Travel advisories have been issued for people attending the event and large screens are being set up at various locations for people to be able to witness the historic moment live with friends and family, all across the UK.

As it stands for now, King Charles III’s coronation will happen on Saturday, May 6, with the Coronation Concert taking place at Windsor Castle on May 7. Monday, May 8, has been designated ‘The Big Help Out’ in the UK, encouraging people to use their public holiday to engage in volunteering work in their communities. The government statement issued in January stated, “Coronation Big Lunches, thousands of street parties, and a day dedicated to good causes will bring communities together throughout the UK over the special Coronation Bank Holiday weekend.”

The Government has also confirmed additional screening sites for the Their Majesties’ Coronation, bringing the total to 57 in locations including Ely Cathedral, Trinity Market in Hull and Alnwick Castle, Northumberland, meaning that more than 100,000 people will be able to watch the Coronation live in their hometowns. So please plan accordingly.

To mark the Coronation weekend, communities are being encouraged to come together for street parties on the Sunday and across the UK more than 32,000 Coronation Big Lunch packs have been ordered with around 50,000 neighbourhood events, attended by millions of people, being planned. Eighty per cent of those signing up are first-time organisers. Plans include a youth centre Big Lunch in Shetland to community focused celebrations across the water in Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. A community carnival is being planned in Morecambe and a Big Lunch paddle board will take place in Bude, Cornwall. More details here.

You can skip the queuing and the chaos of the city with the complete list of screenings of the Coronation for you to enjoy.

Getting In And Around London For The Coronation (Sustainably)

● All transport networks will be running with no planned closures on Saturday, May 6. Night Tube and Night Overground services will be running on Friday and Saturday, May 5-6.

● Walking is often the best way to get around central London. You can reach many popular locations, especially in central London and the Royal Parks, on foot or by bike. Kindly refer to this map if you choose to cycle around the region. This map is for those who will be on foot.

● Tube and rail will be the best and timely way of getting around the capital over the Coronation weekend. Traffic snarls may cause bus and taxis to delay.

● The main Network Rail stations in London are: Blackfriars, Cannon Street, Charing Cross, Euston, King's Cross, Liverpool Street, London Bridge, Marylebone, Paddington, London St Pancras, Victoria and Waterloo.

● There will be limited access to the procession route from Victoria station. If you arrive at Victoria, you may be directed to Hyde Park for screening sites.

● Great Western Railway has confirmed it will run some "very early" additional services to London Paddington from major stations in south Wales, south-west England and the Thames Valley area on Saturday May 6.

● South Western Railway (SWR) will have additional trains between London Waterloo and Windsor only for the coronation concert.

● On coronation day, Southeastern will run additional trains between Dartford and London Charing Cross, and longer trains on the Maidstone East Line and between London Victoria and Gillingham.

● If you are returning to London by train, kindly check last trains and use buses, taxis and minicabs. The Tube will stop running before midnight.

● The complete updated details can be found at the TfL website.

Some of the bus routes in central London have been discontinued, in other news, and may affect travel plans for commuters. Please plan ahead!

"Transport poverty refers to a lack of adequate transport services necessary to access general services and work, or to the inability to pay for these transport services. Intertwined with social vulnerabilities, such as low income, old age or disabilities and with regional disadvantages."

Great Britain has been addressing the concern through academic research and policy changes since much earlier than this latest study. In July 2019, NatCen conducted a study ‘Transport and Inequality: An evidence review for the Department for Transport’ which entailed an in-depth study and analysis of the impact of Transport Poverty in the UK. The study uncovered crucial facts including “Those who depend more on the bus network to participate in the labour market tend to be lower paid, live in areas of deprivation, and are more likely to turn down employment due to transport limitations.” The study has also factored in gender inequality and the role that gender plays in transport poverty as well. “A lack of adequate public transport creates barriers to women accessing employment and educational opportunities, thus hindering their ability to participate in public life.”

