Changing lanes: Elly’s passion for the planet is shaping the future of transport

Elly's journey began with a Geography degree focused on the planet and environmental systems, with her sights set on a Master in Environmental Management. “An interesting opportunity to undertake a PhD in road pricing came up, and redirected my path towards transport planning,” Elly explains.

This opportunity sparked a career that has spanned public and private sector, consulting and contracting, in both the UK and Australia.

“I joined Transport for London on their graduate programme and finished my PhD while I was working there,” Elly says. “I moved to Australia in 2011 and used my skills in business development to work on major bids, before shifting back to transport consultancy.”

Elly’s journey continued with consistently championing transport decarbonisation and the ‘avoid shift improve’ approach to reducing emissions. She is a strong advocate for first considering how to avoid emissions, such as reducing new build road infrastructure that supports car-dependency, encouraging modal shift to sustainable modes, and considering both embodied and user emissions in project planning and approvals.

“Transport is a critical part of people’s daily lives,” says Elly. “Most of us travel somewhere every day, even if it’s walking to the local park or shops. The great thing about creating more sustainable travel patterns is that it also has so many wider co-benefits beyond emissions reduction. It is great for people’s individual health and wellbeing, creates more vibrant local places with better air quality and has significant economic benefits too.”

Australian’s emotional connection to their vehicles is a hurdle in decarbonising the sector. “Car dependency and moto-normativity is a major challenge. Strong societal and political factors can make it difficult to shift away from car-centric planning and behaviour,” she says. “There’s a lot we can do better as professionals and government to consider climate more in our work on transport. Significantly increasing investment in walking and wheeling infrastructure immediately would be a great start.”

Electric vehicles are by no means a silver bullet, but they do have a critical role play alongside other measures. We have been doing work with the freight and heavy vehicle sector. Elly explains, “the Australian freight sector has a lot of small family operators, and small margins. It will be some time until heavy electric vehicles reach price parity with diesels, so this is another important area for government support.”

Building on her PhD research, Elly is also an advocate on reforming how we pay for driving. “Road pricing is a complex and sensitive topic. I believe there are real opportunities for national reform of taxes, charges and subsidies associated with driving - for all vehicles.” 

“The transition to EVs could be a catalyst for a fairer system which helps address both congestion and environmental objectives – and it could be designed to be revenue neutral.” She continues, “my personal and professional view is that an EV road user charge is not the way to go, and that’s not just because I have one!”  

“Managing the zero-emission bus transition plan for Transport Canberra was really rewarding for me. It highlighted the opportunity to combine transport work with making a difference on emissions reduction, which is important to me. Ever since, I have had a strong focus on decarbonisation and climate.”

Her recent work has included considering carbon as part of the Bli Bli Bridge Upgrade and developing an incident response framework and recommendations for road managers for electric vehicle incidents involving thermal runaway, due to be published by Austroads in late 2025. This project work has reaffirmed Elly's commitment to reducing the environmental impact of transport and promoting more sustainable transport solutions and behaviours.

Elly has faced her share of career challenges, including a redundancy shortly after moving to Australia – an experience that became a key turning point in her journey. “I was sponsored on a visa, so had to really consider with my husband if we wanted to get a new visa and stay or go back to the UK. I can hardly believe that was 12 years ago now!”

Elly continues to keep an eye on what is happening in transport decarbonisation in the UK. “The UK is setting good practice in a lot of areas like carbon budgeting, evaluating carbon in transport projects and mandating PAS2080 – the standard for carbon management in infrastructure. I enjoy hearing what colleagues overseas are up to and sharing stories so we can all learn from each other.”

As a climate champion spokesperson at industry conferences, Elly has shared her insights with a broad audience of policymakers and fellow leaders, promoting industry-wide discussions on sustainability. 

“Sometimes it is hard to stay motivated and positive in the face of many challenges and increasingly bad news on climate change. It’s important and uplifting to be part of a bigger community who are trying to drive a change as well,” she says. “Working with a team of like-minded thinkers on the ‘Path to Net Zero’ Policy Issues Paper for the Transport Planning Association (TPA) has been a career highlight for me, to help advance the agenda together”. 

“Caring for our planet has been really important to me since I was a child,” she says. “Becoming a parent really reinforced my values to me and made it even more important to me to contribute to a sustainable future for my children.” 

Outside of work, Elly enjoys spending time with her family, including her two daughters, Jessica and Poppy. She’s a creative person who enjoys crafts like crochet. “I love the outdoors too; bushwalking, canyoning and a bit of baking and yoga for something calmer,” she adds. 

Elly’s values of hard work, collaboration and continuous learning underpin her drive for better outcomes in both her work and personal life. 

“As a collaborative person, I believe in the power of teamwork and supporting each other to drive change. I enjoy working with other people, sharing ideas and connecting with like-minded individuals who are also passionate about making a change to reduce emissions from transport. As someone with an academic background, every day is a school day - I’m always learning something new. I strongly believe in GHD’s vision to ‘make communities sustainable for generations to come’ and think transport professionals have a critical role to play.”