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


  • The epitome of not judging a book by it’s cover; or having a strong hunch that the cover spells trouble? Or sensing a wolf in sheep’s clothing? The word ‘prejudice’ conveys ‘pre-judging’. Here’s an example. My eldest daughter said to me ‘maybe people will listen more if you wear an office shirt and suit jacket…


  • Am I alone in finding myself at least once a day, sometimes several times, asking myself ‘What the hell is going on?’. The closer I look the more I have to squint to try and make sense of what I’m seeing, to the point that it it all blurs. This place has been a good…


  • The Nutmeg’s Curse

    The humble nutmeg precipitated a colonial atrocity in the 1600s. A massacre that forms part of the dirty rapacious history of appropriating nature as a resource for exploitation that bred capitalism and modernity and trampled over indigenous peoples. I’ve just finished reading Amitav Ghosh’s ‘The Nutmeg’s Curse – Parables for a Planet in Crisis’. It’s…


  • To my metal family out there – I’ve put together a resistance and resilience playlist. Some of the albums and tracks in the well of heavy metal that I drink from for replenishment – especially in testing times 🤘 Here’s my pick of twelve albums and tracks, plus two bonus tracks. What are some of…


  • This is a personal post in an awful week. Today my contribution to Local Transport Today’s 2025 ‘deep thinking’ initiative is published. I’m sorry to say fellow transport planners that it is a sobering take on our problems or predicament. It’s called ‘Looking for the light in a dark age’. When I started my transport…