Category: Blog

5th February 2022

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 292: What Would Jesus Ride? An Audience with the Pedaling Pastor

SPONSOR: Jenson USA

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: G. Travis Norvell

TOPICS: Travis Norvell is the pastor of Judson Memorial Baptist Church in Minneapolis, MN. On twitter he’s the @pedalingpastor. We talk about cars, parking lots, what Jesus would ride and Travis’ new book Church on the Move.

LINKS:

Print book

Kindle

TRANSCRIPT:

Carlton Reid 0:14
Welcome to Episode 292 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on the 5th of February 2022.

David Bernstein 0:25
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Jenson, USA Jenson USA, where you will find a great selection of products at unbeatable prices with unparalleled customer service. Check them out at Jensonusa.com/the spokesman. Hey everybody, it’s David from the Fredcast. And of course, I’m one of the hosts and producers of The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast since 2006. For shownotes links and other information, check out our website at www.the-spokesmen.com. And now, here’s my fellow host and producer Carlton Reid and the spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 1:09
Thanks, David. And welcome to the show, which is just over half an hour with Travis Norvell of Minneapolis, Minnesota. He’s the @pedalingpastor on Twitter, as in pastor in church, not pasta in Italy. And we talk cars, parking lots, and what Jesus would ride. We also chatted about Travis’s great new book, Church on the Move. You’re not religious? No worries. The book is evangelical mostly about bicycling, walking, and public transit. So Travis, you’ve been the pastor of Judson Memorial Baptist Church in Minneapolis for 10 years. And your Twitter handle kind of gives it away in that it’s @pedalingpastor even though you’ve got one too few, many Ls. But anyway, pedalling, pedalling. Has anybody wants to follow you, and you’re from England. Don’t put an extra L yet you won’t get Travis. So @pedalingpastor kind of explains why we’re going to be gonna be talking today. But you’ve written a book, and I’ve read that book. But before we go, to talk about that excellent book, tell me about the weather where you are right now because my, my understanding is it kind of gets cold there.

Travis Norvell 2:31
Oh, yeah. I mean, today, it’s right now it’s negative two Fahrenheit, and a windshield will be negative 20 throughout the day, so it gets pretty cold. Yeah,

Carlton Reid 2:39
yeah. And I’ve seen photographs on your social media of you been wrapped up pretty warm, and you know, full on, you know, gloves on the handlebars and and you’ve got to have spike tires, all this kind of stuff. So you’re gonna be riding year round. Yeah.

Travis Norvell 2:56
Yeah, me year round writer. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s it’s fun, though. It’s fun. Once you get started, you know, your body creates enough body heat, you get warmed up pretty quick. Yeah,

Carlton Reid 3:08
You’re part of Minneapolis, cos you’re only a couple of miles from where George Floyd was murdered aren’t you?

Travis Norvell 3:16
Yeah, yeah. George Floyd. The murder site is about about a mile and a half north of where I live, and about two miles east of where the churche is, yeah.

Carlton Reid 3:26
Mm hmm. Are you riding from your home to your church every day? Is that is that kind of what you’re using your bike for? You’re using your bike for everything?

Travis Norvell 3:35
I use my bike for everything. Yeah, when we first moved here, I had a Volkswagen and I loved it. But the heater in it went caput, and I was tired of putting money in it. So I sold it. And the story is, you know that, that it’s happened on a Sunday that the heater went out? And I was preaching a sermon. It was basically on how do people? How do you sacrifice something so other people can experience joy for the common good. And my daughter who was 12 at the time, I went to tell her good night. And she said, Hey, Dad, I was listening, thinking about your sermon today, which is, you know, totally unusual for a 12 year old, I understand. But she said, you know, what are you willing to sacrifice so others can experience joy? And that just that just floored me? I felt like a complete phoney. And I said, you know, honey, I don’t know, but I’ll have an answer for you in the morning. So the heater in the car went out. And I decided I was just gonna start biking, walking, taking public transit full time. And that was you know, that was nine years ago. So I use my bike for everything. You know, go to the store, go to the Good work, good library entertainment. My wife and I we go out on dates. We ride our bikes. Yeah. It’s it’s kind of endeavour.

Carlton Reid 4:47
That’s kind of a preview of your first chapter because you mentioned that that’s that’s how your book begins about that. Yeah, yeah. Here we go. Tada. Now another thing that’s in that first chapter, which tickled me and which I’ve told you I’d tickle me when we’re emailing this. And it kind of describes your your community as well. And so I’ll just I’ll just quote it back to you. You’ll know of course very well. But you’ve got to explain what you mean by this because I love it. So you say your congregation of mostly quirky people who live at the intersection of the television shows the Vicar of Dibley and Northern Exposure. What do you mean by that?

Travis Norvell 5:25
Well, you know, every meeting that wherever in, I keep a little journal, and I’m like, when do we cross the Vicar of Dibley line. And last night, we had a weird a two hour meeting, and we made it all the way to an hour and 23 minutes before we crossed it. So we it, you know, it’s hard to really pinpoint, but there’s always some point where we segue into like, over these minute details, that don’t really mean anything except to us. And we start, you know, not bickering, but having these deep conversations on. How, what is the sentence of this motion going to actually look like? You just kind of devolve into it, or you know, you’re sitting in the middle of a meeting. And someone just comes up with the most off the wall question. And then it feels like you’re in an episode of Northern Exposure, like somebody just walked through the door. And, you know, like, they you know, that all they have is a pair of shorts, one and nothing else, it just feels one of those kind of weird meeting. So that’s what I was talking about the congregation that way, it’s, you never know what’s going to happen. There’s always going to be somebody that’s going to have some kind of off the wall, comment to say, but then they’re also going to be this, you know, kind of loving, compassionate people at the same time. So it just makes for a very interesting day at work. Yeah,

Carlton Reid 6:36
Yeah coz both those programmes, they’re they’re definitely quirky, the people involved, but there is absolutely tonnes and tonnes of warm heartedness in both shows, isn’t that right?

Travis Norvell 6:46
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, this is the kind of beauty of everyday people, you know, kind of, in the midst of bizarre circumstances, but then also just common everyday things you see,

Carlton Reid 6:59
As I said, you’ve written a book, titled Church on the Move, a practical guide for ministry, in the community. And I do want to ask you in a minute about, you know who that book is for. But first of all, tell us about your personal journey. So in the book, you talk about in your college years being hit, you’re running a bike, getting around, and you were hit by a beer bottle, thrown by some, some yield, and then you kind of said, I’m never going to get on a bike again. And then, you know, fast forward a few years, and you’re actually at a funeral, give giving the funeral. And then you said the person you were, you were eulogising, at this burial service was a lifetime cyclist, and that kind of got you inspired again, so tell me about that journey.

Travis Norvell 7:50
Yeah, you know, I grew up in a on a, on top of a mountain in a country on a, you know, in the middle of country on a dirt road. And I loved riding bikes. But to get to the nearest place to ride a bike safely, you know, had to go off the mountain and then down to town. And, and I just loved riding bikes. I just, you know, as a kid, I just, it was something I love to do. But there wasn’t like a real, there wasn’t a biking community in my hometown. And there wasn’t really a safe place to really ride. I mean, I don’t know how many times almost got hit, as a kid, just people taking corners too fast and running through stop signs and such. And then when I was in sixth grade, though, our patrols you know, there’s the there’s the people at public schools, who stand is crossing guards for people across the street into the school. Our patrol group, we went to Washington DC for spring trip. So we got on a bus and we drove eight hours to DC. Everyone else is looking at the, you know, the DC, all the monuments in Washington, DC, but I was amazed, because that was the first time I ever saw a separated bike lane. And, you know, I was 12 years old. And that’s all I wanted to talk about. And I came home and my parents like, what do you think a DC I was like, Mom, dad, they have these bike lanes that are that are separate from the road and people ride on them. And they can go all over town and and they were they were just like, Yeah, but did you go the Washington Monument? Yes, yes. But there were these bike lanes, and they just kind of rolled their eyes at me. So I’ve always had this as a dream to be in someplace like this. But it just never would work out. And then I’m at the I’m doing the funeral. And one of the family members is talking about this guy. And he said, you know, he was a really kind of bizarre person. He rode his bike year round to Providence, Rhode Island, and he would ride it in the winter and he had these special tires. And everyone just kind of chuckled at him being you know, centric person. And I’m sitting there going, you can ride you around your bike and you don’t have you don’t have to have a bike lane. So that that just started then I was off after that. And I kept trying. And I just couldn’t but just never did work out when we moved to New Orleans. I thought I finally found that you know, this, this city, it’s flat, it’s compact, it’s easy to ride around. It’ll be no problem at all. And then I started riding but the one thing I didn’t think about New Orleans is a subtropical climate. So every day at four o’clock, it rains pretty much, and I would get stuck in these rainstorms unprepared. And there was a real boundary that was crossed, because it’s so hot and humid there, I would I would go into a parishioners house, and I would just be covered in sweat. And one time I go to visit and and the person that I’m visiting says, Can I get you an extra shirt? It just felt like a really odd boundary to be in, not to say, you know, kind of an odd place. So I said, Can I just sit by the fan instead? So So, so I kept trying it there. And then when we finally came to Minneapolis, you know, that’s when my daughter preached a sermon. But there’s also this great biking community in Minneapolis, and they were just a lot of people, the people that bike shop, when I told him the perennial bike shop, when I told him what I was wanting to do. They just, you know, took about a half hour and walked me through how you’re going to do winter biking, the, the gear you need, the problems you’re going to have and here’s, you know, Blessings for your ride. So it was just a, it’s been a very supportive place.

Carlton Reid 11:15
In those two years that you’ve spent in Minneapolis in your community. You’ve used that many of those anecdotes in this, this this book church in the loop. So it’s this book for your community is this book for and it could have been for the Vicar of Dibley equivalent in the UK, you know, vicars who are wanting to, you know, ride around their parishes who this book is for?

Travis Norvell 11:41
Yeah, I mean, the primary audience is, you know, pastors and vicars and priests. That’s the primary … that’s who I wrote it for. But the other part of his is, I think a lot of other people can find some inspiration from it. But just because it’s just a way for people to get to know their neighbourhood, by riding your bike by walking by taking public transit. If you take that way of transportation, you’re just exposing yourself to so much more in the community. You’re making yourself open for new relationships. So even though it is geared specifically for parish priests, and pastors, it has a broader appeal in a lot of ways. So I’m hearing from community organisers. Also, just hearing from from people, nonprofits, you know, how do we get to know our community better? Well, here’s, here’s a great way to do it.

Carlton Reid 12:37
Now there’s a whole chapter in the book about parking lots. And how to depend I mean, this is for me, as a as a UK resident, I don’t get this quite so much, but we don’t Yeah. And I know that you get that in America, and basically how auto dependent churches have become. Tell me why being automobile dependent, isn’t good for a church. And, and I know you do mention many anecdotes in the book about but so what can be done with parking lots instead. And this is, of course, a parable for everybody, not just for churches, but just describe your thinking around that.

Travis Norvell 13:20
Yeah, you know, parking lots. They enable … well, first, I should say, you know, most churches in America, city churches in America before WWI they were all built around our being accessible for walkers, bicyclists, and people that took the streetcar so that none of these churches had parking lots. And for you know, think churches for 1,900 years did not have parking lots. This is a recent phenomenon. And then what happened when churches became auto centric, and in parking lot dependent, they became disembodied from the neighbourhoods that they serve. So before you had everybody within probably a 20 minute drive, or walk or streetcar, ride, attending church, but a car enables you to drive 45 minutes to an hour. I’ve heard from some people that that right into church, so rather than a neighbourhood church, you become a church that’s in the neighbourhood, but nobody from the neighbourhood attends. And so it just becomes this kind of vacuous place, and then a parking lot just increases that. So you tear down houses in the middle of neighbourhoods. So you can have parking, which is a parking lot, just a temporary storage of an automobile at maximum a few hours a week. And it just creates these barriers between the church and the community. And it enables people to just kind of slip into the church community for an hour or two a week and then slip back home to their house. wherever they reside, but there’s also kind of some psychological and I would say spiritual parts of this as well, let’s say that you count the number of churches that you pass on your way driving to church, the number is going to be here in America is going to be quite large, regardless where you are. And let’s say that you’re the church that you’re at, you kind of get in a disagreement with someone, it’s so easy with a car to say, You know what, I’m just going to go to the next one, I don’t have to worry about it. But if you are walking, biking, taking a bus, to a place, you’re kind of committed to it, you’re gonna have to work out through workout some of those feelings and emotions. And you’re gonna have to learn how to get around, get along with people that you don’t really maybe you wouldn’t invest your time with. If you’re in a car, it just creates a little bit ease of way of getting out of relationships. And I think that’s a that’s a bad move for churches for faith communities for any kind of, you know, neighbourhood organisation. Hmm. So, so that’s why I think parking lots, you know, are not exactly the best investment of space and money for faith communities. But I think there’s things you can’t let’s say you have like a gigantic parking lot, there’s things you can do. You know, here here in Minnesota, somebody started what’s called the straw bale gardening movement, where you just basically grow vegetables in a straw bale that has some fertiliser, and it’s just some nitrogen really … in one parking spot, you can grow enough to feed a family of four for an entire year. Or my thought is like, don’t think of ’em as church parking lots, think of them as church plazas. In a way that’s just more than just temporary storage of automobiles, but it’s a place where people can gather, you can have farmer’s markets, you can have basketball courts, you can have soccer pitches, you can have arts, marketing, just there’s so many things you can do other than just store a car.

Carlton Reid 17:03
You know, look, you talk about how one parking lot of a church where there was some hoops, basketball hoops, yeah, put up. And then that was deemed by the church elders or by whoever, as Oh, that’s, that’s just not good use of this space. And then they came along and and chopped it down and how unChristian, that is when you’ve got a lot of kids there. And people using this as a community space. And then you you take that away again, that’s that’s kind of unChristian.

Travis Norvell 17:36
It is it’s totally and you know, that was the that was one of the highlights of my youth was at basketball court. We loved going there, we spent so much time there. And they it this was a perfect place to a parking lot was for people from the outside of the community to drive into park their cars, go to worship and to get in their cars and leave. But the parking lot for us was a basketball court. And we all lived in the community. And it was our place to go and hang out. And rather than try to see how these two could be combined the church and in the basketball court, the church only saw it the only imagination they had was this is only for cars and cars only. And it’s it’s disturbing. Our Sunday morning worship. So once one day we were out playing and as we were leaving, we saw a guy come with a blowtorch and cut the basketball poles down and we just you know we just started crying it was it was terrible. Yeah. I just thought that was a poor imagination on their part. Hmm.

Carlton Reid 18:40
So cycling, I mean, your book it majors on cycling, but there’s definitely tonnes of walking in there. And and transit is in there a lot too. So all of those ways of getting around not in cars. Good way, as we know, of really seeing and experiencing a locality. Now driving can be doesn’t have to be but certainly saved a lot of times is quite selfish. It’s even. And you mentioned a poster that you put up the seven deadly sins. You could say driving everywhere actually has quite a few of the seven deadly sins. So you’ve got sloth, obviously. Yeah, there’s some envy in there plenty of times when you’re looking at the you know, the other car and you want to upgrade and stuff. Definitely a lot of pride in that. So again, we’re coming on to the unChristian stuff about driving here. I’m not trying to put too much in your mouth, but anyway. So my question is, What would Jesus drive?

Travis Norvell 19:45
There’s a whole campaign about this. Maybe 10 years ago, there was a minister who came up with an idea what would Jesus drive and you know, obviously, they came up with a, a Prius at the time, some kind of, you know, hybrid vehicle, but you know, I don’t I think Jesus would drive it all. You know, I think that he would, obviously he liked he loved to walk. We read the gospels, but I think Jesus would be out there on a bike. I think Jesus would be walking, I think Jesus would be taking public transit because he wanted to be around people. So he would, that’s the best way to be around people. He wanted to be around those in America, a lot of times that people on public transit are people who can’t afford to have a car. There are people who are trying to struggling through life. And I think that’s definitely where, you know, Jesus would be hanging out at the bus stops hanging out the rail stops and would be on those places rather than in a car. Yeah. And I think that he would take the money that he would have put into a car and put it to better use and for the common good. Mm hmm.

Carlton Reid 20:51
Now as as somebody who has studied this professionally, as in I did religious studies at university, I would say yeah, I’m, I’m pretty much with you there. Apart from the smiting the Romans, but all that kind of stuff, but anyway. So continuing this seven deadly sins theme, another another sin is wrath. So getting angry, people get angry. And we know this people get angry driving in, in cars now I have I, I put this in my in my Roads Were Not Built for Cars book actually has a whole chapter or a whole section on people getting angry, but, and I mentioned that I’ve seen nuns driving at me aggressively, you know, about to knock me off my bike. It says something about driving turns mild mannered, goodly people into something very different. And you mentioned in your book, the very famous Disney cartoon Goofy, where he turns into, you know, Mr. Wheeler, after being really you know, Mr. Mr. Walker, see becomes like this, this, this this horrible person when he gets behind the wheel of a car. So how can we, how can we be made to recognise that we shouldn’t be Mr. Wheeler, the selfish, angry wrathful Mr. Wheeler, we should be much more like the mild mannered, kindly. Mr. Walker?

Travis Norvell 22:25
I think it takes a lot of intentionality on the driver’s part, you know, the big I think the driving disconnects you from life, it puts you in a, you know, in a steel box, where you can have, you know, temperature, temperature control, and you have also, you know, aroma control, depending on how what sense you want emitted in your car, you also put in this in this box, whatever, music or podcast or whatever you want to hear, everything’s controlled about it. And so you’re so disconnected from other people. And studies have shown you once you go over about really 15 to 20 miles an hour, you can’t read another human face. So people, rather than just humans, it’s almost like they’re transformed into objects. So the intentionality on the driver’s part has to be so much but, but I mean, people just get in a car and just drive I don’t think there’s much intentionality at all. The I in the book, I talk a little bit about, you know, the Vatican came out with the rules for drivers. People dictum, and, and we’re talking about that the Vatican had to say that, you know, that drivers should occasionally pull over on the side of the road and pray that prayer, just to kind of just to kind of break up the monotony. And, I mean, think about that, what other what other task, does the Vatican say, when you’re in the middle, you should probably stop about every half hour and pray.

Carlton Reid 23:53
I picked that out of your book, I definitely highlighted that. So the diktat said, “when driving a motor vehicle, special circumstances may lead us to behave in an unsatisfactory” and and this is amazing, “and even barely human manner.” I mean, just wow!

Travis Norvell 24:11
It is wow. Exactly. Yeah.

Carlton Reid 24:14
But that’s never really I mean, that’s, that’s just a, you know, a tiny footnote, it’s never really expressed out loud. So as you said, right at the beginning there, you know, about that guy who did the eulogy at the funeral is the you know, you’re seen as pretty peculiar people. So to be a pedalling pastor, is seem to be peculiar.

Travis Norvell 24:39
It’s peculiar, and it’s even peculiar within my own profession. You know, I have a little licence plate I had made for $6 that just says clergy on it. And I put that on the back of my bike and ride it around. And the reason I did that one time I was, I mean, I like cars. I’m not gonna say I’m not I’m not anti car. They’re parts of motor vehicle. Was it I love my dad used to work with him all the time. And that’s what I spent most of my weekends doing was helping him rebuild engines. But here I was sitting at a stoplight, and another person of the clergy pulled up, and they were driving a car, well name it, but I knew that car very well, and it costs $65,000. And as they pulled away, they had the clergy sticker on it. And I thought, okay, what are we saying about our profession, that this is, this is how we, this is what we are projecting, you know, presenting to the world. So, you know, I so even within our own profession, when I show up to events, there’s there starting to be some other people ride bikes and on Twitter, you know, I found some people that around the nation that are doing this, too, and especially, you know, in the UK, there’s more. But still, we’re viewed as a little bit peculiar that why would you ride a bike to, you know, to for a pastoral visit, or to a conference or to appreciate event? Hmm,

Carlton Reid 25:57
I mean, doctors get the same, district nurses get, anybody who chooses a very practical method of getting around gets the same stick really to be hit with your peculiar for doing something that’s actually incredibly sensible.

Travis Norvell 26:14
And, you know, in the middle of, you know, the climate crisis. Here’s a way that okay, until there’s, you know, full electrified vehicles, which I don’t think solves much problem. But until then, here’s something you could do right now that would cut emissions that would make you happier, and make you healthier, and would put you in better touch with your community. And yet, it’s still not adapted as this, you know, cure all which I think the bikes a miracle is a miracle machine.

Carlton Reid 26:43
Hmm. You also wrote that, in the book that bike lanes are not just for privileged, Spandex-clad, Lycra-clad speed-racing bicyclists, but I’ve still remember when we’re talking, when you’re talking before I had this image of our own bird was couple of years ago, maybe a bit more than that of an African-American church who were complaining about bike lanes being put in outside their church. And they were almost saying this is a racist thing to do. Because all you’re going to get is middle class white guys coming past that African-American church and how bad that was. And I found that quite odd. But there is this, it’s almost a stigma of this as a middle class white thing to do, even though the great majority of people on bikes are actually poor people. But there’s a stigma attached to the fact that bike lanes are for white middle class, people. So how do you square that circle?

Travis Norvell 27:50
Yeah, I mean, it’s tough. It’s tough. Very much. So. And the article you’re talking about, I believe, was in Washington, DC. And I think that’s something that bicycle advocates need to think about, you know, is kind of these undertone racial themes that are running through it. And I had a, that’s the churches in DC, if you look at there, there are, you know, historical, African-American churches that are still present in areas where the membership of the of those congregations can’t afford the gentrification of the neighbourhood. So they’ve had to move away. And so I have kind of a very soft spot, that soft spot in my heart that we need to create a lot of space as much as possible for African-American churches and other churches in those regards that need to have I would hope that we would give them more leniency when it comes to bike lanes. You know, there’s ways you can work with the community, though we can a bike lane be for a few hours on Sunday, can it be can parking be allowed in it? I mean, I think there’s ways that the bike community and churches, African-American churches could work together, rather than being you know, it’s a it’s either or it can be both and in that regard, but for me, the the, you know, the part where I started seeing racial justice and bicycling happened in Atlanta, Georgia, when I got off the bus, was going to the Martin Luther King centre, and there’s Ebenezer Baptist across the street where he was where he was pastor, you know, there’s a bike lane in front of Ebenezer Baptist Church. And I started thinking, Okay, what is the connection between bicycling and social justice and racial justice? And you start thinking about it, okay, in America, the civil rights movement was, you know, a movement but it was, you know, as a movement based on the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which, if you think of in America, that was the greatest moment for bicycling, walking and public transit in a America that the African-American community organised and for a year plus, they walked, they took bicycles and they had community carpools to get to work and do errands. There’s a wonderful picture of a Montgomery city bus empty. But it’s surrounded by African-American kids on bicycles riding around it that was taking place during the Montgomery bus boycott. So So I think that if we look historically into this, we can see that bicycling primarily and walking in public transit can be ways for us to form new relationships in our divided democracy. Hmm, that’s, that’s right. That’s the best way I try to square that circle.

Carlton Reid 30:44
Hmm. You describe your parish as a bikable parish, not not not because it’s veined with bike lanes. But just because you can get everything in your locality. So like the famous now famous, you know, the 15 Minute city? Yeah, where everything everything is is is close. But you also discovered by using Excel documents and Google all sorts of different tech that you discovered of where your people in your community live. You found that the 75% of your community also lived close to the to the church. So are automobile centred churches getting it wrong?

Travis Norvell 31:33
I think so. Yeah, I think so. You know, and a study came out, but in Baylor University, which which I quote in the book, you know, most people drive 15 to 20 minutes to church, that you know, it, they’re already not driving long distances, they don’t live that far away. And it’s usually that 25% of people that live far away, it’s how churches have kind of imagined, that’s their target audience, which, which I think they got it wrong. Our target audience is the people within the that 15 to 20 minute city, the 15 to 20 minute neighbourhood. Yeah, and it’s great. And let’s, let’s use the parking lots, then if we have parking lots, let’s use those for the people who live far away, you know, where we’re at with what’s called a welcoming and affirming church, we are, you know, LGBTQIA+ affirming congregation, you may not be able to find that in a community that’s maybe 40 minutes away. So let’s reserve our parking for families and individuals who are looking for a more inclusive neighbourhood mean more inclusive faith community, let’s save our parking spots for them and really concentrate on those within the walkable, bikable, public translatable parts of our neighbourhood. And I think if a lot of churches did a Google Map survey where they put in their directory, and then you can pin each address, I think they would find a great majority of their congregation would would be within that 15 to 20 minutes circle and to begin with, so focus on that, and leave the parking spots and other other places for people outside that circle.

Carlton Reid 33:15
Of course, many people would, even if they live just five minutes away by walking, prefer to drive. You how’d you get around that?

