Good day my good friend.

Every year, around this time, I usually write a little something about how you should attend Mobility Camp. With this year being no exception. This blog is a bit of a mix of something that I have already written for the Campaign for Better Transport, and a couple of other articles in the works. I will share links to those once they are published.

This week’s newsletter is more an essay, so there is not any room for links and other random things I share every week. Its also more opinion than article with extensive links to verifiable evidence and fact. But its still well-worth reading.

The organising team has really pulled out all of the stops this year to make Mobility Camp a great event. So I hope to see many of you on 29th September in Cardiff!

📅 Mobility Camp is back, and this September we are going to Cardiff. It promises to be an amazing day. It would be amazing if you can be there, or maybe sponsor the day.

💼 I am also available for freelance transport planning consultancy, through my own company Mobility Lab. You can check out what I do here. 

🚶‍♀️From Safe Steps to Bold Moves

If you’ve ever poured months into an immaculate business case and a stack of technical studies for a brilliant sustainable transport scheme, only to watch a road project race ahead at the finish line, you’ll recognise the unwritten rule of British transport planning: we scrutinise everything—then fund highways. Even glossy maps of “balanced” investment often mask the reality that rail upgrades are piecemeal, caveated, or forever “subject to feasibility”, while big road schemes roll on undeterred. And when politics leans in, even the sacred Benefit–Cost Ratio can be quietly nudged to one side. We can do better than this.

We have no shortage of frameworks and acronyms. Many of us can know Transport Appraisal Guidance (TAG) inside out, and can craft impeccably SMART objectives. But set against the scale of what confronts us—the need for rapid decarbonisation, tackling rising social exclusion , and an economy in need of a jump-start—our collective response still feels… safe.

We are thinking long term, yes; acting proportionately, not always. The gap between knowing and doing is fast becoming a gaping chasm. One we have to bridge. While we are stuck trying to decide the location of the first pillar.

Part of the problem lies in the formal and informal rules accreted over decades. They’re the mental shortcuts and inherited norms that help us get things done—until they don’t. We’ve all encountered the oddities: why a new bus service is “revenue” and therefore harder to fund than a shiny capital scheme; why active travel, often with stellar returns, struggles while road capacity gets waved through; why “Access for All” is celebrated yet so often hedged. And everyone knows the whispered truth: if a project is politically favoured, the BCR’s magic number suddenly feels negotiable.

Some I have worked with like iterative change. “Evidence-led change,” they sometimes refer to it as. I have every sympathy with this position. And I agree, everything we do must be backed up with evidence.

But look closely at how we’ve used evidence: we’ve geared it to incrementalism rather than transformation. Consultations on refining TAG and the Treasury’s Green Book are welcome, yet too frequently the outputs lock us into cautious, iterative tweaks when the challenges call for decisive shifts. The bar isn’t just higher now; it’s moved into an entirely different level.

It’s not as though bold policy is alien to us. We’ve run serious experiments at meaningful scale: Cycle Demonstration Towns, Sustainable Travel Towns, Future Transport Zones, and a capital city that has—over time—privileged public transport and cycling. More recently, bus franchising has started to break cover beyond London, with Manchester’s model watched closely across the country. The evidence from these programmes is there; what’s missing is the systematic resetting of rules so that “radical” becomes standard practice where it works.

Wales is showing a different path. Its Roads Review and the corresponding overhaul of WelTAG signal a fundamental shift: road funding is no longer a default outcome, and the rulebook is being rewritten in line with climate and wellbeing goals. It isn’t perfect, but it’s a step away from the practice of the past, and towards deliberation aligned with the future we actually want. Imagine how different England’s transport infrastructure pipeline would look if that principle were mainstreamed.

None of this sidesteps politics, nor should it. We live in a democracy (even if sometimes it doesn’t feel like it), and democratic principles play a key part in probably the one public service we use every day.

Councillors and mayors are powerful accelerants or brakes, and vision matters. Look at West Yorkshire, where the mayor has set a clear target to get spades in the ground for a tram by 2028; look at the growing mayoral appetite to franchise buses for public value rather than privatised convenience. When leaders set the destination and timing, delivery agencies can plot a credible route—fast. Our task is to ensure the rulebook helps them, instead of steering them back to business-as-usual.

Creating space to rethink how we do things is the crucial first move. That’s why I’m such a believer in what Mobility Camp—the annual transport unconference where the agenda is made on the day by the people in the room-can achieve. It sounds anarchic; in practice, it’s catalytic. Year after year, participants don’t just talk—they leave and do. We’ve seen ideas seeded there blossom into funded car-free initiatives, community-led schemes, research projects, and even career pivots so people can work where bold change is possible. When you give practitioners permission to think radically, they rarely squander it.

This year’s theme—Re-thinking the Rules—lands at exactly the right time, and exactly the right place: Cardiff, on 29 September. Wales is already testing what a new rulebook can look like; the conversation belongs in a country that’s walking the talk. We won’t reinvent transport in a day, but you might leave with the spark—and allies—to change the direction of your next decade. And yes, you’ll enjoy yourself in the process. Tickets are available; if you’ve ever wondered “why don’t we just try it?”, come along and talk to like-minded people who want to do just that.

What, then, should a refreshed rulebook actually say? Here are five starters that come from my own experience of the last 7 years of Mobility Camp:

1. Treat operations as investment. If a bus service unlocks access to jobs, education, and healthcare, why does the funding regime penalise it for being “revenue”? A rule that privileges outcomes over asset type would shift money to what works, not just what can be depreciated.
2. Make carbon and inclusion non-negotiable. If a scheme pushes up emissions or worsens social exclusion, it should face a very high bar to getting any funding—full stop. Appraisal needs thresholds that reflect our statutory and moral obligations, not only long-run monetised estimates that can be diluted by assumptions.
3. Put BCR back in its place. We do it anyway, so why not make this a formality? The BCR is not a verdict, its a guide. Where politics outweighs appraisal, say so—and set out the reasons transparently—rather than torturing the numbers. Meanwhile, give active travel and public transport the benefit of the same political will historically reserved for roads.
4. Radical change means trialling. Treat pilots as standard delivery, not indulgent exceptions. Whether it’s filtered neighbourhoods, dynamic bus lanes, or curbside freight hubs, run controlled trials with clear exit ramps and learning baked in. The evidence base grows faster when we build it with deliberate experimentation.
5. Reward infrastructure packages delivering systemic change, not isolated projects. The towns and cities that moved the dial didn’t back lone interventions; they combined infrastructure, services, pricing, and comms, and then stuck with it. Our funding and appraisal rules should favour integrated programmes with credible modal-shift paths over scattergun lists of “good things”.

There’s one more cultural shift to name. Courage. For years we’ve leaned on the vision and stamina of a determined few while the rest of the system tinkers at the edges. That’s not a criticism of caution—transport is complex and public trust is precious—but a recognition that incrementalism now carries its own risks. The climate clock is loud; communities left behind are tired of waiting; our productivity needs the mobility dividend that only ambitious reallocation can deliver. At some point, “pilot” must become “policy”.

If all of this sounds daunting, remember: we already know how to do much of it. We have examples that worked, a professional community hungry for progress, and—crucially—permission to write new rules where the old ones no longer serve. So let’s stop confusing due process with due progress. And if you need a nudge to begin, come to Cardiff on 29 September and help shape a transport system designed for the future we owe ourselves.