The UTSG2024 Conference Programme is out!

Dear UTSG friends,

To access the finalised programme, click HERE!

It will be a wonderful event packed with interesting talks and exceptional initiatives.

Looking forward to welcoming you on Monday, July 1st in Huddersfield.

Have a lovely weekend.

UTSG2024 Organising Team in Huddersfield

UTSG2024 Conference registration is now open!

We are pleased to inform you that the registration for the 56th Annual UTSG Conference (UTSG2024) is now open!

You can register HERE.

Please note that you or one of your co-authors need to be registered in order to present your Abstract.

Early bird rates – available from now until 1st June 2024:

Academic: £300

Student: £250

Regular rates – available from 2nd June 2024:

Academic: £350

Student: £300

Other options:

Accompanying person*: £150

*This ticket gives your accompanying person access to the full conference, including the social events. 

At our conference website, we also have provided some practical information that may help you to plan and prepare your travel and accommodation. For more information please visit the website.

We look forward to seeing you in Huddersfield this summer,

UTSG2024 Organising Committee

UTSG2024 Abstract Submission Deadline EXTENDED!

Dear Colleagues,

After many requests we are happy to announce an extension of 10 days for our call of abstracts for the UTSG2024 Conference in Huddersfield (1-3 July).

OUR SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS IS NOW OPEN UNTIL 21 MARCH (23:59)!

A 300-word abstract along with 6 Key words are required in this stage. For more information, please see: Annual Conference: UTSG2024 – UTSG

Kind regards,

Local Organising Committee

UTSG2024 Conference

UTSG2024 Conference – Call for Abstracts

We are pleased to announce that the 56th Universities’ Transport Studies Group (UTSG) Annual Conference will take place at Huddersfield Business School, University of Huddersfield between 1 and 3 July 2024. Colleagues are reminded that the UTSG conference is a doctoral-student-friendly conference and as always, we are particularly encouraging research students to submit their work. Also, we will be holding a mentoring-surgery scheme to support colleagues across different career stages and doctoral students and a legacy scheme. The UTSG conference at Huddersfield will operate a collaboration initiative for special issues with top-tier journals including Travel Behaviour and Society (Elsevier), Transportation Planning and Technology (Taylor & Francis), and IET Intelligent Transport Systems (Institution of Engineering and Technology).

To present your work at the UTSG Conference involves two stages:

1. Abstract Submission Guideline:

Authors must submit a 300-word abstract and six keywords that should clearly identify the objectives, background, methods, main findings, and conclusions of your work. The abstracts will be reviewed by the UTSG Executive Committee and corresponding authors will be informed of the decision by mid-April 2024. Only authors of accepted abstracts will be invited to submit either a ‘full paper’ or an ‘extended abstract’ using the appropriate templates available on the UTSG and Conference websites.

Abstract Submission Deadline: Monday 11 March 2024. To submit an abstract, please click HERE .

Note: There is no need to attach a file at this stage but simply paste your abstract in the corresponding field. Authors submitting abstracts for the Smeed Prize (see, eligibility criteria below) must indicate that in the corresponding ‘Topic’ of the submission form.

2. Paper Submission Guidelines

Open: late April; Deadline: Monday 10 June 2024

Authors of accepted abstracts will have two options for submitting their research work:

  *   A full paper (max. 12 pages long); this is the recommended option for authors considering the special-issue initiative.

  *   An extended abstract of max. 1500 words

Full papers and extended abstracts will need to use the corresponding UTSG templates. Please also note that Smeed Prize entrants must submit a full paper to be eligible (see, criteria below). Templates and further information can be found on the UTSG website.

Smeed Prize Submissions

[Open to UTSG member institutions in the UK and Ireland, only] Papers can be submitted for the Smeed Prize competition if they are prepared and presented entirely by an author who:

  *   Has carried out the work described in the paper while registered as a postgraduate student at a UTSG member institution, and

  *   Is either still registered as a student at such an institution or has had a viva since the previous UTSG conference.

The best paper will be awarded £500 and the runner-up £250. Anyone wishing to enter the Smeed Prize should make this clear in a statement immediately following the abstract. Entrants must be supported by a confirmation message from the candidate’s supervisor to the utsg2024@hud.ac.uk. A full paper submission after the abstract acceptance is compulsory for the Smeed entrants.

FURTHER INFORMATION

More details about the conference, including delegate fees and registration will be announced in due course via email and on the Conference website. Please, feel free to email utsg2024@hud.ac.uk for any queries.

We are looking forward to welcoming you at Huddersfield!

