Couldn’t wait to know how the chase scene turned out? Here goes:

The bus is busy, and HERO glances through rear window at BAD GUY who seems content to follow until she alights. She takes out her smartphone to check the route and timetable of the bus she’s on.

BAD GUY speaks into his Bluetooth phone to VILLAIN.

BAD GUY: I’ll catch her if she gets off soon, but all the buses go to the railway station, so take the car there and be ready to head her off.

VILLAIN: Do you think she’ll try to catch a train?

BAD GUY: Maybe, but she lives here. Where would she go?

HERO is looking at a real time information display of train departures on her phone. VILLAIN drives to pick-up area at the railway station.

The bus pulls into the interchange stop. HERO gets off and heads for the station entrance. VILLAIN and BAD GUY abandon their vehicles after the briefest hesitation and go after her. They cannot see which way she went. Three departing trains are flashing on the board, leaving in under two minutes, from three different platforms. BAD GUY and VILLAIN run to two different platforms. They cannot see HERO.

HERO cycles away on a hire bicycle from the stand by the station’s rear entrance. She breathes a sigh of relief. She is safe. For now.

Now comes the review of key transport planning motifs and ideas. Please do read the pre-cliff-hanger blog as well – we’re looking at the whole scene.

First, did you note the use of five to six modes, depending on whether private bicycle and hire bicycle are counted as separate modes or not? No, I’m not counting the trains either, but, as with almost all journeys, this chase begins on foot.

Second, this fictitious city has excellently planned public transport, with bus lanes and priority signals, smartcards, real time journey planning apps, bus-train interchange and bus timetables that are in sync with train departures.

Third, I’m not advocating stealing or even borrowing unchained bicycles, but the presence of one suggests a decent bicycle culture in the area, and the quick and convenient hire bicycles are a great example of cycle-friendly infrastructure.

Finally, do note the use of sustainable transport by our hero, compared to the car and motorcycle by her pursuers. I am making a point in this, although that point is not the value judgement you might assume regarding the use of private motorised transport by villain and bad guy compared to the hero. Rather, the point is that the hero got away using well-planned and well-integrated transport, despite her pursuers having the supposedly more convenient and flexible private transport modes at their disposal.

So is this scene realistic, especially the last point? I certainly hope so. Particularly if transport planners stick to their day jobs and make seamless travel a reality. That would be useful for most people, even if your average travelling person isn’t being chased! Therefore, I’ll leave the chase scenes to the movie people, and work on giving them real-street inspiration. Not that I expect them to thank me in their Oscar speech.

This is a blog in honour of the Oscars, although I’ll admit I’ve not seen a single one of the nominated films. I have a three-year-old and an under one. It’s not conducive to going to the cinema. So I’m not qualified to write about the current crop of movies. I’m qualified to write about transport.

Transport plays a big role in movies. From Taxi to Airplane! to the bus in Speed, transport vehicles can be the stars of the show. From the loyal, tireless horses of the old Westerns carrying rugged gunslingers across plains and mountains to the motorcycles, cars, vans and trucks of the last hundred years, there are few features of a film that can better date the plot or characterise the protagonists than the vehicle (or animal) they drive. Anyone would be jarred by a 1980’s Japanese hatchback appearing in an American movie set in the 1950’s. Even the automobile-ignorant can usually tell from the model of the getaway car whether the criminal is a true threat or a loser.

But there’s another role that transport plays in movies. A role that must require quite a lot of transport planning, yet it’s not something I’ve ever come across in my professional life: The Big Screen Chase Scene. The scene or scenes that make it worth going to the cinema rather than waiting until the movie’s available on DVD or aired on the telly.

Most chase scenes are by car, although many begin on foot. If in harsh terrain, such as jungles or city roofs, some are vehicle-free. Some movies offer more unusual modes. Sci-Fi often boasts various airborne private vehicles, like flying motorcycles or cars. James Bond movies included chase scenes on boats and even skis. Some of my favourite chase scenes are from the Indiana Jones series. These scenes include running, cars, trucks, boats, horses, tanks, trains, planes and mining carts.