Travis Norvell 33:26
Well, you know, we haven’t really succeeded that. Well. Judson I mean, I’m trying, I’m trying it, it’s it’s tough. But however, you start to see it happening slowly. You know, when I first started this experiment, my kids were mortified, and thought that this meant that we were going to walk or ride or take the bus everywhere. And I said, Look, this is my experiment for my job. You know, if y’all want to join me, you can when you want to. And, you know, it took a few years, and then all of a sudden, you know, my, my kids started riding bikes with me everywhere. And then they started realising that, you know, we don’t need to have a driver’s licence, we don’t need to be have a car to go around the city and hang out with our friends. In fact, they actually found that they were a little bit freer than their friends who were car dependent because their friends who were car dependent had to either get permission from the parents for the car, or they had to get a job to help pay for the car. But my kids, they were able to do otherwise. And then my wife started after a couple of years. One day she just came down one morning she had a cup of coffee and she said okay, I’m going to do it. And I said do what and she said I’m going to start biking to work and it just kind of slowly happened within my family but then also the I’ve noticed church people there’s been a few Sundays in the summer when I went out and we had there was no place there no other spots for bicycles everyone had at their was taken up all the bike parking spots, and there were more people walking. I’m just hopeful that you know, little by little we can we can try to change things. For example, But I’d say that recently, the one thing that I’ve been noticing is, I haven’t really done a good job of myself myself promoting bicycling, walking, taking public transit, as a viable option for transportation, for health, and for community engagement. And that is something that really changed during the pandemic. You know, because biking was one of the great ways we could get around and be together as a community. So we started doing bike tours of the neighbourhood. And you could tell that there’s, we’re gaining some momentum on trying to be less car dependent.

Carlton Reid 35:35
Hmm. Travis it’s been fascinating talking to you. Where can people get your book and spell out your pedalling pastor name for people who, who don’t realise that there isn’t two L’s in it in the American spelling. So tell us that. And then I want to finish actually on on a prayer. And if you don’t remember your own prayer, that’s in the back of your book, and you can’t flick through it, then I’ve got it written down here. But anyway, first of all, tell us where people can get the book, what you are who you are sorry, on Twitter, and let’s let’s finish on that prayer.

Travis Norvell 36:10
Yeah, well, you can find the book at Judsonpress.com. That is, that’s the press that published it Judson Press, that’s the American Baptist press. You can also find it on Amazon. It will be on bookshop and other kinds of independent places, but the best place would be actually just to go to Judson Press in order from there or to, you know, order on Amazon. If you you can find me on social media on Twitter primarily at @pedalingpastor and the prayer. Do you mean the prayer for sidewalks?

Carlton Reid 36:43
No. No that “may your wheels always spin true” that one

Travis Norvell 36:49
May your wheels always spin true. May your brakes always grab. May drivers always see you, and may the smile only riding a bike can evoke, always remain on your face. Happy riding.

Carlton Reid 37:03
Thanks to Travis Norvell there. And thanks also to you for listening to Episode 292 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast brought to you in association, as always, with Jenson USA, watch out for the next episode popping up in your feed later this month. But meanwhile, get out there and ride …

11th January 2022

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 290: Launch of Gravel Cycling Hall of Fame with Guitar Ted

SPONSOR: Jenson USA

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: Mark Stevenson aka Guitar Ted of RidingGravel.com

TOPICS: Today’s Gravel Cycling Hall of Fame launch, and more.

TRANSCRIPT:

Carlton Reid 0:14
Welcome to Episode 290 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was recorded on Tuesday 11th of January 2022.

David Bernstein 0:25
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Jenson, USA Jenson USA where you will find a great selection of products at unbeatable prices with unparalleled customer service. Check them out at Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. Hey everybody, it’s David from the Fredcast. And of course, I’m one of the hosts and producers of The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast since 2006. For shownotes links and other information, check out our website at www.the-spokesmen.com. And now, here’s my fellow host and producer Carlton Reid and the Spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 1:10
Thanks, David. And on today’s show, I’m talking with Mark Stevenson of ridinggravel.com. He tweets and blogs as Guitar Ted and on one of his tweets earlier today he mentioned that some folks across there in America have created the gravel riding hall of fame. Now, to those who know about the history of gravel grinding, Guitar, Ted is one of the key figures from the early days. So here’s hoping he gets to be one of the first inductees. Here’s our 45 minute chat from earlier today. First of all, Guitar Ted, or Mark, what we’re doing today, Guitar Ted, Mark, Guitar Ted, Mark?

Mark Stevenson 1:57
Would probably be easier just to go with Mark.

Carlton Reid 2:01
Tell me first of all, I know I’ve asked you this before because you have been on the show before you’ve been on the show quite a few times. I went back and I found you 2007 was the first time you were on the show. So you’re a long time show participant. But haven’t had you on since 2018. However, but you have been on the show before. So I know to have asked you this before but Guitar Ted, why?

Mark Stevenson 2:26
Well, when I was younger, and I listened to rock and roll music, and like most of my peers, and my father was very much you must buy American and because he worked in a factory and all that. Well, much of the rock’n’roll that I listened to at the time was not made in America. So I became attracted. This is back in the 70s to the music of Ted Nugent. So and I saw I listened to in high school. So my friend started calling me Ted head, because that’s all I listened to. And then that guitar Ted thing kind of grew out of that, because I played guitar as well and still do. So that’s where that came from.

Carlton Reid 3:10
Okay, and that you are refreshing my memory because I now remember that. But for anybody new who’s coming to the show, and of course, I would expect them to go back and listen to the back episodes and listen to when you want, etc. And so to talking about that, and that this is what we’re gonna talk about today. You were on because the guitar Ted that we all know and love is absolutely not just embedded in the gravel scene, but I would certainly say was one of the core people right back there. Early 2000s on the gravel scene, so that is why we had you on the show to begin with because you were at Interbike and you were there to do gravel bike stuff for a bike shop for yourself. What are you doing when we when we met back in 2007 at Interbike

Mark Stevenson 4:00
in 2007, Carlton, I probably would have been doing stuff for 29inches.com, which was the site that covered the then still quite new 29 inch wheeled mountain bikes. I was kind of pivoting into more gravelly things as you say, at the time and I had a you know, a blog site that covered that kind of thing as well. And then eventually I phased out of the mountain bike stuff and phased into more gravelly things and so now I’m actually part owner of riding gravel calm a site that covers the gravel theme.

Carlton Reid 4:36
Hmm. Now that has come to dominate the world of bikes and I don’t have to really go back to the transcripts for those early shows to realise that we were probably taking the mick we are probably like pulling your leg quite a bit about how this is just you know, the same old same old and it’s just the bike industry. You know, marketing this, this this bike to There are more bikes. But it has come to be an absolutely massive category. And when I look at a road bike, I don’t in fact, I don’t look at a road bike anymore. I think, well, I want to grab a bike for current riding, I want to do sure I want to, I want to mix it up. So that category, which you have very, very early on, has pretty much taken over the world, hasn’t it?

Mark Stevenson 5:23
It seems to have, you know, you bring up a great point, Carlton. Originally, when I was looking at this sort of thing, back in the late 2000s. My idea was that the road racing bike that you would find in most bicycle shops at the time, was the wrong kind of road bike. It really was geared so much towards the racing side of the spectrum that it left out a lot of the versatility that I thought that would make a road bike more appealing to the average cyclist. And I felt that the gravel bike, so called, was the perfect vehicle to bring back the versatility to bring back the appeal of the road bike to a wider audience. And I never really thought that the term gravel bike was the right way to name these bikes. But that’s what it has become. So that’s what it is.

Carlton Reid 6:17
It kind of stuck. It kind of end. And those that’s kind of because you said an Iowa. Yes. That’s where you are. So we’re about to you in Iowa right now.

Mark Stevenson 6:28
I mean, in Waterloo, Iowa, which is the home of John Deere tractors, if I suppose some people might know about that. It’s the northeastern part of the state smack dab in the middle United States, in farm country.

Carlton Reid 6:42
I guess for here in the UK, we kind of go on to almost tracks, you know, like forestry tracks. That’s where you do your gravel riding probably. Whereas I know, a tonne of states across there. And I’m presuming Iowa as well. Your road network, you know, is it is a huge part is actually gravel. You know, this is this is why there’s such good bikes where you are and in many states because you know, huge mileage is can be done on genuinely on on gravel unmade roads basically.

Mark Stevenson 7:18
Absolutely, yes. And part of that stems back to history. Back into the 70s, late teens, late 1700s, when the United States was first getting started, there was a an act of Congress called the Northwest Territories act, I believe it was called. Anyway, it set out the way that America was going to colonise the North American continent going forward. And part of that was to grid out the states and counties and townships, with roads so that the land could be accessed in by farmers and by to soil out for schools and towns and whatnot. And so that philosophy pretty much was imprinted onto the landscape of the United States early on, and therefore we have all these mileage is that you spoke of. So for instance, in Iowa, we have upwards of about 70,000 miles of dirt and gravel roads, whereas the paved part is only about 46,000 or so.

Carlton Reid 8:23
Huh? So you’ve got a whole tonne of choice there. Absolutely fit, you can go on tarmac on asphalt. But you wanted to utilise these roads which are not being utilised because it kind of tough you can do on a road bike, a standard road bike, but it just wasn’t as good. So how did you? What do you do to those first bikes to change them into gravel bikes before the industry started doing it?

Mark Stevenson 8:49
Oh, yes, well, there were there was a thing called a cyclocross bike, as you know, and are familiar with their that allowed for a little bit larger volume tire. Of course, the UCI mandates a 33 millimetre tire, but a lot of these bikes will take a larger tire than that. And so we use those we used mountain bikes, we use pretty much whatever bike we could get our hands on that was comfortable and in good order and could take a wider tire. So you would see all sorts of bikes out there in the early days.

Carlton Reid 9:20
And have they evolved? Have they evolved as much as you thought they might have done it or they evolved even more than you thought? Have they done? How’s the industry done with this baby of yours?

Mark Stevenson 9:32
Well, I think that overall, if you look at it from a wide angle view, I think that it’s done a wonderful job with it. Most of these bikes are can be quite racy, even on pavement. In then they’re also adept at the unpaved parts as well. So that was kind of my overarching vision back then, and I think the industry has done a very good job of translating my ideas. and others into that what we see today, but there are some things that do surprise as you know, as you know, in the bike industry, there’s always the outliers. And that’s strange little things that happen. So there’s full suspension, gravel bikes, there’s gravel or gravel bikes with, you know, electric motors in them. I never dreamed that would happen. So there’s there’s definitely some things that are that are unusual that grew out of this.

Carlton Reid 10:27
Hmm, yes, I’ve had a wee while I had a Canyon electric gravel bike.

Mark Stevenson 10:34
Oh, how did you like that? A whole lot of fun?

Carlton Reid 10:36
Yeah, it was good, you liked it, I enjoyed it. I’ve got to admit, I do like the sweat aspect, and the real grunge aspect of gravel riding. So I probably would prefer not to have an electric bike for that particular mode. So I can see it much more. I picked off me for like a transport by rather than that there’s a gravel bike, however, each each to his own everyone. Everybody wants to do their own thing, which is absolutely fine. So there’s a whole bunch of events that that really took this scene and and exploded it like the early days of mountain biking, I guess, with you know, the Repack? Yeah. What what would be equivalent of to the repack in in gravel terms?

Mark Stevenson 11:31
Well, we can, we can probably point to a lot of early events that existed. But did they have this sort of influence that a repack had, for instance. So, you know, there were people riding on mountains, with bicycles before repack, and maybe they were doing their own little events, but we really don’t know that. Because it didn’t start the dominoes to fall, so to speak. So I’m not going to sit here and tell you that the events I’m going to mention were the very beginnings of gravel scene because there are other events. But, you know, I was involved with a fellow by the name of Jeff Kirkove who’s still in the bicycle industry as an employee of Ergon, I believe. And he and I started an event called Trans Iowa. Kind of an outgrowth of what Jeff had been doing it a time, which was individual 24 hour mountain bike events. And his vision was to cross the state of Iowa on gravel roads, on mountain bikes, and do it in a sort of, is a outgrowth of some of the ultra mountain bike events that were happening at that time, like the Great Divide race and others of that ilk. So we did it on gravel. And that perked up a lot of interest, because we kind of did it at a very opportune time in history. So a lot of people were just getting online and joining forums and finding out about things that they’d never knew about before. And here, we put this thing out about trans Iowa in 2004, late 2004. And it caught the attention of a lot of people. And we were contacted about how we did this, what was this about This looks exciting? Can we do things like this ourselves? And so we disseminated that information, some people that came to our event actually went out and started their own, like events to ours. And it kind of started the ball rolling, and it was like, you know, taking a little snowball on the top of a mountain and watching it go down. And the next thing, you know, is an avalanche. And, and, you know, probably 6, 7, 8 years later, there were so many events, we couldn’t count them anymore. And of course, not all of those were a direct outgrowth of Trans Iowa. But, you know, the early ones were definitely we shared our rules a lot of people and, and are the ways we did things with a lot of people. And I’m sure that what we did was a great influence on that on those kinds of things. So yeah.

Carlton Reid 14:02
And where geographically where where was it all clustered? Or was it clustered at all? Was it was it maybe a bit like mountain biking, which we tried a few different spawning points, and then they kind of met together a few years later, and perhaps even know that they were working on these things? Or where did it geographically gestate?

Mark Stevenson 14:23
I would, I would say, Carlton that it just stated mostly in the Midwest of the United States. So the states that are if you took a map of the United States and cut the middle third out, that’s probably the the heart or the the womb of travel. Right? You will, and then it grew from there. I mean, it didn’t take very long and there were people in Florida doing it and there are people in Southern California doing it and I’ve got contacted by folks in Australia and folks in in the UK that were interested in it too. So it didn’t take long for it to to get going and Different parts of the world but for sure, for sure the vast majority of events in the early days were in the Midwest.

Carlton Reid 15:07
How soon did the bike industry latch on to this co-opted? And do you think they did it cynically? Do you think you know, because they famously quiver bikes, and you’ve got to have like, you know, your next bike. So this is just the cynic would say, Well, this is just an opportunity to just create another bike that you’ve got to go out and buy. So how cynically, should we view this? Or should we view this as No, this was pristine territory, and the bike nerds got into this because they they loved it, and that it kind of grew from that way. So So give us a bit of a flavour of the industry and meeting gravel riding.

Mark Stevenson 15:48
Okay, well, I think a lot of the industry influence and interest grew out of the early gravel events that some of the industry people were attending. For instance, there were a number of people that worked for Quality Bicycle Products, which is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that did a lot of the early gravel events. And some of those folks were starting to think what kind of a bike could we made that would do this better. And then eventually, Salsa cycle started testing those kinds of bikes at different gravel events in the Midwest. And they were, to my knowledge, the first ones to market a gravel specific bike in 2012, I believe that was, and certainly there was an outcry of, oh, yes, you are just trying to make us buy another IQ. You know, there was a lot of cynicism around it, you’re, you’re very correct in pointing that out. But and a lot of people thought, well, it’s just a cyclocross bike. And so there was a lot of going back and forth until things, you know, shook out once these people started riding on gravel in different places and back roads in different places, they realise that, you know, like I mentioned before, it’s a road bike with greater capabilities. And I think a lot of people were offended by the term gravel and gravel grinding and thought that that was a trigger to the cynicism. And I believe that’s probably correct. If it had been called an all road bike or something of that nature, I think it would have been better accepted off the bat. But be that as it may, the industry started to finally jump on board with the gravel bikes, I would say probably 2014 2015 was about that point, when you started seeing companies actually, besides salsa actually starting to market that kind of a bike. And then five years later, well, if you don’t have one of those in your line, it’s crazy.

Carlton Reid 17:47
So it wasn’t just you know, the next year, it wasn’t 2018 There was still a few years. People are chewing this over. Yeah.

Mark Stevenson 17:55
Oh, yes. You know, when we started Trans Iowa, the first one was 2005. And so I would, you know, there was a good seven year period without any gravel bikes there. And by that time, there were lots of events. And as I mentioned, before, people were using whatever they could get their hands on, that would take a bigger tire. So we would see mountain bikes, full suspension, mountain bikes, even, we would see cyclocross bikes, we would see older rode bikes that took bigger tires, you know, back in the day that rode bikes did take better tires, and so that we would see some a fair amount of older road bikes on the gravel roads back in the

Carlton Reid 18:30
day, a long way back. We’re talking now we’re talking like, you know, pre 70s and pre 60s, pre 50s. A long, long with is that, is that what you’re talking about? Like the original, like road bikes? Like, Tour de France, you know, 1905 road bike is that we’re talking about?

Mark Stevenson 18:46
Sure. Yeah, I mean, that’s, you know, what we did in the, in the 2000s, with the bike cyclical industry did in the 20 teens, was pretty much modernised that idea of the road bike that existed in the early 20th century. Really, I that’s what I believe, you know, with better materials, a little bit of the Tweak of the geometry here and there. But you know, with those big volume plus tires, and you know, with an aim at going anywhere on that bike. And as I tell people often I believe a gravel bike is the kind of bike you use anywhere between full on crit racing, all the way up to mountain biking and everything in between there is what what a gravel bike is for. So if you can find that path or that road, that’s what a gravel bike can do. And it doesn’t have to be paved, but it could be and I think that the industry kind of, I don’t think they consciously did it, but I think that’s what they did is they they modernise that old road racing bike.

Carlton Reid 19:53
And the did seem to be, there’s two strands here in that in my garage. It’s actually my wife’s bike, but it’s a It’s a it’s an old road bike. It’s a custom built, it wasn’t custom built for her, but he just bought it off somebody 30 years ago. But that’s got 19 millimetre tyres. Oh, yes. Punishing man is so close to the frame is because there’s a huge trend in in cycling 70s and 80s of just going, the smaller the tyres that you know, the faster you’re going to go. And then there was all sorts of journals and boffins coming up with studies saying actually, it’s not that the rolling resistance is the same with a fatter tyre you get the comfort you know, it goes as fast if not faster on a bigger tyre. So there was that trend in the bike industry already wasn’t those of going to bigger volume tyres, and then the gravel thing, so it kind of they met in the middle. Yeah?

Mark Stevenson 20:49
I would agree with that. Carlton, I think that we went too far in one direction and like the bicycle industry often does this, where there’s a trend that starts and then it’s pursued to the gnat’s eyebrow, and it’s too far in one direction and we have to pull it back and I think gravel bikes, we’re definitely that pullback and we’ll probably see gravel bikes go too far in one direction as well and long you know in the future and we’ll have to pull back again but that’s kind of the way the bicycle industry seems to work. You know, now I can point to mountain bikes at this point. I think mountain bikes are very extreme end of the geometry spectrum right now with a very slack choppered out front ends and the stubby stems and everything you think back 25 years ago, stems were 150 millimetres long, and now they’re 30 millimetres. And so I think the road bike did that as well. And I remember those skinny, tired rode bikes they were brutal to ride on. I had one with a 19 millimetre tyres on my goodness, I think I punctured on a single piece of gravel sitting on the tarmac one day, and I thought that was crazy. So that was one of the things that kind of pushed me towards wanting a bike that had the bigger tyres.

Carlton Reid 22:07
Yeah, I guess people thought they were going faster. But that’s just because there’s so much pain 19 millimetre tire, which it was not a comfortable?

Mark Stevenson 22:17
No, it

Carlton Reid 22:18
was like, two, right. So now what we’re talking about today, and why contacted you because I saw a tweet from you. And I jumped in and said, Well, come on, you’ve got to be in this. So tell me about what I contacted you for. So you don’t on gravel riding today.com Riding gravel sorry.com There’s a Hall of Fame. So tell us about that.

Mark Stevenson 22:43
Yeah, so a few folks in the cycling scene here in the United States decided that this gravel cycling thing is really big. And you know, there’s been some people that have been involved in it, there’s been some technical innovations that should be recognised. There have been have been events that have come and gone that should be recognised as helping to get this ball rolling. And we want to create a Hall of Fame for that. And so today, the gravel cycling Hall of Fame was announced, it will be eventually a physical place that you can go in Emporia, Kansas, which was the home of the Dirty Kanza, which is now called Unbound Gravel, one of the bigger events in United States. And nominations are open. Now, if you go to the gravel, cycling Hall of Fame website, you can nominate people yourself that you feel should be in there. There’s certain parameters that you have to follow to do that, but that’s all there on the site to look at. And, yeah, it’s kind of exciting to see where that will go. I was talking offline with a good friend of yours, Tim Jackson, who and he was mentioning, you know, some ideas he had about this. And I said, Yeah, you know, when you take on the idea of a hall of fame for anything, that’s a big responsibility. So I feel like the people who started this, you know, really have bitten off of quite a bit. I hope they can handle it. Because this could go in a lot of different directions, but we’ll see how it happens. I I’m not involved in and as you as you probably can tell, but I know a lot of people think I should be in it. So that’s why you probably

Carlton Reid 24:34
you’re right, because so Tim pitched in. I pitched in, I guess the Twitter feed is on that thread is now now probably more people are pitching in saying, Well, you know, yeah, I think what Tim was saying was you can’t really have this without you on there. And I certainly I would I’d back that up and that’s mainly because the first person I heard talking about this scene, you know, back in Those that mid 2000s was you? And it was this gravel. What are you? This is a Yeah. And it was it was certainly new. And it was yeah, it was new and it was you. So absolutely you should be you should be in there. So it’ll be crime if you’re not in there. Especially with you know, trans Iowa and and and popularising it to people like me. Back before the before the industry, I latched on to it. So yes, so now the mountain bike Hall of Fame and there’s a road bike holder friends, all sorts of different awards for the mountain bike Hall of Fame is in the the museum. Which Joe Breeze and a whole bunch of, of the mountain bike pioneers. They run so there’s like a physical location for it. So you mentioned that where is the actual place in Emporia? Kansas? Where where’s Is there a physical building? In somebody’s garage, or just head?

Mark Stevenson 26:05
Yeah, I think my understanding right now, Carlton is that it’s, it’s an idea at present, and that the physical place, what will happen in the future, I don’t know where we’ll be in Emporia. But I would imagine it’ll be downtown somewhere. So in that city, that’s been the home of a gravel event since 2006. So they’ve been around gravel since the early days as well. And so it’s probably a good place to be having the the popularity that unbounded gravel has and influence that that event has, so that that all makes sense to me. It’s in the middle middle part of the United States, where we talked about already where gravel kind of grew up. And so that part makes sense to me. And, and I get all that, but as far as an actual place that doesn’t quite exist yet, as far as I know.

Carlton Reid 27:01
And I might be paraphrasing you here, but I’m pretty sure on that day, the Twitter thread that we had going there, you were saying one of the the impetus for this is this, this history needs to be written about these things, and far better to have this accurate history, almost curated by by this, this, this this thing that you’re pulling together, you know, there’s there’s body so it’s almost peer reviewed, in that there’s gonna be a bunch of people, and you can tell us who those bunch people are now, in a second who are behind this thing. But in effect, they will be saying, well, this person should be in this person shouldn’t be in. And then there’s all sorts of academic you know, tooing and froing. Of of actually nailing down the actual history of this. So having an organisation like this is a good way in almost an academic way of working out the truth. Behind formations. Yeah,

Mark Stevenson 28:04
Right. Right. Yeah. If you think about the mountain bike Hall of Fame, as a, as a parallel to what is going on with the gravel cycling Hall of Fame, it makes a lot of sense, because, you know, there was all that back and forth about who invented the mountain bike. And was it Gary Fisher? Was it Joe Breeze? Was it Tom Ritchie? Well, who actually did this? And so amount by Hall of Fame kind of helped sort all that out. You know, who did the first races those kinds of things. And my, my, I’m, I’m a big fan of history. And I think it’s, it’s got a lot of value, as far as, you know, reminding us not only of the past, but why we’re where we are today. And if you don’t have that history, in a hall of fame, or written down somewhere, then people will remember what they want to remember. They may not be remembering the truth, they may be making up their own narrative. Whereas if you have a history book with accurate information, you can say well hold on a minute. This is what actually happened right here. And so then people can learn. And I think that’s important. Not only for cycling, but for all sorts of things that we do in life. So I think that the idea of the gravel cycling Hall of Fame is a great idea and the people that are behind it are LeLan Dains and Toby DePauw, both those individuals were event promoters. Back in the day LeLan worked with the Dirty Kanza, which became Unbound. And Toby did a grassroots gravel event in Illinois back in the day. And then Kristen Legan, who is in the industry with Shimano, she’s also on that board. And there’s a couple other industry people I can’t think of right now [it’s Steve Driscoll]. Neil Shirley’s another I know he’s a media person as well. And I can’t think of the other person’s name at the moment. But they are the main people who started this. When you nominate someone, they have a supposedly have a cast of between 25 and 30. People in the media in the industry, in events, promotions that are going to review who gets nominated, and from that committee will then select who gets in the first class, which will be announced. Believe it I don’t have this information in front of me, I’m sorry, but I believe it’s in April, early April, I want to say and then they are going to be actually installed and banquet that will happen right before the next unbound growl, which is the first week of June. So I don’t know who those 25 to 30 people are in the industry, that are going to be sitting down and looking over all this information that’s going to get sent to them. But I you know, I have to trust that the founders chose wisely and they have their hands firmly grasped on the handlebars of this thing. So they won’t go off into the weeds and, and we’ll see what happens.

