Hosted by David Bernstein & Carlton Reid since 2006: Recent Episodes
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22nd November 2024
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 365: Cycling content creator Josh Reid
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUEST: Josh Reid
TOPICS: Can you make a living as a cycling content creator? Carlton Reid asks his son, Josh.
- Can you make a living as cycling content creator?
Carlton Reid, November 22, 2024
Read more… - Maud de Vries
Carlton Reid, October 27, 2024
Read more… - Martin Powell: ‘Anne Hidalgo saved a world city’
Carlton Reid, October 19, 2024
Read more… - ‘Crash, Not Accident’: SaveLife Foundation, India
Carlton Reid, October 1, 2024
Read more… - FUD and collywobbles with EV evangelist Ade Thomas
Carlton Reid, September 2, 2024
Read more… - Zsolt Schuller — Boosting cycling to National Trust properties and places
Carlton Reid, August 16, 2024
Read more… - Is there such a thing as a good riot? Amsterdam, 1975
Carlton Reid, August 10, 2024
Read more… - Active Travel England CEO Danny Williams and Wayne Hemingway
Carlton Reid, July 16, 2024
Read more… - Rob King — A-to-Zedify
Carlton Reid, July 7, 2024
Read more… -
Simon Warren
Carlton Reid, June 19, 2024
Read more…
27th October 2024
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 364: Maud de Vries
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUEST: Maud de Vries
TOPICS: Update on BYCS from founder Maud de Vries.
- Maud de Vries
Carlton Reid, October 27, 2024
Read more… - Martin Powell: ‘Anne Hidalgo saved a world city’
Carlton Reid, October 19, 2024
Read more… - ‘Crash, Not Accident’: SaveLife Foundation, India
Carlton Reid, October 1, 2024
Read more… - FUD and collywobbles with EV evangelist Ade Thomas
Carlton Reid, September 2, 2024
Read more… - Zsolt Schuller — Boosting cycling to National Trust properties and places
Carlton Reid, August 16, 2024
Read more… - Is there such a thing as a good riot? Amsterdam, 1975
Carlton Reid, August 10, 2024
Read more… - Active Travel England CEO Danny Williams and Wayne Hemingway
Carlton Reid, July 16, 2024
Read more… - Rob King — A-to-Zedify
Carlton Reid, July 7, 2024
Read more… - Simon Warren
Carlton Reid, June 19, 2024
Read more… -
City Thread Awards Four U.S. Cities With Grants
Carlton Reid, June 2, 2024
Read more…
19th October 2024
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 363: Martin Powell
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUEST: Martin Powell
TOPICS: Martin Powell, editor of The Climate City (Wiley, 2022) was the mayoral advisor on the environment to the former Mayor of London, Boris Johnson. He was also a special advisor to The C40 Cities Group, chaired by the former Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg. More recently he has had chief sustainability roles at Siemens and now the insurance company Axa. He was speaking at the Vision Dolomite climate conference in Trento, Italy.
- Maud de Vries
Carlton Reid, October 27, 2024
Read more… - Martin Powell: ‘Anne Hidalgo saved a world city’
Carlton Reid, October 19, 2024
Read more… - ‘Crash, Not Accident’: SaveLife Foundation, India
Carlton Reid, October 1, 2024
Read more… - FUD and collywobbles with EV evangelist Ade Thomas
Carlton Reid, September 2, 2024
Read more… - Zsolt Schuller — Boosting cycling to National Trust properties and places
Carlton Reid, August 16, 2024
Read more… - Is there such a thing as a good riot? Amsterdam, 1975
Carlton Reid, August 10, 2024
Read more… - Active Travel England CEO Danny Williams and Wayne Hemingway
Carlton Reid, July 16, 2024
Read more… - Rob King — A-to-Zedify
Carlton Reid, July 7, 2024
Read more… - Simon Warren
Carlton Reid, June 19, 2024
Read more… -
City Thread Awards Four U.S. Cities With Grants
Carlton Reid, June 2, 2024
Read more…
1st October 2024
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 362: SaveLife Foundation, India
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUEST: Piyush Tewari
TOPICS: Piyush is CEO and founder SaveLIFE Foundation, a nonprofit committed to saving lives on roads in India since 2008.
- FUD and collywobbles with EV evangelist Ade Thomas
Carlton Reid, September 2, 2024
Read more… - Zsolt Schuller — Boosting cycling to National Trust properties and places
Carlton Reid, August 16, 2024
Read more… - Is there such a thing as a good riot? Amsterdam, 1975
Carlton Reid, August 10, 2024
Read more… - Active Travel England CEO Danny Williams and Wayne Hemingway
Carlton Reid, July 16, 2024
Read more… - Rob King — A-to-Zedify
Carlton Reid, July 7, 2024
Read more… - Simon Warren
Carlton Reid, June 19, 2024
Read more… - City Thread Awards Four U.S. Cities With Grants
Carlton Reid, June 2, 2024
Read more… - Enjoy Waltham Forest Turns 10 — Panel at Landor Links’ birthday bash
Carlton Reid, May 19, 2024
Read more… - Bike Town is Ten — Inspiring Speeches From 10 Years of Enjoy Waltham Forest Reception
Carlton Reid, May 16, 2024
Read more… -
Laura Laker
Carlton Reid, April 21, 2024
Read more…
2nd September 2024
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 361: FUD and collywobbles with EV evangelist Ade Thomas
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUEST: Ade Thomas, Green.tv & World EV Day & Ebike Summit
- FUD and collywobbles with EV evangelist Ade Thomas
Carlton Reid, September 2, 2024
Read more… - Zsolt Schuller — Boosting cycling to National Trust properties and places
Carlton Reid, August 16, 2024
Read more… - Is there such a thing as a good riot? Amsterdam, 1975
Carlton Reid, August 10, 2024
Read more… - Active Travel England CEO Danny Williams and Wayne Hemingway
Carlton Reid, July 16, 2024
Read more… - Rob King — A-to-Zedify
Carlton Reid, July 7, 2024
Read more… - Simon Warren
Carlton Reid, June 19, 2024
Read more… - City Thread Awards Four U.S. Cities With Grants
Carlton Reid, June 2, 2024
Read more… - Enjoy Waltham Forest Turns 10 — Panel at Landor Links’ birthday bash
Carlton Reid, May 19, 2024
Read more… - Bike Town is Ten — Inspiring Speeches From 10 Years of Enjoy Waltham Forest Reception
Carlton Reid, May 16, 2024
Read more… -
Laura Laker
Carlton Reid, April 21, 2024
Read more…
16th August 2024
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 360: Zsolt Schuller — Boosting cycling to National Trust properties and places
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUEST: National Trust’s Cyclists Welcome Manager Zsolt Schuller
- Zsolt Schuller — Boosting cycling to National Trust properties and places
Carlton Reid, August 16, 2024
Read more… - Is there such a thing as a good riot? Amsterdam, 1975
Carlton Reid, August 10, 2024
Read more… - Active Travel England CEO Danny Williams and Wayne Hemingway
Carlton Reid, July 16, 2024
Read more… - Rob King — A-to-Zedify
Carlton Reid, July 7, 2024
Read more… - Simon Warren
Carlton Reid, June 19, 2024
Read more… - City Thread Awards Four U.S. Cities With Grants
Carlton Reid, June 2, 2024
Read more… - Enjoy Waltham Forest Turns 10 — Panel at Landor Links’ birthday bash
Carlton Reid, May 19, 2024
Read more… - Bike Town is Ten — Inspiring Speeches From 10 Years of Enjoy Waltham Forest Reception
Carlton Reid, May 16, 2024
Read more… - Laura Laker
Carlton Reid, April 21, 2024
Read more… -
Andy McGrath — God is Dead
Carlton Reid, April 15, 2024
Read more…
10th August 2024
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 359: Is there such a thing as a good riot? Amsterdam, 1975
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUEST: Mark Ames, Strategic Cities
- Is there such a thing as a good riot? Amsterdam, 1975
Carlton Reid, August 10, 2024
Read more… - Active Travel England CEO Danny Williams and Wayne Hemingway
Carlton Reid, July 16, 2024
Read more… - Rob King — A-to-Zedify
Carlton Reid, July 7, 2024
Read more… - Simon Warren
Carlton Reid, June 19, 2024
Read more… - City Thread Awards Four U.S. Cities With Grants
Carlton Reid, June 2, 2024
Read more… - Enjoy Waltham Forest Turns 10 — Panel at Landor Links’ birthday bash
Carlton Reid, May 19, 2024
Read more… - Bike Town is Ten — Inspiring Speeches From 10 Years of Enjoy Waltham Forest Reception
Carlton Reid, May 16, 2024
Read more… - Laura Laker
Carlton Reid, April 21, 2024
Read more… - Andy McGrath — God is Dead
Carlton Reid, April 15, 2024
Read more… -
AA’s Think Bike Redux
Carlton Reid, April 7, 2024
Read more…
16th July 2024
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 358: Active Travel England CEO Danny Williams and Wayne Hemingway
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUESTS: Danny Williams and Wayne Hemingway
- Active Travel England CEO Danny Williams and Wayne Hemingway
Carlton Reid, July 16, 2024
Read more… - Rob King — A-to-Zedify
Carlton Reid, July 7, 2024
Read more… - Simon Warren
Carlton Reid, June 19, 2024
Read more… - City Thread Awards Four U.S. Cities With Grants
Carlton Reid, June 2, 2024
Read more… - Enjoy Waltham Forest Turns 10 — Panel at Landor Links’ birthday bash
Carlton Reid, May 19, 2024
Read more… - Bike Town is Ten — Inspiring Speeches From 10 Years of Enjoy Waltham Forest Reception
Carlton Reid, May 16, 2024
Read more… - Laura Laker
Carlton Reid, April 21, 2024
Read more… - Andy McGrath — God is Dead
Carlton Reid, April 15, 2024
Read more… - AA’s Think Bike Redux
Carlton Reid, April 7, 2024
Read more… -
Turn on Strava for everyday journeys, it could reshape streets for the better
Carlton Reid, March 17, 2024
Read more…
7th July 2024
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 357: Rob King on A-to-Zedify
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUEST: Rob King
- Rob King — A-to-Zedify
Carlton Reid, July 7, 2024
Read more… - Simon Warren
Carlton Reid, June 19, 2024
Read more… - City Thread Awards Four U.S. Cities With Grants
Carlton Reid, June 2, 2024
Read more… - Enjoy Waltham Forest Turns 10 — Panel at Landor Links’ birthday bash
Carlton Reid, May 19, 2024
Read more… - Bike Town is Ten — Inspiring Speeches From 10 Years of Enjoy Waltham Forest Reception
Carlton Reid, May 16, 2024
Read more… - Laura Laker
Carlton Reid, April 21, 2024
Read more… - Andy McGrath — God is Dead
Carlton Reid, April 15, 2024
Read more… - AA’s Think Bike Redux
Carlton Reid, April 7, 2024
Read more… - Turn on Strava for everyday journeys, it could reshape streets for the better
Carlton Reid, March 17, 2024
Read more… -
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett of Komoot
Carlton Reid, March 10, 2024
Read more…
19th June 2024
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 356: Simon Warren & his 100 climbs empire
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid — BestBritishBikeRides.com
GUEST: Simon Warren — 100 Greatest Cycling Climbs empire
- Simon Warren
Carlton Reid, June 19, 2024
Read more… - City Thread Awards Four U.S. Cities With Grants
Carlton Reid, June 2, 2024
Read more… - Enjoy Waltham Forest Turns 10 — Panel at Landor Links’ birthday bash
Carlton Reid, May 19, 2024
Read more… - Bike Town is Ten — Inspiring Speeches From 10 Years of Enjoy Waltham Forest Reception
Carlton Reid, May 16, 2024
Read more… - Laura Laker
Carlton Reid, April 21, 2024
Read more… - Andy McGrath — God is Dead
Carlton Reid, April 15, 2024
Read more… - AA’s Think Bike Redux
Carlton Reid, April 7, 2024
Read more… - Turn on Strava for everyday journeys, it could reshape streets for the better
Carlton Reid, March 17, 2024
Read more… - Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett of Komoot
Carlton Reid, March 10, 2024
Read more… -
Richard Fletcher, Mr Cycling on the Isle of Man
Carlton Reid, February 24, 2024
Read more…
2nd June 2024
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 355: City Thread Awards Four U.S. Cities With Grants
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUESTS: Sara Studdard and Kyle Wagenschutz of City Thread.
- City Thread Awards Four U.S. Cities With Grants
Carlton Reid, June 2, 2024
Read more… - Enjoy Waltham Forest Turns 10 — Panel at Landor Links’ birthday bash
Carlton Reid, May 19, 2024
Read more… - Bike Town is Ten — Inspiring Speeches From 10 Years of Enjoy Waltham Forest Reception
Carlton Reid, May 16, 2024
Read more… - Laura Laker
Carlton Reid, April 21, 2024
Read more… - Andy McGrath — God is Dead
Carlton Reid, April 15, 2024
Read more… - AA’s Think Bike Redux
Carlton Reid, April 7, 2024
Read more… - Turn on Strava for everyday journeys, it could reshape streets for the better
Carlton Reid, March 17, 2024
Read more… - Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett of Komoot
Carlton Reid, March 10, 2024
Read more… - Richard Fletcher, Mr Cycling on the Isle of Man
Carlton Reid, February 24, 2024
Read more… -
Monica Garrison of Black Girls Do Bike
Carlton Reid, February 20, 2024
Read more…
TRANSCRIPT
To come
19th May 2024
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 354: Enjoy Waltham Forest Turns 10 — Panel at Landor Links’ birthday bash
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUESTS: Vala Valavan, former Director of Highways at Waltham Forest Council; Chris Proctor, Enjoy Waltham Forest programme lead; David Rowe, Interim Director of Investment Delivery Planning, Transport for London (TfL); Simon Munk, Lead Technical Consultant, London Cycling Campaign; Paul Gasson, Council Liaison Officer of Waltham Forest Cycling Campaign, rider for Zedify.
- Enjoy Waltham Forest Turns 10 — Panel at Landor Links’ birthday bash
Carlton Reid, May 19, 2024
Read more… - Bike Town is Ten — Inspiring Speeches From 10 Years of Enjoy Waltham Forest Reception
Carlton Reid, May 16, 2024
Read more… - Laura Laker
Carlton Reid, April 21, 2024
Read more… - Andy McGrath — God is Dead
Carlton Reid, April 15, 2024
Read more… - AA’s Think Bike Redux
Carlton Reid, April 7, 2024
Read more… - Turn on Strava for everyday journeys, it could reshape streets for the better
Carlton Reid, March 17, 2024
Read more… - Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett of Komoot
Carlton Reid, March 10, 2024
Read more… - Richard Fletcher, Mr Cycling on the Isle of Man
Carlton Reid, February 24, 2024
Read more… - Monica Garrison of Black Girls Do Bike
Carlton Reid, February 20, 2024
Read more… -
Balance bikes, Bikeability and the Saint Piran team at the Tour of Britain
Carlton Reid, January 28, 2024
Read more…
TRANSCRIPT TO FOLLOW …
16th May 2024
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 353: Bike Town is 10 — Inspiring Speeches From 10 Years of Enjoy Waltham Forest Reception
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUESTS: Cllr Grace Williams, Leader of Waltham Forest Council and Labour Councillor for William Morris; Cllr Clyde Loakes, Deputy Leader of the Council; Will Norman, London’s cycling and walking commissioner. Speeches recorded at the evening reception for Celebrating 10 Years of Enjoy Waltham Forest event, William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow, 14th May 2024.
- Enjoy Waltham Forest Turns 10 — Panel at Landor Links’ birthday bash
Carlton Reid, May 19, 2024
Read more… - Bike Town is Ten — Inspiring Speeches From 10 Years of Enjoy Waltham Forest Reception
Carlton Reid, May 16, 2024
Read more… - Laura Laker
Carlton Reid, April 21, 2024
Read more… - Andy McGrath — God is Dead
Carlton Reid, April 15, 2024
Read more… - AA’s Think Bike Redux
Carlton Reid, April 7, 2024
Read more… - Turn on Strava for everyday journeys, it could reshape streets for the better
Carlton Reid, March 17, 2024
Read more… - Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett of Komoot
Carlton Reid, March 10, 2024
Read more… - Richard Fletcher, Mr Cycling on the Isle of Man
Carlton Reid, February 24, 2024
Read more… - Monica Garrison of Black Girls Do Bike
Carlton Reid, February 20, 2024
Read more… -
Balance bikes, Bikeability and the Saint Piran team at the Tour of Britain
Carlton Reid, January 28, 2024
Read more…
TRANSCRIPT
Carlton Reid 0:12
Welcome to Episode 353 of the spokesmen podcast. This show was engineered on Thursday 16th of May 2024.
David Bernstein 0:28
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.
Carlton Reid 1:03
There are now more people walking and cycling in Waltham Forest, and earlier this week I visited this now most vibrant of London boroughs to join events celebratating 10 years since the start of the Enjoy Waltham Forest programme. I’m Carlton Reid and I was in Walthamstow in 2015 a year after the first fruits of the so-called Mini Holland programme were beginning to ripen and yet where 100 or so protestors gathered to shout at the Labour councillor leading the borough’s transformation. They carried a coffin — in safety, beause of no cars — along Orford Road and warned that Clyde Loakes and his fellow Labour councillors were being held responsoible for the predicted death of Walthamstow. Free access for cars, they said, was necessary for economic vitality and they didn’t want what teir posters called a Berlin Wall. Orford road is now a poster child for how to effect change for the better. It’s buzzing with business, with peaople ambling around and enjoying the pavement cafes. This previously traffic-clogged street is a honeypot destnation for VIPs and traffic planners from around the UK and the world, visiting to see how it is possible to make neighborhoods less car dependent and more people friendly. On today’s show I’ve got three inspiring speeches delivered at an evening reception held in Walthamstow’s William Morris Gallery on Tuesday 14th May 2024. The speeches are from Cllr Grace Williams, Leader of Waltham Forest Council , Deputy Leader Cllr Clyde Loakes and Will Norman, London’s cycling and walking commissioner. On the next two episodes, I’ll share audio recorded at the Landor Links event staged after the evening reception, an event for town planners and other professionals seeking guidance on best practice for cycling and walking schemes. But first, here’s Grace Williams at the evening reception,
Grace Williams 3:37
I think sounds in his night. It is a kind of reunion because we have the whole team. And we of course are climbing. We’ve got Martin, who’s hiding on a balcony. We’ve got Lindsey, we’ve got untold officers who worked on this scheme and given hours of their life. And I know it’s not because community groups here we’ve got plenty out to them. We’ve got families and everyone I know in this room has been putting the effort into what Min-Holland has been over the last 10 years. A massive amounts that we have all learned together actually scanning as it is required to scale which require that’s political wiil. And that sense of keeping on going and doing the right thing, I think is really important. And I should really add that, on top of that because we have built relationships regionally, nationally, internationally and it’s brilliant to have Will Norman here. And it’s really also a testament to the work that’s been done to involve other in Waltham Forest which I am sure Clyde will be talking about, I have been a councillor for ten years so Mini-Holland has been my reality as a councillor, and one of my earliest memories of being councillor was Clyde spoke to me and say, Yeah, the thing he wants you to talk about
MiniHolland tonight. I remember that it was a protest outside that’s become an occupational hazard now, but it was quite nerve wracking as a new councillor going in and doing first big speech on mini-Holland. I do remember saying something along the line of so cyclists and motorist should just go to the pub sit down and have a nice chat about.
No, I did seize up. So now we’ll be thinking about, you know, the culture wars that we had. You know, the fact that we have several elections since then, it really really is a different climate when it comes to talk to you about what actually travelling can do and what Mini-Holland means. I know that Clyde will tell you a bit more about his reflections on that journey. So I do want to thank the whole team. But before I end, I want to pay tribute fine, because we just would not all be standing here celebrating 10 years of mini Holland as if it wasn’t view
everyone in this room, probably you know quite a lot from you about how you stuck with the product. And when you go in decide, I know it was a very personal effect it has cost you and the impact on your on your life has basically become doing Mini-Holland, I don’t know if it’s somewhere.
But it has the effort who said the political will stand up. And that sheer bloody mindedness. More in the sense of knowing that has to do the right thing. He didn’t have to keep moving forward. Because if you’re not moving forward on this agenda, you’re moving backwards. And we have seen others move backwards in fence. So I really want to from bottom of my heart thank you Clyde for doing this. You’ve transformed all of our lives, you’ve made children’s lives better. You’ve made our borough what it is today
and I want to say a personal thank you to what you taught me.y
I hand over to Clyde.
Clyde Loakes 7:25
Today evening, what an honour it is to be in a room of champions, pioneers. congratulate yourselves, everyone. You’re all amazing language people. And we wouldn’t normally be in this evening. If it wasn’t for all of you here this evening. You are the stars. were woken up not just in the forest, but across London over the past 10 years. So I’m so so grateful. Whether you are officers, you know, I will single out a couple of people, you know, Vala, Keith, over, we’re going to need to do that presentation.
Wow. Who knew where we were be 10 years on the answers coming back with a 30 odd million quid. Thank you so much. All the officers who then assembled Chris Proctor, Chris Harrison, Jon little, you know, all that cast,
and then in a wonderful job.
Wow. Wow. And it started off just as a highway project, a cycling project.
And yet, we’ve looked at the difference we’ve made now, you public health terms, and offensive terms and congestion terms. We look at the difference we’re making to the clients. You know, we knew
10 years ago, that this would be one of the fundamental
projects in a local authority that was acting on the climate emergency, look at how building rain gardens and total resilience into those. All coming from this nugget of an idea the idea that we could make it is that we could actually help support people to walk and cycle more often have a tremendous achievement, and she would take it upon us. And everywhere I go and I speak about all we’ve done I always say, you know, it was that politicians, Chris Robbins that stood by me through some pretty
challenging times. He was no keen cyclist Like
he knew this was the right thing to do for the right reasons. Those officers with this technical skill
who was so so bored with just painting double yellow lines that we are aligned and responding to the lowest common denominator consultation return that says, We don’t want any
change. You know, we
unleash their talents now ideas so that we can deliver something so dramatically different things that they went to college and learn their skills that they wanted to do. We were able to do that here. The community activists just talking to Paul we’re just now living
that way now. Right. You know,
Susan, you know, never gave up on your time. You never know Lee when he sat down assignment. Look for when you’re worthy now you are shaping and influencing
London and more because of what you did here and never
gave up. And you’ve made it. Look at the behaviour change it received Jane, Emma. Look at what we’re seeing, Joy Riders, Cycle sisters, breaking down boundaries.
All the cargo bikes!
you seen that on most schools, you know school districts,
normal families going to school. That’s why sharing some way because we’ve created the infrastructure, we created the environment and feel comfortable and safe, transport and cherish them loved ones to school and back again. By bike, by cargo bike.Thank you for that you didn’t absolutely amazing. But it wasn’t always easy. It was It wasn’t the coffin.
We mentioned Dutch ambassador on the second day.
He literally chased out.
We mentioned those things we come along mentioned the judicial review, Vala you remember the emails every day. We’re gonna miss out
on some Yeah, nailbiting stuff because he told us of why we wouldn’t
not be here today. What else? Hey, man. Yeah, the protests. Yeah. And, you know, some pretty hairy, you know, interviews with the police and my answers and stuff that was coming my way. But times, but I’ve always said I was doing the right things for the workplaces always knew, I have that physical support, either community support around the doubles. And that’s what made me continue to do the things that we wanted to do. And that’s why it’s interesting members in many organisations that we just had, I counted six of the candidates have openly declared that they were against low traffic neighbourhoods, in their little pieces in that one photo that we will look at. Where are they now? Where are they now? They are nowhere. And you know, once I have the microphone, and you know, Will’s in the room, newly appointed, fortunately, cycling commissioner, and again well done Will, you know, please take it back to to your boss, Sadiq Khan’s leadership on him less, you know, what to think is some this someone’s readership on
those louder voices that said it was wrong, and you wouldn’t lose.
But actually, vast majority people don’t
clean vocalise their views on these things.
But they like it. Or even nobody makes sense. And they know, politicians are doing these things for the voice reasons, not just for the hearing now, not just for the election, and the next ballot box opportunity, but for the future and future generations that please talk back out thanks to Steve for his leadership that he’s provided us. And we will continue to stand here and will advise supporting those quick, safe transport policies that had brought us all together this evening to sell by 10 years on, we will continue to do all of that will be carrying out those kind of policies that really really do make a difference. So please put your hands together, and celebrate you’re all amazing. Thank you I
Carlton Reid 15:02
We will leave Clyde Loakes in Walthamstow there and head across to the States to get our ad break from David.
David Bernstein 15:09
This podcast is brought to you by Tern Bicycles. Like you, the folks at Tern are always up for a good outdoor adventure by bike—whether that’s fishing, camping, or taking a quick detour to hit the trails before picking up the kids from school. And if you’re looking to explore new ground by taking your adventures further into the wild, they’ve got you covered. The brand new Orox by Tern is an all-season, all-terrain adventure cargo bike that’s built around the Bosch Smart System to help you cross even the most ambitious
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Carlton Reid 16:27
Thanks, David. And we are back in Walthamstow at the evening reception celebrating 10 years of enjoying Waltham Forest. Here’s the final speech of the night from London cycling and walking Commissioner Will Norman
Will Norman 16:41
Absolutely phenomenal to be here today. I cycled through the borough on the way and it is it’s a groundbreaking transformation. I knew this but this morning I was sitting around the breakfast table at home and I thought normal domestic things should work well you can relate to the background this or where you go and move the ball forward. And my daughter who’s 13 Who is normally monosyllabic takes no interest in my work whatsoever, eating a bowl of cereal, then looks up, Waltham Forest? Good bike lanes
Under your leadership for the change that needs to happen in cities around the world, the scariest thing that happened to me in the last two weeks was around the time of the election when text messages that are coming in from around the world to you felt really busy. And they were coming in from Australia from USA from India, from somebody someone in Egypt. If he loses, then I’m gonna zero commitments, that the stuff that we’re doing our cities, the tours that we had an open for the changes that we’re doing fall under threat. It goes back to the point that changes have happened in this borough are being felt integrated internationally and it’s been ascend the leadership that need is required to tackle the climate crisis to tackle what is tmos existential threat. So the human species, everybody has a role to play in that. And if you see the kid cycling through the filters at the moment playing football against the bridge,, they’re on their way to school, that is the change that needs to happen in every city and every community in every town in every country around the world. And you guys have been the focal point of that. It’s amazing. I haven’t said anything it was actually my speech. Last Sunday man this thing you guys be the changes that have happened that obvious you actually listed this is I’m standing in a way when the most important things here just have a look of everything that’s happened in this borough over the last 10 years game changing transformation. This resulted in more cycling it’s resulted in more walking through resulted in fewer collisions saving lives, is resulting in greater footfall in the shops, were to spend in the shop greater economic regeneration, clean air, closer communities, tackling social social isolation, you name it, it is it is changing. And as I said it’s synonymous for how cities are going to get up it should be and how they’re changing. And I use those two there’s there’s a before and after photo offer great band summed up the change that basically the strategic change that’s happening in London, the strategic change that’s happening in Paris, it is blasting around the world as this is the change that needs to happen. We no longer need to design our cities for cars. We need to design them for people a new modes of encapsulated that you digitalize you show what’s possible. And inspiration goes way beyond lessness. The impact you’ve had on neighbouring powers is astonishing by working with teams across borders and raising the bar. As I said, it’s bringing this change lives in the country. It raised the bar has raised the bar of ambition around the country. You got Mini-Holland’s written into national policy. Now we can argue where that national policy is just fine for motorists. Yeah, I’m not so sure that’s going to last but it’s absolutely amazing and you get We have to follow Clyde on social media to see this endless procession of dignitaries, officers, MPs and councillors who come around in his characteristic shirts with all his energy and passion showing every filter every story about the coffin and the Dutch ambassador. But it works. And every time people go away inspired, and every one of those inspiration just changing something in a city retirement city around around the world. It’s not easy, it’s quite said creating meaningful change. Yeah, the amount of abuse the amount of hate the amount of protests that are weird conspiracy theories. And what I experienced over the last seven years is similar to Clyde. I think there were four ingredients which drive change with any within any city. And Waltham Forest has those in spades. The first is has been mentioned is political leadership, that political leadership coming from Grace, but I’m also Clyde again, I want to play particularly for credit, give particular credit to Clyde and just be cheering and he has led the way. It has been a hard journey you you’ve taken the strength you have stood strong, you’ve showed leaders including myself around the city around the world book resilience means more than doing the right thing. It’s the right thing to do and the impact that it has and how that plays into election. election victories in the most people bump this, the enthusiasm, the pride you have is absolutely infectious. And I don’t think that in other changes in this bar wouldn’t have happened to quite the same scale, but certainly not the way that it’s spread around the world. The second ingredients, which have been what we’ve heard has been really good at is collecting data and telling us stories of success. Without that data, you can’t push back the ages, you can’t push back without it, you can’t celebrate the changes that are happening. I think that’s been really inspiring. The third ingredient is that technical expertise, the brilliant officers that have worked on this across the board over the years, successive generations. Again, I want to give tribute to Bala we were talking about the first time we met in the basement of the House of Commons or something seven years ago, and the changes have happened since then. But again, those opposite has happened just the impact is obviously haven’t just stopped at the border to this borough. It is again flowed into cities, other boroughs, other cities and around the world. But finally, and I think living is often overlooked in terms of those magic ingredients that drive change are campaigning communities, the role of community members play, it actually broken this providing all of us who need the backbone of the local information, the reassurance, every consultation that you fill in every petition that you sign, every event you go to with a positive piece, every suggestion you make a change in an improvement in that it matters. It is such a vital ingredient. And the change is often overlooked. You need the political leadership, you need the data, you need the technical expertise and you need the strong communities. Waltham Forest has all of those and showed the world how to do it. So I think everybody should be massively grateful that everyone would welcome everyone in this room on behalf of Sadiq who I think is seeing the Pope that this I’m not saying I’m not going into what’s a better event, it’s a bit of a mystery. He knows what a difference you guys made. He knows how hard it’s been. He’s massively grateful you kind of pioneering delivering his transport strategy. Thank you. There is an awful lot more to do. So let’s keep going.
Carlton Reid 23:34
Thanks for listening to episode 353 of the Spokesmen podcast, brought to you in association with Tern Bicycles. Show notes and more can be found at the-spokesmen.com. The next episode — featuring speakers at Landor Links’ Celebrating 10 Years of Enjoy Waltham Forest two-day conference — will be out soon with another hot on its heels but meanwhile get out there and ride …
21st April 2024
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 352: Laura Laker
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUEST: Laura Laker, author of Potholes and Pavements
- Laura Laker
Carlton Reid, April 21, 2024
Read more… - Andy McGrath — God is Dead
Carlton Reid, April 15, 2024
Read more… - AA’s Think Bike Redux
Carlton Reid, April 7, 2024
Read more… - Turn on Strava for everyday journeys, it could reshape streets for the better
Carlton Reid, March 17, 2024
Read more… - Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett of Komoot
Carlton Reid, March 10, 2024
Read more… - Richard Fletcher, Mr Cycling on the Isle of Man
Carlton Reid, February 24, 2024
Read more… - Monica Garrison of Black Girls Do Bike
Carlton Reid, February 20, 2024
Read more… - Balance bikes, Bikeability and the Saint Piran team at the Tour of Britain
Carlton Reid, January 28, 2024
Read more… - 24 hour racing with Josh Reid on Scotland’s Strathpuffer
Carlton Reid, January 27, 2024
Read more… -
First Ever Computer Modelling of How Cyclists (And Motorists) Hit Potholes
Carlton Reid, December 28, 2023
Read more…
TRANSCRIPT
Carlton Reid 0:11
Welcome to Episode 352 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Sunday, April 21 2024.
David Bernstein 0:28
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.
Carlton Reid 1:04
I’m Carlton Reid and today’s show is a chat with like journalist Laura Laker, author of an excellent new book, Potholes and Pavements. This is a travelogue featuring Laura’s travels around the UK, writing on some of the best and worst bits of Britain’s National Cycle network. From jaw droppingly gorgeous looking ancient military roads in the Highlands of Scotland to dark and dingy urban back streets blocked with barriers. As the books subhead warns, it’s a bumpy ride. Um, so you’ve written a book. Is this your first?
Laura Laker 1:46
Yeah, my first my first book, believe it or not,
Carlton Reid 1:49
well done. Congratulations. It’s a brilliant first book. One of many. I’m sure it’ll be one of many. I noticed you’ve got a an agent. Yeah, you say in the back and thank him. So I’m guessing you’re going to be doing more books?
Laura Laker 2:00
Yeah, I guess so. I’m not trying to think about it too much. This one was very long in the gestation. I had an idea back in 2017 to do a basically ring around talking to people.
I’d listened to the audiobook of John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charlie, in which he travels across the US with his big poodle, and talking to people and he says he’s most wonderful conversations, which were later question for their veracity, but it’s just, it’s just a wonderful format. And I love I’d kind of in that trip to America, I rediscovered my love of talking to strangers, which I had as a kid, and I’m kind of lost over the years, I guess, being British, but spending time in the US where everyone is just willing to talk to you and tell you their life story. I rediscovered this just love of cycling, is brilliant for that, you know, just talking to people you’re travelling around, you might stop at some lights, or you might pass someone on a path and just get chatting to them. And it’s wonderful people have the most amazing stories, I think
Carlton Reid 2:59
Well, there’s two teachers that you met, hopefully they will read the book.
You weren’t avoiding them.
Laura Laker 3:07
I know Greg and Norton, they were so brilliant. And the most unexpected encounters and I was up in the Cairngorms and travelling alone and feeling a bit like oh, you know, such a beautiful, it’s ridiculously beautiful up there. I’m always just astounded by Scotland, and how how it’s possible for somewhere to be so beautiful. And the NCN [National Cycle Network] across the Cairngorms is something else, it’s really quite remarkable. A lot of its off road, it’s this dedicated path. It was an old military road. And the rest is on fairly quiet country roads. And I was pootling along on my big pink ebike, which I did some of my adventures on and I saw these roadies coming up behind me and I thought well that they’re going to overtake me in a bit. And sure enough, they did. We said hello. And then I saw them stopped at this bridge and they were looking over and they just had this wonderful kind of whimsy about them this they weren’t they were going a long way actually they’re going from kind of Aviemore back to Preston where they were at least one of them lived and doing it over a couple of days in sort of training one of them’s an Ironman enthusiastic participants,
but on the way they were stopping looking over bridges, that sort of waterfalls over rocks and like looking across the landscape and just enjoying the scenery. And that for me is what cycling is about. It’s about
appreciating the world around us and the people around us and so they said we’ll ride with us for a while and as you know ebike your Aberdeen bought a bike mine included, maxes out at 15 and a half miles an hour which these guys were obviously capable of exceeding quite easily. So but they they rode with me for quite some time and we chatted and they were just fantastic. And then yeah, they they stopped for a week and I had to run inside for a week. And then I came out and they’d gone
Carlton Reid 4:51
but it’s quite a nice way to say goodbye. Are you are you are you taking notes as you’re going along? So you wrote their names and what they did. And or you
coding stuff. How are you physically?
Laura Laker 5:02
Yeah, so I get back at the end of a ride and write stuff down. And I do think it’s best that way, especially with travel writing, because you forget so much so quickly. And the big three Cornwall, I think is, you know, in the early parts of the book, when I first started the exploration, further afield, you know, writing stuff down as you experience it, or very soon after is really important because you lose a lot of the detail and the texture of what you’re experiencing. And I think it just makes for much richer story that way, but also difficult to do because you’re having to memorise and maybe that’s why Steinbeck was getting criticised because he wasn’t writing No, no. As he was going along, he’s remembering it. Well, memories can do. Memory is really interesting, actually. Because we we probably most of us think that our memories are fairly good, or the way that remember things is correct. But actually, it’s very, very subjective. And the longer time goes on, the more we forget, or the memory gets warped, or things get introduced that didn’t exist, maybe and it’s really very, very subjective. I’ve got I don’t know for some things, I’ve got quite a good short term memory so I can remember
to a certain extent, but obviously, as Homer Simpson once said, you know, one thing comes into your brain another thing has to leave it so.
Carlton Reid 6:23
That’s 100% me though. So this book Potholes and Pavements, a bumpy ride on Britain’s National Cycle network, it comes out May the ninth published by Bloomsbur. £16.99. Excellent, excellent book. I read it yesterday and got up early this morning to make sure I finished it before I spoke with you. Now normally when when I talk to people for this podcast, I always get them to send me a photograph so I can do the you know, the socials and the thing that goes on the show notes. What have you with you, oh, an hour and a half to do that. Because I have ridden with you ridden with you on bits of the ride that you are right that you mentioned in your book. So when you mentioned that, you know the cycle superhighway.
You make an item was like, I’ve got that photograph because I was holding my camera photographing you behind me?
Laura Laker 7:20
Yeah, with Brian Deegan.
Carlton Reid 7:21
There’s knowing smiles when I’m reading your books like I was on that ride.
Like I know, Laura. Oh, my word. It’s also like me on that ride. And when you describe windmills, yes. But the windmills and
it’s a cute book for me. Also cute because I know lots of these people who you’re describing. And I know in the book, it says he didn’t want to be described as a hero. But he is a hero. And because it’s about the National Cycle network, then clearly that’s got to be the guy who
not single handedly founded it, but certainly pushed it through with those with those early innovators. So that’s John Grimshaw.
So he comes in, he’s, he’s in at least three or four parts of the book, you’ve clearly gone to speak to him a number of times wonderful. And it’s fantastic that he’s in there, because he really doesn’t get the recognition he deserves.
Laura Laker 8:16
Yeah, it’s interesting. I mean, he I obviously have to speak to John Grimshaw. Because a lot of people as he points out, and as I tried to convey in the book, a lot of people and probably, you know, uncountable numbers of people were involved in the foundation of and development of the National Cycle network. And then it’s maintenance ever since many of whom are working for very little, in fact, nothing, because they loved it. But John really seemed like, talking to people and talking to him, was the driving this real driving force behind it and his kind of self belief and single minded determination, I think was a major driver and he is such a character. I mean, a bit of a Marmite character, I think, but, you know, it seems like you need people to kind of drive things forward.
Carlton Reid 9:05
Cos you need somebody like that. He’s a visionary. Yeah, you know.
I love Malcolm Shepherd. I love Zavier Brice, the people who are in charge now and Malcolm was the guy who came in after
after John.
But Malcolm wasn’t a visionary. Malcolm was an accountant. And when when the organisation any organisation any business gets big, then you very often need somebody else to take over. And there’s lots of faction there at the time. You don’t go into it in a great detail. That was enormous friction there and there’s still enormous amount of bad blood
between people.
Laura Laker 9:46
Yeah, and it’s interesting because Caroline Lovatt. Here’s another key figure from fairly early on and still works with John today. On there, they’re still building cycle routes under a different organisation, cycle routes and greenways and
Um, she says that, you know, for for years, according to her, John kept disappearing from the kind of record of that of the history of the NCN on Wikipedia, she kept putting him back in. And um, yeah, I mean, the story was, and that was a difficult part of it to tell. But it was one that had to be mentioned, I didn’t want to go too into it. But obviously, you know, John, leaving Sustrans under fairly strange circumstances, and really against his will, was was part of the story that needed to be told. And it was a different and I spoke to a number of people and nobody really, I think, you know, there were potentially nondisclosure agreements. And so nobody really talks about what exactly happened, which is why I call I mentioned the omerta. Because it really seems like everyone has a slightly different story, or, and I and again, I, you know, it’s memory and it was a painful time. And it was a long time ago. And it’s quite common, as you say, with new organisations, you’ve got this big driving force, but then sometimes they’re not the person to carry on leading an organisation once the first major thing is done, and, you know, they might not be great with people is, you know, having a skill to start and drive something is not the same as being a sort of manager of people and diplomats. And it’s, yeah, it’s quite often it’s a painful process, certainly not unique, I think.
Carlton Reid 11:16
No, it’s very common for that kind of thing to happen. However, saying that it’s very important to recognise who was that visionary? And I think he lost an awful lot of that. So, so wonderful to see John.
central to that. So that’s really nice part of the book because I, you know, John, John is a wonderful, wonderful guy, and absolutely, this would not have happened without him. I know, there’s lots of other people
you know, David Sproxton, all these kind of people were there at the same time, George Ferguson. So So Sproxton was Aardman Animation. So people who know admire animation, George Ferguson,
Mayor of
Bristol,
at one point, all these individuals were there at the time, but it needed that guiding force that needed that.
Just somebody who woulda just said no, and just went ahead and did it. That was that was the ethos of Sustrans in the early days. So that
Laura Laker 12:12
Yeah, yeah, because the status quo then as it is, today, is very much stacked against cycling routes happening. And so you kind of need a rebel who’s not willing, who’s you know, not willing to take no for an answer? Who’s going to be able to make things happen? And I think in a way that kind of, I guess, you know, being from a fairly well off upper middle class background, you have the confidence really the education that kind of gives you that confidence and and then the character and self belief to just to drive that forward.
Carlton Reid 12:47
Mmm. That you didn’t mention not even once Cycling, Touring Club CTC cycling UK.
Because the book isn’t in all cycling, you are you are laser focused on the National Cycle network. But there was also friction between those two organisations, you know, stranden effect was an upstart organisation, then it got for £42.5 million with Meatloaf handing that
over on TV or that kind of stuff. And there was there was an awful lot of friction between still is between strands and and what is today cycling UK. So you haven’t got into that at all. What Why didn’t you go into that? Is that just because you wanted to just stay laser focused on the cycle network?
Laura Laker 13:36
I mean, I mentioned that not everyone felt that Sustrans was being helpful because they felt that cycle route should be delivered by government and charities stepping in. And taking that role almost allows the government to say, well, you know, someone’s doing it. Now. We don’t need to get involved. But I mentioned the kind of tension between certain types of cyclists. I think I might quote to you, I think I’ve got you in the references on that. But I mean, I don’t know if I just don’t know how.
I don’t know. It’s yeah, it’s a tricky one. It’s how much to include, and you always have to make these decisions, what to include and what not to include, and I guess I just didn’t feel like that was a key part of the story at all. There was some thinking at the time around that but and I’m aware that there was tension and I know that Mark Strong for one who gets quite a mention in the book, talked about Sustrans being too successful and not successful enough in that, you know, they were doing this job notionally?
No, they were doing a great job for with what they had and who they were and ie not the government and with not very much money but they were doing enough just to allow the government to just say, You know what, well Sustrans is delivering the National Cycle network, tick, job done. Let’s get back to the serious business of roads.
Carlton Reid 15:01
because there is there is you meant we will get on to the very positive points, you’ve got like
a bunch of what what do you call it in the book where you’ve got a whole bunch of asks basically? Oh, yeah, the manifesto, the manifesto. There you go.
Number one,
we’ll go through these points.
10 point manifesto. So there’s some positive stuff
to talk about that. But you don’t really mention that there’s this that, you know, you’re talking about, you know, this should be funded nationally, and there is that struggle, bear with you know, this is a charity, etc, etc. But then you’ve also got the weakness of you have actually got to at least have British Cycling as well, three competing organisations, going to government and asking for money for various things. And wouldn’t it be nicer and more practical and may even get more stuff? If there’s only one organisation so there is that there is the absolute fault line running through cycling? That is one of the reasons why it’s very easy for the government to not do stuff because they’re getting told different things by different organisations and one organisation saying don’t back them back us. So there’s that kind of friction there.
Laura Laker 16:22
I don’t know if that’s if I see it that way. I mean, Sustrans cycling UK,
and British Cycling, and things like livable streets are all part of the walking and cycling Alliance. And I think what that what that’s trying to do is to unify the voice, because ultimately they want the same thing. I mean, British cycling’s coming at it from a sports point of view. But recognising that its members also need safe roads to cycle on. And that means a whole host of other things, safe protected routes in cities. And that’s popular with members. And then cycling UK, originally a touring group, now a charity that lobbies for Safe Routes, safe conditions, and also delivers stuff for government, such as
what to fix your ride, and a bunch of other things. And then Sustrans is a National Cycle network and behaviour change programmes. So there are overlaps, but I do think they are distinct. And I don’t see I don’t see it as I mean, they probably have internal, you know, perspectives on things and perhaps don’t always agree with what the other one was doing. But I think I think they tend to present a fairly unified front these days.
Carlton Reid 17:30
They’re not as bad nowadays.
I mean, it’s when you get rid of it certainly did not get rid. That’s the That’s the wrong phrase. When individuals leave organisations, it can change because a new people come in, and you know, those alliances are, that’s what you’re just used to. But you know, before that alliance was put in place, they were cats and dogs, they were really hating on each other and slagging each other off to government as well. So that’s why government was able to go up. This cycling is just mad look, these these, you know, what they, these three cats in a sack just fighting each other.