And yet, in all these brilliant, classic chase scenes, there are few which employ more than two modes per chase. There’s no interchange. Perhaps that is because the movie industry has never hired a transport planner to develop their chase scenes. If they did, maybe I could offer a sequence like this:

HERO runs from VILLAIN and BAD GUY through narrow, darkened corridors between laboratories into the early evening bustle of an urban street. She grabs a bicycle left unlocked against iron railings.

VILLAIN follows, whilst BAD GUY ducks out of shot. As HERO leaves VILLAIN behind, BAD GUY appears at end of street on a motorcycle, motor revving.

HERO turns sharply down a narrow service road before she reaches the junction where BAD GUY is waiting. He is right on her tail as she chances a look behind her, weaving from one side of the road to the other as he gains on her. She maintains her central position in the alley.

BAD GUY begins to come alongside when HERO shoots out onto a busy main road and turns into a bus lane, just in front of a bus slowing at a stop. She ditches the bicycle and hops on between an old lady and a mum with a buggy, tapping her travelcard with barely a pause as she heads towards the back of the bus.

The motorcycle has turned into the traffic lane outside the bus and pulls ahead. BAD GUY stops at a red light and looks in his rearview mirror. He cannot see HERO on bicycle.

The bus pulls away. A bus signal turns green. The bus pulls ahead of general traffic, including BAD GUY, whose eyes follow the brightly lit rear window of the bus…

You didn’t think I’d finish the chase scene in this blog, did you? These things always need a cliff-hanger, although in this case, it’s not a literal cliff. I’ve seen chase scenes that end like that too!

Did you hear about the lorry fire that severely disrupted Eurostar services for days? That’s an unusual event. I am given to understand it was the first time that they had to use the tunnel’s emergency sprinkler system. But incidents, accidents and events causing disruption are common this time of year. Long hours of darkness, rain, wind, ice, decomposing leaves, fog, snow. Low temperatures that result in someone paying attention to their heating controls rather than the road or busily putting their gloves on rather than walking in a straight line. All these contribute to less reliable travel in the late Autumn and Winter months.

Despite our human pretentions that we have conquered the natural world and it can no longer have dominion over us, we really don’t have much control over the weather. I’m not thinking climate here. That’s another debate. I’m thinking weather. That day to day stuff some of us religiously check wondering what we are going to wear tomorrow, how we will have to dress the kids, whether we will be able to walk to the shops without the groceries getting wet on the way home. So unless you are a qualified witch or wizard, weather control is not an option to improve your travel time reliability or journey safety.

On the other hand, there are ever-increasing options that improve the personalised information for journey planning both before and during said journey. Ongoing alerts and updates enable people to change routes or modes or destinations part-way through a journey. The interconnected series of information can also influence the what, how, when and where of future journeys, creating a sum of changing travel patterns.

Let me give you some examples:

Somebody sends a facebook message to the local BBC radio station that they’re stuck in traffic caused by a broken-down vehicle. The radio station announces the incident in its hourly bulletin. Someone hears this and texts a friend who regularly commutes along that routes recommending that they find an alternative way to travel.

A bus operator monitors delays on a particular service. It tweets to its followers, who include network managers at the relevant Highways Authority. They check their traffic cameras and post a message announcing the congestion on the Variable Message Signs and suggesting an alternative route. People see the message at home on their computers via the Open Data systems. They may also get an alert on their smart-phone if this is their regular route.

Diverse information chains are well and good, but raise some concerns. First, there is a danger of Chinese whispers with second and third hand information, especially if there are no checks possible (e.g. traffic cameras). Second, there is the potential for information overload, particularly where it is poorly targeted; for example, if you follow a rail operator’s feeds on Twitter, you learn a lot about delays on other lines they manage. Third, technology can fail or become out of date quickly, resulting in misinformation on signs and displays. And finally, there is reputational damage from a focus on the negative. People might get the impression that an operator’s train services are always delayed, or a motorway is particularly subject to accidents, or bus stop displays are always wrong.

