STIP Forward

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Ten years ago, world leaders of almost 200 nations reached an historic agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and stave off the worst impacts of global warming by targeting a global temperature rise of no more than 1.5C. The Paris climate compact of 2015 was not without flaws and compromise, but it was a great achievement to secure signatures from so many countries to a legally binding document on addressing climate change.

One key element agreed was to review progress every five years. The national pledges in 2015 were insufficient to meet the 1.5C or even 2C maximum target, so ambition and action had to ramp up over time. But it was not a smooth ride. Some of the pledges were delayed by domestic politics or watered down by links to economic indicators.

However, the global agreement galvanised cities, who met in a parallel conference at the time. In just five years, walking, cycling, shared electric transport and public transport became the preferred modes of travel and of delivery over private motor vehicles run on fossil fuels. Cities pushed for green building standards, retrofitting buildings for the 21st century and insisting on carbon neutrality for iconic new developments. Such initiatives were supported by large private sector investment, as companies strove to become market leaders in the green economy and secure high-skilled employment for the future.

Thus, the world was on target in 2020 due to local action. However, to continue on that path over the last five years has required the international community to step forward again. We live in a local-global world, where nations can only offer so much, where countries may have less power over their own environment than a group of their neighbours.

Therefore, we have prepared this document, to be modified and ratified at the Climate Review 2025 conference in December. It is the Spatial, Trans-national Infrastructure Plan, and it brings together all infrastructure matters which are international and/or inter-continental. Such matters include aviation, shipping, long-distance pipelines, aqueducts and viaducts, watersheds and river systems, satellites and space installations.

Scientists, activists, economists, planners, senior civil servants, and diplomats have contributed to the pages of the STIP, ensuring it is based on accurate data and appropriate forecasts. We are aware that many of these topics are of strategic, international importance and must be dealt with delicately. However, as was highlighted in 2015, their absence in the original agreement and in many national pledges undermined the ambitions of the accord. Therefore, this Plan considers the impacts and outcomes of such infrastructure on trans-national and global climate without reference to national boundaries in order to maintain neutrality.

Through the work of trans-national teams and computers programmed to remove national bias, this document then offers spatial recommendations for international, inter-continental and global infrastructure. For example it proposes the appropriate number of hub airports and flight patterns in, to and from Western Europe to maximise the carbon efficiency of aviation, without undermining national economies.

We are offering to the world what many countries should offer to their citizens if they are serious about social, economic and environmental sustainability: spatial planning. If accepted by world leaders at the 2025 Review, these spatial planning recommendations will help us take the next step or STIP in preserving our planet for future generations.

 

Sarah Gomez-Chen

UN Climate Ambassador

November 2025

 

 

 

 

Spend Nationally, Speak Locally

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Two days before the Spending Review, the Royal Town Planning Institute Transport Planning Network and the Transport Planning Society held a joint event. Entitled ‘Transport and Spatial Planning,’ it billed itself as addressing a topic of ‘strategic importance… on the political agenda.’ Would there be clues as to what will keep transport planners busy over the next four years?

Yes: Devolution of transport powers and investment in major rail and road infrastructure were key themes in most of the presentations from those with intimate knowledge of what has been going on behind the scenes as momentum builds for High Speed 2, the Northern Powerhouse, the Roads Investment Strategy, and devolution bids from non-metropolitan areas.

All the speakers agreed that governance arrangements for transport are changing rapidly, from Highways England to TfL-style authorities in the regions. The devolution of powers to these sub-national transport bodies is well underway. The senior civil servant on the panel emphasised that ministers are ‘deadly serious’ about devolution. (See https://go-how.com/2014/10/22/municipal-independence-referendum/ and https://go-how.com/2015/09/28/devolution-is-in-the-detail/ for previous thoughts on the devolution debate.) He also outlined the DfT’s four strategic priorities: Investment in infrastructure, improving journeys, commitment to ‘safe, secure and sustainable’ transport systems, and supporting the concept of ‘One-Nation Britain’ through devolution.

These priorities were presented without ranking, but the Spending Review outcomes announced two days later clarify their importance. The Government is putting its money into big, national-scale infrastructure projects, whilst its mouth talks about devolved powers delivering local solutions. Without a clear funding source.