Laura Laker 18:03
And then you saw, I mean, I think I talked about, you know, Malcolm Shepherd, who was the CEO after John Grimshaw.
He went to ministers, and he was saying, why aren’t we getting the funding we asked for?
Or why are we getting taken seriously, I think was the question. And he was told, Well, you don’t ask for enough money, basically. So they were thinking and perhaps this kind of historic infighting is also a function of the fact that these were kind of fledgling organisations to an extent for some time, not very much funding. They were run by enthusiasts probably, who all had their own ideas. And of course, let’s not forget that there were also the vehicular ISTS who didn’t even believe that we needed cycling’s of which I think cycling UK early on was one and that might explain why they disagree with Sustrans who were trying to yes, no, there was a whole cohort who stands for that reason, absolutely. 100%. So maybe that, you know, it perhaps is a function of just the whole movement being in its infancy. I mean, it’s been going for a good 40 or so years, but I don’t know, maybe it was maybe it was just run by enthusiasts for a very long time. And that’s why it’s taken
a while to kind of mature but also I think it was going I mean, our cycling lobby, organisations were kind of leading the way for much longer than a lot of European countries in a nice talk about this in the book in countries like France and in the Netherlands and in Denmark, they all started their calls for National Cycle networks or at least safe routes, thanks to charities and voluntary organisations. And then fairly quickly, were all taken on by the government who saw this as a piece of infrastructure firstly, quite often for leisure, but then they realised people were using these routes for commuting trips, and it was it needed to be part of the infrastructure and was taken up with great enthusiasm and in Sweden as well. By the
various local departments and regional governments and delivered quite quickly and at quite a kind of scale. And that hasn’t really happened here. And so perhaps those kinds of just the longevity of those cycling groups being so crucial to anything that happens for cycling, has kind of made this whole, I don’t know, split more important than it would have otherwise been.
Carlton Reid 20:24
Yeah. And like in the Netherlands, the the organization’s tried to fight against this, but the government tax cyclists, and cyclists actually paid for the roads.
Laura Laker 20:34
They did, that’s right.
Carlton Reid 20:37
But it’s the very fact and this was a cyclist at the time were fighting against, they didn’t want to be taxed. In the UK, and the Netherlands, they were taxed. And then cyclists became national infrastructure. And that became critical, as you say, and the fact that you know, there wasn’t, there was some national infrastructure, obviously, I’ve done this the 1930 cycleways project.
But the CTC is the British Cycling as of the time fought against all of this, they fought against taxation, they fought against cycle routes. And so there is there is some argument to be made that cyclists have been their own worst enemy. So I know in the book, you’re saying, you know, it’s just such a no brainer. And it is to back, you know, for want of a better word or phrase active travel. Now, in the book, you’ve got various people are saying we should call it something different.
Laura Laker 21:27
Yeah, Lee Craigie.
Carlton Reid 21:27
yeah. Yeah. But, you know, cycling has been difficult, at the same time. And it’s like, what’s happening in Wales, and in Scotland, is inspiring, possibly, because it’s actually coming from above. A lot of it, you know, there’s obviously enthusiastic people working on the ground, etc. But a lot of this is coming from government ministers. So that helps. Yeah. And,
Laura Laker 21:54
I mean, we have this idea, and I’m sure we’re not alone. And this point you just made and the example of the taxing of the cyclists in the Netherlands, which is something I learned during doing the research for the book, I didn’t actually know about this, but I, you know, the reason we lost the railways that then became a lot of these greenways was because, you know, we see transport as needing to wash its own face needing to fund itself. And the railways at the time, were losing money for most of the routes. And so that was the reasoning. And, you know, with roads, obviously, drivers are taxed it’s not sort of ring fence funding. It’s not a road tax, it’s,
but you know, it is making the Treasury money and cycling has never really done that. And I, I think fundamentally, the way that way of thinking about transport is wrong, because of the benefits, the much wider benefits that transport gives us in terms of, you know, being able to access education and health and social opportunities and for our physical and mental health. And it’s, its benefits span far beyond its own kind of silo. But we don’t really see it that way. And I’m not really sure actually, if anywhere managers to think of it this way, but I think post pandemic, things like free bus services and in different countries has maybe illustrated that people are starting to think about it differently. But ultimately, I think it’s it’s a very tricky one. Because like you say, we in a way we weren’t, we were own worst enemy in terms of our predecessors in the cycling world.
But we were working within philosophy that’s that dictated that actually, if you’re going to build something, you know, who’s making money from it, or, you know, how is the Treasury getting that investment back and not really seeing it as this makes people healthier? Or this gives them opportunities or promotes businesses, local tourism? And all of this? So yeah, I mean, if we’d done it differently, who who knows of cyclists in the UK? So fine, we’ll pay a tax. Who knows? We might have an NCN now, but, and even today, it’s a little bit of an uncomfortable conversation, isn’t it? Because, you know, nobody wants to be taxed.
Carlton Reid 24:02
So the book is, it’s a polemic in many ways, not not all the way through.
But there are definitely bits in there that are strident. And I cannot argue with at all I’m reading it nodding along.
And certainly the bits about
like the national infrastructure, right, and it’s all being spent on roads. And it’s it’s the so many reasons why that is crazy. Yeah, and why spending even just a fraction of the roads budget on on a national cycle network, you know, genuinely joined up one high quality
would bring many more, many more benefits. And then you’ve got and the irony is, and I did a new story on this is, you have a government minister, who has written the foreword to your book, and he said
This is not government minister, a former government minister, a former Transport Minister,
Jesse Norman, and then it’s like, why don’t you do this when you’re in power? It’s great. You’ve said it. It’s wonderful that you’re saying all these things. But you could have done this, you could have pushed for this. And he was also the Financial Secretary of the Treasury. Yeah, he could have released money. Yeah, let me see what he says. But
Laura Laker 25:26
it’s so difficult, isn’t it? And it’s, again, it’s kind of facing it’s the status quo. I mean, it’s, I think, maybe important to remember, and I’m not making excuses for anyone. But, you know, he was a junior minister, certainly in his first round is cycling minister. And so he would have had to tow the party line. So I don’t know how easy it is for. I mean, he’s a very intelligent guy. He cares about cycling. But then he’s part of a system, which ultimately,
I guess, maintains the status quo doesn’t want to upset the applecart.
And that’s why, in the manifesto, I, you know, I think it’s so important that people speak up for these things, because I think until there’s an outcry for it, it’s very difficult for any one minister, unless we have a cycling Prime Minister, to change all of this. There’s a lot of vested interests in maintaining, you know, roads for cars, keeping car manufacturing,
going and, you know, taxation on cars is going to be very problematic, because obviously EVs electric vehicles don’t pay, you know, drivers with EVs don’t pay cortex. So what’s gonna happen there? But yeah, I mean, it’s difficult, but I think people need to speak up for this kind of thing. We get a lot of kickback pushback from people when there’s cycle routes coming. But those are the minority. And one thing I tried to highlight in the book is that most people want this once cycling routes, they they want other options and to drive. And, you know, between two thirds and four fifths of people in representative polls say that they’d support this and many of them, even if it meant taking road space away from motor vehicles. But that’s not what politicians listen to. And I think increasingly, politicians are listening to angry people on Twitter. And you know, if Mark Harper’s comments about LTNs and 15 minute neighbourhoods is anything to go by, which was straight out of the kind of conspiracy theorists, Twitter playbook, you know, they’re listening to the loudest voices. And I think until people say, you know, we actually want choice. We don’t want to have to breathe polluted air, we don’t want to have our neighbourhoods dominated by motor vehicles. We want our kids to be able to go to school safely. I think it’s gonna be difficult for things to change.
Carlton Reid 27:45
Hmm. So you have mentioned a variety of routes that are actually pretty good. So yeah, Keswick one is one of them.
Laura Laker 27:55
Threlkeld, yes.
Carlton Reid 27:58
And that’s why I know,
I know the route well, as good as now, you know, a cycleway there because that was that was long in gestation. But basically, it’s it’s it’s, it’s popular. You know, people say, oh, like, but that’s a popular route now, isn’t it?
Laura Laker 28:15
Yeah, yeah, people drive there. And I mean, that was that was interesting for a number of reasons. I mean, incredibly beautiful. It sort of weaves through Greta gorge, which is just this kind of just this amazing landscape, this sort of rocky river which meanders through this very deep wooded valley. And it’s on a former rail line. And it was,
which storm was it was it 2015, there was a big storm, which basically crumbled a couple of the bridges with the sheer volume of water that ended up going through this narrow gorge. And then it was out of action for a couple of years. And that was an important, crucial route and a tourist attraction for local businesses. One pub owner apparently offered the local council, I think it was the national parks something like 30 grand out of his own pocket, reopened the route, but it was actually a sort of 2 million pound job. So that wasn’t going to go all the way. But you know, this was a really important tourist attraction for people and people drive there because there aren’t safe routes to get to and from the ends, so people drive and park and then cycle along it and cycle back. But yeah, it’s popular, it’s really popular. And they when they put the bridges, the new bridges in Sustrans with various parts of funding, they resurfaced it and there was a big hoo ha about putting tarmac on instead of the gravel that had been there before. But that actually opened up it up to far more people, including people who use wheelchairs and mobility scooters, because any sort of rough surface or uneven ground can tip someone in a wheelchair and it effectively makes these routes unusable. And this is something that I really learned in the book and feel very strongly about now. And there was a big outcry nationally about tarmacking this path because it’s in the Lake District and everyone’s
He has an opinion about the Lake District even if they’ve just been there once and we all feel like we own it because it’s such a beautiful place and I guess rightly so. We all care about it.
Carlton Reid 30:07
The Lakers.
Laura Laker 30:09
Lakers, my people. Yeah.
The people who holidayed in the lakes were known as the Lakers. Yeah, which is brilliant. So yeah, they, you know, they held their ground and they tarmac it and you know, the numbers increased drastically. And this story plays out all over the country, wherever there’s a improve surface on a path. Suddenly, it’s open to everyone. And this is what this is what cycle rich should be in, in my opinion, it should be open to everyone.
Carlton Reid 30:37
Yeah, it’s like the cinder path.
That’s the Sustrans route national cycling group from from Whitby to Scarborough. That was the one that had a load of of people complaining because Cinder path you know, they were going to be tarmacking just parts of it. And lots of people are saying you know but this this this will you know, destroy it or whenever lots of yobs in and it just never got done. And then it’s it’s impossible for a lot of the year because it’s just it gets just too rutted into mud into too horrible. And this is, you know, we discard it would just be so easy.
You know, between these two conurbations and small conurbations, if you could ride there on an all year round an all weather path?
Laura Laker 31:21
So yeah, I do.
I do worry about this, because it’s, you know, they say it’s an effect gentrification. And you’re you’re bringing, you know, urban into the countryside yet. There’s roads everywhere, and they got tarmac on, and nobody seems to be kicking up a fuss there. What’s What’s your problem? Yeah, I know. And I think it’s just we have this idea about what the cycle routes should be or could be, and we see them as leisure routes quite a lot of the time, we have this kind of set idea about cycling, that it’s not, you know, it’s not a commuter option, or, but you know, it is, but it goes beyond that. And it is about who can access these parts. And quite often, having an uneven surface will lock a lot of people out. And you know, we’re an ageing population in this country. And as we get older, we will all have disabilities, and mobility issues. And it shouldn’t be that
you know, these paths are any open to a few people. But yeah, it’s a difficult one. And we would like to say we’ve never think twice about it for roads, we’ve never think about having a road as a dirt path.
And I can you know, visually tarmac is not a beautiful thing, but I think if people understood that actually, it’s it’s not just about the visuals. This is about people and this is what these parts are for they’re for people.
Carlton Reid 32:34
Well you can make if you want it to be just that colour, you can make the the asphalt you can you can you can dye the asphalt. So it’s it’s more expensive. But you can you can do all sorts of treatments you can do to make it all weather doesn’t have to look, you know, black. Yeah. So anyway, so let’s go to another assessment. That’s some negative ones.
Where they tried to be certain, but then you point out the Polgate one, between Polgate and Glynde, which is almost happened to you by by mistake. Not mistake, but it’s certainly a by accident. Yeah. And you’re talking about it being just brilliant. So describe that one.
Laura Laker 33:11
That’s amazing. Yeah. So I was told about this. And then I know someone who lives in Lewis, which is at one end of it. And so we we we met at the station and cycled along this path. And so it’s beside the A27, which is a national highways road. And it’s right by the sales downs, which is hugely popular with cyclists. And basically, there were so many people cycling on this incredibly terrifying road. It’s one of those narrow and winding A roads with huge volumes of traffic. I mean, I went on a walking trip near Louis the other day, and I had to cross it with no crossing and it was it was genuinely terrifying. I can’t imagine people cycling on it, because it’s, you know, six months. So yeah, anyway, people were being held up in their cars because of people cycling. And so national highways decided it was going to build a path alongside and it’s this this was a real eye opener for me because they had done what needs to happen around the country. They had built a path behind the hedge row, which is wide and tarmac and smooze with lots of planting and culverts and bridges over rivers and and they just laid it you know, very little problem. I don’t know if they owned the land or perhaps compulsory purchase probably a mixture of I think it was a mixture of both. And so they built this amazing kind of 10 kilometre joyful route, which is just you know, it’s just like a road. It’s like no stress. You just carry on.
There was someone on the mobility scooter the day I was there, a couple of people on bikes, but it was basically hadn’t opened yet. And yeah, it was just there. But it’s quite funny because at either end, it just stopped because then that’s the local councils job to kind of deliver it beyond. But you know, it shows what’s possible if you have a national body with the power and the funding, and they have, you know, multi year funding pots which helps plan and
deliver this stuff and they just did it, they just sort of swept aside all of the normal problems that I talked about in the book that usually dog these cycle routes. And yeah, it’s quite, it was quite marvellous, quite
Carlton Reid 35:11
I found it fascinating because one of the things you say is, as we just mentioned there, it, it was an effective bill to get the cyclists off the road.
We made enough nuisance of ourselves,
that is 1930s to a tee, you know, the transport, you know, built those 500 miles of cycle tracks in the 1930s to Dutch standards laced around the country.
Some of them weren’t brilliant, but some of them were amazing, you know, 12 foot wide Dutch Dutch level, concrete curbs, you know, perfectly brilliant bits of cycling infrastructure that are now just some of them are white elephants, because they didn’t link up to anywhere. But, you know, the government at the time said, Oh, we’re doing this for the safety. No, they weren’t they were doing it to you know, get cyclists on the road because we’re slowing down motorists, but you kind of almost don’t care if if if you get a really superlative route behind the hedgerows. Yeah. Okay. It’s such a difference. Yeah. That’s the difference. It’s got to be good. You can’t just fob you off with shared route pavement, which is what yeah, the criticism of Sustrans has been is like there’s so many shared route pavement. And that’s why Sustrans got a bad rap, even though it wasn’t their fault. And they were just trying to fill in the gaps.
Laura Laker 36:28
That yeah, yeah. And yeah, they just have to use whatever was there, which was quite often a pavement along what would have been a not too busy road in the 70s or 80s. But it’s now a sort of thundering highway and being on a pavement with no barrier between you and or no, no sort of space between you and the 60 mile an hour traffic is far from pleasant, and no, no, no parent is going to choose to cycle on that. If they have any other choice, you know, they’re going to avoid that like the plague because you know, one little wobble or mistake and then you know, it’s horrific there, you know, possible outcomes. But yeah, it’s you know, it’s, it’s fantastic. Because you don’t even barely know the roads there. It’s just cool. It’s just gorgeous. I’d like to go back actually, because it’s been a good year, I think since I saw it. At least actually. Maybe Yeah, I think it’s at least a year and yeah, let’s see how the trees are bedding in and because it was brand new at the time it just been done. But yeah, it is. Ultimately it is possible. And regardless of the motivations it just goes to show what’s possible. I liked recently because Andy Streets and his Walking and Cycling Commissioner Adam Tranter he’s on my podcast. They announced they’re going to deliver the HS2 cycleway alongside in and around HS2 between Coventry and Birmingham. And when they get to Kenilworth, they’re basically connecting up to one of their 1930 cycleways into Coventry.
So I quite like that, you know, it’s sort of linking something that’s already there. And
Carlton Reid 38:01
yeah, and that’s also a John Grimshaw project, wasn’t it?
That was that was a John Grimshaw.
Laura Laker 38:05
Yeah. He cycled the whole thing. Yes. Yes, he’s been he’s been trying to get that one, you know, for a lot for a long time. And yeah, it does stand alone. No, you need really, you need the HS2, of course, just stand alone without it.
Carlton Reid 38:21
It does. Yeah, saying that, it would have absolutely been put in at the same time, that would not have been the difference. So that is point three. So in your 10 Point manifesto, that’s basically work together a behind the hedgeroq Act, compulsory purchase orders, all these kinds of things that only government can do. Yeah. needs to be brought in into play. Yeah. And then you you’ve said and it’s very ambitious. But when you think about it’s like, yeah, you could do this easily. And that is you know, if if this was done and if money was provided, and compulsory purchase orders were put in like you would do for roads, you can have an unbelievably fantastic truly superlative national cycling in four years.
Laura Laker 39:02
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, Brian Deegan active travel England reckoned reckoned on this, because, you know, they have such a huge amount of power and to take go to build a cycle, which basically takes three years generally you do you have a year to kind of plan it a year to consult and tweak and then a year to build it. And for that you need multi year funding, because without that, you can’t plan anything, basically. And that’s why we’ve ended up bits and bobs of improvements, because it’s like, you get the money, you have to spend it pretty much immediately.
But yeah, I mean, the amount of funding a body like national highways has would be enough to you know, link these existing routes. Sometimes there are quiet roads, you know, I guess, in the Netherlands, you have through roads and access roads, things like low traffic neighbourhoods, in the countryside. That is a that is a kind of measure that you can do.
And some of it it doesn’t all have to be
Are these sort of high quality pieces of massive engineering cycle routes, either behind the hedge row or on main roads? Some of it can just be tweaking kind of existing infrastructure so that it’s not not every road as a through road. But yes, it’s some it’s amazing. And I kind of did a double take when I heard this. But when we put our mind to something, it’s amazing what’s possible.
Carlton Reid 40:24
And potentially, we will see the fruits of this in Scotland, and Wales, Scotland, Wales are putting in some really ambitious stuff. And Mark Drakeford going, you know, will they backtrack on the 20 mile limit? And will they, you know, reverse a lot of stuff that Lee Waters that all this kind of stuff is potentially up in the air? We don’t know yet. Yeah. But Scotland does seem to be, you know, putting their money where their mouth is, you know, that the amount of money that’s going in there, per head, dwarfs what we see here in England. So the potentially you’ve got, you’ve got like, in five years, you could have something incredible. In Scottish cities in Glasgow. Yeah. You’re talking about Glasgow?
Laura Laker 41:09
Yeah. And yeah, Glasgow was amazing. I mean, that was the first time I’d been to Glasgow, on that trip. And I was blown away, actually.
So they’re developing a city wide network of routes, they’re lowering in bridges across, they’ve got this very kind of,
I guess, I guess they had this, at the time, they were building roads, they had a very ambitious programme of building like highways. And maybe that’s about the culture of the city that when something comes along, when an idea comes along, they kind of embrace it. Whereas Edinburgh has historically been much more conservative. And so when, when highways when sort of urban highways came along the bond level load of those, and now cycling is seen as this big sort of saviour of health and climates and all of these important things, they’re going all out on cycle routes, which is fantastic. And yeah, I was really blown away by what they’re doing really high quality protected routes with planting alongside, you know, for extreme weather, it’s really important to have permeable and green planting on tarmac.
And, yeah, and these beautiful bridges and this massive bridge that I saw, and you know, they’re really, really ambitious, I think,
I’ve got a piece coming out about Edinburgh in the next week or so. And it talks about the difficulties that Edinburgh has faced very, very different than the city very conservative. But similarly, it’s had a huge amount of funding. And I think they’re finally getting to the tipping point there where they’re starting to deliver real change, you know, hopefully.
But yeah, it’s, you know, the money’s there, I think there’s still difficulties with politics. So they’ve got these active freeways, which would be a kind of National Cycle network for Scotland, these rural routes,
you know, the plan is there, or at least the idea is there, but it’s not being rolled out yet. So who knows what’s going to happen with that, but definitely, the funding and having that long term funding does make it much easier. I’d really love to see Scotland, you know, doing big things. And I think Scotland and Wales have been very, very forward thinking and a lot of things got maybe Scotland particularly, and more consistently than Wales, because as you say, there’s a bit of a question mark. Now over Wales, they’ve, you know, they had the active travel act, they arguably took term coined the phrase active travel
with the active travel act about a decade ago.
And yeah, but stuff, you know, they have the policy, they had the money, but again, it’s very, very slow to change. And I don’t know, maybe they maybe if Westminster were a bit more proactive and supportive, it will be easier, who knows, but you’re always going to come up against these kinds of
difficulties, local politics and stuff, but I think money talks, you know, the money’s there for it local investment, which Council isn’t going to want public realm improvements, and you know, health.
Carlton Reid 43:49
Money is number one, in your manifesto, so it’s funded, and okay, we get the money from it. Here’s what you say, stop expanding road capacity, and we have delivered a comprehensive network of cycling and walking routes. Hallelujah. Yeah, exactly. It’s just like, you know, we’ve got so many roads, why can’t we have more and more and more and more, as we know, it just fills up with traffic if we’re gonna have build it and they will come Okay, let’s do it for bikes. Now. You know, roads have had eighty years of this, let’s have 10 years for for bikes, but walking and .
It’s just, it’s a no brainer. And the LTNs thing kind of like it’s so frustrating.
Because we’re only talking like a few streets. We’re not we’re not talking. That’s when you hear you know, the the shock jocks you’d think is every single road in the country is going to be catered and you’re going to hand it to cyclists. That’s, that’s how it’s portrayed. And we’re actually
you know, maybe maybe a fraction of 1% of roads. really, genuinely is all too
Talking about
is currently got anyway. Yeah, having safe cycle routes, you know, don’t get it get blown up by us people like us journalists, Laura, we’re to blame for misrepresenting this. That’s that’s, that doesn’t say good things about our profession, does it?
Laura Laker 45:22
No. And I think I think I mean, it speaks to the kind of economics of journalism that, you know, people want eyeballs on stories nowadays because it’s that’s what makes advertising revenue funding for journalism is fallen off a cliff. And I think this is sort of desperation about the industry at the moment. But, you know, I think it’s important to remember that the people shouting against this stuff are a minority, and most people want this stuff or are willing to try it and see, and most of us want quiet, safe streets, we want our kids to be able to play out in safety, we want clean air, we want, you know, peace and quiet. And
I think because we haven’t seen it, a lot of cases, it’s difficult to imagine. But you know, ultimately,
these things happen. There’s, there’s a pushback from a handful of people who are noisy, but I think if we have conversations about, you know, what we could, what we could get from these improvements from these schemes, then it’s much positive way of talking about it. Of course, that’s not how news works. And I think that’s why we need leaders who are willing to sort of look beyond that short period in which a lot of journalists are shouting, and a few people, some of whom have genuine concerns and need to be listened to a shouting and listen to them. But you know, this is something that people want actually, and, you know, the benefits so enormous.
Once it’s happened, I don’t think people would want to go back.
Carlton Reid 46:46
Yeah, this is the thing. It’s like, a good example is Northumberland Street and Newcastle, which is a pedestrianised street used to be the A1, you know, really the central state through the centre of Newcastle. It’s I think, outside of central London, Mayfair on Oxford Street. It’s the highest grossing per square foot retail zone in the country, because it was pedestrianised. And it just made it easier. And nobody in their right mind would say, we need to make that the a one again, guys, you know, let’s get the cars and buses soaring and you just wouldn’t do it. But Newcastle spent the best part of 20 years doing this, it wasn’t an overnight thing. We had to spend a long time, a lot of angst getting it done, but nobody would wish it away now. And that’s what when we’re not getting with all these LTNs and all these cycles, if only if we put them in, nobody would complain about them. Not really not once they see it, it’s just if people don’t like change.
Laura Laker 47:47
yeah, none of us like change just a thing. And it’s hard to picture. And I think it’s easy to dismiss people’s concerns. Because you know, it’s normal for us not to want change, it’s normal to be concerned about something if you can’t picture it. And you’re, you know, many of these are genuine worries about businesses, and how will I get from A to B and, and all of this, but yeah, I think what’s been lacking in this conversation is just some sort of grown up honesty about, you know, this is going to be a change. But ultimately, it’s going to be one that’s positive for these reasons. We, you know, we are going to listen, but ultimately, this is a an agenda that most of us support. And we know it’s beneficial for these reasons. And I think we’ve I don’t know, I think there’s too much government in this country, and in many English speaking countries, kind of almost government by fear of what the Daily Mail might say, in response to this policy. And even the
the recent announcement by governments about
you know, stopping anti motorist measures was all caps. You know, it was like almost a Daily Mail headline.
Carlton Reid 48:52
Yeah, it’s quite scary and sad. Yeah. But then, you know, like you say, if you know, for the ones that hold their ground,
you know, stuff dies down, people say actually, that actually is much better. So
you know, where I’m coming from, I know where you’re coming from.
And you’re saying people want this, but I’m gonna play devil’s advocate here and say, Well, no, they don’t people want to drive around.
And if you’re a woman at night, and you describe a lot of the routes, the Sustrans routes, the Nationals, you wouldn’t want to go there at night, and probably no matter how much lighting security whatever you put in, you probably would still feel that way. In.
Yeah, yeah. On a bicycle, you’re not protected. Whereas a car, a woman, a single woman can get into a car can lock the door, can maybe have, you know, dark windscreen even so nobody knows who’s in there. You then become this powerful individual who can get around in safety at the end of the day.
But bicycles aren’t like that, Laura. So you’re you’re basically making it more insecure for women to go about as independent beings.
Laura Laker 50:11
Well, so as a as a woman who cycles on her own at nights
that that route from Arnhem to Nijmergen in the in the Netherlands, so I ended up leaving that event and it was dark and cycling home on my own however far it was, it’s a good hours ride along these routes, but because you don’t have to stop, you actually feel safe. It’s only when you have to stop that you start to feel unsafe in my experience. I mean, there’s certain routes like along the canal, I live in East London, along the Li River that I have cycled at night, but wouldn’t do now. Because you know, that is very isolated. And people have been known to jump out with bushes. But I think for the large part, if they’re well designed, and other people are using them,
then cycling at night for me isn’t a problem. You know, you’re moving you’re
Yeah, I don’t Yeah, I very rarely felt in danger of cycling through London at night, for example. I mean, it’s been the odd park where I felt a bit sketchy, but I think if you design them, well, not every path is going to feel that way safe at night. But I think in urban places where a lot of people will be cycling to and from at night, it will probably be fine. I mean, you probably feel quite safe. It’s about kind of eyes on the streets in a way having people they’re with you.
Yeah, and I think if a route were well used enough, and don’t forget, you know, if you’re,
if you’re, you know, you’re not going to necessarily, you’re not going to drive home after a night out if you’ve had a drink. And so you will have to sort of walk a section of your journey. Most likely, if you’re in a place like London, you hate taking public transport, maybe you take a taxi, but
I feel I don’t feel like if I’m on a busy road, walking alone at night that I am safe with those other people around me because I don’t feel like people who are driving through again to necessarily stop and help me if something did happen. So I think kind of busy streets can feel unsafe, even though they’re very highly populated. And, you know, theoretically, and this kind of, there’s been research on this, you know, people who live on quiet streets, no more of their neighbours, this sort of social safety element, and people start looking out for each other. Whereas if you have a traffic dominated environment, it’s people tend to turn away from the street.
Carlton Reid 52:28
Yeah, I don’t disagree. But
if it is looking at the motivation of many, many people,
I mean, humans are generally lazy. Yeah. They generally want comfort. They want their own things, and they want security, all of those things you have in spades in cars. The downside is, because everybody wants that. And everybody’s in a car, it means you don’t get anywhere.
Unknown Speaker 52:57
Yeah, I don’t think that’s a whole story. I mean, I think a lot of the time people drive because the alternative is either aren’t there don’t feel possible, or they don’t feel safe. So cycling on the road wouldn’t feel safe, you wouldn’t even most people wouldn’t even consider it. But we’ve seen I grew up in rural West Somerset, and you had to learn to drive as soon as you turn 17, you would take your test, you buy a car, and you drive everywhere, because the buses mean the buses are even worse. Now. They were okay at the time, but not great. But they just took longer, and you couldn’t get everywhere you needed to go my friends as a teenager lived in variable kind of communities. And so you had to drive there was just no other option I would have loved to cycle. And you’ve seen in London, where we’ve got a growing network of roots, suddenly, all these people from all walks of life, all kinds of demographics.
Laura Laker 53:48
genders, you see a much better one gender split, but also all types of people cycling. And that kind of speaks to the fact that actually, people do want to do this and they may want to convenience but they also want to enjoy their journey. They also want to save money.
Cycling can be incredibly convenient, no parking worries, it’s so much cheaper you know you don’t have to stress of finding a parking space or you know, paying vast amounts of money. I think something like
I forget the number who in transport poverty in this country because of cars basically.
They spend something like 19% of their income on their car with finance lorry, using facts to convince me that’s
Carlton Reid 54:36
Anybody can convince with facts, come on.
At that juncture, I’d like to go across to my colleague David in America. Take it away, David.
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Carlton Reid 56:04
Thanks, David. And we are back with Laura Laker the Laker people. And she’s the author of potholes and pavements a bumpy ride on Britain’s National Cycle network. It’s not actually out yet, isn’t Laura. It’s actually middle middle of the next month, middle of night. Hmm. Yeah. So you having a launch day what you’re doing?
Laura Laker 56:28
Yeah, I’ve got some. You’ve got like, You got speaker a bank and tell us tell us what you’re doing? Yeah, so I’ve got I’m having like a bit of a party for some friends and family.
And then I’ve got a talk in Stanford’s in Covent Garden.
I’m speaking in Parliament. But I think that’s more of a parliamentary event. And I have got an event at Stanfords in Bristol with Xavier Bryce, we’re going to discuss the future of the NCN.
I’ve got one I’m speaking in Oxford, at a bookshop. I’m going to be interviewed by Emily Kerr, who’s a green Councillor there. I have got a there’s a literary festival in Wantage in November. And we’re looking at other events as we speak.
Carlton Reid 57:16
Excellent. And this is two hundred and …. All right, I’m going to deliver the end of the book. We’re talking 264 pages, and then you’ve got references back. I mean, one of them. Thank you very much.
Laura Laker 57:32
Yeah.
Carlton Reid 57:34
Thanks. as well. Yes, at the back there, but there’s, there’s lots in this.
So who’s gonna be? Who’s your audience? Who’s gonna be reading this? Who do you think will be reading this? And what might actually could it start something big with with in politics? Can we could we get this like your manifesto? Can it get out there? What do you hope to happen with your book?
Laura Laker 58:00
Yeah, well, obviously, I want everyone to read it. I mean, my editor at Bloomsbury was saying, you know, it’s probably going to be cycling enthusiasts, people who I guess already, maybe listen to your podcast, my podcast, read our articles about cycling. But I would like to think that you know, these people, these two thirds to four fifths of people who want more cycling people who think, you know, why do I have to drive everywhere? Why aren’t there safe cycle routes? Why can’t my kids cycle to school, and see that might see this book and think, Oh, this is going to tell that story, this is going to explain it to me. And so I hope that it’s going to give people a sense of kind of why we are where we’re at, with the history of the NCN and the stories, but also, you know, how wonderful it could be if we had this thing, this network of connected routes, if it were possible for all of these people who say they want to cycle and more who maybe don’t even know they want to cycle
could do so. And I hope that, you know, my perhaps naive hope is that people will read it and think, you know, this could be such a wonderful thing, why aren’t we doing it? And how can we get it to happen and I hope policymakers you know, we’ve got an election coming up
I think this speaks to you know, forget the culture wars. I think this speaks to all sides, you know, of politics, I think, you know, individual freedom and choice is a conservative value, right? Cycling, cycling delivers on that.
Carlton Reid 59:26
Cycling is so libertarian is a
form of transport I’ve had many conversations
This is freedom. Why is this left wing? Why do people always assume it’s just
this thing?
Laura Laker 59:42
Yeah, it’s become a cultural thing. And it’s only for I think, you know, certain factions of the right perhaps see this as a wedge issue. And a way of you know, rallying people around them on based on kind of outrage like false outrage really, untruthes.
and you
You know, in terms of the left, this is, you know, great value for money, the Labour Party is very, very keen on showing they’re working and proving to people that they can be trusted with the economy. It delivers on the green agenda, it’s so beneficial in terms of cutting carbon emissions, it delivers on health, pretty much every department that we can think of this offers people access to work, you know, so many people who are out of work, especially in rural communities can’t even afford to go and find work or stay in a job because the transport is too expensive, or it’s too patchy doesn’t go in and they needed to go. So there’s like barely a thing that this doesn’t touch. And I really hope that you know, along with kind of griping, which is, I hope not too much of the book, and the polemic side that this shows actually, you know, this is great for tourism, this is great for our mental health. This can bring us together, you know, it’s about in Scotland, I saw that a cycle route can be a linear park, it can be about artwork and community. It can bring people together from different walks of life around a space. And, you know, cycling delivers on these things. And, you know, if we kind of dropped the culture was narrative, which is nonsense. You know, we could see all of these benefits fairly quickly and for very little money, and have a far better country for it.
Carlton Reid 1:01:18
Many people would baulk at having Boris Johnson back. And you do mention this in the book of what he and Andrew Gilligan were able to do. Hopefully, it doesn’t seem like I want him back. But will it that that is what you need. I mean, you do talk about having a cycling Prime Minister, we had a cycling Prime Minister, we had a Prime Minister who said it was me a golden age for cycling. So we need we need him back. Laura, that we just we need we need Boris back. No, we don’t like that back there. Are there other other politicians are available? We just need people to believe in it. And you know, I hope that people read the book and think, actually, this is something we can believe in, but don’t need one of the good things about Boris Johnson. Not only did he you know, talk, the talk, walk the talk, all that kind of stuff. But he was right wing. So he could he just instantly takes away that that part of this oversight is a left wing things like well, here’s this right wing politician who’s pushing for this Andrew Gilligan, Telegraph writer. These are not left wing people in any way, shape, or form. So is that what we need we actually need and then we’d like all politicians to do this, but by the same thing, you need somebody almost on the opposite side to be doing this, they’ve got more chance of pushing this through. So that’s why Boris Johnson did so well, because he was right wing and the Mail isn’t gonna, you know, rail against what Boris Johnson was doing. They never did.
Laura Laker 1:02:46
They did though. They did. They totally did. I don’t think they discriminated against him because he was towards their political leanings. I mean, it’s unlikely we’re going to have another conservative government, right, when we’ve got the election coming up, it’s going to be Labour by all likelihood.
And so they’re going to be the ones in power delivering. So I don’t know,
Carlton Reid 1:03:09
But they backtracked over their green policies. I mean, what hope do we have?
Laura Laker 1:03:12
I know I know. I know it’s incredibly disappointing. And the thing is this this stuff like the green agenda, more broadly investment in insulating homes, for example, is such great return on investment and if they’re thinking about finances and showing they’re working insulating homes is just a total no brainer. You know, we all pay far too much for our energy bills. We live in draughty leaky homes. So many houses are mouldy because of the cold walls are damp
Yeah, I just think you know, and green technology, huge growth industry.
Solar and wind where you know, we’re windy little island, but a lot of coastline. Offshore wind is fantastic.
Carlton Reid 1:03:55
But in your in the book, you show how national highways basically is an organisation set up to build roads. And once you’ve done something like that, and that’s their raison d’etre. Guess what they’re going to build roads. Yeah. So yeah, it’s that oil tanker you know having to put the brakes on and change a whole culture so we’re not talking about you know,
Cuz your manifesto is saying you know, stop funding this and yeah.
Laura Laker 1:04:28
Wales did this basically with their no more roads or no more roads and less they increased active travel and public transport policy. They basically have kind of repurpose their national highways body around this agenda, you know, fill in the potholes. We’ve got a road in a dreadful state
and, you know, develop use all their skills and power and funding for active travel. You know, public transport in this country is drastically underfunded. Buses are so important, especially in rural areas, especially people on low incomes, especially for women and
Do you know buses are so important? We’re really, really not kind of reaping the power the massive power of the bus.?
Carlton Reid 1:05:08
Yeah, that’s in your book as well, because you’re talking about
how buses, you know, need to be able to carry bikes. Yeah. And that’s, you know, that’s a small part of what they could do but the broader transport perspective that’s that’s so important
right Laura? Well, we could we could obviously go on and talk for many hours and we have done in the past because we’ve we’ve we’ve done podcasts.
Now, when I ask people to mention where they can get hold of them, I’d like you to do that and feel free to mention Streets Ahead. You have sort of done anyway.
But tell people where where they can hear more from you where they can read your stuff. Give it give us the whole I am about
Laura Laker.
Laura Laker 1:05:57
So yeah, so my book will be available from the ninth of May in all good bookstores. I’ve also narrated the audio book, so if you like sound, my voice, even if you don’t, I’m on the audio book, which I believe will be out at the same time as the regular reading book. And then I am freelance. I’ve got a column in Cycling Plus magazine. I write for various outlets. I’ve been doing some stuff for City Lab. I’ve got a piece coming out with them soon. Do bits and bobs for The Guardian. Gosh, there’s so many places I kind of forget. But yeah, and then I’ve got a podcast Streets ahead with Adam Tranter and Ned Boulting.
Carlton Reid 1:06:35
Never heard of them.
Laura Laker 1:06:40
I know, I’m like the least the least famous trio. But they’re great. It’s great. Yeah, I think that’s it. I think that’s me
Carlton Reid 1:06:49
That’s it for today’s show, thanks to Laura Laker for that bumpy ride along the best and worst bits of Britain’s National Cycle network. And thanks to you for listening to Episode 352 of the spokesmen podcast brought to you in association with Tern bicycles. Shownotes and more can be found at the-spokesmen.com Listen out for episode 353 next month, when I may reveal details of a certain bikepacking project I’ve got cooking … meanwhile, get out there and ride …
15th April 2024
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 351: Andy McGrath — God is Dead
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUEST: Andy McGrath
- Laura Laker
Carlton Reid, April 21, 2024
Read more… - Andy McGrath — God is Dead
Carlton Reid, April 15, 2024
Read more… - AA’s Think Bike Redux
Carlton Reid, April 7, 2024
Read more… - Turn on Strava for everyday journeys, it could reshape streets for the better
Carlton Reid, March 17, 2024
Read more… - Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett of Komoot
Carlton Reid, March 10, 2024
Read more… - Richard Fletcher, Mr Cycling on the Isle of Man
Carlton Reid, February 24, 2024
Read more… - Monica Garrison of Black Girls Do Bike
Carlton Reid, February 20, 2024
Read more… - Balance bikes, Bikeability and the Saint Piran team at the Tour of Britain
Carlton Reid, January 28, 2024
Read more… - 24 hour racing with Josh Reid on Scotland’s Strathpuffer
Carlton Reid, January 27, 2024
Read more… -
First Ever Computer Modelling of How Cyclists (And Motorists) Hit Potholes
Carlton Reid, December 28, 2023
Read more…
TRANSCRIPT
Carlton Reid 0:12
Welcome to Episode 351 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Monday, April 15 2024.
David Bernstein 0:28
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.
Carlton Reid 1:04
I’m Carlton Reid. And today’s show is the first of two episodes with bike book authors. Later this week, I’ll share the chat I had with potholes and pavement author Laura Laker a book so fresh, it’s not even out yet. But today, I talk with William Hill award winning author Andy McGrath about his 2022 book, God is dead biography of Frank Vandenbrouke the wunderkind who died a mysterious death in a grungy African hotel room.
Liège–Bastogne–Liège has been staged since 1892, the oldest of cycling’s five monument races, and this year’s race will be staged at the end of the month, Sunday the 21st to be exact. Now, Andy, it’s 25 years since a certain famous victory of that particular race. So tell us about that.
Andy McGrath 2:10
This was the edition of Liège–Bastogne–Liège where the great Belgian cycling hope Frank Vandenbrouke seemed to be fulfilling his immense potential. And he did it in his own unique way. He told anyone that would listen in the days for the race, you know, teammates, DS’s, rivals and other races and media, where he was going to attack to win the race to make it stick, a bit like Muhammad Ali used to do before his heavyweight fight. And he’d went out for a 20 minute puto, a few days before the age best on the age. And it’s covered his teammate saw him come back to the hotel, you know, barely a blink of an eye later. And he told him, that’s all all I need, I feel good. I’m going to win lift some of the age. And he was in a state of grace that day, he attacked on by ODU, which sounds different course back then. It finished in an industrial suburb over the age. And the Cordilla. Redo was about oh, at 90k from the finish. And he, he he wrote up in the big room, he tacked up in the big green, which is I could barely walk up it when I was researching the book, which is a astonishing and slightly sinister thing when you really get into that era of cycling. And he was already clearly the best, you know, he he accelerated pass the defending champion makayley Bartley like it was nothing and then he just let the rest catch him up, basically. And he did attack, you know, if we’re going to split hairs slightly later than he said he would you know, or maybe earlier actually, I think it was early. And he said he would you know, a few 100 metres earlier. Because
Carlton Reid 3:55
Because that’s in your book, isn’t it? Yeah. It’s a very detailed book and you you’re knocking on doors, and you give the exact door that he actually did attack on and not the one that you said he’s going to attack on?
Andy McGrath 4:06
Yeah, the thing is, I actually knocked on the door of the house number he said he would attack which was 256. You know, hoping for some kind of journalistic intrigue and it was a little bit disappointing that I think people that answered the door were very nice, but it was someone looking after their elderly parent and they said they didn’t like cycling, they didn’t know about it. So so so I was like yeah, that’s there’s that avenue gone in the book. But no abandoned Brook road away from the last remaining rival Michael Burgard on the court to send Nicola outside the edge and road to victory just like he said he would and you know, a country that was already in thrall to him was an even more rapturous, you know, Eddie Merckx was extremely impressed. You know, the Eddie marks the greatest and that was really, I think it was 24 Back then van of work, and it wasn’t so normal for providers to break through in their early 20s, which is what he had done. He was the exception. And it seemed like that, you know, the cycling world was gonna fall to him. You know. During the book research, I kind of ascertained that he could probably have won almost anything apart from a grantor, you know, he was a strong climber, but didn’t have the consistency or the or the mentality to do it over three weeks, but everything else was, was fair game. But that was a very brief high point, you know, that was that was paradise. And he was soon into purgatory. And then how, you know, within a year, which kind of summed up his his life and his career trajectory.
Carlton Reid 5:41
And, and spoiler alert, the kind of the title of your book tells us that Frank is no longer with us. But you did refer a few moments ago, almost to the fact that this is an EPO era. So he’s going up in the big ring, that’s kind of Superman stuff that, you know, Nietzsche, God is dead stuff. So clearly he was he was deeping, he kind of admitted he was doping. This is the EPO era. But then what everybody was saying at that time was, well, everybody was doping. So we’re all equal. Do you buy into that? Are you if everybody’s taken EPO at the time, and he’s such a wonderful rider? Let’s give him those victories, because everybody was on this stuff. person.
Andy McGrath 6:27
I mean, they’re all saying at the time, and I was partly what bothered him, you know, 5, 10 years later that he felt that he was being scapegoated. What we know now, is that essentially, you know, let’s be the what’s the word diplomatic here? Legally, most of the bunch, we’re, we’re doing it, there’s been lots of admissions. Do I think that makes it okay, in a level playing field? No, no, I don’t think so. That’s too simplistic, you know, that comes down to you know, things like science and natural amount of creates and how much room you have to dope, you know, or to get up to the rudimentary UCI testing limit of 50, which it was back then, you know, which was, like a broken speed Camry on a motorway. It barely stopped cheating. If you are caught over the 50, like, image credit limit you are. I think you were given a small fine, and you couldn’t race for two weeks? What kind of, you know, what kind of punishment? Is that really what kind of thing to stop? Anyone from having huge gains, really, that can change, change everything? So no, no, it wasn’t fair. Like it’s not fair. And there are a fair few riders who were probably in, in the minority who chose to be clean, you know, to ride on bread and water, as they say, who didn’t make it who had to take other jobs who. And that was the kind of that’s always a sad thing about doping in a way, you know, that. I don’t think anyone who’s has a positive for doping, who’s cheated. When they get into cycling, they don’t want to put a needle in their arm or have their blood transfused or whatever kind of ghoulish thing hopefully went on, doesn’t go on now. But along the line they get, they get sucked into certain culture and you know, you invest so much time and energy and sacrifice into something you love, and you have to love it. That you realise, well, this is the kind of Faustian deal that many of them thought I had to make that they thought that they didn’t do this, they would finish in the last group or second class group and they wouldn’t, they wouldn’t get the contract renewed. They wouldn’t even be close to winning, you know, to fulfilling their childhood dreams. And you have an abrupt turn turn pro in 1994, which was really probably the worst the worst possible year to turn pro maybe in cycling, because EPO was, that was the year that it was about to get ramped, and if it wasn’t already ramping.