The study, based on the findings of 30 studies across the UK, specified in the solutions that “it would be worthwhile investigating the potential of MaaS or DRT to provide acceptable alternatives to high-cost car use.” Sustainable transport options, which would be inclusive by design, was a key conclusion shared through the study. “It would be illuminating to investigate the net effect of improved transport links at the individual level, taking account of both the pricing-out of poorer residents and of the greater income potential offered by the improved infrastructure. Existing national cohort study data are unlikely to have sufficient power at the local level to detect effects of individual schemes, but prospective work could be undertaken alongside the development of new proposed schemes.”

Initiatives like the ‘Superloop’ buses around London can be viewed as a result of the same. Part of a £6 million (US$7.4 million) investment by the Mayor in outer London bus services alongside the expansion of the Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) to the Greater London boundary, the Superloop has been announced for six routes at its inception, with the possibility of expansion.

At the launch event in London in March 2023, Mayor Khan said:

“When I made the tough decision to expand the ULEZ London-wide, one of my key commitments was to improve transport links in outer London,”

“Today I am delivering on that commitment as we announce the Superloop, the game-changing new network of express buses that will add over four million additional kilometres to our bus network in outer London, linking stations, town centres, hospitals and transport hubs. These new routes will make it much easier for Londoners to get around the capital, and help build a better, greener London for everyone.”

The proposed new routes could add over 4 million kilometres on to London’s bus network, according to the operator, TfL.

As Sustainable Transport Midlands (STM) reaches 20 staff members, just two months after we reached 10, I wanted to reflect on the last three years.

I started STM because of one need that I identified in 2020 (at age 13), for a new railway station in my local area. The idea was originally known as Weedon Station Project, and it took off in the local and regional press. Shortly after I did my initial engagement with Northamptonshire County Council and some very friendly local councillors like Phil Larratt and Rupert Frost - I met Owen O'Neill, a fellow transport campaigner.

From there, Weedon Station Project became Daventry Parkway Project, and became part of Sustainable Transport Northamptonshire, an organisation I ran as Managing Director. Daventry Parkway saw even more success under what was then STN, featuring in BBC News a couple of times and some more local/regional press.

I made the decision in late-2021 that STN wasn't the right name - and we rebranded to what we now know as Sustainable Transport Midlands in an essential move for our company. Shortly after this, I appointed my first volunteer, Thomas Haines.

After six months of project development, with Daventry Parkway Project (now known as Daventry Transport Development Group) continuing to take off, it was clear we needed to become official. On 5th September 2022, we became Sustainable Transport Midlands CIC, joined by Board Directors John Tippett, Gareth Dennis, Stephen Chaytow, Owen O'Neill, and me!

Then something happened - team growth. In October, two new unpaid staff joined the STM team - David Frankal and George Marshall. And this was just the start. Six months afterwards, we appointed 14 more staff, across three organisation levels, six departments, and one (to be two) projects. There are seven line managers within our Group, with me holding eight direct reports and David Frankal taking the 2nd spot on five!

I didn't think, three years ago, that I would lead a team of 19 staff members, in departments from Communications (Nikita Jan) and Marketing (Narek Melkonyan), to Project Development (David Frankal) and Information Services (Chris Elmes). It's amazing, and one of the best bits is that I've brought people together.

More recently, Mandeep Gill and George Marshall have joined STM's board, and we continue to grow our essential Group People department with Samantha Ruffell and Rishita Rastogi also joining the team.

Project teams are continuing to grow also, with Shubham Chakravorty joining Daventry Transport Development Group, assisting John Tippett in day-to-day activities. I also can't forget about Xiaolu Chen, who has taken up the tough role of CFO alongside a directorship!

As our Group Project Development department, led by David Frankal, continues to work on sifting through projects and performing high-level assessments, you can expect to hear a lot more from us in the next couple of months.

Harry Burr, Chief Executive Officer and Board Director, Sustainable Transport Midlands

A new report highlighting the emerging urban mobility trends across the UK and Europe for 2023, including the increasing demand for micro-mobility options and the road to net zero emissions has been released.

The report highlights the changing urban mobility trends based on the behaviour of 48 million FREE NOW users across Europe. As the mobility app continues to offer mobility providers across Europe, it has seen a 221% growth in the number of multimodal trips (e-scooters, e-bikes, e-mopeds, car-sharing) while the number of multi-mobility users have grown by 27%.

