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grahamjames.bsky.social
Graham James
@grahamjames.bsky.social
77 followers 130 following 190 posts
Connecting people, making places: that's transport planning! Professional topics, positive outlook, own views. Re-post is not endorsement. He/him. grahamjames.co.uk
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Reposted by Graham James
emilykerr36.bsky.social
Maybe let's share starter packs again for people new or reactivated on the site?

Mine is this UK / EU Active Travel people Starter Pack (150 people, now full). Feel free to suggest others in replies.

go.bsky.app/GYyLGPA
January 10, 2026 at 9:43 AM
grahamjames.bsky.social
My week at work (snow+sleet edition):

🌨️ What the local government transparency code requires
🌨️ Controlled parking zones
🌨️ And measuring transport connectivity

Photo from a snow-dusted sunny Cambridge at the start of the week. Two modes of transport (if you include flying).
Photo showing parts of two punts that have snow on their gunwhales and their punting platforms. A gull is standing on one gunwhale, with another gull sitting nearby in the well of the same boat.
January 9, 2026 at 8:39 PM
grahamjames.bsky.social
Calling all Shakespeare fans in transport planning:

Tonight is Twelfth Night.

To celebrate*, I’ve hidden a quote from that very play🎭 in my blogpost on the latest #TAG changes. Can you spot it?

grahamjames.co.uk/whats-new-in...

* and definitely not as an excuse for this blatant plug
What’s new in TAG for December 2025
Graham rounds-up the latest TAG updates. What’s changing, and what does it mean in practice? With bonus Strictly content.
grahamjames.co.uk
January 5, 2026 at 5:09 PM
grahamjames.bsky.social
Back to square one! (Or row one)
I was number 290.
I wonder how many of the previous 289 had been in the early hours, on their way back from the fireworks, and how many had been a bit later, heading to the sales and the coffee shops.
Photo looking along a cycle track on the edge of a green space alongside an city street. Prominent in the foreground is a totem with a thermometer-style display showing the number of cyclists this year. The counter goes up to 1,500,000, but only the bottom row is lit. The totem also shows the number of cyclists today (290, hard to see because the shutter speed was too quick for the LEDs) and the time (14-something, again hard to see). The totem has logotypes for the Greater Cambridge Partnership, Marshall, and the Cambridge News.
January 1, 2026 at 9:23 PM
grahamjames.bsky.social
With thanks to those at work...

Today's blogpost rounds-off the #Railway200 year with a thank-you to the people who make the railway happen - including over Christmas and the New Year.

grahamjames.co.uk/with-thanks-...
With thanks to those at work
Graham rounds off Railway 200 year with a thank-you to those who make the railway happen - including over Christmas and the New Year.
grahamjames.co.uk
December 31, 2025 at 4:13 PM
grahamjames.bsky.social
Brighton station looking lovely a few days ago. The transport system busy connecting people.

