Nicole Badstuber

The UK’s next high-speed rail project was over budget before even breaking ground, but Nicole Badstuber argues that HS2 must go ahead to reap the benefit
Nicole is a researcher in urban transport and infrastructure with a focus on transport policy, governance and regulation, including ...more
At the publication of the House of Lords’ Economic Affairs Committee report, The Economics of High Speed 2, the committee’s chair, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, concluded: “The costs of HS2 do not appear to ...

As more and more countries, including the UK, are eased out of lockdown, people are returning to their workplaces and taking children to school. How they choose to make those journeys could determine the future of travel after the pandemic, with consequences for society and the planet.
With fears of exposure to SARS-CoV-2 running high, many people are avoiding public transport. In the UK, as elsewhere in the world, the number of trips plummeted from the start of lockdown on March 23, with pub...

Early results show the Ultra Low Emission Zone is successfully shifting passengers back onto public transport and improving London’s air, Nicole Badstuber reports

In April this year, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan launched the world’s first Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ) in central London to tackle the capital’s poor air quality. Vehicles driving in central ...

Passenger air travel has come to a virtual standstill. EasyJet has grounded its entire fleet, and Ryanair has announced it will not resume commercial flights before June. British Airways has elected to suspend 36,000 staff and has closed its operations at Gatwick and London City airports until further notice. Overall, passenger flights have decreased by up to 95%. With job losses for airline and airport staff likely to reach hundreds of thousands, the government’s priority is, unsurprisingly,...

Above the noisy chatter about Brexit and the NHS, transport remains a key issue for voters and both Labour and the Conservatives have detailed what they would do to keep Britain on the move should they win a majority in the general election on 12 December.
With just over a week until we go to the polls, how do the two main parties compare when it comes to planes, trains and automobiles?
Transport is at the heart of the Labour manifesto and rightly focuses on buses, the most used form of publi...

The Labour Party’s manifesto for the 2019 general election lays out a plan for transforming British society and the economy to address climate change. The “green industrial revolution” calls for massive investment in renewable energy and low-carbon infrastructure, sweeping changes to how public transport services are owned and operated and an overhaul of agriculture subsidies to prioritise conservation and habitat restoration. Academic experts give their verdict on the proposals.
Warm homes a...

n episode five of the Agility Mindset Podcast Fiona Cannon meets Nicole Badstuber, Doctoral Researcher in Transport Policy and Governance at UCL’s Centre for Transport and Christine Foster, Managing Director for Innovation, The Alan Turing Institute, to move beyond the office and corporate politics to look at some of the wider factors making it essential that we reassess our approach to where and how we work.

In 2011, Sweden introduced a gender equality initiative that required municipalities to re-evaluate all their policies and activities through a gender lens. In the Swedish town of Karlskoga, one government official joked that at least snow clearing would likely be spared scrutiny by the ‘gender people’. Instead it got the ‘gender people’ thinking: was snow-clearing sexist?
As studies soon showed, the practice of clearing roads before footpaths, disproportionately disadvantages women – who are...

London’s new Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) is coming into force, as part of efforts to tackle air pollution in the city. From April 8, 2019, vehicles will have to meet tight exhaust emission standards or pay a daily charge to drive into central London. The most polluting vehicles will have to pay a daily charge of £12.50 for cars, motorcycles and vans, and £100 for lorries, buses and coaches, on top of the daily £11.50 congestion charge.
Initially, the ULEZ will cover the same area as London...

New mobility options could support London’s ambitions for more sustainable travel but currently regulation is outdated and not fit for purpose. The case study of London is a microcosm illustrating the out of sync regulation.

London’s population is still growing and so are jobs, but that overall growth has masked the fact that fewer young people have been moving to the capital. Nicole Badstuber reveals the hidden demographic shift that is changing traffic. Not only does this upend

forecasts and question current infrastructure spending, it also reveals the true cost of the affordability crisis.

Any plans that assume continued population growth are now at risk

This week Danielle Ward is joined by Nicole Badstuber, who researches and writes about transport policy, to explain how trains work in the UK or, more to the point, why they don't. Danielle is joined by comedy writers Sarah Morgan (Wilsons Save The World, Not Going Out, The Fear) and Joel Morris (The LadybiBooks for Grown-Ups, Rule of Three, Philomena Cunk)

As the Victoria line celebrates its 50th birthday, we look at a largely forgotten triumph of transport construction: Operation Umbrella.
On the August Bank Holiday in 1963, London’s busy Oxford Circus and the surrounding streets were closed off. The streets were empty of weekend shoppers and all traffic. In their place a team of engineers and construction workers take over.
“Civil, mechanical, electrical, signal, and telegraph engineers. Railway operators, consultants and contractors, archite...

Every January brings the annual ritual of headlines decrying rising rail fares and deteriorating services. These headlines always miss out on mentioning that bus services are in crisis: funding cut, services withdrawn and passenger numbers down.
The bus is Britain’s most frequently used form of public transport. Bus trips account for 59 per cent of all public transport trips in Great Britain, compared to only 21 per cent by rail. Last year, 4.4bn bus trips were made across England. Just over ...

In the middle of the afternoon of 1 September 1968, London’s Victoria Line opened its doors to its first passengers – quietly, and without a ceremony. It was London’s first new underground railway line in over 50 years: the last had been the Central Line, opened in 1907 at the tail-end of the city’s second boom in underground railway building.
Construction of the Victoria Line had started in 1962, and services on the line opened in phases: first from Walthamstow to Highbury in September 1968,...