<span style="font-family:avenir-lt-w01_35-light1475496,sans-serif;" class="wixui-rich-text__text"> Our Work

Client

Project

Bus Options Appraisal

The Problem

Cambridgeshire faced the sudden withdrawal of six local bus services following notice from Stagecoach East. The timing of this announcement posed significant challenges — the notice period was short, and the situation unfolded just ahead of a mayoral election, adding considerable political sensitivity and urgency to the issue.

The affected bus services were diverse in both purpose and scale. Some operated infrequent routes, such as a single daily journey to support access to schools or colleges, while others were more regular services connecting rural villages to larger urban centres. Despite their differences, each route played a critical role in ensuring mobility for local communities.

Without intervention, the loss of these services would have left many residents without any public transport options, severely limiting access to jobs, education, healthcare, and social activities. The risk of increased transport-related social exclusion (TRSE) was high — particularly for vulnerable populations who rely on bus services as their primary mode of travel.

Complicating the issue further, some services lacked sufficient revenue to justify competitive tendering by the Combined Authority, raising difficult questions about financial sustainability versus community need.

The client engaged Nota Bene Consulting to assess each route and produce a board-level report with tailored recommendations on whether to retain or withdraw each service, balancing financial constraints with the broader social and economic impact.

Our Approach

Use of QGIS to display the route and population of each service.
Data collection on service usage.
Route data including : Timetabling, access to key services, route length and population catchment.
Gather and analysis on patronage data provided by stagecoach to form estimates for the revenue of each service.

Deliverables

Board Report

Produced and submitted to CPCA
Presented to councillors to support informed decision-making
Included recommendations on which services to retain or withdraw

One-Page Route Summaries (for each of the six services)

Key data highlights specific to each route
Clear recommendation and supporting justification
Custom route maps created using QGIS for visual reference

Our Work

Client

Rotherham Show Transparent background.webp

Project

Walking Wheeling & Cycling Masterplan

The Problem

Across three distinct sites — Dinnington, Wath, and Rotherham Town Centre — local authorities faced persistent challenges in improving mobility and reducing transport-related social exclusion. Despite their unique contexts, each location shared common barriers to active travel, including:

High levels of transport-related social exclusion due to low car ownership and limited public transport access.
Poor air quality and negative health outcomes linked to physical inactivity.
Unattractive and unsafe conditions for walking, wheeling, and cycling, particularly around major roads with high traffic volumes and frequent collisions.

Existing infrastructure failed to support active travel effectively, making it an unviable option for many residents. The lack of safe, connected routes discouraged walking and cycling and limited access to education, employment, and essential services — particularly for more vulnerable groups.

To address these issues, the goal was to develop site-specific masterplans that aligned with local, regional, and national strategies.

This included:

Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council’s place-based objectives to improve walking, wheeling, and cycling in areas with poor existing provision.
South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority’s Active Travel Implementation Plan, which aims to build a fully connected network across the region.

Improving active travel infrastructure was not just a matter of transport — it was essential to addressing health, environmental, and social inequality outcomes across the borough

Our Approach

Use of QGIS to map data effectively such as , pollution, Transport Related Social Exclusion activities and collision across three sites.
Interventions for Dinnington focusing on independent mobility routes to the market and green spaces.
Interventions for Wath focussing on community cohesion, direct routes and multi-modal connections.
Interventions for Rotherham Town Centre focusing on direct core network, comfort at junctions and neighbourhoods.
All interventions and priorities were fed into a weighted scoring system to allow informed decisions of which will be the best to go forward with.
Overall analysis of the combined interventions ultimately decided which interventions were shortlisted, helping to create a complimentary overall scheme rather than a series of isolated interventions.

