Blog

Our blog offers commentary, analysis and insights on the latest urban transport debates from our team of experts, as well as our Director’s regular column for Passenger Transport magazine.

People using a crossing

This is the sound of the suburbs

Suburbs. Most of us live in them. Most transport policy isn’t about them. It’s time more of it was. What approaches could we take to achieve this?

Making the case for transport authorities

At a recent UITP meeting of mostly European transport authorities it was revealing how much in common many of those attending had. We were in the 80% club (patronage plateauing somewhere in the 80% range of pre-Covid). Our national politicians simultaneously (for climate and cost of living reasons) want better public transport, but (for Covid deficit reasons) also want to reduce financial support...
Happy woman

Menopause in the workplace – breaking the taboo

For several years, the Urban Transport Group has been promoting initiatives to support our members to recruit and retain a diverse workforce, including in relation to improving gender balance in a sector that has typically been male dominated. Part of this involves looking at how organisations manage people, paying attention to health, wellbeing and inclusion, and creating work environments that engage people and enhance their performance.

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 let’s speculate anyway.

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 Northern Ireland on bus safety and the approach taken elsewhere in the UK.
London Overground train

Rail devolution and rail reform: Options for the future

Before the pandemic struck, one in three rail journeys in Britain were being made on services for which responsibility was devolved in full or in part to city regions, regions and administrations in Wales, Scotland, London, the north of England, Liverpool City Region and the West Midlands.
Woman standing on bus

Bus cuts close doors onto the world

COVID may have changed the context for bus services but bus cuts still aren’t victimless or without consequences. It’s just that (as with past waves of bus cuts) those who are most affected by them don’t have much clout or visibility. They were marginalised already and bus cuts marginalise them even further.