Congratulations  to Mark Frost, the incoming Chair of TPS, who takes over from Stephen Bennett who completed his two year term of office. Mark brings a wealth of experience gained from many years in local government, including the post of Assistant Director of Transport, Parking and Environmental Strategy at Hounslow until the the end of 2020. As a CTTP he has championed qualifications for transport planners and is a Reviewer for the TPS PDS scheme. 

On taking up this role Mark said

"I’m delighted and honoured to take over the role of chair of the Transport Planning Society at critical time for the profession. The pandemic has led to seismic changes in travel behaviour that could not possibly have been envisaged just 12 months ago.  How that behaviour evolves in the coming months and years as restrictions on movement and activity eventually start to drop away represents a once in a generation opportunity to fix our systems to respond to the long list of challenges the profession has been flagging for decades - notably the climate emergency, but also poor air quality, lack of physical activity, the insidious impact of transport poverty on social exclusion, the unnecessary economic cost of congestion etc.

As the home of transport planning, TPS is the natural place to have those conversations with each other and our stakeholders and I look forward to taking a front row seat for this debate.  In line with our Transport Planning Day 2021 themes of equality, diversity and inclusion I also welcome a frank conversation as to how we can increase the breadth of participation and engagement in our industry to ensure we are genuinely hearing every voice in that discussion. 

I wold like to play tribute to Stephen Bennett who has contributed so much to the Society in the past two years, raising our profile amongst government, helping to shape the Transport Planning Day Campaign and piloting TPS through a challenging year due to Covid." 

I look forward to working with my excellent board, and indeed all TPS members, on these crucial challenges over the next couple of years.  My email - mark.frost@fernconsulting.net (or LinkedIn) inbox is open to any TPS member who wants to engage with us on these issues and I welcome your feedback on what you think the role of TPS could be in addressing our shared challenges."