Month: July 2023
July 17, 2023 / / Blog

The Potential for Cargo Bikes

17th July 2023

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 335: The Potential for Cargo Bikes

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUESTS: Patrick Rérat and Virginie Lurkin, HEC Lausanne, at the University of Lausanne

TOPIC: The Potential for Cargo Bikes report

TRANSCRIPT:

Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 335 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Monday 17th of July 2023.

David Bernstein 0:28
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
On today’s show, I’m discussing cargo bikes with a couple of Swiss academics revealing findings from their new study. I’m Carlton Reid and I’m joined by Patrick Rérat and Virginie Lurkin from HEC Lausanne at the University of Lausanne. They are two of the three researchers behind the Potential for Cargo Bikes report. While it’s a Swiss study, it has relevance for other countries. Virginie and Patrick, maybe Virginie first, could you just describe what you do at the University of Lausanne?

Virginie Lurkin 1:41
Yes, sure. So I’m a professor of mainly mobility and logistics. So within the HEC, the Business School of University of Lausanne, and I’m working within the operation department, mainly using quantitative methods to do so.

Carlton Reid 1:58
And and Patrick. So what do you do also at the University of Lausanne,

Patrick Rérat 2:02
So I’m a professor of geography of mobilities and a co director of the OUVEMA (Observatory for Cycling and Active Mobilities) which is the academic observatory for cycling and active mobilities.

Carlton Reid 2:14
And I’ve looked on on either his website and scientific committee of 18, professors geography, history, law, medicine, operation management, political science, psychology, public health, sociology, tourism, and, and even more, because then, etc, there. So that’s an incredible spread of specialities.

Patrick Rérat 2:34
Yeah, we founded the OUVEMA, two, three years ago, and a lot of colleagues were interested in the project. So we aim to foster interdisciplinarity research, and to work together to make all these people work together. And maybe if I can say a few words about the Obama, we are not only a research centre, but we want to be close links with the civil society. We organise webinars, we communicate around our research, we try to co design research project with advocates, for example. Okay,

Carlton Reid 3:10
and it’s would I be right in thinking an awful lot of it is behaviour change. So getting people to actually start to increase their walking and cycling and other active modes?

Patrick Rérat 3:23
Yeah, that has been the main focus. We have other subjects, like policies planning and health, but behaviour change has been the major focus lately, this project on target bikes,

Carlton Reid 3:37
and how much and because walking often gets to be the poor relation in mobility research. So all in just in political discourse, in general, and it’s cycling takes the lion’s share. So how big is walking it compared to cycling in Obama?

Patrick Rérat 4:02
When OUVEMA is a bottom up approach, so it depends also on the people who are part of it. And it depends also on on funding. So now, I would say that the majority of research, address cycling, but we have, for example, a PhD student working on public space and the diversity on public space.

Carlton Reid 4:22
Okay. And I’d like to ask both before we get into the paper you’ve got which is the potential of cargo bikes before we get into that. I would like to ask both of you, I’ll start with Virginie on this one. And that is academics who are involved in something like this, which is almost advocacy you’re almost promoting something and that’s not You’re not being like I’m trying to be very delicate here. So you’re not trying to be a like a dispassionate academic here, even though you’re I’m sure your academic work is, but you’re also partially an advocate. So how do you square that circle of being a researcher? But at the same time, if you’re if you’re trying to affect behaviour change that is advocating for something. How do you how do you meet those two?

Virginie Lurkin 5:15
Interesting question. I think it’s a challenge, right? Because as a researcher, I don’t think the first let’s say mission is to advocate but more to get to model more knowledge, and more insights and solutions to current problems. Being professor and so we third true in transportation, of course, it’s directly related to also society, right. I mean, we, we do research on transportation, and then of course, on how to make it more sustainable given the current challenges that the world is facing. So personally, I think it’s, it’s it if you do good research, and you communicate about it in a way that also it reaches society, then of course, you advocate for it, right. So then there is also I do believe in the power of whole model. So I’m trying as much as possible to, to adopt myself what, what I think helps. But it’s, of course, not always easy. But so I would say this right, by, by talking about it, also trying to have impact in research, and not only academic publications, but also communicate about the topic in the news and so on, I think it helps to advocate.

Carlton Reid 6:39
And Patrick, how do you square that circle?

Patrick Rérat 6:44
Well, I don’t consider myself as an advocate, or as an activist, then, of course, a researcher is not neutral. I mean, if I’m interested in cargo bikes, it’s also because for me, I want you to know, if it’s a it has a nice potential to replace cars, for example. But I think that my role as a researcher is to be rigorous, to be transparent on methods on interpretation, and to make my research available. So that’s how I see the my role and the one of the of the Obama

Carlton Reid 7:27
and those people who are maybe opposed to active mobility, people who maybe want to carry on motoring generally, who then say, activist, academics are not independent. What do you say to them?

Virginie Lurkin 7:47
I mean, for me, I agree with Patrick, right, I don’t think we are supposed to be activist. And if we are, it’s more on a personal choice rather than academics, then I think it’s important to do research on the motivation of people, right? Because it’s only by understanding the motivations, for instance, why some people are not willing to use active active modes, then you can better understand the motivation, and then you can better find solutions even for those people with like appropriate policies, or I mean, I don’t believe that there are people against active mobility, I do believe that there are reasons for some people to prefer, like other modes of transport, and so we need to work on making the right alternatives so that they, they go for like active mobility, but I don’t think it’s like, position as such.

Carlton Reid 8:50
Okay, so your paper here. So the potential cargo bikes, first of all, and it is Switzerland, where that you’ve done this survey of 2000, cargo bike owners and users. But is it applicable elsewhere? Do you think that even though it’s a Swiss study, this would be transferable, some of the findings to other global cities?

Patrick Rérat 9:22
When I think it is because it’s not a high second country like the Netherlands, or Denmark. In Dutch cities and Danish cities, we know that cargo bags have been very popular for a long time. In Switzerland, that’s something new. And we have also very big differences between cities and regions in Switzerland, the French speaking part cycle much less than the German speaking one. So I think that we have an intermediate country for cycling, and which makes this case study Interesting. And maybe another interesting point for Switzerland is that we have cargo bikes owners. But we have also a lot of sharers, with a programme at the national scale, tend to compare both public or users. That’s quite interesting.

Carlton Reid 10:19
So you, in the paper, you talk about how safety is one of the determinants, and one of the things that get more people on bikes and cargo bikes is that the safer it is, the more infrastructure is there more likelihood, people will be on bikes of whatever flavour but going slightly backwards, and what you’ve just said there in that, that the French speaking population uses bikes, less than the German speaking population is that in places where there is the same kind of infrastructure, so it literally is a cultural difference, not a concrete tracks difference.

Patrick Rérat 11:03
It really refers to the, to the condition of the cycling condition, and to safety. We did other research projects, and we could show very big differences in terms of perceived safety between the French speaking part and the German speaking part. And why is it so it’s because in the German part, they have taken measures to come down traffic, like 20 kilometres or 30 kilometres zone much earlier than in the French speaking part. And the same for cycling infrastructure. It’s not the same two cycle in the German part than in the French speaking part. But the French speaking part is trying to catch up. And

Carlton Reid 11:53
in your study, you’ve been basically you’ve interviewed 2000 people, how did you get those 2000 people

Virginie Lurkin 12:01
for the first part on their understanding motivation, profile berries, card bye bike owners and sharers, we have a bit less than 1000. And more than 2000 is for the studies on commercial use, but we got them through different division lists. So some like local biking cycling Association, then our own network also, of course,

Carlton Reid 12:32
did you differentiate between electric cargo bikes and old school non electric cargo bikes? So is there anything in the study that that drill down into that?

Virginie Lurkin 12:43
So we asked them if they had the ebike or normal bike, and it appears that almost 90 percent way like were e-cargo bikes? And I think it is, it is it is an important reason why we see this increase in cargo bikes. It’s also because of their electric assistance.

Carlton Reid 13:06
That’s that’s that’s quite a significant statistic. So basically electrifying, but adding assistance, not not not pure. You know, it’s not a motorbike, but adding some assistance clearly has boosted absolutely boosted the take up of cargo bikes. Yes. Yes,

Virginie Lurkin 13:25
definitely. But especially I think in, in cities, like we have in Switzerland, that you have quite some steep streets, right, this is a quite Montaigne landscape. So. So without electrical assistance, I think there would be some street that you cannot see biking cargo bike with, like children or groceries on it. But I think it’s true. It’s true. Also, for like countries like Netherlands that are more flat countries that definitely the boom can also be explained by the development in electrical assistance.

Carlton Reid 14:04
And then cargo bikes can be and one of the first photographs in your study, in fact, is basically the box bikes, which would carry children and then you have cargo bikes that carry cargo and literally carry goods. So are you differentiating between those two things? Because they’re, you know, they’re very, it’s like a car carrying a children and a van carrying goods. They’re two very, very different things. So how did you differentiate those things?

Patrick Rérat 14:37
Well, for ownership of cargo bike, we have mainly families. So we could say that it’s, it’s a family bike. Almost 80% of the respondent, our families and to carry children is an important motivation for them. To carry children to the kindergarten to the nursery. to go shopping or to go for rides, it’s not only motivations, it’s also actual uses. So, when we speak about owning a cargo bike, it’s really mainly referring to some having a family bike. Then when we have cargo bike sharing, it might be between friends or neighbours, or with a specific programme national programme, or in, in, in a company, it’s more or less frequent use, and more related to carrying bulky items. So it’s true that cargo bags it’s quite, it’s not a normal generous practice, we have a private or company practice, you have own ownership or sharing. Hmm.

Carlton Reid 15:57
And then that clearly strong part of your report and something that is often talked about is how owning a cargo bike or sharing a cargo bike reduces car trips. So you think you’ve measured this and you can you can put a finger on on this as long as the environment is okay.

Virginie Lurkin 16:18
I think it’s important to, to say that, I like that you use the word trips, right? I do think the, the idea is to reduce maybe car trips. So let’s say you have a substitution. But what we have seen, I think, for me, one of the main learning is that the substitution is like to own a second car, for instance. So we have quite some respondents who said that by buying a cargo bag, the ring renounced to the idea of buying a second car or even a first car. So that’s quite interesting. So you, of course, also have substitution effects with the other transport modes, but it has indeed potential to reduce either the ownership of a second car or like buying a new car, or like trips that were made by cars.

Patrick Rérat 17:14
And what is difficult to measure actually, is you have trip substitution. But half of the people, half of the households we interviewed are cash free. So they don’t, they don’t own a car. Maybe some of these households decided to sell their car, some decided not to buy one, and some others could go on living without a car, tend to the cargo bag. So the question is whether easy, but the impact of cargo bag, but the answer is quite complex. What we can say as well is that in our sample, half of the households don’t have a car. And if we have a look at Switzerland, it’s only 21%. And if we have a look at families in Switzerland, it’s only 7% or carefree. So we have hints, but not a quantified answer to that.

Carlton Reid 18:18
And have you drilled into the socio economic backgrounds of cargo bike owners and users because I’m not too sure what it’ll be like in Switzerland, but certainly in the UK and in the big cities in Berlin in the US as well. You know, there’s a perception it might not be reality, but there’s only a perception that somebody certainly carrying children on one of these relatively expensive cargo bikes are going to be relatively rich, probably middle class. And yes, we’ll probably have more than one car sitting back at home. So is Have you done any research on who these people are in socio economic terms?

Virginie Lurkin 19:00
Yes, and it’s true, right? So it’s still mainly young adults age between 30 and 50 Mostly family families and high socio economic status. So I think we got like 80 university graduates which is of course not representative of the entire country, and also more people living in your urban suburban area. So I think this is also the case. But so I agree with the first part of your statement right quite privileged people. But but not for the cars. I it doesn’t seem that it’s like household in which day there was a lot of cars.

Carlton Reid 19:50
So that when when, when a poor family will often own a car. It might take a huge part of their budget, but they will own a car for aspirational More reasons, and they tend not to have a cargo bike, perhaps even for the same reasons in that, you know, they they want the car they don’t want a cargo bike because a cargo bike is seen as a bit. Maybe not, you know something that a working class person would use. But do you need to have, this is not so much in this research here, but just in the future do you need the use of cargo bikes are going to have to broaden out to more social classes, because you can’t just have it, you know, small section of the privileged dotting around on cargo bikes, you want to have lots of people, if we’re going to get rid of if we’re going to reduce car use.

Patrick Rérat 20:41
Yes, but it’s still a new phenomenon. And we launched the survey one year ago, and in one year, a lot of things have changed. For example, the rise of of longtail, I don’t know if it’s popular in other countries, but it’s becoming a big thing here in Switzerland. That’s bi x with a new extended rear rack, and you can have like one or two children on it. And it’s two or three years ago, you couldn’t see a single one on the streets. And now it’s quite popular. So it’s still it’s changing quite quickly. And that’s a challenge. Now we have the pioneers, and we have the early adopters of this innovation, the E cargo bag, and how could we extend this practice to other social groups. And I think that there are several measures, it was interesting to see that 15% of the of the households bought a secondhand cargo bag. So if there is a secondhand market, maybe the price will go down, then we still have a niche product. But if it’s if the market is growing, you will have more shops, maybe you could have also a decrease in prices. cities or municipalities could give subsidy, for example, or sharing can be an option. It’s still quite rare, but you have housing cooperatives, for example. And they have one or two cargo bikes for all their members. And that to me, that may be also an ID to follow. And many

Carlton Reid 22:29
cities have Bike Share cargo bikes now where you can just pick them up off the street, like you can get like a, you know, a normal Velib style bicycle yet I believe but with a cargo rack.

