Month: January 2023

25th January 2023

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 320: Get SUVs Off Our Streets: In Conversation with Critical Mass musician Dan Abrahams

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: Dan Abrahams

TOPICS: Musician Dan Abrahams has written a couple of jaunty protest songs, one about oversized cars and another about getting around safely by bike. Both are accompanied by great videos, one of which stars a young girl riding her bike, alone, in Edinburgh before being joined by Critical Mass riders.

LINKS:

Dan Abrahams Music

Bikes for Refugees, Scotland

The Spokesmen, Brussels episode

TRANSCRIPT

Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 320 of the spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Wednesday 25th of January 2023.

David Bernstein 0:27
The spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.tern bicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.

Carlton Reid 1:03
I’m Carlton Reid. And welcome to the 320th episode of the spokesmen podcast in which I chat this episode with Dan Abrahams. Dan is one of those loosely involved with Edinburgh’s critical mass. And he’s also a musician who has recently written a couple of jaunty protest songs that I think will resonate with the audience of a cycling podcast. Both are accompanied by great videos, one of which stars a young girl riding her bike alone in Edinburgh, before being joined by Critical Mass riders.

Carlton Reid 1:44
Dan, thanks for talking to me. You’ve got a new video out today. So let’s talk about that first, I’m sure saying that that’s probably the thing that’s fresh in your mind. So you’ve given quite a few car brands, some plugs? There haven’t been

Carlton Reid 2:02
any idea? Yeah, I was expecting a few more, you know, Aston Martin or whatever. So

Carlton Reid 2:07
why pick on those? I mean,

Dan Abrahams 2:11

mean, I’ve got to be honest.

Dan Abrahams 2:15
I think there’s way too many big cars as I put them, but I think when I when I say that I think people understand what I mean, you know, the kind of fuge city four by fours SUVs, which are just so enormous physically. And also, you know, the engines are so powerful, they have absolutely no place in a city, probably even in the countryside. You know, they’re not that they’re not designed to work on farms. They’ve just been designed as luxury cars. And I think they shouldn’t be allowed. And I think it’s ridiculous that people

Dan Abrahams 2:48
are charging downtown in them. They’re so dangerous, like, you know, kids are literally obscured. You know, when you when you put a kid in front of, you know, the bonnet of one of these cars,

Dan Abrahams 3:03
the person at the front cannot see that kid. They’re so big.

Dan Abrahams 3:08
And this song is just basically to poke fun at them, you know, and, and the choice of the brands is kind of more to do with rhyming than to do with any particularly bad brand. You know, they’re all just as bad as each other. They just want to sell expensive cars. So yeah, the choice of the brands is purely just for alliteration and rhyming.

Carlton Reid 3:33
See, you’re in Edinburgh. Yeah. And I believe Edinburgh. On the TomTom index is basically every single year it winds up being the most congested city.

Dan Abrahams 3:44
Is that right? I didn’t, I didn’t know that.

Carlton Reid 3:47
Yes, Edinburgh is the most congested city in the UK year after year after year. In the TomTom index, I’m TomTom is using you know,

Carlton Reid 3:56
sat nav data, right. So this is not like, you know, people standing up on the side of the street. This is your genuine, you know, computer from computer data, right.

Carlton Reid 4:08
So you’re living in the kind of city where you cars aren’t gonna go very fast anyway. Yeah, the city centre. So yeah, there is no point having these big things and perhaps even big cars are part of the reason why there might be congestion.

Dan Abrahams 4:21
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I am surprised that I’m surprised the TomTom index hasn’t been surpassed by Google Maps index. But yeah, that doesn’t really surprise me. Edinburgh is really bad for congestion.

Dan Abrahams 4:35
I mean, I guess I’m quite surprised that London is not at the top but I guess it’s kind of when you think about Greater London maybe that makes sense. But yeah, in the middle of Edinburgh

Dan Abrahams 4:46
it’s it’s crazy especially like the road which is just off for my road. It’s kind of the route into Edinburgh from the south. And you know, it’s it’s kind of four lanes chock a block because

Dan Abrahams 5:00
You’ve got the two lanes of parked cars on either side. And then yeah it’s just chock a down this major shopping street actually, with people trying to like you know, go about do their local shop. It says chocca with cars and yeah, a lot of big cars.

Carlton Reid 5:15
Hmm. But then you also have a very good and I suppose I don’t you told me was very good the tram system which is relatively new

Dan Abrahams 5:23
the tram system basically takes you currently from the airport to the middle of town. So that’s the main to use a bit like it does serve some areas of Edinburgh but effectively it’s a kind of airport shuttle

Dan Abrahams 5:39
which there is also a bus shuttle to the airport which is faster and cheaper than the tram.

Dan Abrahams 5:45
But the tram extension which probably you’ve heard about, it’s kind of been like an ongoing fiasco is because due to open in the new year, that will be that will be really good because it will go then from the centre of town to the north to the shore through Leith. And when that’s opened, it should be really good and

Dan Abrahams 6:08
should be really good thing for the people in Leith who’ve been suffering the tram works for like

Dan Abrahams 6:13
10 years or something ridiculous.

Dan Abrahams 6:16
And with that, there’s also a bike lane going down. Leith, which at least is like the big region in the north of Edinburgh. And there’s a big bike lane going down there. And it’s got its faults. There’s lampposts in the middle of it. There’s ridiculously tight turns and kind of crashes with pedestrian areas. But still, it’s a bike lane.

Dan Abrahams 6:39
Which is, which is good. So yeah, there’s there’s positive things happening.

Dan Abrahams 6:44
There’s other bike lanes being made. But the pace of change is

Dan Abrahams 6:50
beyond slow. It’s kind of you know, all these parties have been elected in last May, the council, the council, the parties, which had the most votes, were all parties, which said, we want to have more active travel, we want to make infrastructure to enable active travel.

Dan Abrahams 7:08
Yeah, the convener of the transport convener, and the council is saying stuff, like, we’re gonna have a plan by the end of the year. And we’re thinking, you’re gonna have a plan by the end of the year. So if it takes six months to make a plan, and your you know, your term is four years, then you know, what hope do we have to get these things built?

Carlton Reid 7:32
And then you are it is there such a thing as the organiser of critical mass in Edinburgh, because of course, there are no organisers. But I, I really want the people involved in critical mass in Edinburgh put it that way.

