The small team of staff at the Urban Transport Group has a big job to do in making the case for urban transport, in providing thought leadership on the future of the sector and in supporting our professional network so that our members can do more for less. You can find out more about how we do this here. However this week we thought we would show what this all means in terms of what we get up to at UTG in a typical week. This is using what we did Monday – Friday last week and we’ll be posting each day. Hopefully it will give an insight into the inner workings of the Urban Transport Group.

Why are we doing this now? In some ways, with general election purdah the week has not been typical with fewer meetings with Government. However, our Senior Economist, Pedro Abrantes, is leaving us soon so it seemed like a good opportunity to capture some of the things that he does. We are not advertising for a new Senior Economist but we are recruiting for a new post of Assistant Director so if you like the sound of our team then why not check out the ad? It’s Tuesday and everyone is enjoying the sunshine! (At least it was sunny last Tuesday anyway, it’s rainy this Tuesday!)

Tom: Today has been another day of working on Insight for me. The website hub is now starting to take shape, with most of the pages required in place. It will just be a case of getting the data into a database and developing the interactive visuals once the tool is ready to use. I am also working on a project that is looking to develop reverse journey matching for smart card users on bus. Me and Pedro had a call to discuss some legal requirements around data transfers. This is a new project, so there is still quite a lot of admin work to do. I get to leave a bit early now to get to cricket, hopefully the sun lasts.

Clare: Today I had a whole empty day in my diary, a rare thing! Which gave me a chance to get some solid work time into the taxis project. Although I had to do some diary juggling for the next few days as I’m off to an event and some meetings in the North East. I’m also currently organising an event for our Freight Working Group to visit the London Freight Enforcement Partnership in June, so I was coordinating some of the logistics for this. I think this will be a really great visit for the group and an interesting trip.

Jonathan: Today I travelled down to SYPTE for a session in Sheffield with their senior management team about future of urban transport, what Urban Transport Group is working on and how we can work more effectively together.  Some new faces and some familiar ones and very useful to have the opportunity for a long discussion following on from similar sessions at our other full members in the last few months. The other main focus of today was a long phone call with Professor Tom Rye at Napier University on finalising text of the forthcoming report on how Scandinavian countries are bringing about better public transport through franchising, devolution and innovation.

Saila: Today was a lot quieter than yesterday, although my bus broke down on the way to work so that was a good start. I spent most of my time sorting out appointments for our Comms consultancy applicants to chat to Jonathan about the role. I also booked Clare into a training course, and did some forensic investigation into some email trails to find out who said what and when.  This is my speciality if anyone is hiring! I also worked my magic to rearrange a few other meetings. Then I tackled the large amount of filing I had built up over the past few months. I made a start on organising a teleconference with the UTG Board members on air quality. Looking forward to the Eurovision semi-final tonight though! :-)

Pedro: I batted the data sharing agreement back and forth to consultants and transport authority colleagues – getting there… I drafted a briefing paper on the WHO’s Health Economic Assessment Tool for cycling and walking (HEAT) – in short? Strong empirical evidence that being more physically active will enable us to live longer but it more research is needed to understand how different interventions impact on activity levels I provided some support to University of Leeds PhD working on rail data fusion project and who needs help getting access to WYCA data – met WYCA’s Head of Research and Intelligence who agreed to help. 11-mile cycle ride home in the glorious sunshine – I think I’m winning!

Authors: Jonathan Bray, Tom Ellerton, Clare Linton, Pedro Abrantes and Saila Acton.