Patrick Rérat 22:44
Just there is such a system in Switzerland, it’s not exactly like Velib. It’s more like rental cars you need to go to, to a shop or to a post office to get the keys or the code. So you can’t have it in the night or in the evening, for example. But this system is quite important because it’s it’s complimentary to cargo bike ownership. It’s not really competition, it’s complimentary. Because you have people, we all need less a cargo bag, or have a more punctual or less frequent use. It’s also a way for some people who are reluctant to buy a cargo bag, which is like more expensive than the usual bag that can give a try. And maybe more symbolically, it’s important also to normalise cargo back. And when you see cargo bags on the street or next to the shop, you go shopping, that’s also important. It’s it gives an idea of a normal thing.

Virginie Lurkin 23:51
But they also agree that it’s like for now it’s still something that not every household can afford, right? I mean, it’s still quite an expensive product. So indeed, if you need to right now choose between the car and a cargo bike, right? You may say, Okay, I really need the car because some of the trips are too far. Why don’t we save currently in terms of infrastructure to have a cargo bike? So I think a lot of efforts will need to be done on making this also a more attractive alternative in terms of infrastructure price. And then I agree with Patrick right then the more of course we will see them the more it will become attracted but there are still things to be done in terms of making this attractive.

Carlton Reid 24:37
Now I recognise that they are expensive, and I recognise the perception is they’re expensive. But when you look at the price of a car, and certainly the how much you spend, even if it’s very cheap car, how much you spend on that car over the air. They are still a fraction of that. So yes, they’re expensive, but they’re nowhere near as expensive as a car. So as a social You know, economic thing, you could, you could certainly save an awful lot of money as a family. If you actually had one of these experiment doing inverted commas here expensive cargo bikes.

Patrick Rérat 25:13
We have the same debate about Ebates. And actually, I think that maybe it’s because we are not a high cycling country. So we still compare ebikes and cargo bags, with usual back. And maybe we should compare it with where the season ticket for buses or trends that we save or that someone save, or what a car or a second car costs. And of course, if you count everything, like not only the price of the car in itself, but also car parking, and all the maintenance and repair, it can go up quite quickly.

Carlton Reid 25:58
Hmm. Now at this point, I’d like to go across to my colleague in the US. Take it away, David.

David Bernstein 26:04
Hello, everyone. This is David from the Fredcast. And of course, the Spokesmen. And I’m here once again to tell you that this podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles, the good people that Tern build bikes that make it easier for you to replace car trips with bike trips. Part of that is being committed to designing useful bikes that are also fun to ride. But an even greater priority for Tern, is to make sure that your ride is safe, and worryfree. And that’s why Tern works with industry leading third party testing labs like E FB, E, and builds it bikes around Bosch ebike systems, which are UL certified for both electric and fire safety. So before you even zip off on your Tern, fully loaded, and perhaps with the loved one behind, you can be sure that the bike has been tested to handle the extra stresses on the frame, and the rigours of the road. For more information, visit www.ternbicycles.com to learn more. And now, back to the spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 27:13
Thanks, David. And we are back with Patrick and Virginie of the University of Lausanne. And I’d like to ask you both who wants to take this? This is a survey, is this something that you’re going to be doing annually every two years, three years? Is this something you’re going to be continuing. So this is something that will develop over time.

Patrick Rérat 27:34
We don’t have a precise project, but but it would be great to do it like in five years time to see how things have changed. And I’m sure that in five years, a lot of it will increase. And it will be very important, interesting to compare.

Carlton Reid 27:51
And was there a baseline? Was there a previous study that you could say, Well, this has now increased by this much are you the is the first such study that’s been done.

Virginie Lurkin 28:02
Now, it’s actually the first national one here in Switzerland. And in general, this is this is also what what was exciting is that there are very few existing studies on the topic. And it’s still quite some empirical ones, and so on. So I think those are learnings that we got it’s the first one it’s of course an imperfect ones. But I agree with Patrick, it would be really nice to see a bit in five years how things have evolved. And if we see differences,

Patrick Rérat 28:36
the only data we have on cargo bags in Switzerland, that the shapes of E cargo bikes, and it was not even 400 in 2017. And last year, it was more than 4000. So it means that something that was really unusual sides five years ago. Now it’s not usual, I wouldn’t say that, but it’s you don’t turn around your head anymore. If you see a long tail or cargo bag. something exceptional still right but not exceptional. Hmm.

Carlton Reid 29:14
And just putting your your maybe your non scientific hat on here, because I’m gonna be asking you about what you think is gonna happen in the future. But do you think that trajectory that that very steep growth trajectory, do you think that’s going to continue? Or do you think we are bottoming out and it’ll it’ll become less steep in the next five years? So I imagine you’re steady in five years time. If you’ve got one, where do you think you will be?

Virginie Lurkin 29:40
I personally, I hope that it will become way more accessible for many people to have cargo bikes and that we we did well in the substitution effect, right. So but of course, it depends on policymakers on the changes in terms of infrastructure. But I think the weakness is there. Now we need to. Yeah.

Carlton Reid 30:07
So let’s, let’s circle back on that because in the preamble on your report, it does say that the remote the practice remains fragile due to the cycling environment. And you can imagine if you’ve got, you know, two three children in a, you know, Copenhagen box bike, Christiana box bike type thing, you are going to be hyper hyper aware of your surroundings, you know, with with the danger, even perhaps more so than you would as an individual on a bicycle. So clearly, if you’re taking very precious cargo, on the streets, you’re going to be advocating for safer streets. So cargo bikes, actually, and the people who are on them now if they are the privileged class, could that lead to safer streets in the future?

Virginie Lurkin 31:00
Hopefully, I think the safety and infrastructure I mean, we have seen it in the study. But this is something that is already true for a bike or standard bike ride that if you want, if you want to favour the use of bikes, cargo bike ebike, then you need to also make sure that people feel safe. And if you want to see the substitution effect, I also think that it means you need to rethink a bit. How to share the available space right workspace right now is still that there are many streets that are still fully dedicated to two cars while we are trying to reduce. So I think there is a bit of a nonsense there

Patrick Rérat 31:49
is even more an issue when you carry children. I mean, more than 60% of our interviewees said they, they adapt the route when they carry children. And that’s quite a lot. So it shows that everything is far from being perfect. So that’s a limiting factor. At least in now in Switzerland. But it also raises not only the question of, of infrastructure, but of course important. But with cargo bikes, you need also wider infrastructure. Because these cargo bikes will go with regular bags, e bikes, different speed, different size. And there is also something that is less spoken about in the political debate that parking spaces. In many dense or historical neighbourhoods, you don’t really have the space to store your cargo van. And you you hesitate before leaving it’s by at night on the street. So I think that parking spaces is also an important issue.

Carlton Reid 33:12
So bike hangers, you know that you think municipality should be installing secure compounds?

Patrick Rérat 33:19
Yes, something maybe

Carlton Reid 33:21
where car parking spaces were before you can have we’re in the UK, they called bike hangers. And you get

Patrick Rérat 33:29
so that when I was in London a few months ago and tightening that something that is missing in Switzerland, and when you have a cargo bag, you it’s the same also for ebike it has to be easily accessible, but you have also to protect it from theft or weather conditions.

Carlton Reid 33:51
And that the width because the obviously there are very different kinds of cargo bikes out there. So the ones we’ve been talking about so far, like the Christianna. But yeah, as you said they’re wide. But then the long tails are very thin. So they’re they’re each going to have their own a niches and, and and be requirements on the streets, aren’t they?

Patrick Rérat 34:14
Yes, they are different, but they have also some common requirements, like safety, wide cycle lanes. So all these are additional reasons to consider cycling the way when we design streets, for example.

Carlton Reid 34:34
And then the motivations of somebody who are taking children to school or to kindergarten is one thing but then you’ve got the other huge part of cargo bike riding, of course, is the last mile delivery and getting white van man off the streets and so it’s a cargo bike instead of a white van. So what have you discovered on the efficiencies of cargo ebikes compared to say, a big truck, or a van,

Virginie Lurkin 35:06
I mean, urban logistics, you’ll see this more and more right in the discussion that you would replace trucks by other bags because you can access streets that congested and also in terms of cost of emissions and so on. And so the study we did we did was to try to understand the bit, what would be the willingness of young students around here to to pay or to walk to a pickup collection or to pay extra money to be delivered by cargo bikes? And it seems they would be willing to do so. But then, in terms of urban logistics, yeah, I think it’s very interesting debate, because in Switzerland, we still don’t see them very much for urban deliveries, while if you take Paris for instance. They are quite used for deliveries. And so the question becomes also the infrastructure, the landscape. But yeah, the potential for urban Logistics is also of course, quite important. Well, thank

Carlton Reid 36:11
you both very much for talking about your study. Where can people find this study? On online? Where can where can people actually access it?

Patrick Rérat 36:21
It’s on a website of the University of Lausanne. If you Google the potential of cargo bikes, University of Lausanne, you will find it.

Carlton Reid 36:30
Okay, and can you give us your contact details? So anybody who’s listening to this, who wants to either talk to Patrick or individually and they want to contact you either social media or email how do people get in touch with you?

Virginie Lurkin 36:46
Yes, social LinkedIn of course, because when you look on LinkedIn or its viewers, you need that look at you need that ch for the email address.

Carlton Reid 36:56
And Patrick,

Patrick Rérat 36:58
Patrick Rerat. I’m on LinkedIn and Twitter as well and I would happy to connect with other people interested in cargo bikes.

Carlton Reid 37:10
Thanks to Patrick, reread, and Virginie lurking there. And thanks to you for listening to Episode 335 of the spokesman podcast brought to you in association with bicycles, show notes and more can be found at the hyphen spokesman.com Next episode will be out in August. But meanwhile, get out there and ride
July 12, 2023 / / Blog

From Bam-bu to Dott via Sustrans, Fettle, Flitbike and the Diagram Club

12th July 2023

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 334: From Bam-bu to Dott via Sustrans, Fettle, Flitbike and the Diagram Club

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUESTS: Dave Walker, Joana Saavedra, Ilma Barbaroviciute, Andy Lu, Alex Murray, Xavier Brice, Henri Moissinac

TOPICS: This is the third and final episode recorded from the Move mobility conference in London last month. Hear from cycling cartoonist Dave Walker, Joana Saavedra from the Bam-bu bicycle company from Portugal, two bike mechanic folks from Fettle, Alex Murray from Flitbike and Xavier Brice, the CEO of Sustrans. Plus, after the ad break, there’s a fireside chat with tech entrepreneur Henri Moissinac cofounder of the city share scooter and e-bike company Dott.

TRANSCRIPT:

Carlton Reid 0:12
Welcome to Episode 334 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Wednesday 12th of June 2023.

David Bernstein 0:28
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 1:04
This is the third and final episode recorded from the Move mobility conference in London last month. I’m Carlton Reid and, if you listened to the first episode — with Councillor Emily Kerr — and the second one with a bunch of bike infrastructure folks you might have noticed a difference in the audio. With the magic of AI I removed all of the background hubbub from the interview with Emily, but left some in for the second one. Due to popular demand — well, a Twitter poll — I reduced the distracting show chatter by a few decibels but left enough so you could tell that I was recording in an expo hall, not a studio. And I’ve done the same for this episode’s interviews. You’ll hear from cycling cartoonist Dave Walker, Joana Saavedra from the bamboo bicycle company from Portugal, two bike mechanic folks from Fettle, Alex Murray from Flit bike and Xavier Brice, the CEO of Sustrans. After the ad break there are some extracts from a chat I had with tech entrepreneur Henri Moissinac cofounder of the city share scooter and Ebike company Dott. The background audio for that sounds different again because I was interviewing Henri in front of an audience from the show’s main stage. Anyway, kicking us off his Dave Walker. Well, fancy bumping into you here we haven’t met before day.

Dave Walker 2:45
So it’s good to be here.

Carlton Reid 2:48
Yeah. What the hell is is a world famous cycling cartoonist doing at this conference?

Dave Walker 2:58
Well, I’m here to learn, I guess really, in that. I, I normally spend my time shut away in my cartooning lair.

Carlton Reid 3:11
Away from the world. More you meet in real people now. Yes,

Dave Walker 3:15
yes. So it’s nice to be out of the house. So yes, I’m here to essentially I suppose I’m focusing on the micro mobility side of the, of the show. We call it a show, by the way.

Carlton Reid 3:31
Yeah, so it’s talking heads, and then a bunch of like, booths and stands on the outside. So ya know, it’s a show.

Dave Walker 3:40
So I’m here to go to some of the talks and maybe hear a few different perspectives. Because although I focus largely on cycling, I’m interested in sustainable transport generally. And so I’ve got one or two ideas bubbling up things I’ve heard already. And

Carlton Reid 4:01
because when we started talking before, you made a good point, and it is pretty obvious when you start going around even the bicycle elements of this show. It’s basically e elements, everything has got an electric element to it. And the industry is just clearly everything is got a battery now, and it hasn’t got a battery. It’s not innovative, and it’s not Yeah, it’s not going to be an individual conference like that. Is that a worry? Are we old in the tooth? Here we are.

Dave Walker 4:31
We are. But I suppose I can see the if you’re developing something new, then I suppose this is the kind of place you would you come to show off your new direction. And so maybe people who are doing things that are more conventional. This isn’t where you choose to come. But yes, it does seem to be the way things are going because of it that bikes tend to be moving towards having Moto as the standard,

Carlton Reid 5:03
yeah, so the reason I brought you to this particular part of the Startup Village, and the guy’s not here, because he’s Spanish, and he’s gone for a six hour lunch or whatever. But he’s Lane Patrol it so this is basically you’ll get a kick out of this, because he’s doing infrastructure. So it’s a cycling infrastructure. And so it’s of interest to you. And the reason the reason I brought you here is because it was so cute when I was talking to him, and he’s showing me his, his product on his laptop, up popped one of your cartoons, and it’s like, this is somebody in Spain. Yeah, opening up, he’s you. So you’re world famous. And I actually told him, I said, Dave is actually coming, I’m gonna bring him across to see how do you feel? Exactly. ,

Dave Walker 5:56
It’s unexpected that in a very small niche, at least, my work is, is known by people involved in the world of cycling and cycling infrastructure. In other countries, it’s yeah, it’s,

Carlton Reid 6:15
it’s, it doesn’t put, you know, Kit Kats on the table. There’s really no not necessarily. It’s building a profile to making money. Yes.