Local Government budgets are still shrinking and the DfT’s revenue budget will fall a further 37%. The plan to eventually run local government entirely on whatever Council tax, business rates and other fees and charges they can raise locally will mean some authorities cannot pay for all the services statute requires them to provide. Revenue-based local solutions like subsidised park and ride or Bikeability training aren’t legally required, whilst budgets for socially-necessary transport and concessionary fares are themselves under pressure. How will the DfT meet its priority of ‘safe, secure and sustainable’ transport systems?

Meanwhile, road and rail infrastructure investment is clearly well-funded.

The spending review confirmed that £15bn would be spent over the next five years on the “Roads Investment Strategy [which] signals the biggest investments in roads since the 1970s.” With the £12bn local growth fund and £475m Local Majors fund announced at the Spending Review, Counties and LEPs are set to invest in the more strategic local routes too.

HS2 is also allocated just over £15bn and Network Rail £34.5bn, which will be spent on rail line electrification, new lines, upgraded stations, etc. There are also policy promises to freeze regulated rail fares, introduce flexible season ticketing e.g. for part time commuters, and improve compensation to rail travellers, just as the £13bn Transport for the North has been promised for infrastructure (perhaps the new Transpennine rail link, HS3) also includes £150m for integrated, smart ticketing.

But there is still little designated funding for measures like buses and travel planning. ‘Buses’ are only mentioned twice in the whole document, in the context of new buses for London. Apparently the Bus Service Operator Grant has been saved to the tune of £230m a year (or another source says £345m), but I couldn’t find mention of it the transport or local government sections of the Autumn Statement.

As for active travel, the £300m set aside for cycling is primarily to fulfil the Cycle Ambition City scheme commitments, and this order of spend over 5 years is hardly revolutionary. There is a line item in Table 1.10 continuing the Local Sustainable Transport Fund to the tune £100m per year, which is a positive, although LSTF is not mentioned anywhere else.

There are also separate lines for £600m to be invested in supporting ‘the uptake and manufacturing of ultra-low emission vehicles (ULEV)’ and £300m in the Transport Development Fund to develop future projects. Positive again, but is the latter also for infrastructure only?

It would seem that the ‘blue book’ does not give us all the insights transport planners may want, any more than the presentations at the RTPI/TPS event. Try to do your own sums at your peril, as some of the numbers mentioned above may or may not be part of the headline £61bn DfT capital budget. Conversely, no matter how it is divided, DFT revenue funding is decreasing and local governments can increase Council Tax for social care and business rates to fund infrastructure, but neither for transport revenue spend. According to the CILT, even the much-touted ‘pothole fund’ is only an increase in spending on highway maintenance because ‘spending on local roads in England is at its lowest level for well over a decade’ anyway.

Still, devolution could mean cities and counties deliver their own messages. As an Independent Transport Commissioner said, English towns and cities compete with their European counterparts, not with the global city of London. So if the UK Government isn’t putting its money where its mouth is, in local transport solutions, then it’s up to local governments to be creative with the new powers they’re being given and whatever money they can scrape together to keep the country walking, cycling and riding the bus in the right direction.

Bottom Up

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You may well ask what a lecture on water management, a webinar on neighbourhood planning and my specialism of transport planning have in common. The obvious answer is that they are all subjects of RTPI-sponsored events this November (the transport planning one is on the 23rd) that I am attending for Continuing Professional Development and networking opportunities. This is true, but gives no indication of the insights I have gained from presentations about subjects only tangentially related to the work of a transport planner.

Major water infrastructure such as barriers and dykes have strong parallels with major transport infrastructure like roads and railways. These are projects of national scale and investment. One seeks to reduce the probability of flood damage and the other to provide increased capacity, usually for long distance travel. Neither actually manages water or movement. Nor do they directly address the consequences thereof, be it a flood that breaches the barrier or the increased traffic brought in by a new road link or attracted by a new high-speed railway station. Nor do they create resilience in a local community to adapt.

Professor Woltjer’s lecture on 16 November was called A Place-Based Approach to Water and Infrastructure Management, and although mainly about water management, one of his first points was that infrastructure in western cities is part of ‘complete’ networks. Therefore infrastructure management is more about replacement and adaptation to changing circumstances, rather than building new major infrastructure, be it dyke or road.

Later in the talk, I was struck by a slide on local flood groups. These are people in communities coming together to plan for potential consequences, by having evacuation procedures or emergency food stores. They also seek adaptation strategies together, perhaps identifying areas suitable for water storage or objecting to development that increases land area impervious to water drainage.