The number of overall taxi and minicab trips has also increased by more than 50% in the UK during 2022, with London standing out in the rankings of top cities by the number of tours taken.

Across Europe, 73% of rides were travelled by e-scooter and 27% by e-bike and in the UK the number of micro-mobility rides had increased to 200% in 2022 alone. The rise in micro-mobility options is evident in London, with the areas surrounding Trafalgar Square, Covent Garden and Bermondsey the top locations for the brand’s micro-mobility users.

Maruisz Zabrocki, UK General Manager at FREE NOW, said:

“The UK is one of our fastest growing markets and we’re proud to be the leaders in the licenced taxi market. 60% of European citizens want one mobility app that integrates all mobility options, instead of individual apps for each transport mode – be it taxi, car-sharing, e-bikes, or public transport.

As such, we will continue to encourage our users to combine the various transport modes we have on our app and move from an ownership concept to a shared service that can be booked on-demand.”

Urban travellers have increased their expectations regarding sustainability; 91% of Europeans consider sustainable transport options more important or at the same level of importance as before the energy crisis. Stephen Joseph OBE, Professor at the University of Hertfordshire Smart Mobility Unit and Chair of Smart Transport, said:

“This isn’t just about getting around more easily – it’s about the way we want towns and cities to be. Less dominance by private cars means more space for people, green spaces, parklets and cafes, and breathable air.”

The report identifies four key trends for the year ahead, including the concept of the 15-minute city, single app solutions, flexible mobility spending and collaboration for green mobility.

You can read the full report here.

But, more recently, Canterbury West is served by “Southeastern Highspeed”. The first actual domestic high speed service in the UK. Today, I’m going to explain how it works, the services, passenger numbers, and future development of the system.

High Speed One is the UK’s first true high speed railway, running between London St Pancras International and the Channel Tunnel. Its main use is for Eurostar services to France, Germany and Belgium (among others in the future), however, it’s also used by Southeastern Class 395s to run domestic “classic compatible” services to Kent and Medway.

These domestic services are super popular for those all around Kent and Medway. In fact, in the first ten years of service (2009-2019), 100 million people have used the service.

Southeastern Highspeed runs to Ebbsfleet International and Ashford International respectively, via Stratford International, where they disconnect from High Speed One (HS1), and operate on third rail (as is common as opposed to Overhead Line Electrification in the south east) at a lower speed to their final destinations. These are:

• Dover Priory via Ashford International and Folkestone Central

• Ramsgate via Ashford International and Dover Priory

• Ramsgate via Ebbsfleet International, Chatham and Margate

• Margate via Ashford International, Canterbury West and Ramsgate

Now, let’s move onto the “Kent Rail Strategy”. Given Kent has a huge rail network, it’s a big document, with 85 pages, focussing on their three types of rail; Metro, Mainline, and Highspeed. Today, we’re focussing on how Kent County Council plan to expand their Highspeed network.

Let’s start with the simple stuff – stations. A new station (although we don’t understand exactly what the business case for it is, since all it’s doing is serving a closed airport), Thanet Parkway, is opening in mid-2023, and it’s required that all trains passing through (Mainline and Highspeed) call there. This means the Ramsgate via Dover Priory and Margate via Canterbury West Highspeed services will call at Thanet Parkway.

As well as this, Kent County Council and Southeastern are considering calling Highspeed services at Westenhanger, between Ashford International and Folkestone Central, as a new village, known as Otterpool Garden Village, is currently being constructed. This may increase journey times to and from Dover Priory, unfortunately.

And now the more exciting stuff – routes! At the moment, there are only two diesel routes passing through Kent; the Marshlink Line between Ashford International and Hastings, and the Oxted line between Oxted and Uckfield.

There are ambitions within the rail strategy to do one of two things with the Marshlink Line in particular. Either:

1. Purchase bi-mode Highspeed units (potentially based on the Class 80x series), and run Highspeed services between St Pancras International and Eastbourne via Rye, Hastings and Bexhill alongside the existing diesel Southern stopper.