Carlton Reid 31:09
Cool. Now, um, it’s kind of a hackneyed phrase. But jumping the shark, here is the creation of a Hall of Fame. That jumping the shark moment where, in effect, gravel making has peaked. And this isn’t a sign of Vim and vigour. This is a sign of like, almost, you know, old age maturity. But in a bad way, in that, you know, that this is this is this is not a good thing is no longer a young sport is kind of what I’m saying is it’s almost becoming you know, it’s past its adolescence, it’s now going into old age, potentially, these kinds of things can can can make people think, Oh, well, that’s not the next big thing, is it? There’s no got a Hall of Fame there. It’s like that kind of, you know, this is that old people stuff. Is there a danger? Do you think of this? Actually, yes, it’s good to have the history written down and peer reviewed. But alsosuggests that this is no longer a new thing. No longer exciting. Could this be the actual the death knell of gravel cycling? That would be coming no longer trendy put it that way?

Mark Stevenson 32:23
Absolutely. I think it’s all of that in it’s all of that in a lot of ways. I go back to my little conversation with Tim Jackson earlier today. Tim mentioned that, you know, we have to be careful not to lampoon this thing, because there’s a lot of people who think this is new, it’s new to them, they just came to gravel cycling, and in the last couple of years. They’ve never heard of it before till then. And so I think we’re still pulling in lots of new people. Listen, I thought gravel jumped the shark, you know, five, six years ago. And I thought, well, this is it. It’s over and look where we are today. And and is one of the categories that that the industry people say is still growing. One of the few categories. Probably the only one that really does it is is the electrified bikes. So yeah, I mean, I don’t know what to tell you, Carlton, I, I think in a lot of ways, it has jumped the shark. And I think a lot of people are going to say that and feel that especially people that have been around it, as long as I have that, remember the old days. And there’s going to be people who just found out about this today, because of this announcement. And well, there’s a Hall of Fame for this thing. I’ve never heard of it, what’s going on here? You know, and but another driving factor, I think, too, is and we haven’t mentioned this is, you know, where do you ride a bicycle? And where is it safe? And I think that’s one of the major factors of why gravel Cycling has become as big as it has today’s because it’s so hard to find a place where you can simply enjoy a bicycle ride without fearing getting run over by a vehicle. And gravel Cycling has kind of you know, made that choice. And aware, you mean an awareness of that choice to people let’s put it that way. Um, you know, a lot of people weren’t aware that there were 70,000 miles of gravel roads in Iowa that you can go out and ride you can ride that really, they thought they had to ride on pavement, and well you don’t have to you can get out you can get out of these, this path of these vehicles and enjoy nature and enjoy a bicycle ride without thinking you’re going to get killed. And I think that worldwide that’s taken root, it’s amazing, you know, but you know very well how that is in in the UK, where, you know, riding on the roads is is fraught with danger. So this this backroad cycling thing becomes a rather appealing thing when you find out that you can get away from that, I think and I think that’s something that we need to think about here too, that that keeps them gravel cycling niche going

Carlton Reid 35:04
it’s also a worrying thing for those reasons but because also that’s where mountain biking came from if you talk to Gary Fisher if you talk to Joe Breeze, then a lot of their their conversations are exactly the same as you know you, you have the freedom basically what do you mean by the freedom in its it’s not just going downhill, you know in jeans and a plaid shirt and you know workman’s gloves and big boots on the repack. It was the freedom to get away from from motorists to get away from from cars. So gravel biking, had that kind of impetus. So isn’t that a reflection of how crappy with the asphalt and side of the planet is in that we’re always cyclists are always running away. They’re always riding away from from those big beasts and and isn’t that kind of unfair because where where the police that have been asphalted are the important places because, you know, this, this half of the state might only have asphalted roads, but they can be the important roads and the ones that aren’t asphalted. The reason that are asphalt, asphalt is because they’re not quite so it’s great to ride on them. But they’re not as important those roads. So this is a this is a reflection of of society being askew,

Mark Stevenson 36:27
I couldn’t agree with you more, Carlton, if you hit the nail right on the head, you know, I would like I would love if gravel cycling as a niche died, because we were able to ride on roads without fearing our for our lives, I’d love that, I would think that would be wonderful. We should be able to ride our bikes, anywhere that we want to with, you know, in harmony with vehicles. But then again, we should have a lot less vehicles to I believe that’s just my personal opinion on the matter. But I you know, hey, I write on asphalt and I live in a town and I have to, you know, share the road with these these big vehicles and how people pilot them. So I completely understand where you’re coming from. And I completely agree with that viewpoint that, you know, it’s it’s kind of a reflection of, of, of a bad situation. And hopefully in the future, we can rectify that, because I think it would not only be great for cycling, but it would be great for a lot of other reasons as well, which I know you’re very in tune with.

Carlton Reid 37:32
I am. So let’s just let’s just carry on digging into this because we’re almost getting into philosophy here. Absolutely. And that is you know, so if what you’re saying is, yes, it is partly, if not greatly part of it is an escape from from getting away from from motorists. So it’s not an intrinsic love of the surface, gravel. It how much it will I see how much of it is how much of it is intrinsic love of that surface? And how much of it is getting away? Because cars aren’t on that surface? Or what do you actually generally do cyclists actually really preferred the asphalt, if truth were told, but because there’s so many cars on there, they’ll stick to the gravel.

Mark Stevenson 38:18
I think there’s probably an element of the gravel cycling public that absolutely loves the dirt roads. And I think that it’s for a number of different reasons. It’s just it’s not completely tied to what’s the surface of the road is it’s where those roads go. So there’s some people who like to, you know, get lost in the country and be amongst nature. And I know if you live in the West, or in the east of the United States, there’s beautiful, beautiful mountain roads that you can ride on. We have beautiful roads here in Iowa that run along rivers and things, you know, and the only way you’re going to be able to do that is is except the roads that go through these areas, which generally speaking aren’t the main roads. And like you mentioned before, that’s why they’re not asphalted. But again, you know, there’s beautiful roads that are asphalted that we should be able to enjoy a cyclist as well. So I agree that, you know, the the limiting ourselves to just dirt and growl is not ideal, and a reflection of the situation we find ourselves in with with cars and trucks in the world. And so yeah, some of that some of that gravel and dirt thing is is something you have to accept to get away from those things. But I think there are people who, who genuinely do like those road services as well. So I think the vast majority, I’m one of them rather not though.

Carlton Reid 39:52
I’ll say that question but I am one of them in that. I actually do like the dirt and that goes back I used to, I used to long before gravel riding. I used to tour in desert. So I every year I would do at least a month in a in a desert and this is in the 1990s. So I’d go out to the Sahara, I’ll do the Kalahari, I did a bunch of American deserts as well and Mexican desert. I genuinely love the water-bound macadam road, the dirt road, and I kind of like the taste of the dust. I live in the UK. So I’ve got to get used to being in tub of mud as well. I’m not so fond of that. I do love dry, dusty roads. So I was asking that question. And even though in my head I knew actually like the logical don’t like getting at the end of the day, you know, you get into a campsite if they’re, if they’re backpacking in the new trendy thing, of course, or getting to the hotel or getting just just riding in a big circle and come back home. They don’t like the dust. I actually like that I like coming in from a ride and being incredibly dusty. That’s a successful day to me. Not not muddy, but But I love that.

Mark Stevenson 41:09
I do too. I’ll be honest, I like that as well. The more dust and dirt that stuck to my legs, the better the ride was.

Carlton Reid 41:18
Yes, saying that if I remember back to my touring days, and this is I have to remember this because I haven’t done some really hairy tours for a long time. Like my let my son do that. Now. I’d like to also the long stretches of asphalt, but it had to be after you’re done tonnes of bumpy stuff. So it’s good to do the butter, smooth asphalt, you know, after you’ve done a load of riding on the dirt, and then it’s the it’s sort of the contrast I like I like the back then I guess that’s where gravel riding really comes into its own in that you can do both. Yes. And this is a bike where excels on both surfaces. And it’s not militating against one surface where the road bike is millet. You don’t want to go on a gravel.

Mark Stevenson 42:02
Yeah, I agree. And this goes right back to where I mentioned earlier, where the term gravel bike is just so wrong, because immediately conjures up in people’s minds. Oh, this bike belongs on crushed rock roads and dirt. Well, I’m not interested in just doing that. You know, it’s kind of When fat bikes originally came around about 10 years ago, and people were calling them snow bikes. And we immediately dropped that term because, well, I’m not going to ride when it’s cold out and snowy. So I don’t want that bike. Well, if you call it a fat bike, now what’s in your mind is a completely different picture. I’m not stuck riding just in cold wet, I could, you know, you could, that that possibility exists, but it’s not just for that. And so I see that whole term gravel like as being detrimental to the niche. But you know, as I mentioned earlier, here we are. There’s no one doing it now. Hmm.

Carlton Reid 43:02
So we’ve been talking about the gravel bike Hall of Fame, which has been announced today, I will provide a link to that. But I read about it first on on ridinggravel.com Because you provide the link on your your Twitter feed, but I will go to the actual about I’ll do both. I’ll link to both, of course. But tell people so thank you, everyone so much for being on the show today. Tell people where apart from maybe riding gravel where they can interact with you on on the internet, your your social media stuff. Well tell us about all your stuff.

Mark Stevenson 43:45
I’m on Twitter at @GuitarTed1961. That’s my handle on Twitter. So you can certainly engage with me there. I also have been writing a blog mostly about cycling. Since 2005. I post about every day, it’s g-ted.productions.blogspot.com or Guitar Ted productions, and Google will get you there. And and you can find me there as well.

Carlton Reid 44:18
Thanks to Mark Stevenson there and thanks to you for listening to Episode 290 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast brought to you in association as always, with Jenson USA. It was good to catch up with Mark. And I hope to bring you more episodes with some of our past regulars, including David, Donna, Tim, Jim, and a huge cast of others, others that we’ve had on since 2006. The next episode will be with another industry veteran who’s been on the show several times and that’s Rick Vosper, contributor to bicycleretailer.com and a real expert of where the bike industryhas been and where it’s going. But meanwhile, get out there and ride …

13th December 2021

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 288: Why is anti-roads campaigner John Stewart against LTNs?

SPONSOR: Jenson USA

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: John Stewart, Chair of Campaign for Better Transport and UK Noise Association and a long time anti-roads campaigner

TOPICS: Veteran nti-road campaigner John Stewart is anti-LTN: why?

LINKS:

John Stewart’s article in The Telegraph:

TRANSCRIPT:

Carlton Reid 0:15
Welcome to Episode 288 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was recorded on Monday 13th of December 2021.

David Bernstein 0:25
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Jenson, USA, Jenson USA where you will find a great selection of products at unbeatable prices with unparalleled customer service. Check them out at Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. Hey everybody, it’s David from the Fredcast. And of course, I’m one of the hosts and producers of The spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast since 2006. For shownotes links and other information, check out our website at www.the-spokesmen.com. And now, here’s my fellow host and producer Carlton Reid and the spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 1:10
Hi, I’m Carlton Reid and today’s show is an interview with veteran anti roads campaigner John Stewart. He’s been causing a fuss on social media over his controversial views on low traffic neighbourhoods or LTNs. Controversial because of his long history of campaigning against motor traffic, and also because he’s the chair of the Campaign for Better Transport. Now, he penned a polemic in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph, which was headlined, “LTNs are ineffective, and inherently infai.” Rather than engage with him on Twitter, as many have done and I was kind of going to, I thought I’d get him on the show. And as you’ll hear in this episode, which is just shy of an hour, we establish he’s not against LTNs which push motor traffic onto motor roads. But those which he says, push motor traffic onto boundary roads, and where many people live. Now I do in this episode, talk about many studies, which show the opposite. But anyway, here is John Stewart.

I want to get into your background in a minute, because it does appear that we we share many interests, and probably we know very much the same people. But you have made this argument that has led to an awful lot of heat and light on on on Twitter just recently, and in the Telegraph, where you wrote an article that has definitely got people up in arms and wondering why somebody who’s an environmentalist can be making these kind of arguments. So I’d like to explore that I’d like to explore why you’re making those arguments. But first of all, let’s go into your background. So let’s let’s let’s show people that you know you’ve got some bonafides is here in the fact that you’ve you’ve been campaigning against cause and effect and certainly ramp and room road building for many, many years. So tell us first of all, your current role in this field, and then let’s go to your history.

John Stewart 3:23
Okay, the current role is I’m a bit of a freelance campaigner these days, Carlton, but I do chair both the UK Noise Association and Campaign for Better Transport. I have also done fairly recently, a lot of work on aviation issues, aviation noise, and then let’s go to your history then. Because I mean, I’m you you one of the organization’s you chaired, and when this is the late 80s 90s was the all London against the roadbuilding menace, so alone, which was basically a consortium of groups. Yeah, it was it was That’s right cause and that’s, I got involved in a campaign for public transport as a local level in South London. And then we across London, we were hit with these proposals for a £13 billion programme, to update

to upgrade roads to build new highways. And of course, that would have caused a lot of destruction, many people’s homes would have gone, parks would be decimated. And this organisation with a wonderful name All London against the roadbuilding menace — alarm — was formed. It essentially was a network of eventually 250 local groups across London, which I which I helped bring together and which I chaired. And we were actually successful. We wrote all the roadbuilding schemes proposed in the programme were dropped, ironically, just before the local elections in London in 1990. Because I think the government of the

day realised that it was good to lose heavily on this issue on this issue alone.

Carlton Reid 5:04
So we’re going to thank you for that, because that clearly would have been genuinely a menace if that had come through. So you that you’re now chairing Campaign for Better Transport. So we’re back explain, I get that. I sort of almost know that better as Transport 2000. Because it’s an early 1970s organisation. So were you also a chair of Transport 200? So how long have you been involved with with this group?

John Stewart 5:31
I’ve been involved with Transport 2000, you’re quite right. It was called transport 2000. Until what sort of the year 2000 Colton. We tried to change the name and in the year 2000, but the members were having none of it. So we struggled on beyond 2000 for transport 2000 And then came up with this terribly compromised, somewhat boring name Campaign for Better Transport, which could really mean anything at all. I’ve actually been involved with it since since the late 1980s. But it’s only in the last. And I chaired it for a short while in the early 2000s. But it’s only recently that I’ve taken on a more full time role. Or yeah, it’s a much more upgraded role in sharing it over the last couple of years.

Carlton Reid 6:20
So you could name drop here with like Michael Palin. Jenny Agutter.

John Stewart 6:25
I can. I’ll tell you a story about Michael Palin, my niece and nephew who were about seven or eight at the time. And of course, they thought their uncle was dreadfully old fashioned because he couldn’t do any of this new technology on computers and things which was just meat and drink to them. I was his old fashioned uncle who came up to Edinburgh from time to time. And then suddenly, they discovered I had met Michael Palin, and everything and everything changed. I was I was a new cool uncle who technology didn’t really matter that he couldn’t do it. So yes, I mean, Michael Palin who was president of Transport 2000 and Campaign for Better Transport for quite some time and actually a very effective and very engaged President.

Carlton Reid 7:11
Explain what the Campaign for Better Transport argues for? Because it was founded by a railway union in effect. So So is it buses and trains? And, and, and that mainly, or has it always encompassed bicycling? Where do you think it stands in, in, in the in the pantheon of organisations?

John Stewart 7:35
Well, you’re quite, you’re quite radical. It was founded in the 1970s, initially, but the real unions and then the old British Rail came on board. And the idea was, and both of them saw, although they had differences amongst themselves, they saw the value in an independent body, making the case for rail. So opening doors that they couldn’t open. So initially, it was a rail body then moved into other forms of public transport. It has tried to take a holistic view on transport, pushing all the time for sustainable transport. But I think over the years is probably done less on walking and cycling, mainly because there were other organisations which specialised in walking in cycling, and it was you know, when you’re an NGO, you want to focus on the areas where perhaps nobody else is campaigning.

Carlton Reid 8:27
So then you’ve got something like this and you can name drop here again with with Stephen Joseph, a very well known person in this fear. So you had Stephen there. I mean, he has pushed the bicycling and walking message a lot more, hasn’t he?

John Stewart 8:40
He most certainly has. I’m certainly in the in the 1990s with Stephen Joseph there and Lynn Sloman is as deputy

Transport 2000 as it was then was making yes was making considerable waves on on walking and cycling and Stephens a bit of a legend in the transport world. He was the chief executive of Transport 2000 for 30 years. And actually it was very, very keen as really as the organisation to take a realistic view on things so that walking in cycling is as important as public transport except perhaps these days with a little bit less work on it, simply because other organisations specialise in it.

Carlton Reid 9:21
And then you mentioned Lynn Sloman, there again, Lynn Sloman is a very well known person in this sphere. Am I right in saying you’re an associate of her Wales-based organisation transport consultancy?

John Stewart 9:35
I am I

again, I’ve known him for a long time and I’m an associate of her of her consultancy, which you probably know Carlton, it does a lot of fairly traditional work of modelling work for the Department for Transport, local authorities and other organisations, but it also tries to push a radical approach

radical solutions to the transport problems that we face.

Carlton Reid 10:04
And then I’m building up your bonafides here, John,

John Stewart 10:08
You’ve got to keep going.

Carlton Reid 10:09
I’m researching you so Slower Speeds Initiative and RoadPeace again two key organisations in this in this world, so you’ve chaired them as well. So you’ve knocked around a bit, John.

John Stewart 10:23
I have I have indeed, yes, in the 1990s. RoadPeacejust started as an organisation set up by the wonderful Briggita Chaudry, whose son was tragically killed in a road crash, she set it up, and she established it as a national organisation. And she also established international organisations for road traffic victims in the early 1990s. So she was looking for people who had,

who worked mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters of road traffic victims, but who had some knowledge of road transport and road danger. And initially, I came into the road data Working Party, which they set up. But then Shortly afterwards, the the chair of road peace moved on. And I chaired road peace for about six years in the in the 1990s. And that kind of led in the late 1990s, to the formation of the slow speech initiative, which brought together road peace, a number of other organisations concerned with road safety, people like Meyer Hillman and

others. And I chaired that. And I think one of the interesting things Carlton is that, you know, there there in the late 1990s, we were pressing for things like a 20 mile per hour speed limit to be the norm and built up areas. We weren’t really getting anywhere. But now, thanks for the work of Rob King and others, it is becoming the norm in built up areas is becoming the norm in Scotland and Wales in many of English cities. And I think one of the lessons, one of the things that tells me is that even if you’re not getting somewhere as a campaigner, keep going, don’t despair, because 20 years later, your work may see, bear fruit.

Carlton Reid 12:12
Mayer Hillman, certainly like carbon credits, all that kind of stuff. He was way ahead of the the field on that one.

John Stewart 12:19
He was he was indeed. I mean, the other thing I did in the 1990s was an extension of alarm in London, which was,

which was something called Alarm UK, as you may know, in 1989, the government of the day boasted it was it was building the biggest road building programme. Since the Romans, it had dropped London, but it was moving on to the rest of the country. Now, it wasn’t quite we didn’t quite say we’ve done London, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go national. But a lot of people and local groups from around the country approached us and said, Look, you want a few people win against roadbuilding schemes, can you give us some assistance. So myself and a few others set up alarm UK in 1990, and eventually did about 300 local groups across the country, each opposing roadbuilding schemes, and with some success of the 600 Odd schemes that were proposed in 1989.

Only about 160 of them were left. By the time the Labour government came in in 1997. And most of the most of the ones that weren’t most of them had been dropped. There were very few still left as live schemes. So that wasn’t that was a very interesting experience at the time of Twyford Down and everything else like that. Hmm.

Carlton Reid 13:44
So, Johh, we’ve totally established your bonafidesin this this area. I’m sure lots of people listening to this will be nodding at home. And just going Yes, yes, yes. Yes. All of this is exactly what I agree with, etc. And then what

isn’t on people’s radar? Because obviously people think of LTNs low traffic neighbourhoods as a good thing. There are other opinions out there that maybe challenge that opinion. You have challenged that opinion.

John Stewart 14:15
Absolutely.

Carlton Reid 14:16
Now, let’s go before go into the telegraph piece, would it? Would I be right in thinking that it was originally the tweet from @cutnoise? So from the UK noise Association?

John Stewart 14:28
Yep.

Carlton Reid 14:29
Which with that got a lot of heat and light about 10 days ago. I remember seeing that kind of flaring up did that did the telegraph piece come from that?

John Stewart 14:38
I think it did. I mean, I The Telegraph approached me and I think they’d seen that piece. And they’ve seen that react the reaction to it on Twitter, and they explored with me well, I’ll be interested in writing a common piece of the newspaper. Yeah, I kind of assumed I just assumed that might be the case because I remember it bubbling up and then it kind of died.

Carlton Reid 15:00
again and then this came this came in The Telegraph yesterday, The Sunday Telegraph, it’s like, that’s a very similar argument or argumentation to, to that when and then you’re clearly you’re a chair of this organisation too. So I kind of link the two things. So without wanting to completely

say word for word what was in the Telegraph? Can you just give us the thumbnail sketch of how you would pitch your your article that you wrote for The Telegraph?

John Stewart 15:31
Well, you’re quite right, Carlton somebody like me, and I said this at the beginning of the article, for the Telegraph, should be a great fan of low traffic neighbourhoods, they should be my Garden of Eden, my Nirvanna.

quiet, peaceful, very few cars. And they are great places no question about it. And the quality of life for most of the residence has increased no end.

My concern, and it’s a concern that goes back some years before the recent batch of low traffic neighbourhoods, but But my concern is, where is that traffic going? Now, we know some of it is disappearing because people are not using their cars and as quite as much as they did. But a lot of it is going on to the adjacent main roads, the adjacent boundary roads. And from noise perspective, from an air pollution perspective. The main roads are the roads, which were the noise problems, and the air pollution problems are greatest. And I had real difficulty in any scheme, however good it is for the residents within that scheme, putting yet more traffic onto the main roads. So that was the concern. That was that was really the pitch to the Telegraph. And I think they they quite liked what I had to say. I think, to add to that, there, there is this fear this feeling and I think it’s probably right, that on many of the main roads, the objections

have come from

a new quarter. I think for the first time main road residents and many of them are from the BAME community are finding their voice. They’re mums and dads who are getting involved in environmental issues for the first time.

Largely because they’re worried about the impact of extra traffic on the health of their children. Their voice I feel is not being heard their voice.

Carlton Reid 17:32
Why is this an either or thing here. Why can’t you have traffic reduction in the LTNs in the low traffic neighbourhoods? And also traffic reduction in exactly these places where people are saying we don’t want traffic here?

John Stewart 17:45
Well, okay, do both reduce traffic in both areas? That would be the ideal, but that’s not happening. That’s happened. The best example of that happening guys is I think 1990s When David Begg was the in charge of transport in Edinburgh, he became very well known, very well respected in the transport world.

There’s a large road from called Leith Walk which goes from the old lease docks right up to the centre of Edinburgh very wide, big main road. And David Begg wanted to start to, we didn’t call it low traffic neighbourhoods in those days, but some traffic calming in the adjacent side roads because they were getting overspill traffic. But what he did at the same time as putting in a traffic calming measures in the overspill side roads, he reallocated the space on the wide Leith walk. So he put in bus lanes, we’ve now got a tram now going to be a tram going down it, he gave more space for pedestrians. So that actually there was very little space for overspill traffic from those side roads nearby. So it can be done. It requires I think somebody with the vision and the tenacity of David beg to do it. My concern is that that is not what’s on the agenda. Right now. It was the low traffic neighbourhoods.

Carlton Reid 19:12
But yes, I can see the logic there. But if, for instance, a number of low traffic neighbourhoods coalesced together, in effect, you’d make more and more and more and more of these things over perhaps five, perhaps 10, perhaps 20 years. All of a sudden, every single road is then gets exactly this treatment you’re talking about so so don’t argue against you know, the perfect you know, go for the good.

John Stewart 19:44
There’s a lot of truth. There’s a lot of truth in that cause and I think my worry, I am speaking to the

mums and dads of parents on the main roads, so getting extra traffic. There say that is a great theory.

but it could mean that they are living with this extra traffic for five or 10 or 15 years that their children who are now

will spend their entire school aged years living with this extra traffic. That’s the worry.

The word, they would need some reassurance that is going to happen much more as good to happen. And be it’s going to happen much more quickly than that. And quite what you’re saying is, I think, has a huge amount of merit. I’m not sure that that’s what some of the proponents of low traffic neighbourhoods are saying they are primarily concerned to get in place.

low traffic neighbourhoods, there’s been very little not not nothing but very little from from a lot of them about the sort of proposals you’re talking about their hardest and low traffic neighbourhoods so heart is elsewhere.

Carlton Reid 21:03
One of the things on social media that that that I’ve seen the argument to you, because a lot of people have come up against you and said they don’t agree. So one of the things you’ve come up with, or one of the things you say you you mentioned, you know, cycling infrastructure. You mentioned, bus lanes, you mentioned all these other things, as in your Telegraph piece also mentioned this thing, which is, but it was obviously a throwaway line, cos I don’t think the Telegraph would actually run this as a full argument, but road user charging, is that not even more ambitious, then a whole bunch of LTNs everywhere in that we know, you know, because you’ve been in this fear that, you know, the Smeed report of the 1960s, you know has been ignored. Every single report that’s ever been done on this has been totally shelved instantly. Government will not touch this with a bargepole, even though, you know with climate change concerns we know they ought to. So is that what you’re actually proposing is is much more ambitious, potentially even unfair to the very communities you’re potentially talking about.