The link between the flood groups and the parish councils or urban forums who come together to make neighbourhood plans is plain. But the flood groups do not have any legal status nor funding stream. The Environment Agency has limited resources to adequately manage its own workload, never mind support these groups, although it may be that this happens on a more ad hoc or voluntary basis.

It occurred to me that local transport planning is in a similar position. With the disappearance of 5-year funding allocations tied to the Local Transport Plan back in 2011, the capacity for capital projects in individual neighbourhoods like public realm enhancements or new pedestrian crossings was greatly reduced. The Local Sustainable Transport Fund (LSTF) offered certain opportunities, particularly for revenue-based schemes, e.g. personal, work or school travel planning, but not all areas were successful in winning funding. Nor would all local highway authorities be aware of the needs of every neighbourhood or invest in every neighbourhood.

Furthermore, LSTF is almost over and there is no indication yet that it will be replaced. All we know ahead of next week’s spending review is that the DfT, the DCLG and Defra have all already agreed to extensive additional funding cuts. Devolution deals may be the main silver lining to all this reduction in local spending, but the webinar on neighbourhood planning did make me wonder whether localism cannot successfully be taken even further. It was a question I asked during the webinar, and I look forward to receiving feedback.

I have already expressed my general support for devolution in earlier blogs: https://go-how.com/2014/10/22/municipal-independence-referendum/ and https://go-how.com/2015/09/28/devolution-is-in-the-detail/. I have also expressed my reservations about devolution without appropriate tax and spend powers given to the optimised geographies.

Professor Woltjer asked if flood-prone areas could locally tax households that increase their hard-standings. The webinar asked multiple times about the appropriate geography for a neighbourhood plan, particularly in an urban area. So, in conclusion, I ask whether we need an even more bottom-up devolution of legal and financial powers for water management, transport planning and other neighbourhood impact management, resilience and adaptation issues? Or am I reading too much into a couple CPD events?

Were you Walking?

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We are less than a week into November, and it seems everyone is feeling the imminence of winter. The early darkness is closing in, never mind the fog, the swirls of falling leaves, the perpetual muddy puddles that we dare not step in, even in wellies, for fear they are much deeper than they look. So you might be forgiven for having already forgotten October, when we had lovely days of Autumn sunshine. Days which you hopefully enjoyed by walking outside as much as possible.

Why?

There are a multitude of benefits of walking that always apply: physical health, mental health, social interaction, reducing your environmental impact, getting closer to your community. But there were other reasons to celebrate walking in October.

Namely, it was International Walk to School Month. Or, here in the UK, Walk to School 3½ Weeks, as the schools were shut for half term the last week of the month. Still, depending on inset closures, there were 15-17 days to see your offspring put their feet and those expensive shoes to good use every morning and afternoon.

I did. I walk my four-year-old to her reception class most days, with her baby brother in the pushchair. Not all days, admittedly, as I occasionally drive part-way if I am due elsewhere or it is pouring, and there were a couple of daddy-daughter drop-off specials (also on foot). Living Streets asked what we love most about the walk to school. I said the challenge of meeting my daughter’s demands for made-up fairy stories at any opportunity: brain wake-up call! I also enjoy being able to chat with other mums going the same direction, stop off at more than one shop without having to return to or move the car, racking up steps on my FitBit, and making sure the little one gets an airing. No stale babies!

Then, as if the month-long celebration of walking needed a climax, my Twitter feed told me there was a massive #WalkingSummit in the USA on the 30th of October and the US Surgeon General was marketing its #StepItUp campaign with an excellent video. It made me proud to see that the simple act of walking is on the agenda in the country of my birth, a country that is too well-known for its love affair with the automobile and its love of sitting on its collective backside.

So now we are in November, do we know the outcomes of all this eventful excitement?

We know that even if calculated by only the longest segment of a given journey, walking is the second most common way of getting to and from places in the UK. Living Streets reports that only 46% of children walk to school now, whereas 70% did a generation ago. However, from what I could tell, we don’t know if more children walked to school last month than did in September. We don’t know if more will walk this month and in future following participation last month. We don’t even have consistent annual reporting of usual mode of travel to school since the indicator was made non-mandatory under the last Parliament’s reduction of red tape.

