TRICS Consortium Limited are delighted to confirm that we have a date and venue booked for our 26th annual TRICS User Meeting in Central London.

This event will be taking place at The Magic Circle in Euston on Tuesday 28th November 2023. It is a great, unique and fascinating venue that we are visiting for the second time, having previously held one of our TRICS Conferences there some years ago. It is complete with a theatre auditorium and a separate breakout room, plus a curator will be present to provide a tour of the Magic Circle Museum at the venue during the lunch break. As per previous events, bookings will be available on a first come first served basis, with each user office able to send one attendee free of charge, with a buffet lunch provided.

We already have a great programme lined up, which will include the following:

• The schedule for delivering the TRICS 8 upgrade and redesign and its new features.
• The latest on the Decide & Provide approach to Transport Assessments and its implementation.
• How to commission a TRICS SAM survey.
• Reporting on the biggest TRICS SAM survey to date – the Wembley Park development.
• Presenting the revised and improved TRICS Travel Plan Monitoring Report feature.
• Further presentations to be confirmed.

Registration on the day will commence at 0930, and the event will close at 1530.

We will be setting up our online booking system in July, and once this is running we will let everyone know. This event is expected to be popular, so when you do have the opportunity we advise you to book early to avoid any potential disappointment. Until then, please put Tuesday 28th of November 2023 in your calendar, and we look forward to welcoming the TRICS Community to our event, which promises to be a good day for everyone.

The deadline for new TRICS SAM survey commissions for surveys taking place in the current Spring 2023 window has now passed (as of noon on 11th April 2023). Therefore, any new requests for SAM surveys will need to be for surveys taking place in the Autumn 2023 window, which runs from mid-September (once the schools have returned) until the end of November. Should there be Autumn surveys required please contact the TRICS team and these can be set up in our system.

We are pleased to announce the release of our latest TRICS database update, version 7.10.1.

This new version of TRICS includes 75 new survey days, covering a variety of development types across different regions within the UK and Ireland, details of which can be found in the Library module of the system.

The new version also introduces some system enhancements and amendments, which include the following:

• The default survey date cut-off is now 01/01/15
• The note which explains the TRICS count type inclusion rules has been updated to be more comprehensive and to provide greater clarity
• A new data field of Electric Vehicle Charging Bays has been introduced for all petrol filling stations (sub-categories 13/A and 13/B), which will apply to all surveys at such sites undertaken from 2023 onwards
• A new land use category 05/N (Community Hospital) has been created, with a number of surveys that were previously in the 05/B (General Hospital – without Casualty) sub-category now moved to the new land use (see the list of new sites document for this update which lists the old and new site reference codes)
• New Indoor Seats and Outdoor Seats data fields have been introduced for some 06 (Hotel Food & Drink) sub-categories, which will apply to all surveys at such sites undertaken from 2023 onwards

A summary of all system changes are in a document within the Library module once you have logged in and started running TRICS. Just click on the Library icon at the top of the screen and access the file called “List of System Amendments for TRICS 7.10.1”.

We look forward to continuing to work with all members of the TRICS Community and to providing regular system updates.

TRICS Consortium Limited are pleased to announce that Harry Cook has joined our team in the role of TRICS Technical Officer

Harry will be involved in various aspects of our ever-growing data collection programme and will join the team in supporting TRICS users. We are delighted to welcome Harry to the team and look forward to working with him.

TRICS Consortium Limited is pleased to announce the date and location of our 5th annual TRICS Training & Development Forum, after a wait of nearly four years (our first such event since 2019).

This event is being held at the National Justice Museum in Nottingham, on Tuesday 20th June 2023. Registration will commence at 10:30 for a start at 11:00, and the event will close at 15:00.

This is a separate event to our annual TRICS User Meeting (that taking place in November from 2022 onwards with the Training & Development Forum now becoming a June event). Whilst the User Meeting is always held in London, the Training & Development Forum is held regionally in a different part of the UK on each occasion, reflecting the diverse office locations of the TRICS Community. This is also a slightly different event to the User Meeting in that it is more oriented towards the technical day to day operational side of the TRICS system. It is an event where we discuss the use of TRICS and its components and data more than at the User Meeting, which tends to be more wide-ranging across the project as a whole and covering associated transport-industry topics. To give everyone a flavour of what will be discussed at this year’s Training & Development Forum, we have pencilled in the following presentations, which are of course subject to possible amendment.

• Demonstration of Recently Added TRICS System Features
• TRICS System Developments for December 2023 and the TRICS 8 Redesign
• The 2023 and 2024 TRICS Data Collection Programmes
• The 2023 TRICS Good Practice Guide
• TRICS SAM Surveys and the Updated Travel Plan Monitoring Report Feature
• Trip Generation at Fast-Food Drive-Through Developments and Research Update
• TRICS Development: Open Forum

As per the User Meeting, the TRICS Training & Development Forum is free to attend for one person from each TRICS-licensed office, with additional places for attendees from the same user office charged at £175 + VAT (this fee would also apply to any non-TRICS member organisations per attendee). Tea and coffee will as usual be provided at registration, and attendees can mix in the usual way and exchange their thoughts and ideas over a buffet lunch. Unlike the User Meeting, there will be no optional “breakout” session in the afternoon, with all presentations and discussions taking place in a single room. For those wanting to look up the location of the National Justice Museum, it is in the south of the centre of Nottingham and is easily accessible, being only a 10-minute walk from Nottingham railway station.

Therefore, please save the date in your calendars if you are interested in attending. We will be working on the booking system soon, and will send out a further email to everyone once this is up and running so that places can be booked on a first come, first served basis. Myself and the rest of the TRICS team look forward to meeting with our users once again.

TRICS Consortium Limited are pleased to announce that Anne-Marie Kanor has joined our team in the new role of TRICS Project Administrator.

Anne-Marie will be working at an administrative and monitoring level across a variety of elements of the TRICS project, including working with our data collection contractors at various stages of the data collection process (including the management of deadlines and the monitoring of progress), and with our clients commissioning TRICS SAM surveys, as well as being involved in company administration and procedures. The Project Administrator is an integrated role and is designed to enhance the efficiency of the project as we move forwards with increased data collection programmes and greater system development, including work on the new TRICS 8 system.

Anne-Marie will very soon be introducing herself to our suppliers and key contacts, and the team all look forward to working with her.