Dan Abrahams 7:48
Yes, I’m involved. And I think, actually, you know,

Dan Abrahams 7:53
at the start, we kind of came under some criticism from some people for, like you say, basically organising it, you know, I think critical mass and Edinburgh at the start was,

Dan Abrahams 8:05
well, many years ago, it was like you say it was a kind of spontaneous thing with no official organisers. And it was on the last Friday of every month at, I think 5pm. So pen of peak traffic time, Pete kind of this is going to piss off car drivers time. And when we restarted it two years ago, we decided to make it on a Saturday at 2pm to make it family friendly, to make it a bit less antagonistic against car drivers,

Dan Abrahams 8:37
and became under fire from that there’s some people who saying that’s not critical mass. And, you know, we were doing we started social media stuff. And we were kind of organising it and publicising the route before, to make it accessible to people so that they can join midway, they could know how long it’s gonna take, wherever they’re going to manage it. People are saying that’s not in the spirit of critical mass, it’s meant to be spontaneous. But our view is like,

Dan Abrahams 9:03
we think this is a really effective way of showing the support for cycling, which exists, but it’s kind of silent because people, you know, too scared to get on their bike, or, you know, they’re just the silent majority who wants more bike infrastructure, but, you know, they’re not making a fuss about it.

Carlton Reid 9:21
And isn’t it more almost more of a kiddical mass in that case? Because Kiddical Mass is almost based on that, you know, publicising the route, obviously having lots of kids there, because that that will be the name.

Dan Abrahams 9:36
Yeah, I mean, we’ve done we’ve done a couple of critical masses as well. Now. Yeah, maybe it’s more like that. But I guess the point is that we don’t really

Dan Abrahams 9:44
we’re not really mind what the tradition of Critical Mass is, like, we respect that. There’s been like a long history of like people making great protests, but what we wanted to focus on is to be about making accessible and getting people to come and get him not

Dan Abrahams 10:00
Just the usual white middle aged males to come, but to get like people of all types to come and feel welcome and feel safe,

Dan Abrahams 10:08
you know to do that ride, which is and feel safe to doing that, you know, rather than in

Carlton Reid 10:16
the bike video Yeah. Which is where where I found you from your sister.

Carlton Reid 10:23
Was that shot on a critical mass? Or did you just do that on a different day? Yeah, you did that. Yeah. So

Dan Abrahams 10:33
that’s the kind of like that video is a total sort of smashing together of my music life and my sort of bike activism life. And

Dan Abrahams 10:45
my, my friend,

Dan Abrahams 10:49
who’s a big cycle campaigner, his daughter and their family agreed to take part in the video. And they had this idea that

Dan Abrahams 11:00
it would be her riding around the streets of Edinburgh, and you know, being really scared that it’s not safe to cycle of course, it’s not safe for an 18 year old to cycle by themselves in Edinburgh. But it’s something which people doing in Amsterdam, or in Holland, and then slowly more and more people would join her. So basically what we did was on the day, the day before critical mass, we filmed the kind of solo shots of the girl riding around Edinburgh. Then on the morning of critical mass. I got a few pals together and we shot the scenes were kind of a trickle of other cyclists start to join her. And then yeah, at the start of the critical mass ride we basically did a shout out and said

Dan Abrahams 11:42
Hey, everybody, we will want to you know film some shots please let us know if you don’t want to be in the shots are kind of go to the back of the critical mass. And we’re just going to do a few few shots. So basically, we are the little girl came to the front of the credit commerce and I was on like a Tern bike riding right in front of the critical mass and the cameraman was sitting on the back of the Tern back facing backwards towards the critical mass of

Carlton Reid 12:07
GSD. Is that the type of Tern bike?

Carlton Reid 12:12
it’s the it’s probably the most popular one. It’s like the electric cargo bikes. Electric wave. Yeah, like all sorts of fittings on the back.

Dan Abrahams 12:21
Yeah, it was basically like a kind of bench on the back. And it was like, Orange. Yeah, I don’t know what the name was. Yeah, but really cool bike anyway. And cool organisation called bikes for refugees and Edinburgh. Lent that to me because they had that

Dan Abrahams 12:38
bike.

Dan Abrahams 12:39
And they bikes refugees is an organisation Edinburgh who takes like old disused bikes and fixes them up for refugees to donate to.

Carlton Reid 12:51
So then you spliced it all together?

Dan Abrahams 12:54
That’s fine. Yeah, splice it together. And then part of the narrative was the kind of the girl going to Amsterdam and discovering what cycling could be like, in a kind of ideal world. And

Dan Abrahams 13:10
that obviously was going to be very expensive to to do in film. So I

Dan Abrahams 13:18
got an animator to kind of realise those sections.

Carlton Reid 13:23
Because that means the same animator, presumably who’s done the car. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Carlton Reid 13:30
And then

Carlton Reid 13:32
what do you do with the films apart from putting on YouTube? Because I’ve seen them on what how do you physically promote them? How do you get them out there?

Dan Abrahams 13:40
It’s a great question.

Dan Abrahams 13:44
I am just doing my best to get them seen by as many people as possible. And for me, that’s been social media and

Dan Abrahams 13:55
you know, kind of sending them round bicycle organisations hoping that they might share them cycling UK

Dan Abrahams 14:03
shared our streets video. And

Dan Abrahams 14:07
I employed a PR company to help me with the streets video, but I’m afraid to say they didn’t have much success, for whatever reason. But I really want

Dan Abrahams 14:19
you know, more than the usual, like cycling campaigning group to see them, you know, the idea is that they can have catchy pop songs, and people might come across them who are not into cycling, and they might actually get hooked by the music first, and then then the message kind of hit afterwards, you know?

Carlton Reid 14:41
Yes. And then tell me about your music. So how are you?

Carlton Reid 14:49
How are you? You said you’re, you’re merging the two lives together there. But tell me about your music part of your or your life there. Yeah.

