Highways Voices: Talking Roads and Transport Technology innovation

Paul Hutton
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The Highways Voices podcast is a must-listen for professionals in the Highways and Transport Technology industries covering construction, maintenance, Intelligent Transport Systems and Public Transportation. Presented by leading journalists Paul Hutton and Adrian Tatum, you’ll hear industry leaders sharing insights you won’t hear anywhere else, giving you a taste of the latest thinking about the sector's new techniques and technologies, collaborations and innovations. All in the time it takes for an average daily commute (or dog walk!). We bring you keynote-speaker quality guests into your phone or laptop, ensuring every time you listen you’ll learn something new you can use in your day-to-day job. Plus, you'll catch up with the top stories from the daily newsletters sent by Highways-News.com and hear the latest from our podcast partners LCRIG, the TTF, ADEPT and ITS UK.

  1. 4d ago

    Highways UK, here we come! Highways Voices previews the people, ideas and opportunities awaiting you at the NEC

    The countdown to Highways UK is on! As the highways and transport sector prepares to gather at Birmingham’s NEC, this week’s Highways Voices brings you the perfect preview of an event packed with ideas, innovation and opportunities to connect. These podcasts from Highways UK are sponsored by AGD Systems, Arcadis, Nicander, SWARCO and Westcotec. Organiser Claudia Davidson takes us behind the scenes to explain what makes this year’s show such an exciting prospect. With more exhibitors than ever, an extensive conference programme and the chance to meet people from across the industry, she sets the scene for two days you’ll want to be part of. We also hear from Transport for West Midlands’ Jordan Cowley, who looks ahead to Birmingham hosting the ITS World Congress in 2027. He explains why bringing the international transport technology community to the UK presents such a valuable opportunity for our industry, and how visitors to this year’s Highways UK can find out more. Subscribe to Highways Voices on your favourite podcast platform and never miss an episode. And whether you’re exhibiting or supporting colleagues on a stand, Helen Blood of Boundary PR and Marketing shares practical advice on making your presence count - from encouraging people to stop and talk to turning those conversations into lasting business connections. Along the way, you’ll hear more about our brilliant sponsors — Arcadis, AGD Systems, Nicander, SWARCO and Westcotec — whose support makes our Highways UK coverage possible. We’ve also included a flavour of last year’s podcasts so you can hear what to expect from our programmes as the team brings you the voices, conversations and atmosphere from this year’s event. Listen now, get ready for Highways UK, and join Highways Voices for our daily coverage from the NEC. Highways Voices is brought to you with our podcast partners the Transport Technology Forum, LCRIG, ITS UK and ADEPT.

    Highways UK, here we come! Highways Voices previews the people, ideas and opportunities awaiting you at the NEC

  2. Sep 29

    Could your road safety challenge benefit from a free installation of active road studs? If so, listen on…

    This week on Highways Voices, Alastair King, Head of SolarLite, launches the SolarLite Local Authority Impact Challenge. Three sites put forward by local authorities will be selected to receive hundreds of active road studs, supplied and installed at SolarLite’s expense to make their roads safer and reduce the cost of street lighting, light pollution and carbon emissions. Mr King explains what kinds of problem locations he wants councils to nominate, from unlit collision hotspots to roads where ageing street lighting is costly to maintain. Subscribe to Highways Voices on your favourite podcast platform and never miss an episode. The challenge opens on 1 October through LCRIG and runs until December. The three selected authorities are due to hear before Christmas, with installations planned between January and March. Alastair King is deliberately keeping the invitation broad: councils can put forward a junction, a roundabout or a stretch of road if they believe active studs could make a measurable difference. In today’s interview, he also explains why the competition is about evidence as much as equipment. SolarLite, a Clearview Intelligence company, wants to gather data before and after each installation, giving authorities a clearer picture of the effects on safety, lighting costs and carbon emissions. The conversation draws on East Riding of Yorkshire’s Live Labs 2 project, where active studs formed part of a trial involving the removal of street lighting on selected roads. Alastair discusses the project’s findings and the questions other councils should ask before considering a similar approach. He is clear that street lighting still has a role, particularly at junctions and other locations where it is needed. If you work on road safety, manage lighting assets or specify highway schemes, listen to hear how to enter the challenge, what makes a useful submission and why Alastair King believes the humble road stud deserves a place much earlier in design decisions. Highways Voices is brought to you with our podcast partners the Transport Technology Forum, LCRIG, ITS UK and ADEPT.

