Tom D Allen is a Technical Director at AECOM in the Transport Technology team with over 26 years’ experience in the transport domain. Tom has a foundation in transport planning providing him with traffic management and active travel experience. Over the last 15 years Tom’s role as a Transport Technology specialist included managing both connected vehicle and automated vehicle projects and more recently developing plans for a road user charging proof of concept.

With a degree in Civil Engineering, the one thing Tom knew when he graduated was that he didn’t want to be a civil engineer. His final year project at University was to design an alternative rail route to avoid a coast line section that regularly flooded during storms – this project spawned an interest and curiosity in transport planning.

Post University, Tom’s initial role in the early 2000s was for a London based transport planning company to design bus priority schemes as part of TfL’s growing bus priority network. Tom then moved to a different role with a much wider remit gaining experience in:

• leading the traffic and transport analysis for the western section (Heathrow to Paddington) of the Crossrail project that supported the successful Hybrid Bill application
• managing a team of strategic and tactical transport modellers and coordinating with highway engineers to develop highway proposals in support of one of the largest regeneration schemes in London
• route option appraisal for road schemes in Albania to improve journey time reliability for a key strategic corridor. Part of the project required Tom to engage with local University students to conduct a programme of traffic surveys

Tom moved to Bristol around 2010 and started a new role within a Transport Technology team. In this role, Tom was able to expand his knowledge and experience in a time of rapid technological change, as digital advancements opened up a multitude of opportunities to improve mobility. Some of Tom’s highlights in this role are outlined below:

• Tom project managed a multi-disciplinary team to successfully deliver a national connected vehicle pilot. The project required the installation of road side communications infrastructure as well as back office and in-vehicle infrastructure to support real-time exchange of traffic management information alerting drivers to real alerts generated from the traffic management control centre
• As part of an Innovate UK funded project, Tom supported trials of an automated pod in a variety of operating domains
• Tom led a research study to assist a Government agency to identify recommendations to fast-track vehicle connectivity in the fleet consistent with EU requirements. The output was shared with other Government departments to support policy and strategy development

Outside of work, Tom thoroughly enjoys mountain biking, hiking in the hills and being an assistant referee (linesman) for my sons’ football teams.