Podaris

🎄 Last week, we celebrated the transformative year that 2024 has been for Podaris🎄 From welcoming new prestigious partners, including Liverpool City Region Combined Authority and Jacobs to our growing network, and highlights like seeing Podaris-powered projects such as the West Yorkshire Combined Authority Mass Transit go into consultation -  it has been a fantastic year! 🎯 Our team day started with a session of target setting, and then we put our precision to the test in a game of curling... hopefully, we will have better success in hitting our 2025 targets 🫣 Thank you to our partners, users, and supporters who've been part of this remarkable journey. Happy Holidays, and here’s to an incredible year ahead in 2025! 🎉 #PublicTransport #TransportPlanning #Podaris

I had a fantastic visit to the London Transport Museum with Jio Ryu today! 🚂🚌 It was a great opportunity to explore the rich history of London's transport system and draw in some ideas for our upcoming KUDATA (Korea-UK Digital Twin Approach for Transport Analysis) Conference in January. Liverpool and South Korea have teamed up to improve bus journeys across the city by creating a digital twin of the area’s transport system and how both can be improved. This conference is all about working on the twin cities concept, our findings so far and further connecting with everyone involved in the project. Podaris looks forward to welcoming Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, Pusan National University, BUSAN TECHNO PARK, Innovate UK, University of Liverpool. Can't wait to connect with everyone in January! #LondonTransportMuseum #ConferencePrep #Teamwork #Innovation #HistoryInMotion #SeeYouInJanuary #KUDATA

🎄 What do Transport Planners want for Christmas this year? 🤶 Besides longer-term increased funding for sustainable transport schemes, Lego seems to be this year's craze: Arup's new Birmingham office features a room dedicated to Lego, and Podaris' Bethany Fallon recently competed in (and won) Google Cloud's AI Quick Build LEGO Competition! 🏆 In our yearly tradition, and to help you fend off the question of "what would you like for Christmas" from loved ones, we've compiled a list of our favourite gifts for Transport Planners this year. Featuring custom mugs from Marbec Village and light-up ugly jumpers from Chicago Transit Authority 🎁 See the full list here: https://lnkd.in/eW2ghCGR What do you want this year? #TransportPlanning #Xmas2024 #ChristmasGifts

It's almost the end of the #30daymapchallenge 😢 today's theme for #day29 is Overture 🌍 The Overture Maps Foundation is an exciting collaboration that will celebrate its two-year anniversary next month. Despite being relatively young, we're already seeing high-quality Overture datasets used by Podaris users worldwide! Our new Podaris team member Jio Ryu, used the Overture Places dataset to find the locations of 10 of London's most known landmarks and created maps showing the proximity of bicycle hire and parking facilities 🎡 🇬🇧 🚲 Point of interest data from Overture provided the locations of the landmarks, while bicycle parking and rental locations were sourced from OpenStreetMap. The accessibility tools within Podaris were used to generate walking isochrones. Which London landmarks would you cycle to? #OpenStreetMap #TransportPlanning #AccessibilityAnalysis #GIS

Last week, I had the honour of being named Young Transport Planner of the Year by the Transport Planning Society! 🏆 This came as a surprise for two reasons: Firstly, as the knees begin to ache and the hangovers seem to last longer, someone should let my body know that it is officially recognised as young. Secondly, my knee-jerk reaction to being called a Transport Planner is to reel as an imposter. I co-founded Podaris almost ten years ago 🤯 as a Software Engineer without the appreciation I now have for the discipline. Over the last decade, I've led the development of Podaris, which has been used to improve transport systems for hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Growing up public-transport-dependent, I took transport for granted. I thought good public transport was abundant. As a child, I lived in a London suburb that was at the intersection of two different high-frequency bus routes taking me directly to school. That distorted my perspective of transport. Through the networks I’ve helped analyse, the demand models I’ve helped build, and the schemes I’ve helped design, I’ve come to understand the sheer importance of transport. It now makes sense to me why Glenn Lyons describes transport planners as superheroes 🦸 At every transport conference, someone will say, “I’m not a transport planner, but…” and then go on to eloquently advocate for sustainable, equitable, and safe schemes that intersect disciplines and stakeholders. Transport Planning is clearly a vocation. One that I am honoured to be considered a part of. This has only been possible due to the shoulders of (friendly) giants that I’ve stood on. In particular: Titans like Tom van Vuren MBE, Nick Bec, Colin U., and Simon Lusby CTPP have opened doors to not-necessarily-yet-proven solutions and helped navigate opaque structures; Public sector champions such as Jennifer Faulconbridge, Stelios Rodoulis, and Helene Bataille have shaped the adoption of digital tools and new ways of working; Technical experts like Adriana Moreno Pelayo, James Tomkinson, Natalie Gravett-Foyn, Julian Moss, Annys Fearon, and Martin Parretti have always provided honest feedback, good-spirited collaboration, and made Podaris what it is today; Innovators such as Jeral Poskey and Clay Griggs whose trust and vision for how transport planning could be done, added leading capabilities to Podaris that schemes around the world now benefit from; And, of course, to my co-founder Nathan Koren: Podaris would not exist without his mentorship and tenacious hunger to provide tools that enable planning the types of places the world deserves. Many know my personal disinclination towards social media, and LinkedIn falls into that category, but seeing the way the Transport Planning community uses it to support, advocate, and mentor each other means that to give back to a community that has given me so much, I should take LinkedIn a bit more seriously. So, as a Software Engineer might say: “Hello, World!” 💻

