State of the Nations Update:
Transport Planning for a Sustainable Future

In 2020, The Transport Planning Society commissioned the University of Hertfordshire’s Smart Mobility Unit to produce a survey of the state of transport and of transport planning in Britain. The resulting “State of the Nations” report, published in October 2020, looked at trends in travel patterns, at the benefits but also the costs of those trends on society and the environment, and at the impacts of transport policies and public spending priorities in England, Scotland and Wales. The report was well received by parliamentarians and decision-makers and its recommendations were widely covered in the transport world.

Due to a different landscape with regards to travel patterns post-pandemic and some major transport policy documents published since 2020, the Transport Planning Society decided that an update to the 2020 report would be worthwhile, and has commissioned the University of Hertfordshire to revisit its original report and set out the changes that have occurred since then. The report comes at a time of significant challenges for UK society in general, and UK transport in particular, and it is hoped this report will be as useful as the original was in drawing together what is happening in transport across the UK and that the updated recommendations will be helpful to policy-makers.