Podaris, the multi-modal, collaborative transport planning and analysis platform, has joined Intelligent Transport Systems UK (ITS UK), the membership body representing the UK’s transport technology sector.

This membership marks a signifi cant milestone for the Digital Twin programme in the UK, with Podaris joining as the active lead on Innovate UK’s Korea-UK Digital Twin Approach for Transport Analysis (KUDATA) project. KUDATA is a bilateral research and development programme, which is building a digital twin of mass transit with social equity at the centre of network design, rather than treating it as an afterthought.

ITS UK is leading the charge towards better mobility, by placing a strong emphasis on the development of a rich transport Digital Twin ecosystem in the UK. Joining ITS UK offers Podaris an exciting opportunity to contribute new insights and technologies, whilst also benefiting from a diverse consortium of Digital Twin stakeholders.

At the same time, British bus networks are being redrawn on a scale not seen since deregulation. Following Manchester’s lead, Liverpool City Region now has publicly controlled services beginning in St Helens and Wirral in September 2026, with the model extending across the city region by the end of 2027.

Decisions made during a network redesign tend to persist for decades. Get them right, and you connect people to jobs, education and healthcare; get them wrong, and you entrench transport poverty for generations. Traditional network reviews take six months or more, lean on limited data, and rarely quantify who wins and who loses.

“Every authority moving to franchising faces the same problem: a once-in-a-generation chance to redesign the network, but planning tools were never built for a question that big. KUDATA helps transport authorities answer that important question. And joining ITS UK matters because this isn’t a problem any single company solves on its own. It gets solved by the sector talking to each other: operators, authorities, academics, technologists. Which is exactly why ITS UK exists to make this happen.” said Devon Barrett, Co-Founder at Podaris.

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