Tony Melville Ridley

CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(born 1933) is a British civil engineer and professor. He worked as a design and site engineer in the US and Britain before becoming chief research officer of the highways and transport department of the

Greater London Council The Greater London Council (GLC) was the top-tier local government administrative body for Greater London from 1965 to 1986. It replaced the earlier London County Council (LCC) which had covered a much smaller area. The GLC was dissolved in 198 ...

. He became director-general of the

Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Executive Tyne and Wear PTE, branded as Nexus, is an executive body of the North East Joint Transport Committee and is best known for owning and operating the Tyne and Wear Metro. It replaced the Tyneside PTE on 1 April 1974. Operations TWPTE is responsi ...

in 1969 where he oversaw the development of plans for the

Tyne and Wear Metro The Tyne and Wear Metro is an overground and underground light rail rapid transit system serving Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead, North Tyneside, South Tyneside, and the City of Sunderland (together forming Tyne and Wear). The network opened in ...

. In 1975 he was appointed managing director of the Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway Corporation. Ridley was later chief executive of

London Underground The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or by its nickname the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent ceremonial counties of England, counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and He ...

and a director of engineering consultancy Halcrow Fox. He was president of the

Institution of Civil Engineers The Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) is an independent professional association for civil engineers and a charitable body in the United Kingdom. Based in London, ICE has over 92,000 members, of whom three-quarters are located in the UK, whi ...

from March 1995 to November 1996.

Early life

Tony Melville Ridley was born in

Castletown, Sunderland Castletown is a suburb of Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, Sunderland in Tyne and Wear, England. A former mining community, the Hylton Colliery was located at the east end of the village; it lies north of the River Wear, and is near to Hylton Castle a ...

in 1933. He attended

Durham School Durham School is an independent boarding and day school in the English public school tradition located in Durham, North East England and was an all-boys institution until 1985, when girls were admitted to the sixth form. The school takes pupils a ...

before graduating with a bachelor of science degree from the University of Newcastle. Ridley's education has also been associated with universities in the United States including

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

, Illinois; the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...

and

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. He was awarded a

doctor of philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common Academic degree, degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields ...

degree for a dissertation on the evaluation of transport investment.

Career

Ridley, a fellow of the

Royal Academy of Engineering The Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) is the United Kingdom's national academy of engineering. The Academy was founded in June 1976 as the Fellowship of Engineering with support from Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who became the first senior ...

, worked in the United States as a foundations design engineer and in the field of

soil mechanics Soil mechanics is a branch of soil physics and applied mechanics that describes the behavior of soils. It differs from fluid mechanics and solid mechanics in the sense that soils consist of a heterogeneous mixture of fluids (usually air and wat ...

. He was a site engineer for the construction of

Bradwell nuclear power station Bradwell nuclear power station is a decommissioned Magnox-design nuclear power station located on the Dengie peninsula at the mouth of the River Blackwater, Essex. In 2019, it was the first nuclear power station in the UK to be placed into long- ...

(commissioned 1962) and a design engineer for the Nuclear Power Group of

Knutsford Knutsford () is a market town in the borough of Cheshire East, in Cheshire, England. Knutsford is south-west of Manchester, north-west of Macclesfield and 12.5 miles (20 km) south-east of Warrington. The population at the 2011 Census wa ...

. Ridley was later chief research officer for the highways and transport department of the

before he was selected, in 1969, to become the director-general of the newly founded

. At the time of his appointment the chairman of

Newcastle City Council Newcastle City Council is the local government authority for the city and metropolitan borough of Newcastle upon Tyne. The council consists of 78 councillors, three for each of the 26 wards in the city. It is currently controlled by the Labou ...

's traffic and transport committee stated "He is a very brainy backroom boy, well versed in the theory of transport. It will be interesting to see how he deals with the management of a very large transport undertaking as he has had no management experience whatever, or experience of financial control. We wish him well, however". When the idea of a Tyneside metro system was first presented to him in 1971, Ridley is famed for saying "You’ll never get away with it". But Ridley oversaw both the development of the metro plans, which linked decaying rail lines using city centre tunnels and a bridge over the River Tyne, and the successful bid for Government funding. Ridley remained in post as director general until 1975 when he was appointed managing director of the Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway Corporation. Ridley left Hong Kong in 1978 and during the 1980s was chief executive officer of

. In the

1986 New Year Honours The New Year Honours 1986 were appointments by most of the Commonwealth realms of Queen Elizabeth II to various orders and honours to reward and highlight good works by citizens of those countries, and honorary ones to citizens of other countrie ...

he was appointed a

Commander of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

. In 1987 Ridley won the Institution Prize of the

Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation The Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation (formerly the Institution of Highways and Transportation) is a UK-based learned society (with worldwide membership) concerned specifically with the planning, design, construction, maintenan ...

. He was appointed a director of the

Chartered Institute of Logistics & Transport The Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT) is a professional body representing the transport and logistics industries worldwide. It is a membership-based organisation with over 30,000 members in over 30 countries. This i ...

in 1991, serving in that role until 1993 and for a later stint between 1999 and 2001. He was a director of Halcrow Fox consulting engineers between 1992 and 2004, of the Major Projects Association between 1995 and 2009 and of the

RAC Foundation The RAC Foundation (The Royal Automobile Club Foundation for Motoring) is a registered charity. It is a transport policy and research organisation that explores the economic, mobility, safety and environmental issues relating to roads and their ...

from 1995 to 2010.

Institution of Civil Engineers

Ridley served as president of the

(ICE) from March 1995 to November 1996. He was appointed to the presidency following the death in office of

Edmund Hambly Dr Edmund Cadbury Hambly (28 September 1942 – 28 March 1995) was a British structural engineer. Edmund Hambly was born in Seer Green, near Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire in 1942.

. Ridley served out the remainder of Hambly's term as well as the usual 12 months in office, becoming the first person to do so since

Herbert Manzoni Sir Herbert John Baptista Manzoni CBE MICE (21 March 1899 – 18 November 1972) was a British civil engineer known for holding the position of City Engineer and Surveyor of Birmingham from 1935 until 1963. This position put him in charge of all ...

in 1961. In June 1995 he called an extraordinary meeting of the ICE Council at its

One Great George Street One Great George Street (OGGS) is a four-domed grade II listed Edwardian building used as a conference and wedding venue just off Parliament Square in Westminster, London, England. The building is the global headquarters of the Institution of C ...

headquarters to discuss the future of the loss-making ''

New Civil Engineer ''New Civil Engineer'' is the monthly magazine for members of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), the UK chartered body that oversees the practice of civil engineering in the UK. First published in May 1972, it is today published by Metropoli ...

'' magazine. The ICE, facing a £4 million overdraft from a renovation of the headquarters, and the slide of the magazine into unprofitability was considering selling the publishing arm. The council met in a closed session for the first time in its history, with the room being cleared of all observers and the secretariat leaving only the voting members. The sale of ''New Civil Engineer'' and the institution's specialist engineering magazines to

Emap Ascential plc, formerly EMAP, is a British business-to-business media business specialising in exhibitions & festivals and information services. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. History Ric ...

was agreed later that month – though the ICE retained control of its book and journal publications.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ridley, Tony 1933 births Living people English civil engineers Presidents of the Institution of Civil Engineers Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering People from Sunderland Engineers from Tyne and Wear People educated at Durham School Alumni of Newcastle University Northwestern University alumni University of California alumni Stanford University alumni 20th-century British engineers