So the real question we should be asking about live travel information is, what do I want to know? Wouldn’t it be nice to occasionally receive a message confirming that your train has been punctual 95% of the time? Or that despite the snow, your bus will be operating on a Saturday schedule and you can check the timetable, rather than watching a screen which says ‘Due’ though the bus never appeared? Or to be given the alternative directions when you’re driving and cannot review a map? Or to get positive encouragement whilst walking and cycling that you are burning those calories?

Of course we want to know when the weather may disrupt our journeys. But give us a few more positive messages too. That would be an information ideal.

She sat in the interview, pleased to have been invited, uncertain whether it was the right job in the right place at the right time.

She wasn’t nervous, and she had confidence it was a job she could do if they wanted her and she wanted them. Yet she was less confident that she could perform at the interview itself. She felt a deep hesitancy inside that she tried to disguise, or at least muffle each time she took a breath to answer a new question.

“What stakeholders would you envisage dealing with in this role, and how would you manage your relationship with them and thus their relationship with the organisation?” asked one of the interview panel.

She paused. She had listed likely stakeholders at the end of her presentation at the beginning of the interview. She listed them again. She added a few more that might be occasionally relevant. She stopped speaking. The panel looked expectant. She resisted the invitation to waffle unconvincingly.

“Isn’t there a group you’ve missed?” asked the same panel member who’d asked the original question.

“Clearly there must be someone you’re thinking of or you wouldn’t ask that,” she replied, this time trying to hide her irritation at their clumsy attempt to what? Give her another chance? Show her she had disappointed them with her answer?

The panel member responded with condescension. “The public. You know, there are many people who are interested in what we do. We have neighbours. They have views on decisions we make, decisions you will be responsible for delivering.”

“Of course. I would never assume otherwise. I simply consider the public in a separate category from ‘stakeholders.’ Don’t we often say public engagement and stakeholder engagement and mean two separate things?” She hesitated. “Besides, one must be careful about whether someone who is a member of the public represents others, say other neighbours, or only themselves. If the latter, how much of a stake do they have?” She paused again, then closed her open lips. Time to stop digging. The next person on the panel moved on to the next question.

Later, rejected, she wondered why she hadn’t tried to take the opportunity to mention her extensive experience of public engagement. Or to turn the question on its head and ask them why they felt that there was no difference between members of the public and other, organisational stakeholders they dealt with. But she hadn’t.

Public engagement, public consultation, public transparency and access, whatever it is called or consists of; it is a tricky topic. Whether it is a question of theory at an interview or reality when a so-called member of the public is on the other end of a phone line or stands before you, the validity of demand and response is always in question.

Everyone is a member of the public in some contexts or in relation to some situations or organisations’ actions. A stakeholder is often defined by professional standing or recognised representation or organisational participation. A member of the public is the absence of such trappings. This doesn’t necessarily mean the views or relationship with such a person are insignificant or unimportant or invalid. It does mean that action, reaction and interaction are different. Procedures are often different. Sometimes, when members of the public are the target for developing a relationship, they are hard to find or reach.

But how can one think of all this under pressure and explain it all without hesitancy in an interview?

It’s that time of year again, the event that every New Year brings: the annual train fare increases.

Every January, train passengers have an added post-Christmas expense. The question is never whether, but how much.

It is not a question that is easily answered either. National Rail has announced that the overall average increase in 2015 will be 2.2%, the lowest in five years. But that’s the average. Regulated fares, which include season tickets, have been capped at a maximum increase of 2.5%. Unregulated fares could be increasing more. Or less.

If a traveller is a season ticket holder, it is a simple search to see how much their ticket will cost next time their existing one expires. But for occasional travellers or those who are regular rail users, but not often enough to make a season ticket pay or not always to the same location, well then it’s a much harder calculation. It will depend not only on where someone is going, but what time of day and how far in advance they can buy their tickets.

Therefore, there are many factors that will influence how much pain the annual event will inflict on household budgets. The follow-up question is whether this is a pain that can and should be borne.

The Campaign for Better Transport has already answered a clear and resounding ‘No’. They have conducted research that indicates that some season ticket holders have experienced fare increases of more than 20% since January 2010 – a period over which average wages have risen by 6.9%.