Yesterday was day 17 of the #30DayMapChallenge, and theme was "Collaboration" 👩👩👦👦 As a web-based platform, Podaris is the most collaborative transport planning and analysis tool, with it, you can: 🌟 Co-design in real-time with your collaborators, see their changes to routes, services, and geospatial data instantly 🌟 Maintain a robust revision control history, with attribution of who changed what, and when 🌟 Rollback changes in an innovative non-linear fashion to enable multi-user geospatial collaboration 🌟 Share view-only scenarios with stakeholders for feedback through map-based comments To showcase these powerful capabilities, we've created a Podaris:Engage project that presents the newly extended 420 bus route in the Surrey region. This route recently had an extension at the end of August, linking to Gatwick Airport. Check out the project at the link below, and try out the Podaris:Engage functionalities to tell us what you think of the extension! https://lnkd.in/eTZYFEmT #GTFS #TransportPlanning #PublicTransit #StakeholderEngagement #GIS

We’re providing £1 billion to boost the bus sector across the country and provide better bus services for the communities that need them the most. Find out more on the areas receiving support: https://lnkd.in/efWe7WBQ

Yesterday, Nathan Koren and Bethany Fallon had the fantastic opportunity to attend this year’s Local Government Association Technical Innovation Showcase and be one of the few companies selected to present to stakeholders across local government. The event highlighted the ways local government is embracing AI and technology to drive innovation and improve services across local government. At Podaris, we are particularly excited about the growing role AI is playing in enhancing transport planning and analysis to help support sustainability in how people travel about places. It’s clear that local governments are becoming more agile in adapting to digital tools, and events like this show how collaboration and innovation are key to solving the complex challenges we face in transport planning and beyond. Thank you to the Local Government Association and PUBLIC for the great event and the opportunity to present alongside other leading innovators, including Immense, Alchera Technologies, emma AI, Verna, FutureFox, Genie AI, Lilli, Starlight Data Solutions, Beebot AI, and Futr! #LGAShowcase #AI #TransportPlanning #SmartCities #FutureOfTransport #DigitalTransformation

Today marks Transport Planning Day 2024! 🎉 The theme this year is "The Road Less Travelled: the Principles, Policies, Practicalities and Politics of Reducing Car Use in the UK." At Podaris, we like to think that we practice what we help preach, and decided to mark #TPDay24 by reflecting on our own personal experiences with car ownership and alternatives. Here's what the Podaris team shared: Living Car-Free in London 🚶♂️ "Living in London is 100% doable without a car. I take the bus and tube everywhere! When it's warm enough, I walk and cycle," shared one team member. Another noted, "With high-frequency public transport and bike-sharing options, I don't feel my life is any more difficult without a car. When public transport fails, I simply hop on my bike or use a shared mobility service." The Power of Influence 🌱 Our team members are passionate advocates for sustainable transport beyond the office. One colleague proudly shared: "I've been successful at changing the travel behaviour of skeptical friends and family. My proudest achievement was convincing my mother – a self-confessed car person – to walk her 25-minute commute, even in the rain!" Regional Variations 🚗 Outside major cities, the picture can be different. "Weekend services are quite infrequent and unreliable here – a 10-minute drive equals 45 minutes by bus. Without a car, accessing the countryside and nearby towns would be challenging," reflected a team member from Reading. (something Richard Jeremy knows too well!) Cost Considerations 💷 For longer journeys, economics plays a crucial role. As one colleague pointed out, "Train travel can cost up to £80 per person versus £30 in petrol. Cost and flexibility are the main factors in their choice to drive for longer trips." While over 77% of British households have a car, over 50% of the Podaris team does not. #TransportPlanningDay #SustainableTransport #UrbanMobility #PublicTransport #ActiveTravel #TPDay24 #TPDay Transport Planning Society

🗺 Day 6 of the #30DayMapChallenge: Raster! Today we're showcasing how Podaris can support raster-based GIS workflows data by analysing one of the UK's steepest bus routes - the U1 in Bath! Using Digital Terrain Model (DTM) data from Defra and #QGIS, we've created a slope gradient analysis that really shows the challenging topology these buses navigate daily. Why does this matter? As more and more transport agencies around the world electrify their fleets, understanding gradient, climate, and road conditions becomes more crucial. Podaris makes working with GIS tools and GIS data seamless: 📤 Download GIS data for further analysis in your preferred tools 🔄 Seamless integration with existing GIS workflows (including APIs) ☁ Import GIS data into Podaris to style, analyse, and share interactively 📸 Quick screenshot function for easy map sharing This analysis of the U1 route demonstrates why Bath is famous for its hills! #GIS #PublicTransit #UrbanPlanning