  3. Sep 22

    How building trust could unlock up to 10% more value from highways partnerships

    Today’s Highways Voices hears how highways and infrastructure organisations could unlock between 5 and 10% more value from their strategic partnerships by treating trust as an operational asset. XTP founder Pieter Johnson tells us that contracts designed to encourage collaboration will not produce better results unless they are accompanied by openness, shared objectives and the right behaviour from those leading the partnerships. His white paper, Trusted Partnerships: Unlocking the Value in Strategic Alliances, draws on research involving 48 strategic partnerships. More than three-quarters of respondents believed stronger trust could add at least 5% in value, while more than half estimated the potential gain at more than 10%. Subscribe to Highways Voices on your favourite podcast platform and never miss an episode. Mr Johnson explains to interviewer Adrian Tatum that many partnerships are delivering their contractual requirements but could achieve considerably more. “The contract forms are there, the procurement routes are all there, so we’ve got to see how can we maximise them and get the most out of it,” he says. He argues that clients and suppliers should begin assessing each other’s behaviour before procurement formally starts, rather than concentrating solely on technical capability, products and price. This should include examining whether potential partners communicate openly, share common goals and have demonstrated that they can build trusted relationships with previous clients. The podcast also considers the importance of vulnerability within partnerships. Mr Johnson says organisations are often reluctant to share financial pressures, emerging problems or innovative ideas because they fear this information could be used against them. Mr Johnson also challenges the highways sector to stop allowing price alone to determine procurement decisions. The discussion covers payment performance, the balance of power and risk, the use of artificial intelligence in procurement and how international partnerships can bring new technologies and ideas into the UK. Mr Johnson’s message to Government, procurement professionals and industry leaders is to “stop buying on price, share power and risk, and treat trust as an asset”. Read the White Paper here. Highways Voices is brought to you with our podcast partners the Transport Technology Forum, LCRIG, ITS UK and ADEPT.

  4. Sep 15

    Taking Live Labs 2’s £30 million of innovation off the shelf and onto the road

    The £30 million ADEPT Live Labs 2 programme has tested new ways to cut carbon, save money and improve the management of local roads—but how does the highways sector ensure that its findings do not simply end up gathering dust? As the Live Labs 2 regional roadshow prepares to begin the day after this podcast is released, Highways Voices speaks to Programme Director Giles Perkins about taking the programme’s learning directly to local authorities across the country. Giles explains why “low carbon” does not have to mean “high cost”, and why the programme’s focus has broadened to what he calls the vital combination of cost, time and carbon. He discusses how £30 million of investment has helped de-risk innovation, giving authorities evidence about what works, what does not and what can be adapted to meet their own local challenges. Subscribe to Highways Voices on your favourite podcast platform and never miss an episode. The conversation also explores why changing business as usual can be harder than developing the innovation itself. Giles explains how procurement, finance, legal teams, senior leaders and politicians all have a part to play—and why the roadshow is designed to bring those different voices together. Listeners will also hear what to expect from the free regional workshops, how an AI tool is making almost 70 Live Labs 2 documents easier to explore, and what Giles hopes the programme will have changed five or ten years from now. If you work in local authority highways, manage budgets, specify products, procure services or want proven innovation to be adopted more quickly, listen to this episode before the roadshow reaches your region. Highways Voices is brought to you with our podcast partners the Transport Technology Forum, LCRIG, ITS UK and ADEPT.

  5. Sep 11

    Peter Hitchens and Rory Sutherland debate whether the car has been Britain's greatest transport success – or its biggest mistake