Dave Walker 6:28
And so you know, there’s a possibility that more people might buy a book, or might join my currently my diagram club is my way that I’m hoping to make a bit of a living from from what I do. So yeah, so it’s good that the works out there and let it’s being seen and enjoyed.

Carlton Reid 6:52
Hopefully he’ll come back and you can get to chat to him and you can probably invoice him. Literally, what’s his screensaver was one of your cartoons, which was which was a new you were coming into the show. So yeah, that was great. I’m, I freely admit that I will rip off cartoons, probably with a cycling element and private eye. And and put that on social media. And I, I probably wouldn’t do that with a photograph. But I saw I have no compunction to do that with a cartoon. Is that something that? Does that annoy you? Or is that just something that I know? It’s part and parcel of what you do as a cartoonist? And other cartoonists go through exactly the same thing? Yeah,

Dave Walker 7:29
I suppose. Yes, I suppose on the one hand, I see lives, probably a bit too short to get too annoyed about this, because it is just going to happen, people do enjoy funny images. And once they have a funny image, they will share it and use it themselves. But on the other hand, is somebody trying to make a living from it? You know, I’m always you know, it’s encouraging when somebody’s willing to pay for something. And so I suppose if somebody’s getting professional use, and if something particularly, and it’s helping them tell their story, get their point across, then, you know, I’d prefer to be

Carlton Reid 8:14
you’re cutting through the illustrations, you’re cutting through an awful lot of, of language and putting an illustration and that’s it then becomes much more visual, obviously. Yeah, but it cuts through the argument.

Dave Walker 8:26
Yeah. Well, that’s, that’s yeah, encouraging to hear, because that’s, that’s, that’s what I hope it will do. And, you know, using a little bit of humour, which I think is these days is a good way to make a point and something that we, you know, we we love the world of stand up. So humour is a useful tool. And that combined with having, you know, a little bit of knowledge of the experience of the world of cycling and

Carlton Reid 8:58
well, that shines through, you know, yeah, you absolutely have nailed a lot to it, which is why people share your stuff. So we’ve established that you are a global superstar. Certainly in Spain, you got a fan there in Spain. Where can we find your stuff? And where can we find out about the club where we can get tickets?

Dave Walker 9:18
So my website is Davewalker.com. So that’s where you’ll find everything that I do I try and link to from there, or I’m very active on Twitter, Instagram, where you can find by searching and but yes, I do. I’ve changed slightly the way I do things. So my cycling stuff originally was in books and the books are still available. One that’s slightly more sports focused and others more about getting just everyday getting from A to B. But as I was saying to you before the last eight Months. So I’ve been running something called diagram Club, which is where people who enjoy my work, pay a small fee and get reused the work in kind of nonprofit ways. Or cycling campaigns or local cycling campaigns will use it

Carlton Reid 10:19
so that they can use it without having the guilt of Oh, yeah, we shouldn’t

Dave Walker 10:24
leave it to people, you know, the, the price for this starts very low. And honestly, if people feel like they’re getting more use from it, then they can, they could pay me more money, which is, you know, obviously welcome. So, so yeah, so that was my way of allowing people who want to support what I do. So I have a way of doing so. And hopefully over time, that will grow and and there’ll be kind of new benefits to those who do join. And yeah, and they’re funding their funding new work, which so even yesterday, I spent the day working on something that wouldn’t really be possible were it not for for that so it’s a way of funding new cycling work that maybe wouldn’t have an immediate commercial backer.

Carlton Reid 11:14
Okay, brilliant. So who are you?

Joana Saavedra 11:16
So I’m Joana the co founder of bamboo bicycles.

Carlton Reid 11:21
What’s your second name?

Joana Saavedra 11:21
Saavedra.

Carlton Reid 11:24
Okay, and you have a co founder, Sorry, I interrupted you there. You’re the co founder of

Joana Saavedra 11:28
Bam-bu bicycles. So we are a Portuguese startup that is exploring bamboo as a natural fibre and natural composites and who are designing and building bamboo bike frames?

Carlton Reid 11:39
In Portugal?

Joana Saavedra 11:40
Yeah, so the frame is entirely made of bamboo, hemp fibre, and a BL based epoxy.

Carlton Reid 11:46
So there are very many brands. I mean, even in the 1880s, and 1890s. There were bamboo. And then there were forgotten. Yes. And then, you know, we’ve we’ve, we’ve got some today, and there’s like an African angle. So what’s what’s the angle of because our bicycle is actually it’s bam.bu? You Yeah. So what’s the angle? What what’s differentiating you? Yeah, from the few others not not a huge amount, but the other bamboo bike maker,

Joana Saavedra 12:13
basically, yeah, the first bamboo bikes that happened was in the UK really long time ago. But then the Industrial Revolution came, and then the natural materials just got forgotten, right. We do know that, you know, in the in Asia, in Africa, and even in Latin America, you have a lot of bamboo, you have a few bamboo constructions, even around in product development. But also bamboo is still seen as the poor material, you know, because it’s you have it’s in such abundance. And some of the companies are some of the startups that are doing a few things with Bumble in Europe, they either do workshops, or they sell you a kit. So you can do it at home, you make it yourself perfect, or they just import the frame. So while we want to do is to bring the know how of working with bamboo on a structural like in Europe, because there will be an industry of bamboo coming up soon, the bamboo plantations are coming up as well, in Portugal, in Spain, in France in Greece,

Carlton Reid 13:06
so where are you sourcing the bamboo from?

Joana Saavedra 13:08
Now it’s in in Indonesia, okay, so at this point is still in Indonesia, because the bamboo needs to be kind of in the right timing needs to be dried needs to be created. So you don’t really have that structure now in Europe, but we are now currently where that’s why we also were founders of the Burien bamboo Association. And our goal is to put the first level is to map the bamboo plantations that already exists in Portugal and Spain understand how long are they do they exist? What are the species for what are they used for so that we can explore ways of Okay, can we create an industry around product development or product design or more for construction or for recessed for textile, or something else? So we’re working with the University now in Lisbon, to do this mapping and to do this analysis of the species and we hope to continue that further to understand in which direction can the bamboo industry goes in Europe?

Carlton Reid 14:04
So potentially you could be growing it in Europe? Yes. So how old this bicycle which is now in front of us beautiful, beautiful bamboo bicycle, how old is the bamboo? What’s What are the age is that bamboo?

Joana Saavedra 14:17
So this bamboo will be always used, usually between three to five years old, okay. So after that, they will be good enough to cut to dry it and to then be used for for construction or for product development.

Carlton Reid 14:32
So in Europe, you can have that soon. Yes,

Joana Saavedra 14:36
yeah. So normally you have the rhizome needs to be developed first, right. So that will take two to three years first, and then the rest of the bamboo Yeah, will grow between three to five years. It really depends then on the species as well. And then as as long as you go, you can then just get it and it grows again. After three, five years. You have it again. That’s why bamboo is such a great one. ress because yeah it’s not a three they’d such a great a great a great plants for it because it’s besides that it regenerates the soil it’s really good for the gives nutritions to the to the soil is that after you plant it once it’s done then you can cut it because otherwise it will, it will dry while it’s there, it’s also not good. So you can edit you can use it for so many different things in the utilisations and then it grows again it’s a really beautiful it’s not a monoculture you can plant other things around and it’s a very magical as well forest normally when you plant them but so we really think it’s it’s important to see it as a as a potential for for restore as well. The nature then biodiversity as well then we can have

Carlton Reid 15:47
carbon composites Yeah, that’s basic plastic. Yeah, you’re writing a plastic bicycle? Yes, you can maybe recycle ish. Steel, okay, that’s a bit of a better material, titanium, these are all kind of like, non sustainable product really? Yes, material in many ways. Whereas of course, this is organic as in grow. Yeah. And you can literally replace it. And then if it breaks, you just basically I’m not saying it’s gonna break, but if it breaks you then that’s a product that can be okay, basically put in a cotton ball.

Joana Saavedra 16:23
Okay, yes. So normally a frame would definitely break because of the alignment of the fibres of the of the bamboo tubes, it could possibly crack. But if it cracks, you can fix it. But in the worst scenario, yeah, that if it breaks, you can either apply toilet and I don’t know, do some crafts or you know, out of it, or you can probably then burn it as well and transform it into biomass or something else.

Carlton Reid 16:51
Yep. So is there any lacquer on there? Is there anything on there that’s not eco that you need? Or can you say literally that’s just

Joana Saavedra 16:59
so the the resin that we’re using the epoxy, it’s a br based epoxy, so it’s not 100% Echo, but he has like around 60% echo on the rest and because it’s still you can for this type of structural that you need, you have to get that that part of it. So the epoxy is

Carlton Reid 17:18
just the joints, yes. Just the joints. Okay, so the rest is okay. Yes.

Joana Saavedra 17:23
And the joints are hemp fibre and epoxy, that is B of a step.

Carlton Reid 17:28
Right. Okay. And are you direct consumer? Do you think? Or will it be any bike shop?

Joana Saavedra 17:35
Okay, so up to now, and one of the reasons also why we’re here is we’re looking really to distributors or wholesalers in the UK. So we can have a representative here, our strategy in Portugal and also what we are looking is also to focus with in tourism and corporate for two reasons. One, to really promote sustainable tourism cycle tourism with a completely different bicycle riding and even inspire those persons that are not really used to cycle but they will be attracted to the bike because it’s a beautiful piece of design, and at the same time corporate so that you can really have corporate fleets for for staff. And we see those two reasons The best way as well to get to the b2c clients because people are still not really used to bamboo bicycles. So they will be you know, not very comfortable, probably not trust the material, you think about a cane, and you think is going to break. So we think that the best way to get to the final user and to gain their trust is through either tourism or corporate so that they could try the bicycle and really get comfortable and confident around the camera. How

Carlton Reid 18:44
much does this cost? How much the as the spec is here? Yeah. Yeah,

Joana Saavedra 18:52
we try as much as possible to use as well. Portuguese suppliers and industry. Yeah, this is Brooks. Then we also have here it’s TBird. We have Miranda on the crank set and we have Vaude so we try as well

Carlton Reid 19:05
to some noise kit, which is not gonna set me back. What’s that gonna cost?

Joana Saavedra 19:08
It starts in 2500 euros. Yep.

Carlton Reid 19:12
So that’s expensive.

Joana Saavedra 19:13
Yeah. For a made in Europe bicycle. Yes.

Carlton Reid 19:17
And because Portugal is actually coming up as a manufacturing nation of bicycles. Yes. So you aren’t you’re not like some strange? Yes, your niche Yeah. But Portugal is now becoming known. Yes. In the EU for making bikes. Yeah.

Joana Saavedra 19:33
So Portugal has this really old history as well or really known by bike brands right that were really built from scratch there. Then we started to to this level of we were really maybe one of the biggest assemble it so we really assemble a lot of the bicycles in in Portugal. So we probably designed but then we import the frames and all the components from Asia and we are assembling and now we are starting To see a bit of a shift, but until now, even a lot in terms of product development and prototyping is really not in Portugal. So it’s a little bit more outside. But now you’re starting to see and you do have one of the biggest some of the biggest as well, factories that are now starting to

Carlton Reid 20:20
visit. Yes, that’s all I know, it’s

Joana Saavedra 20:24
probably been to carbon, the carbon team and triangles, and some of them Yeah, so they are starting as well. And they’re, they’re building some of the frames. So we’re really want to shift to give the shift in terms of working with different materials, because we know that the industry is starting to talk about it now, like looking for natural fibres, how can we replace or at least combine some of the components will with some more of like natural fibres. So that’s a little bit our our goal here to just step up, we know that because we’re doing small production, because it’s still a different material, you cannot really just scale up or I cannot just go and subcontract to someone else to build it up. So of course, that makes that the product has a different level. Also, the choice of our components and brands made the bike as it is because we wanted something a little bit high end with really high quality, low maintenance so that you can have really a bicycle to be durable, as much as possible. Yeah,

Carlton Reid 21:25
sure. And what’s your background? So why are you

Joana Saavedra 21:30
okay, so I’ve studied economics, but I’ve been living abroad, I lived abroad for more than 11 years between Spain, Mexico, Holland, and China. So and that’s why six years in China got me closer and got me passionate about bamboo. And I found out bamboo I started like really researching about it, travelling around Asia as well to into some of the events around bamboo to get to know more about it. And my brother that is my co founder is an industrial designer, he had previously working with arbeta, that it was one of the big brands as well before in the bank industry in Portugal. So we just challenge ourselves. And we saw that no one in Portugal was working with them boom. In Europe, a very few persons were really working with bamboo in a structural way, or building their own brand or really trying to build their own friends here. So we really saw that there was really a space to evolve. And our dream is really to be a bit of the hub of innovation of bamboo in Europe, so that people can also come to us and try to understand how can we progress and collaborate with big brands in order to move in into the right direction? And so would

Carlton Reid 22:39
you say your your you were more bamboo? Bicycle? Yes. Yeah. But you’ve kind of educated yourself on the bicycle side because you’ve you’ve you’ve zeroed in Yeah, on the bicycle as something that can do something with bamboo as well. But bamboo first and bicycle second. Yes,

Joana Saavedra 22:56
bamboo first and then bicycle second. And then with a background of of the our industrial designer of Tiago that he was on the bike industry as well and are passionate of bikes. We really saw that there was really a match there.