So you’re arguing good, something that’s really perfect when you could be having slight goods now.

John Stewart 22:18
I think there’s just two points. The one about is a bit too ambitious. And the other bit, the question about the fairness.

I think we’re in a new world, as far as road user charging is concerned, and the new world has been brought about by electric vehicles. By their very nature, electric vehicles will not be paying a fuel charge. And the government raises a huge amounts of money from fuel charges, it’s got to find a way of

replacing that money. The obvious way is road user charging. Governments. You’re quite right, Carlton, have shied away from it politically. But I think there’s an inevitability about it, because I think they need the cash, they need the money. Now, if there’s an inevitability about it, I think the challenge then and this is your other point. The challenge then, is how do we bring it in, in in a fair way? And what it seems to me that low traffic neighbourhoods are a little bit of a distraction. But more than that, that divisiveness is not helping to try to get communities, politicians to think together about bringing in this right enormous change of road user charging in a fair and equitable but also effective way.

I believe that’s the challenge that we as local communities, as campaigners, NGOs, or politicians should be facing up to now.

Carlton Reid 23:52
We’ll touch on the fairness. I know you wanted to touch on the fairness of roadway surprising we can we can come back to that in a second. But just just on the point about low traffic neighbourhoods and and the fact that you can potentially join them together, but it’s what what is the alternative? So if you are saying you are against low traffic neighbourhoods, are you therefore in favour of a removing them and be wouldn’t that just diffuse traffic, road traffic motor traffic everywhere, which is the the thing that we’re trying to stop? Okay, it’s not good to have the all this traffic on main roads, because many people live there. 7.5% of Londoners live on these main roads. However, that’s kind of what they were designed for many of them, not all of them, but many of them. And they certainly shouldn’t be on the residential roads. So if they’re going to be anywhere, they’re going to have to go somewhere. So stick them on the bits of infrastructure that they’re at least designed to carry this traffic. Why would you have traffic going diffuse everywhere?

John Stewart 25:00
I think it’s people living and working on main roads recognise that there are different sorts of roads, there always will be a little bit more traffic on them. That’s that’s the nature of them. I think that’s recognised. I think the concern, if we go, I think the concern is, is the amount of traffic that is already on main roads, and and the worry about putting more traffic onto them now, whether you get rid of all LTNs? I don’t know, certainly some of them in my view should go. But, you know, there LTNs put in place 20, 30 years ago, I think we live in the real world, I probably wouldn’t be checking them out.

But I do come back to this point that I think as long as they are there, and as long as they are causing the division that they’re causing, it’s going to be very hard to get people to unite around whatI think is a transformational scheme of road user charging.

Carlton Reid 26:00
Why are they leading to divisiveness because motorists can get everywhere they want to want to go they they’re not banned from every single place in these areas. They just might have to take a longer way around and they can’t go the way they used to going. But they can still get to every single residential property. Nobody’s stopping anybody know why? Why the divisiveness? Why is this a problem?

John Stewart 26:23
Well, I Yes. I mean, I think there’s two problems. One you’ve outlined is, in my view, not a major problem. It’s certainly it’s an inconvenience. I think the big problem is what I was talking about earlier, is the extra traffic on the main roads, and the feeding by a lot of people living on the main roads, that they have got no guarantee that that traffic is going to be dealt with. Therefore, they have no hope. They feel that the situation which they believe is contributing to the bad health of their children is going to be dealt with that that is a divisive bit. That’s a controversial bit. And though and and while that is still there, it is going to remain in my view divisive.

Carlton Reid 27:11
So what about the Mayor’s Ulez? The Ultra Low Emission zones? So where do you stand on them today? Not eventually get traffic off the roads?

John Stewart 27:21
Yes, I think they do. I mean, I think what ULEZ does, I mean, the mayor is doing it for air pollution reasons, I think primarily. But I think what you less than those type of schemes are doing is beginning to introduce the idea of, you know, payment for travel by car.

And I and in that sense, I think they’re not a bad idea. Because when transformational change takes an awful long time. And if you start to be if you start with things like Ulez, then the idea of pay have a bit more to travel on the roads begins to be embedded and possibly to some extent accepted by people. It’s not so it’s not so shocking. It’s not suiting you, in that point, they could be a useful precursor to road user charging.

Carlton Reid 28:14
Are you are you against LTNs in London and specific areas of London? Are you against LTN is the concept anywhere in the UK?

John Stewart 28:25
I wasn’t I’m never very I was never very keen on them or their predecessors called and I remember writing some this goes back to the 1990s.

And at the time they were they were caught they weren’t called LTNs, traffic calmed, traffic cells. And as you’ve probably remember, traffic calmed, a cell of residential roads have side roads, and the traffic was going onto the main roads. And that was kind of the the policy of many local authorities. I wasn’t happy about it. I remember writing something which was called I think ‘Poor show,’ which came out in 1998 was somewhere between a pamphlet and a book. And, and I where I looked at traffic on main roads in the London Borough of Greenwich, and the UK, and there was a particular problem with the noise and air pollution even then, from the traffic. It has been funnelled onto the main roads. I’ve never really been keen on the concept.

And perhaps that’s one reason why I’ve reacted as I have done to low traffic neighbourhoods in London or elsewhere.

Carlton Reid 29:35
Yeah, I can quote from that. So yeah, 1998 Poor Show “transport policy must reject the growing tendency to traffic calm residential roads by increasing the amount of traffic on main roads.” So again, we’ve established you have a long history on this. So this is not something that you know, you’ve done to bait the Telegraph. Just yesterday you have thought about

John Stewart 29:55
indeed, I mean, and it’s difficult to get that across to people who don’t know

To me on Twitter, there’s no reason why they should should believe all that. But, but certainly, this concept of what we now call low traffic neighbourhoods has, has always worried me going back 30 odd years.

Carlton Reid 30:13
So the reason I’m asking you,

is this a London thing is this Dulwich thing, you know, you’re really just really genuinely just campaigning about one. So we’ve established that may not be the case. But if you look at someone like Birmingham, which, you know, my Guardian article described that and it’s not it’s not their description, as my description, it described it basically, even though they did agree with the description is basically a city sized, low traffic neighbourhood, in that they are going to be doing the cells, which you just talked about. They’re not calling it the calling some of the low traffic neighbourhoods, but basically they’re shoving all of the traffic on to they’re not even residential roads. It’s just the ring road. So why would you be opposed to an LTN? If all it’s doing is shoving it onto a non residential ring road?

John Stewart 31:04
That that’s a much more interesting concept. You see, I think, and that’s the sort of thing that similar to Belgium and Dutch cities have done over the years, I think get has done that. I think some some of the Dutch cities have done that. That that in my view is is I don’t know enough about the Birmingham ring road. But I think the probably right, it’s not really a residential road.

In my view, I don’t I don’t have the same concerns about that.

And I think what Andy Street is doing up in Birmingham, is is more sensible and more creative, more imaginative than what has been done in London.

Carlton Reid 31:45
Let’s not give it to Andy because it’s actually Councillor Wassem Zaffar.

John Stewart 31:49
Okay. I,

much like that Andy Street when he was running. When he was running John Lewis’s, let’s give credit where credit is due, Carlton? Yes.

Carlton Reid 32:00
Yes, he is making some good noises. So let’s not take it totally away from indeed, then you mentioned Ghent. And you mentioned, you know, that that’s how they did that, because the UK that @Cutnoise has plugged Ghent just recently in a tweet. And that, of course, is again is that you because the reason that I mean, again, I’ve talked to the Deputy Mayor of Ghent, he said, you know, the god awful lot of abuse, before they brought the traffic circulation measures in, you know, death threats, all sorts of awful stuff, you know, the world is going to end etc, etc. They brought it in the traffic circulation plan a couple of years ago. And then people now come from the street and thank him, because, and this, this will hopefully be music literally music to your ears in that because they can hear birdsong again, and they got rid of the cars. And then they can hear each other talking all of a sudden. So these things can can be both reduced traffic and traffic noise. So if as you said in your Telegraph piece, that’s the Nirvanna that you want, that certainly the noise part of it. Why not just accept that there will be potentially in the short term, some impact, but there’s gonna be an awful lot of fantastic stuff for an awful lot of people?

John Stewart 33:24
They’re all gonna be fantastic, different people. But I think the Ghent thing had had another add another difference. Not only was it a much broader scale of Birmingham type scale,

but but when when these guys were facing their death, strip sets, threats and abuse, they could all do not only with coming up with a creative and potentially effective steam, but affair scheme. And this this is you see what I think the proponents of LTNs can’t argue. They can argue to some extent that they definitely will bring benefits to people living with an LTNd definitely bring some effectiveness and enabling more people to cycle and walk. But they can’t argue the fairness and because they can’t argue the fairness, they are they’re going to struggle in a way that I don’t think the people who can the people putting the schemes in Ghent would have done I think that’s a critical difference for me.

Carlton Reid 34:19
But the surveys that have been carried out and I’m sure you’ve seen on social media, where the local councils have done the surveys and they find the exact same opposition that again got and then probably the same death threats that that gang got and when they bed in people are really really opposed to change. We know that but when you bring these things in even the people who are dead against LTNs, you know, and we’re dyed in the wool motorists and would never want to say they have a support this they want to it and Waltham Forest is a pretty good example of all the things that have been put in Waltham Forest, you know, they had to kick and scream to

get them in. And now if you go and talk to people in Waltham Forest, nobody would want to rip those out. And they weren’t even called LTNs at the time. Yeah. So people don’t want to rip, LTNs or how ever you want to describe them once they’ve bedded in.

John Stewart 35:15
I think what you said about the motorists and some of the local residents, who reposed. They do come to accept them, they often come to like them. I think that’s absolutely right. But I come back to my my point. And actually, the main point of the telegraph article as well, that does doesn’t apply to people on main roads, your right content, it may apply if the traffic just don’t was on the main roads in five or 10 years time. But that is a lifetime away for people. It doesn’t apply to them. That’s where that’s where the concern is going to remain. That’s where the unfairness is going to remain. That’s where the divisiveness is going to remain.

Carlton Reid 35:56
Again, bring back Waltham Forest; Walthan Forest has found it reduced traffic on boundary roads, small amount ,yes, but it has reduced.

John Stewart 36:07
On some of them. That’s right. Not on all of them.

Yes, I think I think what seems to be happening, it’s I know, Waltham Forest was was pre COVID. But I think, and it’s quite different. But it’s COVID is sort of, you know, because the traffic levels changed anyway, it’s difficult to make assessments. But I think what seems to be happening in Waltham forest and elsewhere in certainly in the London LTNs, is that some boundary roads is reduced on other boundary roads, it’s been increased. I, from my own observation, but you know, I have. Studies would need to be done to to back this up. It seems to me that where we’ve gotten LTNs, in areas where there is relatively low car ownership, the increase on boundary roads can be quite small. It’s the it’s the LTNs, where there’s large car ownership, that the LTN that the, the boundary roads, and the people on them can be suffering. That’s my observation from looking at the various

data from the different boroughs. But as I say, work will need to be done on them. So it’s a bit of a mixed picture, but it’s certainly an unclear picture, overall, as yet.

Carlton Reid 37:24
So let’s go to some studies. So I’m sure you’re familiar with the studies that have been done, and most of them are done, you know, by by Rachel Aldred, University of Westminster by Anna Goodman, Scott Urban,

who’ve done

three or four studies out there. Now, on the the, the equity, on the fairness on the the potential unfairness to people of colour is, which is one of the claims, and they just haven’t found that, you know, the studies that they’ve done, and they’ve done it to, you know, down to 300 household, you know, cells, they just haven’t found this at all, if anything, it’s it’s the opposite. Are those studies wrong?

John Stewart 38:03
At, you know, I think they I think they’re credible l researchers. I mean, they are, there’s accusations they’re very close to, you know, the cycling, campaigners, and so on. But I think that I know Anna Goodman, reasonably well, I think they’re, you know, she’s a credible researcher.

I think it’s true. And I think a number of things, original things that come out of the study, which are interesting. I think it is certainly true to say that for a lot of people, including a lot of low income households living within the and including households of ethnic minority people living within the LTNs, they, they have clearly benefited. And in some ways, the LTNs of today are better than the old.

areas that were traffic calmed in the 1990s, because they do encompass much more the lower income areas as well as the higher income areas. I think that’s undoubtedly a finding. I think the other interesting thing that origin Goodman have found is that on main roads, you’re quoting the proportion of people living there,

that there is it’s not it’s not necessarily true to say that all the poor people live in main roads. That was that was something was said, probably the 1990s. That wasn’t quite true. And their research has corrected that.

What I don’t think, though, that their research has properly tried to address is the the attitudes of people living on the boundary roads, where there has been an increase in traffic. They haven’t really properly tried to address that. And if they haven’t addressed that, I don’t think they’re able at this stage to come up with any credible solutions for that.

Carlton Reid 40:00
where you’re going to put these cars? Because as I know, you, you know that there’s, there’s because I’ve seen on your blog where you have mentioned the statistics that I mentioned my guardian piece, which was, you know, 28 million cars 2007, you know, best part of 40 million now almost a doubling in number of cars. So, you know, quart doesn’t fit into a pint pot, etc, etc. There’s an awful lot of motor vehicles out there. And if we just give them free rein to go absolutely everywhere they will, and then everywhere is hell. Whereas if just for the sake of argument, there’s only slivers of Hell, if we put everything onto the Boundary Road, if we say that unfair, okay, it’s unfair, let’s just say that. However, it’s just a small amount of people. And you’re actually freeing up the rest of the city, to the great majority of people. So is the greater good here. Yes, it’s terribly unfair for the people who live on on Boundary Road. And what you’ve got to do is reduce the traffic there, too.

But why would you want cars to go everywhere?

John Stewart 41:09
I fought for a long time as you as you probably no, Carlton I chaired the organisation was looks after residents impacted by Heathrow Airport and its flight path. And don’t his big debate going on right now as the flight paths will be changed, because for it to be too, too good modern technology. And the debate is whether you put the flight paths concentrated all the way sail from the North Sea to Heathrow Airport, in one narrow line. So that a relatively small proportion people get all the noise, but get it all the time, or whether you try to

alternate those flight paths, which means that more people will get the noise, but for less each for less of the time. Now, as you might expect, I’m very much in favour of the alternation. And the respite, I would I really don’t think in the end of the day is either fair, or possibly even credible to put all the planes over a select communities all day long. And I think the parallel, there’s a similar parallel there. I mean, what you’re saying is

that there would be held for a lot of people, but in the end of the day, I don’t think you can, you can put

a minority of people, particularly in London, it’s a big minority of people living on a main road is about 720,000 people, the size of a city, you can’t give them sheer hell all the time, so that others could get a relatively pleasant environment.

Carlton Reid 42:55
With the article you wrote in, in The Telegraph, so your own organisation has come out and said, you know, these are your personal views, because people are now saying they want to quit the Campaign for Better Transport, you know, tear up my membership card, all that kind of stuff. Yeah.

John Stewart 43:15
Yes, some, some are. Some are God. I don’t know how many in total, but some certainly a few. Handful certainly are. Yes.

Carlton Reid 43:22
So campaign for better transport has has, in effect distanced itself from that article, and saying, you know, it’s your views? And of course, you’re entitled to have a view that’s contrary to the organisation that you chair. But do you think that that’s a position that can last for very long if you’re, you’re in effect, opposed to what your organisation stands for? And they’ve posted a blog post in which says this is our opinion on LTN? We’re very much in favour of them.

John Stewart 43:54
Yes, I saw the blog post. And actually, I was obviously in contact with the people that campaign for better transport this morning, I saw the blog post, I saw the tweet, and I actually liked it. And I made a point of liking the tweet because I wanted to reinforce what they were saying.

Yes, I think it’s, I think it’s quite credible for me to stay as chair, I still have a different view on this. If I’d if I had a different view on the

on the basic thrust of where the organisation is going, if I didn’t share the values of the organisation, that would be very different. But I don’t think that this is in that category.

Carlton Reid 44:35
Hmm. Nowt you have taken and you’ve been very good to respond to most people who’ve come on to you and you have, and you’ve basically said the same tweet to a lot of people, which is, you know, you’re in favour of cycling infrastructure, in favour of more pedestrianisation, you’re in favour of bus lanes and you’re in favour of road user charging, but many people have said but what

you’ve not giving us is the actual data. So you’ve said

that that LTNs are (a) unpopular with many people. And and (b) they’re not effective. And people have been saying to you show us the data show us where that that says that because we’ve got the data here that says the opposite. So why haven’t you answered people?

John Stewart 45:22
Well, I think I have but but let me let me say that. I think that’s the question that took me aback, because I’ve gone through the data with some care, because clearly, you’re not going to read an article or something like The Sunday Telegraph without going through the data. First. I got through the data with some care. And it was absolutely clear to me that although as we were saying earlier, although there’s not overspill on to all the boundary roads, virtually every LTN, has overspill or to some of the boundary and Main Roads. I kind of took that as a given. I didn’t think I needed to prove that. And I assumed that particularly some of the really specialist, people who were who were challenging me had had a regulator as well.

Carlton Reid 46:12
But how do we know it’s from the the LTN is because all motor traffic has gone up during the Coronavirus crisis. So it could be just that it’s just you know, there is more traffic on the roads full stop it.

John Stewart 46:24
That’s why COVID makes it a bit difficult. But I’ve looked at in some detail at what some of the consultants have done, for example, sister who have who worked for Lamberth, and who were a very credible consultancy who I’ve known for the aviation days, and they have made a really big attempt to try and take account of the COVID situation. Now, I think they recognise with all recognise that, you know, they may not have been able to completely, but they tried to take account of that and even so, they are showing, in some cases considerable increases in traffic on boundary roads around the LTN. And it’s that is that data which I thought people would have read. Now I this morning, I kind of tried to collate some of it and put it out on Twitter, and just encourage people themselves to go through all the data and to go behind the headlines. I think it is true to say that some of the councillors not all but some of the councillors who have presented the data in the best possible light because they want to keep the LTN. Now, you know, that’s what organisations do. But I’ve said to people today on Twitter, if that’s the data you’re reading, go behind it, go behind it and look at the individual roads, because that does show and does back up. But I think what I’m saying is that many of the boundary roads are suffering adversely as a result of the LTNs.

Carlton Reid 47:56
But only if they’re residential. So we’ve established that that was your beef. So if it’s a if it’s a road that is in effect, so like the Eastern Avenue, so that’s, you know, we have no houses

at all, no residential areas against there are many roads like that in London, so you’re not against LTN that have boundaries against one better word motor roads. It’s only where they are on main roads that have residents. Is that right?

John Stewart 48:27
Residential is the key thing. That’s that’s right. We years ago, UK Noise Association, we did a competition to find the noisiest road in the UK. And we deliberately excluded motorways, probably all the noises wrote in the UK. But we deliberately excluded motorways, because we were only interested in roads where people lived. And that continues to be my position. Yes.

Carlton Reid 48:50
So let’s come back. We’ll finish on this. Because this was also one of the key things that you did mention in your Telegraph piece. And we have touched on on this show already. But we need to come back to because it was the unfairness bit which which i i stopped you from talking about so road user charging. Now one of the complaints against that is if you’re looking at something that’s inequitable, well road user charging, you know, if you’re rich, you’re gonna be able to afford road user charging, no problem. So how do you solve the inequity? That’s that’s inbuilt into road user charging?

John Stewart 49:25
Yes, it’s been built. And I think what you’ve got to do is, first of all, take at least some of the money and put it into public transport. So the fares for people using public transport come down significantly. You’ve got to put some of the money into rehabilitating space on main roads as well as side roads for people walking and cycling. You may also have to tighten the parking rules and you certainly will have to reduce

speed limits

because you’ve got fewer cars on the roads that they’ll speed up, that the critical thing I think, I would say is that I think road user charging will be fair, or as fair as it can be. If for your typical person, he or she is spending less than transport overall during the course of the year than he or she is now.

That means people will be using public transport much more, but we much cheaper, but the total family budget spent on transport will be less than it is now, if we can get to that situation, we’ve got to a reasonably fair situation.

Carlton Reid 50:41
So, John, many of the points you’ve touched on, and it’s slightly curious like this, in that people, most people I would say, are going to be in total agreement with you on about 90% of what you said. So it literally is just that LTN pointd. And I think we’ve now dug down into it enough to find out. It really isn’t LTNs per se, it’s only the Boundary Road. So that’s your your your main concern. And I guess a lot of people would also have very similar concerns to Boundary Road also in that most people want the traffic reduced on the boundary roads also.

John Stewart 51:17
They do. And that’s absolutely right.

Yes, it’s certainly an aspiration. But for most people, I think that’s absolutely right. Because a lot of people, a lot of us, as we were saying earlier, using bad roads, particularly their main roads, you know, we use them to stop and go to school and work and everything else. So a lot of people are interested in less traffic on the boundary roads. But But I think it’s there’s a difference between those people and the people who are actually stuck living on those boundary roads on those main roads all the time, for whom it’s an absolute imperative.

Carlton Reid 51:54
Hmm, I think we can agree on that. I think nobody would want to, to live with that much pollution and that much noise. We I think we can all agree on that for that for definite. So thank you ever so much for talking to us today. Because I saw all of this bubbling up last night, I saw you answering people, I almost, in fact, I did do one or two tweets. And then I thought, no, I think I’ll just rather talk to you rather than just come up with like a pithy comment which many people have come out and just being totally against you, I thought I’d actually talk to you and find out a bit more of a nuanced view, especially with your background, because maybe many people are just looking at the organisation you know, they they associated with you, and then haven’t looked back to your, your background to which most people are going to be subscribing to your background and where you’ve come from. So thank you ever so much for for coming on and explaining your point of view.

John Stewart 52:46
Thank you, Carlton. It’s been a pleasure speaking to you.

Carlton Reid 52:49
Thanks to John Stewart there and thanks to you for listening to Episode 288 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. The next show is an interview with ultra cyclist and bike product entrepreneur, Andrew Phillips. That’ll be out next week. But meanwhile, get out there and ride …

14th November 2021

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 286: COP26 SPECIAL — The Transition to Zero Cars

SPONSOR: Jenson USA

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUESTS: US Congressman Earl Blumenauer of Oregon; Greater Manchester’s transport commissioner Chris Boardman and the city region’s mayor Andy Burnham; the UCI’s Advocacy and Development Manager Isabella Burczak; Susan Claris and Stephen Edwards of Living Streets; Ed Miliband, UK Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy; Mohamed Mezghani, Secretary-General of the global public transit organization UITP; European Cyclists’ Federation president Henk Swarttouw; Heather Thompson, CEO of the New-York-based Institute for Transportation and Development Policy; Bronwen Thornton, chief executive of pedestrian organization Walk 21 and European Cyclists’ Federation CEO Jill Warren.

TOPICS: COP26, cycling, walking, transit and electric cars.

LINKS: Forbes article

TRANSCRIPT

Carlton Reid 0:14
Welcome to Episode 286 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Sunday 14th of November 2021.

David Bernstein 0:25
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Jenson USA, Jenson USA where you will find a great selection of products at unbeatable prices with unparalleled customer service. Check them out at Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. Hey everybody, it’s David from the Fredcast. And of course, I’m one of the hosts and producers of The spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast since 2006. For shownotes links and other information check out our website at www.the-spokesmen.com.

Omnia El Omrani, Global Youth Coalition for Road Safety’ 1:04
Your Excellencies honourable delegates youth advocates. Today marks the launch of the Glasgow Declaration on the Acceleration of the Transition to Zero Cars and Emissions.

Carlton Reid 1:17
Transition to zero cars? Hey, that wonderful mistake was heard by the negotiators, delegates and VIPs attending the main plenary session on transport day at COP 26 in Glasgow, and I was there too. I’m Carlton Reid. And of course the Egyptian Doctor charged with welcoming folks into the cavernous room meant to plug the Glasgow Declaration on Accelerating the Transition to 100% Zero Emission Cars and Vans. But I don’t suppose many people notices the omission. Or should that be emission? Anyway, the room was packed with politicians and representatives from car manufacturers such as execs from Ford, GM, and Volvo. But do you know who wasn’t there? Execs from bicycle or train companies or execs from walking, cycling and transit organisations? Shockingly, the COP26 transport day focused almost wholly on electric cars and trucks. Cycling, walking and travelling on trains and buses were climate-friendly forms of transport that were not on the agenda excluded from the high level discussions. However, pretty much as an afterthought, a line on active travel and transit was tacked on to the end of the the Glasgow declaration — that long thing that I said before — But you’ve got to wonder what the UN and the UK Government were thinking when they listed the priorities for this 26th Conference of the Parties. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in its recent report, we have to reduce motoring, and boost bicycling, walking and other climate friendly modes of transport. Instead, as you’ll hear, a bunch of car execs were allowed to yap on about how apparently they will save the planet by selling people loads of shiny new cars. Now, this is a long show a touch under two hours. But I wanted to pack everything into the same episode and it really is packed. I shoved my microphone under the noses of loads of people in the badge-only zone at COP26 and at a UCI event in the centre of Glasgow. Next year, Glasgow of course, is going to be hosting pretty much every … in fact every World Championship event from the UCI so you’ll hear from US Congressman Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, Greater Manchester’s transport Commissioner Chris Boardman and the city region’s Mayor Andy Burnham, the UCI’s advocacy and development manager, Isabella Burczak, Susan Claris and Steven Edwards of Living Streets. Ed Miliband, UK shadow Secretary of State for business energy and industrial strategy and a recent convert to cycling. Mohamed Mezghanii, Secretary General of the global public transit organisation UITP founded in 1895 It’s quite a long one that one; European Cyclists’ Federation President Henk Swarttouw; Heather Thompson, CEO of The New-York-based Institute for Transportation and Development Policy; Bronwen Thornton, Chief Executive of pedestrian organisation Walk 21. And last but not least, the European Cyclists’ Federation CEO, Jill Warren. First, let’s hear what the car executives were allowed to say when they spoke at the transport days plenary session. Up first is Kristen Siemen Chief Sustainability Officer, [cough, cough] excuse me, for General Motors. Then there’s Hakan Samuelssonn, CEO of Volvo cars. And last is Ford’s Global Director, Cynthia Williams.

