DARe Hub welcomes Simon Lightwood MP

29 March 2024

During their visit, the Hub shared insights into the breadth of knowledge, skills, and people from across all aspects of transport that DARe connects and brings together. We first visited the Urban Observatory (UO), based in the Newcastle Helix and home to the largest set of publicly available real-time urban data in the UK. This data collection can help experts to understand and improve air quality, manage transport growth and traffic congestion, and prepare for climate change.

Located next door to the UO is Hub partner, the Urban Traffic Management Centre (UTMC), a real-time facility managed in collaboration with Northeast councils and working with regional transport operators, which monitors the city’s traffic and infrastructure to keep the population moving, and supports transport research and learning. The UTMC’s open data collection uses one-second and real-time feeds to provide transport users with reliable journey times, a key element in building public trust in our mass transit and transport systems.

The DARe Hub is working closely with both the UTMC and UO, utilising both organisations’ quality data and wealth of expertise to strengthen our research and understanding, particularly into aspects like user behaviour and demand; climate change impacts facing public transport modes (e.g. extreme heavy rainfall and flash flooding); and the co-benefits of improving our transport networks. DARe researchers are working closely with the Urban Observatory team on integrating different models into one coherent framework, and the Hub’s partnership with UTMC provides unique opportunities to model and trial approaches to improve system operation.

During the afternoon, Tobyn Hughes from DARe Hub partners Transport North East (now part of the North East Combined Authority) joined the delegation for a discussion on how involving all actors across transport systems is essential in the co-creation of sustainable transport solutions that work for all. Discussions covered critical aspects such as the importance of policy and trust; deregulation and devolution; the need for accurate and relevant data; and the wealth of unique, contextual expertise regional Hub partners can bring to DARe.

The group also discussed the interdependencies that exist across different systems (e.g. energy and telecoms), and how at first glance the challenges different sectors face can appear isolated, but are instead interconnected, impacting and compounding each other. There has also been a large gap in transport research where resilience and climate change have typically been considered separately. Applying a systems approach, like that of the DARe Hub, is crucial to tackling the transport challenges the UK is facing.