Carlton Reid 9:00
And then Cofidis wasn’t exactly the cleanest of teams.
Andy McGrath 9:04
No. I mean, this is Vandenbrouke. He was on Mapei who were the Italian super team. You may see their products in your local homeware stores you know, they still make I think it’s grouting Yeah, ground
tiles, tile, yes. tiles.
things are still popular. I still smile when I see them and and b&q and all other good stores, but they were the best number one, and they really complimented in hindsight, complimented Vandenbrouke perfectly because often, you know, in in the classics of old classics, he won and he won a fair few, you know, scale the price hit Volk, obviously Liège–Bastogne–Liège. He could be the attacking foil or tactically to say Tom Steels, a sprinter or Johan Museuw, who was a permanent cobbles rider. But anyway, after three, four years, which were the most stable, far and away the most stable years, results wise and maybe mentality wise over his whole career. He has acted in he he wanted to be a contract. He wasn’t ever patient with very much ever. And he he chose good to French Team Cofidis for double the money basically. And they gave him he could pick, you know, his friends, his his teammates, so, pick several of those. And it started off well, but yeah, it transpired that they had they had a kind of sleeping pill and drinking culture. And that’s not a good combination. You know, even one thing. One of those dumb two accesses is bad, but they’d be on training camps, you know, in winter, this is how Vandenberg got hooked in the winter of 98. You know, they’d be it’d be bored you know, you do your training in the sun somewhere in Spain and then a radical Philip go mom, who I think one gateway will give himself. This strong, strapping Frenchman, you know, said why don’t you take this and we’ll have some drinks and what happens is you kind of you have a euphoric high. That’s beyond you know, extreme drunkenness. You know, often you don’t remember what you do when you’re on under the influence of still not an alcohol, you know? And they go out partying or they’re still the team campervan. And it’s kind of thing you wouldn’t believe it happened then, let alone now.
Carlton Reid 11:28
So what is Stilnoct? It’s in your book loads. So just tell us what Stilnoct is.
Andy McGrath 11:34
It’s a sleeping pill with various different brand names. I actually think Anglophone listeners might know it better as Ambien. I think that’s alright. Okay. Yes. Australian kind of version of it. Yes, it’s a sleeping pill. And you know, normally, I think it’s used for insomniacs. And if you, you take one you wait 20 minutes, and it should pretty much knock you out. But they will take festivals, you know, handfuls at the very least. And if you resist if you fight the urge to sleep with alcohol, then you you push through to this strange blankness and euphoric high. And David Miller also has some stories, I think in his, his autobiography of strange things, and I’m the influence, you know. And, you know, it’s kind of a reminder also, that professional cyclists, young freshmen, cyclists are very suggestible. They’re, maybe not quite all of them fully formed as adults, you know, when they turn someone like Vandenbroucke turn pro, at 19. He was more brought up in the sporting culture than really, as a human being, as an app was an adult human being it and kind of influenced by that. So they’re very fragile. And that’s the other thing, you know, we’ve covered it. So there was a lacking duty of care, you know, in terms of the management and, you know, they seem to know what was going on, but they didn’t do much about it really like they, they hired a psychologist to do a to have a talk with with the riders who basically laughed him out of the room. So you know, hindsight is 2020, but it was not a good team for Benbrook to band with a good culture.
Carlton Reid 13:21
Andy, let’s let’s dig into you, because you’ve written this book. And we will we’ll we’ll talk about it, tonnes coming up. But this is before your time in effect, certainly before your time as a journalist you’ve started working from what I can see from your LinkedIn profile. You started working for Cycling Weekly. And then you became the head of Rouleur, which many people wouldn’t want men will know both both titles of course. But this is in effect before your time. Was this before your were You were you like a big cycling fan? From a you know, a youth?
Andy McGrath 14:00
Yeah, I mean, whenever its heyday was before my time in terms of cycling fandom, I really got into it, you know, the Lance Armstrong years 2002 was the year that I you know, discovered this fantastic and strange and exotic sport. And I you know, I did come across Vanderbrouke but by then he was really really on the down slide you know the downfall. I do remember his 2003 Tour of Flanders at the time you know, I remember it. It being this remarkable comeback story where you know this guy who was ranked outside the top 500 in in the UCI standings came second in the tour Flanders out of nowhere. But you know, he was kind of the figure of fun the kind of the fallen hero then. But yeah, he was kind of trying to see I didn’t think much about him when I was at cycling weekly as a staff writer and then you know, joining ruler like, later on I to my first book was about Tom Simpson. I I published back in 2017 lovely kind of mix of contemporary photographs and stories from those who know Thompson best with Rapha, you know, one of their first books. And I was very fortunate that won the sports book of the year prize that year, which was a huge boon. Yes.
Carlton Reid 15:22
What did you do with 30 grand Andy?
Andy McGrath 15:25
I bought a Colnago Carlton, which possibly wasn’t seeing us, I don’t like to ride it in, you know, winter, or spring, sometimes autumn. So, you know, in the UK, I don’t ride a bike to get too messy. And then that really leaves you two or three good months of cycling. So that was, that was my dream bike, you know, when I was a teenager that that was a bike. But funnily enough, that was a brand that I saw in all the cycling magazines, and I obviously, cycling journalists are not the best paid people in the world, sorry to disappoint their any young listeners. But that was, I mean, that was a life changing amount of money for me. So I did go ahead and bought a Kona Argo. You know, that was the that was the main thing and the rest went boringly in the savings.
Carlton Reid 16:11
Now, I kind of threw that in there a to be rude, and see what you say. And so you know, is it wind, wind? And so on? No, it’s a bike. Okay, great. But also, that was a big deal to win that, that, yeah, that’s a big cash amount. And that’s a big deal to win the William Hill sports book of the year well done on on that. You’re basically your your, your, your, you’ve been writing about people who were from a different era, in effect. So these these are these are almost not united to me, Tom Simpson is isn’t a contemporary, obviously. But Frank Vandenbroucke is certainly somebody I would be very, very well well aware of when I was, you know, in into, in writing about cycle sport I was, he was around at that point. So you’re writing about people in effect from from from history. So you’re almost a historian, not just, you know, not just a biographer, you’re digging into past history,
Andy McGrath 17:13
I never really thought about it like that, that’s an interesting way of putting it maybe I should put historian on my LinkedIn profile. It feels like quite recent history, though.
Carlton Reid 17:22
It really isn’t, you know, when you look at this, this is 25 years, that’s a good time away, you know, for for somebody to still be talked about, and for books to be written, etc. That’s, that’s, that’s a federal what it is history.
Andy McGrath 17:36
That’s also what I like, because, you know, in a way, you know, Vandenbrouke, and Simpson both have, have had books written about them already. But I had the kind of maybe the naive hunch, which I would have told my publishers that I can get new stories, you know, there’s more things to be said, by different people, which I which, which I believed in, you know, turned out to be true. You know, there’s, there’s deeper perspective says revisionism to be done, there’s new things to be discovered. And, to be honest, I think I’ve found with, with slightly older people, you know, when you’re talking about the people around Simpson and Vandenberg, and in general, and in cycling there, they’ve lived long lives, you know, so they have more more stories, more life, experience, more more regrets, you know, more successes. But they also, yeah, that somehow they’re just that appeals to me, you know, they, they’re certainly more open, generally speaking. You know, compared to, for example, let’s say, if I was trying to write the, the biography of Matthew Vanderpool who, who won the Tour, Flanders, you know, very recently, there will be a whole circle of people around him that comparatively, it will be very close, very hard to get close to him. And very hard to get intriguing things now, you know, in 10 years time, maybe it’d be a different story. So I think that plays as a kind of advantage in a way to be going back rather than rather than always working with, you know, present champions,
Carlton Reid 19:14
the people you’ve written about in their books are clearly flawed heroes. So both both legendary, both died, that that kind of helps if you’re going to be a biographer, when somebody is no longer here in many respects, but they’re both flawed. So So is that something that naturally attracts a biographer because if you if you’re floored by de facto you’re kind of more interesting. You know, you’re you’re you’re there’s there’s chinks in that armour. There’s the stuff that a journalist stroke historian can get their teeth into. And most sports people tend to be kind of flawed anyway, you know, there’s many psychological studies which show that you know that the absolute top achievers have had some sort of formative bad experience in in their earlier life, which is then forced them to become these, these super men in terms of you know, male sport. So is that something that attracts you the fact that these are flawed heroes you can you can really talk about a flawed here and more than somebody who’s squeaky clean.
Andy McGrath 20:34
Well, firstly, I think we’re all flawed. You’re no one’s perfect. But the Yes, I completely see what you’re saying that these these are top athletes are people who push things to the extremes who, you know, can be quite flawed or extremely flawed, you know. And that’s more the thing, but it, there was no middle for Vandenbroucke things were either going fantastic or his confidence was 100%. Or it was the opposite, you know, there seem to be, you know, they will see a sixth gear or a neutral with him. And I think we’re all drawn to, to people who push limits that regular human beings wouldn’t normally you know, push. Who wouldn’t, you know, we we wouldn’t want to take you know, 10 sleeping pills, and then down some glasses of wine on a night out, but so there’s a kind of, I think there’s a slightly vicarious fascination sometimes. But Vanderburgh was also I wouldn’t say he was escaping from something, you know, a kind of traumatic incident in his childhood, but it’s definitely worth noting that his father was his uncle. He was part of a second dynasty. So his uncle was dubbed the John Louis mercs as Frank would be. Sean Luke, that’s right. Race for Persia had some great results. Never quite lived up to that moniker, who Ken and his father who was older than John Luke. So John’s brother, John Jack. He was on the cusp of being a pro site because he just signed his his contract. When hit, their father died and he became guardian to John Luke, and John Paul. His brothers, his younger brothers, so his history was snatched away from him before he could do anything about it, and he had to he had to sell off his his father’s Frank’s grandfather’s his basins and toilets and sinks because he was a kind of plumber handyman to shut down the business. So there was a kind of element of his Frank’s Father John Jack being being a real driving force for positive and for negative through his formative years, you know, he pushed him so hard, you know, he would, he would follow training with a stopwatch praise was kind of few and far between shows of shows of kind of love work, not not regular at all. And, you know, Frank felt that sometimes you’ve treated too much as a cyclist and not enough as a son you know, as a as a person. And they had, you know, they had fallings out throughout Frank’s life. And, you know, there was also a depression that John Jack had. Or John Paul, maybe it was actually his younger brother. And Frank had that too. So there’s a kind of there’s a, there’s a kind of site genetic, I think, vulnerability to two of, you know, mental health problems that was on show here. So there’s that extreme too. And this is what I kind of also find fascinating about not just pro cyclists, but people in general, athletes in general, that when we see them, just seeing when we see them in the Tour de France or tour Flanders, whatever, we’re seeing 1% of their life, you know. And for Frank, you know, when he was on the bike, that was a kind of safe place, really, when things are going well. That was his refuge. And it was really like when he wasn’t on the bike when he was by himself. And you know, he couldn’t be by himself, really, he loved being around people need to be around people to be supervised sometimes. But when he was alone, that was when the problem started, when he had time to think or to do certain misdemeanours or wrong things. That was a problem. And people don’t think about that, you know that. Everything really needs to be going well, and in the 99% of your life outside of the bike pace for the bike race to go well.
Carlton Reid 24:46
So you mentioned father, son relationship stuff there, which can reminded me that when I was looking at the emails of when we’ve interacted before, and when you were editor of Rouleur, you actually published I’m getting more into you about, you actually published a ride of my son of coming back from China, in Rouleur, and this is now four or five years back when he did that ride and you, you, you published an account of that ride. But you were with Rouleur for about five years, four years editor?
Andy McGrath 25:23
yeah, yeah, every year for nine years and I was here to for five years, you know, which was that was a dream. That was a dream, you know, I was in my mid 20s When I became editor, and I just loved hearing their stories where I’d actually been at cycle sport, which is part of cycling weekly part a part of that IPC Media Group, you know, 15 years ago, that was where I was kind of under under the wing of Ed Pickering, who, who’s now the Rouleur editor, you know, I was around all these great writers like Lionel Birnie, and, you know, just learning from them, you know, either by by osmosis or by asking stupid questions, which is a kind of great way to learn. But I’ve really found I was drawn to longer form storytelling, you know, articles, over 2000 words, long interviews, you know, two, three hours sometimes or, you know, spending a whole day or, or, you know, to with a pro cyclist to really, truly get under their skin, you know, because that’s also the media landscape in increasingly at the moment, sometimes, you’re given 20 minutes, 25 minutes in a hotel lobby, to write a long feature that’s supposed to you know, be chapter and verse about the cyclist. And that’s not you know, that’s not sufficient. I really was kinda like an entry kind of opened the doors you know, ruler when you said you with ruler that kind of had a special effect, they knew you were gonna do a very thorough, well researched, well written job, which I think really helped. And this is also the last landscape we’re in that was, you know, I joined over 10 years ago, and slightly magazines, were more plentiful, were more more profitable. And I still read paper, by the way, I’d never read a Kindle course. And I’m, I’m kind of 35 going on 65 I just like, you know, I’m looking at a bookcase with about 200 books right now. And the same goes for magazines, I just, I’m a magazine guy. And I don’t see that changing. And I’m kind of proud of that, because I’m slightly scared that in even in 10 years, Time Magazine might go the way of a vine on and be a collector’s item when it really shouldn’t be
Carlton Reid 27:42
well, Cycling Weekly is older than Liège–Bastogne–Liège. So that was that was 1891. So that presumably, has has a place in the market, almost guaranteed a lot of the other magazines, maybe not so much, and ruler has a place in that is long form. It is something that, you know, the pro riders as well as cycle sport fans will love and look up to because it does go into immense detail and great care, and the quality of the paper, all that kind of stuff. So it’s I guess, it’s the magazines, in the middle, that that fall between those two kind of different models that are going to suffer.
Andy McGrath 28:28
Perhaps, you know, the Rouleur owner told me a few years ago that there was there was going to be survival of the fittest and you know, he’s turned out to be right. I think it’s also the care you know, the photography and in rural areas, you know, top top notch I think people like that baby surprise, you know, sometimes have little feedback I got as editor, you know, that I could just see the, you know, often the subscription numbers rising and you see the sales figures and I like to think there’s a very happy silent majority. And maybe the numbers pull that out that, you know, some people on social media will either go on there to say how fantastic something is, or how appalling it is or that their magazine never arrived, you know, and that’s fine, you know, but that’s, that’s the world we live in. But I’m not even sure about cycling weekly, I’ve got a huge attachment to that magazine sentimentally. But it could be that that ends up being being an online only presence in 10 years time or you know five years time and I really hope that isn’t the case. But that more and more people are reading things on their phones or their tablets. So you know, papers printed so as a find its its place you know, but realised yet definitely one for the connoisseur. Um, and we do crazy thing crazy fun things. You know, I remember taking a crew of photographers and writers to Paris-Roubaix, which is my favourite race. Because Because I said next year we’re going to do a whole edition of Rouleur just around Paris-Roubaix. And we designed it with a kind of cobblestone font. And we kind of you know, each story was a sector basically and we did it you know, we were there for a week. We worked bloomin hard. And I think we saw six sectors on the day, which for goes from south to north, took some driving that pushed the limits of the highway code. But it was you know, we, we just had carte blanche to do pretty wild things like you know, we had a Gonzo writer called Mort not bow, who was Danish, who, who who divided opinion, you know, but I’ve never seen anyone write like that in cycling media, let alone sports media like and he always got the interview, he always ingratiated himself with the biggest names in cycling, you know, and that’s what I loved was like different styles make make a magazine, for example, you know, Morton was meant to Morton and Jakob, who we call the crazy Danes is right of geography in a combo for several years, so we’re meant to spend two hours with Lance Armstrong in the height of his, you know, scandalous air, I think was 2013 2014. And they ended up spending two or three days I played golf with him, you know, and it was just, yeah, like, the one thing about Rouleur that we wanted to change was that to make it not seem so stuffy or serious, because because we were having a lot of fun making it and we all love cycling, and there’s a lot of, you know, humour to be had with it. You know, you might look at the black and white photographs. And you know, think it’s been ernest but you know, we tried to change that every now and then. It’s
Carlton Reid 32:01
clearly it was it was founded in a party in a Guy Andrews but partly with Simon Mottram of a Rapha, so it’s like, A, in some ways, like a Rapha, journal it had that certain had that, you know, in the early days, certainly had that Rapha you know, aesthetic. And, and power to its elbow for having that aesthetic, because Simon, you know, absolutely went in it, I can say this into the veins of cycling at that time with with with, you know, a very beautiful magazine.
Andy McGrath 32:40
Yeah, he was, you know, he was pivotal to its founding like, along with Guy who, who was the founder, you know, they they saw they saw something different. And they, you know, they put in the money in the effort fearing that no one would buy that first issue which now goes for hundreds on eBay. And, you know, in many ways, it was similar to I think Jacque Waterlase courir magazine in the 50s and 60s, you know, that style and that aesthetic and you know, Guy didn’t want any reviews. He wanted to show the cycling that you know, that he loved that also a child with the Rapha aesthetic and their values. And basically, the Rouleur blueprint that he laid out in those first issues is still what Rouleur is, you know, it’s you know, in depth interviews, it’s photography with a difference. And you ever heard is actually coming up for nearly 20 years. I think it’ll be in a couple of years time. And
Carlton Reid 33:42
Rapha is 20 years old this year. So that makes me feel old. Because now, I was the first person to report on Rapha’s founding on in would have been, it would have been online, I would I probably did a story on bikebiz.com on this, you know, strange aesthetics based, cycled clothing manufacturer, you know, coming in from the advertising world. So I broke the story of Rapha coming in into cycling, and then now it’s that 20 years or so their current PR you know, emails me and says, Oh, would you like to do a story on on Rapha being 20 It’s like, oh my god, they’re 20 and I did a story on them, you know, and it doesn’t feel 20 years away. So it’s history, as well. So we’re kind of coming full circle on on history there. Now on on LinkedIn, you actually say you’re one of your career highlights is actually writing for Bicycling. So what why was that a career highlight highlight?
Andy McGrath 34:50
Did I say that? Oh, that’s good. I just I just wanted to write for you know, one of the tops like a magazine. I’ve been seeing it all my life. You know, when I went freelance two years ago, that was basically my chance to write for whoever I wanted. And yeah, I’m a fellow fellow news. Now fellow went online. So I just saw this kind of this prestige of writing for for an American publication who, who I always thought, you know, did some really good journalism. And they do. I mean, it’s most rigorous fact checking process I’ve ever had, and they did some beautiful photography, it was a long profile of Peter Sagan in his retirement. Yeah, and I went to Slovakia to see, you know, his family with old friends. And I went to Spain to interview him. And it kind of felt like old school journalism, you know, also that they back you to do that, you know, both in terms of time, word count, and paying expenses.
Carlton Reid 35:56
And paying, because that’s why I like writing for American magazines is they pay five times more than any British magazine.
Andy McGrath 36:06
Yeah, I’m not sure if we should be advertising that this is true. Yeah, saying the Americans taking out lucrative stores. But no, absolutely. Like, that’s the thing that I’m not sure why it’s five times more. So I understand, you know, the, the kind of living costs, generally speaking, in the US in cycling friendly pockets is probably higher. So, so they were charging more, but five times more. You know, word rates for journalists, and in cycling identity have changed for 20 years, you know, since Rapha’s inception, which is kind of sad. It’s more of a labour of love than it ever was, and it was still a labour of love 20 years ago. But yeah, like the bicycling and you know, writing for cycling class I’ve written for basically every Anglophone cycling title in my not so young career now I’m 35. And it’s just a pleasure, you know, that something that you know, the teenage me will be super proud of, and you know, that, don’t me, it’s, it’s still proud of, you know, it’s something really nice to go in my bookshelf. And it’s always new stories and new angles, and well, not new sci fi magazines, really. But I kind of live in hope that I can keep doing that mainly around cycling, but I am you know, one slightly sad thing is that I’m trying to diversify slightly and you know, write about different sports, as well as cycling.
Carlton Reid 37:39
I see you on art substack. So that’s really diversifying.
Andy McGrath 37:45
That’s not That’s not for profit. That’s just for me. I just wanted to ride this is, this is something that I started this year, just going to local galleries and doing short, short reviews, you know, with just to learn about art, and to see what I like what I don’t like, you know, I always, you know, I’ve kind of thought that modern art is a bit pretentious, but I’ve never really been to see that much. So I thought it could be fun. And it’s proven to be fun. But the irony is that my my work deadlines are kind of impinging on my art reviews to the point that I haven’t posted anything in about two months, but I will soon for my 20 substack followers. No, it’s just fine. You know, you can live in deadlines. And with a bit of stress for so long that it’s a nice kind of thing to try to do to, you know, flex some different writing muscles, but also learn about something totally away from sport, which is really the thing that I love.
Carlton Reid 38:49
So I want to dig further into that level of cycling and into God is dead, your book. But right now I’d like to go across to my colleague David, who will give us a short ad break.
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Carlton Reid 40:24
So we are back with Andy McGrath and Andy is the well as he’s been telling us in the the before the ad break that he’s been telling us about his career trajectory through cycling into into now doing an art substack even for the for the fun of it and the hell of it and the learning of it. Which Which sounds fantastic, because I should do that too. I should learn new stuff. But the thing we started this podcast with was with the the anniversary coming up to 25 years since since Frank Vandenbroucke and we can we call him VDB Do you think we can we can really Yeah. Yeah. Or should we say Frank goes to Frank because really it is it’s like it’s a it is actually an unknown nickname for other people in Belgium isn’t is not not just something that’s pertinent to him.
Andy McGrath 41:23
That’s right. There’s lots of bands you know something? Yeah, Vanda
Carlton Reid 41:27
something. Okay. So VDB we can we can go with that, as we kind of use a shorthand gumming up. So your book 2002. This came out, and he and it’s the rise and fall of Frank Vandenbroucke cycling’s great wasted talent is the subhead to God is dead. Now God is dead is clearly a Nietzsche reference. Also a reference to when he was coming up when when Frank was coming up through the sport, lots of people treated him as a god. And then in his autobiography, he talks about not being a god, but the very fact that he’s saying he’s not a God means kind of other people were saying he was a god. So that’s, that’s a hell of a provocative title for a book. Andy Yeah, absolutely.
Andy McGrath 42:25
I just correct you there. It came out in 2022. If it came out in 2002, I would have been 14 and
Carlton Reid 42:33
I’m sorry, sorry. 20222. Sorry. Yeah. No, that would have been deep military. Yes. Yes. Yes. Sorry, kind of literal, you
Andy McGrath 42:39
know, the spoiler alert as you pointed out earlier as sports which makes it a kind of backwards who done it or you know, what happened to his life when you know, beside nd and also, you know, his friend contemporary or when I went on to wrote a song called Cody is dead. So I just thought it was too there are too many, you know, perfect similarities to not have that title. It does, I suppose it you know, catches the eye, as well, as you know, telling you what happened. And it intrigues and it should stop people in their tracks, you know, make them think, you know, who was this? Cyclists because most people most passing people in bookshops, for example, wouldn’t have heard of Frank Vandenbrouke, some people at the time, you know, very briefly, he he was on the cover of pro cycling in the UK, for example, he was in the top three of the world rankings, he was going to be the biggest things since sliced bread on 11 speed. And then and this is the thing that half the book is really the rise of a sporting talent, exceptional sporting promise, despite all his problems, you know, that he had the human for example, he was involved in a in a crash with a rally car when he was four years old. Of all things, you know, in the country lanes where he grew up, and that meant that after a long, long recovery, his left leg was always two centimetres shorter and thinner, and the right leg which you would think will be problematic for for a pro cyclist and it proved to be problematic. You know, often during his career, he was always fighting these knee injuries. But anyway, he he rose up at a time when the stars were older, you know, they were 30 Plus, and they were quite bland in comparison to him. You know, we had Indurain, Rominger, Museuw, and Frank Vandenbrouke was this 20 year old counterpoint who said good things to all the Belgian media and was handsome, you know, he was good looking kid. But he raised with such panache. And he won unusually early unusually often. And for someone that yeah, when he was a junior, he won half his races which is ridiculous for someone who who wasn’t a great sprinter either, you know, he he had to attack really to win most of the time.
Carlton Reid 45:14
So it’s an awful lot of is not just legacy but at the time was he just looked so beautiful on a bike I mean there’s there’s a little bit of you know, homo-eroticism going on there but he’s just he just looked wonderful with you know those those as you’re saying those those the legs being shorter and thinner. I hadn’t actually noticed that but it just it looks so beautiful on a bicycle. He’s just like the dream rider.
Andy McGrath 45:42
Yeah, and that’s the way that we the most of us wish we could you know, pedal that’s like pedalling and in a dream. It’s that the French word souplesse. It kind of describes the way that he pedalled you know, with, with no, either body barely moved, didn’t move when the back was still when he kind of cycled it was like ballerina esque if that is the right word for a male ballerina probably is. And it was so incongreous, too, because his legs was so thin. You know, they were like pipe cleaners. Really. They weren’t particularly muscular. But they were tanned and yeah, like it. It is funny about cycling isn’t all Pro Cycling that sometimes it we don’t just admire the best riders. With my style, we My grace. For example, I still remember this Russian writer called Mikhail Ignatieff who won a few Olympic goals on the track. And he didn’t win any anything of any note, you know, in Tour de France, all the all the big leagues of road racing, but his pedal stroke was just gorgeous, just like you know. I imagine there was no human around years of you know, Russian training in the Velodrome but
Carlton Reid 46:55
so that you’re definitely getting back to that kind of Rapha aesthetic which, which Simon Mottram tapped into, you know that it’s not about always winning. It’s sometimes about just looking good and being stylish and having panache. You know, that Tom Simpson also taps into that with his suits and his writing style.
Andy McGrath 47:17
Yeah, absolutely. Like, it’s not about winning always. It’s about how you make people feel. It’s about how you bring the fans along with you all, all the media. And there’s some riders in their 30s. Now, their favourite cyclists was Frank Vandenbrouke. That 999 the age pastorally. Age is the race of their dreams. I think I’ll have an arson who’s a former Belgian champion, said he watched it 200 times on replay I feel it was your bet. The great Belgian bike racer, idolise Vandenbrouke, that and there’s something it wasn’t just results like we can all have, well, not all of us, pro cyclists can have a page on Pro Cycling stats or whatever results. Software, you use that, that shows you what you’ve won, but it doesn’t say anything for how you want it, you know, like with, with daring, long range attacks, like Vandenberg sometimes did, or what you said to the media afterwards, you know, giving them great quotes. And that’s part of his charm. And you know, why people wrote books about him in Belgium, although that said, you know, if, if he hadn’t been a kind of fatal hero, if he hadn’t died so young, it would, it would be a happy a different story. Because
Carlton Reid 48:37
there is that Amy Winehouse, you kind of mentioned that, you know, that Marilyn Monroe that kind of that here, who’s a die young they stay heroes. So there’s there’s that element of and Africa somewhere else in your book where you talk about how people couldn’t have imagined him getting older anyway. You know, there was that that there was almost a fatalism there. That this is somebody who is, you know, the Icarus figure, you know, burning bright climbing high, that will probably come a cropper like almost wasn’t a surprise to many people, the way his his life ended.
Andy McGrath 49:15
Absolutely. I think sometimes that’s it’s not easy to say that, you know, 10 years after he’s died when, you know, after the fact. And the problem was that he had all these issues, he had depression briefly and he became addicted to, you know, cocaine and amphetamines. But he will always find a way out of it that I think a lot of people thought that he would eventually find a way out of his problems, you know, the 10 years from the age when the end of his life in 2009 We were just roller coaster teaser kind of cliche like, but he would always drag himself out. So that’s the sadness and and they were under a lot of pain. April, he said to me, there was some regret, you know, in the quotes that his agent pulled the gator that said, when it came to his drug addiction that they were, he compared it to a kind of sinking ship and said that, you know, when they were bailing the water out, they should really be plugged in trying to plug the hole which was quite a kind of poignant quote like I thought so and so one more thing, too We, of course it gets into sad tragic territory, but you know, it’s not the kind of misery misery fest biography No, and I found them bro was loved by so many people and charmed and joked around with so many people like, he was a great impressionist, he, he was like a bouncy teenager, really, at the age of 35, still, you know, like, messing around with his roommate, and putting toothpaste on the bathroom mirror. And he had this kind of universal boyishness that people found it very hard to be mad at him, even when he did, you know, quite bad things or selfish things or acted vainly, which he could do. So there’s, you know, at the core of it, it goes much beyond the cyclists into this human being who could be lovable, but can also be very frustrating and, you know, do some bad things.
Carlton Reid 51:26
So the book is, yes, it’s not, you’re right. It’s not all doom and gloom. But there’s an awful lot in there. You can’t get away from this about addiction, doping clearly. And then mental health care or lack thereof, in in, in not just in cycling, but in probably in society as a whole. Yeah, like, I
Andy McGrath 51:46
kind of think that. If we look back, even 10 years alone, 20 years, the duty of, of care for professional athletes was really lacking. You know, I think it’s really sad that there were top level riders not just Vandenberg, who were going to psychologist or psychiatrist, but we’re keeping it strong, you know, because it was seen as so shameful, you know. And to me that shy, that taps into the old school soccer mentality of, you know, the way they used to be the way they used to train, you know, do 300k Drink very little, eat very little. Ride harder, don’t complain. And that could work for some people. But that is not a caring way to look up to most people. You know, that’s, and that can come back to by many athletes, you know, and I think that’s what happened. Vandenbrouke’s psychologist probably helped to help him to live longer. You know, that’s what he said in his his autobiography. Actually, Vandenbrouke
Carlton Reid 52:52
That’s Jef Brouwers?
Andy McGrath 52:54
Yeah, exactly. And, in fact, he was probably an early kind of adopter of this help that he needed, you know, not just for, you know, the cycling was one thing, but they were trying to cure his kind of addiction problems and is show him that he he was loved, you know, even though he felt abandoned often. And that’s the crux of it, that, you know, this need to be loved that I kind of thing most of, well, pretty much all all of us have, whether it’s conscious or subconscious. And he always felt unloved or abandoned, despite, you know, the obvious legion of fans that he had and everything else. And that was a tragedy, there are human tragedy.
Carlton Reid 53:37
So in your in your book, there’s a kind of murder mystery, and to the book, murder, mystery, suicide, whatever. So Jeff, Browers was the psychologist about it, he basically told you that he thinks it was it was it was suicide, because he was, as you’ve just said that he needs people around and he was quite alone in that grubby hotel room in Senegal. But then other people, family obviously blame the people he was with and don’t want to have that association. With with suicide, you don’t really come you don’t come to a conclusion because you can’t really come to a conclusion, especially as it happened in Senegal, where it’s kind of difficult to come to any conclusion anyway. But there’s, there’s various people give their their opinions weighing all that up. What’s your opinion?
Andy McGrath 54:40
I don’t have to give one you know, like, if it isn’t clear, factually, and I can’t be certain, but I’ve laid out you know, that’s the job of the biography is to talk to everyone that was close to Vandenbrouke around him at the time. He was actually you know, basically there and include what they said Um, but no. I think that there could be something very well and what you have for hours says, you know, the psychologists who, you know, he was a man who spent hours with him and in that in that room I can see why he would say that. But one of the great, one of the great, strange things about this is, is that mystery like that, you know, Vandenbrouke had never even been to Africa, and he decided to go to Senegal, ye. And this filmic ending, you know, where, whereas you say, a prostitute was the last person to see him alive. So maybe he wanted it to be, you know, clouded in some kind of doubt that it could never be be definitive. But either way, you know what, like, whichever way that he died, it was pretty tragic that that he died, you know, and he’s not the only one from that era, either. He had Pantani, you had Jose Maria Jimenez, you know, and I think it’s, it’s partly a kind of symptom of the doping culture that what they were taking to perform in bike races made it much easier to get into recreational drugs. And both of those things, mess with your mind and your body. And probably your, your, your soul, you know, the core of who you really feel you are and what you’re doing, you know, whether you think it’s cheating or not that moral maze, it, it can’t be easy. I’m there must have been a hot a horrible time to be a pro cyclist.
Carlton Reid 56:41
People think of these things doping is a black and white issue. Yet, there’s a spectrum here, you know, is I mean, the UCI classifies too many coffees, too many espressos as doping. But, you know, four or five, okay. You know, marginal gains, you know, all these things, which which you can legally do, and yet you somehow trip over a line, if you take this other thing. And the other thing is, is meant to be this evil thing. And that’s clearly you know, the wrong thing to do. But vitamin supplements and you know, creatine, all of these things are performance enhancing, why did they not get the stigma that EPO get? So it’s a spectrum and addicted, it’s very difficult to say this as a black and white thing, when there are many things that can make you better on a bike, including EPO, but then you know, just your energy gel makes you better on a bike, should we be adding energy gels, it’s there’s very little nuance gets into it talking about doping, it’s just black and it’s white. Yeah,
Andy McGrath 57:57
when really if you’re saying is that it’s basically shades shades of grey, you know that the modern game does you’re in the peloton is ketones, which are not banned, but they seem to be ethically questionable. And my rudimentary understanding of the science around it is also that no one knows how, how it can affect the career in a few years time or five years time that we might be seeing some writers already suffering from not using them in the right way or overusing them. Well,
Carlton Reid 58:35
my wife is a is a diabetes doctor. So she knows about ketones, and she knows about insulin, as well. And insulin was, was clearly one of the things that Frank used to basically say he was going to kill himself and he’s going to use insulin to do so. So potentially that was, it’s very hard to trace insulin as if you’re going to kill yourself with insulin. So potentially, that’s, that’s, yeah, you’re gonna kill yourself insulin is a pretty good way of doing it.
Andy McGrath 59:11
Yeah. And you know, why would you why would you take that to Senegal? Or how would you source it? You know, what? He wasn’t a diabetic, you know, so. Yeah, I won’t give away you know, the ending or, you know, what everyone said about the ending, but, you know, several people were pointing towards suicide, certainly in the book, but yeah, like, I just going back to the grey area of crime doping. I just hope it’s a bit more nuanced. Now. The way that people regard dope is like I even think that you know, 10 years ago. It it’s really hard. It’s very hard, isn’t it? Because they have cheated. They have done something wrong, and they’ve done it knowingly, you know, in probably 99% of cases. Despite the numerous They can excuse.
Carlton Reid 1:00:02
Yes, there have been quite a few good ones. False twin
Andy McGrath 1:00:10
Yeah, false twin, pigeon pie, weeks from a Colombian grandmother. It’s got
Carlton Reid 1:00:17
I bought it for my dog. Okay.
Andy McGrath 1:00:20
Yeah, well, that was bingo. So on the one hand, they are not above appropriate, you know, the rider. They are number one, you know, anything that turns up in their body knowingly or unknowingly, if they’re positive, that’s that’s on them, you know, that’s how it is. And I totally get that. But on the other hand, it still seems to me that the culture around doping IE, you know, the people that help them or, or facilitate, you know, people like team doctors, team managers, people in the know, people who are still in the sport, you know, nowadays seem to get away with it, pretty much, often quite, quite scot free. And that’s not okay. And I’ve had, you know, cyclists who were pros in the 80s through to, you know, the last decade, you know, saying a similar thing, but that’s a thing that needs to be changed that needs to be snuffed out like the right is kind of like the symptom of a wider problem. And of course, if we knew the answer if the UCI or Wilder knew the answer, you know, anti doping foundations famously have much smaller smaller budgets and maybe even the biggest cycling team in the world they’re always fighting kind of a chasing battle they’re always you know, one step behind maybe against the latest wonder drug or the kind of latest cheats but I think I can save some some confidence Pro Cycling is is cleaner now than it was in Vandenbrouke’s heyday. But I also fear that it’ll never be totally clean partly because of human nature partly because of the money was going up and up and partly because of this bizarre kind of will to win this drive is addiction
Carlton Reid 1:02:13
Yeah, can even amateur races you know, people have been caught doping that will to win
Andy McGrath 1:02:22
Yeah, I mean, that’s that’s sad in my opinion, you know, if you’re, if you’re doping to win a category three cap for race. What’s the point? You know,
Carlton Reid 1:02:32
do you race have you written Have you raced
Andy McGrath 1:02:38
I did a few time trials when I was up at university in York. Beautiful place to ride around there Oh, and I did someone’s teenager with the Addiscombe in Croydon that’s where I’m from. no great shakes, Carlton. I’ve never meant to be the next Frank Vandenbroucke much better at writing than riding my bike has put it that way. But
Carlton Reid 1:03:08
yeah, you’re a rider. Not a racer. So that that that that Colnago that you bought is something that you would ride on a nice day with no mud around so what you’re writing normally what’s what’s if you’re not running the Colnago what you’re writing
Andy McGrath 1:03:33
it’s a time XRS I’ll steel a nice bike from now not a pub bike.
Andy McGrath 1:03:38
It’s a decent bike it was just it just keeps going and it gets me around town if I want to ride in the autumn or winter on the road so I’ll use Quickstep used to ride it back in the day me 20 years ago you know Palpatine and all that
Carlton Reid 1:03:57
which did you pick that up in your in your magazine days then is that was you kind of like you somehow acquired it back then.
Andy McGrath 1:04:07
Well, the thing about me is I’m I’m not I’m no techie I’m really good people that would have seen me trying to fix a puncture back in the cycling weekly office 15 years ago would have realised that immediately now I’m there because I like riding my bike. I just to be completely honest, like I don’t know much about bike tech and isn’t the most interesting thing about cycling for me, you know, I’m the people that ride the bikes, you know, the pros and all their you know, differences and their opinions and personalities. That’s much more interesting to me than say this bike weighs eight kilos or this carbon one weigh 7.5 But that’s that’s just me, you know, each have their own. Yeah, I’d much rather you know ride a bike then. do the legwork for it, you know, which is but actually need to get better at you know mechanics and changing chains and that kind of thing and maybe on a warm summer’s day, I’ll just practice doing
Carlton Reid 1:05:13
that. That’s what bike shops are for. That’s my opinion. Now I’m with you. I’m with you on the I’m not fussed about technical stuff I’ve never really been happy writing about the technical stuff doesn’t excite me writing about technical stuff or weighing things and yeah, it’s the people that is all the stories that are around it that that are from me, personally. A more interesting.
Andy McGrath 1:05:40
Yeah, absolutely. Like, I find it hard to rhapsodise about tech, you know, whereas I can. Yeah, like I kind of wish I was more intrigued by it, but I’m just not, that’s just my personality. And the funny thing is, as a former tech magazine, Ed editor, you really you do have to slightly balance the editorial side with not keeping advertisers happy, but keeping them onside. And there was a slight tech element with Rila. But we we did it in our own way with basically treating the bike or the other kit, like a like a model, you know, hanging on trees or oversea wall, or all kinds of crazy sheets.
Carlton Reid 1:06:29
So if people want to and we’re now wrapping up here, Andy, if people want to get your book and be maybe getting in touch with you or find out what you’re doing, where do they find you on websites on on social media?
Andy McGrath 1:06:44
They can find me on X formerly known as Twitter before Elon Musk made it even worse. Yeah, at Andy McGrath, that’s a n d, why. MC Gra? So, take off the th basically for my surname. Yeah, they want to buy the book, just any online bookseller, really from from Amazon to Waterstones to Blackwell’s to whoever, whoever you like, it’s on there. And I’ll put
Carlton Reid 1:07:19
your art stack substack link in in the show notes. So people can also you know, if they’re not interested in cycling, they could they could follow you for your, you know, your your opinions on Anthony Conway says
Andy McGrath 1:07:31
the next step comes from me being an expert, what’s your, what do you think?
Carlton Reid 1:07:39
Well, I guess if you’re not into the techie side, you know, and you’re just looking at maybe just the people behind these things, rather than the art itself? I don’t know. Is that do they? Are you looking at the art itself? What’s going to interest you?
Andy McGrath 1:07:51
I am mainly looking at the art itself being and that ties into their lives and the era they were in. It’s a bit of everything really, you know, if it’s modern art that I’m likely to question, you know, how did this make me feel? You know, what do I feel? What does this elicit in me kind of understand how much work is took or, you know, the literal art artistry behind it? That’s one element. But, you know, I just went to see Frank Howell back. He’s at the Courtauld in London. He’s basically the last surviving artist from that Lucien Freud. Francis Bacon set in the 1950s. And I thought it was fantastic and but it’s only black and white because he didn’t have the money for pain in 1950s, which I’ve become a pain which is also an insight into a different world, you know, that I’m very fortunate to not be in you know, post World War reconstruction. But anyway, we we digress. Any followers are welcome.
Carlton Reid 1:09:02
Yes, no, I’ll put that link in. For sure. And to your other things. So Andy, thank you so much for for talking to us on me, us.
Andy McGrath 1:09:11
Thank you. Absolute pleasure.
Carlton Reid 1:09:15
And that’s it for today’s show. Thanks for listening to Episode 351 of the spokesmen podcast brought to you in association with Tern bicycles, show notes and more can be found at the-spokesmen.com As I mentioned earlier, the next episode, dropping real soon, will be a chat with cycling writer, Laura Laker. But meanwhile, get out there and ride …
8th April 2024
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 350: AA’s Think Bike Redux
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUESTS: Chris Boardman, Jeremy Vine, Edmund King
- Laura Laker
Carlton Reid, April 21, 2024
Read more… - Andy McGrath — God is Dead
Carlton Reid, April 15, 2024
Read more… - AA’s Think Bike Redux
Carlton Reid, April 7, 2024
Read more… - Turn on Strava for everyday journeys, it could reshape streets for the better
Carlton Reid, March 17, 2024
Read more… - Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett of Komoot
Carlton Reid, March 10, 2024
Read more… - Richard Fletcher, Mr Cycling on the Isle of Man
Carlton Reid, February 24, 2024
Read more… - Monica Garrison of Black Girls Do Bike
Carlton Reid, February 20, 2024
Read more… - Balance bikes, Bikeability and the Saint Piran team at the Tour of Britain
Carlton Reid, January 28, 2024
Read more… - 24 hour racing with Josh Reid on Scotland’s Strathpuffer
Carlton Reid, January 27, 2024
Read more… -
First Ever Computer Modelling of How Cyclists (And Motorists) Hit Potholes
Carlton Reid, December 28, 2023
Read more…
TRANSCRIPT
Carlton Reid 0:12
Welcome to Episode 350 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Monday 8th April 2024.
David Bernstein 0:28
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.
Carlton Reid 1:04
I’m Carlton Reid and on today’s super short show we hear from Chris Boardman and Jeremy Vine, plugging that from today, the AA is relaunching its 10 year old ‘Think Bike’ campaign. This nudge-like promo encourages drivers to fit small Think Bike wing-mirror stickers to remind them to look out for those on two wheels. Back in 2014 the AA printed a million of these stickers and distributed them to members promoting the giveaway with a YouTube video featuring a good-looking naked cyclist appearing in wing mirrors demonstrating that if people chose to truly look before manoeuvring, there’ll be fewer casualties out there. Did the campaign save any lives? Impossible to prove either way, of course. And some might argue that 10 years down the road the feral attitude towards cyclists in particular from some motorists is worse than ever. But that a motoring organisation is still going out of its way to promote a critical road safety message is something that’s to be applauded.
The concept for a wing-mirror sticker came from AA patrolman Tony Rich after his friend was killed in a motorcycle crash. The idea was then championed by AA president who’s not only an arch motorist but also travels around London on a folding bike. Edmund cycles recreationally, too … I know that because he often sends me photos of him riding his mountain bike wearing the ipayroadtax Lycra jersey that I sent him ages ago … So before the sound bites from Chris Boardman and Jeremy Vine here’s Edmund King …
Edmund King 3:01
It is now 10 years since we launched our Think Bike sticker campaign. But unfortunately, the message is still as relevant today as it was a decade ago; far too many people are being killed and seriously injured on two wheels, whether cyclists or motorcyclists. So we will be spreading the message again, to all drivers to think bikes.
Chris Boardman 3:26
It’s hard to believe the Think Bike sticker campaign launched 10 years ago, and I was there when that happened, the idea to make drivers just a little bit more aware of the vulnerable road users around them. Really glad to see that the AA is reinvigorating the campaign. And I’ll be glad to join in and help.
Jeremy Vine 3:43
And I’m so pleased to see that the AA is doing this because if you’re on two wheels, you do feel quite vulnerable. And I always think when you’re in a car, and I drive too, you don’t always see that that person on the bicycle is a mum, a sister, somebody’s son, someone’s grandfather, maybe even their great grandfather. So thank you AA for thinking bike.
