The Foundation for Integrated Transport’s Fellowship is entering a new exciting phase, with technical support from Basemap.

Last year John Austin, from MobiHub Ltd, (a specialist transport consultancy) was awarded a funded Fellowship by the Foundation for Integrated Transport to carry out research, with support from the University of Plymouth, to develop a methodology for identifying locations for Mobility Hubs, using Geographical Modelling Techniques and a wide range of datasets. The project is being carried out for the South-West of England but it has potential implications for the rest of England (where datasets are similar), and also for other parts of the UK.

For this particular research project, the University of Plymouth School of Geographical, Earth and Environmental Sciences is partnering with John and providing access of their computing facilities and the use of ARC-GISPro and Digimap databases.

John is delighted to say that Basemap Ltd is now also providing the research project with access to its widely-used TRACC software, which delivers accurate, multi-modal travel time analysis.

The project, which also builds on foundations to which others have contributed, is to be completed, with a final report which will be made publicly available, in mid-summer 2022. This is an exciting time to be working on Mobility Hubs in the UK, with several of the developing English local area Bus Partnerships having included them in their Bus Service Improvement Plans, and the collaborative mobility charity CoMoUK taking the initiative on developing UK standards and a Mobility Hub accreditation process. Also, the transport group Go-Ahead and the consultancy Arup have recently published their visionary ‘Future Mobility Hubs’ document, whilst Solent Transport has also produced a ‘Mobility Hub Design Guide’.

The Foundation for Integrated Transport promotes radical change for sustainable transport, and was founded by the late Dr Simon P Norton in 2014. Its experienced Board of Trustees includes a number of well-known transport sustainability experts, including Stephen Joseph, OBE (Visiting Professor at the University of Hertfordshire), Mark Frost (the current Chair of the Transport Planning Society) and Roger French, OBE (bus and rail industry commentator and former MD of the award-winning Brighton & Hove Bus & Coach Company).

More information on the Foundation for Integrated Transport can be found on its website at www.integratedtransport.co.uk