Joe Ma is an urban planner with over 35 years of international experience in the field of urban design and transportation planning spanning from the UK, China, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East. He is an Eminent Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, a Member of the Royal Town Planning Institute, and a registered Professional Planner (Hong Kong).

Joe is currently an Advisor to the CEO of Saudi Arabia Public Transport Company (SAPTCO). Prior to joining SAPTCO in 2022, he had been a Deputy General Manager for the Shenzhen Bus Group (SZBG) between 2015 and 2021, taking charge of all international development and branding, procurement, infrastructure construction, and property management, training, and the media business. A major accomplishment when joining SZBG in 2015 was the successful procurement of over 6000 electric buses and 5,000 electric taxis resulting in SZBG becoming the first fully and largest electric bus and taxi operator in the world. He also took charge of the construction of charging infrastructure including some 2,000 chargers in 150 charging stations for both electric bus and taxi fleets. As a result of this successful electrification transition, he represented SZBG at the Union Internationale des Transports Publics (UITP) 2019 Stockholm Summit in receiving the international highest “Outstanding Achievement Award”. He also represented SZBG for high level international governmental and NGO exchanges and cooperation including those with the United Nations, World Bank, Asia Development Bank, European Bank of Reconstruction and Development as well as several climate change organisations such as the California Air Resources Board (CARB), World Resources Institute (WRI), and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)

Joe is a regular conference key speaker and trainer for the UITP. Between 2019 and 2021, he was the Chair of the UITP global Taxi and Ride-hailing Committee.

During the Covid 19 pandemic in 2020, Joe penned two articles on how SZBG combated Covid 19 and the normalisation of social and economic activities and conducted over 50 online sessions with the global organisations including the United Nations, World Bank, Transformative Urban Mobility Initiative (TUMI) For this work, he was nominated as one of the 21 heroes of transportation in February 2021 by TUMI.

Prior to joining the Shenzhen Bus Group, Joe Ma was a Transport Advisory Manager for the Sun Hung Kai Properties Group (SHK)， the largest property development company in Hong Kong and the majority shareholder of Kowloon Motor Bus. Main responsibilities included providing business development advice to the Company Chairman on various business and investment portfolios in the UK, Hong Kong, and China, including TOD developments, logistics, infrastructure, as well as the Group’s franchise bus portfolio at KMB.

Before SHK, he worked in the planning and development consultancy industry for over twenty years as a Partner/Director in Llewelyn-Davies Architects-Planners-Designers, a UK-based company, between 1995 and 2006. Between 2006 and 2012, he ran his own professional consultancy, TMA Planning, and Design Limited, serving a wide range of government, institutional and private sector clients in Hong Kong, China, Dubai, and Indonesia.

Within the public sector, Joe had served as a Planning Officer for the Housing Department of the Hong Kong Government between 1989 and 1994, responsible for the successful completion of a number of public housing projects and new town developments in Hong Kong. Prior to that, he held the post of Senior Planner in the London Borough of Haringey between 1987 and 1989 responsible for urban improvement programmes and development control work.

A New Era for Taxi in MENA after COVID-19

Speakers