David Bernstein 4:07
This podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more. This podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern understand that while a large cargo bike can carry oodles of stuff, many of us prefer something a little more manageable. That’s why they’ve come up with the HSD e-cargobike for folks with big aspirations to go car free, delivered in a compact size, with its rear shock, 280 kilos, and a combined hauling capacity of 180 kilos. The robust new HSD is stable and easy to manoeuvre, even when under load. And with its Bosch eBIKE SYSTEM tested and certified to meet the highest UL standards for electric and fire safety you’ll be able to share many worryfree adventures with a loved one whether it’s your kiddo or Nan. Visit www.ternbicycles. That’s t e r n ternbicycles.com to learn more
Visit www.ternbicycles. That’s t e r n ternbicycles.com to learn more.
Carlton Reid 5:06
And that’s it for today’s show. Thanks for listening to episode 350 of the Spokesmen podcast, brought to you in association with Tern Bicycles. Show notes and more can be found at the-spokesmen.com. The next episode, a rather longer one, will be a chat with cycling writer Andy McGrath, author of God is Dead and other cycling books …. meanwhile get out there and ride …
17th March 2024
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 349: Turn on Strava for everyday journeys, it could reshape streets for the better
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUEST: Tom Knights, Strava Metro
- Laura Laker
Carlton Reid, April 21, 2024
Read more… - Andy McGrath — God is Dead
Carlton Reid, April 15, 2024
Read more… - AA’s Think Bike Redux
Carlton Reid, April 7, 2024
Read more… - Turn on Strava for everyday journeys, it could reshape streets for the better
Carlton Reid, March 17, 2024
Read more… - Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett of Komoot
Carlton Reid, March 10, 2024
Read more… - Richard Fletcher, Mr Cycling on the Isle of Man
Carlton Reid, February 24, 2024
Read more… - Monica Garrison of Black Girls Do Bike
Carlton Reid, February 20, 2024
Read more… - Balance bikes, Bikeability and the Saint Piran team at the Tour of Britain
Carlton Reid, January 28, 2024
Read more… - 24 hour racing with Josh Reid on Scotland’s Strathpuffer
Carlton Reid, January 27, 2024
Read more… -
First Ever Computer Modelling of How Cyclists (And Motorists) Hit Potholes
Carlton Reid, December 28, 2023
Read more…
TRANSCRIPT
Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 349 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Sunday 17th of March 2024.
David Bernstein 0:28
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.
Carlton Reid 1:03
I’m Carlton Reid. On today’s show, I’m talking with Tom Knights. He’s the senior manager of partnerships and marketing for Strava Metro. This is a super-useful active travel city-making dataset-service from the athlete tracking app. And if you bristled at the word athlete, because you think there’s no sport in transport, listen on …
Strava metro was very, very
insistent in 2020. About how successful cycling and and walking in all active mode because of the pandemic and the blog posting was, you know, we’re very pained to say this. However, you know, it’s really, really, we’re going crackers with the amount of cycling as you know, the bike boom, yeah, what did go amazing. Now, the bike industry right now is famously and woefully massively down in the dumps. So what have you seen with usage? So what has happened since 2022? actual usage of bicycles not just, you know, we know the sales are bad. Is the usage bad also?
Tom Knights 2:21
Yeah, that’s a really good question. And actually like to say the kind of the free, the free, free call to Strava Metro kind of suddenly going free was actually very well timed, unfortunately, under very difficult circumstances globally. One of the reasons like I say, we kind of made Strava Metro free wasn’t actually because of the pandemic and the looming kind of crisis. And obviously, this switch to human powered transportation. It was like, almost like an unfortunate timing, but but obviously beneficial for cities and all the planners that start to use this data. So yes, we definitely saw this huge boom during the kind of 2020 21 era. And thankfully, because a lot of cities and a lot of regions and governments had the foresight to start investing in protecting cycle lanes in safe routes, which we know is one of the biggest barriers to people actually kind of picking up a bicycle. Lot of those initiatives have stayed, and we hope that they’ve stayed because actually, they’ve been able to see some of the Strava activity straight through Strava Metro, and then use that against other data sources to start to understand actually, is this being used in terms of trends, and overall, we’ve definitely seen more of a normalisation but again, what we are seeing is obviously, people looking for alternatives to either commute, and then well, kind of 2024 the word commute looks a bit different than maybe it did in 2019. But anything that’s a utility trip, and essentially through safe and accessible infrastructure. That’s what we know. And I’m sure you know, from all the kind of conversations you’ve had over the years, that’s the biggest driver to people, making it feel safe. So, long story short, yes, we’ve definitely seen a normalisation now, in terms of growth
Carlton Reid 4:06
Normalisation, that sounds like quite a bit of a euphemism for, for what?
Tom Knights 4:12
So I guess the new the new normal as it were, so we’ve definitely seen that growth. And then now what we’ve seen, like I say, as people who are consistently cycling now, and then obviously, we hope that through infrastructure improvements into society into communities, that will then also encourage even more folks to pick up a bicycle on that front.
Carlton Reid 4:33
I’m gonna carry on digging here, because I think it’s quite important. So that graph that was on the Strava Metro, I remember it well, the human powered transportation one Yep. Yeah. So I mean, that was that was great. But, you know, so when you’ve been normalisation, is that graph, it went up like crazy. And do you mean by normalisation that it went down so well usage is down or has
plateaued,
Tom Knights 5:00
so not I mean, it’s difficult to say but I wouldn’t say plateau because we’re always seeing kind of growth. And that’s what’s so exciting a and I can’t necessarily kind of say a lot more about the Strava core Strava world because of course, that’s a different kind of department as it were. But in terms of the Metro world, and what we’re seeing in terms of cycling, in general, we’ve just seen that spike from 2019 to 2020, that continued growth into 2021. And now what is is probably more of that kind of continuous steady growth. As opposed to that, we I wouldn’t say we’ve definitely seen any kind of drop off as it were on that front.
Carlton Reid 5:34
So it’s interesting, because we now have metrics that we just didn’t have, you know, 10, 15 20 years ago, from an industry perspective, used to be able to track
sales of number of bikes, and but you never knew whether, actually people even though a few bikes sold, actually, people might actually be riding more, potentially. So now we have metrics from from people like you, where you can not only track the number of bikes sold, but you can also track roughly whether people are using those bikes. So that’s fascinating information from a market point of view. And the way I’m going from on that is
you’ve got some high end holiday companies, you know, Glorious Gravel going to Sri Lanka, Namibia, all these amazing places with people who got clearly a lot of money and a fair bit of time. Yeah, still getting out there cycling. So when we haven’t seen that end shift at all. But no, that’s the rarefied end, isn’t it? That’s like, Yeah, from from a metro point of view.
Tom Knights 6:42
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I in terms of, you know, think travel and tourism, that is obviously a kind of luxury. And, you know, for kind of people a having the kind of means to kind of jump on a plane or to kind of visit and take the time off. And that’s great, though, for kind of seeing that, that boom, because we want people to kind of get an introduction to cycling in general. And if that means discovering it on a holiday tour, fantastic. Hopefully, that then translates into cycling into work maybe two or three days a week, or suddenly dropping a car trip once a week, because they’ve discovered the joy of cycling. But I think January what we’re hoping, though, is we see this bike boom, fueled by better and safer streets. That’s, that’s our kind of main concern is that, if you build it, I know, you’ve heard this phrase a lot before, you know, if you build it, people will come. And we know that from Strava Metro data, when you look at the kind of streets where there’s been investment, the Before and After Effects is amazing. See this kind of increase in trips. Now, of course, you might say, Well hold on Strava growth. But actually, what we’re seeing is that Strava Metro data alongside Eco-counter or Telraam data, you can start to kind of normalise and build a model. And I think that’s what we’re we’re hoping that people can start to, as you mentioned, all these amazing datasets start to pull these together, and then really build this picture to kind of tell a different story than perhaps maybe the negative stories are saying in terms of, you know, cycling booms over or no one’s using this bike lane, etc.
Carlton Reid 8:10
And this is an obvious question, okay. And this is a question that I’m sure you are incredibly well used to batting away, and you know, you’re gonna get it. And you, you could almost do it yourself. So that is in your documentation. It’s all about athletes. Of course, when you put that into Strava Metro, you’re talking about non lycra. I know you discuss this on your blogs, but just just tell me now, why I would be wrong to suggest that Mamils, women on bikes and lycra why the data is robust, even though you talk about athletes?
Tom Knights 8:53
Yeah, no, you’re quite right. And it’s a, it’s a really good point. And I suppose, from the data point of view, we’re not looking at,
we look at those as activities and people and trips so that the athletes is more of a kind of Strava kind of communications in a playful way to call our community athletes, and you’ve probably seen various different messages over the years about, you know, if you’re an athlete, you’re on Strava. And, and essentially, there is a lot of truth in that, you know, we want anyone who moves through human powered transportation, or through moves and find their joy in discovering movement ways we would define as an athlete, you know, anyone who is doing that, now appreciating the world of transportation planning and bike lanes and commuting, you might not think, you know, cycling across the Waterloo Bridge in the morning at 830. You’re an athlete, but essentially, from a metro point of view, what we’re looking to do is see these community based trips as data points, like say that can be used for improving infrastructure on that front. And I think the way that actually I would position it personally is often thinking, well, everyone who uploads a ride on to Strava is a human powered counter, because through through Metro
That’s going towards some kind of better cause in terms of funding and reviewing active travel investment.
But I do understand your point about you know, Mamil. And you know, a lot of drivers growth in the early days was fueled by that amazing core set of athletes. And you know, I grew up in this town called Dorking, which you’re probably familiar with, from the classic ride, sorry, and I’m very familiar, you know, the weekends kind of seeing, you know, the the kind of, I say the kind of more sportive rides coming through the town. But actually, what that served is actually an inspiration for more people’s go. Actually, that was quite fun. I should try that. And I think the data we’re seeing through Year in Sport that we’ve done anecdotally, through Metro data, that actually we’ve got a lot more 18 to 34 year olds, who are now also discovering the joy of active transportation.
And again, Metro data is telling us that it’s not just, you know, the weekend, you know, the Saturday morning at 10am, in the Surrey Hills or on the the kind of Yorkshire Dales it’s actually taking place on the streets of Manchester, or the streets of London, etc. And I think that’s what we’re hoping is that story through community or athletes, as you know, we’re calling it that that helps planners to see that trend is is not just, you know, the kind of Lycra
brigade Who are you know, cycling and I would all use what the same people that are cycling at the weekends, you know, on the kind of right sorry, classics or up in the Yorkshire Dales are also the same people that are using bike lanes. And equally as important when we’re thinking about counting.
Carlton Reid 11:30
Of course, you’re not getting
the invisible in American terms, it’s called the invisible cyclists. So these are often Latino.
Basically poor people on bikes, who are definitely not going to be using Strava. But going to using bikes, and then they call them invisible cyclists, because
they’re not on bicycles that perhaps
an enthusiast would ride, but they are using bicycles and all power to their elbow, but power to their knees. Now, you’re not capturing them. So if you’re not capturing a significant number of people who are using
the roads, does that not suggest that you’re missing an important chunk of people who are not using? You just can’t capture everybody? And how important is that?
Tom Knights 12:27
Yeah, really, really good point. And I guess a couple of bits on that is that
essentially no data set, you know, the world is accurate, you think about a, you know, a bicycle counsellor on the embankment or, you know, in the middle of Manchester, or even in the rural area, you know, if someone doesn’t go through that specific kind of counting station, as it were, you’re not being picked up in the count. And I think that’s what Strava Metro is really kind of aiming to do is essentially colouring the map with all the blank spots that aren’t being picked up. And being free, which is, again, one of these kind of opportunities to kind of get this data into the masses, allows transportation planners allows Safe Streets advocates, anyone who’s focused on transportation equity and environmental racism to dive into that data and go, Okay, looks like actually, there’s people going through this counting station here. But actually, Strava Metro is also showing us that people are going down this route. So what’s interesting what’s going on there. And again, you’re quite right to call out that the heat map, for example, in, you know, maybe underrepresented areas, or places that don’t necessarily have the same political will have, you know,
more affluent areas who have perhaps built cycle lanes or made their streets more attractive from things like heat islands, you think about kind of cities outside of the UK that suffer a lot from high temperatures, you know, the streets are not necessarily designed for being walkable and bikable. That’s what we’re really hoping we can also use the Strava data to show what’s not happening, as well as what’s happening. And again, a lot of the work that Metro is involved in is ties back into this kind of social impact piece. It’s not just, you know, we obviously want this data to be used by, you know, transportation planners, but we’re also hoping we can start to, you know, work a lot more with, you know, say advocacy groups, anyone likes easy, bold environmental racism and transportation equity, to really kind of look at that data, and metrics looks, it’s been designed that anyone including myself, I’m not a geospatial professional, but I can see, you know, through a map and looking at certain areas where people are cycling and when they’re not cycling, but also we want to build a product and I can’t really, you know, say I’m not necessarily holding the Strava product side, but we want to build an experience, which is all encompassing for everyone on there, but I definitely understand your point about the barriers to entry, you know, just in general, you cycling you need to have a bike to join Strava you need a mobile phone that supports you know, obviously your Strava although we do have connections with lots of fitness devices, but again, that comes at a cost, but hopefully, the more people that learn about
Metro and the authenticity and the kind of the fact that it’s free. The fact that Strava is free to join, it gives people a sense of empowerment that actually, I can change something that’s happening on my street. And that’s a big part of the messaging that, you know, I’m working on, and certainly have been working on for the last five years, because as you say,
maybe the association with Strava is it’s just for athletes, or people who are doing k runs, and Q RMS, etc. But actually, what we’re seeing is that more and more people are turning to Strava, to kind of log their activities, and hopefully through when they learn about Metro, they’ll realise that they’re actually changing their communities, because that data is really kind of playing a part in helping to shape your better infrastructure or, essentially, build a political case for more investment.
Carlton Reid 15:45
Good point. So somebody like me, who’s been a Strava member since 2013 I discovered by looking into my profile this morning,
Tom Knights 15:53
and then thank you for your long term membership.
Carlton Reid 15:57
I would say, I’m not a frequent updater. But I should be, shouldn’t I? So what you’re saying is people like me who have it on our phones, don’t use it, you know, because I don’t consider myself an athlete. Yeah, that should be turning on, for even everyday journeys, because it helps.
Tom Knights 16:18
So I’ve been, you know, I’d have that in writing. And, as it quite, you know, when we kind of go out to advocacy kind of events and talk to kind of people because I think, as you’ve just said, you know, the more people that discover about this, you know, cycle of like Strava, being free and then wanting to make streets better. And then Metro, obviously, enabling that, we think there’s a really compelling story. And I genuinely there’s, this is such a passionate thing to kind of work on. And I think we’re very lucky, you know, part of the metro team to be able to have these conversations with partners all over the world. And I think we are we’ve met at Velo-city a couple of times before. And the one thing that comes up all the time at these conferences is, you know, how are we measuring it? Or how do we win the case for safer streets? And, you know, this is our answer to that and to say, well, let’s come together and bring all these amazing datasets that are available out there. You know, let’s build a case and get people to see that this is available.
Carlton Reid 17:12
And those datasets, the expectation is, from your point of view, that a transportation planning department will be using multiple sources, they won’t be just using Metro. They’ll be using their own counting devices, hopefully, if they’ve got them. And they’ll be plotting everything. And they’ll have some sort of, will they have a desktop with everything on? Or have they got like a look at lots of different screens?
Tom Knights 17:40
Yeah, so what we hear from from foreigners, they use a lot of geospatial kind of software, you know, there’s obviously various different enterprise kind of grade level software and data analytics tools where you can always ingest multiple sorts of data. So we make extracting the data from from Metro, which is, I’m sure, hopefully, everyone realises completely anonymized, obviously, and then also aggregated, we make that very easy for partners to essentially download, and then upload back into, like, say, all of this data planning tools.
And obviously, you know, there’s multiple data sets out there. And largely, like I say, we use the same mapping tools as well. So OpenStreetMap is really important, you know, in terms of, actually, how do you paint a picture of your infrastructure in your area. And like, say, planners will then use that to build reports to kind of maybe produce research, and then essentially come up with this kind of our number, which says, you know, for every X number of trips on Strava, you can say that there’s 100 trips of normal, non non Strava usage, for example, send your Strava.
But, and we’ve seen a couple of examples that, you know, the Office of National Statistics have done that, in rural remote areas, Transport for London, have been using it to kind of model traffic lights through London and the timing that you get on green times, you know, and it’s not just Strava D. So you don’t want to build cities just around one particular user. But that’s why being like I say, a free tool to do that allows us to kind of
plug into all these other datasets.
Unknown Speaker 19:12
Let’s let’s go backwards a little bit into
Carlton Reid 19:16
that, that I’ll use your term, the athlete, so you basically got a rider? Yeah, going along. I’ll use like, even though I’m like to 50 miles away. I’ll use London as an example. So going along the Embankment. Yeah, yeah, yes, you’ve anonymized all the data. So this is not you know, you know, you don’t know this particular person on a bike at all. You can’t track anything. But you can see at a granular level, whether they are on the road or whether they are on the Embankment cycleway, and you can see where they make that you know, sudden turn like there’s a there’s a few turns on the embankment where you’ve got to make quite a shift to get on to the cycleway. So you in Strava Metro, you can see that too.
happening?
Tom Knights 20:01
Exactly that so we can see, like I say the, I think there’s something like 420 million edges in the whole world. So edge is referred to as streets on OpenStreetMap. And if you’ve got some enthusiastic mapping listeners on this podcast, hopefully they might be able to write in and correct me in some tell me how many exactly edges there are. But if you think about the world as all of these kind of different edges and routes that are built up, where there’s been a Strava activity gone over the top of that, and, of course, where there’s been a minimum of free, which allows us to kind of aggregate those activities, we can exactly that show you where people have turned left, how many trips went off, on a certain direction? Was this route busier because of a road closure one week? Or was this route more improved year on year because of a safer kind of passageway? You know, I appreciate we’re talkinh about cycling here. But if you think about running and walking, you know, was this improved? Because there was better lighting? Or were more people using this pathway, because, you know, there was a kind of nice new path put down. So I think this is like it’s this kind of colouring in the map with all the other kind of datasets that are available. And then Strava can kind of tell you that picture of where, you know, there has been activity.
Carlton Reid 21:12
So when Nick Ferrari goes on the radio and says, I got stuck behind a cyclist on the Embankment, they should be on the cycleway. You could or anybody could go to Strava Metro, and say, well, actually, that must have been just a completely
unusual person. Because look, 99.9% of of cyclists are going on to the cycleway. And here look, we can show you the heat map where that is happening. That’s what you can do?
Tom Knights 21:42
Exactly that. And like I say you want one colour, I would say is it’s not anyone. So that was one of the caveats to the authenticity of the kind of Metro project. And I know that word authenticity thrown a lot you know about but that the only reason Metro works is because the Strava community buy into this idea that the data has been used for something good, not for commercial purposes. So not anyone can access Metro, but TfL can access it, for example, in your example of the bike lanes in London, London cycling campaign could access this because of course, you know, they’re involved in advocacy work.
Unfortunately, LBC wouldn’t be able to access this, because obviously they’re using it for other purposes.
But actually anyone involved in safe infrastructure, and we hope that this is it, you know, when the the transportation teams, all these different medical authorities or local authorities can actually go, actually what we have seen on the street is that X percentage of people are using this bike lane on there. And that’s, that’s what I think it’s going to take to kind of not win the argument, but really convinced people that bike lanes are being used, and they’re a good investment. They’re just incredibly efficient, because you never see anyone in traffic. And then yes, people are constantly moving.
Carlton Reid 22:53
Yes. Now, I know you’re not on this side of it. So it’s a slightly unfair question to ask, but I’d like one I’d like you to tell me about anyway. So at the end, not not now. But at the end, I’d like you to go through and just tell people how much it costs to, you know, go the full fat version of Strava. But before you do that, and that’s going to be the end anyway, just let’s just, you know, just confirm this right now, you do not need to use Strava Metro for is free for transportation planners, anybody else. But you don’t need any, you’re not going to get hassled to become a pro member.
To be one of these people like me who just want to do good for the community by turning metro or Strava on for our normal daily rides, you won’t be charged for that you can get a free membership that will do everything apart from all the pro level stuff that you don’t need anyway, if you’re just one of these lapsed people?
Tom Knights 23:56
Yeah, it’s possible. And so, you know, Strava is like has always operated on that kind of freemium model, as it were, that you know, at its simplest, you can download the app, join the community upload rise. And then if you’ve made that road public, so I should have added that caveat as well, that will contribute to metric because of course, you know, people might want to hide the start or the end of their journeys, they won’t count. Some people might want to also hide a certain route. But hopefully, like say when they hear about the project and go actually, this is a pretty good idea, I should start uploading my routes and maybe, you know, further down the line as they kind of start to explore Strava they want to kind of look at a route or they want to kind of go oh, that could be quite a good tool to have because I’ve got more into my cycling journey, then yes, of course. Strava is open for them. But at its source and Metro, they are both free.
Carlton Reid 24:46
Mm hmm. Okay. At this point, I would like to cut away to my colleague, David who will give a short break.
David Bernstein 24:56
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Carlton Reid 25:57
Thanks, David. And we’re back with Tom Knights of Strava Metro, and I was looking at your LinkedIn profile. And as you do when you when you want to talk to somebody and you want to find out their background, and you’ve kind of similar background to me, in that you did classics you did you did like nothing to do with what you’re doing in your day job. You did like it will tell me what you did it was Exeter University exactly what you did.
So I kind of found found myself essentially looking at degree subjects where, you know, I was interested in more the kind of anthropological aspects of history and actually Classical Studies, and I’m always very much told by classic students that classics versus Classical Studies is a very different subjects. Obviously, one focuses heavily on Latin language in Greek texts, whereas Classical Studies is more about, you know, the discovery of what was going on during the Roman Empire in the Greek Empire period. So that was always a passion of mine about kind of understanding society, and maybe what was the kind of political kind of themes at the time and, you know, fascinated about some communities on there. And, of course, the story for the dad joke, but like, most people, when you study history, there’s no future in it.
I’ll use that.
Tom Knights 27:24
But yeah, obviously, you know, that allowed me, you know, I suppose to back in the kind of early 2000s, when I was at university, you know, it was a very privileged time, when they weren’t necessarily crippling university fees and structure. So it allowed me to kind of study a subject, which was more of a passion project. But of course, you know, didn’t necessarily elude me into kind of a specific career working in British museum or on an archaeological site in antiquity.
And actually, in hindsight, I think geography would have been more of my passion, because that’s ultimately what’s kind of landed me in this area of transportation and maps and bicycles. Geography was always my kind of first passion.
Carlton Reid 28:04
But you’re a man after my own heart, because I did a degree, that was nothing connected to what I eventually did. And that was religious studies and comparative religion. And I did Hebrew, as well. So I did do a not a classic language, but I did a language that was known to antiquity. I’d say, yeah, we’ve come similar backgrounds. But then you’ve if you look at your career progression, it went very quickly from something that’s completely useless to and affect your career. If I look at your career arc has been certainly tech. So from the very first it was you went from classics, blummin’ heck,, to tech, that’s that’s a leap. And then you’ve carried on that, that that trajectory.
Tom Knights 28:45
Yeah, definitely, I think that kind of, you know, almost juxtaposes the kind of interest in history, but I think a lot of my friends maybe went into, you know, in the early 2000s, like most people kind of found their way going into financial services, I’d always kind of been more interested in the world of tech and technology. And then working my way up through various kind of research firms and kind of people teams in that world of headhunting and kind of early days of, of search, when it comes to kind of jobs and careers. Allow me I suppose just to suppose learn a lot more about the world of tech, and then actually through interviewing people and and candidates and helping people on their search journey. That then opened my eyes into this whole world of kind of software, which again, early 2000s was really interesting, and then tied into that passion for sports and maps and mapping, landed, actually initially at a company when I lived in Hong Kong for five or six years, which was doing event registration for marathons and five K’s and stuff like that, which is obviously very relevant to the Strava world nowadays. But it was when Strava Metro came along and said that they were looking for someone to essentially grow the community on Strava Metro in Europe. It was too good an opportunity not to kind of put my CV forward so
You know, tied into all my passions around mapping and transportation.
Carlton Reid 30:04
And, and getting out there and doing stuff. As in Yes. Being an athlete if you want to use that term.
Tom Knights 30:11
Exactly. And you know, that’s a it’s an interesting point to kind of call up. But essentially the the advice, actually the CEO at the time, who was a gentleman called James, and actually Michael Hogarth, the founder of Strava, they said, The most important thing you can do in this role at Strava Metro is get out there and see bike lanes and infrastructure, or really understand what the kind of partners are doing. So over the last five years, that’s kind of allowed me to get involved and actually see some of these projects. And you know, one of the best moments of the year or certainly at conferences, or events we go to whenever there’s a bike parade, and I’ve never had a bike tour or a technical tour around the cities that you can visit, and you can really start to see the, you know, how those numbers come to life, actually, in the physical world, because, again, we’ve focused a lot on on this talk, we talked a lot about the Embankment. But actually, there’s a whole multitude of examples around the European continent, and also across the world of bike lanes, which we visited and gone. Gosh, that’s really interesting, what innovative design and oh, look at how that impacted this number of people.
Carlton Reid 31:13
Tell me about your day them. So you’ve got somebody flagged out that yes, sometimes travelling around a bit. So what what do you do, Tom, scribe, what you actually do to people who don’t know what you might be doing day to day?
Tom Knights 31:28
I love it. So my biggest kind of responsibility is to grow the awareness of Strava Metro. And obviously, the more people that hear about Metro, hopefully, from listening to this, the more people might go, okay, that’s really interesting. I didn’t know that. So essentially, that’s our, our main focus is to speak to the folks that active travel England through to the city of Paris, and obviously, the, the onset of zoom and online meetings has made that a lot more accessible now, which is great. So as much as I’d love to go visit all these places, a lot of them are done by kind of video conferencing, which is allowed us to scale and obviously tell the story in a kind of much more scalable way. But where possible, I’ll always try and visit partners and learn about what they’re doing on the ground. And then actually, one of the biggest kind of
tasks this time around is to then how do we communicate these back to the Strava community, and then get all these 120 million athletes who are on Strava, to actually learn about these projects that their movement has contributed to, because that’s going to be the power of when they understand that your cycles work, even though it’s providing you with your exercise or your means of transportation. It’s also having a big impact on how, for example, you transport Greater Manchester or Transport for London to building your roads and your cycling. So if it helps with that extra bit of motivation, to get out of bed on a kind of cold January morning to kind of, you know, get cycling or walking to work, then, you know, we’ve done our job.
Carlton Reid 32:57
Isn’t there an argument and I am playing devil’s advocate here a little bit, council employee, a transportation but oh, maybe a councillor could actually use your data, which shows us lots and lots of people using a certain road? At a certain time? Yeah. And you would say,
to a council?
Officer? Well, look, we need to improve this route. Because look, how many cyclists are using it, we need to improve that. So it’s more comfortable besides blah, blah, blah. But, you know, a councillor could use that exact same argument and say, Well, why do we need to improve anything? You’re just telling me there’s loads of cyclists using this road? Great, job done?
Tom Knights 33:44
Well, I think the answer that is the kind of the theory that maybe, you know, a lot of highways and motorways around the world have used, which is what more lanes will fix it. And what did what happens when you get one more loan, we’ll fix it, you get more cars driving? Well, I think the principle for that applies in terms of, if you keep fixing and increasing the number of cycle paths and bike lanes, then you’ll see an increase in even more cyclists on there. So that would be my kind of caveat to say is, you know, the same way that we saw, you know, mass growth of roads and kind of infrastructure around the country, the same way that you could, if you keep investing, you’ll, you’ll see those increases come even more, as well. So it’s just the start. I think this is the kind of the key point. And, you know, this has only really been what I’ve been in the industry for what five or six years intended, specifically around the world of transportation planning. And I’ve, I’ve read your in as another student of history, read your history of bike lanes, and what we’re seeing is nothing new. You know, this obviously happened in the 1920s, as you’ve written about, it’s happened, you know, the early 1950s. And we hope that obviously, this bike boom is going to continue, but we know that the secret to that is obviously infrastructure, but the extra secret sauce and I’m gonna say this with my Strava hat on so apologies is that you know,
other people keep other people motivated. And that’s where Strava comes into it as a motivation machine.
Carlton Reid 35:06
So that game, gamification of it almost. Exactly, which is a good segue, thank you very much into my next question, which will be at the White House. So that’s a that’s a gamification, so, so just tell me exactly I know it’s not UK, but this is a, this is a podcast that goes … it’s very popular in America. So Strava, not Strava Metro, but Strava is working with the White House on something. So just tell us what what you’re doing. And then the gameifacation angle of that?
Tom Knights 35:34
Yeah. So from obviously, my understanding internally of the team that’s been working on that is very similar to other kind of projects or campaigns, or let’s say gamification, or challenges that we would work on this time, though, there’s obviously a social impact cause attached to it, I think what’s happened and from what I understand is that the White House, obviously have a campaign or a kind of cause that they’re looking to mobilise the community on, they had a commercial partner in work, which is, you know, obviously, kind of, I suppose, helping to kind of measure that through the through the wearable side. But the White House is partnering with Strava, to support physical activity, as part of its challenges to end hunger and build healthier communities. Now, as part of the social impact strategy, let’s say the call to action is to raise awareness of that campaign through movement. And obviously, that movement there is on Strava. And it’s very similar to lots of other campaigns that we might work with, from brands, but also also other charities, you know, that might want to also mobilise their community on Strava, through that kind of challenge format.
Carlton Reid 36:38
So that’s a US initiative. Obviously, it’s the White House as in the White House. What other stuff might you be doing UK or maybe even worldwide, similar to that?
Tom Knights 36:50
Well, I think ultimately, it’s if if we’ve done our job, right, and you know, the more people that learn about these challenges for good for social impact, we hope that people will start to see Strava as a platform, where they can actually start to tell their message to what’s a very engaged community. You know, like I say, not every cyclist is on Strava. But we do have, you know, in the UK, again, I’m going to correct myself on every one in seven adults has joined Strava, or something around 15% of the population. So that’s not everyone, but it is a very engaged audience. It’s bonkers, actually. So how many What’s that in millions? Is that like 10 million downloads or something, I will come back with some specific figures. And James can help with that.
On on, on our team, but Yeah, certainly, we obviously are in the millions of users in the UK. And of course, that’s a really engaged community who are using Strava a for their movement, but also then can attach that through a challenge for a social impact campaign, or brand campaign. And again, these challenges are completely optional for people to dive into should they wish to. And I think that’s one of the kind of key things to get at the Strava community, you know, having that say and what they do, and that’s what’s probably kept people coming back stronger over time, is that they get they have a choice in what they can join. And the challenges that the the team in Bristol, who in the UK run those operations for similar to the White House challenge, they do a fantastic job of making sure that there’s some really exciting challenges to come onto the platform and keep people motivated.
Carlton Reid 38:26
So can you now tell me
the different pricing options, so people are like, they’ve got the free version? They maybe like me that don’t.
They will now start using the free version a bit more for the reasons we’ve discussed before. But if you wanted to up the game, what would you be paying? And what would you be getting?
Tom Knights 38:46
So for UK based users, obviously Strava premium is an option and that it costs £8.99 per month, or £54.99 per year. Obviously, there’s a freemium model, in terms of the kind of ability to join Strava and not have to, like, say, necessarily choose to subscribe. But again, the compelling products, and the opportunity that the product team in the US and all the amazing kind of engineers that work on Strava have built an experience that should you wish to subscribe. There’s a really compelling reason to mostly through our amazing routing, mapping discovery tools, looking at new routes to explore. Obviously, like saying you’ve got access to
technical data, should you wish to kind of see things like your heart rate and health and kind of segments and leaderboards, etc. So there’s something on Strava for a lot of folks, and of course, you know, that community element and clubs and groups is really exciting. And another way for local authorities and governments to really drive engagement back to Metro, for example.
Carlton Reid 39:54
And then you got things like integration with fat map so you can like do all sorts of stuff with that as well because it’s
Strava. Did you buy fat map? Is that was that?
Tom Knights 40:02
Yeah, so there was a strategic acquisition of fat map and you know, the the, that’s
the exact date has been going on for the last year. So again, all these amazing tools and some mapping tools are such a good driver for people to discover the world around them. And I think that’s what’s really exciting is that, you know, yes, you might go on a bike ride and you know, kind of cycle from A to B on one of the cycle highways. But at the weekend, that same bike hopefully, is being used to then go, that that route is quite interesting, or I saw my friend do that route. You know, the other day that looks like I could probably do that I’ve got a spare couple of hours. And it’s basically just keeping people active. Again, you’ve probably heard this one for every minute spent on Strava, you can attribute 30 minutes of activity back to your kind of daily life. So rather than that, and that’s because you could you look at heat map, you see, you’re in an unusual destination, you don’t you’re you’re at your bike, and you fire up the heat map. It’s like, everybody’s gone that way. That way, then is that what you mean? Yeah, essentially, you know, like I say, you might, or it might just be on your activity feed that, you know, kind of been suggested a route or suggested a, an area to kind of move through. And I think that’s what’s really exciting is when you get somewhere new, you know that there’s a community, because obviously, we’re a global community that has cycled there before. And I say you can either look at the heat map, or you might be able to see someone’s route. And they’ve recommended it as a kind of place to ride. That inspiration you get from not just
like, say, scrolling through maybe another social network or Doom scrolling, should I say, hopefully, that movement and inspiration of people being active for something that’s going to be a positive driver for people being, you know, engaged on Strava.
Carlton Reid 41:44
There is another active travel analogy, which sometimes gets wheeled out. And that is, you can’t tell
why you need a bridge from the number of people swimming across the river. Because they aren’t going to swim across the river with a bike, they probably aren’t going to swim across the river full stop. But when you put a bridge in it suddenly get, you know, the heat map would go crazy. But once you put the bridge in, so is any of your cleverness your your text, can any of it can I spot? Well, if you only had something here, it would open up, you know, is this something that you can pinpoint that you can say that a bridge analogy can be used?
Tom Knights 42:25
Absolutely. And thank you so much for asking that, because that’s something we just updated last year in our metro product that obviously the planners and the transportation teams can see. And a lot of it ties back into some of the the kind of accessibility transportation equity, environmental racism that we talked about. What we’ve shown is that, when you put a pin on the map, we’ve also been able to kind of draw almost like a kind of circle around what’s accessible within say, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, etc. And people can see data within that kind of circle, which, again, will show you that where there’s a massive motorway with no bridge crossing, that’s that part of the community can’t access the park on the other side of it, or where there’s, for example, a big brownfield site where there’s been industrial use, it’s not safe to cycle through. So people have kind of diverted around it, we had a really good example, actually, recently in Germany, where, you know, there was a curb on the side of a bike lane. And you could see very clearly actually three desire lines on the on the actual grass and the verge that people were kind of going off this curb through the woods to kind of cut out maybe a mile. And again, using Strava, Metro, this German transportation team who are based in Frankfurt, actually, I’ll share the example with you because it’s fascinating see how even at a really small local level, these little changes can make a massive difference. And they’re not expensive to do, I think it only cost them something a couple of 1000 euros to drop the curb, because they then saw that that was having an impact on where people were then cycling. So you know, the famous analogy of when it snows, you can really see the designs of cars. Actually, when you look at the design on the heat map, and then in turn, look at that on Strava, you can start to see Oh, that’s interesting. And again, another great example that was Hartfordshire county council had a bicycle counsellor in one location. And they realised that the Strava count was actually higher than the bicycle counter. And they thought well hold on what’s happening there. And actually, there was a kind of dangerous crossing just slightly further up from this bicycle counter. And they were able to then use the Strava data to kind of, I suppose understand that actually, people were going this way because it was a safer journey. And that’s the these are the kind of insights that yes, we want to do the big high level projects and you know, make sure that we get new infrastructure and cycleways across major cities. But actually the really exciting ones when local advocacy groups or local councils who don’t necessarily have big budgets for you to accessing data can make these small changes and really improve these kind of everyday life for their community.
Carlton Reid 44:56
Can the Netherlands which obviously every week, look
Up to is like, the absolute nirvana of cycling. Do you like do you have like, Dutch people go, Oh, we could use this. It’s like, Jesus, they even removing even more, you haven’t done so. So basically, can you improve the Dutch cycle network?
Tom Knights 45:15
Yeah, definitely. And actually, we’ve had some interesting conversations with the folks over in Copenhagen, and obviously, in Amsterdam, and across the Netherlands as well. So not just Denmark and Holland. But, of course, the Netherlands is such a stays a bellwether of the cycling industry, but they’re always looking at new ways to improve, you know, the technology that they’re using and counting data. We are in Leuven, just at the end of November for the policy network events. And again, we are understanding that the kind of technical university they are leaving, we’ve been using metro to kind of understand, you know, and this is a really forward thinking Belgium city, which has got great cycle access, but they still need data to understand and counter. So rather than, you know, developing another app to count people, and getting the community to download it, they’ve seen that correlation between actually Strava and Strava, Metro.
So again, they don’t need to necessarily go and kind of reinvent the wheel, so to speak with, you know, building another kind of engagement tool with local community to get them to join, because Metro is hopefully fulfilling that service.
Carlton Reid 46:20
Brilliant, Tom that’s been absolutely fascinating. And we could go on for a good amount of time, probably on Classics literature, even while we discussed, what’s your Roman Empire? Yes, exactly.
But we can’t, because we people just won’t listen to 10 hours of us chatting away.
Tom Knights 46:42
I’m sure they will.
Carlton Reid 46:43
Now, could you tell us where people can find out? I’m sure people know where you can get onto Strava. But how they find out about Strava Metro, and and maybe how they can contact you?
Tom Knights 46:56
Yeah, definitely. So the best way to get in touch with myself and travel metric is on metro.strava.com. And then on that website, you’ll be able to learn more about case studies about how cities how researchers, communities have used the actual kind of practical steps of the data. There’s also some frequently asked questions on there about you know, privacy and how the data is used, etc. And then most importantly, there’s an apply button. So you can click apply for access. And then what we ask is that a you’re a organisation that is involved in working to improve active transportation. If you’re a consultancy, or an engineering firm, we also accept those applications as well. As long as you’re under contract with say, for example, the local government or the city authority, we know that Metro kind of appearing as a line item as it were.
And then, again, like saying, at its source, transportation planners around the world can can access, we ask that you use a work email, not a Gmail email. So normally an org or dot.gov, etc. And then just a short abstract, essentially, of how you’re going to use the data. And so then we know that it’s being used for a positive kind of cause, and then you will give you access to the area of interest that you’ve selected. Be it London, Birmingham, Somerset, wherever it is, as long as there’s been Strava activity, you can start to really start to see trends and patterns, then hopefully feed that into other datasets to build the infrastructure.
Carlton Reid 48:20
And Nick.Ferrari@LBC.co.uk or whatever his email address will just be rejected out of hand, that’s nefarious use?
Tom Knights 48:28
Yeah, I reserve the right not to comment on on LBC and Nick.
Carlton Reid 48:34
Thanks for listening to Episode 349 of the Spokesen podcast brought to you in association with Tern bicycles. Show notes and more can be found at the-spokesmen.com The next episode – 350 – will be out next month. Meanwhile, get out there and ride …
10th March 2024
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 348: Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett of Komoot
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUEST: Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett
- Laura Laker
Carlton Reid, April 21, 2024
Read more… - Andy McGrath — God is Dead
Carlton Reid, April 15, 2024
Read more… - AA’s Think Bike Redux
Carlton Reid, April 7, 2024
Read more… - Turn on Strava for everyday journeys, it could reshape streets for the better
Carlton Reid, March 17, 2024
Read more… - Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett of Komoot
Carlton Reid, March 10, 2024
Read more… - Richard Fletcher, Mr Cycling on the Isle of Man
Carlton Reid, February 24, 2024
Read more… - Monica Garrison of Black Girls Do Bike
Carlton Reid, February 20, 2024
Read more… - Balance bikes, Bikeability and the Saint Piran team at the Tour of Britain
Carlton Reid, January 28, 2024
Read more… - 24 hour racing with Josh Reid on Scotland’s Strathpuffer
Carlton Reid, January 27, 2024
Read more… -
First Ever Computer Modelling of How Cyclists (And Motorists) Hit Potholes
Carlton Reid, December 28, 2023
Read more…
TRANSCRIPT
Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 348 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Sunday 10th of MARCH(!) 2024.
David Bernstein 0:28
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.
Carlton Reid 1:03
I’m Carlton Reid. And this is the fourth in a five part series digging into bike navigation apps. There have been shows with folks from Ride With GPS, Bikemap, Cycle.travel, and today it’s the turn of Komoot.
although as you’ll soon hear, in this nearly 90 minute chat with Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett, we also talk a great deal about travelling the world by bike. And that’s before, of course, there were smartphone apps to guide you.
Jonathan, welcome to the show. And presumably you’re you’re in London,
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:51
thank you very much for having me. It’s a real pleasure. And yeah, I’m in London, South London to be precise on a very beautiful sunny February morning.
Carlton Reid 2:01
It’s kind of nice in Newcastle as well. So we’re blessed. Now the reason I said that was because a your name. So we can get looking we can discuss that in a second and you can show me how you’re you can tell me how to pronounce your, the Danish part of your name correctly. But also because cuz because we’re talking here about Komoot and Komoot is a German company. But first of all, how do i pronounce your name correctly?
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 2:29
My name is pronounced Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett.
And it’s actually not a Danish surname. It’s a Faroese surname from the Faroe Islands. So I am I a half British, my father’s English my mother is Danish, but my mother is half Faroese, her grandma, my grandmother’s from the Faroe Islands, and the Faroe Islands for anyone listening who isn’t sure exactly where they are, is a bunch of islands about halfway between Scotland and Iceland. And on the southern most of those islands, called Suðuroyu. There’s a kind of like a mountain ridge, behind the village where like my gran and her family are from called CamScanner. And that’s where that name is from. So yeah, it’s it’s ferries surname via Denmark. Wow. Okay, good explanation.
Carlton Reid 3:26
And because I didn’t know any of that, I then didn’t go back and check on your, your global world. Crossing cyclist. So I noticed that you went from Iceland? Did you go via the Faroe Islands at all? Yeah.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 3:45
So many, many years ago. Now, I spent three years cycling around the world, which was a whole kind of story in episode in itself. And at the very end of that, I wanted to go and seek because my great grandmother was still alive at the time, and she was alive and kicking the pharaohs. So towards the end of this, this, this free journey, I really wanted to go to Iceland cycle there wasn’t particularly advisable in the depths of winter, but had a wonderful time nonetheless. And from there, you can take a ferry to the pharaohs. So I did go. I did after sort of not really seeing any family for about three years. I did go and see my great grandmother, which was amazing. It’s an incredibly beautiful place. By that point, I had seen an awful lot of devote the world and the pharaohs. You know, just like truly spectacular. And it was really wonderful that I got to go and see my great grandma because she passed away a few months later. So it was all kind of perfect. A really nice kind of like final stop before I returned to the UK. So
Carlton Reid 4:52
I will admit I haven’t read every single one of your blog posts from back then but I’ll go backwards and I’ll go back and read that one because I’m sure that Under brilliant because I hadn’t spotted the Faroese part.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 5:04
Yeah, it was a really lovely thing that I got to and then at the very beginning of my, the very beginning of this huge cycle, I left home said goodbye to my dad, my mum lives in Copenhagen. So I started that cycle around the world. I mean, at the time I had, I had no idea. It would be that big a cycle. I was just trying to see how far east I could get. But I wanted to go and visit my mum in Copenhagen. So that was kind of the beginning of the journey. So it was quite nice that I had like pitstop early on, you know, visiting family and it was quite nice that again, towards the very end, I also had a pit stop visiting fan for going home.
Carlton Reid 5:42
That’s your mum also came out and visited you like you as your beach bumming whether that was in somewhere in Indonesia or was in Thailand. Yeah, that’s
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 5:50
right. She came and visited me in. I guess I was in in Thailand, often having seen her for probably a year and a half at that point. So we had a little, very nice, relaxing beach holiday, catching up, and most importantly, not doing any cycling at the time.
Carlton Reid 6:07
And I’m sure she’s treating you as well. It was, yeah, yeah. Know that for a fact, because we treated our son when he was doing stuff like that. Right. So let’s get back to what we’re meant to be talking about here, Jonathan, that is Komoot. So before we do that, I mean, give us the history of Komoot, because, you know, would you have used it on your? So yeah, this is 2015 to 2017. Yeah, yep.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 6:37
So I think I was unfortunately, I was a little bit too early. Cuz it’s been around the apps been around for about a decade now. Set up by six, six friends from Germany and Austria. They have, I guess they will kind of united by a love of both tech. And also nature, they will come from the fringes of like, beautiful parts of Europe. But a very clever bunch. Yeah, excited about like the future of tech and where it intersects with, like, you know, all aspects of reality in our day to day lives. So Komoot is a German company. But going back to your your opening comment is a German company, but we consider ourselves very much a global or at least a European company, people, the people who work for Komoot are spread out across all of Europe. So we have quite an international outlook on the world, I would say.
