Thoughts, insights and rants about futures, climate change, system change, transport, wicked problems, EDI, and heavy metal

By Professor Glenn Lyons

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  • My chance to give oral evidence to the Parliamentary Transport Committee

    My chance to give oral evidence to the Parliamentary Transport Committee

    This is a crucial period of reckoning for strategic road investment in the British Isles. Scotland, Wales and Ireland have targets for reducing car traffic by 2030. The Wales Roads Review outcomes were made public last month. The Parliamentary Transport Committee currently has an open Inquiry into Strategic Road Investment in England. Having submitted written Read more

  • Place your bets now please – do we need road traffic reduction?

    Place your bets now please – do we need road traffic reduction?

    Shouldn’t a government with a legally binding commitment to decarbonise commit to road traffic reduction? It seems England is special. Scotland, Wales and Ireland all have targets set by their national governments to reduce car driven miles. England doesn’t. Yesterday the RAC Foundation published an important piece of work that set the following exam question: Is it Read more

  • Did you hear the $40 billion joke about people, planet and profit?

    Did you hear the $40 billion joke about people, planet and profit?

    Did you hear the $40 billion joke about people, planet and profit? We need to restore biodiversity and reduce global emissions on the planet. People need to change behaviours to help this to help themselves. But perish the thought that such trifling matters should get in the way of profit. It’s a joke. P.S. If Read more

  • Seeing beyond white male privilege in the transport sector – my submission to the Transport Committee

    Seeing beyond white male privilege in the transport sector – my submission to the Transport Committee

    Seeing beyond white male privilege in the transport sector – my submission to the Transport Committee. Shaping the future of transport is not just about emerging technologies. Judgements are everywhere: judgements about what to invest in; judgements in analysis that supports judgements about what to invest in; judgements about who should judge what to invest Read more

  • The earth has all the time in the world and we don’t

    The earth has all the time in the world and we don’t

    “The Earth has all the time in the world and we don’t.” Three years ago next month I was sat in an office on Broadway in New York watching footage on my laptop of one of my heroes, Greta Thunberg, addressing up to 30,000 people in Bristol, the home of my university. It was the Read more

  • Eight profesors speak with one voice of constructive concern on the future of road investment

    Eight profesors speak with one voice of constructive concern on the future of road investment

    Hear the voices behind the Road Investment Scrutiny Panel report – each one worth a listen in their own right I would say, and in turn a report worth taking note of in which they speak as one. Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce the cast for the feature article in this week’s edition of Read more

  • Chat-GPT, what does a four degrees C world mean for life on earth? DALL-E, can you paint that?

    Chat-GPT, what does a four degrees C world mean for life on earth? DALL-E, can you paint that?

    Chat-GPT, what does a four degrees C world mean for life on earth? DALL-E, can you paint that? “A four degrees Celsius increase in global average temperature above pre-industrial levels would likely have catastrophic and irreversible impacts on life on Earth. This level of warming would be considered as a “Hothouse Earth” scenario, beyond which Read more

  • Road Investment Scrutiny Panel report is published

    Road Investment Scrutiny Panel report is published

    Eight professors speak with one voice about their concerns for the future of road investment in a new report published today. We face a climate emergency. We face a nature emergency. We face social injustice. We have 190,000 miles of roads in England to maintain. In 2021, 1,558 people were killed on Britain’s roads. We Read more

  • We are the road crew

    We are the road crew

    May I let you into a secret? I had a small hand in designing and building bypasses during my time in industry as a civil engineering student. That was back in the late 1980s, coincident with the ‘Roads for Prosperity’ white paper. I wonder what that young, long-haired Glenn, rocking along to his cherished ‘Ace Read more

  • I asked Chat-GPT to write me a poem about road investment

    I asked Chat-GPT to write me a poem about road investment

    Is Artificial Intellgence influenced by past data? Is this going to shape our future? I asked Chat GPT to “Write me a poem about road investment”. This is what it said: The road stretches out before us,A ribbon of asphalt and dust.A path to adventure, a gateway to growth,A vital investment, worth its weight in Read more

  • I get to wear my Highway to Hell t-shirt professionally for a look to the future of roads

    I get to wear my Highway to Hell t-shirt professionally for a look to the future of roads

    Highway to hell? Yes, my dream has come true – a ‘well-suited’ (get it?) pose in a metal T-shirt in the latest edition of Chartered Institution of Highways & Transportation (CIHT) Transportation Professional publication to talk about ‘Seeing the Road Ahead’. I have a feeling – in the UK at least – that in the transport sector Read more

  • 10,000 transport professionals converging on Washington – fly me to the moon

    10,000 transport professionals converging on Washington – fly me to the moon

    The Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board takes place in person in Washington DC, starting today. Upwards of 10,000 transportation professionals will convene there. I should say I have attended it in the past myself though the last time I flew is now 1044 days ago. Given the unrelenting news about worsening climate change Read more