Correction: we arrived at 06:08. (I'm very tired...)

There was a real sleeper in Newcastle when we finally got here!

Gah!

Didn't think much of the new @lner.co.uk sleeper service. Departing King Cross at 19:30 and arriving in Newcastle at 05:25 the following day, I found the beds very upright and uncomfortable and the lighting far too bright. I did enjoy the fresh air break at Grantham. Great staff though! #477minslate

Thank you! Working with social scientists as part of the @tyndallcentre.bsky.social has really enriched my perspective on this. We need more platforms for these multi-perspective conversations and partnerships. The tricky bit is often the conversations at the local level...

Thought-provoking and challenging presentation by Lisa Schipper at #ICRS2026, exploring maladaptation and the pitfalls in our global response to climate change. Left me wondering: how can I as a quantitative spatial modeller be the most useful to support change? Any ideas @lisaschipper.bsky.social?

Sorry, International Conference on Resilient Systems! DOH!

Lovely to be back in TU Delft for #ICRS2026 International Conference on Resilient Infrastructure, presenting work from the @darehub.bsky.social researchers. Enjoyed the keynote from Caroline Field of PA Consulting this morning, and this must be the best conference freebie ever!

Earth being ‘pushed beyond its limits’ as energy imbalance reaches record high State of the Climate report finds Earth’s energy has moved dangerously out of balance, with oceans absorbing vast majority of trapped heat

Earth being ‘pushed beyond its limits’ as energy imbalance reaches record high

- #StateofClimate report finds Earth’s energy has moved dangerously out of balance, with oceans absorbing vast majority of trapped heat

#climatecrisis
@wmo-global.bsky.social
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Because they fear it will slow down their timetables! Even though average speeds must be well below that anyway. Most residential streets are already 20mph across Newcastle but they left all of the distributor roads and bus routes (including many shopping streets) at 30mph.

Genuine question: we are told by our city council (Newcastle upon Tyne) that blanket 20mph speed limits are not allowed and they are constantly opposed by local bus companies. Are rules different in Greater London or is political will stronger?

Meeting room with furious discussions about multi-criteria decision making going on.

Multi storey bike park with lots of cycles stored.

View of Cambridge railway station at night from a hotel room window.

Back in sunny Cambridge for the @darehub.bsky.social full team meeting, hearing about the great work our researchers are doing on transport resilience and decarbonisation. Also living the sustainable transport dream to get here. The multi-storey cycle parking at the railway station is immense!

This is utter garbage. I believe in net zero. We need to get there. But renewables are not competitive. That's why they are subsidised. Fossil fuel markets are highly competitive. It shouldn't be hard to hold these two thoughts at the same time.

You might have formed the impression that Paul Johnson, former director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, knows what he's talking about. The media treats him like the voice of God. But here he is - and not for the first time - talking out of his hat. Let's break it down in a short thread. 🧵

😬UK gas prices just hit highest level since 2022😬

At current prices…

* New wind & solar from latest "AR7" auction would cut the bill for UK gas imports by £5.5bn/y
* A single (1) home heat pump would cut bill for gas imports by more than £600/y

www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-why...

It's a very handy dataset built on some snazzy modelling for current transport networks. We'd love to use it as an input to our urban development modelling to explore sustainable housing scenarios but the data isn't downloadable. Wd also be great to be able to test the impact of new infrastructure.

We'd love to be able to download the gridded data to feed into our 100m urban growth model to explore how local authorities could meet housing targets by building in highly-connected areas. Do you know if the scores will be made available for download as GeoTIFF or vector data?

"This is not an inevitable feature of energy systems. It is a policy choice, [one] based on the inappropriate application of a piece of microeconomic theory to a market that does not satisfy the assumptions on which that theory depends."

And *not changing* this mechanism is also a policy choice.

Mayor's push to take contol of North East buses moves closer to reality The North East is moving closer to taking power over bus fares, routes and timetables out of the hands of private companies, under Kim McGuinness' proposed Angel Network

Fantastic to see this go ahead with support from across the region and parties. This is an important step towards bus services that work for people, not private profit, and integration between buses, Metro, and local rail in the North East.

www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-e...

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In Walker...

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We’re out in communities across Newcastle every week - standing up for residents, listening, and taking action where it matters most.

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Photo of the Houses of Parliament with bike, black cab, and red London bus.

Group of people around a meeting table discussing resilience of transport to extreme weather.

A London bus negotiating a very large puddle on a flooded Euston Road.

A great couple of days in London, first as part of a delegation of academics heading to parliament to meet with members of the Transport Select Committee and then at our regular @darehub.bsky.social meet-up with Department for Transport colleagues. Resilience to extreme weather very apt right now.

When direct connections between the mouth of Tyne and London and Norway were just part of the fabric of our ordinary transport infrastructures.

Map of West Midlands showing areas by car ownership and accessibility.

Great session on TfWM's local transport plan, bringing out the need for positive visions of the future and ambitious targets (50% of urban trips by sustainable modes by 2035, 35% reduction in car miles). Some nice maps too, like this of car use and accessibility. Land-use planning vital too!

The importance of carbon budgets raised by the panel is great. "If you want to build a 3rd runway at Heathrow, fine. But you have to close the M1." Quality of life and carbon reduction needs to be valued much more highly than time savings. Shape transport around what people want, not 1960s vision.

Lovely to be at Pathways to Net Zero in Birmingham, hearing from a great panel on the challenge of decarbonisation and climate resilience in transport. Claire Haigh set the scene with a focus on Avoid-Shift-Improve and we've heard about vision-led planning and the need for positive stories.

A view from a rainy train window over a damp valley filled with mill town housing, heavy grey clouds in the sky.

Off to Manchester to examine a @tyndallcentre.bsky.social PhD on climate risks to transport. My train is slowly trundling at 20mph via Todmorden in the rain after a fire in Standegde Tunnel. It shows the importance of redundancy in the network for resilience but also the need for big investment.

Our cat is very middle class...

That's pretty much what the response to the Masterplan consultation that we put together as academics at Newcastle University said. It should be designed with no through traffic from the outset and as high density mixed-use.

What was the outcome of the scrutiny discussion @mikecookson.bsky.social ?

We're on the verge of submitting a research proposal to explore how to anticipate and plan for building re-use better. We were mainly focussing on healthcare buildings but good point about universities leading the way with their own estate!

Ours refuses to take tablets even in Pill Pockets. The only infallible method is coating them in butter then wrapping them in mortadella...

Meanwhile