Dan Abrahams 14:58
So I mean, you mean more

Dan Abrahams 15:00
Generally or specifically for the songs,

Carlton Reid 15:03
generally so so so we’ll just Yeah. The second part. So talk about the music part. So

Dan Abrahams 15:12
I mean, I was an engineer for about 10 years and

Dan Abrahams 15:18
working for a company who was doing kind of sustainable technology stuff. So it was like we worked on a wind turbine, and then we’re working on some hybrid vehicles and

Dan Abrahams 15:27
the music was always on the side. And then this year, for many reasons, I decided to kind of take the plunge and do music. And my music in Edinburgh is a mixture of stuff apart from the cycling songs, which is kind of like a kind of one off special thing. I play in folk bands. So I have a group called Dowally who we make, we make music

Dan Abrahams 15:56
in the kind of traditional Celtic vein, but we were kind of more progressive, modern, kind of feel. And we do a lot of stuff for archive films. I also have a band called Wayward Jane who play more like old time Americana music of banjo and fiddle and double bass. And then I also play jazz soul have a band called the Foo Birds who do that kind of thing. So it’s, it’s a real mix of stuff. And the cycling songs is kind of

Dan Abrahams 16:26
I knew that my bands wouldn’t probably be into that. So I kind of decided to do that as, as myself as Dan, Abrahams, which is kind of a first for me.

Carlton Reid 16:36
Now, you’re not from Edinburgh?

Dan Abrahams 16:37
No, I’m from originally from Sheffield. Yeah. Yes. Yes.

Carlton Reid 16:41
So how can you remember was it through that job that you had described before with uni?

Dan Abrahams 16:45
And then the job? Yeah. Alright. Okay. Yeah.

Carlton Reid 16:48
Because the the video the streets video?

Carlton Reid 16:51
Yes, it’s very Edinburgh based. But it can be any city that that it’s not, it hasn’t. It’s not like grounding it completely. Only in Edinburgh. Is it?

Dan Abrahams 17:01
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think that’s the idea that anyone could could could feel like, you know, that looks like my city totally unsafe to cycling. And, you know, wouldn’t it be amazing if we could all you know, cycle mass together and, and live with less cars. And that that was the idea behind the section right at the end of the video, where you basically see critical masses from right around the world, which is the idea was to kind of zoom out and be like, this is a worldwide movement. You know, there’s stuff going on right around the world, in Africa, in South America. And I didn’t manage to get any footage in Asia. And for now, it’s not true. There was some in Nepal. And, and, and Europe as well. So.

Dan Abrahams 17:48
So yeah, that was yeah, I hoped I hoped. I think, I think that was that was cool. Because I think, you know, it kind of it spoke to people, you know, right across the globe, which was really nice.

Carlton Reid 18:01
If you go back to, you mentioned that there was a bit of conflict there between how you’re organising your critical mass, and how traditionally, it’s organised, you know, last Friday of the month, yeah.

Carlton Reid 18:16
Bang on, yeah, commute time, which is kind of, you know, the raison d’etre. But if you’re doing it when you’re doing it, that doesn’t stop somebody else doing it at the quotation marks here the traditional time. So could you have two critical masses? In Edinburgh?

Dan Abrahams 18:33
I mean, you probably could, but I mean, do you know

Dan Abrahams 18:39
getting these things organised this? You know, it takes the we’ve got quite a lot of people involved, you know, designing the flyers, printing the flyers, putting them up and doing social media, you know, organising stewards first aid. You know, we don’t sort of like, we don’t take it lightly to sort of do things well and safely. So

Dan Abrahams 19:03
if people were up for organising your Friday one, they’d be welcome to and, but, you know, I guess they need to find the people to

Dan Abrahams 19:12
do that.

Dan Abrahams 19:14
And I guess there’s a good thing about consistency is like people know that it’s going to be at that time in that place. They know that they can always turn up and how many really getting their done. We’re getting about 250 a month.

Carlton Reid 19:27
That’s really good.

Dan Abrahams 19:28
I think it’s good. Yeah, I mean, we kind of our benchmark is Brussels, just because

Dan Abrahams 19:35
right at the start we were in touch with some of the people involved in critical mass Brussels and they gave us some tips and advice, and they’re getting 1000s of people at their ride. So you know, when you compare yourself to that, then 250 Doesn’t seem amazing, but when you’re on the road, it feels great, you know?

Dan Abrahams 19:54
Huh, because I mean, that comes across in the video how it’s like it’s liberating to be on it

Dan Abrahams 20:00
And people say that, you know, exactly people say that when they’re on the ride, it’s like, it’s like, wow, this is what our roads could be like, This feels amazing to be on my road, because it’s my road as well as the car drivers roads, but, but I feel totally safe, you know, and we’re, we’re playing music and loudspeakers, you’re chatting to people, you know, meeting new people, there’s people who’ve borrowed bikes to come on the ride, and they’ve come off the ride. Having like, three offers of bikes, like they, you know, they go on the ride, and someone saying, I had to borrow a bike to go home, I don’t have a bicycle. By the end of the ride. Multiple people have said, I’ve got a spare bike, you can have it, you know, so it’s like, I know, there’s a big cycling community on like Twitter and stuff, but it’s actually great to have the cycling community meet once a month in person, and, you know, chat to each other.

Carlton Reid 20:52
There is I mean, Edinburgh is one of those cities with just that does have a very active cycle campaign.

Carlton Reid 21:02
Outfit team organisation, one of you and I call it your spokes.

Dan Abrahams 21:05
it does many, many. Yeah, it does a fantastic. Yeah.

Carlton Reid 21:10
So is there any meshing there between you and spokes?

Dan Abrahams 21:14
There is, I mean, spokes are great, they always share. Like, they always like, kind of promote our rides, and they sometimes come at the start of the ride to kind of sell their maps, they have these amazing maps of like, cycling routes, and Edinburgh.

Dan Abrahams 21:33
And also, you know, I think it’s just,

Dan Abrahams 21:36
there’s a really good synergy between organisations, like spokes, who do the really hard, laborious work of like going to council meetings to give deputations and, you know, meeting with counsellors and doing that kind of behind the scenes work that has a good synergy with critical mass, which is the kind of like,

Dan Abrahams 22:00
let’s be on the street, having a physical presence, you know, having showing the counsellors that look, what are the cyclists who want to be riding on the roads, if only it was safe to do so.

Dan Abrahams 22:12
In your face? Yeah. minor thing.

Carlton Reid 22:16
So tell me about your any future projects. And that way, you’re going to merge these two, you know, the Dan Abrahams two worlds. So you’ve got big car out today?