So maybe the events have had no impact? Yet walking is consistently under-appreciated and under-reported. Therefore, there is no such thing as over-emphasising the benefits of walking to us and our society. The more events and promotions like the ones last month, the better. We should simply monitor more as well, so we can better justify spending more money on promotion in the future. And more money on infrastructure, for the more we can design places for pedestrians, the better. Especially for child pedestrians.

Children need even more physical activity to stay healthy than adults do. NHS guidelines recommend 60 minutes a day for school-age children, compared to 150 minutes a week for adults. In these darkening days, they are ever less likely to get the activity they need without walking to and from school. So, if you can think back to before the clocks changed, were you walking in October? And will you keep walking, even through the winter?

VW Emissions Scandal: I should have known

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The special software was a surprise. The particular company caught cheating on their exams even more so. But the implications for the air we breathe wasn’t. Or shouldn’t have been.

I should have known. I shouldn’t have bought or bought into the fairy-tale of low-emission, environmentally-friendly diesel automobiles. But I did.

Why did I buy into it? Advertising? Government subsidies in the form of lower taxes? The thought of how much more affordable a decent family car would be to buy and run? All of the above.

Why shouldn’t I have bought it? I work in the industry. I should have known.

Okay, so maybe I’ve managed more projects involving bicycles and travel planning than tailpipes and fuel types. And I’m not that knowledgeable about cars generally. I could never identify make and model in a police or emissions fraud line-up. Still, I should have known.

Why? I once did a fair bit of work developing a business case for a Low Emission Zone. I was investigating it as a potential solution not to a carbon emissions problem, but local air quality ‘exceedance’ issues. I was familiar enough with the EU regulations on emission standards to use their strange neologism, ‘exceedance’. Basically, it referred to how much the levels of nitrous oxides and particulates, the emissions that diesel engines produce in greater quantities than petrol engines, exceeded the target levels the EU had set for minimising health impacts on or at ‘receptors’. Another favourite word in air quality monitoring, receptors were either people or places where people would be regularly exposed to pollution. Places like schools and hospitals and homes.

In common with too many places in the UK, Reading has multiple sites of exceedance, which were monitored as part of a single air quality management area. I went to a seminar at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to learn about local government’s responsibilities on these issues. I completed a one-day course on the science of air quality. I visited Transport for London to learn about their Low Emission Zone. I even met some bona fide scientists at Kings College London who had plenty of graphs and jargon to verify their credentials.

Perhaps I did not understand every molecule of what those scientists had to tell me, but I did absorb some key concepts from all this research.

First, as the bar was raised for manufacturers to reduce both carbon emissions and other pollutants, the science and technology to make it all work became more challenging. This is because some chemical processes and efficiencies that might decrease carbon emissions could increase emissions of other pollutants and vice versa. I also learned that the background levels of nitrous oxides in many places were increasing due to greater ownership and use of diesel-powered, private vehicles. The result: failure to meet targets. This was unexpected by experts because it indicated that newer vehicles manufactured under stricter standards were still emitting significantly more in real life than they had in their pre-release testing.

So I knew, at least six years ago, that something was going wrong if vehicles met standards at the testing stage, but weren’t so environmentally-friendly in situations with your average person behind the wheel. Was technology not quite keeping up with those standards? Why reduce carbon emissions, if it made local air quality worse?

Yet, as far as I’m aware, no one suggested that the manufacturers and perhaps the testers, might be fiddling with the results. It didn’t occur to me. VW took me by surprise, but I wasn’t surprised by the implications. Only annoyed that I hadn’t seen it coming. I should have known.

Riding the Bus to Equality

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Throughout my adult life, I have taken the bus occasionally, but not regularly. I have been on city buses in New York, Portland, London, Cardiff, Oxford and Reading. I have taken Park and Ride services and intercity coaches. But other than a summer internship in Portland, I have never taken the bus to work on a daily basis.

So my thoughts travel back to my teenage self, boarding the yellow school bus with its brown vinyl bench seats. I would stand at the bus stop, my hair literally freezing on cold, winter mornings when I would shower at the last minute and never use a hair dryer. Those mornings were dark too, as my high school started at an obscenely early hour for any self-respecting adolescent – was it 7:35?

The bus would pull up and the driver would open the door. She was friendly but tough, with mousy, brown hair feathered in what, looking back, was an absurd mid-90s fashion. As long as no one was too rowdy, she’d tune the radio to the station that played the current charts, making her a favourite among even the less academically-inclined crowd.

