Goodbye Cardiff, hello Huddersfield!

Cardiff, 19/07/2023

UTSG2023@Cardiff was a week ago! (conference programme)

It has been an honour to organise the conference in Wales! And as Prof. John Preston said, UTSG2023@Cardiff was the first ever UTSG conference in Wales over the last 40 years! There was an overall positive vibe that this was indeed a historically great UTSG conference that crafted a family ethos for the transport academic community in the UK, Ireland and beyond.

In July 2023, UTSG had a record-breaking and new standard-setting international conference with 130 attendees including colleagues from Germany, Belgium, Italy, Turkey and Australia.

Lee Waters MS, the Welsh Deputy Minister for Climate Change opened the conference. He discussed with the audience the net zero challenges in transport, the Roads Review and public transport service and infrastructure provision for Wales.

There were three exceptional keynote speakers:
– Prof. Liana Cipcigan (Cardiff University) unpacked the challenges around ‘electricity as a fuel’ and towards decarbonisation of road transport while offering insights on a series of world-leading research projects,

 

– Dr Ioannis Kaparias (University of Southampton) argued whether to ‘share or not share space’ including its history, underpinning policies and a lot of food for thought around shared spaces in urban environments in the UK and beyond,

– Last but not least, returning to his alma mater, Prof. Stephen Greaves (Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies, University of Sydney) gave an informative (and fun!) lecture on e-scooters and the debates around their wider adoption in urban areas.

 

 

Overall, there were 33 sessions, 93 presentations, the first ever UTSG poster session and mentoring surgeries. The PGR workshop focused on ‘how to write papers for an interdisciplinary audience’ and was led by Prof. Carol Featherstone (Cardiff University).

This year’s UTSG offered five (5) awards: the Smeed Prize and Runner-up awards sponsored by UTSG, and best poster, best poster runner-up and ‘best contribution – the chairs’ choice’ awards endorsed by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (ITE) Intelligent Transport Systems:

  • Smeed Prize Winner
    Philip Churchman “Transition codesign for purposive road freight decarbonisation”, supervised by Dr Thijs Dekker, Prof. Jillian Anable and Dr Kate Panbourne, Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds.

 

  • Smeed Prize Runner Up
    Khatune Zannat “Investigating the relative precision of GPS, GSM and CDR data for inferring spatio-temporal travel trajectories”, supervised by Prof. Charisma Choudhury and Prof. Stephane Hess, Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds.

 

  • Best Poster
    Titayapa Meenapinunt, Margaret Bell, Gustav Bösehans and Dilum Dissanayake* “Cluster analysis of commuter’s travel behaviour with attention to their attitudes toward the environment, convenience, accessibility and safety: case study in Bangkok, Thailand”, Newcastle University and * University of Birmingham.

 

  • Best Poster Runner Up
    Muhammad Adeel, John Parkin, Caroline Bartle, Fiona Crawford* and Mirriam Ricci
    “Socio-economic variations in commuting and working from home during the COVID-19: Panel survey evidence from the West of England” Centre for Transport and Society, UWE Bristol and * University of Glasgow.

 

  • Best Contribution – UTSG Chairs’ Choice
    Achille Fonzone, Grigorios Fountas* and Lucy Tamsin “Determinants of Intention to Use Driverless Automated Buses and in Scotland”, Edinburgh Napier University, *Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

 

 

On Tuesday night, we had an excellent dinner and a flavour of Greek music (many thanks to Vaggelis and Stella!).

 

 

 

The UTSG@Cardiff closed with an ‘afternoon walk to Cardiff Central Station and talk in room’ (!). Mark Barry, Professor in Practice in Connectivity at Cardiff University, gave an excellent presentation of the history of public transport across the Cardiff Capital Region and the prospects of the South Wales Metro, a light rail system to connect the city of Cardiff with its surrounding communities.

A selection of conference papers will be published by three special issues in top-tier journals namely:

Last but not least, many thanks go to: Alex Nikitas, (UTSG Chair), Tom Norton (Events and Placement Officer), Gillian Bristow (Head, School of Geography and Planning), Delyth Jones (Manager, School of Geography and Planning), Carol Featherstone (Professor, School of Engineering), Mark Barry (Professor, School of Geography and Planning), and my excellent students: Abhinay Dinari, Rongqiu Song, Allan Penafiel-Mera, Liuqingqing (Vivian) Yang, Aminah Abdullah, and Venkata Subba Reddy (Ram) Arava.

We will meet again at the 56th Annual UTSG Conference at the University of Huddersfield, 1-3 July, 2024!

Yours truly,
Dr Dimitris Potoglou, UTSG Local Organiser

For any information about the conference, please, email: utsg2023@cardiff.ac.uk