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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

Annual UTSG conference 2021 announced

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The 53rd Annual UTSG Conference will be hosted by Loughborough University, and will take place online on 5 and 6 July 2021. More details can be found here.

2020 Smeed Prize Winners

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Congratulations to the 2020 Smeed Prize winner, Aditya Tafta Nugraha from the University of Southampton. Tafta’s paper was entitled “Unravelling the dynamics behind the urban morphology of port-cities using a LUTI model based on cellular automata”. Tafta’s research aims to investigate the urban dynamics influencing land use distribution in the context of port cities. He […]

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Smeed Prize Winners, 2019

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Congratulations to Fredrik Monsuur of Loughborough University who won the Smeed Prize at the 51st Annual UTSG Conference, hosted by the University of Leeds. The second place winner, also from Loughborough University, was Nicolette Formosa. Fredrik’s paper was entitled “Quantifying the impact of train delays on passenger satisfaction”, while Nicolette’s was entitled “Vehicle-level conflict detection using deep learning”. Both students, and their supervisors, are to be commended for the quality of their work.

Nicolette Formosa (2nd Prize) and Fredrik Monsuur (1st Prize)

2018 Smeed Prize Winners

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Congratulations to Michael Nattrass of UCL who won the Smeed Prize at the 50th Universities’ Transport Study Group Conference, hosted by UCL in London between 3-5 January 2018. Two joint second prize winners this year were Shuo Li of Newcastle University and Hannah Budnitz of the University of Birmingham.
Michael Nattrass’ paper was entitled: Infrastructuring when Cycling: How those Cycling, Walking and Driving come to justify the everyday use of the Public Highway.
Shuo Li’s paper was entitled: Investigating the effects of age and driving disengagement level on drivers’ take-over control performance in Highly Automated Vehicles.
Hannah Budnitz’ paper was entitled: Exploring the Influence of Weather on the Choice Not to Travel.
Eight students competed for the prize this year and the judges commended the high standard of entries received.