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Rosie Jones is a national treasure
Rosie Jones IS a national treasure, and – to quote Annie Macmanus – is a f**king legend. Susie and I had the great privilege and belly-laughing experience to see her ‘Triple Threat’ stand-up show last night. “If you’re not disabled or gay you won’t be leaving here tonight until you are” she joked. What an Read more
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Take the risk or lose the chance
Take the risk or lose the chance. Just over six years ago I started my current role with Mott MacDonald. I was stepping into the unknown and leaving a role I was well established in at my university. While weighing up this key decision in my life, my eldest daughter Florrie bought me this sign Read more
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Changemakers – a podcast with the wonderful Annette Smith talking about FUTURES
Annette and I first started working together in the last century! We were once ‘young professionals’ and part of the Transport Visions Network. Years later we’ve found ourselves taking on the future together again. I’m delighted to be part of this new podcast from the University of the West of England in which Annette Smith and I reminisce about Read more
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Happy valentines day, I’d fly anywhere just to be with you
Happy valentines day, I’d fly anywhere just to be with you. Taylor Swift’s private jet use puts carbon credits, personal choice and personal influence under the spotlight. Taylor Swift is making headlines, and not just attracting the attention of swifties. For those in the dark, it seems she now has only one private jet. This Read more
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From ugly to beautiful – the case of Le Plessis-Robinson
Want some hope and inspiration? Wondering if it is possible to change things from awful to beautiful? Then step away from what is at the top of your to-do list and spend 13 mins watching this video. To those who have opportunistically weaponised ’15 minute city’ in pursuit of political populism and profit, stop stealing Read more
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It never ceases to amaze me how Antonio Guterres continues to come out with ‘clarion call’ statements
It never ceases to amaze me how Antonio Guterres continues to come out with ‘clarion call’ statements that you’d hope would galvanise unified and collective action for survival as we stand on the brink, but don’t. Here are some examples: 🔥 “We are in the fight of our lives, and we are losing” (COP27) 🔥 Read more
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We are operating here in privatised public space – our ‘club membership’ can be revoked by the club at any time
I’m a metal-loving transport nerd and wondering what the future holds for this platform which is why I set up https://glennlyons.blog/. If you regularly use this platform as your primary means of keeping in touch with your professional network and getting involved in exchange of knowledge and opinion, how would you feel if your account Read more
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10 years ago today I began my secondment as Strategy Director with the New Zealand Ministry of Transport
10 years ago today I began my secondment as Strategy Director with the Te Manatū Waka – Ministry of Transport (New Zealand). I flew over 11,000 miles to get there. I ended up making the NZ trip four times – over 90,000 fossil-fuelled miles. It was one of the great privileges of my career working as Read more
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Please don’t tell the Government that I spent three hours IN my working day in an event on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
Please don’t tell the Government that I spent three hours IN my working day in an event on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. For those of you who may be alarmed by this admission, please be assured that no productivity was harmed in my taking part in this event – my first workshop of the day Read more
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Madness lies in doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result – from transport planning to Triple Access Planning
Madness lies in doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result. So instead of transport planning in the paradigm of predict and provide, we bring you Triple Access Planning (TAP) in the paradigm of Decide and Provide. While transport planning has continued to evolve, it has remained tethered for too Read more
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Götterdämmerung Syndrome
Götterdämmerung Syndrome – “as death approaches, they [narcissists] do their best to destroy as much of the world as they can”. I’ve just reached the half-way point of The Ministry For The Future and the passage in the image below stands out. A quote from an article on the website Psychology Today called ‘How Narcissism Read more
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Trustee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation
Thank goodness this at least means he isn’t gunning for being chair of the Climate Change Committee, an appointment that isn’t being rushed following the departure of Lord Deben. It seems he is a trustee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. I once listened to one of their webinars just to keep a check on Read more
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As we face the greatest fight of our professional lives we need transport planners with super powers
On Tuesday 14 April I spoke with Michelle Wood and Brogan McPherson from PTRC for the first time about an event – a ‘fireside chat’ – they were thinking of running looking at COVID-19 and transport and wanted me to Chair. Nine days later we ran a panel discussion operating on Zoom and live streaming to YouTube. 1,200 people had registered…
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Everything you need to know? A new Special Issue of one of the leading international transport journals ‘Transportation Research A: Policy and Practice’ has just been published on the topic of Developments in Mobility as a Service (MaaS) and Intelligent Mobility. This is a valuable collection of papers that critically examines one of the areas of (future) mobility…
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Please invest 23 minutes of your time Thanks to my longstanding colleague, Professor Jim Longhurst, my attention was drawn to an interview at COP25 in Madrid with Dr Peter Carter (Director of the Climate Emergency Institute and an expert reviewer for the IPCC). I strongly encourage you to invest 23 minutes of your time to watch his interview in full. It would…
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By Glenn Lyons and Greg Marsden Download for free our new paper [1] that critically examines the history of road traffic forecasting in England from 1989 to 2018 in terms of the treatment of uncertainty and in turn brings into question how uncertainty is addressed in scheme appraisal guidance. In a team effort with equal contributions from…
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“Changing mobility” – it was Phil Goodwin some years ago who highlighted the double meaning of ‘changing’ in a phrase like this (one of many insights from Phil that have stuck with me). It can be an adjective (mobility is changing) or a verb (mobility can be changed). The fact that mobility is changing points…
What the hell is going on? 