Lessons we can learn from Scandi cities
Scandi cities like Malmo are the hope of the world on climate. Sure they are doing all the things everywhere else is doing on transport (zero-emission vehicles, modal shift and so on) but they are also doing the research and development for the rest of us on what you need to do next on climate. […]
Making the case for transport authorities
“Underneath all the commercial activities of the board, underneath all its engineering and operations, there is the revelation and realisation of something which is in the nature of a work of art … it is in fact, a conception of a metropolis as a centre of life, of civilisation, more intense, more eager, more vitalising […]
Cost of living crisis – what will the impact be?
Is the cost of living the new Covid in terms of the impact it’s going to have on patronage and travel trends? If it’s too early to say yet what the medium and long term implications of Covid will be, then that’s certainly true of rising energy prices and all the other inflationary pressures. But […]
Bus safety shouldn’t be an afterthought
The National Bus Strategy for England has an opinion about everything; from bus shelters to bus numbers – it knows best. However, there’s one topic where it is curiously quiet. And that’s bus safety. Or perhaps I should say dangerously quiet, given the yawning gulf that now exists between the approach taken in London and […]
Bus cuts close doors onto the world
‘It’s like a forgotten world. It makes you feel depressed…we’ve got bus passes – that’s brilliant – I feel like framing mine…But no bus services to use them on. We’re on an estate surrounded by main roads. The whole of life is out there but we can’t access it.’ COVID may have changed the context […]
An unhappy new year for public transport
It’s been a shaky start to the new year for public transport and it could get a lot rougher yet. Let me count the ways… The ‘work from home where you can’ advice has hit public transport’s core commuting market hard. Meanwhile the pre-Christmas binge on shopping and socialising which kept public transport patronage afloat […]
Waters isnt willing to go with the flow
Small countries can do big things on transport – look at the public transport paradise of Switzerland. And when Rhodri Morgan was in his pomp in the early years of the Welsh Assembly it felt like Wales was about to forge its own path. But without that drive from the top, there was a sense […]
Funding and a finely balanced future
Now that the dust has settled from Comprehensive Spending Review, it’s becoming easier to see through the smoke and mirrors and work out what actually happened. The question people often ask is ‘is it new money?’. And ‘is it more money?’. All depends on what you are comparing it with. Which previous year’s actual spend […]
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 […]