Another green transport world
The weather is losing some of its British reserve. Changing from introversion to extroversion. Records are now there to be broken – and regularly. The hottest, the wettest, the most extreme. As the weather intensifies we need to expand the capabilities of transport infrastructure and its supporting built environment to cope. We have a problem […]
What is the scope for boosting bus use?
“How much have we as an industry put into research and development in the last five years? We’re getting worse, not better, and we have to change that.” These were words from Brian Souter last year, emphasising that despite being the main form of public transport across the country, research and development in the bus […]
Getting beyond the MaaS hysteria
I don’t know about you but I’ve seen more than enough Power Points by now explaining with breathless excitement what Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is – as if no-one had ever heard about it before. And as if frequent repetition of the phrase in itself has alchemic properties which render immaterial base considerations as economics. […]
Six to watch on urban transport from the new Government
Early days but here’s six to watch that could be early indicators of the long term direction of the new government on urban transport. 1. All the political big names love buses these days – if they can’t claim blood relatives in the industry they are making models of them in the evening. True […]
Sociable housing meets public transport – 10 things I learned in Eindhoven
The UK has a housing crisis. Not enough of the right kind of homes in the right formats in the right places and at the right price. We can and must do better and part of this means making better connections between transport and housing (and professionals working in these two sectors) in order to […]
How Merseyrail dared to be different
“Liverpool, surreal. Liverpool, sardonic. Liverpool battered dignity. Liverpool, flotsam of maritime memory. Liverpool never quite what it was because everything it does changes what it does … Liverpool, welcoming the world. Liverpool cutting edge, keeping pace, dropping anchor.” Extract from The North by Paul Morley Liverpool is different. And so is its very own rail network. None […]
Why En Avant?
Welcome to the new blog from pteg – the Passenger Transport Executive Group. So why have we called it En Avant? Well, this was the personal motto of Isambard Kingdom Brunel – the Michealangelo of engineering who never gave in however many obstacles there were to getting his jaw dropping bridges, railways and ships constructed. […]
We know the pledges – but what’s the plan?
In signing up to climate change pledges politicians are also signing up to a seismic public policy shift – especially for the way we travel Climate change is the challenge of the century, both in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and mitigating the worst effects of the continuum we are already on. We all […]
How can we support towns like Batley?
There are so many policy reports on transport and cities you could stack them up as high as the Beetham Tower. However, the pile of reports on transport and towns would struggle to get higher than the front step. Of course, getting big city transport networks right deserves attention. Wider city region economies, and indeed […]
When transport met housing…
Yesterday we held a roundtable in parliament chaired (at different stages) by both the Chair of the House of Commons Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee , Clive Betts MP, and his counterpart at the Transport Select Committee, Lilian Greenwood MP. Round the table we had housing associations, developers, planning bodies, transport authorities, local government, […]