John Austin

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

SKILLS

ABOUT JOHN AUSTIN

I am an actively-retired Transport Geographer and Sustainable Mobility specialist, and an expert in Travel Information, Maps, Interchange, Mobility Hubs and Connectivity (in both urban and rural areas), and in the systems and procedures that Local Transport Authorities and bus Operators need to have in place in order to deliver those. I have a strong understanding and experience of the nationally-important and fast-developing Greater Cambridge and Newmarket area and its bus networks, passenger needs and service characteristics, developed over a period of more than 40 years.Prior to joining Southend-on-Sea City Council for a two-year posting in 2023 as its Public Transport Manager, I was an international public transport consultant. For over 25 years I worked with high-quality organisations to support people, products, projects and plans for sustainable mobility: not just in the UK, Ireland and mainland Europe, but also in urban Indonesia, Nigeria and Kazakhstan. These Asian and African assignments supplemented my experience in Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore obtained through a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship in My initial position was as a Bus Senior Management Trainee in North-East England, where I instigated and planned the Moorsrider summer Sunday bus service across the North Yorkshire Moors National Park in 1980, which transformed into Moorsbus in 1981 and is still going strong 44 years later. Since then, the focus in all my work in transport has been to add value to secure or enhance the successful design and delivery of sustainable transport networks which meet user needs. This has been done through bringing insights from my experience and deep understanding, particularly in relation to geography, location, accessibility, links, use, operation, viability and economics.One example of this approach was my initiation and delivery of the UK\'s first national multi-modal travel information website (\'UK Public Transport Information\') in 1996, which was then relaunched by the UK\'s Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions in at example was my role in the initial development back in 2003, with Peter Warman, of the Mobility Hub concept to bring easy local access to sustainable transport - Public Transport, crowd-sourced transport and shared transport - together in one place, and its application to the UK with the MobiHub name.