Chair’s message - May 2023

It’s been another busy few weeks for the Society, both in terms of its activities and the wider world of transport policy and planning.

TPS Lecture - The Future of (Great) British Rail

It was a pleasure to be able to host Elaine Seagriff’s lecture on “The next chapter in British rail -delivering rail reform one year on” at the ICE on 4 May, almost exactly three months after Secretary of State for Transport Mark Harper gave the Bradshaw Address on the same topic at the same venue.   We had a fantastic turnout, both in-person and online – a sign of the interest in the future of one of the world’s oldest national railway networks. Elaine is the Director of Strategic Planning for the Great British Railways Transition Team (GBRTT), so she is right in the thick of planning for the set-up of GBR – subject to its inclusion in a forthcoming Transport Bill.   She gave a fascinating insight into how that’s going, including the discussions with the sub-national transport bodies and the city regions on how to integrate rail network planning better into regional decision-making.  You can see Elaine’s lecture HERE. 

TPS Board Meeting

Elaine’s lecture followed my first TPS Board meeting as Chair, which confirmed for me how lucky the Society is to have such phenomenal talent and experience in its membership and for that talent to be available on a voluntary basis. We had a great discussion across a whole range of topics, including the skills programme, events, membership and communications.  We agreed there is great potential to create a “virtuous circle”, where our communications around our events can help raise the Society’s profile and increase our membership.   We’re planning to have a strategy session to update the TPS’s Business Plan to set out a clear “roadmap” for the Society over the next 2-3 years.  

You can see the chair’s reports HERE.  

Transport Planner of the Year (TPOY)/Young Transport Planner of the Year (YTPOY)

I’ve just finished going through the nominations for this year’s TPOY and the new YTPOY awards. We had an amazing set of nominations, with 10 nominations for TPOY and no fewer than 21 nominations for YTPOY. The nominations reflected the huge breadth and depth of skills across the Society’s membership, covering everything from carbon modelling to “Decide and Provide” transport planning to delivery of active travel and behaviour change. The winner of the TPOY award will also give the TPOY lecture, which will be brilliant whoever wins. 

TPS Dinner and Lecture 2023

Bookings are coming in thick and fast for this year’s TPS Annual Dinner and Summer Party on Thursday 13 July at the Dickens Inn in St. Katherine’s Dock just by Tower Bridge. Victoria Hills (CEO of the RTPI and former TPS Chair) will be giving the after-dinner address, which will be brilliant. Book now to make sure you get a place.

You can book your tickets HERE

Planning Roads Fit for a Sustainable Future – the debate continues.

Road transport remains one of the largest emitters of carbon in the UK economy, making its decarbonisation a critical priority if we are to have any chance of avoiding the worst impacts of the Climate and Ecological Emergencies.  There has been a flurry of policy announcements and analyses about the future of the road network over the past few weeks. 

National Highways published its Environmental Sustainability Strategy on 18 May.  This covers a range of environmental issues, including biodiversity, natural resource use and mitigating pollution. On carbon, the strategy reiterates NH’s commitments to deliver net zero corporate emissions by 2030, maintenance and construction emissions by 2040 and road user emissions by 2050.  Perhaps not surprisingly, given NH’s current remit, the Strategy makes no reference to demand management as a way of addressing user emissions.  The Strategy states NH will work with other partners “to research innovative solutions that accelerate vehicle decarbonisation.  In this way, we can influence and promote reductions in road user emissions”.  There is an awful lot riding on the uptake of EVs! 

On the same day as the Environmental Sustainability Strategy, NH also published their Strategic Road Network Initial Report for 2025-2030.  This sets out NH’s proposals for the next road period (i.e. RIS3), how they intend to deliver them and what they aim to achieve.   Interestingly – and encouragingly – this confirms that NH’s focus will be on maintaining and upgrading the SRN rather than starting new roads.  This follows the Government’s announcement in March that several major road projects will be “rephased” due to challenging economic headwinds.   It remains to be seen which of the remaining schemes in the RIS2 programme will progress, given public spending constraints and growing concerns about the rate at which road transport is being decarbonised.  

On this note, Greg Marsden published Reverse Gear, his analysis of the state of play on transport decarbonisation, based on data gleaned through FOI requests to the DfT. The report makes for sobering reading.  It concludes that the new carbon reduction pathway for transport in the Government’s revised Carbon Budget Delivery Plan (CBDP) published in March means that three-quarters (72%) of the potential ambition in the Transport Decarbonisation Plan has been lost.  The focus is on the transition to EVs (see above!) and “demand management has largely been abandoned”.

As I wrote in the April bulletin, “the next 18 months are going to be very important both in the transport sector and more widely”. The TPS will continue to play a key role in shaping the debate about the transition to a properly sustainable and decarbonised future.