2013 TRICS® Conference Date and Venue Announced

We are pleased to confirm that the 25th annual TRICS® Transport & Development Conference will take place on Tuesday 19th November 2013, at a unique and glamorous venue in the heart of London, the Cafe de Paris. We are delighted to have secured this intriguing venue, which is located between Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square, at which we will have sole occupancy on the day.

The theme of this year's event is "Regeneration, Funding and the Growth Act", and we are very pleased to confirm that we have already secured a number of speakers at an early stage. To give you a taste of what this year's conference will feature, we are lining up topics including the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) one year on, The CIL Guide, HS2, the Nine Elms development, large scale developments such as the A303, and a paper on moving residential development forwards.

We shall shortly be putting together our electronic brochure for the event that you will receive via email. When it comes through, we would be very grateful if you could forward it to any colleagues who may be interested in attending this popular annual event in the transport planning and development management calendar.

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2013 TRICS® User Meeting Takes Place in Brighton

The Old Market theatre venue in Brighton was this year's location for our annual TRICS® User Meeting, which took place in June. With around 75 attendees, this annual event, free to all member organisations, continues to be popular with both new and experienced TRICS® users. We were particularly happy with The Old Market, as it was an ideal size for this type of event and the facilities were excellent, with the staff doing a fine job in making everyone welcome and settled. It was also noted that the lunch this year was one of the best we'd had in a long time!

The day consisted of a number of presentations on recent TRICS® system developments, the ongoing development of TRICS® 7, the 2013 TRICS® Good Practice Guide, our annual data collection programme, research projects and future strategic TRICS® system enhancements, and a unique insight into how TRICS® is viewed from both developer and local authority perspectives. There was also an afternoon choice of attending a TRICS® system demonstration or an open forum, both of which we are pleased to say were well attended. As always, the annual User Meeting was the perfect opportunity for users to provide their feedback on all TRICS® related topics, and we received many good ideas from attendees throughout the day. Attendees also took advantage of a nice sunny day to have lunch in an open area outside the building and network with other members of the TRICS® Community from both the public and private sectors.

We shall be taking a good look at the feedback from this year's event, and will be working to bring you another successful User Meeting in another regional location in 2014. As always, we'll keep you informed via this newsletter.

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System Development Work Underway for TRICS® 7

At the time of writing this newsletter, system development was well underway for the scheduled release of TRICS® 7.1.1 this December. Following an initial consultation back in February, the Alpha version of this major TRICS® user interface redesign is scheduled to be completed by 1st September 2013. We shall then be undertaking a second consultation exercise to fine-tune the look, feel and functionality of the new design, before it finally goes live on the web on 20th December 2013.

TRICS® 6 has been running for 10 years now, and we have ensured that the system has been continuously improved and enhanced throughout this period. However, TRICS® 7 sees a major step-change in functionality, user-friendliness and modern design. Users should also note that there are no additional cost implications, with all development work covered by our development budget. Nor will there be any effect on the number of surveys that we are going to undertake in the coming years. In fact, we are looking to steadily increase the number of traffic and multi-modal counts that we undertake across all regions of the UK and Ireland, covering, as always, a wide variety of development types. We recognise that the strength of our system is its database, and the TRICS® Consortium remains committed to replenishing survey data across all areas.

There are currently discussions taking place about a possible TRICS® 7 launch event in January 2014, and if this is confirmed you will of course be notified directly by email.

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A New Way to Produce Travel Plan Monitoring Reports

The release of TRICS® 2013(b)v6.12.1 at the end of June saw the official launch of the new Travel Plan Monitoring Report (TPMR) Generator facility, which was a topic also covered at the recent TRICS® User Meeting in Brighton. This significant new feature within TRICS® has been developed as part of our ongoing Standardised Assessment Methodology (SAM) project that looks at the effect of Travel Plans at a variety of development types.

The TPMR feature is now available for all surveys within the database that contain a "Travel Plan" data section (i.e. those sites that have been surveyed as part of the SAM process, more information of which can be found at www.trics.org). By inputting some straightforward trip rate and modal split criteria, users can produce survey results summaries on-screen, and can then produce TPMR documents that can be forwarded to any interested parties. The documents are annotated with commentary that explains the various elements in the report, and are designed to be "free standing" without the recipient of the documents requiring a copy of the TRICS® database to understand them.

The new TPMR feature comes with its own brief but explanatory user guide, that users can easily access via a link when viewing the TPMR screen for any individual site containing a "Travel Plan" data section.

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Follow TRICS® on Twitter and LinkedIn

Keeping up to date with the modern age of communications, TRICS® can now be found on Twitter and LinkedIn. So why not follow us online and be the first to hear of project updates, new system releases and developments, data collection programmes, research topics and our annual User Meetings and TRICS® Conferences?

We have already started to attract a following on Twitter. You can find us there by searching for the username @trics89. If you are a member of LinkedIn, you will see that the "TRICS" group has also attracted a significant number of members. So here is your opportunity to get involved in the discussion as TRICS® enters an exciting period of significant development and change.

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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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