins and destinations was available under a Creati

When it comes to infrastructure spending on the railways, it’s the enhancement projects – new lines, stations, and capacity increases – that grab the limelight. But how much money is available for such  schemes in Network Rail’s next five-year control period (CP6: 2019/20-2023/24) could depend on NR’s ability to bring down the costs of operations, maintenance and renewals. Having failed spectacularly to achieve the ORR’s efficiency targets for renewals in

The heavy reliance on time savings in transport appraisal leads to investment decisions that run counter to Government policy, an academic has said. The criticism is made by former DfT chief scientist David Metz in a new paper to be published in the academic journal Transport Policy.  The paper develops Metz’s long-standing argument that time savings are a short-run benefit of transport schemes and the long-term effects are changes in land-use and land values as accessibility levels

Bristol City Council has ordered a study of an underground light rail system for the conurbation, which could use driverless vehicles.  The “pre-feasibility study” will “identify the viability of light rail underground systems to provide a rapid transit system across the West of England”. The West of England authorities are Bristol, South Gloucestershire, Bath and North East Somerset, and North Somerset.  Bristol says the study should investigate a system &ldq

A three-mile extension of Edinburgh’s tram line into the north of the city could cost £165m and double the system’s patronage, the city council said this week.  The plan would see the  airport to city centre line extended beyond its York Place terminus to Newhaven, via Leith Walk and the Ocean Terminal shopping centre. Edinburgh’s transport and environment committee will be asked next week to authorise the procurement of a contractor for the project. However,

Highways England is consulting on three options for a dual carriageway bypass of Arundel on the A27 in West Sussex, all of which would have adverse impacts on landscape. A dual carriageway bypass for the town features in the Government’s Road Investment Strategy. The road would connect two existing dual carriageway sections of the A27 either side of the town.  The shortlisted options are:  • Option 1: dualling on the current alignment for the western part of the route, th

The rail industry is exploring how to improve passenger demand forecasting amid signs  that the rate of growth is slowing.  The Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) is leading an initiative to develop more sophisticated forecasting tools, taking account of a wider range of demand influences, and segmenting the population into different markets.  The RSSB says there are “early signs” that the patronage and fare revenue growth trend seen in the last 20 years is &ldqu

Up to 90 bus stops in south Birmingham could be closed in a trial designed to speed up bus journeys. Councillors on West Midlands Combined Authority’s transport delivery committee will be asked to approve the six-month trial affecting five bus corridors next week.  A report to the committee by Danny Gouveia, Transport for the West Midlands’ bus scheme development manager, says ad hoc requests from passengers and local councillors, and changing land-uses mean that some parts of

The government is offering funding for projects in the UK to develop low carbon waste-based fuels for planes and lorries as part of plans to promote clean alternative fuels. The Department for Transport (DfT) predicts planes and lorries powered by waste fuels could use up to 90% less carbon than traditional fossil fuels. The £22m fund is being made available to projects that will produce low carbon waste-based fuels, to be used in planes and lorries where it is not viable today

The management of England’s strategic road network (SRN) has undergone a quiet revolution in recent years with the conversion of the Highways Agency into a Government company, Highways England. The change in 2015 was accompanied by a five-year Road Investment Strategy (RIS) and financial settlement, which provided HE with a rising trajectory of funding for enhancements such as dualling schemes, junction improvements and smart motorways.  Further reform is looming. The Government has

Liverpool City Council is to bring operation of the city’s public bike hire scheme in-house.  The Citybike scheme was launched in 2014 and features about 1,000 bicycles for hire from 140 stations across the city. The council says the scheme has seen about 300,000 rentals to date, and has about 32,000 active users. The scheme is currently operated by Hourbike Ltd and requires an operating subsidy.  Liverpool City Council says bringing Citybike in-house will save £100,000

When I was invited to write the first Annual Survey of Mobility as a Service in the UK I was intrigued.  Could you really survey something in such an early state of development? We currently only have one single ‘full’ Mobility as a Service (MaaS) application under active development in the UK. This app combines a number of public and shared transport operators and offers them through a single interface. A second is in the pipeline, but it will be at least a year in development.

