It seems to be a time of a lot deadlines, a lot of work, and for the last week a lot of writing even though it did not necessarily result in a huge deal happening. Running to stay still is the downside of running any sort of business I guess. Anyway, this is what we got up to. Monday. With a deadline of Wednesday, we set to work with Hannah Budnitz, Nic Cary, and Teresa Jolley on writing a response to the scoping report for Professor Phil Goodwin's project on A New Social Contract for Transport. We had already decided that citizen participation, accessibility, and resilience would be a big part of our response. It was more about getting our ideas down and trying to order them. Find the story you want to tell amongst many different strands of work is challenging, but through successful interations and work, you get there eventually.
Then, checking the tenders. We had put in for some work for Sheffield City Region for a future of mobility study. Sadly, this time it was not to be. We requested feedback on what we could improve next time. Tuesday was the start of more writing. The first phase of our Policy Diagnosis Tool Discovery Project is drawing to a close, and we are writing a short paper on the effectiveness of public engagement in transport, based upon a review of the literature to date. The challenge here wasn't the lack of things to say. There is a lot to say on how effective organisations are at engaging with the public. The challenge is saying something new, reflecting the changing in community expectations and their role in transport services. We kicked around some ideas all day, and started to write in earnest. Wednesday was a bit slack. It was end of the month, so VAT reciepts needed sending and payroll needed processing. Our lack of success with Sheffield knocked us a little bit, to be honest. It would have been a really good project to be part of, and we put our all into the bid. Still awaiting feedback. On the positive side, we published our response to Phil Goodwin's report. You can read it and comment on it here. On Thursday we got the chance to get our mojo back by having a play of the Future of Mobility Scenario Game with ITS-UK. We had 3 players playing the game, all of whom really got into their roles and were very forthcoming in their feedback. Thank you Jennie and Rukshan for organising the afternoon and getting people involved in it. It was just what the doctor ordered. We finished off the week on a high on Friday by calling some old friends to catch up and to plot future opportunities. Teresa was excellent as always, as was Tracy Savill from Connected Places Catapult, Lee Baldry from Waterman Aspen, and John Austin who we managed to catch just before starting a walk in Stratford-Upon-Avon. Sorry John!
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