Carlton Reid 23:13
And how long have you been going? So how new is this company?

Joana Saavedra 23:15
So we we’ve been going up like three years ago, I decided to move back from China to Portugal. And we launched this this models last year. So yeah, it’s been a baby with more or less two years.

Carlton Reid 23:28
And how is it going?

Joana Saavedra 23:30
It’s going good. It’s been the first time outside of Portugal really to present the brand and the project? I think, definitely the feedback here. It’s way more exponential than anymore. It’s you Well, I think the you know, in in Portugal, the markets in the mindset is completely different. For you know, urban cycling, we don’t really have that culture as well still. So here it’s been really, really interesting. And we’ve been approached for some big brands that are interested to collaborate so we’re really keen on seeing

Carlton Reid 24:01
big brands as in corporates rather than from bikes Yeah, because right now you have a referee now is Eurobike is happening yeah, that’s why we’re also there are you also you could have been there but yeah.

Joana Saavedra 24:14
Nobody the standard but we are that was a you you are industrial designers there Yeah, exactly. Right. That’s the goal. But we were

Carlton Reid 24:21
you could have exhibited there. Yeah, but you’ve come here instead. So that’s interesting.

Joana Saavedra 24:25
Yeah, but here was well it’s it’s in terms of like investment at this point. Right the standard it gets a bit of a in here we got invited to so we got the chance to have like split the team and be here as well to understand a bit the market and our goal was really to look for some partnerships on on the corporate world as well and to look for potential distributors or wholesalers so working to then tomorrow as well. We have a few meetings so that we can explore that way.

Carlton Reid 24:53
What do I know I wish you all the best with with getting more corporates to get on bamboo bicycles. Tell us how we can Get in touch so put it on tape your website or your socials how do we get in touch with you okay,

Joana Saavedra 25:05
so you can follow us on Instagram on bam-bu bicycles and so be I am bu Yes, exactly. And you can also check our website that is bam-bu how do you ash this yeah bambu-bicycles.com and follow as well subscribe our newsletter we always like get some either promotions or new product developments or we will let you know the next events are going to be in

Carlton Reid 25:36
Ilma, How do you pronounce that second name?

Ilma Barbaroviciute 25:39
It’s Barbaroviciute. Difficult.

Carlton Reid 25:44
Yeah. I’m glad you said that. They’re not me. A lot. What is this Fettle? Yes, is a bike because it Fettle isn’t like a northern English word. Yeah. For when I do an American podcast. And whenever I say the word Fettle Americans go northern English. It’s like, yeah, yeah. So I know what Fettle means. It means like, you know, repair something, but you tell me what it means in your context.

Ilma Barbaroviciute 26:13
Yeah, so Fettle is a fastest growing bike repair network in the UK. So at the moment, we have four workshops in London. And we recently opened the one in Bristol, we actually partnered up with quickfit, not long time ago. So two of our workshops are in quickfit locations. And we’re actually about to open the sixth one. And it’s going to be the third one, which in partnership with clixsense, basically. So yeah, so we do everything. Everything to do with bike repair, basically. So we don’t sell bikes, because we believe every single bike can be repaired. So you can bring your bike into our workshop, and we’re gonna fix it. And we also do a lot of fleet maintenance, We do manufacture partnerships, an important part of our business is making sure at the moment, it’s only affected in London, but making sure that people who commute to work, they do it on the same bike. So we a lot of our businesses, like b2b. So let’s say we go to the corporate and we maintain employees, bikes, and we also do workshops, or we people teach people how to maintain their own bikes, and all this sort of jazz. We have a lot of community rides, events as well. So it’s, it’s yeah, it’s a really white business.

Carlton Reid 27:33
So do mechanics. Are they all like Cytech? accredited? What? What is the accreditation that you’re using? Yeah, so

Ilma Barbaroviciute 27:39
all of our mechanics like in the workshops, obviously, we have mechanics and people who go and like teach people, they’re also mechanics. Yeah.

Carlton Reid 27:47
For that. Cytech. That’s, that’s what accreditation using? Yes. Yeah.

Ilma Barbaroviciute 27:51
I mean, I assume Cytech.

Andy Lu 27:54
Separately, Cytech. But there are other accreditation schemes out there such as Evans ran one on their own at some point. Yeah. And will will take into account, not just accreditation, but more importantly, experience. So certainly, you know, accreditation can only speak to a certain degree, if you don’t see the experience of the computer by versus, you know, the high end kind of an electronic race bikes. There’s certainly kind of gaps in between their accreditation doesn’t always,

Carlton Reid 28:26
I’ll tell you Cytech came from so Cytech was founded about 35 years ago, by a bike shop owner, it was it was basically the Association of Cycle Traders. Tell me stop me if if you know this history, and they went into this particular bike shop, went into a court case, yes. Where a bike had been fettled, of course, and the judge said, yes, very well. Shuttleworth was the guy Albert Shuttleworth. Sorry, I’ll dive in here. Quick fact check. It was actually Albert Shucksmith. And he died in 2001, a few years after the setting up of Cytech. Okay, back to myself getting a lecture at the Move conference. Very well. What’s your accreditation? Oh, we haven’t got one. Well, this case is now closed. If you haven’t got an accreditation, you’re an official trade body. Doesn’t matter how well experienced you are. Yes, I beat because the guy who said I’ve been doing bike mechanics for 30 years and the judge said, I don’t care. I want to see your accreditation. And he then went back to the association recycled traders and said look, yes, if we do not have accreditation, so they founded their own accreditation way ahead of the American industry, which is got all sorts of different weird ones. So accreditation is incredibly important to have. So that’s that’s where the question was coming from like, Yo, do you actually do If a customer comes in and gives you a very expensive buy, how do they know that? A it’s been handled by somebody who knows what they’re doing? And be they’re insured. They know that this bike has been battled correctly. Of course, you’re sorry. It’s your Andy. Okay, so Andy, I’m going to try and lean in my microphone as well. So are you partners in the business? What’s what is the what’s the how is the business formulated?

Andy Lu 30:29
What is the partnerships manager? And I’m the stock so I’m buying and purchasing manager in terms of what was your question? Sorry, the in terms of I was,

Carlton Reid 30:42
how big is the company? Has it formulated as a limited company? Is it all that kind of?

Andy Lu 30:47
Okay, so we are a limited company. We operate five workshops at the moment, three, sorry, for which are in London. We’ve recently opened a new workshop in Bristol. That’s our first workshop outside of London. And we are looking to expand very quickly with with the assistance of with partnership with Kwik Fit through their centre network. Through that through that can be

Carlton Reid 31:12
quite rapid. Yes, yeah. It could be like boom, boom, boom, on the on a sudden, you’ve got how many? How many stores do they have?

Andy Lu 31:17
So they’ve got around 650 or 600? Plus, I’ll say, and we started the partnership. Operationally, in April, I believe, we’ve already opened our first workshop in Bristol with the assistance and establish workshop is in our centre, we open that last night.

Carlton Reid 31:40
So they know or maybe you’re telling them this is a high cycling area. You should open it here whereas you could like some of them and outskirts of a city on the mainland where there’s no you don’t bother opening one there. Is that? Is that how you’re handling it? We would

Andy Lu 31:55
like we would prefer to say it’s more about priorities. So we will aim for the high traffic. I guess conurbation is first and then we’ll work towards I guess, belong outside of as as a trickle down to the tree

Carlton Reid 32:13
and talk about trickling down. Mechanics traditionally never used to get paid a huge amount bike mechanics I mean, scientific actually helped that because you get that you know, you have your level whatever money do you think federal could raise their game could raise it makes it a more of a career opportunity for somebody? Because there’s a career path you’re going through? Is that Is that something that you’ve considered? And they’re like, Yeah, we want to pay more money.

Andy Lu 32:43
That certainly was a, I believe a one of our vision part of our vision in the beginning. As we started, we started four years ago, I guess, just as the industry was starting to tail off before the pandemic, and then everything else happened. Part of our commitment to that was that we had sought a new way of participating in the London living wage. So our mechanics certainly were paid, what our paid above market rate at the time, and we are now starting to see that market rate is starting to catch up to us, which is great news for everyone, particularly the industry. And yeah, we certainly see that as we already are starting to see the arm mechanics as they kind of go on to other opportunities is that they are they are viewed as being of, shall we say higher quality because of their association with this.

Carlton Reid 33:37
Okay, brilliant. And what’s your second name?

Andy Lu 33:40
Lu. I’ll give you I’ll give you a card.

Carlton Reid 33:43
Because we got your name on tape and I won’t say it again. But we didn’t get your name. Thank you. Yeah, great stuff. Brilliant. Thank you. In fact, I’ve got your business card here so I actually put this on tape of fettle.cc people get in touch with you anybody who wants a job or wants to expand your empire happy Kwik Fit could be

Andy Lu 34:06
well at the moment it’s it’s an exclusive wellness exclusive partnership our network is our own we we own and operate our work our network so it’s not a kind of like a franchisee model we already doing it with Quick Fit as a as a partner.

Ilma Barbaroviciute 34:24
Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah, and you can also follow us on social media. It’s at fettlebike everywhere. And we upload all the news about your workshops about community rights, community events, so people can join us, even if they’re beginners or even if they’re like advanced in their cycling journey. Everyone’s welcome.

Carlton Reid 34:43
Next up here is Alex Murray, of the folding ebike brand Flitbike. Right Alex? This is where we’re basically taking our lives into our hands here. We’re in the middle of the test track. Basically, people are going around on scooters at Move at Excel, but you in the middle are also allowing people to have a go. And this is this is version two iteration two of the Flitbike Yes, yes. So what’s different to this compared to previous version?

Alex Murray 35:14
so at flitbike we specialise in making lightweight folding electric bikes mainly for urban commuters so think of anyone who needs to take a train into a major city as part of their commute. A few years ago, we developed our first bike it was called the Flint 16. We manufactured hundreds of those sold them to people all across the UK and Europe. But then, as a common with a lot of companies in the bike industry, the supply crunch happened that lead time on welding factories went from two months up to about 18 months in some cases. And once you include getting all the components and shipping bikes over from Taiwan, and so on, lead times could go up to nearly two years. So we decided to go back to the drawing board got a grant from Innovate UK. And we use that to develop a whole new manufacturing method. So the bike you can see here has no welding on it whatsoever. It’s a non world bike, it uses the same adhesives that are used in the aerospace and automotive industries. So the bike is mechanically fixed together. And then we use industrial strength adhesives to put it together. Now, that’s not actually that new those techniques have been used since the 1980s. However, where it doesn’t necessarily make sense for a full size bike for a folding bike, it makes a lot of sense. Because if you’re working in aluminium, when you weld the frame, and then you do something called heat treatment to to refrain from the frame afterwards, you introduce distortions every time you do that. And by by not using welding, we don’t have any of those distortions. So it means we can be very accurate with how the parts fall together. That’s allowed us to get more compact. So this bike is about 20% more compact than our original version. And it’s also lighter, it’s about a kilo and a half later.

Carlton Reid 36:54
So the Brompton and many other bike having like a removable battery pack on the front or wherever. So Where’s where’s the battery on this? Where’s everything hidden? And how do you recharge it?

Alex Murray 37:05
Sure thing? Yeah, so the Brompton fantastic bikes, when they came to making an electric folding bike, they didn’t want to change the design too much. So they essentially sort of retrofits, a lot of the components onto the bike motor goes in the front wheel, the battery clips on to the front, as you say, we started from a blank piece of paper, which meant we could put things where we wanted. So the battery frost lives in the top tube here. And it’s got the charging port there on the side. So it can all be charged. The battery is removable as well. So if I just take the seat posts out, appreciate your listeners won’t be able to see this, but the battery slides out there. Right. And that’s a custom a battery that lives in the top tube with an integrated real I

Carlton Reid 37:44
was gonna say there’s a there’s an LED at the back there as well. And there’s there’s something at the front as well. Yes. So we have on the front, though. Yeah. You mean speaking of mono blade as well. So there’s like no, Mike Burrows influence? Yes. Rip, Mike.

Alex Murray 38:00
It’s been sorted by us. So we’ve just had our patent fully granted across the European Union, which is I mean, main market, the UK and European Union, I should say. So that patents have been granted, it’s a unique fold that. Okay, so folding bikes have been around for a very long time, 100 years at least. So there’s very little new under the sun. However, not many people have been designing folding bikes with lithium ion batteries integrated into them that’s quite new. So the way this bike folds, you would only do it if you get a battery that was small and light enough from the lithium ion technology to fit inside the bike. So uses a unique fold that uses an offset headset and an angled fork hinge to bring the front wheel to the side. So you mentioned Brompton earlier. So I’ll just use them as a reference point, Brompton achieved something similar, but they use a hinge on the top tube. It’s a great design. But if you want to put a battery in the top tube, it’s not going to work. So this is a this fold is patented, and has been through the examination process and everything

Carlton Reid 39:02
is going to set me back if I’m going into a shop or if I’m buying direct, I’m gonna tell me the two parts that question and where do you buy it? And how much does it cost?

Alex 39:09
Sure, sure. So at the minute, we’re direct consumer only, so you can buy them from us. We have partnerships lined up with shops in the UK, but we’re going to be launching that in a in a later phase. So at the minute, it’s just from us, the full retail price of the bike is two and a half 1000 pounds, which is alright, which is okay for folding, folding ebike, particularly in the premium category. But because we’re doing pre orders at the minutes, people are ordering them in advance, it’s actually 2000 pounds. When you add on top of that, that most people are buying through cycle to work, the price can drop another 40% or so. So we think we’re pretty well priced.

Carlton Reid 39:44
And Alex tell me where we can learn more about Flitbike, your website and your socials.