Yet even these relatively straightforward percentages mask a more worrying regressive trend; the cost of train travel for the part-time or flexible worker. This cohort includes those who work from home, or at odd times, or in a number of different locations on a semi-regular basis. Many of these flexible workers make less than their full-time counterparts and have seen less increase in their wages during the recession, yet whether regulated or not, they still face large annual increases in fares. There are no discounts available to many such workers, not even the marginal ones available to season ticket holders, who save by travelling more.

In 2012, the Government ran a consultation on rail fares and ticketing. Proposals included using smart ticketing to offer different types of discounts. These could include carnet tickets (e.g. buy ten journeys and get the eleventh free), loyalty points for travel on a certain network, and promotions for those who can travel off-peak, but cannot buy advance tickets.

The capability to provide such tickets was predicated on exchanging the out-dated and information-poor magnetic strip tickets for smartcards or perhaps tickets purchased through cloud computing and stored on mobile phones. The relevant technology and appropriate business arrangements were to be trialled in the southeast as part of the ‘SEFT’ (southeast flexible ticketing) project, focused on commuter routes into London. Three years on and the most progress that can be reported is a pilot within a trial and some contract appointments. This is not necessarily behind schedule, but it won’t be helping any flexible workers soon. Especially as the plan is to issue normal season tickets on smartcards before any new products, allowing actual detailed data collection about rail journeys for the first time in the UK.

So, unfortunately, for most, the only silver lining of the annual rail fare rises in 2015 is that it could have been worse.

Wow. I’ve actually read a blog that combines the two things I like to blog about: a form of transport (walking) and writing. So how could I resist a follow-up blog?

It was the last WoWsday blog for 2014. You can find it on http://www.livingstreets.org.uk/blog-post-happy-wowsday-its-authors-month. Published the first Wednesday of each month and tweeted by @livingstreets, the blogs are designed to promote WoWsday. This is the ongoing campaign that charity and pedestrian lobbying group Living Streets has developed to encourage children to Walk once a Week to school. ‘WoW’ is also sometimes translated as Walk on Wednesday. Living Streets also has a parallel campaign for adults walking to work. The campaigns have increased walking in neighbourhoods and towns around the country, resulting in better health, less congestion at school gates and lots of other good stuff.

I’m not sure if social media is their strong point, but they have given it a good go. This school year their theme is ‘When I Grow Up,’ and they have chosen authors as the career to celebrate in December, which is reflected in their badges and blog.

Now as I said when I first retweeted the link to this blog, their way of selling the career to kids is a bit odd to say the least, and probably unhelpful. If kids want to be writers just because they want to have their novel turned into a ‘blockbuster movie’, then they are much more likely to grow up into a world of disappointment. If movies are their thing, perhaps they should focus on learning the skills of that trade, including screen writing. As for being the grammar police, anyone can be educated enough to do that, writer or not. It’s more of a reading skill, and there are times when I’m mentally correcting the grammar of a novel that’s been published by editors! As for joining a ‘unique group’ and having ‘interesting qualities’, well, I simply haven’t a clue what that’s supposed to mean.

When I was a kid, I loved writing and entered every local ‘young authors’ competition and journalism prize I could, but somehow didn’t really consider ‘writing’ a career option. Early on in my undergraduate degree I decided that hard-boiled journalism wasn’t for me, and I didn’t see another avenue to aim for. In some ways I was wrong. People make careers out of being freelance writers or teaching writing. But in some ways I was right, because being a writer isn’t necessarily a career; it’s more of a personality trait or a part of your identity. And that’s something worth telling kids.

Which brings us back to Living Streets’ blog. They haven’t told the children that the reason they might want to be a writer when they grow up is because they already are one, and they simply need to keep writing and telling stories to be one. Yet they have very accurately identified two of the links between writing and walking.

Gentle physical activity, especially in an attractive, potentially stimulating setting is a great way to dust out the cobwebs and mull over plot lines and character development. You might even see something that inspires you in a new direction. Physical activity is also good for mental health and walking offers a regular, social and accessible form of physical activity that is particularly rewarding for all ages. For children, it helps them develop into more healthy, independent, positive young adults. Is it any surprise that, as the blog mentions, so many classic novels, not least ones about growing up and ‘coming-of-age’ feature protagonists walking and travelling long distances on their quests?

