Staff Profile
Ralph Anderson, BSc (Hons) MCIHT
Senior Consultant - E-mail
Ralph Anderson graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 2006 with a BSc (Hons) in Geography. Whilst there, courses in ‘locational modelling in economic and social geography’, ‘tourism marketing and development’ and ‘inside the city: patterns, processes, problems’ expanded his interest in transportation. His dissertation evaluated Edinburgh’s transport system and investigated people’s attitudes towards and awareness of the city’s transport problems and solutions. This has provided him with knowledge of the Edinburgh area, including a broad outlook on transport, spatial, social and environmental perspectives. Ralph is currently completing an MSc in Urban and Regional Planning at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.
Choosing to remain in Edinburgh after his degree, Ralph took up his appointment with MRC McLean Hazel in 2006. Ralph's early work included the preparation Transport Assessments for new private sector developments but he has since taken on a number of exciting roles in larger scale projects.
He has been involved in a number of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) study commissions which included producing European BRT system profiles for inclusion in the primary BRT planning guidance document published by the U.S. Federal Transit Administration ‘Characteristics of Bus Rapid Transit for Decision-Making’ (CBRT). He has also participated in conducting a study tour of BRT systems in Amsterdam, Utrecht and Eindhoven, and providing a route review of potential BRT or tram routes in Belfast. Other experience includes work on the Megacities project for Siemens AG, in particular carrying out detailed research on Shanghai, as well as compiling and analysing comparison data for a range of global megacities. Further project work involved research into transportation issues for ‘Energetica’, a project aiming to promote Aberdeen City and Shire as a global energy hub by boosting research and innovation along a 30 mile coastal strip north of Aberdeen City. Ralph has been heavily involved with producing a rail strategy for North Northamptonshire, input into an economic masterplan for NewcastleGateshead, and a modal shift research project for the DfT.
One of Ralph’s current main responsibilities is working as the task manager for the research strand of work forming part of the four year E.U. funded RENAISSANCE project. The project is being carried out as part of the European Commission’s CIVITAS+ City-Vitality-Sustainability initiative to test innovative strategies for clean urban transport. This involves implementing state of the art transport and urban design initiatives in five historic cities from across Europe. The cities have strong reliance on heritage and tourism and thus the project focuses on providing increased mobility while considering environmental sustainability, the urban environment, and economic development. His role as task manager in the research workstream is to compile state of the art briefing reports on a number of initiatives and to use these to present to the participant cities some key best practice examples relating to their initiatives. A further responsibility is to stimulate cross-fertilisation of research and ideas across the city study groups. Also in the RENAISSANCE project, Ralph has a leading role in the co-ordination and evaluation of baseline research across the participation cities.
Ralph's most recent work is the completion of a Transport Plan for Makkah Al Mukarramah (Mecca) in Saudi Arabia. His role has heavily been focussed on the creation of an effective open space concept for the central area around the Holy Mosque, taking into account the area's role in relation to the completion of pilgrimages such as Hajj and Umrah but also as a focal point of the city year-round. This open space concept also integrates with the rapid transport concepts being developed for the city as well as considering the spatial interaction with the other sites of pilgrimage around Makkah such as Mount Arafat to the south east of the city. Working on such a large scale project in a differing cultural environment has provided both huge challenges and great experience and satisfaction along the way.
