25th Anniversary - Past Chair Anthology

This year marks 25 years since the inception of the Transport Planning Society (TPS). To celebrate the silver anniversary, the society wanted to hear from its past chairs to see how TPS had grown since its humble beginnings in 1997. We asked them to consider the most important issues they’ve faced in their careers to date, and what the industry as a whole needs to do to be able to effectively tackle the next 25 years.

Throughout the responses, a resonant theme was the transformative power of transport planning when done well. Good transport planning can drastically improve people’s socio-economic conditions in several ways while also helping us realise vital wider policy goals such as Net-Zero, clean air and enabling more physical activity. While different responses touched on a range of topics from enabling more diversity in transport decision making, to digitalisation, to the importance of collaboration across sectors to tackle the root causes of the sectors problems - all were united in understanding the monumental role transport planners will have in shaping society in the coming decades.

As well as the transformative power of transport planning, in their submissions a number of past chairs hit on the essential need to attract, support and develop the next generation of transport planners. It is clear the transport planning profession must find better ways of providing a space that younger professionals can use to develop and raise the profile of the radical ideas that will lead to the substantive change necessary if we are to meet the needs of future generations.

And at the heart of the transport planning profession stands TPS. We hope this anthology gives the reader an insight into our brilliant past chairs, the work which TPS has focused on in the last 25 years, and some ideas for what the profession should focus on looking ahead.