I would step up the stairs into the bus, lugging my book bag that weighed more than most toddlers and try to get a seat towards the front. It was a smoother ride and I didn’t want to deal with those who preferred the less-well-supervised back seat. I didn’t want to be in the very first seats either, as I liked to slouch down enough to rest my knees against a seat in front of me. In that position, I could do a bit of last minute reading or revising, or even catch a quick catnap. Did I mention it was early? And compared to many of my peers, I was a morning person!

So why am I having this trip down memory lane? Why the reverie about buses? For two reasons.

First, the UK Department for Transport released its annual bus statistics at the end of September. They are a reminder of how many people are out there, waiting for the bus every day. Although bus use outside of London is falling, there are still 4.65 billion local journeys a year. Of those, 1.57 billion are made by people with ‘bus passes’; the disabled, the elderly, young people where local transport authorities offer such concessions. How else would some of these people travel? How else would I have travelled at 17? I had my driving license, but could not afford a car of my own. For many, buses offer an equality of access to education, jobs and services that otherwise would be unavailable to those individuals. The ongoing cuts to bus funding and services will only undermine this valuable role of this undervalued mode of transport.

Which brings me to my second reason for indulging in school bus nostalgia. October is Black History Month, celebrating ‘important people and events in the history of the African diaspora’ according to Wikipedia. And the person and event that always comes to mind first for me is Rosa Parks refusing to go to the back of that bus in what turned out to be one of the most significant peaceful protests of the American Civil Rights movement. Segregating public vehicles with only one carriage must have created such an artificial awkwardness beyond its basic affront to civil liberties. Why should a tired woman be forced to the bumpy backseat favoured by teenage boys, just because she was black?

So in Black History Month and as we consider the annual bus statistics, let’s all spare a moment to think about our own bus experiences and how the humble bus can help our greater society be a more equal place.

Devolution is in the Detail

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My starting position is thus:

I believe the UK is too centralised. I wrote about it almost a year ago in relation to the fallout from the Scottish Referendum: https://go-how.com/2014/10/22/municipal-independence-referendum/.

I also believe that mainly executive, rather than legislative powers, should be more liberally distributed to democratically-elected bodies representing appropriate local or regional geographies. These lower tiers of government would not make laws, but rather policies and budgets to enable them to implement laws and deliver the basic public services which laws have decreed.

Therefore, I was pleased to hear that the Government has received 38 bids from a variety of consortia of County, District, Borough, Combined and Unitary Authorities for devolved powers over policy/service areas including education, healthcare, housing, planning and transport. I was particularly pleased on the last point, as I hope it might mean opportunities for future work for my fledgling enterprise, discussed in my two August blogs: https://go-how.com/2015/08/04/flying-solo/ and https://go-how.com/2015/08/27/my-business-go-how/.

The bids cover the majority of England as well as a few places in Scotland and Wales. There are bids that overlap, where a smaller area has bid on its own and also as part of a larger area. However, when I did a little research, an article published in the Local Government Chronicle http://www.lgcplus.com/news/devolution/exclusive-councils-official-devolution-bids-revealed/5090012.article about who did not bid, did not want to bid, surprised me most: Berkshire, the County that no longer exists, comprised of six absurdly-bounded Unitary Authorities, one of which I call home and another of which was my employer for eight years. What was even more surprising than the County’s unique decision not to bid, now or later, was the reason given by the chair of the Berkshire Leaders’ Group: They were not confident that a devolution deal for the county would be “earth shattering”.

I doubt Chancellor Osbourne intends any of the devolution deals to be “earth shattering”, but the Berkshire Leaders are probably thinking that they simply can’t improve on what they already have or have been given. Berkshire has a thriving economy, high median house prices, and, compared to many other areas, a relatively well-off, healthy and well-educated population. In the eight years I have lived and worked here, we have seen substantial public and private inward investment. Major transport projects in the Reading urban area and Wokingham alone have included:

  • Reading Station and the surrounding viaducts, signals, interchanges, etc worth almost £1billion;
  • Major remodelling of motorway junctions;
  • Wokingham’s new railway station buildings and Station Link Road;
  • A number of ‘pinch point’ projects, including major maintenance work on Reading Bridge; and
  • £25 million from the Local Sustainable Transport Fund for the Reading urban area and Wokingham.