Kristen Siemen, GM 5:25
So at GM, we see a world of all electric, where everyone can be part of it, and everyone can enjoy the benefits of an electric vehicle. For us, that means a portfolio of vehicles that crosses every segment and every price point. It’s about having infrastructure and access to charging for everyone. It’s about equitable time at actions so that communities that traditionally have been left behind or disproportionately affected by climate change, are really coming along on that transformation with us.

Hakan Samuelsson, Volvo 6:03
We should also create more attractive products for our consumers, because then the process will be accelerated. And then consumers like electric cars. So, so I think we have come to a point where we should stop in discussing and trying to find other solutions. I mean, the grass is not greener. On the other side, it’s very green on this side. And I think it’s a great opportunity for for the core industry in, in Europe, and for sure, we have come to the mindset, it’s great for our company, this is an opportunity. And and it makes our company is stronger, and we can deliver products, consumers, specially future consumers will love to buy.

Cynthia Williams, Ford 6:56
For Ford, we not only want to build high quality vehicles at scale, but we want to do so in a way that it saves, um. It’s good for the planet, and it’s good for the environment. I think, from an automotive perspective, being able to scale up and bring vehicles at scale that’s needed. Now we need to match our ambitions with our actions. And so to be that’s going to be key for all automotive manufacturers to do so. Moving forward, I think key things that we will need to move this to accelerate the electrification revolution is to continue. We need incentives, incentives are required in order to bring the cost down. And so that we can get more people into the vehicles. It’s keen to leave no one behind. We need infrastructure. We need infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. People need to see infrastructure in order to get in the vehicles and feel comfortable that they can get from point A to point B with no issues.

Carlton Reid 8:05
Are you as staggered as I am that a bunch of car bosses were allowed to pitch for sales at a climate summit? And brazenly say they’ll also need consumers to be given incentives — big fat subsidies then — and, said Ford’s Cynthia Williams there at the end, it should be down to governments to build infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure, in other words, recharging networks. Really, did governments build gas filling stations? No, they did not. And no doubt car companies also want governments to build more road infrastructure.

Carlton Reid 8:45
Funny how car companies and the politicians that support them come over all socialist when it suits them. Remember, this wasn’t a car conference. This was supposed to be a climate summit. Can you tell I’m angry? Anyway … breathe … I’ll calm down by setting up the audio I recorded with politicians and the bike, walk and public transit execs who weren’t invited to speak in the plenary session, but wandered the halls at COP26 anyway. Wwe’ll start with Congressman Earl Blumenauer. Yes, he gave me a bike icon badge. He’s famous for that. And we’ll end with Jill Warren of the European Cyclists’ Federation. So the agenda the top agenda is just electric cars bicycles are missing. what’s what?

Congressman Earl Blumenauer 9:39
Well, that’s not what we do. We’re the US Congress. Our agenda includes electric bikes, and changing policies that are more supportive of cycling, burn calories instead of fossil fuel.

Carlton Reid 9:57
So do you think that’s a huge omission? Got cycling and walking and buses on the agenda here?

Congressman Earl Blumenauer 10:05
Absolutely. Land use, cycling, biking, you know burning calories instead of fossil fuel needs to have more of a focus on.

Carlton Reid 10:16
Okay. So why do you think it is missing?

Congressman Earl Blumenauer 10:20
I think others were more organised.

Carlton Reid 10:23
So the motor lobby is it’s got more money, it’s more organised?

Congressman Earl Blumenauer 10:26
It’s it’s the, the electric cars the new shiny thing which can be transformative and there’s massive investments in it.

Carlton Reid 10:38
As you can maybe tell, that was a grab and go interview with the US congressman for Oregon. I had to catch the politicians as they were passing. But I also set up some interviews such as this one with Chris Boardman, British Cycling’s policy advisor, who also happens to be Greater Manchester’s transport Commissioner. I saw Chris in the badge only Blue Zone at COP26, but didn’t manage to grab him there. Instead, I had to wait until after he had given an inspirational speech at a joint Visit Scotland and UCI event away from the COP26 venue. The UCI of course, is the Union Cycliste Internationale. And the event was a promotion called the Power of the Bike. Here’s Chris. How crazy is it? How bonkers is it? That cycling and walking and buses and trains? Yeah, great event here. But it’s not on the official agenda that the being discussed over the over the road. So how crazy is that?

Chris Boardman 11:45
Yes, it is. Yes, it is. I think it’s not in people’s psyche mainstream as yet. But we’re forcing it in them and had a conversation not an hour ago with Pete Buttigieg.

Carlton Reid 11:56
Yeah, yeah.

Chris Boardman 11:58
Struggle with that about exactly that and saying that him you know, the Secretary of State for Transport America riding a bike, the impact that has when you normalise something that isn’t currently normal, is essential. And he was talking about his boss, liking riding a bike. And that’s what’s needed. And regardless of whatever orbits around it, and the Prime Minister of the UK likes bikes at the moment, and there is the opportunity to actually do something with it.

Carlton Reid 12:23
But it’s still not on the agenda. So Boris likes bikes. Pete likes bikes, Biden likes bikes, but it’s not on the agenda.

Chris Boardman 12:31
It’s not here, but it is on the agenda, you will have read Build Back Better and Gear Change, I’m looking at funding bids and the criteria for submissions. And they all say, and you cannot hide money for bosses. If you don’t deliver active travel, you kind of have one at the expense of the other. And what we’ll find out in the next few few months, is whether the government will hold their ground. And that’s all I have to do. They’ve written a policy, it’s solid, it’s evidence, it’s joined up. And now they have to stand the ground and deliver. And if they do that, we’re living in a step change moment.

Carlton Reid 13:04
So you’re obviously you came into this, as you said in the in the talk there from the sport of cycling, but then became walking and cycling commissioner. And now you’re everything like a rush. But now you’re everything you every form of transport. So I can’t ask you to disciform a form of transport because you cover all of it. But the focus here, the focus here, Chris is on electric — or sorry, here as in not here, as in this building. But here as in COP26 is on electric cars. So how great are electric cars, they’re getting us out of the climate crisis,

Chris Boardman 13:38
I took this job, because the connectivity is critical. So we know that everybody switching from normal cars to electric cars, doesn’t doesn’t do it. In fact, in the short term, it makes it worse because you’ve got to make electric cars and you’re not ready to produce that much electricity and everything else. But it’s it is part of the search. And it’s not as big as part of people think it is. But it’s essential. But you’re about to change fuel, and where the fuel is, and how much there is of it. And if you do that strategically, at the same time you give people a viable, attractive alternative, then then you have an opportunity to really make a difference. So lots of families now are moving to you know, tiny house but three cars, when you can enable them to move to just one car families and down dramatically and have car clubs that genuinely work that are within two to 300 metres at someone’s house, or just open the car with an app. I go and use it for what I want. And I drop it in a space. I’ve just been speaking to the former Deputy Mayor for transport of Amsterdam now mayor have interacted Sharon, I was telling me how she took 1000 car parking spaces out in Amsterdam. And but if you use one of the car clubs, you can park for free. So it encourages people to leave their own cars not to use them if you’ve got to use a car. So she uses an electric bike most of the time, and then and then mixes and matches I think tying into the rest of the transport world is absolutely critical.

Carlton Reid 15:04
So when you’re speaking to Secretary Pete, Mayor Pete were you talking about active travel with him? Was he on message there?

Chris Boardman 15:13
I was talking specifically and only about active travel. And we only had a few minutes. But that was the topic that we were talking about. That was our common ground. And we started talking a little bit about how you’re going to charge for electric vehicles. So you’re not just getting just got free motoring, which they’ve got to do. Because they’re about to have a hole in the tax revenue as well. And the whole world’s got to tackle it. So it’s, it’s an emotionally wrenching time, because we are on on the cusp of massive change, and we could genuinely get it. But it’s not locked down. And it’s not sir. And I think it’s fascinating to be involved. Just very tiring.

Carlton Reid 15:51
Here’s a walk and talk with Andy Burnham Greater Manchester’s mayor. So transport da, Andy. It’s, it’s Car, car car, blah, blah, blah. So that’s not going to solve the crisis, not gonna solve congestion, it’s not going to solve lots of things. So why do you think the government who set the agenda and the UN, why have they gone for car car car?

Andy Burnham 16:18
I did say this to them this coal car, cars cash tree, I said that before, cuz I’m not sure that’s the right, the right sort of framing for this, we should all be talking about public transport. So surely reducing the cost of bus fares rail fares. And actually, if anything, increasing the cost of fares, you know, it’s, it’s the case that it’s much cheaper to get a plane than it is to get a train in this country. And until that’s changed, the economics of this are not going to be in the right in the right place.

Carlton Reid 16:49
So do you think leaders such as yourself, who are doing this, who are well ahead of the curve, considering? It’s not here? Do you think you city leaders, not just you, but all across the UK, and of course, all the mayors that you you meet with frequently? Have they the ones that actually got a bit more power anyway, so they’ll just they’ll just go ahead with with that kind of agenda?

Andy Burnham 17:14
Yes, but we do need the government to support us, we have the possibility of creating within a decade, the UK is first carbon neutral public transport system, our trams already run on renewable energy. And we have a plan to electrify buses now and make them effectively a single a single system. But to do that, it requires the government to step in as well and back us with funding to deliver that system to that to that timeframe. So for me, it’s like, it’s a bit frustrating, because we’ve got the plans, we’ve done the thinking, we’ve done the work, we’ve put buses back on the public control. And that’s a key enabler. Because when you control transport, you can actually then dictate the pace of change in the coming years. So we’ve done all of that. And we’re kind of just waiting to go really. But you know, this is where the government needs to needs to see how Net Zero is also levelling up, you know, they want to level up the country, well, you can make the one on the same thing, you know, you can change great sponsors, public transport system, make it carbon neutral, but actually make it much more affordable for people to use as well. And that’s where these agendas can come together.

Carlton Reid 18:26
And how important is it that you’ve got somebody like Chris Boardman as not just the bike and walk Commissioner, but transport Commissioner, what does that say about your agenda? Well, hopefully

Andy Burnham 18:37
what it says to people is, what’s the message I wanted to send when I asked Chris to take on the broader role that the active travel cycling walking is, is kind of baked into this system, it’s almost the foundation of a modern public transport system. It’s sending the message that, you know, walking or cycling is the natural choice for the first mile last mile, but then you can get on a bus that’s hopefully better and cheaper, and connect with the tram and do your commute in that way. Chris, and I took a commute on Monday morning, actually, using an electric boss and then jumping on one of our new bike, hire bikes. And you know, it was a zero carbon commute, so it can be done.

Isabella Burczak 19:14
So my name is Isabella Burczak, I’m the Advocacy and Development Manager at UCI, ….

Carlton Reid 19:22
So I’ve had a fascinating afternoon, here, outside of COP26. So about a mile and a half away from where the the actual conference is taking place. So tell me exactly what the UCI event has been doing here today. Yeah, so

Isabella Burczak 19:40
the goal of today’s event, which was I mean, I really have to do like kudos to the 2023 World Championships team. And so the idea of this event was to talk about I said, they said the power of the bike, but really how do sporting events, transform cities? How can they bring sustainable development How can they bring that into the community? And then how can cycling also transform cities.

Carlton Reid 20:05
That’s not long to do

Isabella Burczak 20:06
that. Yeah, it’s coming up very quickly. So maybe just in terms of context, so the 2023 World Championships are the first time we’re bringing all the disciplines together into one cycling world championships. So it’s really no bringing 13 World Championships into one into one region because it will be in Glasgow but also in other cities within Scotland. So it’s very much a Glasgow and Scotland effort here. And the idea of the championships actually, so one is hosting the actual event and hosting the 13 World Championships. But actually, there’s a much bigger objective to it. So the bigger objective is actually to transform the nation with cycling. So how can they create infrastructures? How can they create a cycling culture? And how can they use the event to inspire a whole new generation of cyclists that use the bicycle for every reason, so they won’t necessarily be the next, you know, lycra clad cyclists on the street, or they might not be the next world champion, but they may be the next parent that takes the kids to school on a bike or they might be. So really, it’s really encouraging something on an everyday basis.

Carlton Reid 21:09
So I’m sure this this criticism, you’ll have heard many, many times. But when you broach those kinds of ideas, people on social media and elsewhere will say, Well, you don’t promote driving, by getting Formula One noticeboard involved. You don’t basically you have transport, you don’t have sport. So why is cycling different there? Why do you think the sport can influence the transport?

Isabella Burczak 21:38
Yeah, so funnily enough, my, I’d say what I always say is we have this responsibility, within kind of a Global Cycling agenda to promote a sport, which is also a form of transport. So we can’t just focus on the sport. And the idea is, no, if people are afraid to put their kids on bikes on the street, we’re also not going to have future world champions, because there will be athletes coming up and, and riders growing up as riders, but also, between sport and transport, I find there’s also very common agendas. We all want safe roads, we all want education, we want to share best practices. We want cycling to grow within all countries. So whether you’re a writer racing and training, and we heard this in the room, actually, there was a comment from a rider that said that he’s afraid to cycle as a mode of transport

Carlton Reid 22:30
pump track champion, in fact, not just a rider, just like a champion rider.

Isabella Burczak 22:33
Exactly. So I would say the road safety agenda is a huge agenda also touches upon infrastructure. So how do you get more people riding? Or at least how do you decrease the perceived notion of cycling not being safe, because that’s usually the and it was brought up by Hank as well. People don’t take hold because they think it’s unsafe. So we need to create conditions for them to feel safe. So we need to create the infrastructures, but we also need to create a culture. So again, it goes kind of much broader than just bringing in the infrastructures. Yes, that helps, definitely. But we do need to focus on other topics that will also create a culture of cycling within a country. And that’s where really, I would say that UCI steps in to say, Well, we are hosting these events. So saying we’re hosting a world championship and even outside of 2023, we’re hosting an event we’re using money from the government, if private public funding. Well, we also have an opportunity and a responsibility to get more people writing as well. So how can how can we cities that are hosting events then kind of work with the government’s work with tourism boards work with schools to bring more cycling on an everyday basis. And that’s where we get involved in why we’re trying to bridge those two, to three worlds.

Stephen Edwards 23:48
So my name is Stephen Edwards, Interim Chief Executive, Living Streets and we’re the UK charity for everyday walking. So we want more people to walk their everyday journeys. And we want a street environment that is fit for walking.

Carlton Reid 24:03
And that’s the organisation that was founded the 1920s as we were founded

Stephen Edwards 24:07
in 1929, as the pedestrian Association, and we’re very true to our campaigning routes. And

Carlton Reid 24:13
‘Murder Most Foul’ you’re famous for back then. Keep the death machines off the street. I always radical.

Stephen Edwards 24:20
So we we were very focused, but then on sort of looking at things that were getting in the way pedestrian safety. So we were behind the first zebra crossings. In the UK, we were behind the first speed limits in the UK, and we were behind the first Highway Code, as well. And if you look at the kind of things we’re campaigning on today, so we’ve been campaigning, only this year on revisions to the highway code to put pedestrians first at the top of the hierarchy of transport. We’ve been campaigning on crossings to get more crossings and better crossings. So yeah, we’re we’re still doing much of that campaigning work. We’re also doing much much more as well. Working with the UK Government working with local authorities as well to kind of deliver the change on a street by street basis to,

Carlton Reid 25:09
and you’re not here by yourself.

Stephen Edwards 25:10
I’m not here by myself. I’m with Susan, who I will pass.

Stephen Edwards 25:10
I’m not here by myself. I’m with Susan, who I will pass.

Susan Claris 25:15
Hello. So I’m Susan Claris. I’m the Vice President of Living Streets, the UK charity for everyday walking. I’m also a trustee at the charity and I’m a transport planner by profession with Arup where I lead on active travel, but particularly with a focus on walking, because the tendency is is that cycling dominates discussions about active travel. But with almost one in three trips in England being done by walking walking needs to have more of a voice, it needs to have more attention. It needs to receive more more priority because of the massive benefits that it can bring. Yes, decarbonisation, which is what we’re talking about here today. But the session we did earlier was about the wider benefits. So looking at the health benefits, physical health benefits, mental health benefits, the social inclusion aspects of it, the economic benefits, very clear focus on air quality. So really how walking in particular can bring about healthier people, better places, and a better planet.

Carlton Reid 26:14
Chris Boardman was at your event. So he’s, in many people’s eyes, a cyclist. But he’s much more than that, as we all know. So he is a great advocate for for walking, frequently said, you know, that should absolutely be at the top of everybody’s agenda, and then cycling and then we’ve moved, etc, etc. Because he’s the transport Commissioner for Manchester, not the cycling and walking Commissioner anymore. The transport committee. So how significant is a figure like Chris, and getting across the agenda, which we’ve just been discussing,

Susan Claris 26:55
hugely important. And I think that’s a really positive step that the UK has taken in the last few years is to have what started off as cycling commissioners then emerged into walking and cycling commissioners, or active travel commissioners. And I think it’s a really powerful thing. I think it’s important that they’re not associated too much with sport, because a lot of them come from sporting backgrounds. And we need to get away from the fact that active travel is small, and you have to be fit to walk, walk and cycle. Well, Norman, I think does a great job. He always talks about walking before he talks about cycling, and he doesn’t have that legacy of a sporting background, I guess. But I think having that that local focus or that regional focus, and someone who is there every stage to say, What about walking? What about cycling, because too often, authorities are siloed. And decisions are taken about health or about education, or about older age and transport isn’t considered so to have someone who has a voice, and who is well known as well to keep on saying, but yeah, and walking and cycling is a really important thing. So I think it’s it’s a massively important step forward, to have the have the active travel commissioners.

Stephen Edwards 28:04
Just to add to that, Chris gets walking as well as cycling. I think from our perspective, generally speaking, what is good for cycling is good for walking as well. But ultimately, walkers have secular needs. And there are too many people that aren’t thinking about what a walking network looks like in classes, thinking about what a walking network looks like, putting in place proper crossings, making sure pavements are wide enough and accessible for it accessible by everyone. Regardless of age, ability, you need that space for walking in, you need to know you’re safe, and are going to risk your life when you’re out on the streets.

Carlton Reid 28:42
If we can take it back to you because with your transport planners hat on. And basically what that boils down to what Stephen was actually saying that with networks, do transport planners, you’re gonna have to take on the whole of your profession here. Do transport planners get that cycling is I’m sorry, that walking is a form of transport.

Susan Claris 29:08
And some do and some don’t. And, you know, there’s a learning job to do I think in terms of raising the profile of walking both amongst my colleagues and you know, other professionals. You know, the people who are working in transport now were educated 20 3040 years ago, when I did my degree back in the late 80s, early 90s. Walking wasn’t part of it cycling wasn’t even part of it. You know, I did a master’s in transport and walking and cycling didn’t really feature and we’ve got the legacy of people who have gone through that education system working now. I think the people who are graduated that graduates I see it work who join us now as transport planners, all they want to work on is active travel. So you’ve got a generation coming through who have who have got this, and I think we’re now coping with the legacy of the generation that weren’t brought up with it, but that’s no nothing to say that they can’t actually Get it now for me, active travel is as much a way of thinking as it is to do with design. And it is about always starting with putting walking first, in public transport, it’s about thinking about the whole journey from someone’s home to their destination, not from the bus stop or actually on the bus to where they get off the bus. And, you know, the power of walking for me is, you know, the importance of it as a mode in its own right. But also every other mode will involve walking at some point. So, you know, walking, I think is fundamental to transport planning. And we are seeing a shift. When I joined Eric back in 1993, you know, it was pretend to be a traffic engineer. The fact that I had a background in planning and anthropology was a bit of an oddity, whereas now things like that are welcomed, and it’s transport planning, it isn’t traffic engineering. So we’ve seen a big shift in the profession, I think, in the nearly 40 years, I’ve been working in transport, I think now we need to broaden it. So we have more focus on inclusion, you know, there’s been too much designing for a mythical average, which doesn’t actually exist. And we need to think about how cycling can be for everyone how walking can be for everyone. And that’s what we need. That’s the focus now, and again, I think some people get that for some people, you know, it’s it’s hard to design outside your own experience. And too many people plan for what they know. Because it’s hard to know how an older person might experience the built environment, how someone with mental health conditions finds travelling on transport. And what we need to do is, is to have more, a more inclusive approach to transport to take on board Everybody’s used so that we do end up with our streets and our towns and our cities that are actually for everybody not designed for an average.

Carlton Reid 31:39
So I’m going to ask us to Steven, but I’m probably going to come straight back to you anyway. Or you’re gonna you’re gonna grab the microphone off Steven and say, I want to say something here as well. So I hear what you’re saying. Both of you have both said, that’s really that site, walking is here. Can I go like I’m deciding, you can see where my bias comes from. And I’m walking, but also cycling, and buses and trains are not here. So that’s my stick. That’s that’s the big thing that I’m I’m hitting people with. So yes, you have an event here. And you’ve got Chris there, that’s fantastic. But you’re not on the agenda. So there’s an overarching agenda there, which is a little bit of aviation, a little bit of shipping. That had been announcements the today. But then probably 90% of the transport element. The top level, the high level agenda is not walking is not cycling, is not versus not public transport, it is electric cars. And that’s pretty much that’s feeding into bit electric trucks. It’s electric car. So it’s Car, car car, not blah, blah, blah. how annoyed Are you that you’re not at the top table, you’re way off in some annex.

Stephen Edwards 32:58
So I’ll respond specifically to the point on electric cars. And we’re really, really clear that Living Streets, the whilst electric cars have a role to play. They do not, it does not get away from the fact that you need to significantly reduce overall car use. And electric cars still contribute to air pollution for a particular matter. On tires and brakes, you need to worry about the source of the electricity for the cars in the first place. And of course, electric cars do nothing about the congestion. And the problem we have with road safety in this country were again, to Susan’s point on inclusivity. It’s the most vulnerable members in our society that are disproportionately represented in the KSI statistics we see on road safety from UK Government. So yes, electric cars, but even more, less driving altogether and more walking in cycling, especially for those shorter journeys, which is easy to complete by car by bike. By bike,

Carlton Reid 33:59
the IPCC report was very clear, you’ve got to reduce motoring. And yet this conference just has not had that if anything is complete opposite is no less let’s increase motoring but just have the tailpipe a bit different. So same question to you how annoyed Are you because that wasn’t very passionate. I need more passion here. It was good technical I agree with why isn’t walking cycling trains here

Susan Claris 34:29
what I mean walking cycling is here. We are in the blue zone. So on

Carlton Reid 34:34
the agenda, we’re not You’re not on that final agenda that’s going to get on all those news channels over there.

Susan Claris 34:40
But at least we are here we wouldn’t have been here at previous costs. So it is a step forward. Every pun intended that we are at least here and we are having these conversations not as mainstream as I would like to be. I think the whole avoid shift improve is not full is not understood and people don’t get it so people jump straight to the improve First of all, absolutely we need to avoid, we need to reduce the need for travel, then the shift and walking, cycling public transport, there’s not enough discussion of the avoid here. I absolutely agree with you. I think road pricing should be central to that. One of the things I talk about all the time is, is that we will never realise the full potential of walking and cycling unless we address transport gluttony, which I define as the overconsumption of transport to the detriment of others. So people travelling around in ever increasingly large SUVs, engine, idling, inappropriate speeds, pavement parking, not stopping a red light, all of those behaviours just detract from people walking and cycling. And it’s those we need to address. And they’re politically difficult to address, because it’s not the sort of things that voters want to hear. And I think in terms of why there isn’t a bigger voice, that’s up to all of us, it’s up to the public. And people don’t don’t care enough, or they’re not willing enough to actually have what they see as restrictions imposed on them because they see it as a negative. And I think we need to try and change the conversation around. So not to say that roads are closed, or you know, that you’re banning pavement parking. In some ways the focus should be on actually, you’re making sure that somebody with a double bogey or someone in a wheelchair, can walk or wheel down a street, and it should be focusing on the positive. So in some ways, yes, I am angry about it, because until we address the avoid, but we will you know it we will never get the improvements we should I think a parallel is you know, we talk about for waste, we talk about reduce, reuse, recycle. And the tendency is everybody jumps straight to the recycling and they do their bit of recycling and they think they’re fine. They’re saving the planet save the planet, because yeah, what about cardboard? Yeah, and it’s exactly the same with transport, you know, that same reduce, reduce, reuse, recycle is the same as the avoid shift improve. And it’s the same people who feel smug about doing their recycling, who probably feeling smug about driving an electric vehicle, because I think they’ve done their bit. And we need to get across the fact that actually the avoid is the most important, the improve is last resort.

