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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 18/09/2026

15 months ago, I started building an archive of the UK government's Bus Open Data Service status updates. The locations of every bus in Great Britain every minute. It's gone well, but there are a few gaps. Do you have the data that could fill them in? data.datalibrary.uk/transport/BO...

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 21/08/2026

As @instituteforgovernment.org.uk show very well, Civil Servant numbers have grown fastest in London and the majority of the Senior Civil Service remain based in London. www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/...

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 21/08/2026

As a percentage of total employment, since 1948 when the data starts, Central government employment is today the highest on record. Local government employment is today the lowest on record. Some context for Andy Burnham's promise to try and reverse this trend.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 13/07/2026

Currently the 44 miles from Sheffield to Manchester Airport is a drive or a train that you need to leave 2 hours for. To Manchester city centre you need to leave over 2 hours to drive. (the short and unreliable diesel trains can be a bit quicker). That's just far too slow. This fixes that.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 13/07/2026

I have drawn in red, on top of the existing map of UK motorways from Wikipedia, the gap that this tunnel would fill. It would properly connect South Yorkshire to Greater Manchester and Liverpool in a way it currently isn't. And with that, huge economic benefit.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 07/07/2026

In 1998 and 1999, four of Britain's regions and nations voted for devolution. Since then, all have overperformed the rest of the country economically. Even Wales. . Also a bit of a rant about how there's more than one big city in Britain. tomforth.co.uk/agglomeratio...

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 01/05/2026

Includes tables and tables with little graphs in!

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 21/04/2026

Just a data fight. I think that further densification that's already in the pipeline and under construction is a good idea. But we need to use the right data and have that discussion knowing that Manchester's core is already denser than eg. Lille and Hamburg. tomforth.co.uk/densityisdone/

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 17/04/2026

Got you. Yes, census data is very different. Here's a Manchester example. More at tomforth.co.uk/densityisdone/

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 16/04/2026

Using the flawed GHS data gives you their flawed conclusion that Lille has a higher core population density than Manchester and Leeds. Using the better ONS data gives you the better conclusion that Manchester and Leeds have just as high core population density.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 16/04/2026

Let's take the only North European city that Centre for Cities consider in their work so far --- Lille. (Like I said at the time, you make it warm enough that I can sit outside to have two Ricard after football in April in Leeds and I'll live at Marseille density).

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 16/04/2026

It's the same in Leeds, and most other North English cities. If you see a crane on the building, it's not in the GHS data. But even more importantly, if there was a crane within the last five years, it probably isn't either. The density argument is outdated and based on bad data.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 16/04/2026

I was in Manchester last week, I remember it well since Leeds United beat Manchester United in the league at Old Trafford for the first time since 1981. When you take picture like these, know that most of the people who live in these buildings are not counted in the GHS data.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 16/04/2026

British cities have already just about caught up their equivalent in Northern Europe and North America on population density by most definitions of "core". If you use GHS data, you'll find otherwise. But that data is wrong.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 16/04/2026

If we use ONS data instead of GHS to estimate the population of the cores of British large cities (except London) they are up to 50% higher in 2025 and 60% higher today in mid 2026 than what GHS shows for 2025.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 16/04/2026

The Global Human Settlement data isn't safe to use for core densities as Centre for Cities do here. Look at this detailed view of the data for Leeds. It's completely wrong, and if you really look into the methodology, of course it is. tomforth.co.uk/densityisdone/

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 19/03/2026

After three decades of building, Britain's large cities have densities -- both at their cores and overall -- that are comparable to their North European equivalents like Amsterdam, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Cologne, and Copenhagen.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 06/03/2026

GVA/capita within Great Britain, by distance from London (moving 30 miles window). With major (and some non-major) cities shown. I stop at 500 miles because beyond Aberdeen the populations are so low that the data becomes very noisy (sorry Shetland). Northern Ireland had data issues. Sorry.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 06/03/2026

And this GIF should show in a bit more detail what I'm doing and how.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 06/03/2026

Using the ONS small area GVA estimates and my population around a point tool I calculated GVA/capita for every 30 mile wide ring at increasing distance from London. The picture shows where I calculated GVA and population for to get the answer at 100 miles.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 20/02/2026

An important correction to the record. I have returned to the original @annastansbury.bsky.social paper and indeed Northern Ireland IS in there. Also has the extra breakdown of degree types which some have asked after.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 13/02/2026

Fantastic piece in the @FT on London's poor record of building the homes it desperately needs. I added in another major global city* in the UK which seemed to have slipped out of the data during production 😉 giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 07/02/2026

I think I'm reasonable in saying this is well-studied in Britain. This is the write up by @whippletom.bsky.social in The Times for example. A very fair write up, which he wouldn't have done without broad work behind the theory (which I dislike and am sceptical of).