Cost estimates and funding envelopes for some of Network Rail’s biggest rail enhancement projects are reported in letters released by the DfT.  The letters were sent in January  to the senior DfT official responsible for each of the projects. Each was written by the then DfT permanent secretary, Philip Rutnam, and the chief executive of the Treasury’s Infrastructure and Projects Authority, Tony Meggs.  Brian Etheridge is the senior responsible owner (SRO) for five ma

Bath and North East Somerset Council (B&NES) has dropped a controversial plan to build a bus-based park-and-ride site in the green belt east of Bath. In January councillors authorised the preparation of a business case and planning application for an 800-space site on grazing meadows abutting the A4 between Bath and Batheaston (LTT03 Mar).  The site lies adjacent to a railway and B&NES had long-term aspirations to build a railway station to serve the facility.  Councillors al

So, seven years after its predecessor was launched, the draft of the new Mayor’s Transport Strategy (MTS) for London has been published; and anyone who cares to has got until the 2 October to let the mayor, Sadiq Khan, his deputy mayor for transport, Val Shawcross, and their walking and cycling commissioner, Will Norman, know what you think of their and their colleagues’ efforts. The full document is 300 pages long, and so I’ve no intention of providing anything approaching a

The introduction of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) on London’s streets must be done in a way that supports the mayor’s transport policies, Transport for London has said. Michael Hurwitz, TfL’s director of transport innovation, said CAVs presented both potential drawbacks and benefits.   On the drawbacks, he said: “Cheap, convenient car travel could be extended to Londoners who don’t have a car or a licence, therefore reducing public transport patron

In 2009 a paper in the journal Research in Transportation Economics highlighted changing attitudes towards demand responsive transport (DRT), predicting many new opportunities for DRT but cautioning that processes for joint working between agencies needed improvement. Move forward to 2015 and it appeared that DRT in the UK had not progressed at the pace anticipated. Indeed, large-scale DRT networks serving special needs customers in the West Midlands, London and Manchester had significantly cont

The DfT is consulting on whether to make a major investment in Crewe’s railway station so that it becomes an important interchange between HS2 and other rail services.  Under the existing plans,  the phase 2a HS2 route from the West Midlands will join the West Coast Main Line just south of Crewe.  The assumption in the HS2 business case since 2011 has been for two HS2 services stopping at Crewe each hour, in each direction, providing services to London, Preston and Liverpo

The DfT should conduct ‘pre-mortem’ inquiries into major projects in which officials imagine what could go wrong with scheme delivery, a report commissioned by the Department has recommended.    The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), a social purpose company joinly owned by Government,  was appointed by the DfT last year to look into cognitive biases in decision-making (LTT13 May 16). The team conducted interviews with 13 officials and reviewed documents from the DfT&rs

Transport strategies that turn vehicle-dominated streets into ‘people places’ will do much to tackle the health and social challenges that we face, believes Lucy Saunders Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has placed the Healthy Streets Approach at the heart of his 25-year Transport Strategy. This will require all transport decisions and investments to benefit health by improving the 10 Healthy Street Indicators (right). Making public health the driving force behind a transport strategy may

A recent graduate from University College London has won the 2017 Wolfson Economics Prize, a £250,000 competition that posed the question: “How can we pay for better, safer, more reliable roads in a way that is fair to road users and good for the economy and the environment?” Gergely Raccuja proposed a distance-based charge as a replacement for both fuel duty and vehicle excise duty. The money raised by a levy could be used to improve air quality and invested in making UK road

A company building a new train line linking Orlando to Miami in Florida is to also develop rental apartments convenient for a station on the new 'Brightline,' it has been reported. Flordia East Coast Industries, building a $3bn, 235-mile express train system, is launching a development company, Park-Line, according to The Miami Herald, including "three towers of rental apartments...at Brightline's West Palm Beach station" and two further towers "at Miami Central station". Daniel Quintana, vice-

The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority has authorised studies into major road improvements in the area.  A business case will be commissioned for dualling the A47 between the A16 east of Peterborough and Walton Highway east of Wisbech (see map). The CA says dualling the road will improve connectivity between Norfolk, the Fenland area, Peterborough and the A1; boost the economies of Peterborough and Wisbech; and support housing development. The study will cost an estimated