2. Electrify the Marshlink Line, either via OLE or third rail, and run a Highspeed service between St Pancras International and Eastbourne via Rye, Hastings and Bexhill alongside a new Southern electrified stopper.

These are both costly options, but would definitely benefit Hastings and Eastbourne in terms of journey times to London and connectivity to East Kent.

In conclusion, Southeastern Highspeed has effectively pulled southern parts of Kent closer to Stratford and central London, and there’s even more work to be done to improve connectivity not just to Kent and Medway but to East Sussex in the future too. There’s exciting stuff to come.

I’ll skip the boring details of my trip to Birmingham New Street, but I arrive on time in the later hours of the morning, after rush hour. First, we need to address New Street. People really do hate it, but I like it. It’s everything you need from a railway station (since the redevelopment anyway). The platform level is a little grim, but apart from that, it’s a nice station, and the new signage looks great (even though it doesn’t follow the National Rail brand guidelines).

My first trip was to Perry Barr, a station rebuilt in time for the Commonwealth Games taking place in Birmingham in July/August. Apart from getting on the wrong train (since Perry Barr’s service is somewhat limited for a suburban station, a theme you’ll notice a lot today), my trip was alright.

Perry Barr station, from the outset, looks great – the signage is good (but West Midlands Trains, just pick one font and stick to it!) – the building is spacious – and the passenger information screens are really, really good. The best I’ve seen in my time travelling around the UK. But, there are two main problems with Perry Barr:

• The walk to connect with buses is a little too long for my liking.

• The services are lacking.

I'll focus on this second issue, because it’s a theme across the West Midlands. Perry Barr is on the Chase Line, but on the slow lines via Duddeston, Aston, Witton, and of course, Perry Barr itself. This means it’s only served by the Walsall stoppers running every thirty minutes. As a result, it’s by no means a turn-up-and-go service, unfortunately. If we compare this to Tame Bridge Parkway, on the fast and slow lines, it gets a service every ten minutes or so:

• Birmingham New Street // Crewe - Hourly

• Birmingham New Street // Rugeley Trent Valley - Half-hourly

• Birmingham New Street // Walsall - Half-hourly

If you’re trying to get to Birmingham, it’s almost a train every ten minutes, whereas Perry Barr, which is an important
part of the city, gets a train every thirty minutes. Unfortunately, it’s all about rail geography.

I headed back to New Street (on quite an overcrowded train – I struggled to find a seat, probably because it was just a four-coach train). My next trip was to Wolverhampton, which has also (but not as recently) seen a station refurbishment, and as you may know, a delayed tram extension.

Wolverhampton station is quite big. A huge gateline, plenty of information displays, ticket machines etc. The only problem at the moment is what’s going on outside.

Midland Metro Alliance, the group of organisations that manage Birmingham’s (very limited and unreliable) tram network – West Midlands Metro – are currently extending to Wolverhampton railway station, to be closer to the city centre and allow effective rail integration.

The extension has been delayed, and was promised to be opened in time for the Commonwealth Games, but Transport for West Midlands has now said this won’t be happening. Instead, it’s just an eyesore on an otherwise really great station. Nevertheless, I’m very excited to see trams rolling past Wolverhampton railway station eventually.

I took a very wacky trip home to Northampton (via Crewe!), and thus ended my trip to the West Midlands – or did I? I boarded a stopping London Euston service at Crewe, and wow, was it busy after some of the Trent Valley stations (especially Lichfield!) Now, I’ll answer the core question of this blog post – is there enough investment?

There’s two answers to this – in the West Midlands conurbation – yes! From reopening Wolverhampton – Walsall, to running services via the Camp Hill Line once again, and numerous other projects in the works including tram enhancements, there’s so much going on in and around Birmingham. But in the West Midlands region, it’s a completely different story.

A lack of electrification to Shrewsbury and Telford. Infrequent and impractical Trent Valley stopping services. A lack of a mass-rapid-transit network in Stoke-on-Trent. A lack of railways in Herefordshire as a whole (only four stations!)