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 09/01/2026

I get the population centre of the North (three regions) to be in a small woods halfway between Keighley and Haworth at Oakworth.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 09/01/2026

Thankfully less bad in the detail.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 03/01/2026

I found this graph easier to get my head around tbh.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 03/01/2026

Sure. So I have this website where I visualise the historic regional economic data. And we see that, while the UK has always had some regional inequality, it was until the 1960s unusually low compared to other countries. The industrial revolution did that. www.tomforth.co.uk/regionalineq...

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 02/01/2026

So I shifted to this style of graph to get my head round thinking about it per capita.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 02/01/2026

"Welcome to Decline" -- still one of my favourite graphs from last year. In the late 1970s, Britain's economic fate very clearly split in two. How much you blame Thatcher will depend on your politics, but her leadership is useful to understand the timing. tomforth.co.uk/welcometodec...

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 01/01/2026

Now with lots more links and graphs and pictures and maps. And some spelling and grammar corrections.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 21/12/2025

And then finally this, which I quite liked. If you're 45 in The North, you were born into decline vs. the USA. If you're 45 in The South, you grew up into decline. But the great news is,... we're all declining together now. [Ed: is this great news?]

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 21/12/2025

Per capita, international comparisons, I got you.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 21/12/2025

I also did other graphs, that I think exaggerate the difference less. Though maybe the exaggerations are closer to what people actually feel. The North and The South of Britain had equal sized economies for at least a decade before Thatcher. Now they are very different sizes.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 21/12/2025

I started trying to reproduce this graph. And I did, except for London where I think the data is very weak. Oh and I used opposite colour schemes to confuse everyone.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 12/12/2025

Includes me exposing the myth that Cambridge somehow earned its way into its leadership position in UK life sciences. It didn't. Leeds was in the lead, and then the Medical Research Council in London picked Cambridge and London as winners because it was their mates.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 30/11/2025

I go through every form of transport I can use to get to work in Leeds and explain why they suck. 1/ Trains. Never on time and always packed. 2/ Buses. Stuck in traffic and slower than walking. 3/ eBike. Amazing, but not good for many. Then say self-driving cars might fix it.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 13/11/2025

Had a pint before I listened to it too.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 13/11/2025

I did a podcast episode seemingly. About the North South divide and its interaction with transport. With @freewheeling.info. So what better way for me to listen to it for the first time than on a slow train back to Leeds from Rotherham. Which is what I'll do right now.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 24/10/2025

Also includes a graph, for I am known for such things, on how Almere, the Netherlands' most successful new city has overtaken Lelystad, the Netherlands' most mocked new city in population since they were built on land reclaimed from the sea.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 24/10/2025

Includes a map I drew (actually traced) by hand (well in Inkscape) and styled myself (actually got Luke to help me). But it's a good map. I tried to get ChatGPT to draw it for me, but it was rubbish. So I did it with humans.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 18/08/2025

Yeah, I'm 100% keeping the "estimate" tag on my data.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 18/08/2025

They have definitely done something odd given that the number of journeys from Leeds to Birmingham New Street is precisely the same as the number of journeys from Birmingham New Street to Leeds. That's consistent across all the data and it can't be the result of using only ticket sale data.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 18/08/2025

Perhaps worth adding that between Liverpool and Birmingham, where the trains are long, electric, more comfortable, cheaper, the ridership is much higher. Over three times as high if we believe the data. Despite Liverpool's substantially smaller population. I think it's the very bad trains to blame.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 18/08/2025

Not much (the split is usually in Derby I think) is the official answer. But as I hint in the piece itself, I am a bit sceptical about the whole dataset and the railway industry in Britain are pretty bad at this type of stuff.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 18/08/2025

This is mostly an excuse to share a worked example of this passenger flows data tool I built. It calculates the rail passengers flows between any two circles of any size in GB, and the GVA and the populations of those circles too. tomforth.co.uk/passengerflo...

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 18/08/2025

Philadelphia and Baltimore are in many ways an even better match of cities, but the US trains are so much faster, cheaper, and better than the British ones that it felt like an unfair comparison. Plus I couldn't get the US ridership data.

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 18/08/2025

Milwaukee & Chicago are a similar sized pair of cities a similar distance apart to Leeds & Manchester. The trains are half as frequent, but frequency doesn't seem to matter nearly as much as the trains being bigger, nicer, and cheaper. So US ridership is over twice as high. tomforth.co.uk/traindata/

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Tom Forth @tomforth.co.uk · 14/08/2025

So Chicago is 9.4m people. That is precisely the same as the Chicago Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) in US statistics and I assume it's the same for all of the US cities.

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