A 'Hard Brexit' where the UK leaves the Single Market and the Customs Union could throttle necessary private investment in major transport infrastructure, particularly in the expansion of Heathrow, Lord Adonis has been quoted as saying. "These decisions on Brexit have a crucial bearing on infrastructure. Business will not invest for the long-term if they think Britain is going down the tube. It's as simple as that. The projects that will be most affected will be those that require immediate pri

A major road network (MRN) of the most economically important roads in the north of England has been identified by Transport for the North. The network of local authority roads and Highways England roads is described as “the road network that is most economically important to securing the North’s productivity and growth; both now, and in the future.”  The network is outlined in the Initial Major Roads Report prepared for TfN by consultant Jacobs. Says the consultant: &ld

The illustrations in London mayor Sadiq Khan’s new draft transport strategy don’t contain many cars but that’s not surprising: the mayor wants to cut the share of passenger trips made by car/taxi/private hire vehicles from 36% in 2015 to 20% in 2041, with the share made by walking, cycling and public transport rising from 64% to 80%. “The success of London’s future transport system relies upon reducing Londoners’ dependency on cars in favour of increased walki

The challenge that disruptive technologies such as autonomous vehicles and Mobility as a Service (MaaS) pose for transport modelling loomed large at this year’s Modelling World event.  Delivering the opening paper, Luis Willumsen, director of Willumsen Advisory Services and Kineo Mobility Analytics, said modellers were faced with huge new uncertainties, making the job of forecasting ever more difficult.  Factors included: political instability; behaviour change; autonomous vehi

Milton Keynes central will be the testing ground for a new mobility solution when the roll-out of a fleet of 40 driverless pods begins early next year.  The foundations for the UK Autodrive project were laid in October 2016 with on-street trials of three LUTZ Pathfinder pods in Milton Keynes by Transport Systems Catapult (TSC). The two-seater pods were developed by Oxford University spin-out company Oxbotica and manufactured by Coventry automotive innovation firm RDM. The next generation o

The Transport Systems Catapult (TSC) has announced that Paul Campion has been appointed as chief executive officer.  Campion joins the TSC from his position leading IBM’s Global Financing in the UK and Ireland. IBM Global Financing is an IT financing house that helps IBM’s clients and partners optimise the financial cases for their IT transformations. He has previously worked in a variety of technical, marketing and sales operational leadership roles for IBM, both in the UK an

Every self-respecting British transport modeller knows the six-year rule and their clients worry about its implications for timescales and budget: demand data in transport models should not be older than six years to stand up to WebTAG scrutiny. To me, it is surprising that this rule is contested so rarely. For starters, why six years, and not five, or eight? How hard is the rule – or is it mere guidance? And what about the waste in not using older data? So here’s my challenge: as a

Transport received far less media coverage than many other issues in the run up to the General Election, with the possible exception of Labour’s proposals to renationalise the railways (see Media Monitor 26 May). An exception to this was a lengthy article in The New Statesman that went through the major transport policies of each of the major parties in some detail. “Education gets around five pages of the Tory manifesto,” NS writer John Elledge noted on 31 May. “The NHS

I wrote last time (LTT721) about a project I’m involved with that aims to breathe new life into around 300 miles of Ministry of Transport-funded segregated cycleways that were built in the late 1930s. Some of these became buried and lost, while others are hidden in plain sight. Some remain designated as cycle tracks, but other have long since been ‘repurposed’ as general carriageway. An update on the project was then on the front page of LTT723. It began by seeking ‘Kick

Saudi Arabia’s traffic safety issues have recently reached alarming levels when compared to the rest of the world. While considerable resources are being spent by the public sector to reverse the emerging traffic safety crisis nationwide in terms of expansion of infrastructure, much research is still needed to consider the different avenues of deployment of ITS to help deter the steeply inclining traffic safety issues curve. The Saudi Aramco Chair for Traffic Safety research, with the help

It’s easy to stereotype different generations; changing values and different levels of comfort with technology often create the sense that there is a growing gulf between old and young. Much has been made of the age-related factors in the Brexit vote, for example. But is your generation really that different from that of your parents (other than in spending an inordinate amount of time on social media)? Is there value in understanding generational factors? And what applications might this