Carlton Reid 7:39
Was that right from beginning? Or was it very localised to begin with, and then only gradually did become international?
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 7:45
Definitely, it was a gradual thing. I think Komoot I can’t quite was before my time, the point because Komoot’s fully remote. So one point switched and thought, Well, why not sort of recruit from across the entire continent instead of one country. And for a good number of years Komoot has been conscience consciously, international. So like had the app, the product translated to English a long time ago, we now have it available in half a dozen languages. So like, that obviously takes time and resources, but it’s quite important for us to allow as many people as possible around the world to like, understand and interact with and interact with the app. So in terms of my own journey in cycling, I was kind of a bit too early on in the process is quite, it’s quite funny actually, when I, when I first left, I really was not a cyclist. In 2015, when I left home, it all came together very quickly. And this was sort of the blogging, end of those blogging, glory years, I think around 2010 to the mid teens. So anyway, I found some resources online, and people were saying, Oh, you can buy a cycling computer and use that. I didn’t really have much cash at the time. So I picked the cheapest cycling computer that looked like it might do the job. And it was this. This Garmin device, I can’t quite recall what it was called. But you couldn’t load base maps onto it, you could create a route somewhere and export a GPX file and then you could have this line to follow it. And I I was just following the North Sea coast coastline, on the way up to Scandinavia. And I spent a lot of time getting very lost. And after about three weeks on the road, I met someone who was was like, you know, you can just use your phone for this. And I didn’t have mobile data across Europe. It was like before, it was quite so easy to connect to everywhere. But it hadn’t even occurred to me that I could use my phone as a GPS device that it had this functionality, which feels a bit silly in hindsight, but why would I have I lived a sort of normal city life where I was always online at the time. And I hadn’t realised that I could download load these map files from Open Street Map. And so I could kind of work out where I was at all times. So when I had that revelation, it was kind of blew my mind and things became a lot easier. And as we might discuss later, fast forward almost 10 years, it’s now even easier than ever to have this these good quality maps offline and also to sync them with devices. But it’s funny to look at where computers now, compared to my very rudimentary experiences, yeah, almost a decade ago.
Carlton Reid 10:30
So the first time I came across, Komoot in certainly, you know, seared into my consciousness when my son was cycling back from China. Yeah. And I had all sorts of other ways of doing routes. But he was insistent that he was using Komoot. So all the way back from from China in some pretty hairy paid places, but parts of the world some of which I can see that you’ve cycled through as well. He was using Komoot and I need to ask him why he was he was using it but he did found it find it very valuable and certainly very valuable in those hairy parts of the world because it was drawing down some pretty ok maps. And it was giving him obviously really good information. So here’s the pitch. Jonathan, why why use komoot? Why Why would world tourists use Komoot and why would that non well tourists want to use Komoot just you know, bumbling around the the Yorkshire lanes or the Norfolk coast towards why those two users might might wait. They want to use Komoot.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 11:41
It’s really that’s really cool to hear that just used Komoot for that. I’ve watched his like video of that long journey. It’s so amazing. And they’re very nice to Komoot was able to help that little bit. And I know that you’ve travelled a lot by bike as well, I think is funny. You know, especially with bikes, and especially with bike touring, it’s been around, you know, it’s been a thing for a very long time. It wasn’t really that long ago that people were relying on paper maps. But that’s in the same way that people used to, you know, drive around with British people with A to Z you know, in the car. And that already feels like such a such an outdated thing. I think a lot of very young people will this is probably a fact that a lot of young people don’t know how to read maps in the same way that older generations do. So I would say for bike touring, it’s, it’s kind of like I sometimes why would you not embrace the technology that we have now, when I was cycling around the world, I did not really do any complex route planning on my phone. But now, we have commute and some similar apps and products. It’s incredibly easy. The commute app is really intuitive, the algorithms are very sophisticated, it’s very easy to find multiple options, but to find very suitable options, from A to B, even in parts of the world, where some of the map data is, is less comprehensive. And you can do all of this from your phone really easily. You don’t have to drag paper maps around, you can very easily forecast how long it will take to get from A to B, you can very easily find out where might be a nice detour to take. There’s just a lot less guesswork involved. So for the bike tour, it’s a really powerful tool. But I would also say for the recreational user popping around the local lanes in the British countryside, for example, or a beginner, we have, we have a lot of tools that make it really easy to find a suitable route based on your ability. So while we have the route planner, which is great for finding ATV rides, whether that’s like 100 miles, or whether that’s 2000 miles across a continent, for the casual users who are doing like, you know, regular recreational loops. On our discover interface, we have, within just a few clicks, you can find routes that are based on your preferred sport type, whether you’re gravel riding or road cycling, if you like hilly, hilly routes or flatter routes, or whether you’re a hiker as well, because we accommodate for, you know, hiking as well. So you have these options that are tailor made for your needs within just a couple of clicks. And you can go and someone who’s cycling across a continent probably understands how maps work probably enjoys looking at them, probably enjoys the process of, of stitching a route together. But for a lot of other users. That’s not a priority for them. They just want to spend the time outside, having a good time without anything to worry about.
Carlton Reid 14:55
There are a number of navigation apps some some of which seem to you know, be very popular in North America. Akka and some that are more popular in, in Europe. So that ecosystem seems to be very, very healthy. There are a number of apps going for the same kind of thing you know, from, you know, including one man bands like Cycle.travel. So, all of these different apps that are out there, how are people choosing? Do you think people are going through a list? And they’re gonna go, Oh, I’ve tried that one, try that we’re all like this one? Or do you think they just find one? And then they just keep on using that one come? What may? How do you think this ecosystem works?
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 15:39
Gosh, that’s a very good question. And a very big question. I think for a lot of people, it’s probably a question of what they used first. And that’s, that goes beyond just these, like app based kind of routing platforms, if someone is very used to using was successful, use paper maps for decades, or if someone in the UK is, you know, swears by Ordnance Survey. And they’ve always had, you know, good experience doing that, there’ll be unlikely to change unless you give them a very compelling argument or a good example. So I think a lot of people, what they first start using, becomes the thing that they become familiar, familiarity is so important, same of a lot of like tech or products that we use day to day, we’re quite hesitant to change our routines. I also think within that ecosystem, people’s preferences probably change quite a lot based on if they have a bad experience as well. Same with all types of different, you know, products that we consume, you know, there’s probably many things that you’ve used day to day for years, and suddenly when it breaks or something goes wrong, you decide I want to try something different. And then I would also say the local element probably plays a significant part in it. You mentioned in like other regions, or for example, North America, the market is in a different, like perhaps different status for us or you know, different other products that are available for people, I think a lot of it depends on the local side of it has to do with your peers. So like who you explore with you trusting your your recommendation of those you go out with, or the people who give you a great experience outdoors. But also whether or not the product is is localised and translated into your language that also makes a big difference people find rightly so it’s reassuring when the product is as easy to understand gives a different level of trust. So I think those are a few of the factors, that that kind of changed the state of play. But overall, I would say that it’s really, it’s a good thing. There are a lot of incredible, incredibly bright minds and have great innovative companies in a kind of overlapping space, often with a slightly different objective. And, you know, that’s, that’s just great for the consumer, because it means that we’re all kept on our toes, constantly looking for ways to improve those
Carlton Reid 18:08
variety of companies out there, some are chosen by for instance, you know, cycle travel companies. So when you go on a on a cycle holiday, they will, they will choose to partner with a navigation app company, and then they will send you all the routes on that. So you’re basically you’re almost tied in on that particular holiday to that particular navigation app. Good thing, bad thing. So is that something that it’s incredibly important to discover who are actually giving these links out and and calm them? Because you know, you go on a North American owned psychology company in say, Italy. And even though you’re in Europe, you’re using in effect and American app, because it’s an American company that’s leading those tours. So is that something that you are you as in Komoot? Or your your, your your colleagues and commute are actively trying to partner with these key companies? Yeah,
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 19:15
there are. I mean, there are a lot of ways that we might sort of acquire new users. And by that, I mean, like reaching people and giving them their first experience on commute, those kinds of partnerships. I guess they probably represent like a smaller percentage of the ways to reach people. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not important. Particularly because if that partner whether it’s a tour operator, or you know, a hotel or someone who’s running a hotel, or even an event organiser, if they trust in Khumbu, and you know, I would say in Europe is you’re far more likely to find that stuff that information presented to you via commitment than anyone else. That’s great. because it’s just reassures the, you know, the user that people look for that kind of reassurance from those those kind of places of authority. So those partnerships are really important to us. And we do work with a lot of tourism organisations, maybe even like hotels, tour operators, we do have quite a lot of active partnerships. And it’s great for us because we reach that audience. But it’s really good for us, we put a lot of effort into the people that do choose to work with us on educational tools, so that they understand it coming inside out, and can then give their users good experience. And that remains like super important for any of those types of partnerships
Carlton Reid 20:39
can notice. If you get a bradt guidebook, a cycling guidebook, and it’s you know, to the lanes of East Anglia, or whatever have you Yeah. Well, you’re flicking through this, this book. And there’s a little QR code. You open that up, I know, there’s your route in Komoot via the Bradt guidebook. So what else have you got? Who else are you apart from Bradt, what else you out there in like a published terms?
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 21:10
Well, it’s just a good question off the top of my head. And when I struggle to think of them, but quite a lot of I mean, of course, is difficult because we are so you know, across the whole of the continent. There are some amazing publications and magazines that we’ve partnered with across Germany, France, Italy, Spain. And I think one thing that’s really nice at the stage that commutes that is, particularly within certain segments, in Europe, we are, it would almost be strange for the user to have the route presented to them in a different way. Because they’re so familiar with commute. That’s what they use for their group rides. That’s what they use for the events they sign up to. That’s what they do for their day to day riding. And so a lot of those partners like they will present stuff on Komoot, regardless, like we’d always like to help them present the stuff in the best kind of best way possible. But they’re still going to be reaching out and using Komoot, simply because it’s a really nice, easy way to share and present routes with your kind of users or participants.
Carlton Reid 22:16
And what do you do for Komoot? So what is the community part of your job title? What is what is? What does that involve? Yes, so
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 22:25
I’m the global community manager komoot. The global part is, well, global, but it’s in particular, it’s about the gaps between. So we have a team of community managers spread out. In some of the markets where we have more kind of community oriented stuff going on, we have more people. So there’s, there’s a couple of two or three people in Germany, we have a couple of community managers in the UK, I’m kind of filling in the gaps between a lot of the markets that are growing for us, but aren’t quite at the same same kind of stage just yet. And then the community, part of it is kind of two things. One thing is our external partnerships. So that could be with events and event organisers that could be with the kind of inspiring individuals that we work with, because they have, you know, a great platform, or they have a very inspiring story to tell, or they’re great at motivating people that that follow them. And then on the other side of that, I have a lot of focus, particularly these days on our core community. So Komoot is, while we’re really lucky that we have such a huge audience, audience, we’ve got about 37 million users. So there’s a lot of people. And not all of those people are, you know, active every day or using commute to connect with other people and share their stories within the community. But we have millions of people who are and I spend a lot of time, as do my colleagues on how do we give these people? Like how do we reward them for their contributions? How do we motivate them to share more? How do we make sure that people are getting fed the right inspirational content based on their preferences? So elevating our kind of, and looking after our core community is also a significant part of my role.
Carlton Reid 24:22
So can you is it gonna kind of go slightly backwards into your background as well, if you if you are going to set out on a kind of track that you started in 2015? Are you going to do that now? For instance, could you open up Komoot and say, you know, do me a route from London all around the world back again? Or do you have to do it in stages? How would you use if you’re going to be doing it again? How would you use commute?
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 24:55
I think I think doing a route around the world probably possible but That’s an awful lot of information for for one file. So I will probably break it down into smaller segments, which is to be fair, exactly what I did when I cycled around the world, and what most people probably would. And so when I when I left home, and sometimes thinking about cycling around the world is quite kind of overwhelmingly big kind of concept to navigate. But I would break it down into really small parts. So I knew that I wanted to cycle from London to Copenhagen. I knew that I wanted to visit a friend in Amsterdam, for example. So to begin with, I would focus on how do I get from London to Amsterdam, that’s a kind of more sensible, you know, if you break it down to blocks, the whole thing becomes a lot more manageable, both in terms of logistics, but also mentally. So I will do the same on Komoot. One thing that sets you apart from some similar, some similar platforms is that we have a variety of different sport types you can choose from. So if you go on the route planner, you’ll see that even for cycling, there’s a few variations. There’s like road cycling, gravel riding, bike touring, mountain biking. And that’s really important because well, even even within bike tours, people have different preferences. If someone wants to get to Amsterdam, in you know, two or three days, on a road bike, credit card, touring, staying in hotels, they might want to be thinking, you know, they want to have the mindset of a road cyclists, they want to choose quick, efficient routes, they’re on 25 mil tires, they don’t really want to be going down toe puffs, no matter how they’re graded. So these different algorithms think slightly differently, which I think is is really important. I would personally I would, for the way I was touring leisurely, I would be on the bike touring mode. But no, that’s it’s just important to point out there’s different types based on your kind of bike and you’re writing preferences. We have a tool called the multi day tour planner, so I could pick from London to Amsterdam. And then I could divide it up into let’s say, I want to do it in four days, or I know that I want to do about six hours of cycling a day, I can divide it up and it takes into account the elevation on the way. So it has like a kind of consistent breakdown, which is really helpful when you’re trying to forecast when you might get to a certain location. The other tool that I would definitely would be using on the route planner. One of our features is the sport specific overlays. And then you can overlay the long distance or National Cycle routes, which is super helpful. I do this and I’m always toggling between these wherever I’m out hiking or cycling, it just means at a cursory glance, I can see the long distance routes. So for example, I was at the time following loosely one of the EuroVelo. The common which number is the one that goes up along that coast. Well, I can see that overlaid on the map. And so I can compare that against the route that I’m plotting, I can make sure that I’m like loosely following it that that makes a real big difference. Both when I’m long distance touring, or if I’m even just kind of out exploring in the south of England. So those are a few of the main tools that I would use. The final thing I would add, I wouldn’t have such a rudimentary cycling computer, I would still have, I’d still have one. The Garmin that I have now is far more modern and has base maps. And we actually have an app designed for Garmin specifically. And with that, I can create the date the routes on my phone. And I can just press one button send to device and I can load up the IQ app on my Garmin device. And the route will just go bing. And here it is. And if I want to change my route, halfway through the day, I can now just update it on commute on the app on my phone and press updates. And I’ll get a little notification and my route will be updated. So if I wanted to cut my day short, we’ll go to a different hotel or campsite an evening. And that feature is so cool. And I think if I’d had that all those years ago, there would have been a lot less faffing involved, which would have been wonderful.
Carlton Reid 29:14
Yeah, I use that the other day, in fact. So I had a Garmin unit and I had I was navigating with Komoot hadn’t actually changed the route because I just got on my bike after 70 miles because the wind was about 50 miles an hour ahead of me. But still, I was using it and it was neat that so I agree. So the map, I’ve got the app open here now and in other apps, you have a choice of quite a few maps. But here I don’t I see the the Komoot map. I see a satellite map but then there’s no like Ordnance Survey for the UK. So because your is that because you were an international brand and that’s just what on market, yeah, there’s no point just offering an OS just for one market. I mean,
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 30:03
you could obviously you could argue for it. And in the UK, a lot of people aren’t really familiar with and put a lot of trust into Ordnance Survey, commutes sort of core foundation revolves around OpenStreetMap, we are such committed believers of the Open Street Map Project. And it’s really at the core of everything we do. And we are constantly looking for ways that, you know, we can help to enrich the data that’s there or help to facilitate improvements to it. And you’re right, I think, because we are active in so many different countries, we could protect, we could try and add all of these different national maps. But the the user experience would become quite convoluted. You know, if I travel a lot using commute, I quite like knowing that I can get my head around the commute render of OpenStreetMap, which is our like, primary map, and then we have satellite map. I like being familiar with it, I like knowing that the sort of routing algorithms will give me consistent results in different places. And that’s quite important to ask that we still give people like a quite a not simple, but like, you know, familiar user experience that doesn’t become overwhelming or confusing for them. But we really, we really, I should stress that we like, especially in the markets where we are most active in the quality of the OpenStreetMap data is is really amazing. And it’s always improving. And it always is, yeah, enough for us to give people a really good experience.
Carlton Reid 31:40
Maybe it’s it’s an age thing then because I mean, I grew up with OS maps, maybe people who are younger than me and not so hide bound, you know, as you could you have seen before, you know, people are no longer using paper maps, if I’ve grown up as a user of paper maps, and I no longer use paper maps, but I use the Ordnance Survey maps on my, my phone, it generally tends to be if I’m like trying to visualise an area, then me will as somebody who has grown up with that kind of Ordnance Survey mind map, I would I would default to Ordnance Survey as that’s how I explain, you know, my, my where I am. So to me that’s like, wow, I need I need, you know, I need iOS to know exactly where I am. It’s great to have the Open Street Map. It’s lovely. And the commute version of it. But still like, Yeah, but where am I? And I need that something’s very familiar. But that might just be you know, people have an older generation. And that that is obvious to my son to Josh, that had zero relevance. And he probably wouldn’t know his way around and OS map, but you don’t know his way around, you know, the Komoot map really well. So do you think that’s just telling me Jonathan, is this just me? Is it just me because I’m very, very old?
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 33:00
If I frame my answer, as well, to be careful, I think your Ordnance Survey specifically as a very particular place in the British sort of, well, the psyche of how we spend how we map the country, is equivalent in other countries. I’ll give you an example because I sometimes almost feel like as a outdoorsy person who likes Grim Adventures and is British and spends a lot of time exploring the British outside. I, you know, I should be more familiar with Ordnance Survey I confess, I have grown up in London. I didn’t kind of do much outdoorsy stuff at school. Honestly, I’ve never really used Ordnance Survey I am, when when I started to explore, there was sort of these phone based solutions available for me right away sort of 10 years ago, revolving around OpenStreetMap. I do spend a lot of time hiking and walking for leisure. And I’ve just never found that I that I needed it. I’m super familiar with OpenStreetMap. I’m now an expert in how Komoot works. And so it’s just funny, I think it’s like different types of people, for sure, especially in the UK, but I would say also globally, is just very different, like different generations who have grown up, especially have the sort of, you know, even for example of Google Maps is sort of omnipresent in our exploring of the world and navigating I’m talking about everything now from public transport to driving. And even like the sort of sat nav, the satnavifacation, I’m sure that’s not a word, but how we drive a car around the world has now had a massive influence on on people hiking and cycling. A lot of people would prefer to hike with turn by turn instructions on their phone and find that far more easy to get their head around than navigating from a paper map and pen The people could argue that that’s, that’s not as good. But I think if you embrace, you know, the quality of the map data and you embrace it, this actually helps a lot more people explore because there are less boundaries or sorry, less. Yeah, sort of less friction points. So less obstacles for them to to get over to outside. I’m not sure that’s necessarily such a bad thing.
Carlton Reid 35:23
And let’s go slightly backwards in that. The name Komoot is a pun on commute. So when it was originally developed, was it as an internal city thing? Or was it always, you know, this is meant to explore the world with or was that explore the world with just something that came afterwards and is the name a bit of a misnomer,
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 35:56
is actually a bit of a misnomer, partly because it’s actually like a Komoot is derived from, I think it’s called the Valsa dialect, which is the region that the founders are from and it’s just like as far as I understand it, a casual greeting means something like simple and practical. And so it’s a it’s actually slightly misleading, because that’s the origin of Komoot, obviously, was
Carlton Reid 36:22
Nothing at all to do with commute. Well,
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 36:25
I don’t, I mean, it’s not sure if it’s a good or a bad thing that they’re so similar, but that’s the origin of the name Komoot. It doesn’t, and the sort of the product and the philosophy doesn’t come from commuting at all, it’s about spending time outside. Of course, you could probably interpret that in many ways. Perhaps this is an alternative way of you know, commuting in nature. As it happens, many people use commute as part of their commute within town because they want to find a more scenic way of getting from A to B. But that’s not the that was never the objective of the company and and still that isn’t the case.
Carlton Reid 37:05
Right? Interesting. So I got that wrong that Well,
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 37:10
I also had one for a very long day if that makes you feel better.
Carlton Reid 37:15
It does Thank you very much.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 37:17
I’m afraid now that you’ll really struggle to pronounce Komoot without saying Komoot because it’s only a matter of time before for that becomes a riddle itself.
Carlton Reid 37:26
Well, of course Google isn’t I think it’s a mathematical term isn’t it? So would have been familiar to some people but most people it’s not it’s not familiar terms. It’s just these unusual term. So anything that’s slightly unusual is better for a website you know name so the fact that you kind of spelling this and you people think it means there’s but doesn’t but they remember anyway so that’s that’s the trick just remembering it. So if it’s if it helps some people doing all that must be Komoot Oh, yes, he spelt with a K. And other people’s know it as a, you know, a greeting in a certain language. That’s also okay. So it’s however you get your name remembered?
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 38:03
Yeah, very much so.
Carlton Reid 38:06
So at this point, I’d like to actually cut away and let my colleague take over and we’ll be back in a few minutes. So take it away, David.
David Bernstein 38:16
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Carlton Reid 39:17
Thanks, David and we are back with with with Jonathan of Komoot we’ve discovered that it doesn’t mean commute and that’s it you want it to mean commute. It can mean whatever you want. But Jonathan is he’s the community Global Community Manager for Komoot and he’s if anybody’s going around the world on their bicycle or wandering around the world on the bicycle and they wanted to use commute then then clearly Jonathan would be a good guy to to learn from Andy certainly in a pretty good job for for the kind of company commute is because Jonathan, you went round the world well, we have touched on this but now let’s let’s explore this in in greater detail. So we’ve got the Komoot out of the way. Let’s let’s, let’s talk about what where you’ve come from and why are you working for for Komoot? So we laughed before. Could you mention the fact that when you started, you were much of a cyclist? And I was kind of thinking, Yeah, that’s right, because of what the amount of kit you took to begin with is the kind of the classic. And I made this exact same mistake when I started my cycle touring adventures many, many, many years ago, you take too much kit. So you had an enormous amount of kit. And you had a kind of an old school bike, you were you on steel, you’re on a bicycle that I would have been familiar with in the 1980s, you know, a Dawes Super Galaxy, classic touring bike of a while ago. And then you you you’ve, you’ve clearly learned a lot. In that time that you’re away, but you started reading your blog, you basically picked this bike, you didn’t seem to know much about cycling, and then like, a week later, you’re, you’re off touring the world. So describe it. Have I got that? completely correct, you were pretty much a novice, and then you went cycled around the world.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 41:18
That is, that is pretty much it. It’s almost embarrassing to admit how little preparation or knowledge I had prior to leaving, but I think I was just blessed with youthful naivety time, and I didn’t have high expectations at all, I just wanted an adventure. And there are very few simpler ways of finding one than grabbing a bike and kind of just heading off without a plan.
Carlton Reid 41:44
Or when it’s classic, absolutely classic, the way the way that kind of developed. But let’s let’s find out what were you doing at the time? How long were you expecting to do? You didn’t have any plans at all. We literally tried to go around the world, we didn’t know how long was going to take? Or were you just going to cycle and see where you got to and then just what you might give up at some point. What What were you doing? How old were you and what were you doing at the time.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 42:08
So if I rewind a little bit further, we touched upon it at the beginning of the call. I grew up I grew up in London, but my my Yeah, my father’s British, my mother’s Danish. We never cycled or I never cycled for fitness. I never cycled for leisure or for exploring. However, I did grow up riding bikes, it was just very much like a functional tool to get around. London is not bike friendly city. But it’s a very practical city to get around and manoeuvre by bicycle. So I grew up cycling. I studied music at university. And when I returned to London, I wasn’t entirely sure what to do next, like I’m sure plenty of young people. Now, early 20s have the same sort of existential crisis. I was quite fortunate that I’d been working the whole time I was studying and, and while I had an awful lot of debt, I had somehow ended up with, you know, a few grand in the bank accounts saved up so I kind of had this incredible, I was in this incredibly privileged position where I could kind of yeah, go and explore a little bit without having to take the next the next most serious steps in life. I had always travelled a lot that had been a high priority for me, I had done a bit of long distance walking, I was kind of prepared for another long hike. And then kind of had this this moment, this epiphany I suppose, where I thought well, what about cycling that could be I was really interested in human power, not human powered, rather, I was interested in overland travel. So I became kind of fixated by this idea of, of cycling and then bike touring. And, and these were, I think, a wonderful period on internet where you could find all these incredible blogs that were so relatable and so inspiring and so informative as well. And so the sort of recommendations I found online, people said, those galaxies a good bike, found one on on eBay bought it was a good pannier to take Balsam or leave panniers from Argos and got all of this around Christmas. And I left two weeks later and the plan at the time, I’d been sort of telling my peers and family I was gonna cycle to Australia, but it was it was a it was a pipe dream. But it was kind of a joke as well. It was a good way of like picking something so outlandish that people wouldn’t take it seriously at all, which was fair enough given that I had never cycled further than about 10 miles. And so I I set off as I said to go and visit my mother, and I said if if this goes well, I will continue heading east and I had a fantastic first month and I continued writing to Turkey. I became very good at living, I would say extremely cheap on the road. I realised that I could probably get quite a long way. And, and yeah, I ended up going all the way to Australia, by which point I was completely broke. But I got a job and worked for a few months there. And then at that point, I, it became very clear to me that I wanted to continue and make it around the world cycle. And so I did that. And Nick got home, just under three years after having left probably having clocked around 50,000 kilometres, which is kind of a mind boggling number when I say out loud,
Carlton Reid 45:32
huh? There’s some people kind of do that in three weeks. I’m exaggerating a little bit, but they do it fast. And, you know, some Komoot users, Markus Stitz, for instance, did on a single speed, etc, etc. But you took three years. Now, it’s not that you weren’t doing some big mileages, you know, there was there was, you know, I read on your blog, you know, some days you’re doing 145 kilometres. And then other days, clearly, you’re, you’re just doing nothing, because you’re just enjoying the location. So you never had any plan to do it in a certain amount of time, you would just basically ebb and flow. It was just whatever the live through it you you kind of did that.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 46:17
Yep. And thank goodness, I personally like that. Because otherwise, I think it would be overwhelming to think about and those people who cycle around the world planning on it or trying to break records, I think it must just require so much. That’s no fault and pressure, I really was just kind of going for a ride, there was never any pressure, no expectation. If I went home, whenever I was bored, that would have been fine. No one would have judged me. So I was really making up as I went along. And when I left, I had absolutely no plan to spend anywhere near that long on the road knows that I have any plans to cycle all the way around the world. I am a Tura. At heart cycling at that pace is and I’ve done a lot of more, sort of a dyno extreme bikepacking. I’ve done a lot of ultralight cycling, I’ve even tried a few ultra endurance races. But touring at that kind of pace, for me is just the most kind of beautiful ratio in life. Hmm.
Carlton Reid 47:20
So notice, you’ve done the Transcontinental. So you have done these, these, these races, but your forte is basically just pootling along.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 47:30
Definitely. And if I if I continued to my cycling trajectory in between cycling around the world, and ending up doing what I’m doing currently at Komoot, when I returned home, having spent all of this time on the road, I actually worked as a bicycle courier in London for a short period, which was there’s no better way to re calibrate and reintegrate into city living having spent so much time on the road and to get paid to cycle around delivering stuff and exploring, you know, a city even if it’s your home city by bike. And I then started working at a company called Apidura. And I know that you’re familiar of a producer, because I believe you interviewed the founder of Apidura in this past few years. And I was there for a few years. And that was really, I mean, obviously made sense. I had a lot of touring experience. But that was in 2018, which was really when this hugely significant kind of shift in interest from bike touring to bikepacking. Which you can interpret in many ways. But, but this this shift was really kind of about to explode, and then get even more exaggerated through the pandemic. So I, I had learned so much about travelling by bike and then I learned so much about the benefit of ultralight cycling and these new packing systems that were so different to taking for panniers on a loaded bike. And so I spent four years at the Jura did the roller coaster that was COVID 19. And and that was sort of the segue that led me to Komoot because Komoothas been so involved with bike packing bikepacking as an established but also an emerging sport in the last few years. Because
Carlton Reid 49:19
you looking at your your bike setup. Back then with the with the Dawes Galaxy, and the bags you had on that was very much old school. And then I can completely identify with that because I’m clearly old school. And that’s where I started. So you know, for panniers at least loads of stuff and caring too much, etc, etc. And you look at that now and you think no, you would have the upward Eurostyle you know you’d have the bike packing bags, you probably wouldn’t be carrying quite as much Kip, although some of the place you went to. You know I’m thinking of you like your Australia video. and stuff where you’re obviously having to pack. I mean, when you go across the desert, you having to pack you know, an enormous amount of water, you’ve got to have all of the bug kit, you know, you’ve got to have all of the stuff that’s protecting you from the nasties. So you had some times you have gotten better how many it’s not an old school versus new school thing. It’s just you have to have a lot of kit in some places and and there’s no two ways about that. You know? Even if you’re doing a transcontinental style, you know, fast route across somewhere, you would still need a fair bit of of kit. But when you were when you started out, okay, actually good point. Did you finish on the same bike?
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 50:43
I did, I finished on the same bike and I still ride that same Dawes Galaxy as my day to day pub, one around bike.
Carlton Reid 50:51
Excellent. So it’s but it’s like Trigger’s Broom, you’ve got you know, you’ve replaced tonnes of things, or it’s still largely the same bike
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 50:58
is the same frame, the same fork. And that is nice. All That Remains of the original bike.
Carlton Reid 51:05
So that’s pretty good going well done Dawes Super Galaxy.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 51:09
Yeah, there’s a lot to be said. Having modern bike so us so reliable in general. But yeah, I’m very much of the steel fan club. That bike has a lot of battle scars, from various sort of unfortunate collisions with other vehicles or just the road or ice. But it’s still yet it’s still going strong. And, and you’re right, I’ve had the been very lucky to experience travelling by bike in very different forms from the kind of old school bike touring sense where you carry basically your entire house, to super ultra light, you know, bike travel, where you just have a bivy bag, and you sacrifice all levels of comfort. I’ve also done a lot of off road sort of mountain bike touring, I think the thing that I find so wonderful about bicycle travel in general, is that there’s always a new way to do it. And there’s absolutely no right or wrong way of doing it, I think it’s very easy to get caught up in the the idea of I must be a lightweight bike packer, or I must do it in this particular way. But really, there’s no right or wrong way of doing it. We’re all very different, we all travel for very different reasons. And there’s different ways of, of packing for it. And, and even if I refer back to commute and the way that we’re set up, we give people the tools to, to pick, you know, they can pick the fast road route, if they want, or they can pick the meandering route, they can pick the most direct one, or they can pick the most leisurely one up over the mountains. I think this whole kind of space is really set up for the user to be able to customise you know, what they’re doing, and how they’re carrying it based on what their objectives is. And I think that’s what’s really kind of charming about the whole two wheeled travel thing.
Carlton Reid 53:02
See, I’m a historian of many things, but including cycling, and Thomas Stevens, if you hadn’t if you’ve come across that name in in the past, but he was basically a big wheel rider. So what would people would call Penny farthings. And this is 1880s. And the kit he had, the amount of kit he had and how it was packed is very much like bikepacking You know, it’s the big pannier bags, that’s pretty much the 70s and 80s thing, you know, really, really old and I was calling that old school, but genuinely old school. So 1880 stuff is you know, Apidura-style, incredibly lightweight, hard to carrying anything at all kind of touring. So that’s that’s kind of where cycle touring started. And we’ve kind of come full circle in many ways. And so people are going out there with incredibly minimal bits of of kit and somehow surviving. So when you did your your your your cirumnavigation, and you had all this enormous kit, where you jettison bits as you’re going along. And just in case you didn’t you don’t really need this you pick it up basically you became an expert. Just cook you’re having to carry this stuff. And because you haven’t to carry it, you quickly learn I don’t need that Chuck it
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 54:30
Yeah, and I did get rid of an awful lot of stuff. I had some some very questionable belongings with me. Like I had my my, I mean, I was on quite a budget when I left and and while I was going so it’s sort of just what am I sacrificing a bit of weight for a cheaper option, but I had like my, my mother’s old coat which was this like not anything resembling a down jacket, this monstrous thing that took up half a pannier. I had a pair of jeans with me to wear like when I was off the bike. So much unpractical. kind of clothing thing, I even had like a sort of smart casual shirt, I thought I would like to dress up like a non bike person when I was in town for a weekend, or things that I would never do now. And I did get rid of a lot of this stuff slowly. And as time went on out kind of improved things a bit as they broke. But then there was a lot of things that I wouldn’t change, like I travelled with, I mean, I had like a cutting board with me so that I could chop vegetables up when I was camping, and had little film canisters, filmed of spices and a proper source bird. And so I could like, eat well, and, and I wouldn’t, again, a lot of bikepackers could turn a nose up at that and think God’s this person’s just sort of like a moving kitchen. But I you know, for such a long period of the bike, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t change that at all. And on and I know that the sort of, especially at the moment with the sort of influences bikepacking has had on on taking existing cyclists and making them realise what they can achieve on the bike. I still am a big believer in taking a bit more stuff if your legs can handle it. And if you’re not in a hurry, you know, riding up a mountain with the extra weight on your bag, it’s not going to do your fitness any any disservice. If you can get up it. I think a bit of both comfort is quite okay. And while in general, I’m a minimalist these days, I think there’s plenty of space for carrying a few extra luxury items whenever you’re travelling.
Carlton Reid 56:30
But did you come back? Not you but did the bike and the kit come back a lot lighter. So by the time you’d finish, because I know you you’d have to badmouth the bags that you had. But you certainly changed your your your bags halfway around because of various reasons. And other notes on your blog, you do kind of, say a few choice words about the brand you had. But did you come back with? Did you come out with a lot more lightweight than you went? On much more lightweight?
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 57:00
I would say I might have shaved off like a kilo. Like in general, I pretty much had the same amount of stuff with me. And yeah, it couldn’t have bothered me that much. Because otherwise I would have gotten rid of an awful lot of stuff. So no, I actually, I actually think I returned with a fairly similar amount of weight on my bike. That’s
Carlton Reid 57:22
interesting, because that’s totally opposite to the way I did it. So when I started out, I had so much kit, I had like a wooden hammer for hammering in the tent pegs I had, like, we just get a rock, you know, I had so many things that I just I was chucking stuff you know, from the very, very start and you’ve kind of quickly got used to you know, what was necessary and what wasn’t. And you don’t know that until you’re actually on the road. So I was ended up with with a lot less kit. So I taught myself minimalism, just because, cuz, whereas you’re saying you don’t, it doesn’t matter, you can just pedal up a hill, I was the opposite as like, No, I’m not the crane brothers. Famously, when they went up Kilimanjaro and their stuff, they they would, you know, drill holes in toothbrushes, I was never that extreme. But I would definitely want to be lightweight, as much as possible. And so I am kind of interested in taking a chopping board. So I wouldn’t have done that. This is interesting about how different people approach these things. And like, I have come down to the minimalist and caring such a little like I wouldn’t, personally I wouldn’t, not even going on like a camping trip. Now. I won’t take cooking equipment, for instance, I will generally buy what I need, and eat that and then have to then scrambled to get, you know, fresh supplies. And I know it’s much more efficient to take rice and what have you and then be able to boil this up. But to me just carrying any amount of cooking equipment to me in my head, just that’s too much weight, I can do this much lighter. And clearly you’re you’re not you’re a different each to their own, isn’t it? It’s just different people want to do different things. And that’s fine. Definitely.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 59:22
And we need to make sure that we always sort of accommodate that. Because people are so different. And and I think it’s difficult, you know, in life, for example, in the cycling industry, it’s a consumer driven industry, we need to convince people we brands need to convince people that they need to do things in a different way or a better way or an improved way. But really all of it comes down to like giving people options so they can do things in the way that they want to do it. And you know, there is absolutely no reason why one type of bike travelling is superior than another. They are yeah complete The different ways of doing things for different people. So ever people navigate in one particular way, if they choose one kind of route, it’s not about that it’s about giving people the options. And the same, like if someone wants to go on a road bike really fast with nothing on their bike, that’s totally fine. And if someone wants to chuck for massive panniers on their bike, they’ll probably be a bit slower. But that’s, but that’s totally okay.
Carlton Reid 1:00:26
And so what are you doing now? During what what? How would you describe your riding, and your adventuring now,
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:00:33
my, I still try. And when I travel, I always want to be on a bike. If I’m not on a bike, I’ve fully compromised a little bit. But I also like spending time walking around being a normal person, especially if I’m on holiday with my with my girlfriend. But I do try and have one or two bike trips, big bike trips a year. Over the last few years, I’ve developed a sort of real love for exploring, I guess, capturing the essence of a big adventure closer to home. But in general, I’m sort of a casual cyclist I like to get out for provides every once a week if I can. I think working at QMU is quite is wonderful, but a bit dangerous for someone like me who enjoys spending time looking at maps, because the list of places to visit is evergrowing. But commute has this amazing interface. We have this route planner, which is wonderful gives people all these advanced tools to make informed decisions about where they’re going and how they get there. But we also have this discovery interface where you can have these these created routes for you based on your sort of parameters, the smart, this kind of smart solutions, and does have a really big impact on me, since we launched it last year, I’m much more inclined to take a train out from London to a random station and say, load it up on commute and say, Hey, I’m in a new area. I’ve got three hours, give me something. So while I’m going on less epic adventures, and finding new kind of creative ways of exploring familiar places. I’m doing that a lot at the moment. And I’m extremely excited about doing more of that as the weather improves.
Carlton Reid 1:02:19
And is that a curated thing? Or is that an algorithm thing. So
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:02:24
it’s a kind of a combination of stuff. commute, we have so much user data, because we have millions and billions and billions of of users, the number of recorded tours is kind of such a big number. It’s it’s kind of hard to get your head around. So we’re able to give people these. These like personalised suggestions so I can take the train out if I’m with a no fun with friends go out for a walk at the weekend, I can look at which train line takes me to a village that looks somewhere Scenic. I don’t own a car. So I can just say I’m at this station, it will see where the people who use Komoot are heading when they record their tours. So it’s very easy to get a feel for where people actually walk. Where do people go for their recreational weekend straws. And it will give me a clever or suitable solution to get kind of onto that, navigate the route and then return to the train station. And it’s incredibly clever how it works. If I go on where I live now and say I want to go for a four hour cycle, starting for I live. I’ve lived in London for a long time and I’ve cycled in London for a long time. I know what all of the common roadie routes are that people take wherever they’re going off to Windsor or Kent or sorry, Essex and, and if I let Komoot do this for me automatically. It’s kind of amazing how it basically gives me the routes that people most commonly do. But it won’t just give me three or four options, it will give me hundreds of options, which means I can go out for a new ride. And I can always find something that’s slightly different to what I’ve done in the past. And I find that really inspiring for my, like motivation to explore.
Carlton Reid 1:04:12
And then if you were in Iran, would it do the same? Or was it does it need that you know, lots and lots of people have done this before or kind of just glower three people who’ve done this, okay, that’ll be the route we curate for this. This person has just ended up in Iran, for instance, such as yourself a few years ago. Yeah, you
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:04:28
need to have the use of data because it’s based on what people actually do. So if we didn’t have that it wouldn’t we only want to do it when we’re confident we give people a good experience. Otherwise, no one benefits from it. You can obviously still use the route panoramic, your own tool in Iran. The what I would say in certain regions where there is less user data, we have an editorial team that make it they’re the the we create the content so we’ll find what are the classic like walking routes based on like variety of sources, we have an extensive editorial team that will add this content. And they will add suitable highlights, which is what we call the contributions that the community creates to add on to the map. So that this is an amazing viewpoint, this is a great cafe to stop out if you’re a cyclist, this is a really beautiful, rich line stroll. So we will help to populate the map so that the people who are used to kind of a circular thing, the better the map data is, the better that the attributions are on commute, the more local people will find, have a good user experience. And then the more they use it, the more they’ll contributes. And that’s how we kind of launch in in new places where there’s less of an active community, if that makes sense.
Carlton Reid 1:05:48
Yes, your heat mapping then, in effect, so you’re you’re working out where people are going, and you see you perhaps, you know, and your your fellow app. This this ecosystem we talked about before, you know, where people are cycling, you know, like the Strava, type heatmap.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:06:06
Exactly. So we can I mean, it’s all obviously, like, it’s only when people choose to share stuff publicly. It’s all like completely anonymized. But you know, we have so much data, we’re just trying to harness it. And yes, we do know where people cycle we have that information that’s great is quite hard to sort of digest. But if you can take that and turn it into something actionable, the end result for the user is that they can say, I’m a beginner, I’ve got two hours, I’ve got a new phone mount to go on my handlebars, I can select this tool, I can just press go. And I can head off and have an amazing bike ride for two hours. And we can be really confident that it’s going to be suitable because that’s what other people are doing when they, for example, select bike touring as a sport type. And the same for hiking, we won’t have people won’t be walking down the road, because we’ll only be looking at data that’s come from hikers. It’s a very Yeah, it’s an incredible solution is very clever. And I think it’s just a great way of mobilising people, whether they’re like really experienced cyclists who are just looking for something new and and bored of doing the same kind of loop over and over again, or newbies who need their handheld a little bit. And once I have a solution that they can just go off and do with five minutes of planning instead of an hour of planning for a two hour excursion.
Carlton Reid 1:07:33
Now right now the bike and I don’t know how much you know, this, but the bike industry, certainly in the UK, and in many other places in the world is is suffering just incredibly bad. It’s just it is it is dire out there at retail. It’s dire out there for suppliers, you know, post COVID, we basically just got a huge, huge, low a complete slump. You know, I did a story on Forbes of the day talking about how to 40 year low in the UK. You know, the last time we were as low as this in bike sales was in 1985. So 39 years. And that’s that’s that’s pretty poor. Do. Do you recognise that? Is that something you can look at and say, oh, people aren’t writing as much? Or is that just purely at retail and people still riding that is not buying?
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:08:24
Is a good? It’s a good question. I actually saw that Forbes article and is it’s definitely bleak reading. But I’ve worked in the bike industry for a number of years. It’s like, I know many people who share the same kind of anecdotal experiences that things are changing. It is a problem with retail and definitely like have these hangover kind of effects from the pandemic that still making it really hard for people to forecast well. And, and it’s just been so unpredictable for a few years now. Komoot is lucky because we don’t deal with a physical product. But we are subject to the same the same kind of you know, these kind of cultural shifts, whether people are collectively interested in exploring or cycling, we’re not immune to that we might not have the same issues that a bike manufacturer has, but we still get impacted by the same changes. And it’s hard for us to predict these major shifts in usage in the same way that it’s hard for anyone in the cycling industry. One thing that I think is is great for Komoot. Well, I think partly compared to a lot of physical stuff in the cycling space. It’s quite an affordable price point and you can do an awful lot for free. So that’s less of a barrier when people have less disposable income. We are international so if one you know we have we’re active in plenty of markets, but we are, I guess subject to like, international shifts in usage. rather than, you know, locked in and reliant on one particular place, and also, we have a product that is set up for different sport types. So we can, you know, we can we’re not sort of reliant on we’re not just a road cycling company. So if people overnight decided not interested in road cycling, that would be very unfortunate, it would be a very sad thing. But we have plenty of other you know, markets and user types. And even within road cycling, for example, there’s people who’ve been, you know, the people who’ve been road cycling for many years in Italy decide to stop Well, there’s an entire, you know, there’s there’s millions of people who are maybe new to the sport, or could become interested in the sport, if you approach them in the right way. So yeah, it’s particularly in the UK is quite a bleak landscape at the moment, but I think it’s quite lucky in in where we are positioned, we’re not completely Yeah, stuck in the middle of that.
Carlton Reid 1:11:03
So tell us how much it costs to go for the pro version. And what you get with the pro version, better than just going for the free version.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:11:16
So I will try and do a concise summary of our pricing, you can do an awful lot on commute for free, you can find these routes that I referred to in our discover section, you can build our own routes, a lot of the functionality is there for free users. And when you sign up, you get free region bundle, so that you can explore a particular region and these region bundles, you can either purchase like an individual region, so like London, perhaps would be one that’s gonna be like a one those all like one time purchases. So you can buy region for £3.99 and region bundle a collection of them for 8.99. Or you can get the whole world pack for 29.99. Same whether it’s pound sterling, euros or or USD. And when you have a region unlocked you, you can then use offline maps. So you can take the download the map, or you can follow the tour without needing internet, you also get voice navigation. And you also get turn by turn navigation, whether you’re doing on your phone or more on your cycling computer or smartwatch. So those are all one time purchases. And then we also have a premium, like pricing tier, which is 4.99 a month 59.99 for the year. And then we premium, you get a whole host of extra features and functionality, you get the whole world available offline. So those features I mentioned earlier, you get all of that included, you also are able to make collections, which means you can group together, either your planned tours. By that I mean that your plan routes, so you want to do hiking or cycling, or once you’ve completed so like if I cycled around the world, I could add all of the daily bits into one nice collection to show that my car five, I’ve cycled while I was away. You also get sports specific overlays, which I referred to earlier. So you can overlay the light, long distance hiking or cycling routes, you get on tour weather, which is really cool, you can see where you’re estimated to be when the sunsets or when the rain arrives, or the winds looking like you get live tracking, you get the multi day planner, which I also refer to earlier. If you have a really long route, you can divide it into like segments. And as accommodation stops for each, you know, each daily part. And finally, you get 3D maps. So they’re all a bunch of features that are really amazing, really cool. I guess we pitch it as for people who wants to go further, so people who who require a little bit of extra extra features, and we’re constantly trying to add new features to enrich that.