Dan Abrahams 22:27
Yes, big streets was three months ago. So

Dan Abrahams 22:32
ideas for projects, I’m sad to say that, that’s, that’s the kind of

Dan Abrahams 22:40
the kind of that’s the kind of cycling songs for the moment.

Dan Abrahams 22:46
I’ve had some people get in touch saying that they’d be interested in collaborating to do some more cycling songs. So definitely, that’s possible in the future, but actually, I’m going to be releasing some more sort of Dan Abrahams and his emotions songs. So less cycling more sort of,

Dan Abrahams 23:07
you know,

Dan Abrahams 23:09
just about, you know,

Dan Abrahams 23:12
love life and that kind of thing. So, maybe less interesting for the cycling community. But, but, you know,

Dan Abrahams 23:21
hopefully, people will like that music too.

Carlton Reid 23:24
Okay. And tell us about how you got into cycling, because your sister won’t mention her full back.

Carlton Reid 23:34
Now. I’m just thinking when I was speaking to your sister, and

Carlton Reid 23:38
then she was in my Forbes.com piece she didn’t want her second name. Okay. But of course,

Carlton Reid 23:45
it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realise I wonder what her second name might be.

Carlton Reid 23:52
But she’s clearly into cycling, you’re into cycling. So how come that the Abraham’s family is into cycling?

Dan Abrahams 23:58
Yeah, it’s interesting. I mean, my

Dan Abrahams 24:02
when I said into cycling, I don’t actually do cycling for leisure. Like I don’t go occasionally go out for for kind of bike rides have fun, but for me, like bike cycling, is just how I get around, you know, and my interest in cycling is about

Dan Abrahams 24:18
you know, protesting for people to be able to use the bike as their means of getting from A to B, you know, a cycle everywhere cycle to my to I cycle to gigs on my bike, or wherever on my bike. Whereas my sister and my dad, cycling is like, it’s a sport. It’s about on the weekend going out with the group and how fast are they going? And have they got the latest gear and stuff?

Dan Abrahams 24:43
So it’s it kind of bothers him obviously, my sister’s into like, the campaigning side of it too. But I think it was it was kind of just chance the we all kind of got into it. I guess. We were brought up me and my sister you know

Dan Abrahams 25:00
Thinking about, you know, social and environmental issues in the world. And I think

Dan Abrahams 25:09
just sort of both separately

Dan Abrahams 25:12
came to the understanding that,

Dan Abrahams 25:16
you know, cycling is just such an easy solution to so many problems in the world, like it says, in our streets, song at the end, you know, pollution, hurt people’s health, mental health, congestion, climate change,

Dan Abrahams 25:36
air pollution, you know, tyre pollution, all these issues become easier when more people are cycling. And

Dan Abrahams 25:49
I’ve lost track of what was gonna say,

Carlton Reid 25:53
you kind of on your, on your family and how you Cycling is a good solution.

Dan Abrahams 25:57
Yeah, you know, I was, you know, I was working in a in a tech company for 10 years, you know, on kind of this like solutions like with for reducing co2.

Dan Abrahams 26:08
But I think at the end, I was really quite frustrated that the technology was taking so long to to mature and get commercialised. But at the same time, all these sort of just absolutely. Basic solutions, which just about political will, they’re not about technology

Dan Abrahams 26:27
being so slow to kind of be become realised.

Dan Abrahams 26:33
Apart from in Holland. So, yeah, and I think I think I think, you know, masochistic, you know, it’s the same kind of thing in Brussels, although I think they’re further ahead than in Edinburgh.

Dan Abrahams 26:47
So, I think so yeah, she kind of combines her sport, sporty cycling with the kind of, you know, getting, you know, the kind of community and campaigning cycling thing. Whereas for me, it’s kind of, I don’t I don’t have any lycra or anything like that.

Carlton Reid 27:05
Thanks to Dan Abrahams there. By the way, Dan’s sister, Alison, was featured in the Brussels episode back in November last year. Thanks for listening to Episode 320 of the spokesmen podcast brought to you in association with turn bicycles. dance videos are embedded on the shownotes at the-spokesmen.com. The next two episodes will be with inspirational women in business. But meanwhile, get out there and ride

2nd January 2023

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 318: Chris Boardman explains Active Travel England’s Capability Fund

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: Chris Boardman

TOPICS: Active Travel England‘s new £32.9m Capability Fund

TRANSCRIPT:

Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 318 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Monday 2nd of January 2023.

David Bernstein 0:27
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern Bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e bikes for every type of rider whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.

Carlton Reid 1:02
Happy New Year. I’m Carlton Reid and welcome to another year of the Spokesmen podcast, which has been coming to you non-stop since 2006. Amazingly, it’s now 2023 and on the first working day after the festive break there’s this here announcement about a new 39 million pound fund that plans to empower local communities to create people-friendly environments through design. Active Travel England’s new Capability Fund will, the words of the press release, “create a national network of experts to work with communities, enhance high streets and make regional roads safer for everyone.” Working with the willing, Active Travel England will be doing what urban designer Brian Deegan did so well in Greater Manchester and that’s engaging with people, asking them not whether they wanted to limit car use but what they wanted their streets to look like and how they wanted them to function. Brian is the Director of Inspections at Active Travel England and I teased Active Travel Commissioner Chris Boardman over whether the Capability Fund was a sort of cloning exercise, replicating Brian’s expertise in lots of local authorities … but first I asked Chris to explain a little bit about the fund and the announcement.

Chris Boardman 2:45
The emphasis is a lot less on encouraging people and more on enabling them. And then when you start digging into what that means some of its political some of its psychological. But a lot of it is capability behind the scenes. So the point of this and it sounds rather melodramatic, but it’s true: we need to build an army of engineers and local officers who are capable of delivering to a consistently high standard across a whole country. And this fund is part of starting that. So it’s to enable local authorities to make active travel even higher value than it already is by by creating in-house capability. So reduce their dependency on consultancies. And it’s the start of several large announcements this year to get people ready. So they’ve got a pipeline of schemes that we can start delivering consistently as we go forward. So active travel is it will become a mainstream part of transport.

Carlton Reid 3:49
You’re basically cloning Brian Deegan. So you’re creating lots of Brian-Deegan-type people in local authorities, is that kind of is that the template?