Since Kazakhstan shrugged off the Soviets in 1991 and declared its independence, Almaty, the country’s largest city, has gone through an unprecedented period of growth. That growth was powered by the entrepreneurial energy unleashed through liberation which swept through much of the nation’s economic and social life, not least when it came to public transport. The trouble is that the buccaneering spirit is not necessarily as liberating for local commuters as it can be for the bus op

In December 2015, the 196 countries attending the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Paris came to an historic agreement that could have the most profound repercussions for the future.  The Paris agreement aims to reduce worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases down to zero by the second half of this century, limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees. It is a boldly ambitious proposal, but some of the tools that could make that ambition a reality, in

How often do we see car parks being built, and not meeting the end users’ needs? Time and again we reach our destination, be it a mall on a Friday or an office during the week, and we are faced with the dreaded experience of circling around a car park looking for a space, or being stuck in a queue waiting to even enter the car park.  Whilst sometimes this may be down to a shortage of parking spaces, often these issues arise due to poor car park design and signage. So what is wrong wi

We can’t predict future demand, but the transport solutions we help shape will influence that demand. The longer the horizon, the less we know.  Yet our infrastructure can have a lifespan of 30-plus years. Where will we want to go to in 2040,  and when?  What will be the impact of disruptive new technologys such that the connected autonomous car (CAV)? How will socio-economic changes change travel patterns?  To what extent will we work more from home?  What will ha

Streetlytics allows users to make well-informed decisions by providing direct access to detailed, ready-to-use insights on a particular population, its activity, and movements across all modes of travel from the current day into the future. As traffic analysts, we need to know the reasons why travel is happening, as well as key facts about the trips and flows on our streets and transport services. The questions asked in traffic operations and in modelling are who, when, where, why and how. WHO:

The scale of change means that conventional elasticity-based approaches need to be adjusted (the ‘arc elasticity’ problem) but, even then, it is difficult to understand all the possible longer-term consequences for example, of relocating homes and jobs Hyperloop is one technology that offers brave new possibilities for rapid travel. It offers extremely fast land-based transportation, at speeds of up to 700mph, on a maglev-type system in an evacuated tunnel.  A test track has b

Future cities will be different than today's cities in many aspects, but especially in terms of transportation and mobility. The car of tomorrow will be intelligent, connected and autonomous. Aspiring smart cities  such as Qatar in the Middle East are preparing for the challenge. The future car will avoid accidents, drive by itself and park by itself. When the penetration of this technology on the road becomes high enough, people will no longer need to own a personal vehicle.  Why sh

The EU project Opticities develops and implements real-time decision tool for traffic management based on dynamic simulation. The design is a combination of Grand Lyon’s existing traffic management system and Aimsun Online, which is developed and supported by TSS-Transport Simulation Systems. The tool allows the anticipative monitoring of the traffic in the network based on predetermined warnings by predicting the next hour in real time. By Emmanuel Bert The Opticities project has brought

There is one thing that cities around the world have in common: their streets are congested with cars, causing traffic jams and accidents, polluting the air and taking up an immense amount of the highly contested urban space. But addressing the symptoms alone is no solution; we also have to face up to the underlying cause: the conventional use of conventional cars. And therefore we need mobility disruptive technologies. There is one thing that almost all cities around the world have in common:

Traffic and revenue forecasting for greenfield toll roads is an ideal testing ground for modelling and forecasting. The problem is behaviourally simple: the default assumption is that the main response is route choice, and any other potential response is an upside. Nevertheless, there is abundant evidence that on average these forecasts tend to overestimate demand, sometimes by a large margin. Incidentally, the work of Bent Flyvbjerg, now at Saïd Business School, Oxford, has shown this bias

Over the last two decades, cities in the Middle East have witnessed significant growth in economic development, resulting in population growth and higher levels of employment which, in turn, resulted in increased daily trips on limited transport infrastructure.  To cope with the fast pace of development, the concerned authorities accelerated transport infrastructure expansion, but its pace has not matched the pace of development growth, mainly due to the time required to plan and implement