Alex Murray 39:51
Sure thing so we’re we’re to be found online at www.flit.bike and then to find this bike in particular, it’s flit.bike/m2, and on social sites, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, we’re at flitbike

Carlton Reid 40:06
So, Xavier it’s just tech, tech, tech at the Move conference. It’s e scooters, its autonomous vehicles, lorries that emit only water, not spewing out. awful stuff back there. So the thing that’s missing is shanks’ pony, is pavements, because you’ve been given a talk here. And you were talking about how we move. Yeah, and how we show some slides of dystopias and other words, those kind of motor centric cities of the future where almost walking isn’t in Wheeling and wheelchairs, can I just almost not there or you know, why really separate? See, you are the opposite to everything that’s here. Are you here as some sort of agent provocateur?

Xavier Brice 41:05
Well, to a certain extent, I mean, that’s just this conference is called Move. So it’s about movement. And my argument was, movement is one of the fundamental things that makes us human, that shape. And therefore how we move is a fundamental question about how we want to live together. And I don’t think that, that were the kind of opposite of all of this. I mean, there’s some practical stuff isn’t there isn’t much money to be made from walking and pavements. And this is a conference with exhibitors. And as you know, there’s a commercial side to it, which needs to be recognised. And I think that’s just commercial reality. Not that there’s not much money in active travel. So and so I think that that impart shapes what you’re seeing here. And the other thing to say is that transport technology, transport innovation, a lot of what you see here, there is nothing wrong with it, per se, there is nothing wrong, per se with the car, it’s often the unintended consequences. And so I think that highlighting the unintended consequences, talking about those and reminding people that ultimately just as transporter derived demand, transport technology is is serving a purpose, which is to connect us to move us. And actually, we need to go back to the question of, of not only how do we want to get from A to be as quickly as possible, but how do we want to live? How do we want to be together? How do we want to move together? And given that movement as an opportunity for human connection? How can we maximise that, while still enabling people to have convenient, comfortable journeys, that in a way that helps bring us together helps us be the society we want to be, rather than pushing us apart.

Carlton Reid 42:52
So you’re talking about connected connections you have when you when you walk into, potentially, when you when you start community, you can’t just stop on a dime, and talk to somebody which you tend not to be able to do in a car. And you showed one slide, which is the famous study of Sheffield, where a great grandfather, you know, as an eight year old, had eight mile radius, coming right down to the modern generation of that family 300 yards away from a house. And you mentioned that your total right now that’s probably even less than that. And the other study, you could have mentioned, you will be familiar with the Appleyard study, which is the amount of connections you’ve got across the street, across, you know, we’ve got cars coming here, then where’s people you can get people go at different angles on there’s no cars, basically. And that’s also something to do with with a human connection? Absolutely. So that’s something that we’re losing. And you’re what you said in your talk is what we travel in teleporters when travelling to get places as fast as possible, whereas that for our mental health? And for many other reasons, that’s probably not the most optimum thing to do.

Xavier Brice 44:08
No, indeed. And so it’s always the danger, isn’t it? When you optimise for one thing, you optimise for that one thing, and therefore you will have unintended consequences. And so to go back to that notion of human connections, the point I was making there was so when I used to want my daughters to school because the school was close enough to the house to do that. And during that walk, I would always see somebody I knew. And I knew them probably through I might have met them on the walk to school Bachalo and got chatting and and that’s making a human bond. And it’s non trivial. There’s lots of evidence don’t trust is built over time, not in single big acts. So So community trust is built through those social bonds. I talked about you know, when you drive I do drive, and I now drive my children to the station on a fairly regular basis has been safe enough to cycle sample Okay. When I when you do that, literally anyone you come across That’s like going the other way. See, anyone else you come across from the road is in your way somebody crossing is slowing you down the car in front of you, it wasn’t there. You could go faster if they’re not speeding,

Carlton Reid 45:16
or you try to sorry, you’re trying to stop yourself from thinking that or you are thinking that when you’re driving, you know, this is the impulse is

Xavier Brice 45:23
the impulse, isn’t it? Because because when you get enough factors as people are in your way, so I was at an event that we already see foundation about the future of the car. And Richard Hammond was one of the talkers who was being provocative on you, standardly. And he was talking about him, the goal is to get somewhere and ideally get somewhere quicker than someone else was his words. No, that’s an exaggeration of it. But there is something about it’s that notion, is that famous thing of people complaining about the traffic, not recognising that part of the traffic. We all do it. Yeah. It’s the nature of being enclosed in your own personal mobility device, your own teleport. And I think that and beyond that, go back to what you were saying about. That’s the Appleyard study. So So increasingly, car travel is about door to door. So one of the things I talked about was the scourge of pavement parking, a huge impact that has on disabled people in particular. And it seems again, like a minor thing. But it’s huge, actually. And, and one of the reasons I think this come about is more than one reason. One is certainly the increase in private car ownership I saw you on Twitter tweeting about recently, so that there are simply more cars and less space. But one of the things that I regularly see, matching UDT is actually where there are perfectly sensible places to park, people are not parking there, because it’s not directly outside where they want to go. And what seems to have happened is, there’s a sort of a view that it’s not my right to park outside my destination. So this notion of the car is sort of pseudo teleporter is becoming more and more the case, if you think about from autonomous vehicles, especially when you summon up on your phone, you are getting close to teleportation, you are getting close to this ideal of, you know, I tap on my phone, my pod arrives, I get it, I get to my destination, I have no contact with anyone on the outside world bank on that amazingly convenient. And living in suburban Surrey with children who do after school activities, but very limited safe cycling infrastructure, and an adequate bus service. You know, I know how much time gets spent preparing children about oh, my goodness, the thought of being able to put them in an autonomous pod. You know, let’s face it, that is a that is that would that would improve quality of life, but at what cost? At what cost of their own sense. And and and it’s not one cost of the society we’re building. And if you think about some of the images I showed, and poked fun at which were these kind of tech visions of a tech enabled transport future, you just want to step back from and say, well actually focus on looks amazingly convenient. But where did it take us? Does it take us somewhere that we actually want to live, that we actually want to build communities in that we want to know where chip where our children will be able to play where our children will learn their independence. And those things are really important, especially in an increasingly polarised world. And especially with the public health crisis that we have, and we’re storing up for the future, where actually, movement is good for us encountering people who are different than us, is good for us building community partners. And actually, a lot of the way we do that, it’s not at a destination. It’s getting an axe on the way there, it’s leaving our door and walking to the bus stop. It’s it’s those so on the way here today, actually the railway station, I bumped into somebody you I haven’t spoken to for years, and we caught up. And it helps it made me happy actually, then it helps increase our social capital. And these are not trivial things.

Carlton Reid 48:57
You mentioned, not trivial things you mentioned. polarised world. Yeah. And in your talk, you mentioned that there are some LTNs that are brought in at breakneck speed potentially, that’s where some of the friction has come from. But then you predicted that the going forward. Some of the conspiracy theories around LTNs, around 15 minute cities is not going to go away could potentially even increase. Is that Is that a fair reflection of where you’re going with that?

Xavier Brice 49:37
I think it’s not comforting thought as a but I think I think when you when you look at the challenges around climate change, to rail on what those elite into and if you look, you know, the US is often ahead of the UK on many things. It’s a predictor of what’s to come. And there’s I Let us for several years in the early 2000s. And I think if I was to go back, it would feel very different. Certainly talking to people who live in the States, you know, and clearly and and, and you look across mainland Europe that’s on the rise advisor far right parties as well as far left. So I think I think it’s difficult to say that on one side lightsaber, we’re not going to polarisation is going to go away, the conspiracy theories are going to go away evidence or evidence of that. And in things that get taken into the orbit of different conspiracy theories, right, going back to what I talked about movement movements are fundamental human part fundamentally being human. And it’s where conflict occurs, because it’s where we come together. And movement and transport is often it’s one of those social dilemmas that isn’t, you know, it’s by maximising what we own personal gain my own personal mobility, my own personal convenience, can act against the greater good as good of a hole, which ultimately will come back and bite me traffic. And so I think it’s no surprise that transport finds itself in the crosshairs. Especially when, where people will live. And it also is, again, deliberately pulled in in some areas. So So I think it’s not going to go away. And and it’s not just climate change, because because a lot of what some of what we’re talking about, you know, you replace cars with electric cars, or Can’t you imagine, if you were able to snap your fingers and replace all cars and electric cars tomorrow, choice is impossible. You would still have challenges around LTNs, you will still have issues around traffic, traffic, destruction, people, all the stuff. We haven’t even talked about emissions yet. So I don’t think that the electrification we see around us here today and what’s going on is really needed is a good thing. That’s not going to solve some of the fundament fundamental dilemmas and transport which actually is what makes it so fascinating, so interesting. And so worth influencing living has changed for the better.

Carlton Reid 51:55
Thanks to Sustrans’ CEO Xavier Brice. Next up is Henri Moissinac, co founder of Dott. But first let’s go across to my colleague, David for a short ad break.

David Bernstein 52:05
Hello, everyone. This is David from the Fredcast. And of course, the spokesmen. And I’m here once again to tell you that this podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles, the good people at Tern build bikes that make it easier for you to replace car trips with bike trips. Part of that is being committed to designing useful bikes that are also fun to ride. But an even greater priority for Tern, is to make sure that your ride is safe, and worryfree. And that’s why Tern works with industry leading third party testing labs like E FB, E, and builds its bikes around Bosch ebike systems which are UL certified for both electric and fire safety. So before you even zip off on your Tern, fully loaded, and perhaps with a loved one behind, you can be sure that the bike has been tested to handle the extra stresses on the frame, and the rigours of the road. For more information, visit www.ternbicycles.com to learn more. And now, back to the Spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 53:15
Thanks, David. And we are back with audio from the Move mobility conference. I was one of the interviewers on the shows main stage and I snuck on my microphones so I could record my fireside chat with Henri Moissinac of the city share scooter and ebike company Dott

Move announcer 53:33
Up on stage for our next session Carlton Reid and Henri Moissinac.

Carlton Reid 53:41
Good morning, we are miked up, and we are ready to go. So I am here this morning with Henri Moissinac. You live in London, Henri. So we’re gonna be talking in a minute, about 15 minutes cities. And if you’re aware of all the conspiracy theories, around 15 minute minute cities, we’re going to not try and go down into that particular rabbit hole, we are going to try and keep it all positive. Neither of us are in the pay of the World Economic Forum. Let’s just put that out there at the moment. But first of all, before we get into the the absolute gubbins of what we’re gonna be doing here this morning, Henri. Let’s find a little bit about you. Because you’re with Dott, we’ll get into the biography of Dott in a moment, but let’s get a biography of you. So tell us about your background because he started in E commerce. And even in social networking, both of these things before they became big. So give us your your biography, and then we’ll get into Dott.

Henri Moissinac 54:54
is great question. So yeah, actually, I started in E commerce. It makes me think about mobile because when I started in E commerce CES was like, three, four years before it started become becoming popular. And I remember vividly people were telling me is just never going to work, you know, people are never going to put their credit card on the internet. And some of the things we did, and some of the companies that work for became massive, massive successes, and there were hundreds and hundreds of millions of users. I was just saying, when I started in social networking, so I was an early employee at Facebook, we have 300 employees. And when I joined Facebook, people were telling me, it’s never going to work, you know, people, you’re only going to see photos of cats and dogs on the internet. Look how many users now. And I, to me, mobility was made the same way I started getting interested in shared mobility. And people were telling me you’re never going to work here. I think what we see here with the move, you know, if you look how much progress from the first one in 2019, to today, look how vibrant this industry is becoming. So I think it’s going to be the same, like E commerce like social networking. Some of the other things you’ve seen massive changes, I think shared mobility or micro mobility, these type of things that you see behind is going to be become very popular. And the one who’s going to disappear as the personal income within cities. Yes.

Carlton Reid 56:12
Now let’s go into Dott. How did you get into dott and describe how dott has not just shade scooters, it also has a n ebike. So described the trajectory of Dott. started in France? Yes, in Paris.

Henri Moissinac 56:29
Yeah. So maybe just a few words about that. And how do we stop this so that we operate in at 60,000 vehicles, about 1/3 of this is E bikes, and the other the rest of it is e scooters. We are in 35 cities in Europe, and most of the main cities in West Europe. So London, Paris, Brussels, Milan, Rome, Walsall Madrid, we also in Tel Aviv and surroundings. And then we operate plenty of smaller cities in in Belgium, France, Italy, bit of UK a bit of Spain. When I started when I was actually on a refreshing trip in China, I wanted to take a personal break and go through the bucket list. So I went to China because I wanted to see how vibrant and how China was not not the tourist year aspect of it, but you’re spending time with entrepreneurs and so on. And so this wave of shared bags, mobile microphone, you may have heard of these companies. And then we also heard about the stories about bird coming up with a new form factor. And so Maxine microfauna. And I, we took a piece of paper and we say, okay, what are all the things we like, of the of the things we’re going to copy? What are all the things we don’t like? And we are going to do none of that. So for example, the gig economy of birth, we said none of that for us. And then the last question was, what are all the things neither Chinese or American will understand? And that’s typically the relationship with the cities and the stakeholders. And so we thought, okay, well, if we do very well, what they’re good at if we avoid all the things we don’t like, and if we do think that neither the Chinese or the Americans can understand, we have a chance to win. So that started, we were probably the last company to start, I mean, among the big players, everybody thought we would have zero chance against realignment and burnin look where we are today. And we are very healthy, we are going very fast. We feel very safe about the future of this industry. So yeah, it was That’s how it’s happened.

Carlton Reid 58:30
So we are gonna get on to 15 minute cities. But let’s dig a little bit more down into into Dott. You the bikes came on after that the scooters. So I’d be interested and I’d be interested for you to tell the audience about the share between bikes now and scooters. And does that change compared to the way the city is and what they’re on the ground would have seen for instance, bike lanes now.

