Travel and Transportation

We all have places to go. Today, even after the coronavirus travel restrictions and the shift to hybrid working in many sectors over the last few years, we travel much further and much more often than a couple of generations ago. While connecting people and communities is hugely positive, the volume and methods of travel has also brought harms. These include the increase in land consumed by roads and motorways since the mid twentieth century, poor urban air quality, CO2 emissions from aviation and many more.

I am keen to drill down into some of these issues and look at the choices we can make for the better as well as  investigating other solutions under development.  Different considerations come into play for hyper-local travel (upto a mile/2km), local (town or city wide), regional, national and international travel. In some cases active travel or public transport are most appropriate, while space remains for private cars. Both the distance and the purpose of the journey is important, but the needs for a small number of journeys should not dictate the mode of all journeys.

Past posts include:

Biofuel Status 2026 : not an in-depth review of the status of biofuels in the transport sector in 2026, but a review of a roadmap for biofuels in transport published by the International Energy Agency which was reviewed in a 2011 post, Biofuels in Transport, on this Blog. The 2011 post was a commentary on an International Energy Agency forecast on uptake of Biofuels in the transport sector up to 2050. This seems a good point to review the assumptions part way through the forecast horizon.

The Carmont Train Crash: Six years on from this tragic accident, there has been some progress towards recognition of the impact a changing climate has on our critical infrastructure.  This article reviews the events on the day and factors which led to the accident, highlights some of the lessons learned through the Rail Accident Investigation Board's investigation, and describes some measure being taken by Network Rail to reduce the risk of similar occurrences.  

The Clyde Fastlink : This second post on the Clyde Fastlink didn't age well, nor did the original post. They represent another footnote in the decades long conversation about improving public transport in the Glasgow area. We now wait with bated breath to hear of the shape a Clyde Metro may take. Watch this space.

My personal journey back to active travel is told in an as yet incomplete three part mini-series. It reflects on how I fell out of the way of regular cycling then, after some false starts, got back into the way of utility cycling. 

Planned posts cover active travel,  regional public transport (predominantly from a west central Scotland (Strathclyde) perspective but with examples relevant to other metropolitan areas), and resilience of our ageing infrastructure against the effects of climate change.

The Engineering EcoWarrior, September 2026

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