The world touches you more directly when you’re walking (or on public/group transport, bicycles or horses) than when you’re in a car or private vehicle. So if Living Streets’ WoWsday campaign is increasing walking, they are probably helping young writers even without the addition of blog advice.

Did you know that hoverboards have now been invented? Funded by a crowdsourced Kickstarter campaign, you can surf a few inches above the ground. (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/142464853/hendo-hoverboards-worlds-first-real-hoverboard)

Have you heard about solar roadways? Solar panels strong enough for vehicles to drive over. Funded by a crowdsourced Indiegogo campaign, the company forecasts its first installation in Spring 2015. (http://www.solarroadways.com/intro.shtml)

Mainstream media is now reporting on the accelerating progress of practical and affordable driverless cars, which global corporations say will be available for sale in a few years.

There was even a prototype flying car unveiled at a technology show in Vienna just a few weeks ago (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/29/flying-car-liftoff-advanced-prototype-unveiled-aeromobil).

So perhaps the transport future that we all envisioned in the popular science fiction of the twentieth century, the future that a couple decades ago we thought would never come, has finally arrived. And we’re only 15 years into the new century. Is it time to celebrate?

Well, I’m all for crowd-sourced funding, crowd-sourced information and who doesn’t want a new high-tech toy? But what sort of future are these innovations heralding?

It seems that technology is once again racing ahead of society, legislation and human behaviour. Many people still enjoy the act of driving, so how will the law and highway engineering react to the interactions between driven and driverless cars? If a vehicle is driverless, then does no one need to be ‘in charge’ of it? Can drunk people have it chauffeur them around? Can blind people have an opportunity for a new level of independent mobility? What happens if the vehicle is involved in an accident? Who is legally responsible? The manufacturer?

What impact would a driverless car revolution have on society? The peak car theory suggests that young people prefer smartphones over steering wheels. Will they start choosing cars once more because they can use their devices whilst travelling? Will people interact less with the environment they are driving through and the people they are passing by? Driverless cars are being designed to be more energy efficient than human drivers can achieve. Perhaps they will even be electric, in which case less air pollution and less greenhouse gas emissions would bring environmental benefits. They are forecast to be safer as well, for both those inside the car and those outside. That’s another benefit worth celebrating. Yet driverless cars, like driven cars, still create congestion, still sever communities and reduce social interactions, still foster greater inactivity and thus reduce the health of the population. Thus, the negative social impacts of driving would persist.

Flying cars would have the same negative impacts, in addition to potentially expanding congestion upwards. Even solar roadways, with their proposals to start by replacing the tarmac in parking lots, buoy the retention and development of car-shaped, car-serving and even car-dependent neighbourhoods.

So if we want a future where traffic jams are in terminal decline and people connect in their local community with healthy levels of physical activity and social interaction, then maybe we need to go back to the future. Where people don’t pull out their devices because they are being driven by a robot, but stow them in their pockets in order to navigate a real place. Back to where walking and cycling and going more slowly are the modes that are culturally accepted or even celebrated.

With maybe a hoverboard or two thrown in.

It was a dark and stormy night. The rain pounded down except when gusting winds assisted its ambitions to swipe sideways. The orange glow of the streetlights were insufficient to illuminate the deeper darkness of swallowing puddles. The music of murder mysteries and horror films drifted through the minds of any observer with an appropriately mischievous sense of humour.

It was dark and stormy, but it wasn’t night yet. It was only half past five. It just felt like night since the clocks had been turned back.

Surely the weather would compel anyone with a choice to stay cosy behind closed curtains with feet safely dry in slippers.

Yet due to the time of clock, a multitude do not have such a choice.

They may dodge, coatless, from office to car, as they try, unsuccessfully, to walk between the raindrops, drenched despite the minuscule distance they have covered. They may walk with only umbrellas to protect them, despite the curious accessory’s inability to deal with precipitation when it falls round corners and splashes up from inconsiderate wheels. Or they may don waterproof trousers, coat and boots to bicycle down busy roads, mounted lights illegally flashing. They will still be wet on arrival because the gear, no matter how breathable its advertisement, kept the dampness of exertion in as much as the rain out.