Henri Moissinac 58:57
So first, let’s step back and understand what’s the vision and strategy and then how they compare to each other today. So the vision is we want to go after every trip that is not walking in public transit. But when we are younger and we only have a piece of paper and a few doors, you got to be a bit naive and optimistic and you got to start simple and be very focused. So we thought that scooters would be the form factor to start with. We know all the data proves it today scooters are a bit edgy gives you more freedom for you feel younger, it’s you know typically a bit more male and female a bit younger than the typical average citizen of a city. So we thought okay, let’s just scooters when we got it right in many cities, we stopped bikes. And also we wanted to wait a bit to see what type of share bikes we could come up with because we felt the early pieces of hardware weren’t going to be sustainable enough. So now in most capital cities, London we operate in London for example, we are both in Paris processes on the bikes. They are typically older and more female They are they go a bit faster. So to be key commuters, they tend to like it a bit more. When it’s cold people prefer to do bikes. But when it rains, people prefer to do scooters. And typically we have three types of users. We have people who are heavily on scooters, and they love it. And it’s just a lifestyle for them. And they don’t want to touch a bike. We have people are more pragmatic like me, that will just switch depending on availability, the weather where they going, if they know traffic or not. And then we have people that just don’t want to touch the scooter and they will never get on one and the only comfortable on bikes. So that’s why you need to get to both.

Carlton Reid 1:00:35
And the bikes that the bikes so they’re limited in their speed. But on downhill sections for instance, you’re not limited you can go as fast as you like on on. The scooter, of course, is limited. So why why do cities? Why does the industry that the sector limit one mode doesn’t mean the other mode because of course motorists are not limited.

Henri Moissinac 1:00:59
Yeah. So for remediation facts first, answer your question. So typically in cities the bikes I’ve sold our bikes are kept in speeder same for scooters. And in some cities, most cities, the bikes have a slight senior higher speed cat again, then in scooters. But then there are sometimes bigger differences. For example, in London with a bike on that you can go through a park, but you can’t do it on the scooter. Either backing walls also can change. So in take, for example, in Paris, when the gap is the most important. So these like 10,000 parking spots for bikes, and only 2500 parking spots for for scooters. So it doesn’t really give it exactly the same experience. I think it is. The reason for that is because scooters is new and bikes is not enough stakeholders have decided to limit the speed, I think actually the speed of a scooter is is quite good. I mean, it really goes well. It’s not too fast. It’s not too slow. And London is the only city where it’s slightly lower than the other cities. And then the bikes they are they can go faster, but they don’t go at the speed of a personal bike. Most of the personal bikes, too, as we share bikes, the speed of our bikes is designed so that if you ride in a bike lane with Santa the bikes, for example, you’re going to be in the flow, you’re not really you can pass but you’re not going to disturb everybody. So not too, not too slow, and not too fast.

Carlton Reid 1:02:26
15 minute cities, which is the conspiratorial thing of the moment. But it’s a very, very nice concept you would think, to live close to education, to shops, to nice restaurants. Why on earth would that be subject to a conspiracy theory? It’s quite strange. However, Carlos Moreno, who is the guy who came up with concept in Paris called Paris. He describes it as something there, the proximity to all of these amenities is mainly by foot. So a bicycle or share bike or by standard bicycle or a scooter actually extends that to not being a 15 minute stick, because you can get quite a long way on a scooter on a bike compared to the walking 15 minutes city. So do we still talk about a 15 minute city when we’ve got a bicycle or a scooter involved?

Henri Moissinac 1:03:27
So the concept of 15 minute cities is it’s really a vision I I follow and I believe a lot when these type of messages came from not just parents actually your loved cities, I think you at least London is the perfect example of this vibrant neighbourhoods, young there. But yeah, you’re right, your job, your university, maybe your next job interview or your friends, they’re not going to be 15 minutes walking away, but would be great if they could be 15 minutes with public transit or your personal bike or a shared bike and you can do quite a long distance and 15 minutes on the dots whether it’s a scooter or bike, so it just widens the possible network. So I don’t know why they didn’t just take an example. If you in Piccadilly Circus, you know centre of London, it takes to go to the other side of Hyde Park, it’s about 18 minutes with with Russia bike, it will take a lot longer in public transit. And yeah, so if you have your personal bank, if it hasn’t been stolen, you can go even faster. So I do believe that micro Rutaceae scooters, share bikes private bikes, they help you live within 15 minutes but just increases dramatically the rich the distance you can get them. The average distance in Paris for example, I’m just French so use that example. The average distance in Paris about three kilometre for us and it So completely when we talk to people the price in terms people are not in the industry doesn’t matter. They, it’s very hard for them to realise exactly what tricky matter because that’s not how they think. So you tell them when it’s about 2500, for now, in metro or in Cuba, by the time you get there maybe and if the connections 45 minutes. And so that’s how people think. And if you’re telling them 45 minute trip with one connection, now you can do in 20 minutes on a shared service. I mean, I’m going to see my friends, I may take a job that is further, I may have this other business meeting and business relationship face to face that wasn’t able to do so. So I really believe we are bringing good here

Carlton Reid 1:05:41
I got here from Kings Cross on a folding bike. And most of the way it’s on CS3, which is the cycle, superhighway three, which is great. But then there’s one little bit. The last, basically, last mile, in fact, is not on bike paths, and you’re on a road. But there was no cars on that road. And all of a sudden, what would have been quite an awful journey. If there are 1000s of cars on that particular busy, what would normally be think a busy stretch of road suddenly became this is great, because there are no cars or no trucks. And so I can now go on what in effect was like a dual carriageway motorway quite happily. So is that the future for cities because cities like London, you know, private motor cars are disappearing. Paris and Hidalgo with all her content, are also trying to get rid of parking spaces trying to get rid of cars. So is the future for cities going to be? It’s not the bike lanes, it’s going to be there are no cars around. And it’ll be the scooters, the bikes, the private banks, the private scooters, that’s going to take over and you’re not going to have to build bike paths. You’ve got the existing infrastructure or these beautiful roads. It’s

Henri Moissinac 1:07:02
probably the hardest question for the stakeholders and cities because they have all these conflicting messages and so on. But the reality is that a city needs infrastructure, it needs logistics, it means delivery trucks, your restaurants will be able to serve you pizza in the evening, if there is not a delivery truck in the morning, so you’re still going to have motor vehicles. And some of them are quite big to, to, for example, the delivery people. And how do you combine all these modes, the one thing I think most cities are clear on is the private ownership of cars to do small trips within cities. That doesn’t make sense. And we’ve been living for 30 years. And that’s the transition were doing it reminds them you’re talking about ecommerce is the same transition of I go to someplace to do some shopping, because I don’t I can’t just have it delivered. Or if you take, for example, email, I had to send faxes in the past and I can read over that transition takes time. But I think this transition, how they’re going to rethink the centre of cities, it’s moving really fast. I’ve been in London for 10 years, if you look at embankment used to be a kind of highway, and now look how much better so that was for sure is that to really get mobility to change, you need to have safe paths for for for people to be comfortable on their private bike or shared services. That’s really important. And so that’s why most of the time, the primary better is to get safe space. And just specifically the intersections are healthier for pedestrians and for shared services. I agree with

Carlton Reid 1:08:39
the safe space. But kind of circling back on that question. Just if you get rid of the colours, you have got that safe space. So that’s not an easy win for a legislator, get rid of the cars. Why can’t cities just get rid of the cartels?

Henri Moissinac 1:08:57
It’s really interesting to see the conflict between the stakeholders within one city so I do have a lot of respect. Take Take London for example. The people in London that built the bike lanes, they’re really Crusaders, you know, they are really trying and good for the city. But every time there is a project for a bank lien is plenty of opposition’s takes forever to convince the local residents that removing parking spots. Because if you if you remove the parking lane, you know, like it is like 50 cows that are sitting there forever moving maybe once a day, at best at best. Just move that to a bank then think about all the people that could benefit from the space. So it sounds obvious, but it seems to be extremely difficult to do. And I think it’s really important to have statistic owners are thinking about the long term and not the short and the long term is having a personal car parked in the street, not movie when you can remove dance and do a bank pain or delivery spot inside the parking spot for deliveries. So obviously they just do it.

Carlton Reid 1:10:00
Why don’t you talk before about shopping in with a scooter or with a bank, you can’t carry a sofa, you can carry lots of heavy shopping, for instance, if you do a weekly shop, so the private car still as van, that perfection, you can carry lots of stuff. So, you know, do you argue that we should get rid of cars? Because cars are actually quite useful? Maybe only sometimes, but they’re still useful. So can you argue them? So I’m basically I’m being a devil’s advocate here. So can we argue for getting rid of cars when they’re actually incredibly useful?

Henri Moissinac 1:10:41
People will adapt their usages there will always be a need for cars, for example, if you have kids, or if your luggage if you’re going very far away, I’m not saying the opposite. Yeah. And I’m thinking a lot of the things can be adapted. And the the average consumer does change their habits. You were talking about shopping on the bike and scooter, it works very well. And I mean, the best training course is EasyJet, you know, think of all the people that used to have luggage, big luggage and so on. Amanda just had a backpack. Thank you EasyJet, for training us to have a small backpack, you have your pay for luggage, the same if I spent a lot of time in the streets with users and so on. A lot of them start to carry the backpack, love them. You go to dinner or sample class, you see them they come out of the train and the hub they go off on the shuttle service, but he can’t zone the zone carrier tray anymore. They have a backpack? So yes, he I mean, life is full of possibilities. And people want to enjoy it as much as possible. You give them mobility, they do more things. And yes, if they need to carry a say I will say the bigger backpack because they want to do that. And I’m not worried. We are about creating opportunities for people.

Carlton Reid 1:11:52
Henri, thank you very much if we could give Henri Moissinac round of applause. Thank you.

Thank you and thanks to all my guests today. And thanks to you for listening to Episode 334 of the spokesmen podcast brought to you in association with Tern bicycles. Shownotes and more can be found at the-spokesmen.com. The next episode will feature two Swiss academics talking about a new report on the growth of cargo bikes. That’ll be out next week. Meanwhile, get out there and ride…
July 10, 2023 / / Blog

Playing God: Bike Infrastructure Folks at Move Conference

10th July 2023

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 333: Playing God: Bike Infrastructure Folks at Move Conference

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUESTS: Philip McAleese, Jon Little, Kris Vanherle, José Manuel Gutiérrez

TOPICS: Bike infrastructure folks recorded at the Move mobility conference in London in June.

TRANSCRIPT:

Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 333 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show is engineered on Monday 10th of July 2023.

David Bernstein 0:28
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 t learn more.

Carlton Reid 1:04
I’m Carlton Reid. And today’s show is a bunch of interviews with bike infrastructure folks who I met at the move mobility conference in London last month. You’ll hear from Philip McAleese of Northern Ireland, cofounder of SeeSense the bike lights and data company. I talk digital trees and more with London’s Jon Little, cofounder of drag and drop cityscape imaginator Betastreets, I also got to meet Telraam’s Kris Van Herle— Telraam is a citizen traffic counting system based out of Belgium and which featured on this podcast a few episodes back. And last but not least there’s José Manuel Gutiérrez of Barcelona who was in London to talk about Lane Control, a tool from the Keita Mobility Factory that assesses the safety and attractiveness of cycling infrastructure.

Have you been here before you interviewed before we came

Philip McAleese 2:10
here last year as well. And so

Carlton Reid 2:11
So you’ve returned? That’s good. Yeah. But Well, shouldn’t you be on a bigger booth now? Because you are you’re not you’re not a startup? It’s a Startup Village. How can we all are you do you want to be in with like the innovators is that

Philip McAleese 2:24
I think we still consider ourselves a startup because there’s still a lot of things that we’re doing, which are very explorative. And you and so you know, we are we are looking to scale. We have a lot of really cool technology. And one of the things that we enjoy doing, but there’s a lot of it is a voyage of discovery. So it’s understanding how people can use our data and insights to really get better understandings make better data, live decisions, to really look at, you know, with the climate of urgency, how do we get more people on sustainable transportation? How do we encourage people and hyper localise nudge behaviour, so it is personal to the individual, so that it means something to them, or will encourage them to keep doing it? Because as I’m sure you know, it takes a few goes that getting people to do something before it can stick in form habits. So how do we break things? First?

Carlton Reid 3:11
Are you data data? I mean data? Are you a data company here? Are you a light company? What What What’s your elec, give me your elevator pitch as though I know nothing about your company fillers.

Philip McAleese 3:23
So we are really a sensor of data company. We specialise in giving insights into micro mobility, helping to understand not only where people are going and how they’re using it, but actually what their experiences where it’s working well. Particular where, what their interaction is like with other road users with the infrastructure, understanding where that’s all working? Well, I’m understanding where it can be improved.

Carlton Reid 3:47
So obviously, you you bicycle lights is where you came from. I’m looking at poster here. And of course, it’s Micromobility. Yes, so you’ve got a bicycle there, but you’ve also got a scooter. So your product, yes. is now going on scooters. Is that in scooters? Or is that still a light that you put attached to the scooter? So what’s what’s the tech?

Philip McAleese 4:06
Yeah, no. So we’ve got two product offerings. One is the consumer lighting. And then obviously, Paris with a mobile phone app to allow people to optionally collect data. The other one is a fleet telematics solution, which uses the same patented sensor technology, but integrated with auto lighting products, so that we can track fleet vehicles. So we’re tracking, obviously, e bikes, regular bikes as well, and E scooters as well. So we’re getting all of the different viewpoints from those different users. One of the projects we’re really brought off at the moment is as its pedal bar, where we’ve got an area of pretty significant deprivation, where we’re helping people to access better opportunities to use bicycles, which are being given to them to access, utility cycling, to get to the shops and so on to access train stations and employments and that’s still in the relatively early phases, but it’s scaling up it’s a really it’s During project, we’re starting to see some infrastructure changes go in for additional bicycle parking drop curbs to allow them to, to access the places they

Carlton Reid 5:08
want to go. And that’s because data showed them.