Wishing everyone a peaceful and happy Christmas. Thank you to all my friends and followers for your posts, comments, likes and reposts over the course of the year. See you in 2026!
Photo taken inside a large railway station. It is after dark, but the station is brightly lit. We are on the concourse, looking past a Christmas tree in the foreground, towards the gateline and the platforms. The station is busy, but not crowded, with people walking across the concourse, through the gateline and on the platforms. The Christmas tree is decorated with red, white, gold and silver tinsel and baubles, and lots of little lights. The concourse has white-ish Terrazzo-type floor tiles. We are under a beautiful Victorian two-bay train shed, with ornate pillars and arches in a crisp blue and grey colour scheme, contrasting with the white of the unglazed elements of the roof. Beyond the gateline, we can see a Thameslink class 700 train at platform 4, and can glimpse a Class 387 unit in red Gatwick Express livery.
December 23, 2025 at 4:09 PM
grahamjames.bsky.social
Tess and Claudia’s new gig?
Photo taken on an urban street, on an overcast day, looking along the footway and across to the carriageway. On the footway is a yellow temporary sign on an A-frame. The sign reads, in capitals, “Strictly no waiting of vehicles on carriageway.” Alongside the footway is a grey construction hoarding with the ‘Sanska’ logotype on it. On the opposite side of the carriageway, a single-decker electric bus in blue ‘U’ livery is at a bus stop. The stop has a shelter and there is a person waiting in it. Behind the stop is a terrace of yellow-brick houses that look like they are now in institutional use. In the background is a five-story office block faced with yellow brick.
December 23, 2025 at 2:59 PM
grahamjames.bsky.social
My week at work (still Advent edition):
🎄The law on setting parking charges and spending the income
🎄The DfT’s connectivity metrics and tools
🎄Mapping parking demand
🎄And the value of conference papers – for both the audience and the authors.
Photo in an urban setting, looking from a pedestrianised area towards a dual carriageway road and down a side street beyond. The sun is setting in the distance above the side street, with golden evening sunlight coming towards the camera. The light picks out the yellow herring-bone brick paver pattern in the foreground, with pedestrians silhouetted against the light. In a flower bed, two wire-frame reindeer are lit with strings of white lights. The dual carriageway is busy with cars and a van.
December 12, 2025 at 9:34 PM
grahamjames.bsky.social
Interesting piece on the early history of railway timetable graphs:
www.chartography.net/p/charts-fol...
Charts Follow Chaos
How information design rescued the railway from fiery catastrophe.
www.chartography.net
November 24, 2025 at 8:31 PM
grahamjames.bsky.social
Back at home (and thawing out) after two interesting, intensive days in Derby at the Local Transport Summit.

Always good to catch up with old friends and make new ones.

The conference theme was how to harness opportunities from the new strategic authorities. More on this from me soon...
Photo taken from the upper deck of a bus, looking along a city street towards a signalised crossroads. It is a bright day, with some cloud cover. A person is crossing the road in the foreground. There are other people, and cars, around the junction. The people are wrapped-up warm. There is a bus stop with shelter in the right foreground. The buildings are a mixture of one to four storeys, in a variety of styles. Some have shopfronts on the ground floor.
November 19, 2025 at 9:04 PM
grahamjames.bsky.social
My week at work (downpour edition ☔ ):
Lots of work coming in. Plus:
▶️ Getting the best from controlled parking zones in one local authority
▶️ A financial model for another
▶️ Customer-service options for a third
▶️ And a visit from a cute doggie 🐕
Photo, taken from near ground level, looking along a shopping street after dark when it has been raining. We see a puddle, double yellow lines, and a give way line. In the background, the lights are on in the shops. There is a person walking towards the camera, and there are car headlights in the distance.
November 14, 2025 at 8:23 PM
grahamjames.bsky.social
Yesterday for me involved three different Transport Planning Society activities!

Firstly, an update from one of this year's TPS Bursary recipients. I'm their mentor as part of the bursary scheme. Their research is really worthwhile and interesting.

Then to London for... (1/3)
Photo of a train alongside a station platform. The train is predominantly white with ‘Great Northern’ branding. People are walking along the platform having just alighted from the train.
November 11, 2025 at 9:41 PM
grahamjames.bsky.social
“You’re the page 3 boy”, a colleague said…

That’s one way of putting it!

Today’s issue of Local Transport Today includes my piece on the new road freight values of time that DfT is proposing.

▶️ What’s the problem with the existing values?
▶️ Why does it matter?
▶️ What’s the plan?

(1/2)
Screenshot of pages 2 and 3 of Local Transport Today, issue 925, dated 30 October 2025. The lead headline on page is “New freight time values will boost highway scheme appraisal outcomes”. That story continues on page 3, with a head-and-shoulders photo of Graham. All text is pixelated, other than the lead headline and the words “Graham James looks at the proposed revised DfT Transport Analysis guidance on this subject and its background – see pages 31-36”.
October 30, 2025 at 9:21 PM
grahamjames.bsky.social
Lots of technical updates on transport modelling + appraisal coming out of DfT recently.

