Transporting Cities helps operators & their staff to improve Passenger Experience.

We help operators increase their passengers by undertaking discreet assessments to provide a snapshot of service delivery. We provide our insight to staff in workshops to help them respond to changing consumer requirements and developments in mobility services.

Transporting Cities was founded by Liam Henderson to highlight global best practice and help public transport keep its place at the heart of mobility.

We arrive, we experience, we capture, we explain.

Our passenger experience audits record real time passenger experience, taking the role of a first-time user. We feed back our findings through workshops to help staff understand how passengers think.

Liam

Aug 31, 2017
4 min

Brisbane Airtrain

Continuing my tour of Australia’s east coast, I flew up to Brisbane. Brisbane’s Domestic and International airports are served by the airtrain which is a stub from the main rail network for the city. I used the service in the off-peak when trains leave every 30 mins. Domestic Airport Landing at the Domestic Airport, it was ironic that one of the first signs I saw when I entered the common airside area was an advert for Sydney’s Airport Link. There’s no mention of the local ra

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Liam

Aug 17, 2017
4 min

Getting About Sydney

This is a bonus 3rd article from Sydney to mention some of the quirks that I didn’t cover in my two other articles, on the Light Rail service and on the Airport Link. In a harbour city, it’s not unusual that there is a large water based transport system. As such, many areas of the city are served by Sydney Ferries, rather than an urban rail network: apart from the spur to Bondi Junction, Sydney Trains services are exclusively west of the central area (the CBD). I found myse

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Liam

Jun 14, 2016
3 min

Up, Down and Around Hong Kong

In a previous article, I travelled on the Airport Express service into the central district of Hong Kong. Once in the city centre, it rained constantly so I had good use for the public transport options to get around. These included the MTR subway network, on-street light rail and the quite unusual Mid-Levels escalators. Central Hong Kong is split between ‘Central’ on Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon area across Victoria Harbour, on the mainland. The easiest way to travel bet

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Liam

May 20, 2016
2 min

Hong Kong Airport Express

Arriving into Hong Kong Airport the obvious route into the city centre was to use the Airport Express rail service. Operated as part of the MTR railway network, it is a limited stop service terminating at the geographically ambiguously-named Hong Kong station, in the central area. Getting onto the Airport Express After a long flight I was very tired and obviously wasn’t tuned into the Hong Kong transport system: the first difficulty I faced was buying a ticket: all the public

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Liam

Apr 11, 2016
4 min

Cornwall’s Night Riviera Sleeper Train

As we’d had already travelled on the daytime train to Cornwall we opted to take the Night Riviera sleeper service back to London so that I could maximise the time we had beside the seaside before returning for work in London. This fairly unknown sleeper service seemed the perfect way to minimise travel time. The service runs in both directions between Penzance and London Paddington, every day (except Saturday – I don’t know why). Passengers can buy a sleeper supplement to the

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Liam

Apr 6, 2016
3 min

Eating Your Way To Cornwall

In the hope of seeing some Easter sunshine, I took a trip down to Cornwall to hike some of the South West Coast Path. The fastest journey from London to Penzance takes about 5 hours on Great Western Railway (GWR) so I travelled on the Thursday before Easter in order use a service that offered the full service Pullman restaurant. Overall, I’m glad I did as the Pullman dining service was excellent and well worth the money but beyond the restaurant there were some issues which d

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Liam

Nov 30, 2015
14 min

UK AirRail 2015

This year’s UK AirRail 2015 conference took place in London, giving the attendees an overview of current airport policy environment and recent developments at a selection of national airports. Many of these enhancements were presented in the context, and response to, a lack of a national aviation and surface access strategy and the move towards regional and local devolution. This review begins with the keynote speech by Lousie Ellman MP, Chair of Transport Select Committee, b

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Liam

Nov 18, 2015
4 min

Malpensa Express

Travelling to the Airport The AirRail Italia 2015 conference was held at Milan Maplensa Airport last week. As I arrived into Milan by train, I had to reach the airport via the Malpensa Express airport service. My introduction to the service was a bit confused though, as the first sign I saw when walking from the Thello train was for a bus service to Malpensa. There was no mention of the Malpensa Express. If arriving from a long distance train at Milan Centrale station, the fi

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Liam

Nov 16, 2015
8 min

AirRail Italia 2015

AirRail Italia 2015 took place in Milan this year and provided an opportunity to learn about policy and developments in the Italian context. In the following section we report on the presentations made by various airport operators, as well as the infrastructure managers for both the regional and national rail networks. It is important to recognise at the outset that, unlike the majority of the UK, rail infrastructure in Italy is managed by one of two bodies: the national comp

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Liam

Nov 9, 2015
2 min

The Azur Train

I’m used to travelling to Brussels and Paris on Eurostar so it seemed the obvious way to travel down to the south of France too. I hadn’t realised that the direct service to Marseille operated fairly regularly throughout the year. There is something romantic about the thought of boarding a train in London and stepping off in the Mediterranean. It’s not bad for a 6.5 hour train ride; that’s less than the 7 hours it takes to get to Aberdeen. Brussels, Paris and the Med! On the

