Professor Simon Blainey PhD, FRGS, FHEA, MCIHT

Professor Simon Blainey

Department of Civil Engineering
Professor of Sustainable Transport
Director of BCRRE

Contact details

Email
s.p.blainey@bham.ac.uk
View my research portal
Address
Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education
School of Engineering
UKRRIN Building
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Professor Simon Blainey is a Professor of Sustainable Transport and will become Director of the Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education (BCRRE) from 1 July 2025. He has particular expertise in rail transport but during his career, Simon has experience of undertaking research relating almost all transport modes.  From an early age, Simon has had a keen interest in all facets of transportation systems and their relationships with wider society and the physical environment.  Transport plays a crucial role in enabling and creating the complex linkages which allow our society to function but also poses a threat to the continued existence of that society through the demands it makes on natural and human resources and the damage it causes to the environment.  Through his work at BCRRE, he aims to make a contribution to the development of a transport network which is more sustainable, more efficient, and less costly to users, government and the environment.  This aim is central to both his research and teaching, full details of which are provided in the relevant sections of his profile.

Qualifications

  • Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice, University of Southampton 2016
  • PhD on ‘Forecasting the Use of New Local Railway Stations and Services Using GIS’, University of Southampton, 2010
  • MSc in Transport, Imperial College, London & University College, London, 2006
  • BA (Hons) in Geography, St Anne’s College, University of Oxford, 2005

Biography

Professor Simon Blainey joined the University of Birmingham in January 2025, as Professor of Sustainable Transport at the University of Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education in the School of Engineering.  He had previously worked at the University of Southampton, most recently as Head of the Transportation Research Group (TRG).

Simon's research interests are centred on understanding and modelling the interdependencies between transport and other human and natural systems.  He is a geographer by background and has made extensive use of geographical information systems and spatial modelling techniques in his research.  Simon's work initially focused on rail transport, but he has subsequently carried out research relating to nearly all major transport modes.  His research aims ultimately to make a practical contribution to policy-making in the transport and climate domains, by creating outputs that will be of direct use to stakeholders; he has extensive experience of collaborating with non-academic partners to achieve research impact.

Simon recently led an Ordnance Survey-funded project (RATIN) which developed routable datasets for active travel networks (2022-4), and a major FCDO-funded project on ‘Decision Support Systems for Resilient Strategic Transport Networks in Low Income Countries’ (2020-23).   He has previously acted as a Co-I for several large EPSRC-funded projects including ITRC, MISTRAL and Track to the Future.  Simon has extensive experience in rail research with particular expertise relating to rail demand modelling and appraisal, and has provided peer review and guidance to government bodies in the UK and overseas. 

Simon's academic career began at TRG in 2006, when he started work on a PhD on demand forecasting for new local railway stations and services, during which he won the 2009 Smeed Prize for the best student paper at the Universities' Transport Study Group Annual Conference.  In 2009 he was awarded an EPSRC PHD+ research fellowship; his contract was subsequently extended to allow him to work on a range of research projects relating both to rail and to transport more widely. Simon was promoted to the position of Senior Research Fellow in 2012, to a lecturing post at from February 2014, to Associate Professor from March 2019, and finally to Professor from August 2023.

Simon is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a member of the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation, and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.  He has previously served as Secretary (2016-2019) and Membership Secretary (2014-2016) of the Royal Geographical Society’s Transport Geography Research Group, as a member of the Rail Research UK Association Executive Committee (2014-2018) as Honorary Secretary of the Universities' Transport Study Group (2011-2012), and as a member of the governance board . 

Before moving to TRG he obtained an MSc in Transport from Imperial College London and University College London, and a first class honours degree in Geography from the University of Oxford.  He also gained first-hand experience of working in the transport industry as a travel advisor for First North Western Trains and carrying out public transport surveys for Flintshire County Council.

Teaching

  • Professor Blainey leads the ‘Railway Operations Management and Planning’ module. 
  • He is involved in supervising both undergraduate and postgraduate students on research projects relating to transport.

Simon will also consider supervising postgraduate research students on topics which relate to his main research interests.  Please contact him if you would like to discuss a potential project.