The last is my particular pride, as LSTF formed a large proportion of my day job for years, from writing the initial bid documents to launching public cycle hire, a key project, in June 2014. Other key projects are Mereoak Park and Ride (opened 17 August) and the new pedestrian-cycle bridge over the Thames (opening this week).

The point is, can Berkshire do any better with devolution? Probably not, unless they had significant tax and spend powers to keep the wealth the area generates. That’s not George Osbourne’s plan, although Hampshire is proposing to retain business rates. We’ll see if they convince the Treasury to let them.

Which brings us to another point; all bids must be approved and agreed in Westminster. Would Berkshire manage to get a decent slice of the new pie when it had such a large slice of the old one? Perhaps not, and certainly not if they can’t come up with a convincing source of accountability similar to the city mayor ideal. Considering Berkshire’s patchwork political complexion, that would be difficult.

Which brings us to the last point, so aptly argued by Centre for Cities blogger, Ben Harrison. Namely, what is a sensible area to attach executive powers to? Is Berkshire? Would a mayor of metropolitan Reading be a better idea, although it’s a political pipe dream?

So are the Berkshire leaders right? Is it better not to bid for devolution when details like the geographic area or the financial powers are, well, so devilishly difficult? My final position is yet to be determined.

Go Forth

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L’shanah Tovah. May G-d bless you with a sweet new year and write you in the Book of Life for health, prosperity and peace.

Monday is Rosh Hashanah. It and Yom Kippur, 10 days later, are the most holy days in the Jewish calendar. They are also the only days that many Jews attend a synagogue. Therefore, the rabbis work hard to write and give meaningful sermons, often linking the portions of the Torah read on those days with current events and world problems.

I don’t know what the rabbis will be coming up with this year, but the world problem that’s been in front of everyone’s eyes recently is the Syrian refugee crisis. And behind that sits big questions about migration. There are also questions about peace, governance, education, international aid…

But I’m interested in the issue of migration. This is a transport blog after all.

First, I would like to put forward the theory that humans are a migratory species. For tens of thousands of years of pre-history, our ancestors roamed over distances difficult to conceive of considering that their own bodies provided their only form of locomotion. Seasonally and across generations following food sources and climate changes, our species spread across the globe.

For thousands of years of recorded history, the movement continued. Mechanical, wheeled vehicles pulled by domesticated herbivores and a variety of boats made travel faster for some and more places accessible for others, but most probably still walked. And although there were settled communities and cities, many peoples were still nomadic, travelling for food and livelihood, pilgrimage and conquest. Many more were like today’s migrants, fleeing war or oppression or famine or all three. Indeed, as well as the regular movement of those who travel for economic or lifestyle reasons, such mass migration is much a hallmark of our modern world as it was of our ancestors.

Now, I can’t think of an immediate link between the high holy day Torah portions and my premise of migration being a constant, rather than the exception, in human life. But I can think of many biblical examples of migration.

Abraham, the first patriarch, was told to Go Forth, become a migrant, and seek opportunity in a promised land. Later in Genesis, Jacob and his sons migrate to Egypt to escape famine. The tribes of Israel grow and multiply in a ‘foreign’ land until they migrate again in the Exodus, this time escaping oppression and slavery.

Were the tribes of Israel ‘strangers in the land of Egypt’ or were they simply immigrants, then residents, until they became migrants again? Genesis tells us that when Joseph held power in Egypt, the Hebrews lived free and peaceful lives there. Today’s migrants can likewise become free, peaceful residents of countries around the world.

Whether their stay is temporary or permanent, we should realise that their decision to move, to migrate, is not only easy to understand, but also a natural, even primal instinct. This instinct overcomes the ever more bureaucratic and physical barriers to migration that nation-states create, so why create them?

Thus, my holy day message is this: Let’s not fight migration, but embrace it. Let’s use all the increased knowledge, means and capability of transport we now have at our disposal to do good deeds. Let us especially help people migrate who cannot have health, prosperity or peace where they are, that they may find it elsewhere. Let us give migrants their chance to be written in the Book of Life for the New Year too.

L’shanah Tovah.

My Business Go-How

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People often blog about how things are going for them. But I am a transport planner and I simply blog about how things are going.

I am about to begin a new career adventure as a freelance transport planner, and I’d like to introduce my new company. Yes, I know it’s just me, but I thought it would still be worth having a business name. It’s taken a lot of thought and then there’s finding a domain name that is available and something that isn’t trademarked in my industry…

So I’m going with Go-How.