No one who goes outside comes home dry. And along with the discomfort, there is danger. Cue music.

No, I’m not thinking of murderers or even muggers. Many more are killed or injured on the roads than by criminals. And the dangers only increase on dark, stormy Autumn nights. (Although admittedly there are fewer vulnerable users, i.e. motorcyclists, cyclists and pedestrians, out on the road, bringing down the absolute numbers of casualties.)

November and December can boast the added danger of hosting the lead up to Christmas. So people are drinking. Some are drinking and driving, and drinking and cycling or drinking and walking can be dangerous too. Intoxicated pedestrians have been known to step out in front of moving vehicles without looking.

This dangerous season, the Government’s THINK! Campaign against drink driving celebrates its 50^th year. And its success in changing the mind-set of millions is clear, not only from the long-declining trend in road traffic accidents, injuries and fatalities, but also in attitudinal surveys. The results of the latest are described in the following article: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/92-of-people-feel-ashamed-to-drink-and-drive-as-50th-anniversary-think-campaign-is-launched.

The THINK! Campaign has branched out over the years to expound the dangers of speeding, drugs, fatigue and mobile phone use when driving. It has reminded people to wear their seatbelts and be aware of motorcyclists, bicyclists and other less visible, more vulnerable road users. It has worked with schools and in partnership with local governments and emergency services around the country. But it doesn’t rest on its laurels.

As the article and the newest campaign advertisement say, even one death on the roads is too many. Because every serious injury or fatality on the road can destroy not just the victim’s life, but their loved ones. And despite the relatively lenient view of the law and even insurance companies, the person who causes injury or death when simply undertaking the everyday task of driving has terrible guilt to bear for the rest of their lives.

So we need to be reminded how to drive safely every year by THINK!. We need the campaign as a minimum in the absence of being re-tested or re-educated on a regular basis, as @johnstreetdales once put forward in an editorial in @TransportXtra or as those on a speed awareness course have experienced. And we need to hope that the violent, death-preceding music that accompanies dark, stormy nights on our television screens doesn’t follow us onto the reality of dangerous roads.

The Scottish referendum may have resulted in a ‘No’, but I doubt it was a coincidence that as the vote neared, new campaigns, reports and demands from the Local Government Association, Centre for Cities and ResPublica were all highlighting the need for the devolution of powers to a much more local level. Like the focus of debaters of Independence versus Union, the powers requested by cities and local government are economic. Or at least financial.

Coming from the United States, with not only a federal system of States, but a tradition of powerful mayors and municipalities, I was astonished when I first learned the extent of centralisation of tax and spend powers in the United Kingdom. Unlike American property taxes, British Local Authorities have no say over how Council Tax is levied on different types of residential property. They can increase Council taxes by a percentage, but since the most recent Parliament’s austerity measures, not without penalty. Business rates aren’t retained by the city or district that collects them. The money all goes to Westminster and then is redistributed by a complex formula.

Business Improvement Districts (BIDs), collecting extra rates from local commercial properties for extra local services, have more revenue-raising and spending discretion than the Local Authorities who are providing the baseline services that the BIDs are aiming to supplement. The centralisation of government finance thus acts as a straightjacket on local governments responsible for delivering the vast majority of public services.

Local transport is one such service or group of services. Not only does Central Government control the transport budgets for local government, its formulas are so obscure that the amounts received in expectation of concessionary fares reimbursement are unobtainable and apparently unknown. The funds for subsidising privitised bus operators’ commercial services are usually given directly to those operators. Capital funding has been cut dramatically, then replaced only partially by pots of funding allocated after competitive bidding processes, the most recent controlled by the unelected Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) who can cite few transport planners on their payroll. Even the Department for Transport (DfT) has admitted that the LEPs might require some professional assistance.

Is it any wonder that transport is a key topic in the various calls for devolution of powers and funding? The latest publication from the DfT makes the absurdities of transport finance even more obvious as it deals with those most local forms of travel: walking and cycling.

