Conferences galore

During my last stint as guest diarist, regular readers will remember me describing some of the projects that were keeping me busy back in August 2004.

A key part of academic research is publicising your work – this very much fits in with the brief of a university to create and disseminate knowledge. Whilst papers in academic journals, not unlike the current one being undertaken by Mr Watts himself, are a key part in this, conferences also have a vital role.

Thanks to some unfortunate timetabling, I'm presenting my second conference paper in two weeks tomorrow at the Bi-annual "Smart Moving conference" in Birmingham.

The title of the paper is "Strategic Management of Urban Road Networks", which is unfortunately as interesting as it sounds.

The paper describes the project I worked on with the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) to examine best practice within Local Authorities for making the most efficient use of their road space. Much of it centres on procedural guidelines for dealing with planned and unplanned incidents (road works, accidents, big sporting event etc) along with routine operational improvement. As new road building is very much off the political agenda, this is a good way of squeezing a little more capacity out of existing road space.

Last weeks conference was connected with car sharing - more specifically how Local Authorities can get business signed up to their scheme. That, however, is a story for another entry.