Chris Boardman 4:03
Yeah, well, Brian’s, obviously our director of inspection, and he’s worked for decades in this area and knows that both politically, and technically we’d right down to how high is a curb what is required to enable people within the laws of this country to get around easily under their own steam and feel safe doing it. So that’s why we we put them in that position. Now we need people like that in every council across the country, or every council that wants to, you know, they think the important bit that we’re also injecting here is choice. That’s what this is about giving people a genuine choice in how they travel, because one of those choices is underrepresented. And we need skilled people who can navigate the system. Now that the reason I said engineers and local officers or officials is because it’s different. It needs to be cost done for each local authority, what it is that they’re lacking some engineers but the the knowledge amongst local councillors on how to do it and how to how to conduct an effective consultation that takes people with you doesn’t exist. So the training is in a different space. Whereas somewhere else, they’ve got great political will, and they’re frustrated that they officers aren’t capable of delivering. So that that comes from years and years of knowledge. And over the next, while by the spring, we hope that we’ll have a package of training for all authorities to help them develop their capabilities,

Carlton Reid 5:41
is that the way it started? £39.2 million is that is that where the money is going on things like training up to make these mini like, Brian Deegans. And it’s like, you know, when you when you put money down for a brand new cycleway or new bus route, or, you know, a widening pavements, whatever, that’s capital, that comes out of one fund. But when you actually want to do stuff with council officers, that obviously comes out of a different pot, revenue. So is that what this is for, to fill in those gaps?

Chris Boardman 6:15
To a large degree, yeah. And the reason it’s, it’s slightly more opaque than that is because it needs to be customised. But ostensibly, is to create a national machine that produces a pipeline of high quality schemes across the country, and then need to be consistent across the country. So wherever you are, you are, you see, you see a sign with with a bike on it, or somebody walking and you know, you’re going to have a good experience. So this scheme is about creating that capability within all the local authorities who want to do it. And obviously, that’s a rapidly growing number for, I mean, for a lot of people because they simply can’t afford the status quo, or realising rather, that we can’t afford the status quo. So when people go, there’s, you know, there’s hundreds of millions for active travel, it doesn’t just design itself, that capability isn’t the map consistency is what we need, probably more than the quantum of cash, we, we actually need the consistency and the ability to design and deliver when cash is available.

Carlton Reid 7:20
So criticisms potentially, could be I’m not this scheme in particular, but just, you know, people want infrastructure first. So you kind of you’ve kind of got people who just say, Look, we just want infrastructure, forget anything that you know, is ancillary to that just give us infrastructure. And then the other criticism from from a totally different point of view will be these kinds of things aren’t a nanny status? And why do we need people to tell us how to cycle how to wear all these kinds of things? So so how do you, how do you square those two circles?

Chris Boardman 7:53
Well, the environment is, is everything, you know, we can dance around, we can look at all the stats about you know, we know that we’re inactive and costly health service a billion pounds a year and all of that. But the only thing the reason we’re gonna get on a bike or, or walk to school every day is it’s the easiest choice. And it feels safe, simple as that. And so did the job of active travel endurance is to strip away the noise and go, but what really makes a difference. And it’s safe space. Number one is safe, convenient routes, where I want to go continuously. And that’s what we have to focus on. Once that is there, then you can start giving people the tools to use that space. So by kind of schemes and really inject into bike training, bikeability training, specifically concentrated in the areas where you’ve created safe space. So the layers of things that are needed. But I’m tempted to use a metaphor of baking a cake really you need, don’t you need all the ingredients and you need them in the right proportions, and you need them added in the right order. You know, otherwise you just end up with with stuff that’s inedible or unusable.

Carlton Reid 9:04
Now, am I right to be thinking that this is not new money? So this isn’t a government announcement of this is a brand new pile of 39 million pounds, a big pile of cash, new, this is coming out of your existing budget and you’re just apportioning it?

Chris Boardman 9:20
Yeah, there’s no you know, there’s no disguising the fact that last year is the politics last year meant that things got slow down, you know, we had, we had three prime ministers in a matter of months, and behind them as a team of people and behind them as another team of people. So all of that changes in the decision making is, is slowed down. So we’re several months behind where we want it to be. But we’re now very much on the move. There’s been some great activity in the last few weeks. And we’re finally getting out a lot of the stuff that we wanted to do in active travel, I’m pleased to say is there very highly valued in inside the Department for Transport. And politically, there’s really good support for it now as well. So, as I said, I hope this this will be the first of several announcements over the next few months. This is the one that enables people to use and capitalise on everything that comes next. But no, it’s not new money. It’s part of the £2 billion dedicated funding that was promised in 2020. And now we’re actually in a position to start to, to utilise it and make sure it’s spent properly. I mean, to set up an entire business, which was Active Travel England to deliver that and make sure it is spent properly. It’s something that’s incredibly technical ask anybody who’s who started a business. So we’re well into recruitment, we’ve had to put officers in place, those are now open all of the mechanics of creating first a national machine that then can drive the regional machines. So it’s, it’s quite exciting, actually. And exhausting. I think it’s, it’s taken a long time to get here. But at last, we’re ready to actually start doing the job at pace. And consistently.

Carlton Reid 11:11
And how hands off or potentially even hands on is the DfT? How much leeway do you have, Chris?

Chris Boardman 11:18
DfT is an essential partner. I mean, we’re an arm’s length body, we choose how we deliver government’s policy, how we how we get this mission done, that’s down to us. But we have to interact with buses and trams and trains and national highways and department for health, even over a DCMS, you know, and my other role in Sport England, they’re also a statutory consultee in the planning system. So there’s so many partnerships, you we have autonomy in how we deliver the mission, but we have to work really closely with other people, if we, if we want to do it well, and forming those relationships is well underway. Now. I’m really quite excited and enthused, actually by the level of enthusiasm and desire to see change that we’ve encountered.

Carlton Reid 12:09
Is any of that to do with Jesse Norman? Or is there something that it doesn’t matter who the individual is you think this is baked in now?

Chris Boardman 12:17
I think it’s essential who the people are individuals are critical. I mean, if if I could have walked into parliament, and looked into into the rows of seats and said, right, pick a minister, then then Jesse Norman would have been it. We have we’ve known each other for several years. He understands politics very well, obviously, he’s done a considerable stint at Treasury, which is very helpful. And he actively asked for the active travel brief. And that’s really important that that you get somebody who’s chosen to be here who wants wants to make a difference. So it’s quite exciting. We’re really, really looking forward to working with him closely over the next year.