From what I’ve seen, not just from my trip in July, but as a whole, as a Northampton resident, some of this funding needs to be redirected to the region, not the conurbation, and where funding is being sent to the conurbation, services are the things that need to be improved (and how quickly projects can be delivered!)

Recently, I have been exploring the European continent, and unlike your typical tourist, I have been using my time to explore the transport networks of the places I’ve been to, primarily in France, Germany and Italy. France is the country I’d like to focus on in this post though, due to the public transport throughout the country, and how it regularly puts shame on the UK. I believe this experience – and the lessons we can learn from France – can feed into the projects STM push forward in the coming years.

The lesson most applicable to STM’s work is related to the trams. This can feed into our projects almost immediately, with past projects such as Derby TramLink coming to mind. While the commonality of tram networks throughout the country is in part due to how France is governed politically, and mainly because each local area can raise money for such projects on their own, the design of these numerous tram systems is something we could learn from in the UK.

The one thing that has stuck out to me so far is, as mentioned above, the commonality of tram networks throughout the country. You can find trams networks in places as big as Marseille and Nice, or as small as Besançon and Caen.

To my mind, if similar criteria were to be applied to the UK, and my East Midlands region in particular, that could mean tram networks appearing in places such as Derby, Peterborough, Grantham, etc.

The other thing to note, is that these tram networks don’t have to be big affairs. As an example, Caen’s tram network only consists of 2 (ok, there is a 3rd stub) lines, albeit with 2 more under construction. So, for these cities I mentioned in the UK, it isn’t obligatory for them to have Manchester Metrolink-sized networks. They don’t need massively complex tram networks… Well, certainly not immediately anyway…

With that, I’d like to close this blog post by reminding everyone that STM’s projects should be powered by youth (which we are in need of, please check out our volunteering page!), and inspired by the best existing examples, which are frequently found outside the UK’s borders.

East West Railway Company is the organisation promoting the East West Rail project – the proposal to effectively reopen parts of the former Varsity Line between Oxford and Cambridge, therefore connecting the two university cities by rail, via Milton Keynes, for the first time since the 1960s. As you can probably tell, this is a vital project for the region, and you could also say it’s nationally important – providing new routes for freight and long-distance cross-country passenger services.

But, unluckily for us, the Treasury doesn’t quite understand these benefits, and the NIMBYs against the project just keep coming, especially on the Bedford – Cambridge portion of the route.

As you can see from the map above, the project is split into two phases – 1 and 2. Phase 1 is already operational, providing Oxford with a direct link via Oxford Parkway, Islip, and Bicester Village to the Chiltern Main Line and London Marylebone. This has been a success, with 809,812 people using Oxford Parkway in the first year of improvements alone (2016), increasing to 1.1mi in 2019.

Phase 2 is now. The Bicester – Bletchley portion of the route is being constructed via Calvert as I write this post. The section between Bletchley and Bedford is an existing alignment (the “Marston Vale Line”), but a lot of improvement needs to be made to this line including replacing its 31 level crossings before EWR services can commence. The portion between Bedford and Cambridge is the difficult one, given it’s a brand new alignment.

But I’m going off on a tangent – the question of this article is whether East West Rail is under threat. In my opinion, yes, EWR is under threat. It’s not the promoters fault – the proposal they are making is really great. 4tph between Oxford and Cambridge and 2tph between Oxford and Milton Keynes Central (let’s hope Northampton one day!) sounds really ideal. The reasoning behind this threat comes down to two main problems, both originating in Westminster:

• Grant Shapps

• HM Treasury

Grant Shapps

Grant Shapps is our current Transport Secretary. As you may know, Shapps recently decided to join the contest to succeed Boris Johnson as Conservative Leader, and therefore Prime Minister, making the promise to “scrap East West Rail east of Bletchley”. He quit the competition a few days later.

Yes, the photo to the right is one of the most important members of Government filming a bizarre promotional video for a railway sale which should have been applied as standard anyway.

Grant Shapps has a lack of leadership over the Department for Transport, and a lack of interest in not only the rail sector, but public and active transport sectors as a whole. In fact, active travel responsibility has effectively been moved to Active Travel England, an executive agency owned by the Department for Transport.

To be fair to our Transport Secratary, these cuts are not all his fault. In fact, most of the time, Shapps is just a puppet for the Treasury. Let’s explain.

HM Treasury

As you’ll know, the Treasury is in charge of money, full stop. During the course of Johnson’s premiership, they have cut, cut, cut the Department for Transport’s public transport spending, including through the introduction of the Integrated Rail Plan, a £96bn new strategy for the railways, although it introduced no new funding whatsoever.

Here’s a graph of public service expenditure in 2021/22, in billions. Transport got allocated £51bn. To put that into perspective, that’s just just 40% of the budget for education in the same year, and almost the same as how much the Government paid on debt interest. What!?

Let’s go back to the IRP. This plan cut HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail, by effectively taking control of NPR from Transport for the North and putting it into DfT hands, cutting HS2E, and removing the essential Golborne Link from HS2 plans (a somewhat politically suspicious decision according to some in the industry, given who a nearby MP is)

The Government (for now), has stripped HS2 and NPR dry of funding. Now it’s East West Rail’s turn, unfortunately.

Harry has written a blog post with details about his visit:

This week, I stayed in Nottingham for two nights so I could spend some time with the Rail Forum, of which I am their Young Persons Ambassador. On Wednesday, I headed up to Leeds to their Stations of the Future event, and on Thursday, I went to Derby with Elaine for some company visits.

I think we were all surprised by what was in store for us on Thursday. The first part of the Stations of the Future event took place in the Shoosmiths offices outside Leeds station, where we learnt about what stations could look like in the GBR era, and how changes are being made now, mainly at Leeds City, to continue enhancing stations.

Afterwards, we were taken around Leeds City station by the Station Manager. The railway came to Leeds for the first time in 1854, when Leeds Central railway station opened. This station closed in 1967, and traffic was diverted to what we now know as Leeds City station.

We were all under the impression that we’d just get a tour of the public levels of the station – and we did – but we also were taken very underground, down what could be described as pretty dodgy stairs. Once we were underneath the station, we were taken round the very expansive area, probably enough to fit another Leeds City station (if someone really wanted to do that!)

Overall, the Stations of the Future event was really insightful to me and many others, and the visit was just fascinating. I’ll never think of Leeds City station the same again!

The next day (yes, two days in a row!) I met Elaine in Derby, and we did some visits to Rail Forum members. We started with Alstom at Litchurch Lane, where, after a meeting, we were accompanied by Kathryn Lancaster for a tour around site, taking a look at (mainly) new Aventra trains being constructed.

I don’t think, unless you’ve been to a similar site before, how much time and effort you’d realise goes into building and testing these trains. And everyone at the site are so safety-conscious, too. Kathryn was a great guide, and I learnt a lot about the process!

After a short drive through Derby, Elaine and I visited TrainFX, a rail technology company that specialises in passenger information systems and crew communications. I’ve found, throughout my role as Chief Executive of Sustainable Transport Midlands, that passenger information is vital if we’d like to increase modal shift to public transport from the car. If it’s not easy-to-understand and in English, then it won’t attract people to switch!

With this in mind, it was really interesting to see how passenger information systems work behind-the-scenes, and the types of systems that can exist. I met Andrew Wakefield, Operations Manager at the company, who explained to me that there’s a certain PRM regulation that requires Passenger Information screens to have certain text sizes, colours and fonts.

After a trip to Greggs (some of you may know that I love Greggs…) we went to see Resonate, whose office is conveniently right next door to Derby railway station! Robert Cooper gave us a great tour of the office, and we had a chat with some of his colleagues and I learnt exactly what they do. I wasn’t too sure when Elaine explained what they did in the car, but Rob was a great guide and helped me understand exactly what they do (Traffic Management!)

Rob was really welcoming of Elaine and I, and we ended up sitting in their offices for quite a while having a chat, and ensuring my train wasn’t cancelled! Overall, the last two days have been really great. Elaine and the Rail Forum team have been super welcoming of me, and I look forward to working with them in the future to promote young people in the industry.