On behalf the organising committee with my best wishes,

Prof. Alexandros Nikitas

Chair of the Local Organising Committee

UTSG Executive Committee Chair

Pre-Call UTSG 2024: 56th Annual UTSG Conference in Huddersfield 1-3 July 2024

Dear Colleagues, 

The 56th Universities’ Transport Studies Group (UTSG) Annual Conference will take place at the University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, UK between 1 and 3 July 2024

The Conference will have an international scope, so contributions from colleagues outside the UK and Ireland are very much welcome! 

Colleagues are reminded that the UTSG conference is a doctoral-student-friendly conference and as always, we are particularly encouraging research students to submit their work. Also, we will run a mentoring-surgery scheme to support colleagues across different career stages and doctoral students. 

The UTSG conference at Huddersfield will operate a collaboration initiative for special issues with top-tier journals including Travel Behaviour and Society (Elsevier), Transportation Planning and Technology (Taylor & Francis), and IET Intelligent Transport Systems (Institution of Engineering and Technology). 

The call for papers and more details about the conference organisation and initiatives will be circulated in January 2024. 

* Indicative submission dates: 

Abstract (300 words) submission deadline: Monday 11 March 2024 

Final paper/extended abstract submission deadline: Monday 10 June 2024 

We are looking forward to welcoming you at Huddersfield! 

On behalf the organising committee, with my best wishes, 

Prof. Alexandros Nikitas 

*Contact for UTSG related matters: utsg2024@hud.ac.uk 

Special Issue: Advancing the Study of Intelligent Transport Systems: Selected Studies from UTSG2023

IET Intelligent Transport Systems
Call for Papers

This issue of IET ITS will consist of 8-10 selected papers drawn from the 55th Annual Universities’ Transport Study Group Conference, hosted by Cardiff University in July 2023. The Annual International UTSG Conference is the largest academic transport event in the UK and Ireland. It is a forum where researchers come together to discuss research needs, research in progress and recent findings, and to give research students the opportunity to present papers on their work (www.utsg.net). We expect more than 80-100 papers to be submitted; the authors of the very best manuscripts that are aligned with the journal’s scope will be invited to have their papers considered for inclusion in this special issue. The papers submitted will be subject to a rigorous review process from the UTSG Executive Committee first and then from your typical review process. The papers of our special issue will reveal the range of academic research within the UTSG community, with differing research approaches and areas of study. The common denominator will be how the advancement of intelligent transport systems research is achieved; thus the title of the special issue. When we have the submissions available we will invite the very best papers to be submitted in IET ITS and hopefully we will be able to formulate a more tight thematic direction for the special issue. Our UTSG community will happily help us in building up the special issue by accepting and delivering promptly reviews.

Deadline for Submissions: 15 January 2024

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

– Sustainable Traffic Solutions

– Deployments with enabling technologies

– Demonstrations and evaluation

– Economic and behavioural analyses of ITS services and scenarios

– Data integration and analytics

– Electric vehicles

– Intelligent/Autonomous Vehicles

– Connected Vehicle Systems

– In-vehicle ITS, safety and vulnerable road user aspects – Mobility as a Service Systems

– Traffic management and control

– Public transport systems technologies

– Demand management and electronic payment systems – Transport policy and institutional issues

– Human machine interaction

– Education, training and outreach

For more information about the journal please visit IET Intelligent Transport Systems and read our Author Guide.

Please submit your paper via ScholarOne.

In January 2021, The IET began an Open Access publishing partnership with Wiley. The Open Access Article Processing Charge (APC) for articles accepted for this special issue is 2,200 USD. For further information on APCs, and support for APCs including Wiley’s institutional agreements and Research4Life initiative which offers waivers and automatic discounts for certain countries, please see our FAQs.

55th UTSG Annual Conference, 10-12 July 2023, Cardiff

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.

  • 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.

Read more here: https://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/utsg2023/

Dr Dimitris Potoglou, Reader, School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University

Annual UTSG conference 2023 announced

The 55th Annual UTSG Conference will be hosted by Cardiff University, and will take place between 10 and 12 July, 2023. More details can be found here.

2022 Smeed Prize Winners

Congratulations to the 2022 Smeed Prize winner, Ian Greenwood, Doctoral Researcher at the University of Leeds! Greenwood’s paper was entitled ‘The politics of road death in Britain: are we still complacent?

The runner-up was Sayed Faruque, Doctoral Researcher at Edinburgh Napier University, for the paper ‘Determinants of shared ownership and use of driverless cars in Edinburgh

Annual UTSG conference 2022 announced

The 54th Annual UTSG Conference will be hosted by Edinburgh Napier University, and will take place between 4 and 6 July 2022. More details can be found here.