Carlton Reid 13:03
Potentially, this administration, as you said before, the we’ve had many changes within even this administration, but but going forward, every electoral cycles, you might have a different administration. So the building blocks you’ve put in place here, presumably, you considered would survive any change of administration, perhaps even be strengthened in a future administration?

Chris Boardman 13:33
Well, not wishing to, to sidestep your question. This, this should go beyond politics. This is for any administration, who purports to follow the evidence, until want to do the thing for a community, then this is where you end up. You know, I mentioned earlier that people are doing this because they’ve realised they can’t afford not to. Well, that’s where we started in Greater Manchester four years ago. What’s it cost you to travel as you are now? Can you afford it? And I think there’s been a turnover of people that we’ve worked with from officers to politicians, in the last few months, often have come at this fresh and gone ‘why are we doing this’? And then they realise, well, I have to, I’ve got climate commitments that we absolutely have to meet. We’ve got a health service that is, is being well, severely burdened, shall we say, by by inactivity, you know, one in six deaths in the UK is down to inactivity, and I mentioned a billion pounds and it costs nearly 8 billion pounds to the economy. You look at all of those, and then you follow the thread and you realise that active travel is a huge part of the solution. It’s the transport mode that punches above its weight. It’s a it’s a quiet but powerful industry that is growing, not necessarily because people think ‘I love cycling’, you might absolutely have nothing to do with cycling but they realise that there’s never been a more important time in history to allow people to get around under their own steam. So our supporters have amassed for different reasons. But they all end up in the same space because it’s the cheapest, quickest, most logical answer. So I would expect, fully expect and I’m highly confident that the active travel agenda will just get stronger and stronger and stronger.

Carlton Reid 15:27
I’ll stop Chris there for a quick message from this show sponsor from my colleague, David.

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Carlton Reid 16:44
Thanks, David. And we are back with Chris Boardman. Do you think your your time obviously in Manchester will cover this? There’s the answer to this. But do you think devolution helps with this going forward so that nine times out of the whole of of of the Tyneside region is going to have a Manchester style administration? So do you think those kind of localised regionalized administrations are going to be much more powerful going forward for for what you would like to see happen?

Chris Boardman 17:25
Yeah, well, the macro and micro are, I mean, this is this is huge change delivered at a very, very local level, you know, hyper local, this is me going out the front door to go to the shops, or to go to the train on the tram station. And that’s where the change happens. And then you scale that up. Now, the time in Greater Manchester, was invaluable. And it made me realise that local councillors are in charge of climate change, because you realise that if there’s a local councillor, and he’s got a majority of for somebody screaming in his face about removing the car parking space, and his job is to represent that individual who he knows and has known all his life, then if they don’t change, well, you scale that up and nothing changes. Therefore, you you know, climate change is severely impacted and health and all the other things that I mentioned. So we need to give that local councillor what they need to be able to go, Well, we’re going to remove that car parking space, but this is why it’s good for you. This is how I’m going to get you or hopefully this is this the method I’m going to use. So we arrive in the same solution, we both want the same thing. So it’s, you need to mesh the two things together. And devolution can very much be a part of that, I think, I think it needs to be to go further at the moment. I mean, that local politicians need the powers to do interact with the strategic road network. There’s work in the pipeline, as we know about pavement, parking all of these things. But devolution can very much be a part of it. And I was in Newcastle a few months ago and had a look around. And I saw the work that had been done to stitch bits and pieces together to make a cohesive network and, and the desire that was there. But without that local desire. It doesn’t happen. And just to add on. I mean, that’s one of the reasons that I mentioned earlier. This is about choice. If there’s a local authority or an entire region that has no interest in increasing active travel, then good luck to them. And we will not be forcing anybody to work, but we won’t. We won’t do things badly. So we will learn to use the overused cliche, we will work with the willing and create examples at such a scale that they become on a global and that’s already happening.

Carlton Reid 19:58
And these examples that you have to create via local authorities will come mainly from Do you think existing officers being trained up? Or do you envisage councils maybe actually creating jobs that take this on board,

Chris Boardman 20:16
It should report our support is proportionate and targeted, and there’ll be more on this and then in the next few months, but a local authority who has no, no trained officers doesn’t know how to conduct consultations, but is rocket keen to do it, then we’ll help them with training, excuse me. And with schemes that they can win up from where they’re at, at the moment, and we’ll try to help them grow as fast as possible. For those that are already, excuse me, like Greater Manchester to Birmingham, and the West Midlands in particular, who are already on the journey and already have people in place, I have the capability to deliver and I’ve learned a lot of the lessons, we’ll both will just say, hey, crack on, you know, the standards will check you meeting those standards, but crack on, and tell us what you need. Because we have to do it. If we’re going to deliver government’s targets of 50% of all journeys, cycled, or walked by by 2030, then we’re going to have to work with those that are already capable intensively, and we’re going to have to work with concentrations of people are, but that doesn’t mean that other areas that are just turning to this will get left behind, they absolutely won’t.

Carlton Reid 21:35
Because in the press release, it says the fund could see up to 1300 new green jobs created across England. So where are those jobs coming from?

Chris Boardman 21:44
Well, you have to design, you have to design and you have to consult all of those, all of that capability, which is why it’s called Capability Fund is generally people, you know, you, you need people to be able to go and speak to local communities and run a really effective consultations that help the people that design the network that they want. So we have to have a network of networks and a machine to create that. And this is a very personal thing, changing how people travel in region and giving them real choices, the ones that they that will actually change behaviour. And all of that is people. So I think that’s an underestimation. And that’s, you know that that’s specifically to dob with this fund and how it can be used. And it says up to because again, it’s a choice. And it’s quite possible, that that’s where all of this, this, this particular fund will go on engaging people officers capable of conducting all those tasks.

Carlton Reid 22:52
So urban planning courses and schools and what have you 20 years ago, wouldn’t have had a great deal of active travel in there wouldn’t probably even much bus stuff either, it would have been pretty much predicated on cars, cars, cars, cars, that presumably has changed over the last 20 years. And then the throughput of trained people we’re gonna get out of these courses and be much, much more aware of, of mode other than the car. Is that something that you’re seeing that you’re seeing that the old guard are falling away, and you have a new thrusting bunch of millennials perhaps, who are now wanting to change the world in the way that they’re the people who before changed the world, but for cars, and now changing the world but not for cars?

