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A new form of personal rapid transit has been developed from research which began at the University of Bristol in 1995 and has since been commercialised by a University spin-out company. The ULTra system is now in operation at Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 and constitutes a world first for the UK. Since opening in 2011, passengers have benefited from a personal, fast, reliable and low cost driverless transport system, that has removed the queuing and inefficiencies associated with bus transfers to the terminal. The Heathrow pods completed a million miles of fully driverless operation within two years of the system opening and have the highest satisfaction rating of any passenger service at Terminal 5, which itself is rated as the best in the world. The success of the system has led to a plan to extend it to Terminals 2 and 3.
Research on sustainable transport conducted by Hickman et al at UCL has contributed significantly to a major shift in UK and international transport policy during the last decade. Whereas such policy previously included little, if any, consideration of climate change, the desire to reduce transport CO2 emissions is now often its primary objective. Findings from and methods developed through the research have been used at city, regional, national and international to support and implement revised strategies and investment programmes promoting sustainable transport. As such, they contributed to increased use of public transport, walking and cycling, and reduced dependence on car usage. The methods have also been widely used by international consultancies and other researchers.
A series of research projects, between 1994 and 2013, developed innovative land use and transport models to provide an evidence base for urban decision-making. They have impacted the planning of cities around the world, in particular the industrial declining city of Bilbao, Spain, now heralded as an exemplar of renewal; the planning of the developing world city of Santiago, Chile, now an exemplar of modernity; and the expansion of the knowledge-based city of Cambridge, UK, now an exemplar of sustainability. This research continues to contribute to planning policies around the world.
This case study describes impacts on the professional practice of transport appraisal, and on investment planning at national and local levels, arising from an approach developed over the period 2005-2013 to estimate the Wider Economic Impacts (WEIs) of transport investments. The research instigated an important reform of the UK approach to Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) and provided key empirical evidence that has been formally incorporated in the UK Department for Transport (DfT) web based CBA guidance (WebTAG) since 2009. Governments and public authorities throughout the world subsequently adopted the models and techniques proposed as decision support tools for infrastructure investment and planning. Since 2007 Imperial staff and their industrial collaborators have applied the approach to approximately 150 Billion US Dollars of international transport investment, and its use and impact are now widespread globally. It is now a standard textbook approach for assessing the WEIs of transport investment. Recent applications of the approach in the UK include the official economic evaluations of CrossRail (2010) and High Speed 2 (2010, 2012).
Research at Heriot-Watt University led to the development of a Knowledge Transfer Project (CALM) between the University and Caledonian Aerotech, known as Caledonian Alloys (CA). The KTP enabled CA to deliver material on-time and provide real-time information on the progress of shipments which led to existing customers purchasing greater proportion of their material requirements from CA over competitors. Customers Rolls Royce in the UK and Allvac in US awarded new long term processing contracts in 2009 worth $4m annually in which the CALM capability had a major influence. The company increased from 119 employees in 2004 to 309 in 2009 and currently employs 280 worldwide, reflecting the impact of the research on the company's performance.
A key element of the Plymouth Centre for Sustainable Transport's (CST) work since 2007 has been leadership of a major project to introduce and roll out smart card ticketing technology across South West England. Such technology brings significant sustainability benefits, but is extremely difficult to deploy in the UK's deregulated public transport operating environment. Professor Jon Shaw and Dr Andrew Seedhouse created with colleagues South West Smart Applications Ltd (SWSAL), a region-wide public / private not-for-profit company launched by Transport Minister Norman Baker in October 2010. The company is supporting the delivery of new smartcard ticket machines on all registered local buses in the South West. This has delivered significant improvements to public transport service delivery, shaped the roll-out of government transport policy and produced direct stimulus for the development of new public transport ticketing products and practices.
The research into green freight transport and logistics has had several key impacts. It facilitated freight transport becoming part of the London Mayor's Transport Strategy (which aims to improve efficiency and reduce negative impacts of freight) and that this strategy incorporated van-based activities as well as heavier goods vehicles. It provided evidence for policy makers and industry of the potential for modal shift to rail freight and new methods of measuring rail freight activity to inform decision making. The joint development of a technique for calculating fuel consumption and carbon emissions of road goods vehicle activities was adopted by the Department for Transport (DfT) and DEFRA in guidance to industry about emissions reporting.
Joint research by the Logistics Research Centre (LRC) and the Transport Research Laboratory Ltd directly influenced the government's decision in 2008 to allow which categories of longer and heavier vehicles (LHVs) onto UK roads. One category out of seven was recommended. This decision was informed by findings relating to impact on the railfreight business and road infrastructure. The LRC subsequently provided advice on cost/benefit of the excluded category (longer semi-trailers) which contributed to the government's decision in 2011 to undertake a ten year trial of 15.6m and 16.6m trailers on UK roads. In 2010-11 the LRC's research on double-deck vehicles was used by the UK government and Freight Transport Association as evidence for opposition to an EU proposal to limit trailer heights to four metres, a measure which would have imposed a significant economic and environmental penalty on the UK.
Research by Prof Jillian Anable and colleagues in the Centre for Transport Research (CTR) at the University of Aberdeen has made a leading international contribution to a specific approach to sustainable transport planning known as `Smarter Choices' or `soft measures'. These have been used to develop non-coercive transport policies that inform people of their travel choices, and seek to improve services to make these choices feasible.
These measures rely on understanding the processes and mechanisms for people to change their travel behaviour voluntarily in response to locally tailored initiatives using a combination of social marketing, travel planning, information provision and investment in alternative transport infrastructure. The research at Aberdeen has used a combination of methods to assess the potential of Smarter Choices, and has also been used to calculate the expected carbon emissions reductions that would result from different combinations of policy measures. This research has also developed a specific quantitative methodology involving segmenting the population to give a flexible interpretation of behaviour, allowing different policies and messages to be targeted to different groups.
The research has directly influenced English and Scottish transport and climate change agendas, being taken up in policy guidance, evaluation frameworks, new funding mechanisms and the inclusion of Smarter Choices in carbon reduction targets. The research has also been used by several local transport authorities in the UK and mainland Europe and as underpinning evidence by many transport and environment NGO's and community groups.
This research by the University's Transportation Research Group (TRG) has contributed to the development of sustainable road transport networks both in the UK and other leading cities worldwide. In summary: