The 24th annual TRICS® Transport & Development Conference has successfully taken place in London, and was warmly received by delegates providing their much-valued feedback. The event was held at the Institute of Contemporary Art on The Mall, and was attended by around 100 delegates from across the UK and Ireland.

A number of good quality speakers gave presentations on a variety of topics, under the banner "New Policies, New Challenges, New Approaches". Subjects included The National Planning Policy Framework, assessing the impact of construction traffic, rural Transport Assessments, data collection technology, the Dublin Bikes Scheme, Local Enterprise Partnerships, and the current and future role of Travel Plans. The presentations generated a good level of discussion, which is always good to see, as the panels of each of the four sessions engaged with the attendees.

There were plenty of opportunities for members of the TRICS® Community to network and discuss the issues of the day over tea, coffee and lunch. A number of attendees also took part in an interactive lunchtime session that asked them to provide opinions on the strategic future of TRICS®. The TRICS® Consortium took away plenty of food for thought, the feedback received being of great use as we plan the future of the system and its associated projects.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank our sponsors, Intelligent Data, Quality Traffic Surveys and JES Traffic, and special thanks also goes to the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation for their support and granting the event CPD status. All of the presentations given through the four main sessions are now available for free download at www.trics.org. We shall of course provide you all with details of the 2013 event at a later date.

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TRICS® 2013(a)v6.11.1 Released This Month

The latest update of TRICS® goes live on Thursday 20th December 2012, containing a number of new surveys across various land uses and regions. As usual with our quarterly updates, all member organisations will be able to log in with their current usernames and passwords to access the new version, which is also being made available as a download.

In addition to the new data being added, there have also been some changes and enhancements to the system, all of which will be explained in detail in the Library module once the update goes live. These changes are explained briefly as follows.

• The "Most Recent Survey" field has been removed from the Selected Sites screen during the trip rate calculation filtering process as this caused some confusion with users.
• All time periods outside of survey durations are now shown as blank instead of "0", providing clearer guidance to users on when surveys started and ended.
• 85th and 15th percentile surveys in rank order lists are highlighted more clearly.
• All output options for trip rate calculation results are now included by default, so outputs are fully comprehensive.

There have also been some significant software upgrades in the last few months, which now mean that, from this new version, TRICS® will be fully compatible with Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 10. Everything should be running fine, but any users who are experiencing any issues with these versions should contact a member of the TRICS® team and we shall immediately investigate.

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The TRICS® Consortium is pleased to announce that a significant re-design of the TRICS® interface will be taking place through 2013, at no additional cost to our users. This new series of TRICS® system releases, known as TRICS® 7, will incorporate a new system interface designed to provide an enhanced level of user-friendliness. This project reflects our commitment to providing a quality nationwide system of trip generation analysis, and will provide good quality improvements across the board. Some of you may have already seen a mock-up of new TRICS® 7 screenshots at the 2012 User Meeting and the 2012 TRICS® Conference.

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As the new year arrives, the TRICS® team will start to plan for the next of our annual TRICS® User Meetings, and we are pleased to announce that the 2013 gathering of users is planned to take place on the south coast in Brighton in June. This annual event, which provides free attendance for user organisations, is a popular forum for the development of the system, and is a great opportunity for both new and experienced TRICS® users to find out the latest developments in the project and to exchange their own ideas, in an informal yet productive setting.

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A SMS text updates service is now available free of charge to all members of the TRICS® Community. The latest news and alerts can now be sent via SMS text message to your mobile phone, and recipients of messages do not pay a penny!

Whether it's an update on the TRICS® Conference, User Meetings, system updates or the data collection programme, sign up to our new service and we will keep you up-to-date on developments as and when they happen. All you need to do is contact any member of the TRICS® Development Team with your name and mobile phone number, and we'll set up your free alerts account. It's quick and easy, and you don't need to fill out any forms or complete a registration process - just give us your number. Of course, TRICS® will not give your number out to any third party under any circumstances, and you can cancel your free subscription at any time.

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TRICS® training sessions are available to all users. These sessions consist of a full system demonstration plus an interactive workshop session, which allows attendees to fully test the system. These sessions continue to receive good feedback and have been popular with our members at universities, councils and consultancies.

For information on training sessions, please contact Ian Coles.

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We are pleased to confirm the continued availability of a quarterly payment option for all of our members. We understand that cash-flow can be an issue in the current economic conditions, and this option allows user organisations to spread the cost of their annual licences across four quarterly payments, rather than having to pay for their licence in one go. For those wishing to take up this offer, four invoices will be forwarded instead of one, at three-monthly intervals. This does not affect user expiry dates in any way, and all you need to do to set up this option is contact a member of the TRICS® team when your licence is due for renewal.

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A free 1-month trial of the latest full version of TRICS® is available to all organisations upon request. Throughout the free trial period full technical support is available at no cost, and there is no obligation once the period has expired.

Many organisations have already found this trial useful. Anyone interested in the free trial should contact the TRICS® team.

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