The TPS is delighted to hear that TPS Member, Gergely Raccuja, a 27 year old Graduate Transport Planner from Amey  has been awarded the prestigious Wolfson Prize for Economics, worth £250,000 for his imaginative ideas on how to design a new way for paying for road use. This is based on replacing fuel duty and vehicle excise  duty with a distance-based charge collected by insurance companies. Congratulations from us all at TPS.

The judges included Lord Darling, former Lord Chancellor and a champion of road pricing, Sir John Kingman, Chairman of Legal and General, economist Bridget Rosewell, Isabel Denning, former Deputy Mayor for Transport in London and Lord Finkelstein, The Times Columnist.

Keith Buchan, TPS Director of Skills, said

“Gary is a great example of a graduate who has enthusiastically engaged with the key issues of transport planning and we are pleased he is one of the 400 graduate trainees on the TPS Professional Development Scheme (PDS).  The PDS is designed to support people like him and this project will provide him with plenty of material to make rapid progress to complete the scheme and in due course to achieve the TPP.  Making road user charging simple and acceptable has been a challenge for transport planners for decades – a fresh approach is just what is needed.  Well done!”