Philip McAleese 5:11
Yes, exactly that. So we were able to see that, you know, Tuesday evening down the pier was the social place to be, but the some of the local shops that were being used, and people were using them and going places that weren’t expected. So being able to uncover that and understand the sorts of journeys that the bicycles are being used for, has really helped in that design of knowing where to put the infrastructure to improve and continue that good, like behaviour.

Carlton Reid 5:36
So what cities you’re working with.

Philip McAleese 5:38
So we’ve got projects going on at the moment in a number of cities, obviously, our six is the big one. Another one that we’re really proud of is Victoria in sorry, Melbourne and Victoria in Australia. And there we’ve just finished the first phase of a 1000. bicycle lights trial. The that’s what the transport Accident Commission here a government organisation tasked with well, accident condition, transport Accident Commission, that car

Carlton Reid 6:04
accident, yes, in the title. That’s awful. Anyway,

Philip McAleese 6:08
it’s historic. Yeah, okay. But they

Carlton Reid 6:12
Crash not accident. So they should change their name,

Philip McAleese 6:14
yes, but the attack. So they are actually they’ve just paid for an extension to the project. So allow us to engage with the local government authorities, I was selected three or four within that region, to see How could our data help to help them to better understand some of the infrastructure changes they’ve made around how effective they’ve been to look at future infrastructure change? And indeed, is what they’re planning aligned with what the data is actually showing.

Carlton Reid 6:41
Cool? And who are you hoping to talk to hear how you like our meetings planned? Are you just completely random that whoever comes on? What have you set up?

Philip McAleese 6:51
This a little bit of everything. So we’re obviously very, very much interested in here to learn. So there are a number of incredibly fascinating talks and presentations, and so on that we want to go and see. There are a lot of contacts of projects, I think we’ve been quite conscious of our carbon footprint, where, you know, we like having some meetings with people. We haven’t travelled backwards and forwards in Belfast to the UK as much as we would have done historically. And so it’s actually wonderful to come here and meet a lot of our customers and clients and people that we know, and see them face to face, but in a very effective and carbon, low carbon way. So partly for presentations, partly to meet people, and of course, for networking to see are there other opportunities for us to sell our technology and to help people have better insights.

Carlton Reid 7:34
Philip McAleese has been on the show before, and so has the next person that I interviewed at move, and that is Jon Little. And Jon is kind of a tree fan, you’ll kind of find out why in a second. But he was extolling the virtues of trees on this show, way back in 2018. So that was episode 195, in which I entitled “cycle advocates should ask for trees, not just cycleways.” So here’s the up to date, Jon, at the Move conference. And of course, we did start by talking about trees.

Isn’t this as though

Jon Little 8:11
there are lots of trees in it? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the plants and stuff are actually my favourite part of it. To be perfectly honest, we’re but

Carlton Reid 8:17
so first of all, tell us who you are for the tape yet. Jon, who are you, Jon? So

Jon Little 8:21
my name is Jon Little. I’m a transport consultant. I work in street design, generally, but particularly kind of interested in getting people involved in the code design process, realise how important that is. And basically how a picture is worth 1000 words. It’s never truer than kind of what we’re up to at the moment in trying to show people that change is possible and actually that the world won’t stop spinning.

Carlton Reid 8:43
So this is betta. So drinking seats. Yeah. So it’s kind of like a riff on better and better and betta.

Jon Little 8:49
Absolutely. Yeah. So it’s a street design visualisation tool we built from the ground up during lockdown. Primarily because I do my day job has been asked by so many local authorities. Can we do this down here? What would that look like if I kept thinking self if only we had a tool where we could just take a photo and drag and drop stuff in and create this vision of mainly a meme got me more useful. So of course, how it could look in the end with a full blown visualisation, which I think is fair to say lots of people unfortunately, when they saw trees in pots couldn’t necessarily see what the end result might look like in a few years time and can’t buy into the halfway house as such. So we built a tool that enables you to create visualisations in a matter of minutes that look the same as a visualisation that would have been made by UK transport consultancy costing 1000s of pounds and taking lots and lots of hours of engineers and people involved in that process.

Carlton Reid 9:37
And it’s using Google Streetview

Jon Little 9:39
now so we we tried to tell people not to street although you can do that’s up to you. We prefer that people don’t use Google imagery at the moment we recommend that you don’t just purely because Google don’t like people drawing on their images but effectively it’s any any photo you take the mobile or or an SLR you import into our browser. And then you set the scale set the horizon And, and that’s about it. And then everything that you drag and drop from the library of things, which is all real things provided by real providers. So kerbs from char con or Felco cycle hangers or whatever that might be. You then drag and drop to stuff of your choice into your image and recreate the vision of how that street or place could look. It’s got every single TSR DD sign and the pro version line markings and everything else, all the standard stuff you need to do highway maintenance, not just beautiful streets, but you can use visualisation or use our tool to help people understand how it look, if you just resurface the road. Of course, you’d never normally do that with visualisation tool because it costs 1000s of pounds. And there just isn’t that money or that inclination to necessarily do that normally. We like to think that we’ve invented something or made something that can change the way that visualisation is used in our industry. And actually the way our industry works with people, be it in in the office or out the office, and particularly around the courts having those conversations about how places might look if change happens, and hopefully it will be a good thing.

Carlton Reid 10:59
And when as you there was like a rolling demo that was going on where you weren’t having to press thing. Yeah, there was the Photoshop. Like regenitive thing. Basically, it took a car out of the picture. Yeah, it was quite cute. So you’re basically not just adding stuff. You’re taking stuff

away. Yeah, you can play god.

Jon Little 11:17
Absolutely. So we’ve we’ve we’ve got an image object removal tool within our within our platform, it enables you to remove pretty much anything from the image. I mean, it’s machine learning, it’s not perfect. It’s akin to like similar to some of the smartphones have gotten now. But yeah, the idea being that if there’s a car in a place where you don’t want it and you want to and that would otherwise mean that you couldn’t do the visual without going to Photoshop or something else. So you can remove it. But as you can see, it can easily as easily remove a line marker off the street.

Carlton Reid 11:43
Yep. Yep. And how much is this going to cost? authority so

Jon Little 11:48
it’s 900 pounds a year. For licence that licence can be floating between the team only one person can use at any one time. So obviously, we like to think that that teams will need more than one licence to be perfectly honest with you because actually, as you can see, you can use visualisation for just seeing what it looked like if you dropped a tree in an empty tree pit and not necessarily doing a full blown visualisation, as we’re kind of accustomed to with big developments and big road projects.

Carlton Reid 12:13
So the demo we’re getting now is of a tree being put in is that what particular kind of tree

Jon Little 12:17
though now you’re testing my knowledge I sorry, man. I’m not education as well. I know that’s a shocker, isn’t it? But um, but this

Carlton Reid 12:25
is your favourite thing you like basically the last time you were on the show many many years ago you were basically saying that the biggest thing that we could improve cities get more people walking, cycling and not driving bizarrely, is those green things with brown bits underneath.

Jon Little 12:43
Yeah, absolutely. And actually in the background of that image is his street art and the like. I mean, people like we know from you know, Lucy Saunders healthy street stuff from from lots of evidence based stuff that we use in our industry, we know that people feel safer, they more likely to walk and cycle and be outside if they feel like it’s a place that they belong for one of a better phrase, and of course, beautify and streets and add implant and and stuff as Andy stone at the moment. Couldn’t be part of that process. Again, we we like to think because we’ve designed so we talk we pay lip service, I think in some times in our industry to we’re going to design this street for eight to 18 year olds, and it’s going to be for everybody and all that stuff. And of course that’s right, but we don’t actually involve all those people in the process, particularly children whereas I mean, my daughter talks about this as being my game so that you can upload your game please. He loves placing trees in the Olympic Park and adding stuff where it should be on our on our route school. We like to think there again on a community centre on a Wednesday night when actually people might be getting frustrated so can’t get as involved in the design process they’d like to this tool brings all those barriers down you don’t need a massive load of experienced software to use this you don’t need a civil engineering degree we think with roughly about half an hour an hour playing around here as a competent

Carlton Reid 13:49
you’re you’re playing God your You’re certainly playing Monty Don there because what he’s been basically planting the street with grasses first as possible soils and obviously, and then you put daisies in and all that. And it’s like already looks really cute. You’ve taken a what’s a pretty boring industrial stroke scene and you’ve instantly made it nice. And that took what about 25 seconds? Probably from start to finish. Yeah. And then can you like do instant LTNs. So you’ve got like planter boxes of you?

Jon Little 14:23
Absolutely. These are all like, plugged in. Yeah.

So you can pick a plant from the library things you can then actually decide what plants go in it so you can put the plant down and then and then plant it yourself. I mean, we’ve got we’ve got curbs we’ve got kind of all your standard highway materials in there, but also cause lots of stuff to make streets look nicer.

Carlton Reid 14:41
So now you’re saying this is for local authorities and one person to do it. But would this not be something maybe you’ve absolutely envisage this and I’m not saying anything that you haven’t already thought of is getting people in and playing on you as a founder of your street. Yep. And people will naturally even though if you went in and say do you want, what do you want? They wouldn’t tell you what they want all the cars riddle, but if they actually physically played with it, so I’d actually quite like some flowers. Yeah, absolutely. And then all of a sudden you say what? You drawn them a Yep. So that’s what is this?

Jon Little 15:15
Absolutely. So we hope that rather than people having a kind of philosophical, do you want this thing? Yes or No, actually, you can have a design competition where everyone’s doing their own versions of the plant and at the end of their street and saying, Oh, I like his idea. I like that tree. I like that bit. And maybe collaboratively, truly collaboratively come up with a solution for whatever it might be. You can also actually, there’s no reason why you can’t put a half created street designing so say for argument’s sake, an engineer does put in the two metre wide footway, the new cycletrack and then get people to colour in the rest of the drawing. So they pick the plant and they pick the optional extras, they decide where the parklets go and all the rest of it to again, hopefully open up that design process. So it truly is CO design.

Carlton Reid 15:53
So you’re making it more beautiful there now with planting and nice things, but just as easily if you’re a motor centric traffic engineer, you could put loads of Yes, city stuff. Absolutely. I mean, this can be used for bad yet as well as

Jon Little 16:08
absolutely, you know, dare I say you can think about putting a road through a park if you say wish as easily as you can, you know, turn in a street into a park,

Carlton Reid 16:15
which reminds me because there’s a an A to Zed of Liverpool, where they’re going to put a road through a park. And it’s not it doesn’t come forward. You don’t think about it too much. Until he said put it on anything. Jesus, they really are putting a road through a park. Yeah. And it’s when you visualise it on a map when it brings it home. Yeah. So these kinds of things can bring these things home.

Jon Little 16:40
Yeah, absolutely.

And we’ve had, you know, we’ve had lots of interest from temporary, sort of music festivals and things and think about can we show people how it will temporarily look, if we put an entrance into this farmer’s field to do the carpark? Well, of course you can. Similarly, you know, parks, we’ve had somebody from the United Nations talk about whether they could use it to plan temporary road to conflict zones, or I mean, fundamentally, you can use anything you can take a photo of, you can upload to our platform and then play away.

Carlton Reid 17:04
So you’re saying it international there. But this isn’t British? Because it’s got all the British roads? Yeah. So have you got an international version?

Jon Little 17:12
on the roadmap? Yes, certainly, we’ve had quite a bit of interests from Ireland, we’ve got a bit of a fan club in Prague, we’ve added some life purpose, paving patents and semicircle. Paving patents are quite widespread in Prague purely because we’ve got quite a few users there of the demo, certainly, we hope that they’re going to start using the pro version. But the idea is absolutely that our next step is more traffic management stuff, more more standard street design stuff into the library, but then also thinking about a, you know, Dutch library of French library and the road signs and the light just as much as you know, Dutch entry curves and the like. But the idea being that there are different versions for different countries to

Carlton Reid 17:46
Yeah. And so what stage you out with with physically selling there

Jon Little 17:49
So we’re basically getting ready for Rio. So

we’ve so we’ve just relaunched our website, is literally at the moment of us switching over to have a fully constrained compatible purchasable website where you can affect the download, like by your own subscription version straight from there, there will always be a free demo, we believe in that. We believe we’ve created something for the power of goods, you said earlier about putting road to carpet and free parks. Of course you can, but we like to think that most people are going to use it for the right thing. And we actually want everyone to always have a version available for nothing too bad to do a bit with it. But then of course, if they want to go big, they need to subscribe and get the wider product like

Carlton Reid 18:24
an electric shock. You know, if you put a road in? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. So 900 pounds for local authority. Yeah. Or you can envisage a member of the public doing this is there like a subscription model.

Jon Little 18:38
So there’s a free version for anybody. And that’s got a very limited library of things, it has to be said compared to the full blown pro version. Local authorities can purchase the version and open it up to residents to have a play around as part of the design process. But primarily, the the end user subscription version is aimed at people who work in the industry be that in consultancies or local authorities or, or even suppliers of stuff. So we’re actually working with a few of our providers to build them versions, they can use a sale tool, because of course, they can stand there with a prospective local authority client and show them how it look if you put a row of their curb defendants down the road or wherever it might be.

Carlton Reid 19:13
Jon, people who are going to be interested in this where can they find out more information?

Jon Little 19:17
so go on to a website betastreets.co.uk. You can find that the demo there, you can sign up for the free version. You’ll find details about those subscriptions to the Pro versions. We’re on Twitter at BT streets limited BTA streets limited. And yeah, and that’s that’s kind of our profile at the moment. We’re on Instagram, too. But we’re not as prolific on that. As we said at the moment. There’s too many things for

Carlton Reid 19:39
but you’re very visual.

