Party conferences and crunch point
It felt like the fallow Covid period has reinvigorated party conferences as institutions that before felt like they were in a slow decline. But as the equivalent of Glastonbury for the party faithful they were far busier and buzzier than I was expecting. The Conservative party conference was a sign of how far the Government […]
Five things I learned from the party conference circuit…
1.The Government has moved right into local transport’s territory with ‘levelling up’ one of the key themes (and devolution a sub theme) of the Conservative party conference. It’s still a very baggy concept onto which all sorts of asks, ideas and wishes can be projected onto but we are told that more definition will come […]
Be like Rotterdam and 'make it happen'
The planet is in danger. The trouble is that all too often targets and declarations can become ‘sign and forget’ – we need to act now “The frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation events have increased since the 1950s over most land area for which observational data are sufficient for trend analysis (high confidence) and […]
Tiger in the Tank – the story of the first female Secretary of State for Transport
On September 8th more than 350 people took part in the first of the ‘Gender on the Agenda’ events that UTG is sponsoring. A good indicator that this is an issue whose time has come. Meanwhile on October 9th a statue will be unveiled in Blackburn of former local MP, Barbara Castle, on what would have been […]
What the transport decarbonisation plan means for urban transport
Here are five key takeaways, based on an initial run through, of what the Transport Decarbonisation Plan means for urban transport. 1. It accelerates the shift in tone and emphasis in urban transport policy and delivery towards active travel and public transport and makes moves to lock this in (in a quantifiable way) through resuscitating previously […]
From point A to point B with a bit of poetry
Leeds 1953 Leeds was one of many cities that pre-figured what Beeching was to do to the national rail network in the Sixties by trashing their own mass transit system in the fifties. After World War Two housing was a bigger priority for public investment than comprehensively overhauling run down tram systems. At that time […]
I tried to stop a rail privatisation
Since the Williams-Shapps rail plan was published it seems like everybody has been telling their story of rail privatisation. So I’m going to tell mine. I was the Coordinator of the Save our Railways campaign that, in the nineties, tried to stop privatisation. We came close too. Though, as it has turned out, it was […]
What might the Williams-Shapps plan mean for urban public transport?
Here’s a first take: There are clear tensions between the urgent need to de-clutter and de-layer the railway landscape; the influence of the wider ‘save the union’ project; and the facts on the ground around existing devolution of urban and regional rail (and its clear benefits). One of those devo benefits being the pioneering of […]
Fighting smart to get passengers back on public transport
In some ways, getting the funding to keep public transport going during the pandemic was the easy bit. During the pandemic it was important for Government to keep the public transport show on the road (and the companies that provide it) to prevent a wider sense of societal and economic breakdown. As a result, the […]
The national bus strategy
1. If deregulation is dead then what is this that is replacing it? For years we have been arguing that passengers in our areas don’t want on-street competition and private companies determining the key public service that they rely on. Instead they want single, integrated bus networks as part of wider single, integrated public transport […]