As political momentum mounts to increase investment in cycling, the DfT have published a ‘Cycling Delivery Plan’, which includes a target to double cycling activity and supports the aspiration to spend £10 per head on cycling by 2020. Yet there is no central source of funding committed. The closest thing to it is a vague promise of ‘a continuous source of seed funding’ of an unspecified amount for an unspecified number of ‘Partner Authorities.’ Otherwise, local government will be expected to ‘seek out new funding opportunities’, utilise stretched highways maintenance budgets and request investment from the LEP-controlled Local Growth Funds.

There may be £10 per capita in there somewhere, but it won’t be easy to find without changes to local government’s ability to raise revenue. Nor will it be easy to increase funding for walking projects; despite the document’s title, walking is the subject of another target and other actions within the consultation draft plan, and, I would argue, is in even greater need of attention than cycling: https://hdbudnitz.wordpress.com/2014/05/08/justifying-cycling-spend/.

Which brings us back to devolution. American cities have made great, rapid strides towards making their streets more pedestrian- and cycle-friendly, often from a more car-dominated baseline than the UK. They have done this both by having powers for local taxation, borrowing and spending and by benefitting from the political leadership to promote and follow through on significant change. If UK cities, counties and unitary Authorities are to do the same, they need the financial tools with which to act.

Now is the time of evaluation and appraisal. Evaluation of what has past and appraisal of what is to come.

The Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah is not a stand-alone holy day. It is the start of a cluster of Autumnal holidays that begin by celebrating the birth of the world and end by celebrating the end and beginning of the annual cycle of reading the Torah, the scrolls that are comprised of the five books of Moses. Altogether, these holidays span over three weeks. Rosh Hashanah is also the first day of the ten ‘days of awe’ that culminate in the holiest day in the Jewish calendar: Yom Kippur.

Yom Kippur is often translated as the Day of Atonement. There is much in the service about asking for forgiveness, sins of the individual and the community, promising to be better next year and God granting pardon – at least for any wrongs against God. Wrongs done to fellow humans must be forgiven by said humans. All this atonement requires substantial reflection, but more than that, it requires evaluation of what we have done. And, as we are also looking forward to being written into the Book of Life for a good year to come, it requires not just forward planning, but appraisal of what we can realistically do to be better people.

In my view, reflection or remembering deeds of the previous year and making plans for the next year are skills that, whilst not always easy, can be taught and are common enough. Evaluation and appraisal are much more difficult. And evaluation and appraisal of the positive, rather than the negative are even more difficult than that.

Take the UK party conference season or the US midterm election home straight. Legislation passed or vetoed, executive actions taken, statistics and polls collected are presented to the public as if their implications are obvious. Any analysis is left to the media, who mainly focus on the negative and rarely attempt clear, unbiased evaluation, never mind projecting forward an honest appraisal of the continuation or alteration of policies and governance.

In transport planning as well, evaluation and appraisal are particularly difficult skills, constantly debated and often short-changed in favour of more palatable or easier to measure lists of indicators or policy statements, no matter how meaningless. It is difficult to argue for projects that will make our lives better without proper evaluation and appraisal, and transport planners leave themselves open for that much more criticism by the local and national press. Those who deliver projects – operators, engineers, campaigners, volunteers – often struggle even more than transport planners with these skills. Without robust appraisal, worthwhile projects don’t get funded and without robust evaluation, successful projects don’t get extended, enhanced and replicated. Where possible, detailed evaluation should form the baseline for the next appraisal.

Perhaps my Jewish upbringing, with its annual day of reckoning, has helped me develop an understanding of what evaluation and appraisal are about, whilst my education and experience developed my methods. As a transport planner, I have delivered some fantastic projects over the last couple years. My role in delivery has not been a physical one. Rather I have researched, planned, bid, procured, managed and monitored. At its best, my role has been one of evaluation and appraisal.

On Yom Kippur, I apply these skills to my ‘personal’ life, which is 100% of my time at the moment, as I am on maternity leave. I have evaluated the last year in all its blessings and will use this understanding to appraise the opportunities available to me over the next year. What will be the outcome? That will form next year’s evaluation.