Transport User Voice October 2025 – Chief Executive’s editorial

16 October 2025

Everything seems to be switched back on at full speed. Familiar routines of work, kids at school, swimming lessons and coaching my daughters football team at the weekend. The absence and return of these routines creates an opportunity to reflect on how you feel about them.

What I’ve enjoyed most is catching up with colleagues and seeing their pride in the work they were updating me on (plus of course sharing amusing stories and adventures from their summers – a busy office gives you that in a way nothing else does). Colleagues who have put time, energy and personal commitment into making change happen. Quite often doing it with a smile and sense of humour too.

Jo Trotman has been leading our work on motorway service area accessibility. We could have published a report earlier in the year to highlight good and bad practice but Jo worked with disabled drivers and motorway service operators to get them to commit to pledges that will address the issues identified in our work. It took longer, but will achieve more. The proof is in the pudding though and a pledge is only as good as the change it produces. The commitment to get back together next May to show progress will help with this and you can tell Jo’s not going to let it drop.

Sticking with accessibility, we have also published a report on EV car charging accessibility. We all want faster roll out of EV charging, but if we aren’t careful we run the risk of creating the same problem we have on the railway and London’s Tube – infrastructure that wasn’t designed for people having to be slowly and expensively retrofitted so everyone can use it. Ceri Oest has been leading this work and quickly established a good grasp of what the issues are and what needs to change. This isn’t going to be easy, but the sense of purpose Ceri brings to it and the collective effort from the rest of us to help is great to be part of.  Check out our the report, we may need your help.

Enjoy the read.