Richard ter Avest
urban mobility consultant
“We’re going to build better towns and villages!”, “We need to work on the climate, and mobility means we can do that” or “Make sure everyone can participate” – the challenges facing society today and tomorrow all affect how we move around. I want to help tackle these challenges by improving our mobility system.
As both a traffic engineer and a spatial planner, I’m basically a generalist with specialist know-how. My strength lies in linking my specialist knowledge about what makes a town or city liveable – public transport, proximity, cycling/walking, public squares – to other issues.
In recent years, I’ve therefore worked on both the combination of “fast cycling and regional transport systems” and the densification of housing and facilities incorporated into existing towns and villages. I also pay attention to integrality: working from large to small, from policy to implementation, and finally the broad approach in relation to other objectives for better cities and regions.
I prefer working in a group: two heads are better than one. I boost my social impact by developing and sharing know-how. You get better results when there’s cooperation between public authorities, knowledge/interest groups, and citizen representatives.
Supervising students and doing research ensures that we are constantly working with the latest insights. I frequently teach at universities of applied sciences and the CROW technology platform for transport, infrastructure and public space, and also for clients in the Netherlands and elsewhere. I’m also on the board of the Iganga Foundation, a CSR organisation set up by Goudappel that works to promote sustainable mobility in the growing cities of the Global South. Everyone participates, in a sustainable manner.