Jon Little 19:41
Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, so we’ve got, we’ve got for users, we’re building an academy in the background, that’s going to be a place where people can share tips and videos of how to Andy’s gonna have lots of videos him using it showing how to create you know how to pop up the shadows and kind of really finish off your images, but we like to think that’s gonna end up being a peer to peer space where people are going to love from each other and share best practice to, we encourage everyone to when they create beautiful images to share them as best they can with everyone else. That’s gonna go wild on social media. Yeah, we like to think so I mean, the London Cycling campaign at an earlier version of it last year in the lead up to the elections, and that went really well. I mean, they use it’s quite the climate Safe Streets campaign. Of course, the visuals that they created, were really powerful in showing prospective politicians. You know, if you like this, I’ll vote for you. If if you vote for this type thing, which I think you know, by all accounts worked really well. Yeah, we know. I mean, obviously, I said earlier, it’s the power of, you know, an image being worth 1000 words. And yeah, I mean, we hope as I say that people grab it and do beautiful things with it.

Carlton Reid 20:42
Before the next two guests, here’s a quick commercial interlude with my colleague, David.

David Bernstein 20:48
Hello, everyone. This is David from the Fredcast. And of course, the spokesmen. And I’m here once again to tell you that this podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles, the good people at Tern build bikes that make it easier for you to replace car trips with bike trips. Part of that is being committed to designing useful bikes that are also fun to ride. But an even greater priority for turn, is to make sure that your ride is safe, and worryfree. And that’s why turn works with industry leading third party testing labs like E FB, E, and builds it bikes around Bosch ebike systems which are UL certified for both electric and fire safety. So before you even zip off on your Tern, fully loaded, and perhaps with a loved one behind, you can be sure that the bike has been tested to handle the extra stresses on the frame, and the rigours of the road. For more information visit www.ternbicycles.com to learn more. And now back to the spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 21:58
Thanks, David. And we are back with bike infrastructure folks I met at move at Excel in London. I got to the show from Newcastle on LNER on the East Coast Main Line and then rode to Docklands on a folding bike. Kris Vanherle of Telraam also came on the train. How did you get here because this is a mobility conference, you’ve got to use micro mobility you’ve got to use the bicycle. You say anything else and you’re you’re drummed out, move on.

Kris Vanherle 22:32
I’ll explain the whole story. So I live very close at the train station in Leurven. So that’s like five minute walk even less. So I take a train to Brussels Midi station, you’ll start to Kings Cross and I walked across to I don’t know the connecting rail. One stop at Farrington and then Elizabeth line until here and that’s it.

Carlton Reid 22:55
Kings Cross today? That was pretty good. So we’re both travelled long distances. today. Yeah. So we have talked before Yes. Even on the on the podcast. But why are you here? Why is telraam here? And how do you find out about move?

Kris Vanherle 23:11
All right, well, first of all found out but move. And we’ve been stalled a bit by by industry or people or people who knew about trafficking, you should be here, so close about new stuff on mobility. And yeah, obviously we are new. So I think we should have our place here where technology meets the centres for policy or anything which is going to get to traffic so

Carlton Reid 23:36
I can’t explain where we are because we are in the startup it’s the lots of expensive booths out there. I’m not saying that you know inexpensive booths, I’m sure they they charge you and I’m gonna lay however, we are smaller you are like you know, your elevator pitch is basically smaller than an elevator, you’ve got like a small but this is an I was fine that here is the most interesting companies anyway, not nothing against the big companies, but their corporates have been going for a long time. It’s the smaller guys who are the ones you know, innovating, which I like to come and talk about, come and talk to so you think you’re gonna get who here who are you gonna be talking to?

Kris Vanherle 24:13
There’s a few people we know that will stop by so from Oxfordshire, I think for sure. And we known as a couple more languages is joining as well. So it’s good to finally meet them in person. So that’s, that’s interesting. And I don’t know, who knows. I mean, we don’t just don’t only want to work for local authorities, but also any mobility professional who might work with the data or want to be sent to deployment doing counts. So there’s there’s I guess there’s plenty of talks to be had today.

Carlton Reid 24:44
So I’m still waiting to do my Forbes piece. Yeah, I used it very successfully to measure the pedestrians and cyclists and motorists on my my road and I thought it was absolutely brilliant for that and it went viral at times. To You know, people are really fascinated in this. So hopefully people will will now recognise you a bit more when they come to you. But what do you actually physically doing here? So what, what how you enticing them cuz I can see you’ve got something and you are gonna be Have you seen this yet I’ve never used to describe what this is

Kris Vanherle 25:20
okay, so this is a this is a demonstrate how Telraam works in the field. So we’ve got a backboard of a typical cityscape, let’s say, which is then standing up like this, there’s a street in front, like this. And we’ll simulate a window here. Now there’s two devices connected. So one is the dahlia which I’ll connect later on has to be that one. And then there’s a video, which is basically showing you what Telly I’m seeing. So you can see how cars passed by and you can see telecom counter picking up and you can see how telecom is counting done. So with the bounding boxes, so it’s just a technology demonstrator and see how it works in the field, basically. And we work obviously, with all kinds of fun stuff like this. Trucks. Bikes, we have to sort this out, because this is the beautiful, but we’ll we’ll sorted and also a fire truck. So we’ll just be driving by it to to show how thallium device how it works. That’s it,

Carlton Reid 26:29
I guess, when people just kind of know that counting is really, really important. And counting of pedestrians and cyclists is tends to be way down the list

in the priority list, it’s easier to just, you know,

monitor cars with your pneumatic tubes and stuff. So the tech that you’ve got here isn’t pneumatic tubes, and it’s using AI. And it’s counting people. And that’s important for cities and certainly important. And I got a huge shock. On my road. I was new, there’s lots of people using it, active travel, but to actually see it in numbers and to see how much more than motorists was like, incredible. Exactly. And very valuable data. Yep. So you are producing basically very valuable data.

Kris Vanherle 27:14
Yeah, yeah, that’s it. I mean, the I think the capitalism tries to fill us two things. So the non car modes because there’s technology to monitor and uncovers, but it’s either very expensive or very limited. And then on the on the smaller roads, which are often neglected. So there’s there’s plenty of counting on Main artists, which is needed, because you need to mark congestion zone, but it’s always the small residential roads, whichever got running, for example, which never get counted. So you need to have something cheap and which is affordable, no cheap, affordable to do allow for a more dense, ethical thing. Network. That’s what we’re aiming for.

Carlton Reid 27:53
And finally, here’s Jose Gutierrez of Barcelona, talking about Lane Patrol.

Jose Gutierrez 27:59
So I’m Jose Gutierrez, I’m representing Lane Patrol. We are actually in some sort of incubator internal incubator where a mobility company called fracture consulting based in Barcelona, and we’ve been working with this project, we brought up this a software solution, that it’s called Lane patrol that consists of two things, one it like hardware on the other side is software, what we do is to analyse the infrastructure safety of cycle routes, for all we get, we are actually leveraging being trusted suppliers of a IRAP, which is the international road assessment programme. I’m their methodology called Cycra.

Carlton Reid 28:36
And you’re doing this for cameras. What’s What’s this,

Jose Gutierrez 28:38
so what we do is that we have a device or we also have a mobile app where we collect frames of video or images that we then use to evaluate over 40 attributes. To assess the safety of the cycle routes, where these attributes, we get actually the rating based on the methodology of the safety of these damn intersections. And we get the conflicts in the cycle route conflicts of vehicles with other conflicts of bicycles, with the bicycles, bicycles, with objects, bicycles, with pedestrians and bicycles with vehicles

Carlton Reid 29:11
and technology technology that you use or is this anybody can use it and they feed the information to you,

Jose Gutierrez 29:18
or at least actually, anyone can use it, but we need to supervise it because for the methodology, we need to have this we’re a trusted supplier. So actually, we need to understand the methodology we need to do quality review of the work. So it is the solution is either for other consultants or for cities who wants to analyse it and create probably an investment and or a maintenance plan of the cycle routes. So this is this is starting off with let’s say the end user we could what we do is that we collaborate with consultants in other countries, or we go directly to municipalities or decision makers in regions, but actually they want to say okay, you know what, we have a 200 kilometre network we want to analyse, where should we invest first either where we have more bicyclists and these bicyclists are in the red zones of safety. Or you can just want to make sure that all your network gets to a certain level of safety. So this is this is what we did. We are working. We have now a project we’re part of a European funded project called Mollier. We are analysing cycleway that is connecting Barcelona to neighbouring towns. We’re in our bigger project together with people from my rap from cycle rap in which we are in analysing and typology of cycle routes in Madrid and Barcelona. But there’s also their partners working in Bogota, Sao Paulo and Fayetteville in the US. So there’s a big project that we’re currently ongoing.

Carlton Reid 30:38
And I’m presuming it’s on a bicycle.

Jose Gutierrez 30:41
It is on a bicycle.

Carlton Reid 30:42
Do you have pictures?

Describe this or show me pictures? Looks like?

Jose Gutierrez 30:47
Yes. Well? Well, basically, it’s like, I was just opening my computer. Let me see. I don’t have

Carlton Reid 30:55
he’s coming. The guy who draws that he’s coming. How easy he’s coming to Yes. Well, I’m meeting him later on.

Jose Gutierrez 30:59
Oh, I’m gonna look for him. Because I know there’s a new cartoon that I want to say.

Carlton Reid 31:04
I’ll send him

your way.

Jose Gutierrez 31:05
Oh, yeah. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect.

Carlton Reid 31:07
I’ll just jump in here to explain that Jose had an illustration on his laptop drawn by Dave Walker. And I introduced the two later on, because Dave was also at the show, in fact, on on one of my free tickets anyway, Dave is on the next show.

So for now, we have this little device

where I’m going to describe this. So that’s basically a box a big grey box that you attach to the handlebars.

Jose Gutierrez 31:33
Yeah, exactly.

Carlton Reid 31:33
And that’s, that’s more than just a camera. So there’s an accelerometers in there.

Jose Gutierrez 31:38
Exactly.

Carlton Reid 31:39
Is it doing surface roughness?

Jose Gutierrez 31:41
Yeah,

Carlton Reid 31:41
is it doing the vibrations it is

Jose Gutierrez 31:43
It has some he has some, some sensors, we’re actually adding more, or the moment we’re working on this device, we’re improving it. So this is, let’s say version one of the device. And at the same time, we have the mobile app that is doing the same thing for now in the mobile in the mobile phone, on the phone. So our idea is to offer now we have actually, we’ve been working on this a little bit less than a year. So our idea is to use a mobile app now. Then start using the device to avoid having a super extensive AI model to analyse the attributes.

Carlton Reid 32:14
So my next question is we must be AI in here somewhere that’s analysing this afterwards. That’s good. Okay,

Jose Gutierrez 32:20
we’re now we’re doing both AI work and manual work to do this. Imagine like, over 40 attributes, every 10 intersections, so there is a lot of coding to be done. So we are using AI to save the time. So

Carlton Reid 32:30
give me so it’s it’s junctions. It’s number of pedestrian pedestrian interactions. What? Yeah, more of the 41 of the

Jose Gutierrez 32:40
Yeah, yeah. So some of them is the width, the width of the cycling, the roughness of the surface, if there’s curvature, if there’s this low, here, there’s adjacent lanes of vehicles. There’s what type of facility it is, if it’s off road or on the road, yeah, over 40 Art units,

Carlton Reid 32:58
and then the city gets an overall score. Exactly. And then there’s like red spots or hotspots and you must go and fix this bit. That is why the AI says is that it is

Jose Gutierrez 33:10
a little bit project based. So you can either analyse the whole network, as you mentioned, or you can analyse one specific route with this a couple of tunnels, for example. So we want to check, what is the safety or what what attributes can be changed in that in those tunnels, we’ll make sure that we can improve them to we can improve the safety of them. So it is project based, but yeah, the typical will be analysing the whole network and make it a maintenance plan or an investment plan for the cycle routes.

Carlton Reid 33:33
And if you envisage this technology being used by people in one city, or people we’re going to be going, who’s basically doing this, which is one company doing this, are you selling the technology, so lots of people can do this?

Jose Gutierrez 33:52
Yeah. So while we envision is to have partners during this, and using both leveraging our knowledge, and being part of the methodology, and also using the technology to do them themselves. So I guess

Carlton Reid 34:03
the question there was, there’s a long way of saying I’m sorry, what is Yeah,

are you selling the box or the service? The service? Okay, so so that that

was that was difficult.

Jose Gutierrez 34:12
I’m looking for partners, probably in other parts of the world, right? But this can be that’s a good thing. This is an easy and cheap way to analyse the safety of cycle routes. Okay,

Carlton Reid 34:22
so this is gonna be for a podcast. So tell me where people can get more information on lane patrol.

Jose Gutierrez 34:29
Yeah, so you can you can look for us and Keita dot mobi so Keita ke ita dot m o b i You can email me at Jose dot Gutierrez at Gator dot moving on. We’re soon to launch our limpets or website. So we’re about to do that will be Lane patrol.com dot it’s coming soon.

Carlton Reid 34:56
Thanks to all of my guests today there and thanks to you for listening to episode 333 of the Spokesmen podcast, brought to you in association with Tern Bicycles. Show notes and more can be found at the-spokesmen.com. The next episode will be out soon and will be a whole bunch more interviews recorded at the Move conference including cartoonist Dave Walker, a bamboo bike company from Portugal, bike mechanic folks from Fettle, Alex from Flit bike and Xavier, the CEO of Sustrans. There will also be extracts from a chat I had with Henri Moissingiac recorded from Move’s main stage but meanwhile get out there and ride.