Why?

Transport planning is the Geography Of HOW. It is a social science that complements the geography of where created by town planners and developers and the geography of what is available from transport operators and or chosen by individual consumers. It is the discipline that deciphers how we move around, travel to and from different places for different purposes, how we go. And I know a lot about how we go.

Meanwhile, instead of just writing about my go-how, I will be trying to sell it. Therefore, I will be offering a variety of services to GO, such as:

  • Advice on the policies and regulations of Government Oversight;
  • Assistance with bidding for Grant Opportunities;
  • Gauging Options for business cases and appraisals;
  • Monitoring projects to evaluate success and Gain Outcomes;
  • Generating Overarching strategies for neighbourhood accessibility;
  • Recommendations on how sustainable travel projects and services can Grow Organically;
  • Implementing innovations to Get Optimal modal splits for travel planning; and
  • Developing travel incentive schemes to Give Offers to participants.

I hope to have it all good to go in the next couple weeks, but I dispense with silly acronym suggestions for the main pages of my website, www.go-how.com, as this blog becomes a subsidiary page, useful for a personal take or a bit of comic relief, but no longer the focus.

Why?

Although my words tend to be playful, my purpose is serious: to deliver professional, independent transport planning to discerning clients who can make good use of my knowledge and experience. I also hope to continue to work on projects and for organisations I can believe in. I want my work to have a tangible impact, something I have been fortunate enough to achieve in the past as an employee, but it may be asking a lot to continue to do so.

In the modern employment market, there are many jobs without the benefit of an end result. I am a one-woman band with limited time free from caring for my children. Can I expect to deliver more than a supporting report here and there? I hope so. And of course, I have yet to try to win some paid work for myself in the first place.

If I achieve success by my modest measures, by the way, I may not have time to write two blogs a month. Or maybe I’ll be writing blogs on things I get paid for…

No, I’m jumping ahead. I might have plenty of go-how, but I can’t yet predict how things will go.

Flying Solo

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Yes, I’m flying solo.

No, I’m not flying to visit American friends and relatives in two weeks and leaving the kids behind. I’ve not suddenly taken up extreme sports or trained as a pilot. Nor did I decide to celebrate my double chai (life) birthday by risking chai and limb going paragliding or skydiving. Nothing so exciting. Instead, one of the most exciting things that happened to me recently was getting my payslip in the post.

I can imagine any reader’s response to that statement. Is it so unusual for a person to receive a payslip in an envelope through their letterbox? Of course not. Personally, I’ve been sent them that way ever since I went on maternity leave. But, and it’s a big but, I’m not on maternity leave anymore. I was serving out my notice period and that was my last payslip from my employer of 8 years.

Then I received another item from my employer in the post. My P45 (tax form) for a leaving employee. It had three pages. One for me and two for my new employer. Except that I don’t have a new employer to give them to. I may not have jumped off a plane, but I have taken a big leap into the unknown.

Am I unemployed then? For the month of August, technically, yes. Although, I would challenge anyone who considers being a mother to two young children a lack of employment. Paid employment, yes. Employment, no. And my children and family needs are a major reason behind my resignation.

However, I plan to do more than be a full-time mum. From September, I’m going to be registering myself with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs as self-employed. A sole trader. A freelance transport planner. An independent consultant. My own boss. Flying solo.

My own mother has been telling me to try it for years, but it’s not an undertaking to be taken lightly. There’s a lot more to it than feeling one has the experience to be technically qualified.

I will be required to fill out my own tax returns and pay my own national insurance. I must have professional indemnity insurance and keep my own accounts. I need an online presence, I must market myself, network and use membership to the professional institutions wisely. And yes, it is necessary to make time to work without interruption, which, for me, means initially hiring a childminder one day a week. No matter my intention to work mainly from home, nor how modest my ambitions at present, all these things equate to start-up costs and therefore a commitment to win work to recover those costs.

Then there’s the commitment I’ve made to myself and to the friends, family and former colleagues with whom I’ve shared my plans. They have done me the honour of taking me seriously, so I must pay them due regard by putting in the effort it will require to not only keep up to date with the industry and keep contacts fresh, but also to earn commissions, participate in projects and deliver quality transport planning advice. I have my trepidations, but they believe in my ability to do this and are willing to lend a hand or a kind word or a bit of time or a reference along the way. Perhaps I won’t be flying completely solo on this journey after all.