Chris Boardman 23:43
I think we’re we’re, we’re actually we are and have been on the same side. You have to bear with me with this one. What we haven’t realised it. And I think that’s that’s a key difference that certainly the learning in Greater Manchester, if if you say do you want to ride a bicycle? People say no. But do you want a place that’s quiet and you’d like to sit? And you can you can let your kids walk around on their own and or go to school? Yeah, I’d like one of those things. Would you like to save money by having one less car in the household? Not not driving, but but one less car? Yes. That’d be great. What would you need for that to happen? Well, I’d have to be sure the kids were safe. Okay. What would that look like? Well, you know, there’s no real fast cars everywhere. So lower speed limits where you live? Yeah. Yeah. And they’d have to get across the main roads. So you mean like crossings or well lit underpasses? Yeah. Yeah, those things. Okay. So you mean this? So, so that’s the key, I think, for me, is that we start to talk about the outcomes of all of this, we start to talk about what does this actually give me that I value in a language that I choose so that it could be money saved? It could be time saved, it could be easier life, it could be a better place to live, it could be something for my kids. I mean, you probably saw the piece on Kesgrave High School that we did a few months ago, I was just can’t believe was embarrassed the fact that we didn’t know about this place, you know, nine, eight to 900 kids every day 61% ride to school and we went, that’s got to be a mistake and to go to see it. If you actually talk about kids getting to school and being able to avoid bullying, because they don’t have to be kettled, on a bus after school, all of the benefits that this can bring, if you speak to people about that, then suddenly you’ve got common ground. And I think that’s absolutely critical here that we actually want the same thing. And we know that by the fact that when we introduce high quality cycling, and walking facilities in an area, give it a couple of years, and people would fight you tooth and nail if you wanted to take it away. So we know the majority want the same thing, just not everybody has realised it and doesn’t see it in the same way. So it’s it’s the way that we’re going. And there’s examples all over the world, maybe you’ll be very familiar with Paris, you know, which is, which is one of my favourite examples, because it’s not the most people travelling actively, but it’s the one that’s changing fastest. And it’s a it’s a society that’s close to ours. And seeing what’s happening there. And they, they play to another part of human nature, which is, which is positive peer pressure, really, it’s just a case of here’s somebody doing something and I’m feeling a little bit uncomfortable not doing it well, the more of those examples that we can create in our country, the better.

Carlton Reid 26:46
Going back, I mean, absolutely, Paris’s is kind of poster child for that. But going back to Kesgrave, Ipswich, my theory on that and it is just a theory out you can’t can’t pin this down was the United States Air Force dropped 2000 bicycles on that community in in the Second World War. And as far as I can tell it, it was the only United States Air Force or any military base that that just dropped so many bicycles out at one time. That must have, I posit, created a community of people riding around the the air force base, they must have then gone to the local pubs, but and that must have created a community of cyclists. And that’s why in the 1960s, the local authority decided to put those those those cycleways in for that particular school when it was when it was expanded. So just putting bicycles getting getting people with bicycles, I mean, maybe that’s even why by Paris, you know, with the Velib scheme, you get more people on bicycles, you almost don’t need many of the other things is just get people on bicycles?

Chris Boardman 28:00
Well, that would be true if you could introduce 1930s to 1960s levels of traffic at the same time, because that that, that that theory has just missed the fact that that that they started with much quieter and safer space. And I think if you dropped 2000 bicycles, now, you wouldn’t have much of an impact because people still wouldn’t feel safe, and they still wouldn’t want to go on a road with cars that are travelling fast around. So I think that’s the difference. I mean, the story of Kesgrave is definitely you know, worth exploring and local farmers. And when they sold the land. They they one of the stipulations was now to keep the network in place and build around it, not over it. And I think I’d have you ever been there?

Carlton Reid 28:46
Yes.

Chris Boardman 28:48
I mean, you’ll see it’s not perfect by any means. And it’s not shy. And there’s lots of shared use and all the things are not supposed to work. But it works because the core of it is there. It’s joined up, and it deals

Carlton Reid 29:00
Yeah, it’s a network. I think the word you said there before was that was the key there. It wasn’t isn’t just two or three cycleways beside a road. It’s a quite a dense network of very, very different kinds of facilities.

Chris Boardman 29:13
Yeah, and the underpass to get to the school itself is just horrible. The I guess 1980s on the past that, you know, volumes of people have made it usable, you know, the safety numbers, natural security,

Carlton Reid 29:27
and that was that was built in something like 1964, 65. So it’s because very early. Yeah, for what they were doing. Yeah.

Chris Boardman 29:35
And it’s, it’s horrible, but it functions. And I think that’s key. I mean, there’s a lot of lessons to be learned from that area. I was almost relieved to find that when we spread out I went on a tour down there for a full day and we wrote miles around the whole area that move away from that. That probably what is it 10 square kilometres and it’s very normal. Still very car dominated. And it was almost a relief, to be honest. But they’ve inherited something and then built on it, and made it work for them. But it’s just a brilliant test case of what happens when you give people what they need. And it’s great to have an example that’s not in London.

Carlton Reid 30:19
Hmm. What have I was Ipswich? About 50 miles out 45 miles out from London? Yeah.

Chris Boardman 30:25
Pretty easy train journey.

Carlton Reid 30:27
Mm hmm. Yeah, very much. So. Right. So this this announcement on second of January, do you think it’s technicall press will pick up on this rather than mainstream? What do you think is gonna happen with the announcement?

Chris Boardman 30:46
I don’t expect and don’t require it to be to be hugely newsworthy. I mean, it’s, it’s the start is to get ready for a sustained big push that’s coming throughout the year. And I think there’s bigger stories in the pipeline. So this is just a case of, we’re letting people know that there’s 32 million pounds worth of funding now available for local councils and local authorities to start getting ready to deliver a network of networks.

Carlton Reid 31:16
So people, I’m talking about people here as in the general population, can expect to be consulted. And and taken on board by Brian Deegan clones and asked what they want, which was what you were saying before about, you know, do you want this and it turns out to be that’s what they actually want. So we can expect much more localised planning on the ground, in certain areas?