My application to host #Strictly might have to wait until I've read all these and responded to the mini-consultation on road freight values of time...
Screenshot of two browser windows alongside each other on a computer screen. Both are open at UK Department for Transport web pages. The one on the left is headed "TAG: Forthcoming changes". The text reads "Record of upcoming changes to transport analysis guidance (TAG)." It then has links to HTML documents called "Forthcoming change: appraisal data update", "Forthcoming change: vehicle emissions carbon tool" and "Forthcoming change: climate change adaptation update". It looks like there's more if you scroll down the page. The one on the right is headed "Understanding and valuing road freight travel time" and continues "Research that aims to estimate new road freight values of travel time." It then has links to PDFs called "The value of road freight travel time" and "Freight value of time and value of reliability". The text continues "Details" and again it looks like there's more if you scroll down.
October 23, 2025 at 9:01 PM
grahamjames.bsky.social
This👇is worth reading - but I'm biased!

Delighted to have been part of the team producing this report for the Transport Planning Society.

If you want to know what the 2025 Green Book Review really means for transport business cases, this is for you.

tps.org.uk/tps-policy/g... (1/4)
Montage of the front page of the TPS report mentioned in this post, overlaid onto a screenshot of the TPS webpage where the report can be downloaded. The page is dated 17 Oct 2025 and the heading is "The Green Book Review and what this means for transport business cases". It includes a few paragraphs about the report, and a button to download it. For full text, see the page itself: https://tps.org.uk/tps-policy/green-book-review .
October 22, 2025 at 8:20 PM
grahamjames.bsky.social
Getting to grips with the DfT's new connectivity metric, for a forthcoming article.

First task: a recap on what it does, how it does it, and what you get in the dataset.

Creating a process flowchart helped to cement the method in the brain and get a handle on what it's really measuring.
Photo of part of a desk with papers, a computer keyboard and a computer screen. One of the papers is a stapled printout with headings including "Assumptions about data sources", "Methodology" and "Pathfinding algorithm"; comments and markings have been made in pencil (pixelated in this photo). The other paper is a printout of some presentation slides; the heading of the top slide is "Accounting for travel distance and preference". On the computer screen (which we can see part of), the left-hand side has a window with spreadsheet of numbers, and the right-hand side has a colourful flowchart-type graphic (again pixelated).
October 13, 2025 at 7:07 PM
grahamjames.bsky.social
New blogpost: Autonomous buses.

What's the big prize? Will there still be a role for on-board staff? And what's below the tip of the tech iceberg?

My latest post flags-up a thoughtful podcast that's worth listening to, and adds some perspectives of my own.

grahamjames.co.uk/autonomous-b...
Autonomous buses: the prize, the person, the iceberg
Autonomous vehicles could be a game-changer for bus operations. Graham flags-up a thoughtful podcast, and adds his own perspective.
grahamjames.co.uk
October 8, 2025 at 5:42 PM
grahamjames.bsky.social
My week at work (Showgirl edition):
➡️ The principles behind how you set the price of parking
➡️ Planning a round of surveys
➡️ Sensors and the internet of things

Met up with friends last weekend at London Bridge. Proud to have worked on the station redevelopment👇. Our work makes a difference!
Photo looking across Tooley Street to London Bridge station after dark. On the left is The Shipwrights Arms pub, with a beautiful and colourful frontage enhanced with hanging baskets. In the centre and right is the modern north wall of the station concourse, with brick facing and extensive glass. The Shard is seen behind the station, with lights on in some of the floors. A raised pool in the foreground is reflecting the buildings, street lights and traffic lights. The leaves of a street tree peek into the corner of the picture.
October 3, 2025 at 5:08 PM
Reposted by Graham James
trb.org
Learn more about the power of public transportation research on #TCRP day!