Carlton Reid 1:14:07
Great. So to wrap up, give us a URL. I mean, it’s reasonably obvious. I agree. I’ll even spelled out during that during the recording now, however, give us the URL, and then the URL for for where people can have now obviously put in the show notes. But where people can can follow your your adventures in 2015 through 2017. And then you’ve done subsequent rides and you’re updating your blog for a while so so to basically give us your URL for the blog and for Komoot.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:14:39
We can spell out one more time for luck. It’s just Komoot.com. On the web browser. You can also find the app on both iOS and Android. If you want to give it a go and get started myself You can find me on LinkedIn. If you can manage to spell my surname, you can add it into the podcast notes. I have a link there to my Komoot profile, should you be interested in following my adventures there? My blog is called JKB’s bike ride, which is Jk B. S, my initials. If you want to read some of my, my rambling thoughts from a long time ago, all my photography from the many bike trips I’ve been on. And if you find me there, you can, you can find me on other social media platforms. And I would just say if you have any, if anyone listening has any questions about the things that we’ve discussed today, or any questions about commute, or bike touring travel in general, you’re very welcome to send me an email at jonathan@komoot.com Always happy to hear from people and talk about adventures
Carlton Reid 1:15:55
during this time. Excellent. Thank you very much. Now, as expected, this was meant to be about Komoot. It was it was Komoot. And Jonathan it was like this afternoon to measure exactly how much is is how much was Komoot and how much was Jonathan. But I kind of expected that as soon as you know that. I want to interview you then it’s like, Okay, we’re gonna be talking about bike touring. And we’re bringing Komoot here and there. So that hopefully I mean, you are very clever, you are dragging commute back in as much as possible, which is absolutely fine. And good, because that’s what ostensibly what we’re meant to be talking about. Anyway, that’s been fascinating. And thank you ever so much for for well, we recorded this and it was an hour and 16 minutes, and it flew by. So Jonathan, thank you ever so much.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:16:41
That was a real pleasure. I really enjoyed. Yeah, I really enjoyed going through whole range of subjects with you.
Carlton Reid 1:16:48
And we could have I mean, I could have gone blog by blog posts and blog posting and tell me about the flies here in Australia and stuff. But we didn’t but I do recommend people go read your blog, look at your videos, and work out whether Do you really want to cycle around the world. Or maybe Jonathan’s bug experiences and farting monks and stuff will will actually inspire you to go and do your own stuff. So anyway, thank you very much.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:17:10
It was a good teaser. Yeah, thank you very much for your time.
Carlton Reid 1:17:13
Thanks for listening to Episode 348 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast brought to you in association with Tern Bicycles. Show notes and more can be found at the-spokesmen.com. The next episode will be a chat with Tom Knights of Strava Metro. That show will be out next weekend. But meanwhile, get out there and ride.
Episode Details
Status: Published
Release Date: Mar 10, 2024
Author: Carlton Reid
Episode Type: Full
Episode: 348
Rating: Clean
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Episode Description
10th March 2024
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 348: Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett of Komoot
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUEST: Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett
LINKS:
Play
https://www.ternbicycles.comTweets by carltonreidhttps://www.komoot.com/user/655260825794https://jkbsbikeride.comTRANSCRIPT
Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 348 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Sunday 10th of MARCH(!) 2024.
David Bernstein 0:28
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.
Carlton Reid 1:03
I’m Carlton Reid. And this is the fourth in a five part series digging into bike navigation apps. There have been shows with folks from Ride With GPS, Bikemap, Cycle.travel, and today it’s the turn of Komoot.
although as you’ll soon hear, in this nearly 90 minute chat with Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett, we also talk a great deal about travelling the world by bike. And that’s before, of course, there were smartphone apps to guide you.
Jonathan,
welcome to the show. And presumably you’re you’re in London,
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:51
thank you very much for having me. It’s a real pleasure. And yeah, I’m in London, South London to be precise on a very beautiful sunny February morning.
Carlton Reid 2:01
It’s kind of nice in Newcastle as well. So we’re blessed. Now the reason I said that was because a your name. So we can get looking we can discuss that in a second and you can show me how you’re you can tell me how to pronounce your, the Danish part of your name correctly. But also because cuz because we’re talking here about Komoot and Komoot is a German company. But first of all, how do i pronounce your name correctly?
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 2:29
My name is pronounced Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett.
And it’s actually not a Danish surname. It’s a Faroese surname from the Faroe Islands. So I am I a half British, my father’s English my mother is Danish, but my mother is half Faroese, her grandma, my grandmother’s from the Faroe Islands, and the Faroe Islands for anyone listening who isn’t sure exactly where they are, is a bunch of islands about halfway between Scotland and Iceland. And on the southern most of those islands, called Suðuroyu. There’s a kind of like a mountain ridge, behind the village where like my gran and her family are from called CamScanner. And that’s where that name is from. So yeah, it’s it’s ferries surname via Denmark. Wow. Okay, good explanation.
Carlton Reid 3:26
And because I didn’t know any of that, I then didn’t go back and check on your, your global world. Crossing cyclist. So I noticed that you went from Iceland? Did you go via the Faroe Islands at all? Yeah.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 3:45
So many, many years ago. Now, I spent three years cycling around the world, which was a whole kind of story in episode in itself. And at the very end of that, I wanted to go and seek because my great grandmother was still alive at the time, and she was alive and kicking the pharaohs. So towards the end of this, this, this free journey, I really wanted to go to Iceland cycle there wasn’t particularly advisable in the depths of winter, but had a wonderful time nonetheless. And from there, you can take a ferry to the pharaohs. So I did go. I did after sort of not really seeing any family for about three years. I did go and see my great grandmother, which was amazing. It’s an incredibly beautiful place. By that point, I had seen an awful lot of devote the world and the pharaohs. You know, just like truly spectacular. And it was really wonderful that I got to go and see my great grandma because she passed away a few months later. So it was all kind of perfect. A really nice kind of like final stop before I returned to the UK. So
Carlton Reid 4:52
I will admit I haven’t read every single one of your blog posts from back then but I’ll go backwards and I’ll go back and read that one because I’m sure that Under brilliant because I hadn’t spotted the Faroese part.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 5:04
Yeah, it was a really lovely thing that I got to and then at the very beginning of my, the very beginning of this huge cycle, I left home said goodbye to my dad, my mum lives in Copenhagen. So I started that cycle around the world. I mean, at the time I had, I had no idea. It would be that big a cycle. I was just trying to see how far east I could get. But I wanted to go and visit my mum in Copenhagen. So that was kind of the beginning of the journey. So it was quite nice that I had like pitstop early on, you know, visiting family and it was quite nice that again, towards the very end, I also had a pit stop visiting fan for going home.
Carlton Reid 5:42
That’s your mum also came out and visited you like you as your beach bumming whether that was in somewhere in Indonesia or was in Thailand. Yeah, that’s
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 5:50
right. She came and visited me in. I guess I was in in Thailand, often having seen her for probably a year and a half at that point. So we had a little, very nice, relaxing beach holiday, catching up, and most importantly, not doing any cycling at the time.
Carlton Reid 6:07
And I’m sure she’s treating you as well. It was, yeah, yeah. Know that for a fact, because we treated our son when he was doing stuff like that. Right. So let’s get back to what we’re meant to be talking about here, Jonathan, that is Komoot. So before we do that, I mean, give us the history of Komoot, because, you know, would you have used it on your? So yeah, this is 2015 to 2017. Yeah, yep.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 6:37
So I think I was unfortunately, I was a little bit too early. Cuz it’s been around the apps been around for about a decade now. Set up by six, six friends from Germany and Austria. They have, I guess they will kind of united by a love of both tech. And also nature, they will come from the fringes of like, beautiful parts of Europe. But a very clever bunch. Yeah, excited about like the future of tech and where it intersects with, like, you know, all aspects of reality in our day to day lives. So Komoot is a German company. But going back to your your opening comment is a German company, but we consider ourselves very much a global or at least a European company, people, the people who work for Komoot are spread out across all of Europe. So we have quite an international outlook on the world, I would say.
Carlton Reid 7:39
Was that right from beginning? Or was it very localised to begin with, and then only gradually did become international?
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 7:45
Definitely, it was a gradual thing. I think Komoot I can’t quite was before my time, the point because Komoot’s fully remote. So one point switched and thought, Well, why not sort of recruit from across the entire continent instead of one country. And for a good number of years Komoot has been conscience consciously, international. So like had the app, the product translated to English a long time ago, we now have it available in half a dozen languages. So like, that obviously takes time and resources, but it’s quite important for us to allow as many people as possible around the world to like, understand and interact with and interact with the app. So in terms of my own journey in cycling, I was kind of a bit too early on in the process is quite, it’s quite funny actually, when I, when I first left, I really was not a cyclist. In 2015, when I left home, it all came together very quickly. And this was sort of the blogging, end of those blogging, glory years, I think around 2010 to the mid teens. So anyway, I found some resources online, and people were saying, Oh, you can buy a cycling computer and use that. I didn’t really have much cash at the time. So I picked the cheapest cycling computer that looked like it might do the job. And it was this. This Garmin device, I can’t quite recall what it was called. But you couldn’t load base maps onto it, you could create a route somewhere and export a GPX file and then you could have this line to follow it. And I I was just following the North Sea coast coastline, on the way up to Scandinavia. And I spent a lot of time getting very lost. And after about three weeks on the road, I met someone who was was like, you know, you can just use your phone for this. And I didn’t have mobile data across Europe. It was like before, it was quite so easy to connect to everywhere. But it hadn’t even occurred to me that I could use my phone as a GPS device that it had this functionality, which feels a bit silly in hindsight, but why would I have I lived a sort of normal city life where I was always online at the time. And I hadn’t realised that I could download load these map files from Open Street Map. And so I could kind of work out where I was at all times. So when I had that revelation, it was kind of blew my mind and things became a lot easier. And as we might discuss later, fast forward almost 10 years, it’s now even easier than ever to have this these good quality maps offline and also to sync them with devices. But it’s funny to look at where computers now, compared to my very rudimentary experiences, yeah, almost a decade ago.
Carlton Reid 10:30
So the first time I came across, Komoot in certainly, you know, seared into my consciousness when my son was cycling back from China. Yeah. And I had all sorts of other ways of doing routes. But he was insistent that he was using Komoot. So all the way back from from China in some pretty hairy paid places, but parts of the world some of which I can see that you’ve cycled through as well. He was using Komoot and I need to ask him why he was he was using it but he did found it find it very valuable and certainly very valuable in those hairy parts of the world because it was drawing down some pretty ok maps. And it was giving him obviously really good information. So here’s the pitch. Jonathan, why why use komoot? Why Why would world tourists use Komoot and why would that non well tourists want to use Komoot just you know, bumbling around the the Yorkshire lanes or the Norfolk coast towards why those two users might might wait. They want to use Komoot.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 11:41
It’s really that’s really cool to hear that just used Komoot for that. I’ve watched his like video of that long journey. It’s so amazing. And they’re very nice to Komoot was able to help that little bit. And I know that you’ve travelled a lot by bike as well, I think is funny. You know, especially with bikes, and especially with bike touring, it’s been around, you know, it’s been a thing for a very long time. It wasn’t really that long ago that people were relying on paper maps. But that’s in the same way that people used to, you know, drive around with British people with A to Z you know, in the car. And that already feels like such a such an outdated thing. I think a lot of very young people will this is probably a fact that a lot of young people don’t know how to read maps in the same way that older generations do. So I would say for bike touring, it’s, it’s kind of like I sometimes why would you not embrace the technology that we have now, when I was cycling around the world, I did not really do any complex route planning on my phone. But now, we have commute and some similar apps and products. It’s incredibly easy. The commute app is really intuitive, the algorithms are very sophisticated, it’s very easy to find multiple options, but to find very suitable options, from A to B, even in parts of the world, where some of the map data is, is less comprehensive. And you can do all of this from your phone really easily. You don’t have to drag paper maps around, you can very easily forecast how long it will take to get from A to B, you can very easily find out where might be a nice detour to take. There’s just a lot less guesswork involved. So for the bike tour, it’s a really powerful tool. But I would also say for the recreational user popping around the local lanes in the British countryside, for example, or a beginner, we have, we have a lot of tools that make it really easy to find a suitable route based on your ability. So while we have the route planner, which is great for finding ATV rides, whether that’s like 100 miles, or whether that’s 2000 miles across a continent, for the casual users who are doing like, you know, regular recreational loops. On our discover interface, we have, within just a few clicks, you can find routes that are based on your preferred sport type, whether you’re gravel riding or road cycling, if you like hilly, hilly routes or flatter routes, or whether you’re a hiker as well, because we accommodate for, you know, hiking as well. So you have these options that are tailor made for your needs within just a couple of clicks. And you can go and someone who’s cycling across a continent probably understands how maps work probably enjoys looking at them, probably enjoys the process of, of stitching a route together. But for a lot of other users. That’s not a priority for them. They just want to spend the time outside, having a good time without anything to worry about.
Carlton Reid 14:55
There are a number of navigation apps some some of which seem to you know, be very popular in North America. Akka and some that are more popular in, in Europe. So that ecosystem seems to be very, very healthy. There are a number of apps going for the same kind of thing you know, from, you know, including one man bands like Cycle.travel. So, all of these different apps that are out there, how are people choosing? Do you think people are going through a list? And they’re gonna go, Oh, I’ve tried that one, try that we’re all like this one? Or do you think they just find one? And then they just keep on using that one come? What may? How do you think this ecosystem works?
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 15:39
Gosh, that’s a very good question. And a very big question. I think for a lot of people, it’s probably a question of what they used first. And that’s, that goes beyond just these, like app based kind of routing platforms, if someone is very used to using was successful, use paper maps for decades, or if someone in the UK is, you know, swears by Ordnance Survey. And they’ve always had, you know, good experience doing that, there’ll be unlikely to change unless you give them a very compelling argument or a good example. So I think a lot of people, what they first start using, becomes the thing that they become familiar, familiarity is so important, same of a lot of like tech or products that we use day to day, we’re quite hesitant to change our routines. I also think within that ecosystem, people’s preferences probably change quite a lot based on if they have a bad experience as well. Same with all types of different, you know, products that we consume, you know, there’s probably many things that you’ve used day to day for years, and suddenly when it breaks or something goes wrong, you decide I want to try something different. And then I would also say the local element probably plays a significant part in it. You mentioned in like other regions, or for example, North America, the market is in a different, like perhaps different status for us or you know, different other products that are available for people, I think a lot of it depends on the local side of it has to do with your peers. So like who you explore with you trusting your your recommendation of those you go out with, or the people who give you a great experience outdoors. But also whether or not the product is is localised and translated into your language that also makes a big difference people find rightly so it’s reassuring when the product is as easy to understand gives a different level of trust. So I think those are a few of the factors, that that kind of changed the state of play. But overall, I would say that it’s really, it’s a good thing. There are a lot of incredible, incredibly bright minds and have great innovative companies in a kind of overlapping space, often with a slightly different objective. And, you know, that’s, that’s just great for the consumer, because it means that we’re all kept on our toes, constantly looking for ways to improve those
Carlton Reid 18:08
variety of companies out there, some are chosen by for instance, you know, cycle travel companies. So when you go on a on a cycle holiday, they will, they will choose to partner with a navigation app company, and then they will send you all the routes on that. So you’re basically you’re almost tied in on that particular holiday to that particular navigation app. Good thing, bad thing. So is that something that it’s incredibly important to discover who are actually giving these links out and and calm them? Because you know, you go on a North American owned psychology company in say, Italy. And even though you’re in Europe, you’re using in effect and American app, because it’s an American company that’s leading those tours. So is that something that you are you as in Komoot? Or your your, your your colleagues and commute are actively trying to partner with these key companies? Yeah,
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 19:15
there are. I mean, there are a lot of ways that we might sort of acquire new users. And by that, I mean, like reaching people and giving them their first experience on commute, those kinds of partnerships. I guess they probably represent like a smaller percentage of the ways to reach people. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not important. Particularly because if that partner whether it’s a tour operator, or you know, a hotel or someone who’s running a hotel, or even an event organiser, if they trust in Khumbu, and you know, I would say in Europe is you’re far more likely to find that stuff that information presented to you via commitment than anyone else. That’s great. because it’s just reassures the, you know, the user that people look for that kind of reassurance from those those kind of places of authority. So those partnerships are really important to us. And we do work with a lot of tourism organisations, maybe even like hotels, tour operators, we do have quite a lot of active partnerships. And it’s great for us because we reach that audience. But it’s really good for us, we put a lot of effort into the people that do choose to work with us on educational tools, so that they understand it coming inside out, and can then give their users good experience. And that remains like super important for any of those types of partnerships
Carlton Reid 20:39
can notice. If you get a bradt guidebook, a cycling guidebook, and it’s you know, to the lanes of East Anglia, or whatever have you Yeah. Well, you’re flicking through this, this book. And there’s a little QR code. You open that up, I know, there’s your route in Komoot via the Bradt guidebook. So what else have you got? Who else are you apart from Bradt, what else you out there in like a published terms?
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 21:10
Well, it’s just a good question off the top of my head. And when I struggle to think of them, but quite a lot of I mean, of course, is difficult because we are so you know, across the whole of the continent. There are some amazing publications and magazines that we’ve partnered with across Germany, France, Italy, Spain. And I think one thing that’s really nice at the stage that commutes that is, particularly within certain segments, in Europe, we are, it would almost be strange for the user to have the route presented to them in a different way. Because they’re so familiar with commute. That’s what they use for their group rides. That’s what they use for the events they sign up to. That’s what they do for their day to day riding. And so a lot of those partners like they will present stuff on Komoot, regardless, like we’d always like to help them present the stuff in the best kind of best way possible. But they’re still going to be reaching out and using Komoot, simply because it’s a really nice, easy way to share and present routes with your kind of users or participants.
Carlton Reid 22:16
And what do you do for Komoot? So what is the community part of your job title? What is what is? What does that involve? Yes, so
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 22:25
I’m the global community manager komoot. The global part is, well, global, but it’s in particular, it’s about the gaps between. So we have a team of community managers spread out. In some of the markets where we have more kind of community oriented stuff going on, we have more people. So there’s, there’s a couple of two or three people in Germany, we have a couple of community managers in the UK, I’m kind of filling in the gaps between a lot of the markets that are growing for us, but aren’t quite at the same same kind of stage just yet. And then the community, part of it is kind of two things. One thing is our external partnerships. So that could be with events and event organisers that could be with the kind of inspiring individuals that we work with, because they have, you know, a great platform, or they have a very inspiring story to tell, or they’re great at motivating people that that follow them. And then on the other side of that, I have a lot of focus, particularly these days on our core community. So Komoot is, while we’re really lucky that we have such a huge audience, audience, we’ve got about 37 million users. So there’s a lot of people. And not all of those people are, you know, active every day or using commute to connect with other people and share their stories within the community. But we have millions of people who are and I spend a lot of time, as do my colleagues on how do we give these people? Like how do we reward them for their contributions? How do we motivate them to share more? How do we make sure that people are getting fed the right inspirational content based on their preferences? So elevating our kind of, and looking after our core community is also a significant part of my role.
Carlton Reid 24:22
So can you is it gonna kind of go slightly backwards into your background as well, if you if you are going to set out on a kind of track that you started in 2015? Are you going to do that now? For instance, could you open up Komoot and say, you know, do me a route from London all around the world back again? Or do you have to do it in stages? How would you use if you’re going to be doing it again? How would you use commute?
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 24:55
I think I think doing a route around the world probably possible but That’s an awful lot of information for for one file. So I will probably break it down into smaller segments, which is to be fair, exactly what I did when I cycled around the world, and what most people probably would. And so when I when I left home, and sometimes thinking about cycling around the world is quite kind of overwhelmingly big kind of concept to navigate. But I would break it down into really small parts. So I knew that I wanted to cycle from London to Copenhagen. I knew that I wanted to visit a friend in Amsterdam, for example. So to begin with, I would focus on how do I get from London to Amsterdam, that’s a kind of more sensible, you know, if you break it down to blocks, the whole thing becomes a lot more manageable, both in terms of logistics, but also mentally. So I will do the same on Komoot. One thing that sets you apart from some similar, some similar platforms is that we have a variety of different sport types you can choose from. So if you go on the route planner, you’ll see that even for cycling, there’s a few variations. There’s like road cycling, gravel riding, bike touring, mountain biking. And that’s really important because well, even even within bike tours, people have different preferences. If someone wants to get to Amsterdam, in you know, two or three days, on a road bike, credit card, touring, staying in hotels, they might want to be thinking, you know, they want to have the mindset of a road cyclists, they want to choose quick, efficient routes, they’re on 25 mil tires, they don’t really want to be going down toe puffs, no matter how they’re graded. So these different algorithms think slightly differently, which I think is is really important. I would personally I would, for the way I was touring leisurely, I would be on the bike touring mode. But no, that’s it’s just important to point out there’s different types based on your kind of bike and you’re writing preferences. We have a tool called the multi day tour planner, so I could pick from London to Amsterdam. And then I could divide it up into let’s say, I want to do it in four days, or I know that I want to do about six hours of cycling a day, I can divide it up and it takes into account the elevation on the way. So it has like a kind of consistent breakdown, which is really helpful when you’re trying to forecast when you might get to a certain location. The other tool that I would definitely would be using on the route planner. One of our features is the sport specific overlays. And then you can overlay the long distance or National Cycle routes, which is super helpful. I do this and I’m always toggling between these wherever I’m out hiking or cycling, it just means at a cursory glance, I can see the long distance routes. So for example, I was at the time following loosely one of the EuroVelo. The common which number is the one that goes up along that coast. Well, I can see that overlaid on the map. And so I can compare that against the route that I’m plotting, I can make sure that I’m like loosely following it that that makes a real big difference. Both when I’m long distance touring, or if I’m even just kind of out exploring in the south of England. So those are a few of the main tools that I would use. The final thing I would add, I wouldn’t have such a rudimentary cycling computer, I would still have, I’d still have one. The Garmin that I have now is far more modern and has base maps. And we actually have an app designed for Garmin specifically. And with that, I can create the date the routes on my phone. And I can just press one button send to device and I can load up the IQ app on my Garmin device. And the route will just go bing. And here it is. And if I want to change my route, halfway through the day, I can now just update it on commute on the app on my phone and press updates. And I’ll get a little notification and my route will be updated. So if I wanted to cut my day short, we’ll go to a different hotel or campsite an evening. And that feature is so cool. And I think if I’d had that all those years ago, there would have been a lot less faffing involved, which would have been wonderful.
Carlton Reid 29:14
Yeah, I use that the other day, in fact. So I had a Garmin unit and I had I was navigating with Komoot hadn’t actually changed the route because I just got on my bike after 70 miles because the wind was about 50 miles an hour ahead of me. But still, I was using it and it was neat that so I agree. So the map, I’ve got the app open here now and in other apps, you have a choice of quite a few maps. But here I don’t I see the the Komoot map. I see a satellite map but then there’s no like Ordnance Survey for the UK. So because your is that because you were an international brand and that’s just what on market, yeah, there’s no point just offering an OS just for one market. I mean,
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 30:03
you could obviously you could argue for it. And in the UK, a lot of people aren’t really familiar with and put a lot of trust into Ordnance Survey, commutes sort of core foundation revolves around OpenStreetMap, we are such committed believers of the Open Street Map Project. And it’s really at the core of everything we do. And we are constantly looking for ways that, you know, we can help to enrich the data that’s there or help to facilitate improvements to it. And you’re right, I think, because we are active in so many different countries, we could protect, we could try and add all of these different national maps. But the the user experience would become quite convoluted. You know, if I travel a lot using commute, I quite like knowing that I can get my head around the commute render of OpenStreetMap, which is our like, primary map, and then we have satellite map. I like being familiar with it, I like knowing that the sort of routing algorithms will give me consistent results in different places. And that’s quite important to ask that we still give people like a quite a not simple, but like, you know, familiar user experience that doesn’t become overwhelming or confusing for them. But we really, we really, I should stress that we like, especially in the markets where we are most active in the quality of the OpenStreetMap data is is really amazing. And it’s always improving. And it always is, yeah, enough for us to give people a really good experience.
Carlton Reid 31:40
Maybe it’s it’s an age thing then because I mean, I grew up with OS maps, maybe people who are younger than me and not so hide bound, you know, as you could you have seen before, you know, people are no longer using paper maps, if I’ve grown up as a user of paper maps, and I no longer use paper maps, but I use the Ordnance Survey maps on my, my phone, it generally tends to be if I’m like trying to visualise an area, then me will as somebody who has grown up with that kind of Ordnance Survey mind map, I would I would default to Ordnance Survey as that’s how I explain, you know, my, my where I am. So to me that’s like, wow, I need I need, you know, I need iOS to know exactly where I am. It’s great to have the Open Street Map. It’s lovely. And the commute version of it. But still like, Yeah, but where am I? And I need that something’s very familiar. But that might just be you know, people have an older generation. And that that is obvious to my son to Josh, that had zero relevance. And he probably wouldn’t know his way around and OS map, but you don’t know his way around, you know, the Komoot map really well. So do you think that’s just telling me Jonathan, is this just me? Is it just me because I’m very, very old?
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 33:00
If I frame my answer, as well, to be careful, I think your Ordnance Survey specifically as a very particular place in the British sort of, well, the psyche of how we spend how we map the country, is equivalent in other countries. I’ll give you an example because I sometimes almost feel like as a outdoorsy person who likes Grim Adventures and is British and spends a lot of time exploring the British outside. I, you know, I should be more familiar with Ordnance Survey I confess, I have grown up in London. I didn’t kind of do much outdoorsy stuff at school. Honestly, I’ve never really used Ordnance Survey I am, when when I started to explore, there was sort of these phone based solutions available for me right away sort of 10 years ago, revolving around OpenStreetMap. I do spend a lot of time hiking and walking for leisure. And I’ve just never found that I that I needed it. I’m super familiar with OpenStreetMap. I’m now an expert in how Komoot works. And so it’s just funny, I think it’s like different types of people, for sure, especially in the UK, but I would say also globally, is just very different, like different generations who have grown up, especially have the sort of, you know, even for example of Google Maps is sort of omnipresent in our exploring of the world and navigating I’m talking about everything now from public transport to driving. And even like the sort of sat nav, the satnavifacation, I’m sure that’s not a word, but how we drive a car around the world has now had a massive influence on on people hiking and cycling. A lot of people would prefer to hike with turn by turn instructions on their phone and find that far more easy to get their head around than navigating from a paper map and pen The people could argue that that’s, that’s not as good. But I think if you embrace, you know, the quality of the map data and you embrace it, this actually helps a lot more people explore because there are less boundaries or sorry, less. Yeah, sort of less friction points. So less obstacles for them to to get over to outside. I’m not sure that’s necessarily such a bad thing.
Carlton Reid 35:23
And let’s go slightly backwards in that. The name Komoot is a pun on commute. So when it was originally developed, was it as an internal city thing? Or was it always, you know, this is meant to explore the world with or was that explore the world with just something that came afterwards and is the name a bit of a misnomer,
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 35:56
is actually a bit of a misnomer, partly because it’s actually like a Komoot is derived from, I think it’s called the Valsa dialect, which is the region that the founders are from and it’s just like as far as I understand it, a casual greeting means something like simple and practical. And so it’s a it’s actually slightly misleading, because that’s the origin of Komoot, obviously, was
Carlton Reid 36:22
Nothing at all to do with commute. Well,
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 36:25
I don’t, I mean, it’s not sure if it’s a good or a bad thing that they’re so similar, but that’s the origin of the name Komoot. It doesn’t, and the sort of the product and the philosophy doesn’t come from commuting at all, it’s about spending time outside. Of course, you could probably interpret that in many ways. Perhaps this is an alternative way of you know, commuting in nature. As it happens, many people use commute as part of their commute within town because they want to find a more scenic way of getting from A to B. But that’s not the that was never the objective of the company and and still that isn’t the case.
Carlton Reid 37:05
Right? Interesting. So I got that wrong that Well,
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 37:10
I also had one for a very long day if that makes you feel better.
Carlton Reid 37:15
It does Thank you very much.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 37:17
I’m afraid now that you’ll really struggle to pronounce Komoot without saying Komoot because it’s only a matter of time before for that becomes a riddle itself.
Carlton Reid 37:26
Well, of course Google isn’t I think it’s a mathematical term isn’t it? So would have been familiar to some people but most people it’s not it’s not familiar terms. It’s just these unusual term. So anything that’s slightly unusual is better for a website you know name so the fact that you kind of spelling this and you people think it means there’s but doesn’t but they remember anyway so that’s that’s the trick just remembering it. So if it’s if it helps some people doing all that must be Komoot Oh, yes, he spelt with a K. And other people’s know it as a, you know, a greeting in a certain language. That’s also okay. So it’s however you get your name remembered?
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 38:03
Yeah, very much so.
Carlton Reid 38:06
So at this point, I’d like to actually cut away and let my colleague take over and we’ll be back in a few minutes. So take it away, David.
David Bernstein 38:16
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Carlton Reid 39:17
Thanks, David and we are back with with with Jonathan of Komoot we’ve discovered that it doesn’t mean commute and that’s it you want it to mean commute. It can mean whatever you want. But Jonathan is he’s the community Global Community Manager for Komoot and he’s if anybody’s going around the world on their bicycle or wandering around the world on the bicycle and they wanted to use commute then then clearly Jonathan would be a good guy to to learn from Andy certainly in a pretty good job for for the kind of company commute is because Jonathan, you went round the world well, we have touched on this but now let’s let’s explore this in in greater detail. So we’ve got the Komoot out of the way. Let’s let’s, let’s talk about what where you’ve come from and why are you working for for Komoot? So we laughed before. Could you mention the fact that when you started, you were much of a cyclist? And I was kind of thinking, Yeah, that’s right, because of what the amount of kit you took to begin with is the kind of the classic. And I made this exact same mistake when I started my cycle touring adventures many, many, many years ago, you take too much kit. So you had an enormous amount of kit. And you had a kind of an old school bike, you were you on steel, you’re on a bicycle that I would have been familiar with in the 1980s, you know, a Dawes Super Galaxy, classic touring bike of a while ago. And then you you you’ve, you’ve clearly learned a lot. In that time that you’re away, but you started reading your blog, you basically picked this bike, you didn’t seem to know much about cycling, and then like, a week later, you’re, you’re off touring the world. So describe it. Have I got that? completely correct, you were pretty much a novice, and then you went cycled around the world.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 41:18
That is, that is pretty much it. It’s almost embarrassing to admit how little preparation or knowledge I had prior to leaving, but I think I was just blessed with youthful naivety time, and I didn’t have high expectations at all, I just wanted an adventure. And there are very few simpler ways of finding one than grabbing a bike and kind of just heading off without a plan.
Carlton Reid 41:44
Or when it’s classic, absolutely classic, the way the way that kind of developed. But let’s let’s find out what were you doing at the time? How long were you expecting to do? You didn’t have any plans at all. We literally tried to go around the world, we didn’t know how long was going to take? Or were you just going to cycle and see where you got to and then just what you might give up at some point. What What were you doing? How old were you and what were you doing at the time.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 42:08
So if I rewind a little bit further, we touched upon it at the beginning of the call. I grew up I grew up in London, but my my Yeah, my father’s British, my mother’s Danish. We never cycled or I never cycled for fitness. I never cycled for leisure or for exploring. However, I did grow up riding bikes, it was just very much like a functional tool to get around. London is not bike friendly city. But it’s a very practical city to get around and manoeuvre by bicycle. So I grew up cycling. I studied music at university. And when I returned to London, I wasn’t entirely sure what to do next, like I’m sure plenty of young people. Now, early 20s have the same sort of existential crisis. I was quite fortunate that I’d been working the whole time I was studying and, and while I had an awful lot of debt, I had somehow ended up with, you know, a few grand in the bank accounts saved up so I kind of had this incredible, I was in this incredibly privileged position where I could kind of yeah, go and explore a little bit without having to take the next the next most serious steps in life. I had always travelled a lot that had been a high priority for me, I had done a bit of long distance walking, I was kind of prepared for another long hike. And then kind of had this this moment, this epiphany I suppose, where I thought well, what about cycling that could be I was really interested in human power, not human powered, rather, I was interested in overland travel. So I became kind of fixated by this idea of, of cycling and then bike touring. And, and these were, I think, a wonderful period on internet where you could find all these incredible blogs that were so relatable and so inspiring and so informative as well. And so the sort of recommendations I found online, people said, those galaxies a good bike, found one on on eBay bought it was a good pannier to take Balsam or leave panniers from Argos and got all of this around Christmas. And I left two weeks later and the plan at the time, I’d been sort of telling my peers and family I was gonna cycle to Australia, but it was it was a it was a pipe dream. But it was kind of a joke as well. It was a good way of like picking something so outlandish that people wouldn’t take it seriously at all, which was fair enough given that I had never cycled further than about 10 miles. And so I I set off as I said to go and visit my mother, and I said if if this goes well, I will continue heading east and I had a fantastic first month and I continued writing to Turkey. I became very good at living, I would say extremely cheap on the road. I realised that I could probably get quite a long way. And, and yeah, I ended up going all the way to Australia, by which point I was completely broke. But I got a job and worked for a few months there. And then at that point, I, it became very clear to me that I wanted to continue and make it around the world cycle. And so I did that. And Nick got home, just under three years after having left probably having clocked around 50,000 kilometres, which is kind of a mind boggling number when I say out loud,
Carlton Reid 45:32
huh? There’s some people kind of do that in three weeks. I’m exaggerating a little bit, but they do it fast. And, you know, some Komoot users, Markus Stitz, for instance, did on a single speed, etc, etc. But you took three years. Now, it’s not that you weren’t doing some big mileages, you know, there was there was, you know, I read on your blog, you know, some days you’re doing 145 kilometres. And then other days, clearly, you’re, you’re just doing nothing, because you’re just enjoying the location. So you never had any plan to do it in a certain amount of time, you would just basically ebb and flow. It was just whatever the live through it you you kind of did that.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 46:17
Yep. And thank goodness, I personally like that. Because otherwise, I think it would be overwhelming to think about and those people who cycle around the world planning on it or trying to break records, I think it must just require so much. That’s no fault and pressure, I really was just kind of going for a ride, there was never any pressure, no expectation. If I went home, whenever I was bored, that would have been fine. No one would have judged me. So I was really making up as I went along. And when I left, I had absolutely no plan to spend anywhere near that long on the road knows that I have any plans to cycle all the way around the world. I am a Tura. At heart cycling at that pace is and I’ve done a lot of more, sort of a dyno extreme bikepacking. I’ve done a lot of ultralight cycling, I’ve even tried a few ultra endurance races. But touring at that kind of pace, for me is just the most kind of beautiful ratio in life. Hmm.
Carlton Reid 47:20
So notice, you’ve done the Transcontinental. So you have done these, these, these races, but your forte is basically just pootling along.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 47:30
Definitely. And if I if I continued to my cycling trajectory in between cycling around the world, and ending up doing what I’m doing currently at Komoot, when I returned home, having spent all of this time on the road, I actually worked as a bicycle courier in London for a short period, which was there’s no better way to re calibrate and reintegrate into city living having spent so much time on the road and to get paid to cycle around delivering stuff and exploring, you know, a city even if it’s your home city by bike. And I then started working at a company called Apidura. And I know that you’re familiar of a producer, because I believe you interviewed the founder of Apidura in this past few years. And I was there for a few years. And that was really, I mean, obviously made sense. I had a lot of touring experience. But that was in 2018, which was really when this hugely significant kind of shift in interest from bike touring to bikepacking. Which you can interpret in many ways. But, but this this shift was really kind of about to explode, and then get even more exaggerated through the pandemic. So I, I had learned so much about travelling by bike and then I learned so much about the benefit of ultralight cycling and these new packing systems that were so different to taking for panniers on a loaded bike. And so I spent four years at the Jura did the roller coaster that was COVID 19. And and that was sort of the segue that led me to Komoot because Komoothas been so involved with bike packing bikepacking as an established but also an emerging sport in the last few years. Because
Carlton Reid 49:19
you looking at your your bike setup. Back then with the with the Dawes Galaxy, and the bags you had on that was very much old school. And then I can completely identify with that because I’m clearly old school. And that’s where I started. So you know, for panniers at least loads of stuff and caring too much, etc, etc. And you look at that now and you think no, you would have the upward Eurostyle you know you’d have the bike packing bags, you probably wouldn’t be carrying quite as much Kip, although some of the place you went to. You know I’m thinking of you like your Australia video. and stuff where you’re obviously having to pack. I mean, when you go across the desert, you having to pack you know, an enormous amount of water, you’ve got to have all of the bug kit, you know, you’ve got to have all of the stuff that’s protecting you from the nasties. So you had some times you have gotten better how many it’s not an old school versus new school thing. It’s just you have to have a lot of kit in some places and and there’s no two ways about that. You know? Even if you’re doing a transcontinental style, you know, fast route across somewhere, you would still need a fair bit of of kit. But when you were when you started out, okay, actually good point. Did you finish on the same bike?
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 50:43
I did, I finished on the same bike and I still ride that same Dawes Galaxy as my day to day pub, one around bike.
Carlton Reid 50:51
Excellent. So it’s but it’s like Trigger’s Broom, you’ve got you know, you’ve replaced tonnes of things, or it’s still largely the same bike
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 50:58
is the same frame, the same fork. And that is nice. All That Remains of the original bike.
Carlton Reid 51:05
So that’s pretty good going well done Dawes Super Galaxy.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 51:09
Yeah, there’s a lot to be said. Having modern bike so us so reliable in general. But yeah, I’m very much of the steel fan club. That bike has a lot of battle scars, from various sort of unfortunate collisions with other vehicles or just the road or ice. But it’s still yet it’s still going strong. And, and you’re right, I’ve had the been very lucky to experience travelling by bike in very different forms from the kind of old school bike touring sense where you carry basically your entire house, to super ultra light, you know, bike travel, where you just have a bivy bag, and you sacrifice all levels of comfort. I’ve also done a lot of off road sort of mountain bike touring, I think the thing that I find so wonderful about bicycle travel in general, is that there’s always a new way to do it. And there’s absolutely no right or wrong way of doing it, I think it’s very easy to get caught up in the the idea of I must be a lightweight bike packer, or I must do it in this particular way. But really, there’s no right or wrong way of doing it. We’re all very different, we all travel for very different reasons. And there’s different ways of, of packing for it. And, and even if I refer back to commute and the way that we’re set up, we give people the tools to, to pick, you know, they can pick the fast road route, if they want, or they can pick the meandering route, they can pick the most direct one, or they can pick the most leisurely one up over the mountains. I think this whole kind of space is really set up for the user to be able to customise you know, what they’re doing, and how they’re carrying it based on what their objectives is. And I think that’s what’s really kind of charming about the whole two wheeled travel thing.
Carlton Reid 53:02
See, I’m a historian of many things, but including cycling, and Thomas Stevens, if you hadn’t if you’ve come across that name in in the past, but he was basically a big wheel rider. So what would people would call Penny farthings. And this is 1880s. And the kit he had, the amount of kit he had and how it was packed is very much like bikepacking You know, it’s the big pannier bags, that’s pretty much the 70s and 80s thing, you know, really, really old and I was calling that old school, but genuinely old school. So 1880 stuff is you know, Apidura-style, incredibly lightweight, hard to carrying anything at all kind of touring. So that’s that’s kind of where cycle touring started. And we’ve kind of come full circle in many ways. And so people are going out there with incredibly minimal bits of of kit and somehow surviving. So when you did your your your your cirumnavigation, and you had all this enormous kit, where you jettison bits as you’re going along. And just in case you didn’t you don’t really need this you pick it up basically you became an expert. Just cook you’re having to carry this stuff. And because you haven’t to carry it, you quickly learn I don’t need that Chuck it
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 54:30
Yeah, and I did get rid of an awful lot of stuff. I had some some very questionable belongings with me. Like I had my my, I mean, I was on quite a budget when I left and and while I was going so it’s sort of just what am I sacrificing a bit of weight for a cheaper option, but I had like my, my mother’s old coat which was this like not anything resembling a down jacket, this monstrous thing that took up half a pannier. I had a pair of jeans with me to wear like when I was off the bike. So much unpractical. kind of clothing thing, I even had like a sort of smart casual shirt, I thought I would like to dress up like a non bike person when I was in town for a weekend, or things that I would never do now. And I did get rid of a lot of this stuff slowly. And as time went on out kind of improved things a bit as they broke. But then there was a lot of things that I wouldn’t change, like I travelled with, I mean, I had like a cutting board with me so that I could chop vegetables up when I was camping, and had little film canisters, filmed of spices and a proper source bird. And so I could like, eat well, and, and I wouldn’t, again, a lot of bikepackers could turn a nose up at that and think God’s this person’s just sort of like a moving kitchen. But I you know, for such a long period of the bike, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t change that at all. And on and I know that the sort of, especially at the moment with the sort of influences bikepacking has had on on taking existing cyclists and making them realise what they can achieve on the bike. I still am a big believer in taking a bit more stuff if your legs can handle it. And if you’re not in a hurry, you know, riding up a mountain with the extra weight on your bag, it’s not going to do your fitness any any disservice. If you can get up it. I think a bit of both comfort is quite okay. And while in general, I’m a minimalist these days, I think there’s plenty of space for carrying a few extra luxury items whenever you’re travelling.
Carlton Reid 56:30
But did you come back? Not you but did the bike and the kit come back a lot lighter. So by the time you’d finish, because I know you you’d have to badmouth the bags that you had. But you certainly changed your your your bags halfway around because of various reasons. And other notes on your blog, you do kind of, say a few choice words about the brand you had. But did you come back with? Did you come out with a lot more lightweight than you went? On much more lightweight?
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 57:00
I would say I might have shaved off like a kilo. Like in general, I pretty much had the same amount of stuff with me. And yeah, it couldn’t have bothered me that much. Because otherwise I would have gotten rid of an awful lot of stuff. So no, I actually, I actually think I returned with a fairly similar amount of weight on my bike. That’s
Carlton Reid 57:22
interesting, because that’s totally opposite to the way I did it. So when I started out, I had so much kit, I had like a wooden hammer for hammering in the tent pegs I had, like, we just get a rock, you know, I had so many things that I just I was chucking stuff you know, from the very, very start and you’ve kind of quickly got used to you know, what was necessary and what wasn’t. And you don’t know that until you’re actually on the road. So I was ended up with with a lot less kit. So I taught myself minimalism, just because, cuz, whereas you’re saying you don’t, it doesn’t matter, you can just pedal up a hill, I was the opposite as like, No, I’m not the crane brothers. Famously, when they went up Kilimanjaro and their stuff, they they would, you know, drill holes in toothbrushes, I was never that extreme. But I would definitely want to be lightweight, as much as possible. And so I am kind of interested in taking a chopping board. So I wouldn’t have done that. This is interesting about how different people approach these things. And like, I have come down to the minimalist and caring such a little like I wouldn’t, personally I wouldn’t, not even going on like a camping trip. Now. I won’t take cooking equipment, for instance, I will generally buy what I need, and eat that and then have to then scrambled to get, you know, fresh supplies. And I know it’s much more efficient to take rice and what have you and then be able to boil this up. But to me just carrying any amount of cooking equipment to me in my head, just that’s too much weight, I can do this much lighter. And clearly you’re you’re not you’re a different each to their own, isn’t it? It’s just different people want to do different things. And that’s fine. Definitely.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 59:22
And we need to make sure that we always sort of accommodate that. Because people are so different. And and I think it’s difficult, you know, in life, for example, in the cycling industry, it’s a consumer driven industry, we need to convince people we brands need to convince people that they need to do things in a different way or a better way or an improved way. But really all of it comes down to like giving people options so they can do things in the way that they want to do it. And you know, there is absolutely no reason why one type of bike travelling is superior than another. They are yeah complete The different ways of doing things for different people. So ever people navigate in one particular way, if they choose one kind of route, it’s not about that it’s about giving people the options. And the same, like if someone wants to go on a road bike really fast with nothing on their bike, that’s totally fine. And if someone wants to chuck for massive panniers on their bike, they’ll probably be a bit slower. But that’s, but that’s totally okay.