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Liam

Oct 16, 2015
2 min

Weekend in Washington

I recently visited Washington DC for the first time. I had planned to write a quick piece about the Metro service; however, due to my visit occurring over the Labor Day weekend, it became very difficult to objectively assess the service as, well, the service offered was fairly dire. Planned Disruption Labor Day weekend is quite a major holiday and I flew into Dulles Airport expecting a quick shuttle bus connection to Wiehle-Reston East station where I would change for the Sil

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Liam

Jul 27, 2015
6 min

Travelling the Maritimes VIA Rail

Have you ever thought how relaxing it would be if you could get on a sleeper train in London and snooze your way through to Amsterdam or board a train in Manchester and travel through the night to Frankfurt? Well, when the Channel Tunnel was under construction, this was part of the plan: Nightstar trains were even built to operate sleeper services through the tunnel; however, the birth of low cost air transport in Europe meant that the service never got on the rails. After a

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Liam

Jun 17, 2015
10 min

Railway into the North

In contrast to our usual posts about urban networks, Transporting Cities took at trip to experience a remote service where modern information systems simply don’t exist and where there are few stations to signpost. We took a ride on Canada’s Algoma Central Railway. This may start to sound like a travel blog but keep with me… We had heard that the Algoma Central Railway (ACR) provided a passenger service 3 times a week from the city of Sault Ste. Marie up into the forest lands

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Liam

Jun 3, 2015
4 min

Toronto’s Befuddling Transport Network

As described in a previous post, the fact that Toronto’s transport system doesn’t show that it serves the downtown airport appears to be a reflection of the isolated way that mapping and wayfinding is presented on the network – there is no standardisation. To begin with, there are 3 maps used on the TTC subway. Aside from the lack of consistent design, the information on these maps is limited to subway services with no mention of interchange to other rail modes. Passengers ar

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Liam

May 26, 2015
4 min

Global AirRail – Toronto 2015

I attended the Global AirRail conference in Toronto last week hoping to get some insight into how the airrail operators approach a balance between business constraints and passenger experience. The starting point for the conference was an introduction to the new UP Express to Pearson Airport (read my review): whether or not it raises the city’s reputation, the impressive passenger growth at the airport means that a rail link is becoming essential: with many different types of

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Liam

May 21, 2015
3 min

UP Express to Toronto Pearson Airport

Arriving at Toronto Pearson Airport, you can’t miss the anticipation of the new airport rail service, UP Express. There is a lot of signage at the airport promoting the predictable journey time and high frequency. Though the service doesn’t open until the 6th June, I joined the Global AirRail Alliance for a preview of the passenger experience that awaits. Source: Union Pearson Express Offering a 15 minute headway from 05:30 to 01:00 the service will take 25 minutes, calling a

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Liam

May 6, 2015
2 min

InterCity with a Bike

It’s spring, the sun is shining (well, it was last weekend) and I’m back in London. Perfect weekend for a bike ride in the country. I usually get South West Trains, Southern or Southeastern from London it’s possible to just turn up and take your bike on board; however, on this occasion I decided to travel further afield and went to Bath on First Great Western. I’ve travelled InterCity before with my bike but only ever up to the Lake District so it provided a great opportunity

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Liam

Apr 27, 2015
3 min

Rail from Southend Airport

The last leg home: When checking in at Bern Airport, I was extremely impressed that SkyWork Airlines had a promotion offering passengers a free rail ticket from Southend Airport to London Liverpool Street, all I had to to was collect it on arrival in London. With the promise of a free rail ticket, I relaxed on the flight home knowing that I’d get the train back into London. I have wanted to try Southend Airport for a few years, in part because of the focus put upon the short

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Liam

Apr 26, 2015
4 min

Navigating to the Swiss Capital Airport

As my other post described, taking the train to Switzerland can be a rewarding, if challenging, journey. Obviously, once you get yourself to the Swiss Alps for a meeting, you have to get back again. Taking the train across France would have been fine but with my sense of transport adventure, I decided to explore my alternatives. A quick, last minute search on Kayak narrowed this down to one choice: a flight back from Geneva was likely to cost over £300 so I opted to book a fl

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London to Switzerland by Rail – Journey Experience

Liam

Apr 12, 2015
6 min

London to Switzerland by Rail – Journey Experience

In a previous post, I covered the difficulty of booking a rail journey down to Switzerland, struggling with the lack of through ticketing. The journey involved undertaking six different legs for which there was no consistent passenger proposition: London to Paris – Eurostar Transfer across Paris – RER Paris to Lausanne – TGV Lyria Lausanne to Martigny – Swiss Intercity Martigny to Le Châble – St Bernard Express Le Châble to Verbier – the bus For a Londoner, Eurosta

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500 Terry Francois Street San Francisco, CA 94158

liam@railinnovationgroup.com

123-456-7890

Transporting Cities helps operators & their staff to improve Passenger Experience.

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