In February 2016, the Royal College of Physicians estimated that air pollution was killing around 40,000 people a year in the UK , which is more than 20 times more than are killed in road traffic accidents. If accurate, this estimate would make air pollution the fourth most-serious public health risk in the UK after cancer, heart disease and obesity, and one that disproportionately affects the most vulnerable in society: the elderly, the sick and the young. Poor air quality is also likely to hu

Modern transport planners are not just the sum of their technical skills, or the tools at their disposal. They are not even the sum of their own experience. They are the sum of more than 50 years of hard work, research, innovation and the experiences of many hundreds of thousands of planners and engineers.  Transport planning itself has found its way in an ever-changing world. The rise of the motor vehicle, the emergence of supercomputers, oil shocks, and the re-emergence of sustainable tr

Many of the traditional assumptions underlying forecasting and modelling are being challenged by radically different travel behaviours. The way in which younger people, and people in cities generally, choose how to travel is already undergoing dramatic change. The emergence of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) in cities and Connected Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) on the strategic network makes the point and their development will be fast – years rather than decades. We need to be prepared. Transp

A transport model is devised with two primary requirements: replicating base year situations and forecasting future year implications.  To achieve an acceptable validation performance, measures are sometimes introduced which compromise the quality of the forecasting performance of the model. Overfitting the base year can undermine the reliability of the forecasting outcomes. This article explores the impact of ‘overfitting’ through three case studies that cover the three model

Transportation forecasting models were first implemented in the 1950s, back in the days of punch-cards and mainframe computers. Yet advances in modelling techniques, computing power and data availability have not been accompanied by a systematic uptick in predictive performance. Fact. So a more fruitful line of enquiry might switch attention from production to consumption. How can investors become smarter consumers of traffic forecasts? A good place to start is by improving our understanding of

The first part of the question implies that we are in a world of rapid change. The rise of Uber, increasing autonomy of vehicles, electrification, on-line shopping… the list goes on. Change is happening for sure – but how rapid it is and how much of it is defined by changes to transport technologies seems much more open to question. I argue here that there are a number of trends, many of which our traditional approaches to understanding demand did not anticipate, that have been on-g

Welcome… This year's Data and Modelling publication brings together thoughts from three events in the Modelling World series: Modelling Tomorrow's World, run in November 2016 in partnership with the Transport Systems Catapult, Modelling World Middle East 2017, held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in February 2017, and themes and ideas to be discussed at this year's Modelling World in London, to be held on June 14 for the 12th successful year.  It is published at a time of unprecede

What the feature in the last issue on heavy goods vehicles shows is that bold freight policies are needed (‘Can’t live with them, can’t live without them: whither the HGV?’ LTT 12 May). We receive many requests for advice from the public on how to ameliorate the adverse impacts of lorries using unsuitable urban and rural roads. In the past, freight, which does not have a vote and was not seen as sexy, was often overlooked by politicians and officials alike. Growing aware

The Conservative manifesto for next month’s General Election makes no mention of Crossrail 2, the plan to link up rail lines in south-west and north-east London, adding to fears that the project could be shelved by a Tory victory.  The party’s manifesto pledges to continue a programme of “strategic national investments, including High Speed 2, Northern Powerhouse Rail and the expansion of Heathrow Airport”. Before the prime minister called the election, Transport f

Persuading businesses to adopt green travel policies may be a widely-shared goal in the transport planning community, but achieving success in the real world can face a number of formidable obstacles, including cost, convenience, and communication. The Smartgo brand, developed by ‘green’ transport consultancy Go Travel Solutions, offers a means to overcome these barriers to implementation by signing up a critical mass of businesses that can provide the numbers of staff necessary for

The promoter of a 60-tonne, 25.25-metre lorry is waiting to hear if the DfT will approve his proposal for on-road trials of 1,000 of the vehicles.  Dick Denby, non-executive chairman of Lincoln-based Denby Transport Ltd, has lobbied successive governments to permit trials of his eight-axle lorry, dubbed the Eco-Link. He says the vehicles would cut fuel consumption, reduce lorry miles –  thereby improving road safety – and reduce costs for shippers.  The UK’s cu