Carlton Reid 1:00:26
And so what are you doing now? During what what? How would you describe your riding, and your adventuring now,
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:00:33
my, I still try. And when I travel, I always want to be on a bike. If I’m not on a bike, I’ve fully compromised a little bit. But I also like spending time walking around being a normal person, especially if I’m on holiday with my with my girlfriend. But I do try and have one or two bike trips, big bike trips a year. Over the last few years, I’ve developed a sort of real love for exploring, I guess, capturing the essence of a big adventure closer to home. But in general, I’m sort of a casual cyclist I like to get out for provides every once a week if I can. I think working at QMU is quite is wonderful, but a bit dangerous for someone like me who enjoys spending time looking at maps, because the list of places to visit is evergrowing. But commute has this amazing interface. We have this route planner, which is wonderful gives people all these advanced tools to make informed decisions about where they’re going and how they get there. But we also have this discovery interface where you can have these these created routes for you based on your sort of parameters, the smart, this kind of smart solutions, and does have a really big impact on me, since we launched it last year, I’m much more inclined to take a train out from London to a random station and say, load it up on commute and say, Hey, I’m in a new area. I’ve got three hours, give me something. So while I’m going on less epic adventures, and finding new kind of creative ways of exploring familiar places. I’m doing that a lot at the moment. And I’m extremely excited about doing more of that as the weather improves.
Carlton Reid 1:02:19
And is that a curated thing? Or is that an algorithm thing. So
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:02:24
it’s a kind of a combination of stuff. commute, we have so much user data, because we have millions and billions and billions of of users, the number of recorded tours is kind of such a big number. It’s it’s kind of hard to get your head around. So we’re able to give people these. These like personalised suggestions so I can take the train out if I’m with a no fun with friends go out for a walk at the weekend, I can look at which train line takes me to a village that looks somewhere Scenic. I don’t own a car. So I can just say I’m at this station, it will see where the people who use Komoot are heading when they record their tours. So it’s very easy to get a feel for where people actually walk. Where do people go for their recreational weekend straws. And it will give me a clever or suitable solution to get kind of onto that, navigate the route and then return to the train station. And it’s incredibly clever how it works. If I go on where I live now and say I want to go for a four hour cycle, starting for I live. I’ve lived in London for a long time and I’ve cycled in London for a long time. I know what all of the common roadie routes are that people take wherever they’re going off to Windsor or Kent or sorry, Essex and, and if I let Komoot do this for me automatically. It’s kind of amazing how it basically gives me the routes that people most commonly do. But it won’t just give me three or four options, it will give me hundreds of options, which means I can go out for a new ride. And I can always find something that’s slightly different to what I’ve done in the past. And I find that really inspiring for my, like motivation to explore.
Carlton Reid 1:04:12
And then if you were in Iran, would it do the same? Or was it does it need that you know, lots and lots of people have done this before or kind of just glower three people who’ve done this, okay, that’ll be the route we curate for this. This person has just ended up in Iran, for instance, such as yourself a few years ago. Yeah, you
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:04:28
need to have the use of data because it’s based on what people actually do. So if we didn’t have that it wouldn’t we only want to do it when we’re confident we give people a good experience. Otherwise, no one benefits from it. You can obviously still use the route panoramic, your own tool in Iran. The what I would say in certain regions where there is less user data, we have an editorial team that make it they’re the the we create the content so we’ll find what are the classic like walking routes based on like variety of sources, we have an extensive editorial team that will add this content. And they will add suitable highlights, which is what we call the contributions that the community creates to add on to the map. So that this is an amazing viewpoint, this is a great cafe to stop out if you’re a cyclist, this is a really beautiful, rich line stroll. So we will help to populate the map so that the people who are used to kind of a circular thing, the better the map data is, the better that the attributions are on commute, the more local people will find, have a good user experience. And then the more they use it, the more they’ll contributes. And that’s how we kind of launch in in new places where there’s less of an active community, if that makes sense.
Carlton Reid 1:05:48
Yes, your heat mapping then, in effect, so you’re you’re working out where people are going, and you see you perhaps, you know, and your your fellow app. This this ecosystem we talked about before, you know, where people are cycling, you know, like the Strava, type heatmap.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:06:06
Exactly. So we can I mean, it’s all obviously, like, it’s only when people choose to share stuff publicly. It’s all like completely anonymized. But you know, we have so much data, we’re just trying to harness it. And yes, we do know where people cycle we have that information that’s great is quite hard to sort of digest. But if you can take that and turn it into something actionable, the end result for the user is that they can say, I’m a beginner, I’ve got two hours, I’ve got a new phone mount to go on my handlebars, I can select this tool, I can just press go. And I can head off and have an amazing bike ride for two hours. And we can be really confident that it’s going to be suitable because that’s what other people are doing when they, for example, select bike touring as a sport type. And the same for hiking, we won’t have people won’t be walking down the road, because we’ll only be looking at data that’s come from hikers. It’s a very Yeah, it’s an incredible solution is very clever. And I think it’s just a great way of mobilising people, whether they’re like really experienced cyclists who are just looking for something new and and bored of doing the same kind of loop over and over again, or newbies who need their handheld a little bit. And once I have a solution that they can just go off and do with five minutes of planning instead of an hour of planning for a two hour excursion.
Carlton Reid 1:07:33
Now right now the bike and I don’t know how much you know, this, but the bike industry, certainly in the UK, and in many other places in the world is is suffering just incredibly bad. It’s just it is it is dire out there at retail. It’s dire out there for suppliers, you know, post COVID, we basically just got a huge, huge, low a complete slump. You know, I did a story on Forbes of the day talking about how to 40 year low in the UK. You know, the last time we were as low as this in bike sales was in 1985. So 39 years. And that’s that’s that’s pretty poor. Do. Do you recognise that? Is that something you can look at and say, oh, people aren’t writing as much? Or is that just purely at retail and people still riding that is not buying?
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:08:24
Is a good? It’s a good question. I actually saw that Forbes article and is it’s definitely bleak reading. But I’ve worked in the bike industry for a number of years. It’s like, I know many people who share the same kind of anecdotal experiences that things are changing. It is a problem with retail and definitely like have these hangover kind of effects from the pandemic that still making it really hard for people to forecast well. And, and it’s just been so unpredictable for a few years now. Komoot is lucky because we don’t deal with a physical product. But we are subject to the same the same kind of you know, these kind of cultural shifts, whether people are collectively interested in exploring or cycling, we’re not immune to that we might not have the same issues that a bike manufacturer has, but we still get impacted by the same changes. And it’s hard for us to predict these major shifts in usage in the same way that it’s hard for anyone in the cycling industry. One thing that I think is is great for Komoot. Well, I think partly compared to a lot of physical stuff in the cycling space. It’s quite an affordable price point and you can do an awful lot for free. So that’s less of a barrier when people have less disposable income. We are international so if one you know we have we’re active in plenty of markets, but we are, I guess subject to like, international shifts in usage. rather than, you know, locked in and reliant on one particular place, and also, we have a product that is set up for different sport types. So we can, you know, we can we’re not sort of reliant on we’re not just a road cycling company. So if people overnight decided not interested in road cycling, that would be very unfortunate, it would be a very sad thing. But we have plenty of other you know, markets and user types. And even within road cycling, for example, there’s people who’ve been, you know, the people who’ve been road cycling for many years in Italy decide to stop Well, there’s an entire, you know, there’s there’s millions of people who are maybe new to the sport, or could become interested in the sport, if you approach them in the right way. So yeah, it’s particularly in the UK is quite a bleak landscape at the moment, but I think it’s quite lucky in in where we are positioned, we’re not completely Yeah, stuck in the middle of that.
Carlton Reid 1:11:03
So tell us how much it costs to go for the pro version. And what you get with the pro version, better than just going for the free version.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:11:16
So I will try and do a concise summary of our pricing, you can do an awful lot on commute for free, you can find these routes that I referred to in our discover section, you can build our own routes, a lot of the functionality is there for free users. And when you sign up, you get free region bundle, so that you can explore a particular region and these region bundles, you can either purchase like an individual region, so like London, perhaps would be one that’s gonna be like a one those all like one time purchases. So you can buy region for £3.99 and region bundle a collection of them for 8.99. Or you can get the whole world pack for 29.99. Same whether it’s pound sterling, euros or or USD. And when you have a region unlocked you, you can then use offline maps. So you can take the download the map, or you can follow the tour without needing internet, you also get voice navigation. And you also get turn by turn navigation, whether you’re doing on your phone or more on your cycling computer or smartwatch. So those are all one time purchases. And then we also have a premium, like pricing tier, which is 4.99 a month 59.99 for the year. And then we premium, you get a whole host of extra features and functionality, you get the whole world available offline. So those features I mentioned earlier, you get all of that included, you also are able to make collections, which means you can group together, either your planned tours. By that I mean that your plan routes, so you want to do hiking or cycling, or once you’ve completed so like if I cycled around the world, I could add all of the daily bits into one nice collection to show that my car five, I’ve cycled while I was away. You also get sports specific overlays, which I referred to earlier. So you can overlay the light, long distance hiking or cycling routes, you get on tour weather, which is really cool, you can see where you’re estimated to be when the sunsets or when the rain arrives, or the winds looking like you get live tracking, you get the multi day planner, which I also refer to earlier. If you have a really long route, you can divide it into like segments. And as accommodation stops for each, you know, each daily part. And finally, you get 3D maps. So they’re all a bunch of features that are really amazing, really cool. I guess we pitch it as for people who wants to go further, so people who who require a little bit of extra extra features, and we’re constantly trying to add new features to enrich that.
Carlton Reid 1:14:07
Great. So to wrap up, give us a URL. I mean, it’s reasonably obvious. I agree. I’ll even spelled out during that during the recording now, however, give us the URL, and then the URL for for where people can have now obviously put in the show notes. But where people can can follow your your adventures in 2015 through 2017. And then you’ve done subsequent rides and you’re updating your blog for a while so so to basically give us your URL for the blog and for Komoot.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:14:39
We can spell out one more time for luck. It’s just Komoot.com. On the web browser. You can also find the app on both iOS and Android. If you want to give it a go and get started myself You can find me on LinkedIn. If you can manage to spell my surname, you can add it into the podcast notes. I have a link there to my Komoot profile, should you be interested in following my adventures there? My blog is called JKB’s bike ride, which is Jk B. S, my initials. If you want to read some of my, my rambling thoughts from a long time ago, all my photography from the many bike trips I’ve been on. And if you find me there, you can, you can find me on other social media platforms. And I would just say if you have any, if anyone listening has any questions about the things that we’ve discussed today, or any questions about commute, or bike touring travel in general, you’re very welcome to send me an email at jonathan@komoot.com Always happy to hear from people and talk about adventures
Carlton Reid 1:15:55
during this time. Excellent. Thank you very much. Now, as expected, this was meant to be about Komoot. It was it was Komoot. And Jonathan it was like this afternoon to measure exactly how much is is how much was Komoot and how much was Jonathan. But I kind of expected that as soon as you know that. I want to interview you then it’s like, Okay, we’re gonna be talking about bike touring. And we’re bringing Komoot here and there. So that hopefully I mean, you are very clever, you are dragging commute back in as much as possible, which is absolutely fine. And good, because that’s what ostensibly what we’re meant to be talking about. Anyway, that’s been fascinating. And thank you ever so much for for well, we recorded this and it was an hour and 16 minutes, and it flew by. So Jonathan, thank you ever so much.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:16:41
That was a real pleasure. I really enjoyed. Yeah, I really enjoyed going through whole range of subjects with you.
Carlton Reid 1:16:48
And we could have I mean, I could have gone blog by blog posts and blog posting and tell me about the flies here in Australia and stuff. But we didn’t but I do recommend people go read your blog, look at your videos, and work out whether Do you really want to cycle around the world. Or maybe Jonathan’s bug experiences and farting monks and stuff will will actually inspire you to go and do your own stuff. So anyway, thank you very much.
Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett 1:17:10
It was a good teaser. Yeah, thank you very much for your time.
Carlton Reid 1:17:13
Thanks for listening to Episode 348 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast brought to you in association with Tern Bicycles. Show notes and more can be found at the-spokesmen.com. The next episode will be a chat with Tom Knights of Strava Metro. That show will be out next weekend. But meanwhile, get out there and ride.
24th February 2024
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 347: Richard Fletcher
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUEST: Richard Fletcher, Isle of Man
TOPICS: Cycling on the Isle of Man. Mark Cavendish and Matt Stephens. Bike Style bike shop, Douglas. Manxman ferry. Dot Tilbury’s funnel. TT racing. Mountain road. Pan-Celtic. Isle of Man Youth Tour.
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TRANSCRIPT
Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 347 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Saturday 24th of February 2020. For
David Bernstein 0:29
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Carlton Reid 1:04
The plan was to record this interview while riding to Laxey on the Isle of Man with cycle guide and event organiser Richard Fletcher, pointing out the roads long used by fellow Manxman Mark Cavendish, but then weather! I’m Carlton Reid, and I was on the Isle of Man for the AGM of the British guild of travel writers. members could choose a one day fam trip activity. And while others chose spa and yoga retreats or cookery sessions, all indoors, I had asked to go cycling. I brought my road bike on the Steam Packet ferry from Heysham and was eager to hook up Richard with a radio mic and then chat, as we pootled along. The driving rain put paid to that idea. And after a bitterly cold two hour ride, we drip-dripped into a Douglas bike shop. Right. And I’ve just seen a photograph of you there that I took on the road, and you’re smiling. But there’s sleet. There’s rain, there’s basically we’re riding through it almost a river coming up through to Douglas. So that was pretty grim out there.
Richard Fletcher 2:23
Yes, as bad as it gets over here. But yeah, you’re out on your bike. And there’s the worst places to be. So as long as you don’t do more than an hour and a half in that sort of that sort of weather, then it’s fine. Right?
Carlton Reid 2:35
So warmed up, we had a cup of coffee, and a bit of cake in Noa’s bakery, and that’s Noa. And next door to that is Bike Style. The bike shops who are now sitting on very nice sofas here, in in a nice bike shop. I’d like to say overlooking, you know, the scenic wonders of Douglas, but we can’t actually see a great deal. And when we were out riding this morning, you you basically you took me out to some scenic places, but we didn’t actually see anything. So just describe the ride that we did this morning. What would we have seen if it would be a beautiful day? Because we’re kind of going towards Snaefell, weren’t we?
Richard Fletcher 3:12
Yeah, well, the hills, the route, we went on the hills all around it, basically. So and yeah, on a clear day, that’s what you see. You can you can see the island from sort of side to side and top to bottom only when you’re out it’s particularly if you get some height. But today, because it’s hilly, you get white-out effectively. So yeah, there’s quite low cloud and you don’t see a lot. But yeah, it would have been a nice ride if our view wise if it had been clear.
Carlton Reid 3:42
Because we did get pretty damn cold out there today. So the route you were originally planning to take me on would have been towards Laxey
Richard Fletcher 3:52
We’d have gone north of the east coast of the island. And you get some stunning views on the East coast. Well on all the coastal routes on the island, and the island basically has villages and towns dotted around the coastline. So as soon as you come in from the towns, you start climbing, and you go either over a hill into a valley and over another hill and back to the coast. The island is only 12 miles wide and it’s been its widest point, and 36 miles long. So you can cross from coast to coast or top to bottom in a day. But there’s lots of minor roads. I think some of the roads we went on. They were most of them were single carriageway roads to the benefit that is the nicer island because they’re quiet, very little traffic. But yeah, it’s just today was a rough day for it.
Carlton Reid 4:42
So if we had done that ride, which we’re planning to do towards Laxey would have basically written past Cav’s house, yeah?
Richard Fletcher 4:51
Well, he’s born and brought up in Douglas and Laxey still has a house in Laxey. And Laxey’s got a lot of history from it was an old mining village years ago not a big population there. It’s people have a possibly have an impression of Cav that because he’s a sprinter the same of the Tour de France with a sprint train that he’s a rider for the flatlands but the he was born and brought up over here where you there are hills everywhere you go. And in his amateur racing, I think you see that that he’s used to coping with that type of terrain.
Carlton Reid 5:29
And tell me about Dot Tilbury because Dot Tilbury you’re talking about basically before when we’re in the coffee shop about a big funnel of riders. Then at the bottom, you would spit out these well known riders that we’ve all heard of.
Richard Fletcher 5:42
Yeah, I mean, I’ve been cycling for 40. More well, more than 40 years and until Dot came around, and the cycling tended to be quite insular. And people would get into cycling because their parents had all their brothers or sisters. Dot started a children’s league on a Tuesday night, more than 20 years ago now. And it started attracting more and more children into it, who weren’t anything to do with the normal cycling scene. And within a relatively short space of time, it got to the stage where she was getting 200, then 250. And now 300 kids would turn up on a Tuesday night and be introduced to cycling as an activity. And that’s been going on now say for over 20 years. And I’d say for a small population out the Isle of Man 86,000 people, that’s the most directly cause of of the high standard of cycling because you use the word then there is a sort of wide funnel of kids becoming involved in cycling. And yes, there’s when they get to 14, 15, 16. And all the distractions come around or other activities come around, particularly in this day and age where there’s so many alternatives to to spend your time still a larger number drop out at the bottom of the funnel than would have if she didn’t run that league. And I think she’s the most direct link to the success of of elite cycling over here. I remember when did that exactly set that up? I don’t exactly 20, 20 something years ago be more than 20 years
Carlton Reid 7:20
Where Where does she where’s that is it’s just like an off road circuit?
Richard Fletcher 7:24
It’s on a perimeter road around the National Sports Centre. So it’s about half a mile round pan flat. And it’s like an oval, like a 600 metre version of an athletic track effectively, but it’s tarmac. And they race round there on a Tuesday night, they start when they’re almost just off balance bikes then through to when they’re 16. And they that’s where they get into cycling, and then as they get to the older age groups, and they then move into the more sort of traditional cycling. Dot also takes them away on trips. So they go to places like a day on the Manchester Velodrome they take part in the youth series that British Cycling runs. And we run around with that over here. So they get to perform on home soil as well. In fact that is coming up in April, this year, there’ll be over 200 kids come from the UK, the best 200 Kids in the UK will come over to ride in the Isle of Man. And about 50 of Dot’s kids will be in those races as well.
Carlton Reid 8:32
Because you’re one of the organisers of yeah, they used to it
Richard Fletcher 8:36
I recently do, the youth has been running for 14 or 15 years now. And last couple of years, the organisers sort of change over time, became involved and become involved. So Emma Dyer who has been involved for many years and organising it Rob Holden, ex professional cyclist and myself are the three main organisers but it’s a big team of people that put it together and it’s closed roads Yeah, we get Road Club full road closure which is one of the USPS if you like of them coming to the Isle of Man that the kids aren’t used to riding on closed roads they used to running on closed circuits around parks and things like that. And we get the national escort group guys come over so it’s quite a an atmosphere for the kids the it’s not to to France but it’s sort of to ride on closed roads with national escort and we bring Tony Barry’s neutral service cars over as well so they’ve they’ve actually got a almost like professional experience that they get and I think that’s why I like coming over for it.
Carlton Reid 9:39
And one of the ways you’re able to close the roads is the Isle of Man government is pretty well used to closing roads for the TT so is that part of it? You can you they are used to closing roads?
Richard Fletcher 9:53
Yeah, they are and there’s an acceptance by the public there’s always some resistance to close. as roads, whatever it’s for, and we try and minimise that. But yeah, the sort of structures and the policies and laws are in place to help you do that. The TT happens has happened for 100 years. 1907. Yeah. That that’s an established thing over here. What people probably don’t know as much about is that at this, the bicycle TT started in the 30s. And it was, again, it was because they couldn’t do it. on the Isle of Man; in the UK rather. So you had the I don’t know, whatever the governing body of cycling was then. And you had a breakaway group called British League of racing cyclists. And they, they got together with the Isle of Man. And we ran one of the first big mass start races over here in the 1930s last century. And that for a time that became the biggest race in Britain for cycling, so you had top names like Tom Simpson, and all the big riders at the time came over and race the Isle of Man, the International, before in this sort of following the Second World War,
Carlton Reid 11:12
when there was no nothing like that everybody was time trialling, yeah, famously and alpaca Yeah, you know, black alpaca going out in secret in the morning
Richard Fletcher 11:20
Yeah, so the road racing scene was established, cycling was established then right, and then became Manx International Cycling Week, which ran through till 2003, which was a week long festival where we close roads for two the whole week for cycling. That went into decline mainly because people’s habits changed. And they didn’t want to take a week off from their work holidays to come to Isle of Man for cycling when Majorca and other places were, were beckoning. So now we tend to have smaller scale races, we had the we’ve had rounds of the British National series for seniors. So the premier calendar, we’ve hosted the national championships. And consistently we’ve run the National Youth and junior two sets around the British youth series and around the British Junior series, the Peter Buckley series, which it’s still I still call it that. Peter Buckley was actually from the Isle of Man. And when the Commonwealth Games gold medal, and
you’re from the Isle of Man too, so you’re a born and bred Manxman
Yeah, I spent a little bit time off the island but mainly on the island. Yeah. My wife’s from the UK. And my dad was from the UK. So it’s, but yeah, it’s been my home is here.
Carlton Reid 12:40
And tell me a little bit about how you sort of semi funded Cav’s early career with some cash, but indirectly.
Richard Fletcher 12:51
Yes, that’s my claim. And I don’t think Mark would want to know about it or agree with it. But Mark’s mother. For many years, Adele ran a dance workshop, not far from this shop, actually. And both my daughters did ballet. So I spent quite a lot of money on pointe shoes over the years with with Adele. And so I say that and that was about the time Mark was getting into cycling. So yeah, I must have contributed in a small way to Yes,
Carlton Reid 13:16
yes. And he of course had a dance background at first.
Richard Fletcher 13:19
I believe so. I think I think a lot more is made of it than that. But yeah, when I think he was nine or 10 or 11, I think he did some ballroom dancing. So I wouldn’t be surprised if in the next three or four years, he appears on Strictly or something like that. Be a good candidate.
Carlton Reid 13:37
And he’s got a house, you said at Laxey. He’s got houses dotted around, but one of them. One of them is certainly here. So he would be a known figure here. And I’m here, obviously for the the AGM of the Travel Writers Guild, and even you know, the top big wigs. And when we had our gala dinner, they mentioned Mark Cavendish. Yeah, you know, so he he’s a known figure, quite apart from in the cycling scene, but he will appear and he will do local, local, right. He
Richard Fletcher 14:10
He comes up frequently to see his Mum and Dad, who both live on the island. And yeah, when you see, he goes out with the local lads on both training rides, and you’ll he’ll, he’ll pop up and do events as well. I run a sportif each year, and I haven’t had any contact with him. But the British Cycling entry system that was used, the entries pop up in your email inbox and there’s one M Cavendish OBE, who just paid his entry fee and rocked up like any other rider to it to just make a big thing about you made the day because he’s turned up and he was late getting to the start and we sportifs quite relaxed. But when he got to start on when went round with the lads who were strong enough to ride with him, and he because he was They started you went past everybody in the event and it made the event all you could hear in the sort of coffee shop afterwards was because Cav passed me on this hill or Cav passed me here. So it’s great, but he does. He just slots in. And I think I think I don’t know, you have to speak to him. But I think he enjoys the fact you can just behave normally over here and go about his business without getting accosted for this, that and the other. So,
Carlton Reid 15:23
So we’re about on the roads before most of the people were getting with this wide berth. But we had a couple, and it was such atrocious weather. And they were coming past at speed. Yeah. And that wasn’t that wasn’t very nice. And you might have told one of the drivers they shouldn’t have been doing. And that was it was a horrible close pass. So how much respect do you generally get? And could it be some of it down to you’ve got that funnel of riders, and you’ve certainly got somebody as famous as Mark Cavendish, that, you know, the big wigs talk about him? So might there be some, even if it’s just a small bit of people’s brains? Like why can’t you know, close past those cyclists; one of them might be Cav and then I’m in the national news?
Richard Fletcher 16:10
It’s a bit subjective, my gut feel, because I do do quite a lot of riding off the island is my gut feeling. I think the drivers over here are a little bit more considerate than elsewhere in the in the in the British Isles is a bit subjective. But generally speaking, I think the overall rise in popularity of cycling, whether it’s here or in the UK, has also contributed to maybe people being a bit more aware. I don’t I don’t think it’s it’s not malice of people in cars. I think it’s it’s ignorance of, of the fact they’re inside us. steel box, and you’re not. So it’s not something that would ever I mean, I’ve been cyclists for many years, it’s not going to put me off cycling anyway. But I think it is the it’s still the main barrier to people taking up cycling who aren’t experienced cyclists. So it’s a bit of culture change people’s personalities change when they get in the car. And then that’s, I see to unbonded really, but no, it’s not too bad over here. And the roads themselves because they’re not big roads, people have to drive with a bit of care and attention most people to give you plenty of room.
Carlton Reid 17:23
So, okay, well, a few seconds ago you said British Isles rather than the UK. So Isle of Man isn’t in the UK isn’t in the EU, ever. It’s but it’s part of the British Isles, and it’s a crown dependency. There are different rules here. Because if you’ve got your own government and one of those rules, or lack of rules, is you can go as fast as you want in a car on certain roads. And that’s partly maybe a legacy of the, the TT that’s been going on. So if you’ve got this TT circuit, and even on Ordnance Survey maps, it says, you know, this is the TT course. But these are public roads. These are these are not not closed circuit at all apart from when it’s running in June, and the roads are closed. So at those roads being no speed limits, means some drivers, not all of them for some drivers are going to be going crackers on those roads, because then you can overtake a policeman, police car 200mph nand they can’t do anything about it. So does that mean cyclists avoid that, that course, that road?
Richard Fletcher 18:31
There’s only one section that most cyclists avoid. That’s the what’s called the mountain road. It runs through Ramsey over alongside Snaefell the only mountain on the island and drops down into Douglas. So whereas 20, 30 years ago I used to commute over that road. Most people would avoid it now and I would avoid now is because and there’s a number of reasons for that. One is that yes. A lot of drivers do put the foot down when they get on a mountain road. There are safe passing places on the mountain road. If you were doing excessive speed and you took a police car, they would still pull you in because it’s below there’s no speed limit. It’s allowing us to do art drive. Um, I’m not sure the legal definition but in a safe manner effectively. So it’s not unlimited speed, it’s driving to the road conditions and if you overtook them at 70 and it was misty, they put you in so it’s them. There’s there is some control over it. But particularly motorbikes because of the history. They like to really push it over the mountain. And it’s so I wouldn’t go up there on a bike now for two reasons. One, you can although we’ve got terrible weather today, and even in on a summer’s day, the mountain in patches can be misty. So you could set off from Douglas or Ramsey in bright sunshine. And once you get above 1000 feet or whatever in the mist, and the speed differential between a car even not absolutely ragging over the mountain, and the bicycle going uphill is such that you be at risk of being hit from behind. Because the driver just wouldn’t see you in time,
Carlton Reid 20:17
Do motorists avoid it, do they also seem motorists to go I’m not gonna get that because
Richard Fletcher 20:22
I mean, I say I lived in Ramsey and commuted to work in Douglas, for 20 years. And I could, I could probably drive the mountain road blindfold. But I do know some drivers and even taxi drivers who don’t like riding, because the because it’s the TT course there are no cat’s eyes in the middle of the road. So it’s actually quite a difficult road to drive in the mist. You need to know where the roads going up ahead. So yeah, there are some motorists avoid, as well.
Carlton Reid 20:54
So that’s a 37 mile stretch of, in effect, a triangle of roads that are marked on the OS map as the as the TT course. But the island has something like 688 miles, all other roads. So we’re talking, you know, 640 Odd miles of other roads. Yeah. So that’s something that right, avoid them. You don’t have to sometimes use that road to link up with other things, you can always avoid it.
Richard Fletcher 21:23
And the funny part is that the when we have bike races or their motorcycle races, there mountain road, because it’s very, there are maybe three businesses on the mountain, or I think you went to one victory cafe, that they were allowed actually to close the mountain road with very little resistance, because they’re alternative routes around the island for motorists. And there’s not many people live in the mountain road. So it’s it’s actually a lot, it’s a road you wouldn’t use when the roads are open, it’s for an event, you can often get a road closure on the mountain road quite quite easily because of that. But now the other road, most of the active cyclists, they wouldn’t use a TT course because they are effectively the island’s equivalent of sort of arterial roads. Most of the traffic is on those roads. But it means the roads the side I mean, we went on some of them today can’t learn without being able to see where we were. But they’re the roads that run alongside or crisscross those roads. And the traffic is fairly light. Still, we didn’t have a chance to go up to the north of the island where it’s the northern plane is flat. But that’s where virtually all the local racing takes place. Now because there’s very little traffic it’s mainly just farmland, but farms and fields.
Carlton Reid 22:48
At this point we’ll cut to a break. Take it away, David,
David Bernstein 22:52
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Carlton Reid 23:52
Thanks, David. And we are back with Isle of Man Mr. Cycling, Richard Fletcher. So describe where maybe Kev or Pete Kennaugh where they would have ridden where would they go? Do you think would they have a standard training ride? Or would they mix it up?
Richard Fletcher 24:09
No, they mix it up and I know Cav’s thing that he doesn’t like to repeat the same road on any training ride. I think he covered that when he did a piece over here with Matt Stevens. But they ride the ride all over basically. And you can it’s for small island, there are a lot of roads, you can you can mix it up. And you tend to look at the weather and see which way the winds blowing and decide a new route then rather than have a planned route, but they will know both those two and any boys have been involved in cycling over here you get to know every road on the island basically. So
Carlton Reid 24:51
you would link it up in your head and then just kind
Richard Fletcher 24:54
of criss cross and go where the coffee is really
Carlton Reid 24:59
and then Then on this trip, maybe they’re just pulling our leg I don’t know. But the bus driver everybody who’s been talking to us on this trip has been stressing the folklore element of the Isle of Man, which I wasn’t really terribly familiar with at all. So everybody is stressing, you know, you’ve got to when you go across the Fairy Bridge, you’ve got to say hello to the fairies. How much of this is would you tell that to the tourists? And how much of that is no people on the island genuinely, you know, believe in this stuff.
Richard Fletcher 25:36
I don’t know if I believe in it. A lot of a lot of the people buy into it.
Carlton Reid 25:42
And why?
Richard Fletcher 25:44
Because I’m I’m not one of those I’m not a superstitious person. But there is. I mean, there is a big Celtic background the history of the Isle of Man is interesting. So don’t buy into all the folklore stuff. The background history of the island where the Vikings were heavily involved in the Isle of Man if you look at it geographic on a map, you can see that if you’re military strategist, where would you base yourself if you want to rape and pillage all over the British Isles, you got the Isle of Man because you can bet your base here and strike out and hit violent Wales England or Scotland from it. So the Vikings were have a big influence on the islands. Longer history. And then because of that, the Scottish Lords got rid of the Vikings and then the Lords of Darby took over from the Scots. So there’s a lot of not folklore that but there’s a lot of good, meaty history about the island. The the other stuff? I don’t know, I think it’s it’s the stuff about mythical creatures and fairies is, is probably because you then you’ve got a small island race basically. So you get myths and things from a an environment like that. But yeah, it’s uh, it’s, it sells a lot of gin. Yes.
Carlton Reid 27:17
Definitely good stories. Yeah. And we’ve been given, you know, books of folklore. And so you’ve got to say, hello to the fairies
Richard Fletcher 27:25
doesn’t mean the other Celtic nations have similar things. So Irish, Irish methylene and Welsh and Scottish as well. That so there is quite a strong Celtic presence here. And there are quite, there’s quite a lot of exchanges between, particularly in the arts around the Celtic side, so you’ve got them Normandy, Brittany, Cornwall, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and they do get together, particularly in the art side and, and share the same sort of music and poetry and everything else. It doesn’t overlap as much in into sport. Although we’ve got a really interesting event coming over here in July this year, called Pan-Celtic, which is like an ultra endurance event. And I was amazing guy, I didn’t know anything about the event until earlier this year. And the guy who organised a guy called Matt Ryan, who lives in north Wales, the opening entries for it and had to close them within 48 hours later because he’d filled the field and it’s people from all over the world coming. We completely coincidentally bumped into a German couple on a cycling holiday and they said Are you from Alabama? We’re coming for the pan Celtic this year. And so they’re flying in, mins booked to Gatwick and Gatwick to here to do this event that starts does 100 mile loop around the Isle of Man and they’re getting on the ferry and they go off to Scotland right around there.
Carlton Reid 28:59
You know the route and what they what are they doing loose route
Richard Fletcher 29:03
it’s about like it’s about 1500 miles in total. It’s one of these ultra distance the other man is strange and it’s been set as the because we got very right it’s been set as the first stage they’ve been classed as a time trial. It’s not it is a race and it isn’t a race it’s a it’s a race where nobody wins anything is the way that if the organisers describes it, but it’s a personal challenge thing so when the clock starts normally on the pan Celtic it doesn’t stop until you get to the very end whereas for this year because the argument is being used the first stage they don’t do a ride through the night here and then get their morning ferry over to patient and then ride I think they go north then and ride around Scotland for the rest of it. But I’m seeing the rest of the room
Carlton Reid 29:48
because normally on the pan Celtic it’s if you get to the ferry port late well you’re gonna get the ferry the next day and that’s that’s added to your time. Yeah, where is this one? And usually they’re gonna stop the times there is like a time drive.
Richard Fletcher 30:04
Yeah, because it’s a three to four hour journey over I think so yeah, they’re they’ve got they’ve got a big enough window the starting at seven o’clock on Saturday evening and they’ve got to do better thing is boundary and five miles. So the very least 8.45 next day so I can’t see anybody missing that that they should have a little bit sleep actually
Carlton Reid 30:27
do what route they’re doing actually on yeah went
Richard Fletcher 30:30
through the route with the organiser because he we’ve actually got another big cycling event the next day. So we needed to avoid clashing with that. And it basically does a big loop of the island round round the perimeter mainly but they cut into they’ve got the participants left some interesting clients did it as well they go burn the client pool faulty will, which is effectively going up the mountain it’s not the mountain road TT causeway but it’s the it’s a, it’s a nicer if you can have a nice climb, it’s a nicer climb than the TT course one
Carlton Reid 31:07
and they are avoiding the TT course completely. There’s not not not hitting it at all
Richard Fletcher 31:11
on it for about a mile. And that’s it because when you get to the top of that climb, you actually go backwards along with TT good for you then go back into the interior. But that’s that’s fine. It’s then it’s the middle of summer it’ll be the middle of the night when they get there as well. So there won’t be a lot of traffic on that road.
Carlton Reid 31:31
So that’s it as you’re saying before there’s there’s there’s no cat size on that road. So that’s a road that maybe people avoided that night anyway.
Richard Fletcher 31:37
Um, yeah, this well. There are alternative routes. So yes, you will, they will fit in on if there’s not misty then you would go that way. Because the quickest way from north to say, most direct way. But generally speaking in nighttime, it’s quiet anyway.
Carlton Reid 31:55
So last night, we had a talk from Milky Quayle. Who’s one of these guys who who averages 186 miles an hour on his motorbike as he’s going around the corner, sometimes hitting 200 miles an hour. And he was one of the questions I asked him was, you would die if you hit a pothole at 30 miles an hour, nevermind 200 miles an hour. So the local authority, the government must be pumping a huge amount of money into keeping that road. absolutely pristine. And there’s never going to be a pothole on that road. However, does that mean that other roads, the roads, maybe the cyclists are on? Does that mean they’re getting short shrift there because they’re getting roads where there’s gonna be potholes, and then all the money has been pumped into that mountain road?
Richard Fletcher 32:46
The don’t know the answers are so the there’s a perception certainly that the TT course will not upset from the TT course it has a priority. And it is always, as you say, perfectly maintained. And it has to be actually sculptured sometimes to accommodate the motorcycling. So the the course has probably got faster over the years, because it’s been improved. There’s a on the mountain road section, there’s a couple of places where the road is actually been that not banked. But is lends itself to is certainly not off camber for it that way. So that there is a lot of money spent on the TT course. But that’s justified by the fact that the TT races are revenue generating. So whether the, whether that means it whether that’s to the detriment of other roads is a moot point. Some people locally would say, definitely, whether it’s financial or just resource wise, in terms of the time spent. And generally speaking, I think our roads are fairly good. I tend to ride a gravel bike now anyway, so on You seek out rough road sometimes. So it’s not as I don’t think we certainly don’t think we’re the roads elsewhere. The roads outside of TT girls over here are certainly not any worse than UK roads now. And I’d say overall, slightly better than a lot of areas of the UK. So be it as much the time I think is nCn calm the isn’t more than the money you’ve got limited resources to do road maintenance. So if you’re spending quite a lot of that time on a TT course you’ve you’ve a limited timeframe.
Carlton Reid 34:40
By the same token, you probably got some pretty good experts who are probably using some pretty good scientific equipment to spot potholes forming and that might benefit.
Richard Fletcher 34:52
Maybe not seeing that but we’ve got the we’ve got reporting so you can report potholes and they do that for very quickly to them when you report them. When it’s inevitable, you’ll get where and turn around. Look at the weather today. It’s there’ll be, I’m sure when this week is out, there’ll be a lot more potholes than they were last week.
Carlton Reid 35:15
So, so far, we’ve talked about road cycling, and you’ve talked a little bit about gravel cycling there. What about mountain biking?
Richard Fletcher 35:22
Mountain biking is is a growing thing. It’s been under exploited. I think
Carlton Reid 35:26
in that get in the bank shop here. I’m just turning my head. It some of this road bikes over there. But there’s a tonne of mountain bikes. Yeah.
Richard Fletcher 35:33
I mean, the there are 26 plantations over here
Carlton Reid 35:37
are found they are what we would call Forestry Commission. Yeah, yeah, Department
Richard Fletcher 35:41
of the Department of Government that looks after them and uses them for growing trees, basically, and harvesting those trees. But within those plantations, a lot of them have had over the years. sanctioned and unsanctioned trails built, they tended to be built, historically, they’ve tended to be built. And then forgiveness, asked afterwards, rather than permission to go and build the trails. And the government, the barn has been quite friendly in that respect, in that they generally want to encourage access to those plantations. The we tried to formalise that in the last couple of years and recognise that we’ve probably got as many trails and the quality of those trails and the accessibility Australia is just as good as some of the sort of identified cycling parks in particularly in Wales, Scotland and Ireland more recently, but we’ve never really produced a a tourism product that, and we’ve never really joined them all up. So there’s been quite a big effort in the last two years to do that. And there’s a there’s a scheme, just kicking off at the moment government agreed funding in October last year, to produce effectively a, an Isle of Man trail Park. And that’s taking a cluster of seven plantations that are quite close to Douglas, and joining them together, they’re about they’re only about four road crossings to join them together, because they either abort each other or they’re, there’s a road crossing to get into the next one. So that’s a project that’s, that’s starting now. To join those up. And then I think it will be used as a as a tourism product, but also be of great benefit to local population. And then you’re involved in that. Yeah, the I’m involved in advising the government on it. The the rise of gravel cycling as well, because a lot of it. Within those plantations, you have forestry, roads, fire fire roads. And so we’re going out from this bike shop actually, on Saturday and on a gravel ride, and we’ll take in at least two of the plantations during that if the weather improves.
Carlton Reid 38:03
So the government is pumping money into into these plantation rides. It recognises all the big wigs recognise Mark Cavendish, or they use Mark Cavendish as something to talk to a general audience and there’s not wasn’t a noise of scientists at all. It’s an audience of, of just general travel writers who they were talking to. So is their awareness that cycling is important to the economy and potentially could become even more important in future. Yeah,
Richard Fletcher 38:35
it’s growing thing that the Isle of Man’s tourism product has changed over the years. If you go back to my childhood, it was a bucket and spade tourism, where the the mill towns of the Northwest would shut down for a week and the there was Scottish week, there was Irish week. And it was that type of holiday that fell away when the trips to Spain and things like that came about. So that was one section. Then it it moved on to basically in more niche tourism, such as around the heritage railways and things like that. And that became very popular. More recently, so last three, four years. All the studies and reports that have been done around the future tourism on the island says actually that generation is these strong say flatlining because that flood that is declining. The new demographic, a tourism want the outdoors and that’s what the Ironman has got in spades. So, the activities such as I think the government does now realise that activities particularly such as walking, cycling, golf as well, there are numerous golf courses over here. And then anything, the more sort of general, outdoor and active type of activities are they will be the future tourism on the island. So cycling and walking in particular are being focused on we’ve got some I’m not a hill Walker at all. But the the that is as an asset over here this does access all around us there’s an 82 mile coastal path, go the route route fall on them that is under use is it’s not known about really, but it’s there. And it doesn’t need a lot of work to make it a top rate tourism product, like some of the the Pennine routes that you have in the UK. And cycling wise. Yes, the there’s mountain biking has been absolutely recognised and the see the money has been allocated to do that. And I think that will become a product and I think gravel and sort of lead you into road as well. So I mean, the challenge that mean chance, I think is is for cycling is getting a bike go via
Carlton Reid 41:02
the ferry. I mean, some people might fly but the ferry it’s a brand new ship. Yeah,
Richard Fletcher 41:07
they use those pretty friendly with the bikes. I mean that there’s room yeah, there’s actual
Carlton Reid 41:12
room where you put your bike? Yes, and you hang them up. And it’s like what most varies, even in fact, I don’t know any ferries where there’s a room where you put your bike? Well, that’s come about
Richard Fletcher 41:20
because I say about three or four years ago, there was a recognition that the future lay in those niche, outdoor active elements, the various brand new so we did a gap analysis effectively. And what’s the difference between the Isle of Man and an established cycling destination to take the weather out of it because if you comparing, say Croatia to the Isle of Man or basically to the weather booked the other things, the more the more basic things are the same. It’s they’re having cycling friendly accommodation, which can be the most basic thing where you don’t get looked at as if you’re from a different planet when you turn up in lycra with a bike through to the proper cycling friendly hotels, which would have secure bike storage, maybe a little workshop, side tap to clean your bike, that type of thing. So looking at the combination in the Government Department concerned has now a registered recycling friendly hotels and gives them advice as to what they need to do. In terms of that. The very youth was another one where back in my day, the crew were really friendly, but you’d roll up down the ramp and it says sticky bike over there mate. And it’d be just put against the side of the deck where all the cars work. Now as you see the new ferry the Manxman has got a dedicated cycle storage park so it’s that type of messaging if you like people coming over that actually cycling is welcome here the big ticket items are things like putting together a proper trail Park product the route became in on blinded by rain in the last couple of miles went past what’s called a nunnery estate which is an older stately home and been in talks with the owners of that put a close road title circuit in it. And they’re quite keen on that funding won’t be an issue. But but that so there is recognition particularly around so I think that it’s it’s a it can become an an important tourism product.
Carlton Reid 43:31
And when people are laughing they because maybe not in February
Richard Fletcher 43:36
no I don’t think and there’s a big push to try and encourage visitors to the island in what they call the shoulder periods. But no if I was I’m blunt about these things when people ask about the Ironman and cycling cyclists more enjoyable in good weather. It’s as simple as that. So yeah, you would come in the not this year the high season but he come between April May June July August September. I wouldn’t I personally wouldn’t do a trip outside those months I’d be them a lot of people would say well there’s no such thing as bad weather just blanket but
Carlton Reid 44:14
we had some good kit on today and we still got cold I
Richard Fletcher 44:18
know yeah the the sort of you were you can tweak the sides a bit on now are around mountain biking because you what we tend to do with the locals anyway. On a day like this, if you were going to go out you go on a mountain bike in the plantations and you don’t hear the wind and basically So building that mountain bike trail Park product could actually extend the season because yes, you still gonna get money, but you don’t get score and worse because you there’s just no wind in plantations. That’s where I would probably do my gravel riding or mountain biking Not quite not quite as bad as this but you can extend it a little bit in that respect I think
Carlton Reid 45:05
so people listening to this they thought right definitely not in February but in the months that you’ve just recommended summer basically they want to come across they want to see this this fantastic very with its dedicated bike room they want to do the same roads that cab has done and other top local riders they want to do the plantations maybe on a mountain bike How did they find out about this and how do they find out about you? So what social media and what websites can they go look at will the
Richard Fletcher 45:41
there is a cycling website we’re trying to build up quite a lot now called https://www.cycling.im and that will become hopefully one of the main portals to visit Isle of Man website as well has quite a lot of information. But nowadays a loop it’s not totally reliable you can easily find on Strava or rider GPS routes on the island that aren’t somebody’s commuter route, but they are actually a decent ride. So it’s quite so much easier nowadays I think to find you yourself new routes or or you can you can hire a guide but it’s small enough Island to find your way around. What where it’s more difficult I think and that’s why we’re putting the work into is on the mountain bike side. I go out with mountain bike I’m because I’m mainly road cyclists. I’ll go to mountain bikers and I’ll go trails I never would have found if I hadn’t gone out with the group that did the old time. So the idea with trail Park is that it will just be on trail forks are one of the products like that it will actually be very well signposted. So that you can the the network we’ve designed is it’s about 64 kilometres of trails. And we agree right start the project actually although it might seem cosmetic, the most important thing is the signage. So people can without a guide or or necessarily GPS files that they can find their way around and find the know where the coffee shop or the toilet block or whatever on their ride. So that’s it’s probably going to take 18 months to complete it but the aim is we’ll have that a credible product for people wanting to do that for the start of the 25 season.