    Veteran journalist Peter Hitchens and leading behavioural scientist Rory Sutherland debate cars, railways, HS2, road building and the future of transport in a “omnibus edition” of Highways Voices today which brings their complete conversation together from this week’s series of special podcasts. Mr Hitchens, Mail on Sunday columnist and author of the forthcoming book “The Madness of Cars”, argues that Britain made a historic mistake by allowing the motor car to dominate its transport system and dismantling much of the railway network which preceded it. Mr Sutherland, vice-chairman of Ogilvy UK and co-author of “Transport for Humans”, is equally enthusiastic about rail but strongly rejects the idea that the car itself was a mistake, arguing that it has delivered enormous gains in freedom, accessibility and economic opportunity. Subscribe to Highways Voices on your favourite podcast platform and never miss an episode. What follows is a wide-ranging and often good-humoured argument about almost every major question in modern transport. They discuss the railway closures of the 1960s, whether HS2 represents an obsession with speed at the expense of connectivity, the value of trams and bicycles, electric vehicles and e-bikes, plus induced traffic, road pricing, safety, land values and the relationship between transport and where people choose to live and work. Some of the most revealing moments come when apparent disagreement gives way to common ground. Both question the logic behind spending vast sums to save a relatively small amount of time on occasional long-distance journeys. Both believe Britain's railways could be made far more attractive. And both accept that people need credible alternatives to the car rather than simply being punished for using one when no practical alternative exists. Mr Sutherland argues for better information, easier interchange and a much more experimental approach to transport policy, including improved parkway facilities, micromobility and better integration between cars, bicycles and trains. Mr Hitchens goes further, saying policymakers first need to accept that the transport system built around mass car ownership may itself have been a wrong turn. Their disagreement is at times philosophical as much as technical: does the car represent individual freedom, or has mass car ownership created a system in which people are effectively forced to drive? Is a collectively efficient transport system necessarily less free? And should policymakers trust economic models and theoretical time savings, or simply look much harder at what passengers actually value? Listen to the full special edition of Highways Voices to hear Peter Hitchens and Rory Sutherland debate those questions in depth – with remarkably little intervention required from the host – and decide for yourself whether the future of British transport lies in defending the flexibility of the car, rebuilding the alternatives to it, or finding a much better way of combining the two. Highways Voices is brought to you with our podcast partners the Transport Technology Forum, LCRIG, ITS UK and ADEPT.

  6. Sep 9

    Hitchens and Sutherland ask what Britain should actually do about transport

    After two episodes arguing about how Britain became so dependent on the car, Peter Hitchens and Rory Sutherland turn to the more difficult question in the final part of this week’s special Highways Voices series: what should the country actually do next? Mr Hitchens makes clear that he is not proposing a sudden programme to remove cars from everyday life, arguing instead that Britain first needs to recognise what he regards as a profound historic mistake in allowing the motor car to dominate the transport system. He says changing that position could take generations, but that long-term planning cannot begin until the underlying problem is acknowledged. Subscribe to Highways Voices on your favourite podcast platform and never miss an episode. Mr Sutherland takes a more experimental approach. Drawing on arguments around the late transport analyst David Metz's work, he questions whether major transport schemes are assessed using the right measures at all. Rather than concentrating so heavily on speed and theoretical journey-time savings, he suggests policymakers should pay much more attention to the quality, convenience and frequency of the journeys people actually make. That leads to discussion of Heathrow's driverless pods, why travellers often seem more attracted to trams than buses, and the way permanent transport infrastructure can influence development. The pair also return to the Oxford-Cambridge railway, with Mr Hitchens using its troubled reopening as an example of what he sees as Britain's inability to deliver a coherent transport policy. The conversation also turns to smaller-scale interventions. Mr Sutherland calls for widespread experimentation with intermodality, micromobility, better station access and easier links between cars, bicycles and trains, arguing that policymakers should watch how people respond before committing billions of pounds to another major scheme. He says improving relatively short journeys made frequently may deliver far greater value than shaving a few minutes from occasional long-distance trips. Listen to the concluding episode to hear whether the two men can find a workable area of common ground, why connectivity may matter more than speed, and whether Britain's next transport revolution should begin not with another grand project, but with a series of much smaller ideas. Highways Voices is brought to you with our podcast partners the Transport Technology Forum, LCRIG, ITS UK and ADEPT.

