Public Transport Fundamentals

Thomas J. Potter is a Senior Transportation Engineer with Norconsult AS and is based in their offices in Bergen, Norway. He is a railway and public transport engineer with a focus on electric buses, light rail systems and vehicles with over 35 years of experience in the field. He is and has been involved in many international projects sharing his experiences with other cities concerning the planning, design and introduction of new light rail systems and acting as a trainer at several UITP transport management courses.

He received his B.Sc. in Civil Engineering from MIT and his M.Sc. in Systems Engineering, Transportation from the University of Pennsylvania where he studied under Professor Vukan R. Vuchic. From 2001 until 2012, he was the Chief Engineer of Bybanen, the new light rail system in Bergen, Norway, which opened in June 2010. The project was recognized as Worldwide Project of the Year at the 2011 Light Rail Awards. In addition, he was Project Manager for the procurement, delivery, testing, modification and maintenance of the vehicles for the system, the Variobahn, supplied by Stadler Pankow GmbH which was awarded the Red Dot Award for Design in 2011.

He worked for Sporveien developing technical specifications for the next generation of light-rail vehicles for Oslo. He is also providing technical advice to Hordaland, Rogaland and Buskerud concerning the introduction of electric buses and the introduction and expansion of trolleybus services using in-motion charging.

Thomas is an American who has lived in Norway since 1987. He has spent most of that time promoting, analyzing, defending and designing the technical aspects of the light rail project, first as a consultant to the City of Bergen and later as the Chief Engineer for the project.

He has also been a consultant to other cities considering or planning the implementation of light rail systems in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Germany and Canada. He has been a member of both the TRB and UITP Light Rail Committees, as well as a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Institute of Transportation Engineers and the Norwegian Society of Graduate Technical and Scientific Professionals (TEKNA). He is a founding member of the Nordic Light Rail Association (NLRA) and was awarded the NLRA Light Rail Prize in 2017.

Rachel has a BA (Hons) in Geography from University of Oxford and holds the inaugural Masters in Carbon Management from University of Edinburgh Business School. She is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport.

Since graduating from Oxford, Rachel worked as a consultant beginning her career as a transport planner with WSP then worked for a start-up advising companies in the transport sector on how to reduce their carbon emissions. She then set up her own firm (Surbon Consulting) in the UK supporting transport operators such as Keolis, Go-Ahead, Serco and MTR on  business development and contract mobilisation  covering contract management, sustainability and customer experience. She has worked across all modes of transport: rail, metro, bus, ferry and cycle hire and more recently electric scooters. She set up a UAE branch of Surbon Consulting in 2017 and has delivered work in UAE, Qatar and Saudi.

She has been a member of UITP since 2015 and has found the conferencing and training courses offered by UITP extremely valuable. She has been an UITP trainer delivering training to TGA (Saudi), RTA (Dubai) and LTA (Singapore).

Diégo EGGERMONT is a mobility expert based in Brussels. He has worked for 4 years in the Strategy and Innovation department of STIB, the Brussels’ public transport operator, where he was involved in strategic and operational studies such as network development, Mobility-as-a-Service, complementarity between public transport and bike and so on.

In 2018 he joined Espaces-Mobilités, a consultancy specialised in transport strategy, new mobility services and public space design, where he has been working on various mobility topics. He is specialised in urban mobility, including public transport and shared mobility and he develops many change management programs, convincing people to change their transportation habits.

Max has degrees in Engineering from University of the West of England, Project Engineering from Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University and a Masters in Transportation Systems from Technical University Munich.

He has worked for the commuter railway branch division of Deutsche Bahn AG, where he was involved in various operational projects including maintenance planning, disposition as well as overall production planning. Later Max joined Mitsui Rail Capital Europe to set up a material requirement planning for their locomotive fleet.

Thereafter Max worked for the Singapore based research institute TUM CREATE to develop a Singapore public transport model using the automated fare collection smart card data provided by the Land Transport Authority. On this basis, he did various analysis of the public transport in Singapore.

In 2016 Max joined INIT, Karlsruhe-based leading supplier of integrated telematics and ticketing solutions for public transport. He worked in different roles in sales, training and consulting and assisted multiple customers internationally.  Currently he is working as a Key Account Manager. There he is assisting customers in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Luxembourg and Germany with INIT’s solutions.

Emmanuel Dommergues studied political economy at the University of Warwick (UK) and at Dauphine University (Paris, France). He holds a degree in Space Planning and Policy following a Masters at Sciences Po (Paris, France).

Over the course of 18 years, he served as a civil servant in the urban mobility sector in the Paris region. He began his career as a transport planner, contributing to regional transport planning strategies for the Ile-de-France Regional Authority. Subsequently, he worked as a transport project manager, overseeing significant metro line extension projects in Paris, which involved tasks such as technical definition and environmental assessment, for the transport authority of Paris (Ile-de-France Mobilités) and the transport operator RATP.

Later, he served as a technical advisor to the Deputy-Mayor of the City of Paris, focusing on street design and transport matters while representing the city’s interests at the Authority Council. Four years ago, he joined UITP, where he has been involved in examining governance and policy issues pertinent to transport authorities. He has been responsible for developing UITP activities concerning informal transport and paratransit transformation policies. 

With over a decade of experience, Adrian POHER is a committed professional specialising in advancing training programs within wide range of topics and recently more specifically in the realm of Public Transport and Urban Mobility. Currently serving as the Training Manager at UITP in Brussels, Belgium, Adrian plays a central role in crafting and overseeing tailored training initiatives. Responsibilities encompass program design, facilitation, eLearning development, and the thoughtful management of learning experience uniquely tailored to the nuances of urban mobility.

In previous roles, Adrian led Learning and Development initiatives, across different sectors such as quality management, auditing, environmental and social responsibility, entrepreneurship and innovation, construction and public sector.

Passionate about advancing skills and knowledge in Public Transport and Urban Mobility, Adrian strategically manages training initiatives, contributing to creating meaningful learning experiences that support the growth and success of Urban Mobility organisations worldwide.

Arno Kerkhof was born in 1972 in The Netherlands. In 1996, he graduated as a Civil Engineer at the Engineering University of Delft after having obtained in 1995 a Certificate in Transport and Planning at the French Ecole Nationale des Ponts and Chaussées in Paris (ENPC). Arno joined UITP in 2003 where he carried out the Bus of the Future project.

He is currently Global Head of Bus Division and is directly in charge of all content and knowledge-related bus activities within the Association, coordinating members’ work on the Bus Committee, the Trolleybus Committee, its four Technical and Operational Working Groups and the UITP Industry Committee and acts as senior trainer on a worldwide basis in the development of the UITP training services.

Arno develops cross sectoral activities (Tender Structure platform, SORT fuel consumption referential, Standard Bus Activity Model) and is doing research on Bus Systems.

Arno Kerkhof is a confirmed public transport professional with a long practical and field experience in the services as described above.