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Spreaker

CIHT’s podcast series is now available on (and on other podcast platforms - just search your favorite podcast provider and we should be there):

 Transcript available (use captions facility on YouTube):  

In January 2021 CIHT launched its webinar series 'Future of Transport', there have been a range of topics covered within the series.  The first webinar event has now been released as a podcast; in that CIHT explored how Covid has, will, and above all should change our world.  

Given there was research published recently – commissioned by England’s Economic Heartland – that said the legacy of COVID-19 could transform capacity on the roads in its region, removing around one in nine peak hour vehicles.  And - as of 19 July - most legal restrictions on social contact have been lifted in England –- it felt a good time to share more widely what the impact of covid has been, and might, be for the future of transport.

The podcast features an interview with Professor Nick Tyler. 

Amanda Levete, the Stirling Prize winning architect has said that historically cities have been shaped by pandemics. At an urban scale the 1870s cholera outbreak in London led to the creation of the sewage system and wider streets in Victoria Embankment. 16th century houses in Spain were painted with lime because antibacterial properties helped prevent the spread of the plague, lovely example of need expanding into the vernacular and unknown at the time was one of the first examples of nano technology in action.  How has, and might even more, Covid shaped our world and changed our cities?

Some key discussion points:

• The future for the way we work - We should learn from COVID-19 and not go back to where we were. The pandemic has taught many that you do not have to be in an office to do a lot of types of work. If there is a significant change and continuation of this move to remote working post-pandemic, the transport system will have to fundamentally change to facilitate this.
• The future for the way we live - We should be thinking in terms of creating local ‘neighbourhoods’ that have all the necessary facilities for daily life and the transport system should accommodate that. Currently, the transport system is very radial, it goes from outside of the city centre into the city centre. In the future it might have to change and become more orbital.  
• Suburbs can change from being ‘dormitory’ type places to becoming more thriving communities if some of the activity such as work is moved from city centres. The economy of a city is unlikely to decrease from doing this, it might grow but it will not get smaller. Doing this will increase quality of life, in terms of health and well-being and so on.
• Transport is crucial to creating a healthier UK. – how we use transport can form part of creating healthier lifestyles either by incorporating active travel into our everyday routine and / or improving the integration between transport and planning.

About our Speaker

Nick Tyler CBE FREng is the Director of the UCL Centre for Transport Studies and Chadwick Professor of Civil Engineering, and investigates the ways in which people interact with their immediate environments. He set up the Accessibility Research Group within the Centre for Transport Studies, with a team of researchers investigating many aspects of accessibility and public transport. The group has a total research portfolio of more than £40million for projects directed towards making the world more sympathetic to people's needs and creating a sustainable future for both people and planet; including the PAMELA pedestrian environment laboratory, which is being used to develop models for accessible pedestrian infrastructure, and which is being enhanced as part of the Government's UKCRIC programme, to create a new larger facility called PEARL. He is a co-founder of the UCL Universal Composition Laboratory (UCL²), which undertakes multisensorial spatiotemporal design.