Transport for the North has scooped a prestigious CIHT Award for the second year in a row.
The Sub-national Transport Body’s Future Travel Scenarios work, which offers an innovative approach to understanding and responding to transport uncertainties, picked up the accolade for Transport Planning in the 2021 online awards ceremony on 29 June 2021.
Tim Wood, Interim Chief Executive at Transport for the North, said: “We’re absolutely delighted to receive the CIHT Award for Transport Planning for the second year in a row. It demonstrates our ongoing commitment to enhancing connectivity across our region and is testament to the hard work and passion across all our teams.
“Our ground-breaking Future Travel Scenarios work helps us better understand what future uncertainty means for our vision for transport in the region, ensuring we can remain agile and have confidence that we are on the path to better transport for our people and businesses.
“Far from a static report; it will allow us to adapt our plans and model the outcomes of a range of scenarios and potential worlds, ensuring strategic transport investment in the North of England is based on ambition and growth.”
The work explored, debated and challenged thinking towards what future change might mean for our travel choices and options. As a result, it will increase resilience of our transport decision making, as part of a vision-led strategic planning approach.
Much of this work was also made possible thanks to the inputs, guidance and constructive challenge from partners across academia, industry and the public sector whose collaboration helped shape and guide the process.
Partners across Local Transport Authorities, as well as Highways England, Network Rail, and the Department for Transport, were instrumental in supporting the evidence base, alongside experts including Jon Peters (Steers), Glenn Lyons (Mott MacDonald), Charlene Rohr (Mott MacDonald), Giles Perkins (WSP), Greg Marsden (Institute of Transport Studies Leeds), Richard Holt (Oxford Economics), Keith Mitchell (Stantec).
The Transport Planning Award category “celebrates the value of transport planning in achieving positive outcomes for the benefit of the public, in creating new communities or on reducing the adverse impact of transport in communities”.
Sue Percy, Chief Executive of the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation, presented the award and congratulated the team on its success.
“The judges valued the clear vision that takes an innovative approach to the key issues surrounding uncertainty, by applying a scenario-based approach that links well into a strong set of objectives,” she said.
“The approach involved broad stakeholder engagement and the work recognised the need to consider transport within society and place by accepting that many aspects effecting travel demand and its solutions lie outside transport.
“This approach offers substantial benefits to the whole sector and to society at large.”
Watch back the full awards ceremony here.