Category: Foresight
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Looking for the light in a dark age
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’.…
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Future mobility meets the Nolan Principles
Today I had the pleasure of being one of the speakers at the launch of the latest report in London Transport Museum’s Interchange Programme – a report called ‘Making transport fit for the future‘. I didn’t have a hand in this report but if I say it focuses upon ‘Decide…
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The Mott MacDonald journey continues at UWE
📢 BREAKING NEWS I’m delighted to announce that my role as the Mott MacDonald Professor of Future Mobility that started in 2018 has been extended by a further three years. My love of transport stretches back into the last century, but it was a flurry of excitement in the transport…
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666 ppm – the Number of the Beast – it is a human number 🤘
666 parts per million of CO2. Woe to you oh earth and sea. In 1982 when I was 13 or 14 I bought ‘The Number of The Beast’ as a red vinyl single. Isn’t it beautiful? Blood red. It was my first gig when I was 13 – the Number…
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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…
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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…
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Transitioning to Net Zero
I’ve just taken part in the first 2024 webinar from the Association of European Transport’s Transport and Mobility Forum. Hosted by Conall Mac Aongusa, Chaired by Derek Halden and with Susan Krumdieck and Elizabete Arsenio alongside me on the Panel, we got stuck into the wicked matter of the future…
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A New Year’s radio interview, and Jevon’s Paradox
The transition to electric vehicles is in full swing and in the news, while I’ve been worring about Jevon’s Paradox. I’ve just done my first BBC Radio Bristol interview of 2024 on the topic of the EV transition. Putting aside politics and other matters about addressing the climate emergency, transitions…
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Foresight through developing shared mental models: The case of Triple Access Planning
On the sixth day of Christmas my true love gave to me…. six triple access futures, and a mental model in a pear tree. Daniela Paddeu and I are pleased to share our new paper (free to access) which sets out how systems thinking can be used to make sense of…
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You say scenario, I say scenario
Scenario planning is now entering the mainstream of transport planning – great! But hang on, now people are discovering that scenarios are not so easy-peasy when you try and develop and use them. You say ‘scenario’, but I say ‘scenario’. Oh dear, confusion is starting to creep in. What a…
What the hell is going on? 