Carlton Reid 37:04
I was sat working in the media centre at COP26, when at the corner of my eye, I saw a familiar figure. It was Ed Miliband, and I jumped up and grabbed him. So yesterday was the transport day. And the focus was almost totally on electric cars. Whereas you have said, in your book, and in interviews, that cycling is a major part and walking is a major part. And then buses. But COP26 only cars only talked about electric cars.

Ed Miliband 37:38
It’s a very very good point. I wasn’t focused enough on the transport stuff yesterday. But I think it’s incredibly important that as we think about the transition, the climate transition is not simply about replacing every petrol diesel car with an electric car, it’s got to be about walking and cycling, and decent public transport. Because, well, partly for sustainability reasons. But also, because you want you want to give people good alternatives. And you also want to create a kind of better society where people can walk and cycle with all the health benefits that gets and giving people those options. And I think that is really important. I mean, when you think about the UK, I think it’s incredibly important. On the public transport side. I you know, as a constituency MP for Doncaster, one of the biggest unaddressed sort of accident during somebody. One of the one of the biggest unaddressed issues is his bus services, his local bus services and the problem with local bus service is real missed opportunities that wasn’t addressed yesterday.

Mohamed Mezghani 38:46
Mohamed Mezghani, Secretary-General of UITP, the International Association of Public Transport.

Carlton Reid 38:53
It’s been going quite a while now, it’s not a new organisation, 1885?

Mohamed Mezghani 38:58
UITP is 156 years old.

Carlton Reid 39:00
And it was a tram organisation to begin?

Mohamed Mezghani 39:02
Yes, it was born as the European tramway association with the 60 members from nine countries, European countries and then then progressively became the Association for all public transport stakeholders and all modes of public transport in the city and not just mass transit modes but also on demand and shared mobility.

Carlton Reid 39:23
So this is a like the big bus companies the big train compnaies, they’re all members that you represent their interest among the members.

Mohamed Mezghani 39:31
We have 1900 members from 100 countries and our members are the public transport operators. So operating metros and buses and ferries in the in the cities. The authorities the regulators at national or local level means public entities, regulators, the supplying industry, so those manufacturing buses and trains and the IT system, the ticketing system consultants, the academics, and as I said, I mean it’s not just about Mass Transit is really including when I say operators, it’s also operators of bike sharing, car sharing, taxis, also part of UITP.

Carlton Reid 40:09
And I believe you’ve just come from a meeting with the World Health Organisation. So what we’re discussing with them because getting onto a bus isn’t really very healthy.

Mohamed Mezghani 40:18
We are discussing about how public transport contributes to better health because when people use public transport, first they woke compared to those who are using their cars. So it’s good for for health. But also, when you have 50 people in a bus, even if that bus looks maybe, like dirty bus, there are 50 50 people and so the emission per person is much lower than the 50 cars that are on the same road than that bus. So and, and it was interesting to see that the WHO ‘s considers really public transport as a way to improve health and as a way to reduce air pollution. And so that’s why we were having this meeting with them and to see how we can

Carlton Reid 41:09
Mohamed, you know, I know. But it’s not here. It’s not on the official agenda — public transport isn’t, cycling isn’t, walking isn’t, even trains are not on. So how surprised are you at that? And how disappointed are you in that?

Mohamed Mezghani 41:31
Look? I mean, I am disappointed than the positivity surprise at the same time. positively surprised, because when I see the where we were 10 years ago in the cup regarding transport, and how in 10 years ago, we had only two or three associations, or two not to say two or three people representing associations at the club. And when I see now that there are much more mobilisation, we have a transport day at the COP.

Carlton Reid 42:00
This is the first one isn’t it?

Mohamed Mezghani 42:01
Not the first one. Okay, but we have a transport day. And that’s a that’s important. So this is these are very positive developments. But at the same time, I’m disappointed because when I hear the conversation about transport, and yesterday, I was part of the ministerial meeting, Transport Minister meeting, when I hear the discussion is about connecting vehicles. It’s aviation. Yeah, it’s Yeah, but it’s more about electrification, but technology and not not about policies, not about how to give priorities to to the modes, which are less polluting, less emitting more socially inclusive, healthier, etc, etc. So So we still have to do a lot to convey our our message and to make the policymakers understand that public transport can contribute to this to the to fight climate change. And also, when we look to the the national plans, only 30% of them national climate plans, only 30% of them include public transport measures only 30%.

Carlton Reid 43:14
So I’m shaking my head.

Mohamed Mezghani 43:16
So our message is clear 100% of them, all of them must cover public transport. So this is the kind of message we we try to convey. And also now transport in general is representing 24%, more or less all the CO2 emissions in 2030, if we don’t act in 2030, it will be 40%. So and it’s the sector which is seeing its contribution, growing the fastest. So so it’s important that we acknowledge that.

Carlton Reid 43:53
Your organisation has signed the letter. We I think you’ve signed two letters, haven’t you with with the two organisations but the one I’m talking about is the European Cyclists’ Federation, which is now rather exploded, it’s lots of NGOs and organisations and charities have now signed that. So, you represent public transport. So, why why are you getting involved with with cycling?

Mohamed Mezghani 44:21
Because first we we consider cycling, walking and public transport as a green alliance as the really the alliance that will that will help and that not that will we will will make feasible, the reduction of CO2 emissions related to urban mobility. So, and that’s why we joined forces. That’s why we we shared with them a number of messages, a number of values, I would say that we try to promote so it’s not surprised for me it’s not surprised that we are we are coming indicating and together with the with the cyclists the Federation, because both modes are, are clean both modes are sustainable. And, and we would like also that people think door to door when they when their mobility and not just station to station. And so thinking door to door and we know that public transport is not a door to door mode. But if we joined forces with shared mobility with the on demand transport with cycling, then we can offer this and and people if they have a convenient door to door solution, they will not feel the need to own a car not just to use the car but to own a car.

Henk Swarttouw 45:44
My name is Henk Swarttouw. I’m president of the European Cyclists’ Federation and of the World Cycling Alliance. The European Cyclists’ Federation is the European umbrella organisation of cyclists. And then I don’t mean racing cyclists, they are covered by the UCI, but everyday cyclists, leisure cyclists, people who use a bicycle, actually not cyclists, but people who ride bikes that would be a better a better name. But anyway, and World Cycling Alliance is the global alliance of organisations like ours, in people for bikes in North America, continental organisations in Latin America, Africa, South and East Asia and even Australia.

Carlton Reid 46:30
And we’re here at, we’re under the globe at COP26. But I know you’ve done a fantastic letter, which lots of organisations have said how many organisations and so we

Henk Swarttouw 46:41
are I don’t have the actual number because organisations are still signing up and can still sign up. But we are over 260

Carlton Reid 46:48
Yeah. Okay, so that’s a great letter. But it’s a protest letter, basically, because cycling isn’t here. Why isn’t it here? And how disappointed are you it’s not here?

Henk Swarttouw 47:03
Well, let’s start to say the second part of the question. First, we’re very disappointed, of course, because to us, it seems so obvious. And why it isn’t here. I can only guess because I haven’t asked the British presidency who has been setting the agenda. I mean, it’s go to transport day. This is the first time there’s a transport day at COP26. And yesterday, there was a meeting of transport ministers, which is also a first time first time for a COP.

Carlton Reid 47:34
But they’re not talking about cycling. Yeah, or walking or trains.

Henk Swarttouw 47:37
Indeed, and that’s all you need to ask them. But the problem is that cycling is not visible. It’s very visible. No, it’s it’s it’s it’s visible for you. It’s visible for me. It’s not visible for the people in the negotiating rooms. We are not allowed to bring a bicycle into the venue, as you are aware that a cyclist outside and they are showing that we’re here and that’s great. waving the placards or showing the bikes, but I was meaning more general not at COP. The cycle cycle. You know, a good example in London when pop-up bike lanes were introduced during the COVID pandemic. Lots of people complaining look, there’s a bike lane, it’s all empty. And that’s because a bike this takes so little space, it’s transparent, it’s hardly visible. Whereas a congested car lane is very visible. It’s clogged with cars. Has anybody ever asked why a railroad track is empty? 99% of the time? No, it’s a bit the same. The same, the same reason. The other thing is, of course that the economic ecosystem around a bike is so much smaller than the one around motorised vehicle called make money. That’s what he said you can make money but not as much. And there are not as many interests involved. There is no insurance sector there is much less maintenance, there’s no fuel, fossil fuels going into the car. The tires don’t have to be exchanged and checked as often as so around the car around alter mobility there is any gigantic ecosystem. And you know, as well as I do that, about 100 years ago, we took a wrong turn. And we adapted our cities our way of life to motorised transport. Before that. There were omnibuses, there were street cars, trims there were bicycles, people walking, pedestrians, and somehow 100 years ago, we took a wrong turn. And now we have to turn back but as 100 years of investment behind it.

Carlton Reid 49:57
So for that reason, do politicians not take walking and citing active forms do not take it seriously, even though transport is, you know, 24 27% of for emissions, and you could really use that.

Henk Swarttouw 50:13
So it seems so obvious. And for us, it’s a no-brainer, low cost, low tech, high impact. But indeed, politicians don’t see it. What I find, having travelled in Europe talking to politicians is, it’s very much connected to personal experience, politicians who have been cycling themselves, they will see it, walking, walking is a bit different, because walking, I think, is not even perceived as a mode of transport.

Carlton Reid 50:45
No. Do you think if this COP was in the Netherlands cycling would be on the agenda?

Henk Swarttouw 50:51
Absolutely.

Carlton Reid 50:52
So it’s …

Henk Swarttouw 50:53
And I don’t I don’t know maybe you know, whether it was on the agenda in Copenhagen. At the top there, which was not the most successful

Carlton Reid 51:03
could have been transport really has done before. It’s been just a little part of the job. Now, this is a full day, as he said, but if it was in a cycling country, it will just be of course, cycling is going to be involved in the on the agenda?

Henk Swarttouw 51:16
Yes. Even if it is, I guess, even if it had been in Ireland, you know, what the Irish government has been doing on walking and cycling, making really indeed a commitment to put 10% of transport budget to what cycling and 10% to was walking. It’s amazing. So and that’s the kind of examples we need. And I think the Irish Minister has said as much yesterday.

Carlton Reid 51:43
But they’ve got greens in their government coalition we have so in the UK, there’s no greens.

Henk Swarttouw 51:49
Now, but I mean, I, I’d love to discuss the British electoral system with you

Carlton Reid 51:53
I know, it’s depressing enough as it is.

Henk Swarttouw 51:59
So so. So let’s not go there. But But of course, the political colour of governments makes a difference. Absolutely. I will meeting the Danish transport minister here tomorrow.

Carlton Reid 52:12
But you see, we’ve got a prime minister in the UK, who’s a very famous transport cyclist, who absolutely gets it absolutely is visible when he’s on his bike, because it easy, he’s a very visible person. So what hope do we have if a cycling Prime Minister can’t get cycling on the agenda?

Henk Swarttouw 52:35
We should always keep hope. Don’t ask me to get into the brain of the British Prime Minister, I have a fair idea about why about about why he is behaving like he does. And he is I know, he is a great friend of cycling, but somehow he and that’s, that’s probably part of the problem. He doesn’t see any political benefits in championing cycling at a national level. And I really don’t know whether that’s his own decision, or his advisors or and that’s but he will be considering that. Not all his voters are that much into cycling, and it’s a fact for every politician is a fact that the majority of their voters are car owners and car drivers. And that’s the whole point. I mean, we don’t even we don’t want to take people’s cars away.

Carlton Reid 53:36
I do!

Henk Swarttouw 53:38
But we don’t.

Carlton Reid 53:40
Your official position is …

Henk Swarttouw 53:42
We don’t want to take people’s cars away. But we want to make people aware that they use their cars for for trips that can easily be done by bicycle 50% of the trips, is short on the five kilometres or 30% even shorter three kilometres, you could walk that distance and we don’t say that disabled people need to take two years bicycles or the Pimlico plumber although he could. But you know, so we are saying that right now 95% of all vehicles being sold, is still fueled by petrol or diesel. Those vehicles will be on the road for another 20 or 40 years, 20 years first in the first world and then another 20 years in the Global South, perhaps. That’s not going to reduce the emissions from the transport sector fast enough. EVS electric vehicles, they are great, but our arrival is too slow. The investment is too high and it will not do anything about a couple of other problems we are seeing in our societies. Public health through inactive inactive lifestyles, congestion pollution, noise pollution, particle pollution, what have you, and also social cohesion. Cars are not good for social cohesion. Cycling is good.

Carlton Reid 55:10
So we’re complaining here about national governments. Do you see there’s more hope in city governments, so city mayors, Anne Hidalgo is a good example. The councillors, in in charge of the Motor City in Birmingham is a good example. Andy Burnham of Manchester is a good example, there are many mauors that have actually got quite a lot of power, mainly transport, certainly in the UK, that can make changes to do you think cities are ahead of nations?

Henk Swarttouw 55:45
Absolutely.

Carlton Reid 55:46
And is that a good thing?

Henk Swarttouw 55:48
It’s a good thing. I think that in this case that cities can show the way. There’s a bit of a subsidiarity issue there. cycling’s cycling infrastructure cycling policies are easily implemented. At a local level cycling is more adept to an urban environment offers more of a solution more a direct improvement in people’s quality of life. In cities, cycling cities are better cities to live in. So absolutely what and what Anne Hidalgo, and David Belliard and Christophe Najdovskie are doing in Paris, is absolutely great. And the best thing about it is, if Paris can do it, no other city can credibly say that it can’t be done in their city. So even dad, therefore, it’s it’s extremely important what they’re doing in Paris, and I hope they will continue down this, but also other cities, smaller cities are taking that we know that the biggest impediment for people to take up cycling is concerned about road safety. That’s the biggest single factor. It’s not rain, it’s not hills, it’s not sweat, it’s safety. towns cities who are reducing their maximum speeds to 30 kilometres an hour, 20 miles an hour. It has an enormous impact on safety. And it’s, you know, it’s just changing the signs. It doesn’t cost anything not a penny Well, bid for the signs perhaps but that’s all and a bit for real for for for enforcement. But it’s, it’s very those are, that’s low hanging fruit, quick wins. Easy, easy, easy, is easily implemented easily done low investment.

Carlton Reid 57:29
You said before you didn’t want to take the official position isn’t you don’t want to take cars away from people, so people can keep their cars. But you would be in favour of many more restrictions on cars in city centres at least?

Henk Swarttouw 57:44
Yes, absolutely. Particularly where they are where there is no necessity, where there is a good public transport infrastructure where there is a good cycling infrastructure with a good cycle parking facilities. And I think even that people will find that it is more comfortable, more agreeable, more efficient, to travel by bicycle in those cities. It’s a win win win situation. But we need a paradigm shift to achieve that. But quite a few cities and a growing number of cities are actually going down that path walking.

Carlton Reid 58:25
There are collaborations between the city mayors, which which they come together and they

Henk Swarttouw 58:32
just maybe not maybe not the mayors but at C40 level perhaps, maybe not to mayor’s but we are very much involved and we facilitate our organisation facilitates urban planners from different cities to meet said once it is more advanced than the other, you can learn from each other experiences, best practices, lessons learned, etc. The EU was also actually funding quite a bit of that kind of cooperation. In like, for instance, you may have heard about the hand receiving this handshake project. It’s a good example, where cities are learning from each other but also pushing each other because there is a competitive element here. Everybody, every city wants to be the best cycling city.

Heather Thompson 59:19
Heather Thompson for the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy.

Carlton Reid 59:23
However, you’re doing something here because we’re not any longer actually in COP26. We’ve now come across to a different part of Glasgow. You have been doing stuff at COP. So tell me what the ITDP has been doing. across there.

Heather Thompson 59:43
well, I have a number of things. So ITDP supports all parts of sustainable transportation. So we are a big advocate for public transportation, walking, cycling the development of compact city so also focusing on land use, which is fundamental to our sustainability mission, and also efforts that are kind of newer to cities, which makes driving private cars more expensive, less attractive so that people have the incentive to move towards more sustainable forms of transportation. And there’s a big emphasis here at the COP on electrification. So we’ve been trying to pull all of those things together, supporting the move to electrification, because we absolutely need to take fossil fuels out of the transportation sector. But we can’t focus on electrifying private vehicles alone. We have a new study coming out in just a couple of weeks in reaction to all of the emphasis on electrification at COP that shows that we will not meet our 1.5 degree target. If we focus on electrifying private vehicles alone, we need to focus on public transportation, walking and cycling, electrifying all the bus fleets out there in the world, moving to more public transportation, and again, making sure our cities develop in ways that are compact. So I’ve been here advocating for all of those messages, and trying to get decision makers at the city level to adopt those missions. And those those points, as well as advocating at the state and international level that these are fundamental to our climate change mission, but also to more equitable cities around the world. Most people can’t afford our private vehicle, they rely on public transportation, and we need to make sure that public transportation is reliable, convenient, safe, affordable for people.

Carlton Reid 1:01:40
Do you think cities are way ahead of national governments here, because when you only see the C40, all these kind of different meetings, they’re pretty radical and Anne Hidalgo. You see Birmingham in the UK, instituting loads of really positive stuff. And then you look at what happened nationally. And it’s very litrle. And you look internationally here, again, it’s just electric cars. That’s just the norm. That’s not that’s not anything quite radical, whereas cities, why are cities more radical, I guess, then then that national and international governments?

Heather Thompson 1:02:12
I think, absolutely, cities are more radical, and more and more cities are becoming more radical. And I think it’s because it’s, as we say, the transportation sector, it’s where the rubber hits the road, right? It’s where people where leaders actually have to look at their constituents in the eyes and see if they’re actually meeting their needs. And you can’t just make promises that you don’t actually fulfil, you have to you have to meet people’s needs, and people are fed up. Climate change is becoming more and more visible with weather events that that we see in front of us. And you know, we all know that air pollution is tied to climate change, and cities are becoming more and more polluted. Consumption is becoming out of control. So I think people just realise that, that they’ve had enough and they can look to their city decision makers or city leaders or city mayors for change. And that’s why there’s there’s more accountability, and we have more mayors that are actually making a difference in making the change, and hopefully, making the pressure go up to the state provincial level, and then the international level. So I think they’re, they’re beginning to listen, but yeah, there’s so much power at the city level.

Carlton Reid 1:03:29
So you’ve got Mayor Pete, who’s now Secretary of Transportation Pete, is that already making a difference on the ground that you’ve got a former city mayor, who’s now in charge of transportation, can he genuinely move the needle? Or is this so much stuff that’s going to just hold him back?

Heather Thompson 1:03:50
It’s such a good question. He’s been saying all the right things, and certainly advocating for the right things. But, you know, when you’re at the national level, there’s so many more politics than trying to get agreement within our Congress in the United States to actually put more money into the right infrastructure is a challenge. And one of the biggest challenges is that most of the money goes into highways that are not in the city centres. And we know most people live in the city centres, and he was a huge advocate for away. We call in many places Complete Streets. So thinking about public space, walking, cycling, making sure that streets are really built for people and not cars. He’s saying all the right things you’ve got, he’s advocating for the right things. We’re yet to have a decision to really put the money behind all that we have a great infrastructure bill. Hopefully that’ll be met with some other decisions that will that will support that as well. And then we have to put that money on the ground. So it’s still early days. And I really have high hopes that the money will come in the money really We’ll get to the ground in the way that it should.

Bronwen Thornton 1:05:04
I am Bronwen Thornton, I’m Chief Exec of walk 21 and I represent the entire planet because everybody walks.

Carlton Reid 1:05:12
Everybody walks. I agree. It’s a transport mode. But we’re at the transport day and walk ing’s not on, cycling’s not on, buses, on, trains not on, the only thing on are cars.

Bronwen Thornton 1:05:26
It’s a pretty gross generalisation in the technical sense of the term because there are conversations happening.

Carlton Reid 1:05:32
It’s on the fringe, not on the agenda, not on that main policy.

Bronwen Thornton 1:05:37
It’s not in the headlines, it wasn’t a priority for the UK, government. Electrification is a priority for the UK Government. So vehicle centric tech, it’s, it’s the challenge in all these environments, but in, in the, the NGO world that I move in, then it’s very much you have to have a mixture of all those things you have to have, we’re not going to get there on Tech, we can’t wait that long, you know that we have to have it. And so I’m speaking this afternoon, quite opposed to sitting alongside aviation and maritime, you know, like that’s Living Streets had their session this morning, the words aren’t in the headline, but the conversations are there and the activity is happening,

Carlton Reid 1:06:21
How we’re going to move it up. So it gets into the headline into the into the actual gubbins of the policy that actually physically emanates from here.

Bronwen Thornton 1:06:33
Globally, or locally?

Carlton Reid 1:06:36
Globally.

Bronwen Thornton 1:06:39
So we are doing that all the time we have we are actually way putting out pathways, we have a whole set of global indicators with walking lens. So looking at the existing databases, from a walk in perspective, to see what does it say about walking globally, and to map that and to set some agendas around that walking is everywhere. It’s never going to be in the headlines. It’s not that high tech, high money, it doesn’t have any

Carlton Reid 1:07:04
You don’t electrify your feet do you?

Bronwen Thornton 1:07:05
You can’t. Well, they do have jetpacks and you know, all those sorts of things. I think Honda developed some robotic supports and things like that. I think I mean, the thing for walking and UK is a good example for this, where you start to get champions in cities, you start to put it on the political agenda. And you start to communicate the benefits and where we are working in the Global South. We’re focusing a lot not just on the co benefits, everyone likes to talk about those co benefits and their manifold with health and social cohesion and mental health. But there are transport benefits. I mean, it’s it’s a sensible investment to invest in transport. So Washington metro Washington did a massive study of this of their or their stations and their entire system to look at how they could improve their service. And the singular thing they did was improve walking access and cycling to save cycling access to their stations to underpin the ridership to increase their ridership. They actually did walkable catchment, it seems so basic to us, but they hadn’t done it when they built the metro. And not only did it improve their ridership, which improves their fiscal viability, but it also reduced their what they call paratransit costs, which is their private transport for people with a disability. So it made the whole system more accessible. But it’s a transport solution. It wasn’t a social solution or a health solution. And I am all here for the for the health benefits. But when we want transport to change the way the transport system works, we have to talk to them on those transport benefits because they don’t have the KPI for delivering health and who does done the new heatall Health economic assessment tool. And it’s you know, it’s, again, another big step forward. We’ve been involved in some of the consultation around that and actually quantifying those benefits shifting the paradigm about how what we value and how we evaluate in our systems and in our in our fiscal, you know, decision making. Because the cost, you know, we know, the cost of only having motorised travel travel, it’s not just about decarbonisation. If we only decarbonize as, as my colleague Ron Tolley used to say, if you get hit by a Tesla, it still hurts, you know, and it can still kill you. And it still crowds the streets and occupies far too much, you know, public space per person. Disposable costs, air pollution, you know, whatever line, whatever issue you want to carry, there’s good reasons to do something else. But even if you didn’t want to do it, for all those reasons, even if you didn’t want to do it for those reasons, you know, whether it be for children or old people or whatever, people are always going to be walking. We’re not going to stop walking, you know, we’re not going to be levitating. We’re not going to be, you know, doing all of these things, and we’re going to need it. Yeah.

Carlton Reid 1:09:48
So everybody’s pedestrian. You’re right. Yeah, at some point. So even motorists are our pedestrian. They’re

Bronwen Thornton 1:09:55
just pedestrians momentarily in cars. Yes.

Carlton Reid 1:09:58
So if everybody’s A pedestrian at some point. But a pedestrian once they’re out of that car then becomes potentially to run run over by by the Tesla motorist as you said there. So in Biden’s President Biden’s infrastructure acts that was voted through on Friday. There’s this little little chunk in there, hidden away about decolonization about transformers, because the driverless cars the future connected cars of now can’t see pedestrians they can’t see cyclists. They can see them envision maybe if you’re wearing a white noise, jacket, can’t see all of a sudden you’re wearing camouflage can’t see all sorts of scenarios where they can’t actually the current technologies, even the future technologies can’t see pedestrians. So the US government is funding, transponder style spotting of pedestrians, not the same transponders that are in the lampposts and getting junctions and stuff. So what would be your take on? If you want to be safe in the future, when you’re going to have to have one of these transponders otherwise, it’s your fault if you get hit by car.