The Government is being urged to draft legislation to accelerate the delivery of road improvements to serve the Channel Ports in Kent. Charlie Elphicke, the MP for Dover and Deal, wants the planning processes temporarily  suspended to ensure the quick delivery of the Lower Thames Crossing (LTT 14 Apr); an upgrade to the A2/M2; and a new lorry park beside the M20 in Kent (LTT 14 Apr). All are taking too long to deliver, he says, claiming that the  need for them is urgent because the t

US engineering giant CH2M announced at the end of March that it was withdrawing from the running for the  £170m contract to serve as the Government’s development partner for HS2 phase 2B (Crewe to Manchester, and West Midlands to Yorkshire) (LTT 31 Mar).  CH2M had already performed the role for phase one of HS2 (London to the West Midlands), and in February it was named preferred bidder by HS2 Ltd for the 2B contract. That prompted Mace, one of the other shortlisted bidder

Five proposals to change how we pay for road use have been shortlisted for the prestigious Wolfson Economics Prize worth £250,000.  More than 120 entries from seven countries were received in response to this year’s prize question: ‘How can we pay for better, safer, more reliable roads in a way that is fair to road users and good for the economy and the environment?’ (LTT 28 Oct 16). The prize organisers say the  switch to electric and autonomous vehicles, gro

Local Transport Today is very good at reporting the new developments, policies and procedures that our profession generates on almost a daily basis. It also reports on problems that occur when major schemes and interventions have not resulted in what was envisaged. However, issues that it does not seem to fully cover include the manner in which our national road infrastructure is deteriorating due to a lack of investment in its everyday operation, and the lack of political, and sadly possible pr

An ability to interact with customers through apps is going to have a huge impact on our industry, and will change the way that local transport is provided over the next decade,” says Peter Bell, technology and innovation director for transport software provider Trapeze. “It’s a fairly obvious point, but nevertheless crucial, that traditional operators underestimate the speed at which things will flip. The generation of those who can’t or won’t use a smartphone is r

Councils in Oxfordshire seem set to prepare a joint spatial plan, which should strengthen the links between the transport and land-use planning.  Transport is a county council responsibility but Oxfordshire’s five district councils are responsible for spatial planning, each preparing a local plan informed by an Oxfordshire Strategic Housing Market Assessment that  identifies overall housing need.  The Oxfordshire growth board, a joint committee of the county council and th

Electrification may not be the best way to improve the UK’s rail network, Network Rail chief executive Mark Carne has said. The case for electrification has been damaged by the Great Western electrification project  between Maidenhead and Bristol, Cardiff, and Newbury. The project has been beset by problems, with ballooning costs and works running years behind schedule. The electrification equipment has also proved controversial with local residents  who say it is ugly. Network

Everyone involved in road planning and appraisal should read, digest and reflect on the research report published by the Campaign to Protect Rural England (LTT 31 Mar). Here are our reflections. Lynn Sloman and colleagues show for over 80 schemes that traffic across a screenline drawn widely around the scheme tends to grow more rapidly than background growth in the region. There are various points of contention, for example whether regional background growth should include or exclude urban traff

We’re just an enthusiastic bunch of nerds really – transport nerds,” says Sharon Daly, the Australian-born UK managing director of Steer Davies Gleave.  The words are said with evident fondness for colleagues who are involved in many major transport projects both here and abroad – from rail franchising bids to toll road sales, big city transport strategies to inter-urban studies, and journey planning apps to autonomous vehicles. “We’re not an engineering

The Welsh Government’s decision to include infrastructure and information standards in its recently published discussion document on bus services policy  is to be welcomed (‘Welsh Government puts bus franchising on the agenda’ LTT 17 Mar). Too often the humble bus stop is overlooked in terms of schemes to improve local bus services and the wider public transport network. Whilst there are many areas in England where local authorities and/or operators are very proactive in

Local authorities in the West Midlands conurbation are exploring ways to capture more contributions from developers and landowners to fund major transport projects. Proposals have been drawn up by Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council’s UK Central Urban Growth Company (UGC), which has been set up to realise the potential of the UK Central Hub, the name for the 1,300-hectare area in which the proposed HS2 Interchange station on the London-West Midlands line will sit.  A major program