Deliverables

Strategic Business Cases for all three sites

Justified the need for public sector funding
Aligned with the public good nature of infrastructure projects, where private investment is limited

Stakeholder Engagement

Led collaboratively by Arup and Nota Bene
Gathered insights to inform planning and decision-making

Site-Specific Masterplans (one for each location)

Included background context and local transport challenges
Incorporated stakeholder feedback
Detailed proposed interventions and the option sifting process leading to final recommendations

Our Work

Client

Project

Autonomous Vehicles

The Problem

While much of the discourse around autonomous vehicles (AVs) has centred on when the vehicles themselves will be technologically ready for deployment, far less attention has been paid to the readiness of the road infrastructure they will operate on. At Nota Bene we decided to carry out our own research, seeking to address that gap by examining how existing roads, using Sheffield as a case study, might already meet, or fall short of, the requirements for AV integration.

By applying a scoring framework based on physical and digital criteria, the study aims to provide insight into where AVs could be safely and effectively introduced, contributing to a more grounded understanding of practical AV deployment in urban environments.

Autonomous Vehicle Infrastructure – Are we closer than we think?

In recent years, the introduction of autonomous vehicles (AVs) on public highways has become an increasingly imminent prospect. While the vehicle technology is being tested and may be almost ready, there has been limited focus on the requirements that the existing infrastructure may need to meet to be ready to host AVs. However, many sections of the network may be closer to being AV-ready than we think.

This article draws on existing research to assess suitability and create a scoring system for the existing road network to assess the suitability of the major road network alongside all other supplementary A-roads for hosting AVs, using Sheffield as an example.

Automation in vehicles is classified into 5 ‘levels’ with level 1 representing a single automated feature such as cruise control, all the way through to levels 4 & 5 where a vehicle can operate without the need for human intervention.

One of the most important reasons for the need to

classify the suitability of the existing infrastructure is to ensure that there can be safe interactions between human driven vehicles (HDVs) and AVs as well as with pedestrians and cyclists, as these interactions are much more unpredictable than interactions between multiple AVs.

Opinions on what the requirements of the road infrastructure to host AVs will be are mixed, with some arguing that the existing infrastructure will be suitable enough as it is, although it is worth noting that many who hold these opinions work in the automotive industry. On the other hand, many industry experts believe that initial rollout would be within a defined geofenced area.

Many of the requirements for AV infrastructure are simple enough to implement but may require a higher level of road upkeep such as not having potholes, more regularly maintaining visible, reflective road markings and ensuring that traffic regulations are designed in a machine-readable format.

The potential requirement for higher standards of maintenance to ensure AV operate safely will have an impact on local authorities’ road maintenance budgets.

Other potential requirements relate less to physical aspects of the infrastructure and relate to digitised aspects such as mobile signal, the availability of high-definition mapping or the presence of variable message systems, which can be used to digitally transmit live data and information to AVs.

Building on the existing research, a weighted scoring system was created using the likely requirements of the road infrastructure to host AVs, a list of the existing main roads in Sheffield, alongside other A-roads were collated and manually scored using Google Street View to give each road a suitability score for hosting AVs. This data was then mapped using GIS to illustrate where the most suitable roads were located and where any patterns might appear such as clusters of roads with a high suitability score located close to each other.

The suitability map of the main roads shows a high density of roads which may already be suitable or require a small number of upgrades to be suitable, this could perhaps feed into a network of city centre ‘robotaxis’ which serve the inner ring road and a limited number of through roads. Roads on the periphery of the city tended to score lower due to fewer lanes, less provisions for vulnerable road users and poorer maintenance.

One factor which was not considered in this study was the storage and recharging of the vehicles. If the initial rollout of AVs is for use as taxis, there will need to be sufficient space for their storage when not in use, likely needing to be along one of the suitable roads. One potential solution for this would be to make use of underutilised parking spaces. Additionally, the same issue would need to be addressed for recharging the vehicles.

Having gone through this process, it is likely that when rolling out to other towns and cities that an AI model could be used to automate the scoring of the road networks. However, it is important that a human touch is maintained as part of the process for cross-referencing any mistakes which the model may make.

It may be interesting for future studies of the same nature to expand the scope to a wider area, such as the Major Road Network across an entire region to assess if a well-connected autonomous vehicle network could be feasibly established.

Ensuring that autonomous vehicles can safely navigate a city or region using the infrastructure will be key to ensuring an effective roll out without hindering public perceptions of their safety.

Our Work