Bronwen Thornton 1:11:15
See, it’s the tech solution again, and the assumption that that is going to be the dominant No, no, that’s a fair way off that as the dominant mode, look how long it’s taken, you know, for some of the other new technologies to come on board and as appealing as they are. And there’s two schools of thought around this one is that it will make the system safer, because cars will have to slow down, it will make it more dangerous, because you have to wear a transponder or people the segregation factor will start to come into play and the restriction on pedestrian movements that we saw, historically with fencing and which was, you know, done with alacrity, you know, here in the UK, just fenced them off so that vehicles can move more, it is a big challenge. And it’s not just the US the EU’s current call for proposals under the new horizon 2020 road safety agenda has wearable detection, you know, tech, let’s not call it art, or you know, so they’re also keen to pick up on the tech solutions. But when you look at the global, Lucky look globally, it’s very easy for us to sit here in the UK or look at the US and think this is going to impact everybody, but it’s not. There’s millions of people in Asia in Africa, who are walking every single day 70% of people walk in Africa for their entire journey. So while everyone walks in some respect, you know the volume of walking and they’re not going to have a visa and transponders anytime soon in a lot of those environments so we can we can keep getting high tech here. There’s gonna just have to be i My sense is that those type of vehicles and those types of systems will we be restricted to corridors like trains are restricted to corridors or light rail is restricted to a track

Carlton Reid 1:12:56
But then these corridors suddenly take over the whole blummin’ world just as roads did, and and motorways did.

Bronwen Thornton 1:13:01
Yeah, but railways did it. Railways were contained in corridors, roads is a free network, we’ve always had pathways and movement that’s roads is just part of that it’s just currently occupied by cars. But if you’re going to have something that can interact with the whole system, or bicycles, and people walking, and you know, all those sorts of things, then potentially we end up in that corridor situation. And it comes back down to one of the things that were, we were hearing a lot in the different conversations around. And I think it was on the Saturday conversation with the World Health, climate and health meanings and different people are saying, it’s so much comes down to negotiations of space, where do you put bike lanes? Have why’d you make the footpath, who gets the dominant, you know, the priority in the space, and they’re just their choices that we’re making. And it doesn’t automatically follow that what we currently use that space for will be how we use it forever, you know, just as we, you know, cities were built for human movement. So there was more like Medina’s and things like that. Then we got you know, horse and carriage the streets got wider, and then they got longer and it goes, and these things are evolving all the time. So I could be disheartened or I could be hopeful. And you essentially you feel both, don’t you about this sort of agenda, but it’s still choices that we can make as cities and as citizens about how we use that space in our cities.

Carlton Reid 1:14:18
We’re a bit of a an active travel huddle.

Bronwen Thornton 1:14:21
No, we just suddenly …

Carlton Reid 1:14:22
An active travel huddle. So how do you get on with those guys, those those those pesky cyclists over there? Do you like them?

Bronwen Thornton 1:14:31
Well, she’s a lovely, pesky cyclist [pointing to Jill Warren].

Carlton Reid 1:14:34
Okay, not Jill, how about if she was wearing Lycra, and she was doing 40 miles an hour?

Bronwen Thornton 1:14:39
That’s like saying how do we get on with drivers or train riders or any of those sorts of things? I won’t get into that. Ask him there my argument with you about it at all we have with both parts of the ecosystem. They are we are absolutely all part of the solution

Carlton Reid 1:14:52
Snd sort of coming together and becoming more powerful. If you join and you join with buses. Yeah, so we missing actually made that up on the hoop before the coalition of the missing is what I’m going to describe this is so so I think I’ve interviewed you ITP. Here missing from this conference from the agenda cycling, missing walking missing. So if you’re coming together with public transport and with cycling and with with walking for transport, is that something that has potential for change? Not here, we know not here. But in the future, maybe

Bronwen Thornton 1:15:31
yeah, of course, that is that is the ultimate combination that we need, because as much as we love cyclists, and we’re very happy that they’re part of the mix, we actually want to place a working relationship with public transport, when we talk about decarbonisation is public transport trips that we’re walking can make a stronger contribution. And public transport is a journey extender for a walking trip. Whereas a cycling trip is a different starting point you get on a bicycle, you leave your home, but a public transport trip you get on you leave your home on foot, you travel on public transport for a short journey, or for a long journey, and then you walk again at the other end. So that is definitely the combination that has to be the starting point for the the truly sustainable in all the senses of the term, not just carbon emission sense of the term. But in all senses in terms of usage of space, public health, you know, commercial realism, people don’t shop inside their cars, despite the prevalence of drive through coffee shops. Now, when I saw in Canada all those years ago, it’s just like, you’ve got to be joking. But there it’s minus 29 outside, so you can forgive it marginally. So it is the Nexus that is the thing that is and there is a lot of strong dynamics around that. We’re not entirely missing from this event. We’re not the headline story. We’re not the electric cars, we’re not that person, we’re fine about that. But we are in the conversations and outside this particular version of COP, there is so much good work going on, on these agendas, you know, elsewhere. When you when you look at what countries are doing when you look at what Ireland Ireland is our pinup child at the moment, I’m putting in a ruthless plug because wall 21 is in Ireland next year. But you look at the political commitments that Ireland has made 20% budget and split evenly between walking and cycling. That’s a million euros a day they need to spend for walking and cycling. That’s a commitment that’s translating into change on the ground and changing the way that they they govern their systems to deliver that to to one public transport versus motorised travel, you know it. This is the stuff this is the political commitment. This is the translation of what we need. And when anyone I just sat in the session with Living Streets and people there said, Yes, of course, it’s not for everybody. And I must admit I’m really tired of hearing that. Of course, it’s not for everybody. driving cars is not for everybody. But we don’t say that when we talk about driving cars, we say oh yes, we understand people that are walking, you can’t go very far. And of course, you can’t go very far. But you can go most of the journeys we do, can be done by walking or with a public transport, you know, extender, we always find this way of downplaying and dismissing, you know, the general public transport this or cycling that, you know, and this delusion, the car travel is is a freedom thing, this is the thing that I really like I just like, we all need a car, I’m not a car free person, I’m not in the car free zone. Here, I have four children, dogs and holidays and things I’m fine about their place in the system. But the thing that I always feel is car, people in cars deny other people the choice to walk, deny them, the opportunity, deny them the freedom to walk and cycle. And that’s where their choice and their freedom isn’t a true freedom because it’s unsustainable, because it’s taking away that freedom and choice from from other patrons and

Carlton Reid 1:18:48
equity. Yes, yeah, absolutely. Reason why it should be here, walking should be here. And cycling should be here, these modes, you know, the majority modes of transport in a global

Bronwen Thornton 1:19:00
time. So ITDP launched the Global Cycling challenge yesterday, cycling is here, they launched this, they’ve got cities all over the world. They’ve got, you know, all sorts of partners on board making and talking about walking. So even if it’s not making the headlines here in COP, there is a lot happening outside, you know this one moment in time. And these are really critical moments, no less than to just have opportunity to sit and talk to people in real life like we are doing. But they’re not the only moment. And the most important moment right now is to get some of those commitments. You know, there’s all these agendas and copper, and I’m fine for all of that. But But around all of that around that centrality of ministers and things. There’s so much good work going on. And there’s so much change evolving and happening in cities. When we when we look from where we are, what 21 to 21 years old. The difference between now and 20 years ago is is immeasurable. It’s extraordinary. And we saw a graph the other day we’re doing some review of research bibliometric studies Have walking research. And until the year 2000, it was pretty like low flatline. And since the year 2000, it’s like this bit like global warming, it’s a bit of a worry what we’re mapping there,

Carlton Reid 1:20:10
A hockey stick.

Bronwen Thornton 1:20:12
But it’s doing this is general and we are about we part of a programme that’s going to launch for Research Education Foundation is launching a research programme into walking only, not walking and cycling, not active mobility, not collective nouns which obfuscate meaning walking as a mode of transport, because it’s the it’s not the underdog, but is the under under studied. And so it’s really exciting. They’re launching a whole research funded research programme, to grow the agenda. And what we always think is so critical. It’s not just that there’s lots of knowledge out there, it’s translating it into action, which we all know, is the big challenge. And so through things that we work, I chair, the African network for walking and cycling. And we have a working group there on the nexus between research and action. And how do we translate that and how do we do that? So I, I’ve come to cop here. I live in the UK, it was a lovely train ride. But I don’t invest everything in this moment. It’s an important moment, but it’s not the only one. And there’s so much good stuff happening elsewhere, and growing agendas and things like that, that I’m uncomfortable with that.

Jill Warren 1:21:19
Hi, I’m Jill Warren. I’m the CEO of the European Cyclists’ Federation. We are the umbrella federation for cyclist organisations from all over Europe, we have about 70 members in over 42 countries

Carlton Reid 1:21:32
And Jill where’d you come from? And that’s geographical and your career.

Jill Warren 1:21:38
Yes. So I’m American originally, but I have lived for over 30 years in Europe. I’ve spent time in Germany, Belgium in the UK, currently based in Brussels with ECF. And before joining ECF, at the beginning of 2020, I had spent 20 years in international law firms in Europe.

Carlton Reid 1:21:56
Why did you get into this job?

Jill Warren 1:21:59
Well, it’s it isn’t a million miles away, because law firms lobby for their clients. And there, they absolutely represent their interests in every way you can think of and also in a lobbying sense. And so I was quite familiar with that having worked in Brussels for major international law firms and seeing how they advocated for their clients interests. So I was always a very passionate cyclist. I mean, I never went on holiday unless I can take my bike with me. And being able to combine that, you know, into a career I really love has been an absolute dream.

Carlton Reid 1:22:32
Jill, you’re a media superstar already, because I just saw you on Sky News. Fantastic. What were you saying to Sky News?

Jill Warren 1:22:39
Well, I was talking about how we would very much like to see cycling have a prominent role in these discussions as the solution with potential that it is yeah, instead of all the focus being on the electrification of vehicles.

Carlton Reid 1:22:53
So I’m pleasantly pleased that they’ve interviewed you surprised that they’ve interviewed you because they found you and got you on. So what was their line of questioning? Was it totally see, I can see what you’re saying, but was it totally serious? You were taken seriously?

Jill Warren 1:23:11
I think the catalyst was this joint letter that we initiated, in in the run up to the COP, when we saw that, you know, all of the papers coming out seem to be focusing on the electrification of vehicles, we thought that can’t be we really need to call that out and talk about the need for the leaders here to recognise cycling and to fund it and have policies that will enable more cycling, because it’s a solution that’s available. Now. It’s a solution that, you know, it also has an electrification element e bikes have absolutely changed the scope out there in terms of opening up cycling to people of all ages and abilities. And, you know, it really is a solution that can replace car trips, given that most car trips in Europe are less than five kilometres. So the potential is there. The technology is there. We just need the political will the courage and the funding.

Carlton Reid 1:24:02
Absolutely. Now, it’s great that Sky News have interviewed you. However, it’s not on the agenda. So as many wonderful interviews that I’m sure you will really be doing. TV just just now. All fantastic. All we need all of this. But if we don’t physically get on that all important agenda. It’s like it’s kind of hot air, Jill.

Jill Warren 1:24:26
Yeah. Well, I, I appreciate your point there. But I do think it’s been great to speak to some ministers here to really get our letter in front of them to raise the awareness further, I do think that a lot of them are more progressive than maybe the rest of their governments are. We know that cities are more progressive than their national governments are that their citizens are even more progressive than the than the city leadership is. So we really feel like the people are on our side on this and we just need to keep fighting our fight to get it higher up the agendas and on the agendas stuff. That’s more action is taken, and it’s it’s funded, we have the policies, the funding, all the political will and everything that we need to really turn more of our cities and towns into cycling cities and towns.

Carlton Reid 1:25:12
So Henk was saying before about somebody was complaining about incrementalism. But you could look at this maybe getting onto the next COP agenda, incrementalism in that you’re not here, you’re not on this agenda. But you’ve kicked up such a fuss and garnered so much support, that the next COPs will be totally blown out of the water if they haven’t got walking, cycling, bus, train, because these are these are modes that is like, how could they have missed them?

Jill Warren 1:25:45
They are used by millions of people every day and the potential for millions more and it is such the solution, we need to a lot of the emission of you know, the rise in emissions coming from transport over years. I mean, that’s one area that’s been really tough to crack, it can be cracked. I mean, we saw in the pandemic, how quickly you can make, you know, cycling, enabling infrastructure. You know, overnight, you can make a street car free, you can turn it into temporary cycle lanes or low traffic neighbourhoods or slow streets. And you know, that’s a good start. Now let’s let’s do that, then let’s make this permanent. Let’s, you know, people don’t really want to go back to the way it was before when you’ve done something like that. So we just need more action.

Jill Warren 1:25:45
They are used by millions of people every day and the potential for millions more and it is such the solution, we need to a lot of the emission of you know, the rise in emissions coming from transport over years. I mean, that’s one area that’s been really tough to crack, it can be cracked. I mean, we saw in the pandemic, how quickly you can make, you know, cycling, enabling infrastructure. You know, overnight, you can make a street car free, you can turn it into temporary cycle lanes or low traffic neighbourhoods or slow streets. And you know, that’s a good start. Now let’s let’s do that, then let’s make this permanent. Let’s, you know, people don’t really want to go back to the way it was before when you’ve done something like that. So we just need more action.

Carlton Reid 1:26:28
So Greta, has got blah, blah, blah. And that’s cut through that. Absolutely cut through those three words. So the advocates, outside bicycle every morning, had car car car,

Jill Warren 1:26:40
I had my picture taken with them, it was fantastic.

Carlton Reid 1:26:43
As soon as I saw that, I got to get a photograph of that. That is totally brilliant, you know, going for the zeitgeist. But the car car car element comes in in that an awful lot of the delegates here, some are coming on buses. But then you see on social media, the photographs of fleets and fleets of non electric cars, even though they’re like electric SUVs, shuttling them. And treating politicians are probably in part. So is it just a mindset, it’s just we live on an an automobile dominated planet. And so there’s no hope of getting cycling, walking. Because not even the delegates are using these modes. It’s just everybody. The people who are here during the negotiating are actually car based people.

Jill Warren 1:27:28
Yeah, well, I think that’s true to a large extent. But I do think we have some leading by example. things out there. I mean, look at the Prime Minister of the Netherlands who regularly is seen on a bicycle, he’s not the only one, you’ve got Deputy Prime Minister’s in Belgium doing the same thing. I do think more of our leaders are in favour of this kind of active, sustainable transport. And, you know, certainly Boris Johnson, I mean, he needs to put his money where his mouth is, but but but you know, he is one that’s, you know, famous for the Boris bike. I mean, you have to give them that. And so, I think being a politician at that level, you’re in a bubble anyway, which you’re going to travel in convoys, and all of that kind of thing. So So leaving that aside, I do think you’ve hit a point that the people making the decisions, you know, how are they travelling? And what’s important to them? And, you know, how can we break through that maybe is,

Carlton Reid 1:28:24
that’s why it’s good to see you on Sky News, because maybe in previous years, it would have been well, yes. Like, who cares about cycling, that’s, that’s even the kids or people or people who are not serious. But now you’re being interviewed. I know you’re a serious person. But you’re being interviewed as a serious person, is that a change? You notice that changing?

Jill Warren 1:28:48
I’m sure that there is a change there. I think that we are being taken more seriously, we’re not just these fringe hippie, you know, cycling advocates, activists or something. I think that our voice is being heard maybe more than it was before. And we practice evidence based advocacy, we can show you exactly what that potential is and what you get. If you make your cities more cycling friendly. You don’t just get the emission benefits, you get so much else you get the livability, you get the health benefits, which are absolutely enormous. You know, these, these add up to over 52 billion euros in economic benefits a year in Europe. And, you know, we can show you well, you know, everything that that brings, so we are serious people and we mean it

Carlton Reid 1:29:33
and you’re also partnering with with serious people. So you’ve got like the joint letter that you had, you’ve had new UITP yes signing which, again is very, very good thing to see and progressive because it’s it’s a coalition. Yes. And it boasts a coalition of the missing. Yeah, because you know, trains aren’t here. buses aren’t here, walking site here site and so you’re all kind of in the same boat. That and that you’re you’re missing from from COP. But do you see these partnerships being very positive for the future?

Jill Warren 1:30:09
Absolutely. And I think they’re powerful. We are natural allies, what we want. So for example, when we got together a coalition to lobby for the EU sustainable and smart mobility strategy, what we said was, we want active mobility and public transport to be prioritised, as, you know, the backbone and the modes that we need in our cities. You know, with everything else, back in line behind those modes.

Carlton Reid 1:30:38
And what about because we’re talking about buses there? And you ideally, what about walking? That’s a mode that people not walkers on transport.

Jill Warren 1:30:48
Yeah. It’s something that people tend to forget in that sense. But I would absolutely say that, you know, walking and cycling are at the top of that hierarchy, then you’ve got public transport, then you’ve got everything else.

Carlton Reid 1:31:02
You’ve said that, again, it’s there is a hierarchy, even the car beside the UK, there is a hierarchy, where walking and cycling are actually at the top. So if you’ve got a template of a transport day, surely the UN and the UK Government will go on, let’s look at the hierarchy. Right cycling the walk and put them at the top. Yeah, we’ll have cars right. But it’s not it’s the other way around the hierarchy. The provision has been flipped.

Jill Warren 1:31:30
Yeah. Well, I think it’s less than a hierarchy being flipped and more of what is the most comfortable solution for our leaders. The most comfortable thing is something that looks like the status quo, and electrifying conventionally fueled vehicles is basically let’s change the status quo a little bit. That’s as you know, little disruption is possible. And you know, the the car makers who are the most powerful lobbies I can think of, you know, are happy, everybody’s happy and jumped on. But you know, we’re here to say no, you know, you really need to pay more attention to the things that can make a much bigger difference.

Carlton Reid 1:32:06
Thanks for listening to Episode 286 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. And thanks also to everybody who allowed me to grab them in Glasgow. Some of these interviews made it into my news stories from COP26, published on forbes.com. Search for Carlton Reid if you want to read them, and also search on YouTube for a video I made on my trips to COP26. I travelled there by bicycle first and then arrived for transport day on a sleeper train from London. I’ve embedded that video on the website for this podcast, too. And that’s at www.the-spokesmen.com I hope you think the extra long show was worth it. But I also don’t plan to make a habit of such lengthy episodes in the future. There’s another show due at the end of the month. Meanwhile, get out there and ride!

4th October 2021

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 284: Brum to kick out cars

SPONSOR: Jenson USA

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: Cllr Waseem Zaffar

TOPICS: 45-minute interview with Birmingham’s city council’s transport lead Waseem Zaffar on the day the council launched its radical and potentially transformative transport plan. The UK’s motorway city is to prioritise people over cars, including adding more protected cycleways. If Britain’s Detroit can do it, any city can do it! This interview was used for a news story which appeared in The Guardian.

TRANSCRIPT:

Carlton Reid 0:14
Welcome to episode 284 of the Spokesmen cycling Podcast. This show was engineered on Monday 4th October 2021.

David Bernstein 0:25
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Jenson USA. Jenson USA where you will find a great selection of products at unbeatable prices with unparalleled customer service. Check them out at Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. Hey everybody, it’s David from the Fredcast. And of course, I’m one of the hosts and producers of the Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast since 2006. For shownotes links and other information check out our website at www.the-spokesmen.com. And now here’s my fellow host and producer Carlton Reid and the Spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 1:11
Birmingham City Council has just launched its radical and potentially transformative transport plan. The UK is motorway city is to prioritise people over cars, including adding more protected cycleways. I’m Carlton Reid and in this 50-minute episode we hear from Birmingham city council’s transport lead Waseem Zaffar and the very personal reasons why he converted to pedalling from being a petrolhead.

If Britain’s Detroit can prioritise people over car, any city can do it. This interview formed the basis for a news story which I wrote for today’s Guardian and here’s Waseem.

Waseem, thank youever so much for for talking to me and thanks oOf course for for sending through the plan which is no longer a draft plan. It’s a real thing coming up

Cllr Waseem Zaffar 2:13
Absolutely long time coming. But we would have loved to have adopted this a lot sooner but the pandemic created some challenges particularly around resources and our priorities as a as a council is slightly shifted but in between we did have the emergency Birmingham transport plan which followed the same four key principles of the the development transport plan.

Carlton Reid 2:35
Now I’m going to compliment you here in that I could have written this. Tthis is the plan I would have written. I mean, I might have been a bit more radical here and there but not a great deal. So that says to me it’s quite radical.

Cllr Waseem Zaffar 2:48
It is radical because Birmingham needs a radical shift in how people move across our city. We’ve we’ve got major challenges, we’ve got major environmental challenges, you’re know, our challenges around air quality are very well publicised, we’ve got major challenges like climate change, where the biggest gas emissions contributor in our city and across our country is transport more. More importantly, even that those are really important or more important than that Carlton, we have major health inequalities. So I see this less of a a transport project, but more as a project making our communities and our neighbourhoods a lot healthier through active travel, getting people at their cars and those short journeys and getting people walking, getting people cycling. You know, we’ve got the scooter trial as well. And this is all a shift from single occupancy private cars towards more sustainable transport then buses. You know, the the tram is really important to us. But it’s he hasn’t got the coverage anywhere near the coverage that we need. And local trains are really important. We’re expanding on them, but they’ve got nowhere near the coverage that we need. So the busses are absolutely vital I sit here, we have to give them the level of priority that that they need. So this this, this plan is about giving busses a greater level of priority in our city. And I’m absolutely convinced once we start to get this delivered some aspects we’ve been trialling through the emergency Birmingham transport plan. But once you start to get this delivered that the key principle driven across communities and start to recreate places in our neighbourhoods, which are more friendly to people over cars, we will see a real shift in how people’s patterns — there will be a cultural shift to more walking and cycling, which will make people live fitter and healthier and longer in our city.

Carlton Reid 4:37
Now you have the draft plan went out to public consultation you had 619 responses from individuals, 44 from organisations so just go into that 619 is that really representative because that’s 619 people in a city of lots of people?

Cllr Waseem Zaffar 4:57
So, Carlton, it is always a challenge in how people respond to our consultations. The council carves out consultations on a variety of things, often statutory consultations, and we don’t get anywhere near the response that we need. Obviously, some of the biggest consultations we’ve carried out have been linked to transport and environment, the Clean Air Zone was a 10,000+ response consultation, we had over 6,500 responses on our bus survey that we did a consultation that we did. So, you know, we were out there, we were talking about the Birmingham transport plan, we, we received a lot of local, regional, national and international coverage on this too. So we didn’t in a way, hide this consultation behind loads of pages on our website, this was very much out there. And and I’d like to think I’ve been very, very much out there myself, not hiding behind council officers, or the stakeholders talking about these plans, because these are, these are plans. I mean, you know, obviously the a lot of people have been part of this, but these are politicians, we’re making the decisions and, and I always believe firmly that popular unpopular politician need to front of these decisions.

Carlton Reid 6:09
Now that in the report to cabinet, you say the response to those 619 responses and the 44, from organisations, were largely positive, including on the things that potentially you might think if you were incredibly pro car wouldn’t be so popular. So the cycling infrastructure, the walking infrastructure, and buses, all of these were actually quite popular. So what does that say about the kind of the trope out there that you can’t do these kind of things, because they’re not going to be popular?

So, Carlton, in the three and a half years I’ve been in this job tThe thing I’ve realised is that the challenge and the heartache is generally with the disruption that projects cause. Once you start, people, communities start to see the benefits of a project. They … And the long term benefits are probably they are very, very supportive. So I think it’s sort of looking beyond the actual delivery and implementation of a project and looking at the benefits that really work. I don’t know there’s people out there who you know … Our blue cycling lanes are probably the most one of the most popular things that council’s done in a long time we’ve got going on, I was talking to at the Ruth Cadbury MP at Labour Conference. She’s originally from Birmingham, she visits her mum in Birmingham, and she’s the chair of the all party parliamentary group, we’re walking outside, and she was travelling on those blue cycle lanes recently, and she was extremely positive about them. So I think people in our community as citizens of Birmingham, want these changes. It’s just whilst there’s all this work taking place in our city at the moment, and obviously the games the Commonwealth Games have been a catalyst for investment and a catalyst for change. This quarter, there’s quite a lot happening, which is creating some disruption, but I can assure them that you know, as we end this year, those projects will start to come to an end and then people will start to see the benefits on me so I think people are starting to understand because we’re out there talking to as many people as possible about the long term benefits of projects I think they are starting to get more support or what we’re doing and obviously there’s there’s some projects like the low traffic neighbourhoods in and we’ve seen the the issues in Kings Heath which some which are very very popular in some quarters and not so popular amongst others, but it’s about getting the balance right and ensuring that we do everything possible to bring everybody on this journey with us. And you might have noticed we’ve launched the consultation formal consultation for the the temporary measures in Kings Heath and also move forward to the expansion of the the the low traffic neighbourhoods over other areas and Kings Heath and Mosley too so where we one thing that certainly happens, around transport gets communities talking, it gets people you always got an opinion about a change in the way a road or a piece of highway currently exists or is moving into to a new way of doing things. So people always have an opinion.

Hmm very loud opinion sometimes now how much different is this plan compared to the 2020 draft one, in wording, how much has been changed?