Research

Research interests

  • Rail demand and operations modelling
  • GIS and transport
  • Transport decision support systems

Other activities

 

  • Transportation Planning and Technology (Journal) - Editor in chief since 2022 - present
  • Journal of Transport Geography (Journal) - Member of editorial board since 2019 - present
  • Special Advisor to House of Lords Built Environment Committee's Inquiry into Public Transport in Towns and CitiesRole: Advisor (2022)

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Blainey, S & Hare, B 2025, 'An assessment of the potential contribution of overnight trains to sustainable long distance travel in Europe', Case Studies on Transport Policy, vol. 22, 101599. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cstp.2025.101599

Hill, C, Young, M, Blainey, S, Cavazzi, S, Emberson, C & Sadler, J 2024, 'An integrated geospatial data model for active travel infrastructure', Journal of Transport Geography, vol. 117, 103889. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2024.103889

Najafpour Navaei, T, Blainey, S, Preston, J & Powrie, W 2024, 'Carbon footprinting of railway infrastructure: a standardized, consistent data collection method', Carbon Management, vol. 15, no. 1, 2368839. https://doi.org/10.1080/17583004.2024.2368839

Emberson, C, Blainey, S, Hill, C, Sadler, J & Cavazzi, S 2024, 'The development of a routable pavement network dataset to support active travel', Transportation Planning and Technology. https://doi.org/10.1080/03081060.2024.2427120

Matthews, B, Hall, J, Batty, M, Blainey, S, Cassidy, N, Choudhary, R, Coca, D, Hallett, S, Harou, JJ, James, P, Lomax, N, Oliver, P, Sivakumar, A, Tryfonas, T & Varga, L 2023, 'DAFNI: A computational platform to support infrastructure systems research', Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers: Smart Infrastructure and Construction, vol. 176, no. 3, pp. 108-116. https://doi.org/10.1680/jsmic.22.00007

Chaudry, M, Jayasuriya, L, Blainey, S, Lovric, M, Hall, JW, Russell, T, Jenkins, N & Wu, J 2022, 'The implications of ambitious decarbonisation of heat and road transport for Britain's net zero carbon energy systems', Applied Energy, vol. 305, 117905. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2021.117905

Nugraha, AT, Waterson, BJ, Blainey, SP & Nash, FJ 2022, 'Unravelling the dynamics behind the urban morphology of port-cities using a LUTI model based on cellular automata', Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, vol. 92, 101733. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2021.101733

Chapter

Preston, J & Blainey, S 2022, Conclusions. in S Blainey & J Preston (eds), Sustainable Railway Engineering and Operations - Volume 14. 1st edn, Transport and Sustainability, vol. 14, Emerald Publishing Limited, pp. 325-329. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2044-994120220000014019

Blainey, S & Preston, J 2022, Introduction. in S Blainey & J Preston (eds), Sustainable Railway Engineering and Operations - Volume 14. 1st edn, Transport and Sustainability, vol. 14, Emerald Publishing Limited, pp. 1-3. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2044-994120220000014001

Blainey, S 2022, System and route planning. in S Blainey & J Preston (eds), Sustainable Railway Engineering and Operations - Volume 14. 1st edn, Transport and Sustainability, vol. 14, Emerald Publishing Limited, pp. 5-18. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2044-994120220000014002

Conference article

Navaei, T, Blainey, S, Powrie, W & Preston, J 2022, 'Carbon footprinting of railway embankments and cuttings: A circular framework', Energy Reports, vol. 8, no. Supplement 11, pp. 8-13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egyr.2022.05.051

Conference contribution

Navaei, TN, Blainey, S, Powrie, W & Preston, J 2024, Decarbonisation of Small-Scale Railway Earthwork Interventions Using PAS 2080 Life-Cycle Methodology. in C Rujikiatkamjorn, B Indraratna & J Xue (eds), Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Transportation Geotechnics (ICTG) 2024: Sustainable Infrastructure and Numerical Modeling in Roads, Rails, and Harbours. vol. 7, Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering, vol. 408 LNCE, Springer, pp. 199-207, 5th International Conference on Transportation Geotechnics, ICTG 2024, Sydney, Australia, 20/11/24. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-8237-6_20

Editorial

Blainey, S 2024, 'New features in Transportation Planning and Technology', Transportation Planning and Technology, vol. 47, no. 5, pp. 623-623. https://doi.org/10.1080/03081060.2024.2367314

Blainey, S 2022, '50 years of Transportation Planning and Technology: an anniversary and a new chapter', Transportation Planning and Technology, vol. 45, no. 2, pp. 117-118. https://doi.org/10.1080/03081060.2022.2073698

Review article

Rempelos, G, Ognibene, G, Le Pen, L, Blainey, S, Preston, J & Powrie, W 2024, 'Railway Track Deterioration Models: A Review of the State of the Art', Transportation Geotechnics, vol. 49, 101377. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trgeo.2024.101377

View all publications in research portal

Policy experience

Simon is a member of the Department for Transport’s College of Experts.  He also acted as a Special Advisor to the House of Lords Build Environment Committee inquiry into Public Transport in Towns and Cities in 2022.