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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  • The Driverless Cars Emulsion – are you ready to come together?

    The Driverless Cars Emulsion – are you ready to come together?

    Driverless cars – it can be a divisive topic. Some people love them. Some people hate them. The lovers and the haters are like oil and water in my experience. They just don’t come together well – they don’t like mixing. Yet oil and water can be helped to mix by adding an emulsifier. Hence Read more

  • Planning for connected autonomous vehicles

    Planning for connected autonomous vehicles

    There is a burgeoning volume of literature on autonomous vehicles. We wanted to cut to the chase and identify the most important issues for our clients (especially those in the public sector) to be aware of and addressing. We have produced a crowd-sourced report that draws upon our thinking across Mott MacDonald globally which we Read more

  • The importance of user perspective in the evolution of Mobility as a Service

    The importance of user perspective in the evolution of Mobility as a Service

    Download our new paper. See a video of the paper being presented. A collaboration between Mott MacDonald and UWE Bristol‘s Centre for Transport & Society. At the end of 2018 the UK Parliament’s House of Commons Transport Committee published the report on its inquiry into Mobility as a Service (MaaS). It considers findings and conclusions concerning MaaS in practice and issues of governance and Read more

  • My journey by train from the UK to Southern Spain

    My family left our rented villa in southern Spain at 7am this Saturday morning. A few hours later and they are already home. They flew. I will arrive home two whole days after them IF things go to schedule. Today it’s Malaga-Madrid-Barcelona, youth hostel overnight. Tomorrow is Barcelona-Paris, hotel overnight. Monday is Paris-London-local station. Some…

  • GB News presenters laugh at the climate crisis

    This drivel is probably best left in ‘Olds’ rather than ‘News’ but it seems to have raised its head on this platform. Why not join 3.5 million other people who each month apparently on average consume a massive one minute of what GB News serves up? I mean what could be a better use of…

  • Place your bets on the future of transport decarbonisation

    The Parliamentary Transport Committee’s report on strategic road investment published today recognises that the Government is gambling with our future when it comes to decarbonisation. Having led the Road Investment Scrutiny Panel (RISP) with Professor Steve Gooding which reported earlier this year (with Professors Jillian Anable, Nicola Christie, Zoe Davies, Stephen Glaister, Phil Goodwin, & Karen Lucas, supported by Andrew Crudgington)…

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  • The Pentagram of Influence

    What a devilishly wicked problem getting the world mobilised on climate action is. So devilish that I think we are at the mercy of an inverted pentagram of influence that holds everthing in tension rather than enabling all factions to pull together to create concerted climate action of the intensity required. In the pentagram five…

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  • Team spirit

    There is something beautiful and powerful about being part of a team with shared purpose, emotional intelligence, creativity and a wealth of experience. These are some of the wonderful humans I work with in Mott MacDonald making magic when it comes to vision-led planning and robust decision making in the face of uncertainty. Our collective skills help…