To be honest with you because we’ve got we’ve got considerable support not just from people but also from key stakeholders it’s it’s the key principles are literally the same. The the project is this plan is very similar to the draft plan. The obviously COVID creating massive challenges but the one opportunity did create is we could we tested out some of these principles. We tested our low traffic neighbourhoods, we tested out pop-up cycle lanes. We tested out the city centre segment and you know that That gave us the ability, I’m not saying first time around all of those things absolute perfect, but when we start to embed them in permanently, we will get very, very close to the ideal, the ideal project with respect to that. So there has been that that mass opportunity but because and we’ve also obviously rolled out the Clean Air zone since then as well, which has been really successful in its first few months and I know it’s gonna get it’s going to success levels are going to increase and increase and increase until we don’t need a clean air zone. So it’s very, very, very similar to where we were.

Okay. So the current fuel shortages on the news all the time at the moment that it shows how reliant we — I’m saying we, people in general as it’s it appears from the media – are on on petrol and on dotting around in private cars, and how scared the government clearly are upsetting motorists. So the transport plan was clearly written long before the current woes but there’s all that TV and media coverage does that, does that keep you awake at night thinking I’m going to get so much stick here, when we start delivering on the ground.

This is one of the original motor cities — the car will always have a role within Birmingham. But it’s it’s the issue is the over reliance of coal in our city, particularly the overloads of single occupancy journeys in our car in using car and the fact that we’ve got 300,000 journeys every day. These are pre COVID figures obviously 300,000 journeys every day by car, which are less than one mile. That’s that’s not how I want Birmingham my city. Progress I want, I want people to be able to look going back to the health inequality I referred to earlier, I want people to be able to walk and cycle those journeys, enjoying their communities, enjoy their neighbourhoods enjoy the space around them. And for that, you need that that cultural shift. One of the things we’ve realised, particularly in the pandemic, people want clean air. And if we want to get cleaner air, we have to shift the way that we move across the city, there is no two ways of it. So whilst there, there are projects on the clean air zone that have made me very unpopular in the north of the city where I live in and represent, the A34 highways project made me unpopular. But I often say I didn’t, I didn’t come into politics to win popularity contests I came into politics to change lives for the better. And I’m convinced projects such as the Clean Air zone, which will save lives. It will ensure that kids who are currently living six months less in our city because of the levels of air pollution will grow up fitter and healthier. I’m convinced that Perry Bar in the north of Birmingham will be one of the most connected neighbourhoods around with segregated cycling, a new train station, a new bus interchange, a bus rapid transit route and bus priority like no other place in Birmingham, these are the changes we’re making to people’s lives that is just a start because this transport plan is about a vision for the foreseeable future. And looking at how we can create similar changes right across the city. So whilst at times I you know the the challenge and the criticism, and the trolling does have an impact on me, I’d like to say if he didn’t have he didn’t have an impact on me. But I look at the long term benefits. And this is about no matter what hugely privileged position to be able to change my city for the better. And this is my city, this is where I was born. This is where I’ve grown up, I’m the proudest Brummie there is and this is where my family will and my kids will grow up. And I you know, I want to look back at this exciting period of my career and say I was I was able to play a very small role in making Birmingham, that amazing place that it will be coming forward.

You’re not taking an all-modes or equal approach here. You know, you’re not boosting all modes, you know, adding cycleways but leaving motoring intact, you’re actively talking about reducing motoring. So that’s not just bold, isn’t that electoral suicide for a politician?

Cllr Waseem Zaffar 14:38
Carlton, if we’re going to reverse the health inequalities, if we’re going to tackle air quality, the 1000 people dying prematurely every year in Birmingham, because of air pollution if we’re going to become carbon neutral by 2030, there has to be some radical, bold and brave steps. And this Birmingham transport plan is one of them. I’m convinced I speak to people who drive, their challenges to public transport system isn’t good enough. People who use public transport tell me that isn’t reliable enough. So if we can increase the reliability of the public transport system, if we can get more zero emission buses, which we’re working on, we’ve got 20 hydrogen buses, we’ve got a bid for 200 through the Zebra route. You know, we got the greenest buses in Birmingham, we get more reliability in the bus services, people will decide to give up on their cars, people will decide to leave their cars at home and travel by by public transport. So I’m convinced that this is this is the right time for Birmingham to be making these bold moves so close to the games, the HS2 round the corner, we need to provide these integrated public transport solutions rather than making decisions, as we have for decades, which prioritise cars over everything else. And, you know, we’ve ended up with the gridlock city, we’ve ended up with the challenges that are referred to and with 150,000 more residents expected over the next few years here in our city iIf we don’t have this cultural shift away from private car and reduce the reliance of private car, we’re going to end up you’re if it’s gridlocked, already, God forbid what our city will look like, moving forward. So this change is needed, it will happen. And I’m convinced the people of this city will not will will not oppose these plans, electorally, or in any other way.

Carlton Reid 16:42
So you said “brave” and you said “bold” and then in the plan itself, there’s “radical,” there’s “transformative.” There’s “seismic.” These are scary words, for most people, because people don’t like change, even if it’s maybe potentially could improve their lives. It’s just they like to see things that they’ve always done. So why have you used such an effect triggering words in your in your document? Could you have not sugarcoated it a bit more, bring in the change slowly, perhaps even by stealth? So people didn’t notice the changes?

Carlton, when you put yourself forward for public office, when you put yourself forward to represent the people of a city like I have, you put your head above the parapet and you do that understanding the consequences. I’m I’m absolutely confident. I’ve got some of the best officers in local government working with me. I talk to stakeholders all the time, I talked to communities all the time, I listened to people who are critical of these plans and I listen to people who are supporting these plans. So I’m very routed back to where how this will impact on people. I absolutely believe that there’s two things a politician has to do. One you have to be open transparent, honest with people so sugarcoating is not the way I do things. I have to you have to front the decisions you’re making, you can’t hide behind council officers, you can’t hide behind press officers, you need to be a decision that’s got your name on it, you need to be able to sell it and convince people and if you can’t come to sell it and convince the people you should not be making that decision. And that I believe that you know those are very, very important values of how I operate as a politician. And and you know, I’m I also absolutely live what I what I say you know, I absolutely believe in in these things. I believe that the right things for for for, for me, my family who live in in the city, for my constituents and for the wider city. And I think you know, it’s like the clean air zone on leading up to the clean air zone, leading up to the clean air zone, my inbox was full of people challenging and criticising the project and they have every right to do that because I absolutely believe in freedom of speech and I believe in democracy which is about challenging and holding people to account, I believe in that. But with the level of the complaints diminished literally the moment we launched because a lot of people were obviously comparing the clean air zone onto the congestions on London’s thought they’re all going to be impacted by rather than just the polluting cars being impacted by by that project. And I’m I’m convinced that the the initiatives within this will bring about long term benefits to our communities and they will understand that

Were you a convert all these ideas or were you in your youth, were you a bit of a petrol head or have you always been this way minded?

So, Carlton, you couldn’t get me out my car four years ago I was I would, I would take those journeys less than one mile by car. I hadn’t been on a on a bus since my university days. And I never cycled never, ever cycled until the summer of 2018. So when I started to look at the consequences that people that the decisions I was making, that the impact that that was having on me and my health, I’m a Type2 diabetic. And my health was really diminishing a few years ago. And then I started to know … My father was a taxi driver in Birmingham. In 2009, February, he suddenly died at the age of 54. And every day, I think about the consequences of a him and his job being behind a wheel of a car, earning a living from me and my mum and my siblings to put bread on the table. How that led ultimately led to his untimely demise. Now he was his health, he was a Type2 diabetic, we had the under control, his health conditions pretty good. Just went overnight. So I absolutely think about this and I know one of the biggest groups that’s challenged me in the city has been taxi drivers. Before I became a councillor, I was a trade union rep for taxi drivers in Birmingham. And I often talk to them about the impact that sitting behind a wheel for the long hours they do in polluting areas has on their health, this is about reversing their health inequalities and making them live longer and stronger and healthier lives. So I’m absolutely a convert. I you know, there’s still a lot more I could do I could walk a lot more ironically, I was at Labour Conference. And I did a remarkable amount of steps during that during the conference which I found fascinating. I could do a lot more steps around you know, walk, I could do a lot more cycling. But I have absolutely, you know these changes will will will make people in our city healthier. No one needs to tell me about the health inequalities in our city because I represent the ward with the lowest male life expectancy. I represent the ward which had the least amount of resilience amongst its people and led to it being very badly hit during the COVID pandemic. We have to change people’s lives and this is one way of doing it.

Hmm. So you mentioned the Labour Conference there but the policies you’re bringing in perhaps bizarrely are actually an awful lot of them you can find in the Tory manifesto now so you know Labour and and and Tories maybe agree on these things it doesn’t doesn’t always happen in you know Tory councils and it has been the Labour councils that have been taking in effect Tory policies or the way that the Tories are now allowing councils to do these policies if they so choose so there’s there’s no conflict there’s no right or left in this any more, is there?

So I always say in politics we agree on a lot more than we disagree on. The Conservatives have taken different positions so the Birmingham Conservatives are very much opposed to our plans; they they are convinced that car needs to remain king in our city. They that’s their position they they’ve been opposed to the Clean Air zone to be repurposed to the emergency transport plan they opposed to the burden of transport plan and the principles within that they’ve taken a certain position and i’m i’m not a fan of Boris Johnson no no no prizes for guessing that right but one thing I I’ve got where I do agree with Boris is his views in some aspects on our active travel I know as a mayor of London he did a you know a lot of good stuff around that and I genuinely think your man Andrew Gilligan absolutely understand the importance of the shift from car to more sustainable mode of transport. So I think the the Conservatives nationally understand the importance of this better than the Birmingham Conservatives who I think

So can you not just hit them over the head with “this is what your leader says guys, why you opposing this, this is what your leader says, listen to your leader.”

I often do in the council chamber, stopped asking me questions. But then a totally different place and Andy Street, the mayor of the West Midlands and he’s stuck between the two. He’s done some good stuff around active travel too. But I know he he his position on the clean air zone shifted over time is is now more opposed to them supportive of it. But I think the local Conservatives are more concerned about what’s going to happen in the May 22 elections in Birmingham, rather than making sure our communities are living longer and fitter and healthier lives. So they’re more their price right now is the politics rather than the people of the city, which is a shame, because I’d rather all the parties came together to work on this very, very important agenda.

And I’m not saying you’re gonna get voted out here, because what you’ve said there before was these can be electorally popular, but theoretically, could all of this be reversed if the council flipped in 2022?

So we introduced Birmingham’s clean air zone on because we there was a ministry of direction and our modelling showed the only way to address the ministry direction was through the introduction of a CAZ D. The ministers signed that off the ministers and civil servants absolutely said this is the right way to do it. Local Conservatives right now are promising the people of Birmingham they’re going to reverse that. I don’t know how they’re going to do it. I don’t know what modelling they’ve done, what alternatives they’ve have got, [wards?]. So they can promise they’re in opposition, they could promise anything and everything. But ultimately, the people of Birmingham will see beyond those false promises. The people of Birmingham will vote for a council and a political party that’s delivered for them and vote for a political party that has the right vision at this particular time for Birmingham because these things are needed based on urgency is absolutely the right way to work. And I’m convinced we will once again when comprehensive we’ve got a two thirds majority in the council chamber and I I can’t see that changing

so before it was him, you mentioned low traffic neighbourhoods and the ones you’ve brought in with the segmentation plan where each you know, part of the city is going to be different you can’t use it as a as a through route every segment would it be fair to call the central Birmingham one big LTN?

Um, it so the central Birmingham we’re prioritising cycling walking on public transport. And in essence, that is, that is the the, the key thing of a low traffic neighbourhoods. So there’s various versions of low traffic neighbourhoods, the version in Kings Health, two very different to the version and Lozells that I’m implementing where low traffic neighbourhoods are one, one way circulars that reduce the traffic flow in residential areas. And you can you can’t technically say that the city centre segment is about, it’s certainly about reducing car through traffic through travel. So he is reducing, he is in essence, reducing car journeys through through the system. So you could say it’s a low traffic neighbourhood. Yeah, you could, you could say it’s one big, low traffic neighbourhood.

Local press supportive, critical, neutral?

Em, depends depends on what gets the clicks these days. But I think there’s there’s been a lot of support for for some of these initiatives. And for some that has been challenged, you know, the, the you I still, when we launched the Clean Air zone. We did, we did a lot of media. How many interviews I did that particular day. It’s a record that will never ever be beaten. And I still remember one particular thing I did and that was the ITV central programme that did from the Fiveways Island at a hotel on the Fiveways Island, we spent the whole half an hour talking about the importance of cleaner air, improving air quality in the wider environmental challenges and I was I just walked away thinking thank you that was brilliant that is exactly that, how we need local media to support not just our efforts but to to really push forward the the environmental challenges and the health challenges that we’ve got in our city. I’ve also sat for a number of hour long audience phone callings with with BBC Radio locally. And that’s been very, very difficult. But I’ve sat down and listened and I’ve gone back and I’ve listened and I’ve responded as best as I can. So we’re out there we’re very open and you know where we don’t just have to hide behind the decisions and the policies that I bring forward. But I think people are starting to understand the importance of them. Hmm.

Now in the, in the in the plan, I can only find one I might have might not have got this there might be somewhere else but I can only find one of autonomous vehicles, many other places. And even if you listen to Grant Shapps at times, you know, autonomous vehicles and, and electric cars, but certainly autonomous vehicles, you know, that’s the future. That’s that’s what’s going to rescue us, that’s going to be the thing that gets everybody out of their cars, because they’ll just be these autonomous cars darting around. But you see, you have mentioned it and you’re you say, you know, the technology is being developed in part in the Birmingham region. But then you haven’t made it on autonomous vehicles there. So would it be right to think that you’re quite ambivalent towards how quickly these can actually be brought in? And certainly not within, you know, the nine year framework you’ve got to work to

Cllr Waseem Zaffar 30:45
That technology is, is developing really, really quickly. And I’m really excited about all sorts of developments and autonomous vehicles is certainly one of those. I think we are we’re absolutely on board, we’re absolutely committed, working very closely with the combined authority and transport systems with a combined authority, and other partners, the local university of looking at how we can benefit from being a 5G pilot city as well, looking at how better communication can can also help some of the technological advances that will be made. So absolutely, we’re not trying to water the future for autonomous vehicles, we’re actually excited by it. And maybe if we had asked you to write this transport plan for us, you would have made it far greater than we have.

Carlton Reid 31:37
No, no, I’m pretty much dead against it. I don’t think we’re going to exist for all sorts of different reasons. Anyway, maybe trucks on motorways, but that’s it. So so one of the things that you’ve you’re saying there is the removal of footway parking, which absolutely is another one of those, you know, touching the third rail, sort of things. But doesn’t that require national legislation, and I know that, you know, the 1834 Highway Act gives people the powers but you still need central government to back you up here.

Cllr Waseem Zaffar 32:09
Absolutely, we need central government to back us up in two ways, give us extra powers, and, and also give us the resources to to implement some of these things. You know, parking on on pavements is is something which blight a lot of communities. And I sometimes get really frustrated, particularly with those people who have accessibility issues, or moms have got problems with their babies, and I’m causing the way he just frustrates me, angers me. And I’ve always said, the amount of space that we waste with parked vehicles is also a major challenge. So as we move forward, we want those extra powers. But I also think this plan will help reset the relationship between the citizens of Birmingham and car. And I hope people will become less reliant on cars. And you got some households with no cars in the city, you got some household with four or five cars in the city. And that is the sort of place we really absolutely need to reset that. So hopefully, people won’t need that amount of cars in a household and we could start to get away from God. I remember reducing a coin is I sold my car back in I think 2018. And I sometimes have to drive and borrow my wife’s car, other times I walk cycle, get the bus or even get an E scooter. So it’s about how we can manage and design our lives in a different way. Where is the whole focus in cars? But yes, the pavement, we do need those extra powers from government to be able to do a lot more. And I think it’s

Carlton Reid 33:49
A case of just sorry, it’s just him. Isn’t it a case of just getting the police on board because the powers are there. You can get you can you can book motorists for obstruction of the footway, if the police are involved it when it’s you know, civil enforcement, that doesn’t work. But it’s when the police or the police generally around the country have problems from London where the rules are very different. They can enforce this should they choose to do so. So if it’s, you know, local politicians, say to Westminster police right from now on you, you give somebody a ticket if they’re parked on the pavement, so what more powers Do you need, the powers are there they’re just not currently use by the police.

Cllr Waseem Zaffar 34:29
Carlton, I’m not sure if my Sergeant who 10 years ago had twice the number of officers he’s got now. I’m not sure I could tell him to go and book those cars parked in the pavement or find those people who are creating major.

Carlton Reid 34:46
It had a lot of money we’re seeing if you started booking people for parking, the payment. It’s so endemic, you’d be in billions in credit very soon,

Cllr Waseem Zaffar 34:54
But they just made the lot the cuts that we’ve had to the Wes Midlands Police and police forces up and down this country has, has really hindered their ability to do some of the very important basic things that they need to be doing. I’m somebody who’s, I’ve made it very clear, I will never criticise police officers, because the politicians have made decisions have really hindered their ability to carry out this carry out the service that they want to do, and they can do so. You know, I meet regularly with senior police officers, I’m meeting the Police and Crime Commissioner next week. And we’re talking about some of these issues that you brought up, but there’s a real lack of resources. You know, I’ve got a serious issue right now around the enforcement against poverty scooters, you know, which which is, which is a challenge in our city. But again, where do where do I get the resources to the police to be able to do that. So I think that the government really need to look at how they’re resourcing the police in the wider public sector to do the things that desperately need in our community. The answer is called dancer is a clear style of government investing into our communities and investing into neighbourhood policing. The way that the last Labour government did, that was the level of investment we need in our in our policing.

Carlton Reid 36:18
Hmm. So that your plan says the growth in the number of vehicles on the road needs to be contained. That’s pretty explosive. But isn’t it every English persons right to drive where they want when they want? You’re taking away with you’re taking away people’s freedom.?

Cllr Waseem Zaffar 36:40
So I’m not stopping people from driving. The clean air zones hasn’t stopped doing we’re driving into the city centre, the the city centre segments will still you could still get to everybody on the city centre bar the one or two extra expansions on the pedestrianisation that we’re making the the low traffic neighbourhood, we bought it, you can still get to every single house or shop within the city with the exception of small pedestrianisation we’ve done so we’re not stopping anybody. But what we’re saying is we need to rebalance the use of car. And one way of doing that is looking at other alternatives. So right now you can you can, you can walk, you can use a variety of different modes of public transport, you can use e-scooters, you can hire a West Midlands bike share about a cycle on the West Midlands Bike Share project. So there’s a whole range of alternatives we’ve got to increase the obviously the cycling issues due to infrastructure, particularly segregated cycling to make it safer for people to do so we’ve got to improve the reliability. So the alternatives are there, and the alternatives grow and grow. So we’re not stopping anybody from driving. But we’re just encouraging them to look at modal shift in particular modal shift to more sustainable modes of transport.

Carlton Reid 38:08
So if the if this plan doesn’t get voted through so that’s that’s option three, what’s going to happen to Birmingham?

Cllr Waseem Zaffar 38:17
I’m very confident that this plan will be voted through by the Cabinet because this is not me on my own who’s worked on this project I’ve got the very strong support of the leader of of the Council and all my cabinet colleagues and in fact, I’ve got support from the Labour group and the Labour Party who are absolutely determined that this is the right decision at the right time for our city and decisions which are absolutely needed these days no other alternative and I’m confident that the people of this city when they start to witness on live the benefits of this project will actually appreciate that we will be making the right decision for the city of Birmingham

Carlton Reid 38:58
And that’s a key point we’re seeing so when so I noticed there’s a something called I like the fact they’ve got two words in here, the Birmingham transport plan delivery plan. But when I read through that I couldn’t actually see the when I didn’t see you know, when physically these things are going to be put on the ground. And for instance, is the segmentation plan is that all going to go in overnight like like happening gained, or are these things going to be built and done over a longer period of time.

Cllr Waseem Zaffar 39:33
So we want to deliver a lot you know, we’ve got some quick wins. And as I said earlier, the emergency transport plan and the the active travel resource that we’ve got from the government has enabled us to trial some of these things out. So some aspects of these will be implemented really, really quickly. We’re looking at making a lot of the pop-up cycle lanes that we introduce permanent very very quickly. The city centre segments I think will move really quickly. And I think, you know, obviously, embedding all the changes in at the same time can be challenging. But we will, you know, there’s a likelihood a lot of that can happen really quickly because we’ve trialled out a lot of this through the emergency transport plan measures. But the low traffic neighbourhoods will, you know, there’s been some, it’s not been all straightforward, and we need to, we need to ensure that we do, right, and we do with the people of Birmingham rather than to the people of Birmingham. And I’ve always said, we will engage, engage, engage, and then through the engagement called design and co produce, and then carry out the statutory consultations or we want to work with local communities to get this absolutely right. So some things will happen really quickly, some things will take a lot of time. And but I’m very confident that the key principles around this plan will, will be we’ll we’ll kind of keep us focused on what we’re doing and how we’re doing in the city. Resources are really important. So getting there and some of these things cost a lot of money to deliver. So you know, we’ll go with the big and bold government every opportunity to ask them for the resources to be able to do this, I’ll actually go back to Boris, I’m confident that Boris and Grant Shapps and Andrew Gilligan will understand that Birmingham was actually on a on a journey that they will support. So a Conservative government and a Labour council working together to deliver this could be could happen for the next couple of years that this conservative government’s in office.

Carlton Reid 41:38
I’ll go back to the when I know it’s difficult because it is something that has to be worked through and there is a plan for the plan. But when I did that Guardian article, and as a couple years ago when did that Guardian article, so the the deputy mayor of Ghent when I asked him what you know what, what would be your advice to Birmingham when they’re doing this this traffic segmentation plan and I’m sure you remember he said, as well as you know, you’ll hear birdsong and you gotta bring every with you blah, blah, blah, blah, it was you’ve got to do it overnight. You just got a you can’t pussyfoot around you can’t take six months to do this, you do it overnight. So that the segmentation plan is that something that you think might have to be done in the same way you do. Sunday Night is when it’s done and Monday morning is when it is all in place.

Cllr Waseem Zaffar 42:32
So Carlton, in the in terms of the segment plan most of you I think, is already in place through the through the the the short term measures we brought in during COVID it’s about making it permanent very quickly. So I think a lot of the citizens this will not come as a surprise when we recently launched a consultation around this I think some of the residents and some of the people visiting our city would thinking these are further measures that we’re bringing in there are some further measures from the original so I know my officers are working very closely with a wide range of stakeholders I know they’re spoken to people in get and other places too. But Birmingham is different so we will make the right decision but I absolutely understand what the what the Ghent deputy mayor saidy and if required we will do that. But I think most of the segments are already in place.

Carlton Reid 43:31
And those those segments that are there and it is generally that ring road that’s kind of great fantastic for those those segments and they’ll eventually gain the the clean air and and health benefits, etc, etc. But isn’t it the suburbs? Isn’t it like, you know, the 7, 10 miles out, that’s where the real car use takes place. So So how are you going to affect change, in Erdington and in places that way beyond the city centre?

Cllr Waseem Zaffar 44:04
That’s a very valid question. And this transport plan is not by the city centre, these transport plan is about the entire city. And I know historically at times the local authority has been perceived or possibly rightly solid to be very city centre focus. And the citizen is absolutely important. You know, you create employment, there’s a massive visitor economy. And there’s there’s this great private sector there. And our city centre is is one of the best city centres in the country. It’s a fascinating place, but I want clean air in every single neighbourhood in Birmingham. I want active travel in every single neighbourhood in Birmingham. And to do that we’ve got to expand the basis on the measures around recreating neighbourhoods and ensuring that we support initiatives right across Birmingham is really really important. So actually travelling every every neighbourhood, expanding our segregated cycling infrastructure right across this city so it doesn’t come to a stop at a particular place or at least starts when you get close to the city centre, we need to ensure that it goes right across the city and public transport, zero emission public transport right across our city. So the we’re introducing a number of cross city bus routes. But the most important bus route in Birmingham is not a bus route that actually goes into the city where it’s the 11 route that goes across in a city Birmingham, right all the way around is the longest route in Europe. It goes past 300 schools. Now I don’t want the bus providers to be putting all the clean green buses coming to the city centre and putting the old polluting vehicles on that 11 route on the 8 Route which is also goes across the inner city run the city of Birmingham, I want our green especially that’s why when when Boris announces the zebra funding for buses moving forward, I want to ensure that when Birmingham gets those 200 hydrogen buses that I’m confident that we will get we’ll put some of those onto the 11 and the Eighth Route to ensure that we’ve got zero emission buses operated there. So this is a this isn’t a plan for the city centre. This is a plan with some key principles or how we’ll move forward in the delivery of our transport projects right across the city and I want to ensure that we’ve got a good balance of investment right across this city. So no no neighbourhood is left behind.

Carlton Reid 46:36
Thanks to Councillor Waseem Zaffar. There’s a photo of him and a link to Brum’s plan and my Guardian article on the show’s website which is at the-spokesmen.com. Later this afternoon I’ll be talking to multiple Tour de France winner Chris Froome and Pieter Morgan CEO and founder of Hammerhead — that show will be in your feed real soon but meanwhile get out there and ride.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai