Local Transport Today
An Independent Journal for Transport Decision-Makers
Local Transport Today, usually shortened to LTT, is a fortnightly magazine for professionals who plan, fund and deliver transport in the United Kingdom. Published in London by Landor LINKS, it describes itself as an authoritative, independent journal for transport decision-makers, and it has covered transport policy, planning, finance and delivery since 1989. Where most transport titles serve a single mode — buses, rail, highways or cycling — Local Transport Today was created to follow the whole local transport system at once, from a council bus priority scheme to national funding settlements, because its readers work across those boundaries every day.
That breadth is the title's defining idea. A local authority transport officer, a combined authority strategist, a bus operator's planning director and a consultant preparing a business case all need the same thing from the magazine: an accurate record of what government has decided, what money is available, what other places are doing, and what the professional argument is about. Local Transport Today built its reputation on supplying that record in print every fortnight and, increasingly, online.
Founding in 1989 and the Founders
Local Transport Today was co-founded in 1989 by Peter Huntley, Peter Stonham and Rod Fletcher. The timing mattered. The late 1980s had reshaped British local transport through bus deregulation and privatisation outside London, new structures for local government finance, and a growing professional debate about road building, congestion and the environment. There was a clear gap for an independent publication that could report those changes for the people implementing them, rather than for enthusiasts or for a single industry lobby.
Peter Stonham remained a central figure in the business for decades as chairman of Landor LINKS and the magazine's editorial voice, writing editorial opinion in the title into the 2020s. Peter Huntley went on to found the TAS Partnership bus consultancy and later became managing director of the bus operator Go North East; his death in a fell-walking accident in the Lake District in February 2012 was reported by the magazine he had helped to create. Rod Fletcher was likewise associated with Landor LINKS for many years, and the company's later work on carbon literacy was begun under him as chief executive.
The Publisher: Landor LINKS
The publisher, Landor LINKS, is a London-based specialist in transport publishing, conferences and events. Alongside Local Transport Today, its activities on the TransportXtra platform have included titles and services for related professional communities, including Parking Review and the British Parking Awards, and events such as the Local Transport Summit. That combination of a journal of record, specialist events and industry awards is characteristic of British business-to-business publishing at its most embedded: the publisher does not simply report a sector, it convenes it.
The standing of the business was underlined in October 2016, when the Department for Transport awarded Landor LINKS a four-year contract to help deliver a strategic stakeholder engagement programme for practitioners working on active travel and sustainable transport projects, including a national conference and a programme of workshops, seminars and publications. A small independent publisher winning departmental work of that kind reflects the trust its titles had built with both government and local practitioners.
Editorial Focus: Policy, Planning, Finance and Delivery
The magazine organises its coverage around four editorial themes: policy, planning, finance and development — in other words, what ministers and councils decide, how schemes are designed, how they are paid for, and how they get built and operated. News reporting is the backbone, covering government announcements, funding rounds, consultations, inquiries and legislation, alongside developments in Scotland and Wales, whose transport policies have diverged increasingly from England's under devolution.
Analysis and comment sit alongside the news. Editorial opinion, expert columnists and detailed examination of policy documents are a long-standing part of the mix. A recent issue, for example, carried an expert examination of a government highways financing bill and its implications for how new roads might be funded, discussion of an MPs' inquiry into public transport pricing and ticketing, new Transport for London initiatives on interchange design and regulating e-mobility, and coverage of autonomous vehicles and local transport strategy. That range — from a Westminster bill to a London interchange standard — is precisely the local transport brief.
Coverage of Modes and Movements
Because its subject is local transport, the magazine's pages follow whatever is moving in the sector. Buses, the workhorse of local transport in Britain, receive sustained attention, from funding and franchising to the economics of rural services. Rail coverage focuses on the local and regional dimension: stations, devolved rail powers, ticketing and integration with other modes. Roads coverage deals with maintenance, financing, road safety and the politics of allocating street space.
Active travel grew from a minority interest into a central theme during the magazine's life, and Local Transport Today followed that transition closely, reporting cycling and walking investment programmes, design standards and the arguments they provoke. Newer subjects — mobility as a service, e-scooters and e-mobility regulation, autonomous vehicles, decarbonisation and electric vehicle charging — have been absorbed into the same policy-and-practice framework, examined for what they mean for local authorities and operators rather than as technology novelties.
A 'Journal of Record' for the Profession
Landor LINKS has described Local Transport Today's detailed analysis as making it a 'journal of record' for the United Kingdom's transport policy and planning scene, and after more than three decades that description explains its survival. Specialist professional journals endure when practitioners need them to do their jobs: to know what a funding stream requires, what a neighbouring authority tried, or where national policy is heading before it arrives as a circular. By the mid-2010s, after 27 years of publication, the publisher could still credibly present the fortnightly title as the pre-eminent source of news, comment and analysis for the sector, reaching decision-makers in print and a further large audience online.
That position also reflects what the magazine is not. It is not a campaigning newspaper, a trade association house journal or an enthusiast title, though it publishes strong opinion. Its independence from any single operator group, mode or political party is a commercial as well as an editorial asset, because its readers include people on opposing sides of the same argument.
Digital Presence Through TransportXtra
Local Transport Today's digital home is TransportXtra, the platform through which Landor LINKS publishes its transport titles and services online. The magazine's content is presented there for subscribers, with individual issues — identified by their LTT numbers, which had reached the mid-940s by the autumn of 2026 — summarised and made available to readers who take the digital edition. Issue summaries show the same editorial pattern as the print journal: government announcements, devolved policy, expert columns and editorial opinion.
The online presence also carries the wider apparatus of a modern specialist publisher: jobs, events information and coverage from sister activities. Dedicated magazine pages and subscription services, including a separate magazine edition site, support readers who have moved wholly or partly from the printed fortnightly to screen reading, while the print edition continues for subscribers who prefer the journal in physical form.
Events, Research and the Wider Landor LINKS Programme
Publishing is only part of the title's world. Landor LINKS organises professional gatherings connected to its editorial territory, including the Local Transport Summit, which brings together senior figures from politics, local government and the transport professions. The publisher has also produced research in the magazine's field, including an annual survey of mobility as a service whose 2018 edition examined how new digital, demand-responsive and multimodal services might change the ways people organise and pay for travel.
More recently Landor LINKS launched the Decarbonising Transport Awards, whose first winners were announced at a London ceremony in March 2026, recognising leadership and innovation on the path to net zero across walking and cycling strategies, zero-emission fleets and travel demand management. The company also recorded its own environmental work, announcing accreditation as a Bronze Carbon Literate Organisation in 2025. For a publisher long associated with Local Transport Today, these activities are a natural extension of the journal's subject matter into professional celebration and practice.
Audience and Readership
The readership is deliberately narrow and influential rather than large. Local Transport Today is aimed at the people who shape local transport in Britain: local authority officers and elected members, combined authorities, transport executives, central government officials, consultants, academics, operators and suppliers. The publisher has historically promoted the title to advertisers on the basis that it reaches the key decision-makers in the sector — the complete circle of influence around a local transport decision — through a paid and controlled professional circulation in print and a growing online audience.
That audience explains the magazine's tone. Articles assume professional knowledge, use the sector's vocabulary of business cases, funding streams and statutory duties without apology, and give space to detailed argument that a general newspaper would cut. For readers whose work it is, that depth is the product.
Significance in British Transport Publishing
Local Transport Today's significance lies in its longevity as an independent, cross-modal professional journal in a field often served by in-house and single-mode titles. Founded in 1989, it has documented bus deregulation's long aftermath, the rise of integrated transport authorities, the cycling and walking investment era, devolution, austerity's effect on local services, the pandemic's shock to travel patterns and the decarbonisation agenda — reporting each as it reached the desks of the people responsible for delivery.
For historians and practitioners alike, its back issues form a continuous record of how British local transport policy was made and contested over more than 35 years. As long as councils, combined authorities and operators need a shared, independent account of that world, the fortnightly journal founded by Huntley, Stonham and Fletcher retains its place at the centre of it.