Chris Boardman 31:45
I’m not quite sure that where the question was there, I think consultation is a big part of it, and the capability to run and good consultation. And harping back to Greater Manchester again, the best thing that we did that was give the pen to the people who lived there and said, Okay, first of all, you don’t have to draw anything, when you don’t have to do anything. But if you did, where would you go? And what’s in your way? And what would you do about that, and we helped them to design something that worked for them around their shops and local communities in places where they knew that they, and that ownership was absolutely everything. And that’s, that’s been witnessed across the country has been really effective when you give people a choice. And I mean, a genuine choice, including the choice to do nothing, you end up getting to the same space. But the choice is really important when you’re talking about people’s homes and their communities. And this one will be heavily weighted towards making sure that capability is there. And the training to be able to do that consistently.

Carlton Reid 32:51
That you talked about people’s homes, their residential road. There’s bete noire, I’m sure you come across it all the time in media interviews, when you get asked about this, but LTN low traffic neighbourhoods is absolutely seems to be the the most hated thing from from from, from some commentators, you know, that’s taken some sort of freedom away from them. But LTNs have got this reputation of inequity, in that you’re in effect, giving facilities to middle class people. And if you’re forcing the traffic, the motorised traffic away from residential streets, and people’s houses go up in value, etc, etc. But then you’re actually forcing the motor traffic to go on the boundary roads, which then makes it people live on those boundary roads, and they tend to be poor people live on those boundary roads. So displacement, how do you get around the fact that any measures to make it nicer for people to walk and cycle can actually make it worse for other people? Because it increases traffic on their roads, much traffic on their roads.

Chris Boardman 34:06
There’s, there’s no, there’s no solution. And God knows we’d all love one. There is no solution that says we’re going to change how we use our streets that is pain-free. And that’s why it takes political will. And that’s why political will is one of the things that we require. We know as we mentioned earlier, and you’ll be well aware of with the likes of Waltham Forest, is that once you’ve pushed through that for two years, if it’s a well designed scheme, or well considered, then people prefer it. And we know that 70% of the stuff that was done during COVID and attracted a lot of those headlines has been made permanent because people wanted to keep it and that hasn’t made headlines, the fact that actuallt Low Traffic Neighbourhoods or whatever you actually want to call them, it’s just local traffic management really, and traffic being managed for the type of roads that it is where it had been allowed to be repurposed for moving traffic is actually it’s a very sensible and, and just a standard thing to do. I mean, there’s lots of lessons I think to be learned. I’m not sure packaging them up into one big thing that’s visible, and it’s change all at once is necessarily the way to go. I think it can be done in stages. Rambling a bit here, but I think LTNs are, if you actually describe the content I mentioned earlier, the outcomes there most people agree, yes, I want that. Then there’s going to have to be, there’s going to have to be some compromise, if you want to induce to introduce choice back into society. And I think when you talk about choice of kids travelling to school parents with prams, this disabled, don’t feel that they have to travel in a vehicle all the time, because actually, the pavements work for them, they’re clear, the crossings are all in the right places, then all of those things people want, we need to make sure that this is portrayed as the this is what it actually gives you. This isn’t taking away, it’s actually given people something back that they’ve lost.

Carlton Reid 36:23
Can society, can British society, create this, this nirvana of people walking, cycling, taking the bus, all these different modes? Doing that more? Can you create that and have elevated levels of car use? Or do you have to have a reduction in car use to get the former?

Chris Boardman 36:51
I think you’re almost talking about the same thing. If you if you make space for your kids to walk to school, or ride to school or scoot every day, then you don’t need to drive them there. And that’s that’s where the chicken or the egg and where the pain comes as your the discomfort is that change over period, because you make the space and then the behaviour changes to make the space, then there’s not enough of it the moment places where it’s saturated, particularly at rush hour. A match that’s the political hump that you have to get over time. And again, it’s show that that change happens. And I think I think that’s the juxtaposition that’s where the political will is required for that first step where people don’t necessarily they’re worried about change. And they don’t can’t see the alternative until they’ve experienced it; a lot of people won’t change until they can experience something. And so to create that takes courage. And I think, just to go slightly sideways, where we often get it wrong. And we’ve actually been alluding to it subconsciously all the way through there is by we pose the wrong question. If we pose what’s the place you live look like forget cycling and walking, what’s it look like? And what would you give up for that? Or what would you change for that? Would you like to have one less car? And I think we need to really think carefully about the questions that we’re asking. So a counter question to the one you’ve just asked me was, what happens if we don’t? What happens if we don’t? Can we afford it? Do you like it? And I think that’s, that’s probably the underlying the most important thing is that we need to start asking the right questions.

Carlton Reid 38:46
So do you think you can get the Daily Mails — and I write for the Daily Mail — but do you think you can get the Daily Mails of this world onside and how?

Chris Boardman 39:03
I don’t know, is the answer. I’m not sure I should care. Because I, I can’t we have to spend time creating a message that’s attractive and asking the right questions. So you know, if we don’t do this low traffic neighbourhood how are you going to tackle climate change? Do you like it? And there’s there’s lots of things and wouldn’t you like your kids to be able to get around under their own steam? I think the asked constantly asking the right questions. You know, what happens if you win? What have you won? It is there’s there’s a there’s a raft of really good questions that make the nice thing about questions. They cut through emotion and connected with the person and make them stop and think and you won’t win them all. This is not this is not a an easy journey change. Culture change never is, it’s always slow, and it’s always painful. So the best way we can do it to come back to the start, is to work with those that are prepared to go through that first bit of discomfort. And take people through that slightly scary bit of change, and then create examples. And to hark back to Greater Manchester, again, when we went when we put our draft network online, way back in 2018 and asked people for their opinion, just put it out there and said, tell us what you think the biggest complaints were ‘where’s ours? Where’s our bit? They’ve got it, we haven’t got it.’ And that’s, that’s the kind of battle that you want. So I’m not I don’t think we we can and we should try to persuade everybody. We should just speak to the evidence and the evidence of outcomes that have been seen elsewhere and crack on. Because what happens if we don’t?

Carlton Reid 41:00
Thanks to Chris Boardman there and thanks to you for listening to episode 318 of the Spokesmen podcast, brought to you in association with Tern Bicycles. Links about the Capability Fund can be found on the show notes at the-spokesmen.com. The next episode will be with a Critical Mass campaigner looking to change hearts and minds through song … that show will be out soon but meanwhile, in 2023, get out there and ride.