  7. Sep 8

    Hitchens and Sutherland debate whether cars really deliver freedom

    The argument between Peter Hitchens and Rory Sutherland over Britain's relationship with the motor car intensifies in part two of this week’s special Highways Voices series, as the pair move from railways and HS2 to the much broader question of whether car ownership really represents freedom. Mr Sutherland argues that the strength of the car is its autonomy: the ability to travel when you want, with passengers or luggage, to places which may be difficult to reach in any other way. Mr Hitchens challenges that definition, pointing instead to congestion, traffic lights, roadworks and the sheer number of vehicles competing for limited road space. Subscribe to Highways Voices on your favourite podcast platform and never miss an episode. They also debate one of the most familiar arguments in highways policy – induced traffic. Mr Hitchens says widening roads ultimately creates more traffic, while Mr Sutherland accepts the effect exists but argues that additional road capacity can also enable economically useful journeys. That takes the discussion into road pricing, where Mr Sutherland says there is a case for using pricing intelligently to manage scarce road space at the times it is most heavily demanded. The disagreement then widens to electric vehicles, e-bikes and micromobility. Mr Hitchens is highly critical of battery-powered road transport and of e-bikes in particular, while Mr Sutherland argues that electrification gives transport greater flexibility because electricity can be generated from a wide range of energy sources. They also discuss road safety and the extent to which the risks associated with everyday car use have become normalised. Yet there is also common ground. Both accept that people need realistic alternatives to driving and that simply making the car more difficult or expensive to use is not enough when homes, workplaces and businesses have been shaped around car access. Mr Sutherland argues that better information, pricing and intermodality could encourage people to make different choices without removing the option of driving. Listen to part two to hear two very different philosophies of transport collide – and to discover why an argument about roads and railways ends up becoming a debate about individual freedom, collective efficiency and even whether Peter Hitchens's transport philosophy can reasonably be described as Maoist. Highways Voices is brought to you with our podcast partners the Transport Technology Forum, LCRIG, ITS UK and ADEPT.

  8. Sep 7

    Hitchens and Sutherland clash over cars, rail and what Britain got wrong on transport

    Veteran newspaper columnist and author Peter Hitchens and behavioural science expert Rory Sutherland go head-to-head over the future of transport in a special series of Highways Voices podcasts this week, beginning with an argument over whether Britain has become far too dependent on the car. The discussion starts with an area of agreement. Mr Sutherland, vice-chairman of advertising agency Ogilvy UK and co-author of “Transport for Humans”, describes himself as a huge enthusiast for rail and argues that people could be encouraged to use trains more often through better information, easier interchange and measures designed to make rail a more obvious option. Mr Hitchens, who is currently writing a book “The Madness of Cars” agrees that more journeys should be made by rail, but says the fundamental problem is that much of the network that criss-crossed the country no longer exists. Subscribe to Highways Voices on your favourite podcast platform and never miss an episode. But the agreement does not last. Mr Sutherland says the car has brought extraordinary economic and social benefits by providing flexibility across a huge range of journeys, while Mr Hitchens argues that Britain sacrificed what he considers a more rational transport network in favour of a system increasingly dominated by cars. The pair also debate trams, bicycles, parkway stations, electric vehicles and whether a transport system designed around steel wheels and steel rails would ultimately be more efficient. The conversation was prompted by an exchange between the two men on social media after Mr Sutherland challenged comments from Mr Hitchens about car ownership and the amount of time vehicles spend parked. Rather than continue the disagreement in short online posts, Highways News brought them together for an extended conversation. Listen to part one of Highways Voices to hear where Peter Hitchens and Rory Sutherland unexpectedly agree, where they most certainly do not, and why a debate which begins with railways quickly develops into a much bigger argument about how Britain should move. Parts two and three are published on Wednesday 9 and Thursday 10 September. Highways Voices is brought to you with our podcast partners the Transport Technology Forum, LCRIG, ITS UK and ADEPT.

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About

The Highways Voices podcast is a must-listen for professionals in the Highways and Transport Technology industries covering construction, maintenance, Intelligent Transport Systems and Public Transportation. Presented by leading journalists Paul Hutton and Adrian Tatum, you’ll hear industry leaders sharing insights you won’t hear anywhere else, giving you a taste of the latest thinking about the sector's new techniques and technologies, collaborations and innovations. All in the time it takes for an average daily commute (or dog walk!). We bring you keynote-speaker quality guests into your phone or laptop, ensuring every time you listen you’ll learn something new you can use in your day-to-day job. Plus, you'll catch up with the top stories from the daily newsletters sent by Highways-News.com and hear the latest from our podcast partners LCRIG, the TTF, ADEPT and ITS UK.

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