To celebrate, we're hosting a live recording of @transitunplugged.com all about emerging tech for transit customer experience!

buff.ly/hZlfOhq
October 1, 2025 at 4:09 PM
grahamjames.bsky.social
Happy #TCRPday!

TCRP is the Transit Cooperative Research Program, a really useful resource on issues the US transit (= public transport) sector is tackling and the practical solutions that are out there.

grahamjames.co.uk/happy-tcrp-d...

@apta-info.bsky.social @trb.org #TCRP
Happy TCRP Day! All about the USA’s Transit Cooperative Research Program
Graham celebrates a superb and ever-growing resource for public transport planning
grahamjames.co.uk
October 1, 2025 at 5:31 PM
Reposted by Graham James
apta-info.bsky.social
The Transit Cooperative Research Program has conducted hundreds of studies and produced practical ideas to make transit better. Check out some of the latest reports, syntheses, legal digests, and more, all for free! > www.trb.org/TCRP/TCRP.aspx

#TCRP @usdot.bsky.social
Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP)
TCRP is an applied research program that develops near-term, practical solutions to problems facing public transportation.
www.trb.org
October 1, 2025 at 3:15 PM
grahamjames.bsky.social
Quick reminder of two recent blogposts:

✍️Different purposes, different trends: what the latest National Travel Survey data tell us about post-Covid recovery in trip-making

✍️A streetcar named Desire-Line: the contemporary US streetcar concept

Find these and more at grahamjames.co.uk
Illustrative graphic of a line graph with various coloured lines Photo looking across a city street to a streetcar vehicle. The vehicle is double-articulated, in predominantly red livery, and says "DC Streetcar". It is modern-looking and has a pantograph collecting current from the trolley wire.
September 26, 2025 at 6:22 PM
grahamjames.bsky.social
My week at work (Strictly's back edition):

▶️How value-for-money metrics differ when a proposal is revenue-positive
▶️Accounting for VAT in an economic appraisal
▶️and GIS hacks for creating desire-line maps

👇What user-class is the doggie? And does "eating the grass" count as a journey purpose?
Photo looking along an asphalt path on a grassy common. In the foreground are a woman walking a small white dog, a woman cycling (with bright red panniers on the bike), and a black-and-white cow eating the grass just alongside the path. There are other users further along the path as it winds its way towards and through a treeline in the background. There are also cows sitting on the grass. Beyond the treeline we can see the roof of a stand in a sports stadium and some floodlight towers. It's an overcast day.
September 26, 2025 at 6:14 PM
grahamjames.bsky.social
New blogpost:

Why has travel still not returned to pre-Covid levels? Why has the bounceback stalled on some indicators?

Pre-Covid trends - and a dive into different journey purposes - offer some clues.

grahamjames.co.uk/different-pu...
Different purposes, different trends: what the latest National Travel Survey data tell us about post-Covid recovery in trip-making
Why has travel still not returned to pre-Covid levels? Twenty-first century trends in trip levels by journey purpose might offer a clue.
grahamjames.co.uk
September 23, 2025 at 5:06 PM
grahamjames.bsky.social
My week at work (on-the-ground edition):
➡️Revenue allocation and forecasting
➡️Changes to a front-line service process
➡️Balancing different users' needs for kerbspace
➡️Plus happy customer feedback from some recent project meetings

Photo unconnected as usual.
Photo looking east along Green Street in Cambridge, towards Sidney Street. It is a pretty urban shopping street. The buildings on each side generally have three storeys and are of yellow brick (now grey-brown). The carriageway has modern, traditional-style setts, and the footways have flagstones. The kerbs are shallow. Cycles are parked on the footway in the right foreground. Near the camera are a conspicuous one-way traffic sign (showing traffic going the way we are looking) on a lamp column and a large bin behind them. Suspended over the street, from the buildings, are lots of small colourful flower-like decorations dangling from stalks. A few people are walking along the street.
September 19, 2025 at 6:41 PM