Carlton Reid 47:38
So famously Majorcar is a destination without cycling product and clearly part of the attraction of of New Yorker is nice weather yeah early season well yes or late season one and but also beautiful road but the certainly the nice weather is a is a is a pool, but here could become a cycling paradise could become either a cycling paradise in many ways already, but could become even bigger in the future, especially with like short haul stuff you having to be necessarily, you know, in the future, we’re gonna have to start basically holiday much closer to home. Yeah, I don’t like climate change and not flying everywhere. And taking a ferry is much more ego than flying to Majorca. So cyclists could come to the Isle of Man and not go to Majorca
Richard Fletcher 48:33
and I think to say the weather is important factor. But yeah, it is more the hassle of I mean, I’ve done it all my life cycles since I was 15. Taking your bike on a plane is a faff, it’s now because I’m old and grumpy when I go I do still do a lot of cycling outside of the UK. But it was hired by want to do that. Now if I go to France of France, alright, well, France is different. Unfortunately I’ve got a friend lives in France with a house and I leave a bike there. But I’m gonna go anywhere else Spain or Italy or further afield I was hired by because I don’t like the faff of going through airports and boxing it up and unboxing it and wondering whether we’ll get there. The ferry is a lovely way to do that you can just literally ride on the boat. So yeah, that that is the best way for cyclists to get the Isle of Man is to bring it to bring their bike on the ferry. That and yeah, I think it is a viable alternative is going it’s going overseas without going too far.
Carlton Reid 49:38
You’re going out of the UK,
Richard Fletcher 49:41
You are going out of the UK and the rod. There are a variety of road to get here is quite fun. That to me. The sweet spot for a visitor is about a three or four day trip. And then you can ride different roads every day and enjoy them in that way. Say they it’s been record week, we spoke to a few of the tour on cycling tour operators because one of the other things in sort of gap analysis that was done is it the Arman is not on in the portfolio of a lot of tour operators. Some like there’s a company that I’ve done some work with bikeadventures.co.uk, they, they’ve got the Isle of Man because I did a trip for them, basically, and, but a lot of the larger ones don’t have the Ironman as a destination. So we need to convince them that the Ironman should be a destination on their portfolio, and then put together the trips for them to do. So that’s another sort of initiative that needs to
Carlton Reid 50:42
get across here before those companies put it on and they become saturated. And it’s another Majorca. Yeah,
Richard Fletcher 50:48
it’s we’ve got we’ve got lots of space that we could handle.
Carlton Reid 50:53
Thanks to Richard Fletcher there and thanks to you for listening to Episode 347 of the spokesmen podcast brought to you in association with Tern bicycles. Show notes and more can be found at the-spokesmen.com. The next episode will be about the bike navigation app Komoot, but it soon veers off to a discussion of a round the world cycle trip. That show will be out at the beginning of March. Meanwhile, get out there and ride …
20th February 2024
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 346: Monica Garrison
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUEST: Monica Garrison of Black Girls Do Bike
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Carlton Reid, March 10, 2024
Read more… - Richard Fletcher, Mr Cycling on the Isle of Man
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Read more…
20th February 2024
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 346: Monica Garrison
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUEST: Monica Garrison of Black Girls Do Bike
TOPICS:
LINKS:
Play
https://www.ternbicycles.comhttps://www.blackgirlsdobike.orgTweets by carltonreidTRANSCRIPT
Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 346 of the spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Tuesday 20th of February 2024.
David Bernstein 0:29
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.
Carlton Reid 1:03
I’m Carlton Reid and today’s episode is a half hour chat with Monica Garrison of Black Girls Do Bike a Pennsylvania nonprofit now in its 11th year of group rides and more for black women and girls. And yeah, I should have checked out the weather map before I asked the first stupid question. Have you been riding today?
Monica Garrison 1:28
Oh, no! There’s snow everywhere. We had a big storm yesterday. Yeah, yesterday.
Carlton Reid 1:35
I should have checked your weather. Okay. So how much of the year can you not cycle in Pittsburgh?
Monica Garrison 1:43
Pretty much November to March is pretty snowy and rainy, and cold. So we have a nice big offseason here, though some folks ride through the winter. I’m not one of those people.
Carlton Reid 1:57
So you kind of come say March, April, you’re kind of really desperate to get out on your bike, that kind of thing.
Monica Garrison 2:05
Oh, yeah, the mid March The weather seems to shift and and cyclists return full force and and then we’re good. I mean, we get pretty hot in August and July, you know, it’s a bit unbearable and humid. So there’s some time there where it’s not so pleasant to be out on the bike, but pretty much yeah, the rest of the year we’re riding.
Carlton Reid 2:27
So I really should have checked the weather. Because that was such a stupid question, wasn’t it if you’re deep in snow, and of course. That’s okay. So the rest of the year. tell me about the rest of the year in Pittsburgh. What’s it like riding in Pittsburgh?
Monica Garrison 2:43
So Pittsburgh is notorious for its hills. It’s a very hilly city. So it’s not for the faint of heart. Literally. I think over the last 10 years, we’ve had a really good programme, Bike Pittsburgh is our local Bike Ped organisation. And they’ve done a really good job of creating infrastructure that connects. So there are large parts of the city that are interconnected for commuters and everyone else on bikes. So that’s nice. We have what we call the gap trail here, which is a Great Allegheny Passage. And it starts here in Pittsburgh, and you can ride it all the way to Washington, DC. So a lot of local cyclists put that on their list of things to do in the spring and summer, before it gets too hot. And our we have Port Authority, which is our local bus transportation here. And they made an effort a few years ago to outfit all of the buses with bike racks on the front. So no matter where you’re headed, you can take your bike with you
Carlton Reid 3:52
Now, we’re very jealous. When when we see Americans with, with buses with that on the front, we get very jealous, we’ve got very few services that will will do that. So I’ve seen photographs on your, on your website, where it’s like the media images where you can get these the photographs you’re allowed to use. And there’s you and your kids, and there’s a bike lane in Pittsburgh. So I can visualise extremely well, the bike lane that you were talking about there, but your kids. So not only are you getting women of colour, and you’re getting people just generally onto bikes. You’re we’ll talk about your chapters in a minute, but you’re getting your kids onto bikes. That’s something that you wanted to do. That’s something that just happened what so how have you managed to get your kids on bikes?
Monica Garrison 4:46
I mean, when I was a kid, I loved riding my bike, so I just assumed that they would too. And I you know happened to me correct. But what I did was honestly I started them riding really early like my son and daughter for probably pedaling bikes at the age of four. And so the earlier you get them in, The more consistent you are with them wearing helmets, then it just becomes a part of their life. And so you know, when, when Black Girls Do Bike started, it was a time where I was riding my bike a lot more than I had in the past. And so I just invited them to come along, and they they kind of got bitten by the bug. I will say my, my daughter, my son is probably the one who goes with me the most these days, we’ll load up the bikes and drive to like our downtown area and spend a couple hours riding around when the weather’s nice. And that’s really fun to do. So yeah, it’s just a no, no, it’s, it’s a fun thing to do as a family. Cycling is great for me as a solo sport. But I also like bringing folks along and you know, showing them how fun it can be.
Carlton Reid 5:55
So you have all these chapters across I mean, this one is the one that’s in London, is that still going?
Monica Garrison 6:01
it’s still going but we have, we have a leadership vacuum, there we are our leaders who started the group stepped down to do another project. So we’re actually looking for someone to kind of step in and, you know, rejuvenate the chapter.
Carlton Reid 6:17
Tell me about the chapters in in the US than them and how big did they get? Which are the biggest ones? What’s the chapter story?
Monica Garrison 6:25
Sure, we have 103 chapters here in the US. So as you can imagine, pretty much every major city here has a chapter every almost every state has has at least one chapter. The smallest chapters are, you know, a few 100 ladies and our largest chapters have anywhere from 1500 to 2000 members. I will honestly say that I we’ve never gotten 2000 out on a bike at once. But generally our rides are, you know, anywhere from five ladies to maybe 40 to 50 ladies.
Carlton Reid 7:04
Is it a kind of Facebook private group organised is that? Is that how you get in touch with everybody?
Monica Garrison 7:10
Yeah, I think Facebook’s been the easiest way. I mean, we’re 10 years into this journey. So Facebook was a lot more robust 10 years ago, but it’s still the best way to kind of organise people. And yeah, so each each chapter has its own Facebook, private Facebook group. And then so folks who are interested can go to BlackGirlsDoBike.org and then they can click on chapters, and then they can find the nearest chapter for them.
Carlton Reid 7:36
You’ve got very, very strong, bold graphics. Is that something that was there from the get go? Or is that something that evolved? Did you have members who are graphic artists? How have you managed to be really bold and distinctive?
Monica Garrison 7:53
That’s a good question. So it was always the intention from the beginning. Or I should say soon after, there’ll be an increase. So the plan really wasn’t to have chapters and have t shirts and jerseys and all this, these things all came organically as people began to ask for them. But, but once we started to design gear, I yeah, I think, you know, I was a business major. So I have a little bit of insight into, you know, what makes for good advertising. I’m also a photographer, so I’m visually built to, you know, built to appreciate things and design. I do most of the design myself, I usually just have an idea, and then I’ll collaborate with artists who can bring it to life. And I just, I There are a couple of reasons, I think, because as a Black woman, I know that, you know, our skin tone, generally looks really nice with bright colours, it’s kind of they complement each other. So I never shied away from bright colours and in, you know, variety in that respect, but also in terms of getting the message out, I think, you know, if someone’s wearing a shirt, and it’s visually appealing, and it catches the attention, then you’re more likely to spread your message and have people ask, what’s this about? You know, I’ve never seen this before. So I do think the the visual part of it is a huge part of our success.
Carlton Reid 9:20
And I kind of guessed why I kind of surmise that you’re a photographer because you’ve got your credit on some of the photographs. And there’s obviously a studio lights going on there. There’s some serious photography going on behind the scenes there. That’s like some pretty impressive stuff.
Monica Garrison 9:36
Thank you. Yeah, I think that’s been one of my favourite parts of this process is I’ve been able to flex my photography and video videography muscles a little bit. And, you know, in terms of like posting on our social media, that’s that’s it’s a nice way for me to be creative and not get too caught up in the day to day things.
Carlton Reid 10:01
So before that 2013 You’ve been going now this is your 11th 11th. Yeah, yeah. So So back, it was 2016 There was an article in bicycling it was by Elly Blue. Elly was the person who had the idea for bikenomics. So that’s me and Elly have spoken a lot over the years. So I know who Elly is. But there’s, there’s a quote in there, which I’d like to quote back to you. I mean, it is 2016. I’m not expecting you to remember this. But I just want you to riff on this really. And that is, so this is a quote and this is from you “know that my journey to riding may be completely different than yours. Know that my experience while riding, and even how I am perceived, while riding will be different to yours.” So Monica, clearly I cannot even start to imagine what it must be like for you as a Black woman on a bicycle because it bicyclists famously kind of like we’re out there sometimes when we’re not the most favourite people have lots and lots of what can I outcasts in many respects, even now. So you kind of take that, and then you take the fact that you’re a woman. And then you add on you’re Black. So you’re, you’re really stacking it against yourself here. So so kind of riff on what you said there about how the perception, your perception of you when you’re riding is going to be so so?
Monica Garrison 11:44
Yeah. Yeah, thanks for kind of breaking that down. It’s, so I do remember the quote, now that you read it, it’s, it comes back to me, I still believe it to be true. So you have a couple of things. So most women who are women of colour even plus size women, which is a category I fit into, we’re not expected to be cyclist, right. No one expects us to pull up on a bike. So you the first thing you overcome is the expectation of from the outside world, like, where did you come from? And what are you doing on the bicycle? And we could also have those internalised things just from our community. When folks say, Well, you know, why, why do you own a bike? Or how’d you get how’d you get into that? So there’s expectation. And you mentioned drivers on the road. That’s a big thing. For me, I prefer not to ride on the road, I try to ride on the trails as much as possible. But that’s just it’s a comfort level thing. And I think it varies from city to city and because all cities aren’t the same, but you know, as a woman cyclist you have, you might have men catcalling you, drawing attention to you physically when you’re on the bike from from a car, as a cyclist of colour. I know some cyclist, I can’t speak for all but some cyclists of colour feel less safe on their bikes. Because you know, the person behind the will, could have ill intentions for you. And, you know, an automobile always wins that contest, right? So if someone does want to do your do you harm or at least intimidate you, you know, you could be in a vulnerable, a more vulnerable position if someone doesn’t appreciate you being on the road as a cyclist, but then also has a problem with the colour of your skin. So I feel like I feel like most cyclists of colour feel that pressure as well.
Carlton Reid 13:46
Sorry, sorry. If you’re in a car and you experience racism, you’re in a car, you’ve got locked windows, you can you can kind of hide. But if you’re on a bicycle, you can’t hide, your skin is out there, you’re really like making sure that people know you’re there and that must be very vulnerable.
Monica Garrison 14:06
It does feel very vulnerable. It’s almost like you feel like a sitting duck, right? So if you put yourself in that position, I imagine you want to feel like you are equipped maybe to escape right? So physically, you may want to make sure that you have the strength, the stamina to get out of a tough situation. But yeah, when it comes down to it, as I said, the automobile is always going to win. So if someone does want to do you harm, not a whole lot you can do and that’s the scary part, as a cyclist and a cyclist of colour.
Carlton Reid 14:46
And then nothing all that I’m going to assume here that that’s one of the reasons why you would want to ride in a bunch of women, Black women together because you are not going to you want to get like there’s a group of you? You’re no longer alone?
Monica Garrison 15:03
Yeah, sure, safety in numbers. If you’re on the road, and they’re, you know, 10, 15 of you, then you’re drawing attention in the way of all the cars are going to see me. Right. So safety, but also there’s strength in numbers. So if something does happen, then you have folks there who are witnesses to report it. Hopefully, the the fact that there are multiple women, or people will deter someone from doing something, you know, negative. But yeah, certainly that I mean, there are many reasons why riding together is great and there are positives, but I think that’s definitely one of them.
Carlton Reid 15:40
At this point, we’ll cut from Monica to a short ad break. Take it away, David.
David Bernstein 15:46
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Carlton Reid 16:46
Thanks, David. And we are back with Monica Garrison of Black Girls Do Bike. So tell me about your Sheroes. Who are they?
Monica Garrison 16:56
Yes, Sheroes are women across the country who have volunteered their time to organise at least one monthly ride. They moderate the Facebook pages that we talked about earlier. And they keep you know, they keep it exciting. They also are plugged in, I’m plugged into the sheroes. So they let me know what folks are asking for or what things we need as an organisation or even get their opinions on, you know, designs, for instance, for cycling gear. But they’re just really enthusiastic women who who our boots on the ground, they’re doing the work that keeps the organisation moving forward. And they are really amazing. They’re like super fans of Black Girls Do Bike for the most part. And I’m very grateful to have them working on our side.
Carlton Reid 17:48
Now, how’s the industry been with you? Because famously, the industry is pretty white, is generally male. It’s kind of tech bro, but for bikes. So how has the industry? How does the industry perceive you? How is the industry maybe funded? You supported you? How have you done with the industry?
Monica Garrison 18:13
Sure. The I think in general, the statement would be that the industry has been very supportive. I was my first like introduction to the cycling community was the National Bike Conference in Washington DC many years ago. And I was really well received there. And then over the years, we’ve managed to have partnerships with probably Trek Bike was our first like manufacturer that would that partner with us for a couple of years. And they you know, they help support our national meet up one year and we all went to trek headquarters and participate in the Trek 100 we’ve been partners with REI, who’s a big outdoor supplier store here in the US. I don’t know if they’re overseas, but they’ve been a really nice strategic partner, not in terms of monetary support, absolutely. But also, you know, behind the scenes, finding out where our pain points are as an organisation and also connecting us with other orgs who are operating in the outdoors for minority groups. And, you know, for other activities like hiking and running and things like that. And then just along the way we we’ve had a number of other just companies who have stepped up from year to year to support us in different ways. But so yeah, overall, I think it’s been amazing. I’ve been in rooms that I never imagined I would be, you know, answering questions and helping with things like plus sizing for women in merchandise. You know, even even with designing bikes, I’ve given input with that. Notoriously women have Black women have issues getting cycling helmets that fit over their natural hairstyles. And I’ve been involved in, you know, some folks who want to change that. So I think overall, it’s been great. I’ve done lots of interviews through the years. And I think our message has, at least within the cycling community, I think our message has gotten out there. I think a lot of people are aware that we exist and know that we need support.
Carlton Reid 20:28
So imagine, you know, go back to 2013, when when this first kicked off, and now, have you seen any systemic changes? So you see, have you seen anything like, oh, wow, that’s so different to 10 years ago? Or is it this is going to be an uphill struggle? How do you how do you think it’s gone up? There’s 10 years? And how much of a difference maybe have you made?
Monica Garrison 20:52
Yeah, I think we’ve made really good strides. I think, when you when you show up to a bike event, now versus 10 years ago, there are a lot more women and people of colour at those events. I think I think obviously, we have a long way to go. But I definitely want to acknowledge the progress that we’ve made. And I hope that Black Girls Do Bike has been central and you know, letting people know of the concerns and issues that face our community, uniquely. But beyond that, I think, the most important thing, if you know, if we’re here, 10 years from now, still doing this work, is kind of the pain point has always been having people of colour in the decision decision making chairs, right, working at companies working in the industry, whether it be racing, whether it be you know, even other types of cycling, BMX, all of all the genres of cycling, I think we don’t have enough people of colour, who are working in those jobs, who can affect change from the inside. And as always, we’d love to see more bike shops that are owned by people of colour, which is a rare thing here in the US.
Carlton Reid 22:09
Monica, it’s gonna be a tough one to answer but but why is that? What Why? Why do you have to do what you do? Why Why isn’t it just normal for a black person to get out of bicycle? What’s what’s, what stopped black people from doing this?
Monica Garrison 22:27
That’s a good one, I think, well, I’ll speak for myself, but then I’ll go a little bit more broadly into it. So when I was a young person, I didn’t, there were no women in my family who rode bikes, I’ve never seen other than in my adult life, as a young person never saw my mom, you know, just casually get on a bike and ride it. So there’s that there is just not a norm in our community. Beyond that, I think you won’t really ride regularly, unless you have a bike that you enjoy riding that’s comfortable. And to get to that point, you have to spend some money, right to get a bicycle that is, you know, essentially fit to your body and, and is comfortable to ride. And so it could be just a matter of making the investment, there are a lot of sports that black people aren’t in because the barrier to entry be economic. And so here in the US, that’s, you know, the, there are a lot of black people below the poverty poverty line, who will never be able to enter some of these sports. And, and I think some people are just intimidated to walk into a room where they’re the only person that looks like them. Not everyone but but I think that is that can be a characteristic of people of colour, Black people. So you know, if you you may not want to show up to a ride, when you aren’t going to know anybody you anticipate it’s going to be all white guys who you may or may not have anything in common with, you don’t know how competitive the rides gonna be. So there are a lot of unknowns. And I think that alone is enough to keep you from trying something new. So that’s kind of where we come in, right? We we are pushing cycling as an activity that everyone can enjoy. But we’re also giving you a safe space, for lack of a better word, to to enter into it and to try it and see if you like it. You may try it and not like it never come back. But for some people, they show up they ride and they find that it’s you know, enjoyable and they and they continue to come and they discover something new. So we try to get that image intimidation factor out of the equation.
Carlton Reid 24:47
trying I’m trying to think if I have know the answer here, but in the Netherlands, where it’s a societal norm to ride a bike, Black people ride bikes. Asian people ride bikes, you know, Muslim women in their hijab ride bikes. It’s because it’s a cultural norm to ride a bike, because you were saying there before about, you know, you didn’t see your mom ride a bike. Well, in the Netherlands, all people will see their mom, their Auntie’s, their grandmother, the bank managers, everyone on bicycles. So there’s no real huge split in, in like a colour thing at all. It’s just it’s a cultural thing. And so, on the one hand, I’m asking you a question about being Black on a bicycle. But that question could be just as easily have asked of white people, generally, white people generally in the cultures, you know, in Britain, and in America and not in the Netherlands, but where we were out, it’s not a cultural norm to be on a bicycle. So that’s why people are on bicycles. And there is the colour aspect to it, of course, but it’s just generally, people aren’t on bikes. At the end of the day, and we are Monica, we are kind of weird.
Monica Garrison 26:03
No, you’re right, you’re right. It’s, it’s not a cultural norm to ride a bicycle in the United States, maybe with the exception of a few cities. I think, and I’ve heard this argument made, and I, for now, I agree with it until I hear a better one, which is, and I don’t know if this is true in the UK, as well. But here the infrastructure here is built around cars, right? So it’s car centric. So there is really a safety concern with being on a bicycle and on a lot of major roads in the US. And secondly, we value as a culture, individualism and we lead tie status to our car. So it’s the bicycle is secondary. The funny part is there was a time when bicycles were the main form of transportation here, right, and, and roadways were actually built a many of our fundamental roadways were built so that cyclists could get around and then at some point that that shifted, but I honestly don’t think we’ll ever move away from that maybe in 100 years, when, you know, cars are self driving, and it’s a lot more safe. And, you know, folks, their, their definition of success has changed. But for now, with a car centric society, I think cycling will always be a second class citizen,
Carlton Reid 27:29
just to end really, and that there’s a quote, another quote, I’m going to pick up from the Elly Blue article again, this is this is Monica by you. And I’d like you to riff on this a bit if you if you can. So, you said the cycling spectrum is a beautiful one. So what do you mean by the cycling spectrum?
Monica Garrison 27:46
I mean, the spectrum of personalities, and literally the types of people who ride bikes, I find as a as a general bunch, cyclists are extremely kind, gentle people. And, you know, anyone who appreciates the, you know, the value of getting on a bike and in finding that relaxing, I’m willing to be a friend to that person. But yeah, and even just a cycling in general, there are many types of cycling. So you can kind of there’s a phrase here you get in where you fit in. So once you decide that you like riding a bike, there’s so many things open to you in terms of the kind of cycling that you do, whether it’s long distance like cross country rides or cyclocross, gravel, BMX. You know, there’s so many things that you can get into.
Carlton Reid 28:40
Monica, it’s been an absolute pleasure to talk to you. Can you please tell people where they can? I’m definitely going to plug the fact that you’re looking for London people, but just where can people get more information? About Black Girls Do Bike, I’m kind of giving it away back is going to be a bit anyway, just give us the URL?
Monica Garrison 29:02
Sure. Blackgirlsdobike.org is the best way to find us. And from there you can link to as it’s pretty easy to navigate so you can link to our shops, check out our gear, you can link to our chapter page and see all the cities that we’re in.
Carlton Reid 29:18
Thanks for listening to Episode 346 of the spokesmen podcast brought to you in association with Tern Bicycles. Shownotes and more can be found at the-spokesmen.com The next episode will be a fireside chat on the Isle of Man with Richard Fletcher. That’s out at the weekend. But meanwhile, get out there and ride …
14th September 2023
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 339: Balance bikes, Bikeability and the Saint Piran team at the Tour of Britain
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUEST: Ricci Pascoe
TOPICS: From mail order innovator to net zero hero: farmer’s son Ricci Pascoe founded Bike Chain of Cornwall in 1985 and created the UCI Continental team Saint Piran in 2016. It’s been quite the journey.
- Laura Laker
Carlton Reid, April 21, 2024
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Read more… - Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett of Komoot
Carlton Reid, March 10, 2024
Read more… - Richard Fletcher, Mr Cycling on the Isle of Man
Carlton Reid, February 24, 2024
Read more… - Monica Garrison of Black Girls Do Bike
Carlton Reid, February 20, 2024
Read more… - Balance bikes, Bikeability and the Saint Piran team at the Tour of Britain
Carlton Reid, January 28, 2024
Read more… - 24 hour racing with Josh Reid on Scotland’s Strathpuffer
Carlton Reid, January 27, 2024
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First Ever Computer Modelling of How Cyclists (And Motorists) Hit Potholes
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TRANSCRIPT
Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 339 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show is engineered on Thursday 14th of September 2023.
David Bernstein 0:28
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern Bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.
Carlton Reid 1:04
On today’s show, I talk with bike industry veteran Ricci Pascoe. We talked about the St Piran racing team he founded and which had such an amazing Tour of Britain last week with a young rider I’ve known since he was a very young rider, finishing high on general classification, just a few places behind famous World Tour professionals. We also talked about mental health, aiming for net zero and getting more people on bikes. I recorded Ricci remotely; he was talking from his bike shop’s cafe
Ricci Pascoe 1:44
Over the years, a bit of a fan. I liked what you produced like this mega I’ve been involved in the industry for 35 years I mean you’ll you’ll remember me probably is Ricci limited mail order maybe back in the day you know that type of thing.
Carlton Reid 2:00
I was actually going to start there because yes, I absolutely remember that because you were doing mail order long before you know in ads in the comic and Cycling weekly and long before there was internet ordering.
Ricci Pascoe 2:16
Oh, mate there was there was five of us that probably carved up the UK market Jack Parker, Ribblethey started Who else was there Oh Mel Bentley you know that type of thing.
Carlton Reid 2:27
So why so that was that was via that was via Ricci limited or was that via Bike Chain was that
Ricci Pascoe 2:32
Ricci Limited was always the mailorder side and then obviously we morphed or people couldn’t remember. Bike Chain was kind of the local name that are you horrible is just people could use yeah maybe understand bytecode well, but in fact up to the will not come a franchise in the UK I don’t know here writing Do you remember called Townsend limited? Oh yeah. Yeah, what was all its concept that there was a director there Steve Walsh been riding the CPU years we’ve been set up I remember it very well actually was in the 80s So I said look, if you’re going to multistore site in the 80s got it by chain if you do the data for the year in terms of the layout one thing that other members were doing several million turnover back then. And you could have bought 12 properties in the UK for example, Hardisty’s or you could go to 12 places bought the 6 million pound you could have had your turnover back within well within the year you could have your turnover back and then if you were the importer you read the 30% the retailer was making under 30% Within two years you’d about an asset they based on file stock to franchise so the reason why the two byte games we morphed the name for Ricci limited into bunkie who’s been a little bit innovative I suppose cropped it away and when the internet came along I yeah I didn’t really get I had no interesting notes I didn’t really impressed that we had quite a bit of volume and you know what what you got up Marwat you know what wiggle did or chain reaction or these they you know, they develop the computer programme to sell product or industry is very collaborative.
Carlton Reid 4:18
So you had the bike shop first before the mail order.
Ricci Pascoe 4:21
The mail order first, believe it or not, is from my parents, my parents farm so, you know, I was a racing cyclist, you know, an average elite racing so I raced there I went to live in France and never really saw the front of the bike race. So I’ve travelled and a lot of gutters and you know became because you know, we were we were actually making cycled clothing in in Red Rooster, any i 25 Girls do what the cool CMT were cut making trim. So we had our own clothing. And I was exporting that to France and then importing look pedals and then we became the importer plateau and back to clean and chizine And, you know, so we did a lot of that. And we moved from a parent’s farm down to the retail store, which is still there in red roof. Go back, Jane Reki, or we call it more service course now it’s more forgiving thinker and Service Course, as an identity. Yeah, and that’s the history of it, right? It’s just,
Carlton Reid 5:21
and then you also took a second unit in Bissoe.
Ricci Pascoe 5:25
Yeah, so sort of four or five kilometres away, we’ve got, again, I’ve either been inspirational or mad, I bought a place on an honour on a mineral tramway between the coast to coast, and I paid a lot of money for our border and my art rather than my head. It’s sort of 12 acre site. And, yeah, it was sort of cafe and higher. And just recently, in the last two or three years, we’ve really expanded the site, you know, we put a proper kitchen on with commercial pitch in with on Dean, he’s an ex macro finalist, and J and another shaft with a great food offering and hospitality, and it’s the headquarters. So we now call it some parent cafe. So again, you know, it’s another venue to visit, and, you know, exemplifies the values that you now see with the, with the team,
Carlton Reid 6:21
so the team was founded 2016, is that right?
Ricci Pascoe 6:24
Right. 2016. So, my passion has always been cycling, you know, a bit like yourself, and you know, how you know, how to get people, you know, similarly with cycling or out on bikes, and so on, and so forth. And, you know, mistakes over 30 years, in terms of how not to run things, or not outdo things. So, you know, the thing that’s really the embodiment of, you know, if I had enough money, I was mad enough to hopefully do something that’s really, really good, but not a broken model, you know, I wasn’t making sustainable, so no advertising. You know, we’re just giving young people opportunity of activities and deliver a press release. We just didn’t break bikes, right there and got them travelling away, and during the race in and you’re learning the craft, so that was the pattern around it. But it’s morphed into something, you know, a lot more fun, you know, a lot more students. So it was all about giving opportunity, young people, the anatomist at the beginning, and trying to get people on board with that message is, is kind of tough, or was tough. You know, and it’s taken seven years to get the point where now I will say people were an always on Corporation, we’ve been seen by 180 million people in two years. And, uh, now there’s been a sea of change for me in a much what I’d like to do is, is use it, you know, for good, and I’m poacher turned gamekeeper. I’m 58. And I’ve got a three year old. And I guess before, before Lowen was born, I probably didn’t really think about the planet or our future. And the minute he was born, I’m like, Oh, my God, what are we doing? You know, we, you know, this is worried I want to future from Assam. You know, I want to make this nice entity, an example of best practice, you know, wisdom, let’s, let’s amplify the voice let’s, let’s use it for something really good, you know, stick to our true family value. And so, you know, very, really now is about, you know, that opportunity is about telling people about great that we do and making people aware of, you know, our sustainability campaigns, making people aware of, you know, how we’ve on boarded a mental health partner in a deal, they get 24/7 All my staff writers get X 24 hour there. Haven’t had a breakdown personally 16 years ago when every thought had a successful life. But you know, I didn’t build on success. I felt that I failed at things through throughout my life, that people say, Oh, you got a successful business, but you know, I didn’t feel like I’m taking one at that or I didn’t feel well at relationships. I didn’t do well. I’ve done very well at sport. So whilst I felt my life was paralysed by failure, you know, it all came to a head with a with a a breakdown and I got some really great family care and psychiatric care went through a nine month period of really great care and caregiver side and it was, you know, it was with that desire to do something, you know, baby then cycling. Again, a bit like yourself, you. You said, look, the industry is great, but we’ve got to sort of help you know, what is the point of cycling, you know, what is good about cycling out and we’ll enjoy your benefit. diplomat. So we’re not trying to put our viewpoint across in a in a in a political way. We’re just saying that about people in many ways unlock themselves, you know, whether it be helpful ladder or Plaza, you know, of course, is the inspiration around the sport, you know, and if we’ve got an ability to talk about excellence, and our care programme and whatever progress before, let’s do it, but you know, we are we are from a grassroot. Now, do you know, many people in the world that’s, you know, elite programme, trying to showcase what can be done in and around a bicycle. So that’s kind of the background to
Carlton Reid 10:42
you contacted me before the Tour of Britain. And you asked if I’m following a turbine, and this year, I wasn’t because I didn’t actually come close enough to Newcastle. Normally, when it’s north north, I will go and follow it. But this year, it wasn’t. But then you had, obviously a stellar Tour of Britain, with Zeb who’s from from Newcastle, and is a my best my son’s best friend. In fact, Zen Oh, that’s how I was probably zaps. First, what are these first coaches? Because my son, when he was very young, and Zeb was very, very young, they would come to the go ride the British Cycling go ride club, I helped found a new castle. So that’s how I know that that’s when I said I’ll say hi to said that, that time knows that. But then obviously, you had a fantastic Tour of Britain, you then therefore also had a fantastic tour and just just tell us, tell us from your point of view, what the Tour of Britain was like for you? Because it was it was almost I mean, you had it. I know you had a good tour Britain last year, as well. But I think this is probably surpass that. So so just tell us how you found this year to a Britain?
Ricci Pascoe 11:54
It’s a great question. But if I’m out even one step further back, like, you know, I always talked about now, you know, what does success look like? What, you know, what is success for you? What is it? And anyway, we’ll come on to the magnificent achievements of the the team and the riders and everything in a minute. But success for me now is have we created a happy environment? Is there a smile on people’s faces? If and when anybody or the leisure organisations, whether they continue in the sport, or even if they say, look a family level through finer levels? Right, how we will find our level, you know, when we find our level, you know, is the person happy? Can we retain them in the sport? You know, can we, you know, if we’re on an upward trajectory, and we say, Look, you know, okay, the levels gone up, but would you like to be still part of the parent, and we’ve got development teams pulled out by those three, or we’ve got a frequent cycling club, to deliver the sport, as a potential living or pro rider, we want to retain you through deliberate, free to join on the website, the service course, some parents parents post, and join for free. For me, success is about happiness. It’s about the process that we do, and do it in the right way. And never forget where you come from, it becomes increasingly harder, because with the same measure of success, and we are inundated with with people don’t how did you do it? How can you do this? What you’ve done on your children 53 in 1000 budget when you know, any song 50 million? Yeah, how can you riders, you know, in the top six in a grant, I mean, I had to look back in the in the records cloud to find out, you know, has it been done before on a when Bill did it in 2011? We got a third of the been a couple other writers have been but in recent times, No, it hasn’t been done. It’s, it’s almost impossible to do. So then you got to say, What have you done it? And, and interviews and we’ll look at any of these interviews, the interviews that he gave, you know, they would make the cry foul, because he actually doesn’t talk about himself the first day. He says, you know, I’m in a family I’ve been given the freedom to do you know, I’m listening to value, and I just seem to get into so much more out of myself. And, you know, you Ryan, everybody making that effort to put that little individual component into it. So you make the one there, you know, without that, go right back then. So you gotta remember that always go backwards without that go right section. So you have a component within that attacks. And so what I was talking about is, let’s hear the stories from everybody’s just comparing is not up As a returning officer, Tim Martin, you know, but let’s say, I’m using Express at the moment together, we are strong. And I firmly believe that you know, whether it be teams, race organisers governing body, the media, we all have a role to play in cycling these days, you know, and if we can amplify that, and then take it into community or environment, or, or education or transport or whatever, then then we’re all winning, we are definitely all winning. So it’s very good of you to say, what does that success feel like? Perhaps add all the caveats that we’ve just talked about? Because the success is really? Look, we don’t own the sport. You know, we’re just sold internet. And if you remember, your custodian of something called it does change the viewpoint. And I know, with your, your writings and your rap that it doesn’t seem like, you know, what’s the path across intermittently over the years? It’s the reach out now. And for a lot of genuine people is heartfelt. And so that to set the test, you use the word is stellar. What we have to let go, Okay, here we are now, how do you start to get into stellar? I mean, you know, ultimately, I think the French have a really strange expression and magic that I mean, like, you know, would you prefer to be, you know, a Northern Star that burns bright forevermore? Or would you prefer to be a shooting star, which everybody stays personal, we want to be the former rather than the latter. So success looks like giving everybody their moment, in particular event horizon. So, you know, and that’s certainly the event horizon. And the, the monumental change for me is that young man now believes himself. And we, as a family just learned, given that belief. So what we’ve done first and foremost is say, let’s give you the right race broker, and let’s give you the ingredients, let’s, let’s put a relaxed situation, it lets you know, Coach, you know, Coach, or look at your coach and bring on best practice, you know, let’s do the best with the resource that we’ve got, you know, let’s not over promise and under deliver. So, you know, if we stay, we can do something, do it. And I think people like the fact that you’ve got honesty and integrity in what you can do. So if we’re going to erase overseas, you know, we got to come back from Belgium at 10 o’clock in an evening. You know, everyone says, Can you fly us back like other other things? No, no, you got to jump in the car. And I’m sorry, it’s a six hour trip back. Yeah, that’s the level that you know, we never promised. I mean, we can’t deliver because
Carlton Reid 17:52
that that is today isn’t your team is basically racing in Belgium, as we speak.
Ricci Pascoe 17:57
Oh, we’re riding. You’re lucky to drag me away actually. Hope? Yeah, we’re the GP, the dual arm or is, you know, again, yeah, we’re getting invites these races because I think people are saying, well, how are you doing this? You know, how are you doing it? You know, we’re touring Norway. Yeah. Wonderful. You know, we turn off we’re going to silver Swanee van, we got a white car, a black car, you know, the white back. So we look like the poor cargo performances are far from it. You know, so,
Carlton Reid 18:29
I mean, let’s go back to your your business hat as well, not just your your your team ownership and creation hat. Yes. does it benefit your business? Having a team it does actually wash its face? Does it does it? does it benefit you commercially
Ricci Pascoe 18:45
that the team does. But of course, it doesn’t benefit the business. If you’re spending 60 hours a week on on something else, you know, it’s very hard to, you know, generate independently overcoming life is if I spent the same energy in my business, I would be wealthy. But by doing a team that’s got something different, my life is very rich. My life is rich, because you can eat steak once a night, why two states, three states for steaks. So by actually giving opportunity by actually doing something that you know, you know, if you do something the right way, and like legacy is a really important thing as well. So, and it’s not like a seek because Oh, yeah, I’ve got lots of money. I want to feel better about leaving something because, you know, so initially, the business is not the most of it. But what we’ve done, we were doing something really unusual in and around some parent as well. So we’re going online presence as a the service course. So anybody who’s involved with the team, you know that they get a commercial return on the backend for a website for selling products or services. So that’s, you know, so we’re looking at For our own ecosystem, but then we’re also trying to help other teams or organisations as well through through what we do. You know, so, for example, with a very healthy relationship, so for example, with by race or work, we’re doing clothing for other organisations. So we’re feeding back the ecosystem or the economics of the people involved with that. Traditionally, you know, appropriation was either funded, because either somebody wanted to put some money in sold some advertising space, or the lesser level, it was oh, especially if if shops were involved, it was oh, if you buy more product, we’ll give you some free, therefore, you can run the team with that. But that’s the sales discount, right? So that that’s not particularly very healthy. If it’s done that way, but what we try and do is say, we’ll have a commercial relationship, we’ll try and get the ingredients together will try and bake a cake. And if you’ve built into taking care from it, then it’s growing in business terms. So every, every partner we got, we are growing their business in the UK, and because we’re now successful on the road, we’ve got eyes on, it’s great, we’ve got the content, and we can, you know, and we’ll we’ll work with products that we think, work for us. So, you know, we’re not taking secondary or tertiary bike manufacturers, and riding them, you know, a team at our level could get a fantastic deal with a, with a really great perhaps value for money brand, that isn’t really highly rated in terms of performance, but we won’t do that we will, you know, we will work with people that try and give us the best tools, therefore, we’re very happy in in recommending those tools. But it’s not conditioned on us purchasing or selling or whatever. So I know it’s a mixed answer. So initially, the business has not benefited. But of course, now, some parents become such a big thing we know, we’ve changed the name of the cafe to some parent cafe, you know, methodical bike chain, Rocky, but it’s, it’s more in, it’s moving more and more towards simpler and service course. Because, you know, one has got a regional footprint, and yet some parent is now going to national or international footprint. So the shift has gone from not paying, there’s a business model to becoming very successful as a business model. So hopefully, I’m answering your question. You know,
Carlton Reid 22:33
when you first started, you almost think but that’s detrimental to your business, because you’re taking so much time away from Correct, yeah, you know, brought up since 1980s. And you’re, you’re putting so much time and effort into this pot. But I guess you could also say grows cycling in general, in your part of the world. And that even though you might not be able to get an exact, you know, grip on whether that’s physically that money in the tail is coming from your team. But just if you’ve got more people cycling in general, that has got to raise, you know, all ships, isn’t it?
Ricci Pascoe 23:08
Well, you know, that’s a really great point. And sometimes you have really great relationship with the UK bike industry, it’s really strange, isn’t it where, you know, you may be an independent dealer, and this is Five in in the county. And if one dealer builds up a really strong cycling club, there’s a little bit of like, oh, that’s their cycling club. But actually, if more people are cycling friends or family cycle, you know, ultimately, you know, cycling game, you know, it’s not a brand fun bike. Such, you know, you’re right, I think the more people that the cycle that enjoy it, you know, I mean, what we need next is a, we need a political shift in this country. And that will only come about when you’ve got to back up 3 million people, you know, subscribe into one cycle entity, whether we can get British Cycling, cycling UK is just brand, you know, your site website, that’s it a bit different, different branches or sectors within it. But once you’ve got a million names, you’ve got political and economic power, you know, the organization’s become the National Trust doesn’t struggle getting some of its time campaigns or membership for grant applications truth, it’s got nearly 2 million members. It’s funny that, you know, so, you know, if anything, again, you know, we’re all in this together. It’s about I mean, I’d like to see a cohort of 20, 50 journalists together, you know, and saying, What is our tone of voice? What is our method? You know, we don’t see that, you know, whereas that, you know, something that we’re trying to maybe instigate another way and say, look, hey, guys, you know, I’m not expressing that we’re not capitalist. instal your own brand. If you’re moaning at your own industry, what we should be doing is don’t hang on a minute. We’re diverse challenges, but what a great, great thing we’ve got, you know, it’s a tool to start to people about, you know, you know, exercise and implementation. I know, I’m not saying, I’m an advocate, then everybody’s got a cycle. You know, no, it’s there if you want it, you know, the barriers to entry should be free, whether it’s in sport, hence us setting up our own site with comfort free delivery. Or we can cure our transport problems problem in this country very simply, with a tin of red paint.
Carlton Reid 25:26
Cycling’s famously, obviously, sustainable. Cycle racing, famously isn’t, you know, you think of the Tour de France, you think the Tour de France caravan, you know, and how many, you know, most of vehicles are actually going along the road, following the or in front of and following, you know, the men and the women on their on their bikes, racing. So what you’re trying to do with cars, you’re you’re if you go on to the same person, website, you’ve got a very in depth sustainability section. You know, it’s not just one section, there’s like, a six interlinked section. So you’re really going strong on the sustainability angle, and you said it was because of your son Lowen. Who’s now three. So So tell us about that sustainability angle. And you said why you said Lowen was the the impetus for that. But what exactly you’re doing because you launched it last year? Yeah. That like the kind of the the attempt to go Net Zero? Yeah.
Ricci Pascoe 26:27
Yeah. So listen, this is I’m very sort of strong on all of this. There’s there’s several components. And whilst I have was have limited knowledge, I’m trying to pull together more knowledge to give an example of best practice, I think we should be talking about Net Zero. How we see that these, we’ve got to do the first step. And with the last first step, I think, mostly talking about the circular economy. I think that’s the brought into as well. I think we should also be saying, yes, whilst the Tour de France, for example, with his vehicles, he’s driving his vehicles out, can it be? Not, there was the thought what you can do is say, Look, we can use an event to showcase what we’re talking about. And by the way, we’ll take the step on vehicles, let’s move from, you know, from diesel, to hybrid to to whatever, and that needs a step change in terms of infrastructure, as you well know. So it’s all about, you know, infrastructure, think vehicles sometimes can be used as a as a clickbait point, because, you know, the circular economy would say, well, actually, shall we repair a 20 year old Landrover defender, for example, it’s already been made, you know, there’s no more cost to the to the ecosystem, and less people on the road is a very strong argument that producing you know, a brand new electric lithium factoring car, then I think we included a little bit of digging yourself for all of us can learn a little bit about part of the the the inputs required, or the cost to us as a society, the sustainability kind of offers, I think those are sort of questions, that raises a few challenges. And our main points that moment for us. In all of this pesky cafe, life’s getting busy. You know, the main point in this is that we must ask the questions goal, whether we like the answers or not. So the first process was, for us a small steps in terms of look, we will look at every aspect of our organisation. So with the extra University, what a carbon footprint looks like recycling, you know, and it was quite horrifying, really about where our responsibilities lie. But, you know, we wanted to put our ourselves in the firing line. So you know, what are we doing? What are the mistakes we make? What belief does? So the first thing was research. So our first phase is research. And course we’re doing positive changes to McAfee even reusable cups and, you know, the black pill or rubbish or recycling and, you know, we’re trying to do lots of things, that educational programmes with our writers and our staff, around usage of the team and everything from collecting rubbish at races and bringing it home, and so on and so forth. So the first thing is we’re looking at, we’re looking hard at what we do, and bring it into initiative to the point and again, we paid for it took round a sustainability officer Orion for Brian Tracy followed us on a team. We’ve paid 2000 pounds for that budget. I’ve been ill afford for to look at every practice that we’re doing whilst on tour. Now,
Carlton Reid 29:44
when you haven’t gotten the report yet, that comes a while. Yeah,
Ricci Pascoe 29:49
but we don’t want it really didn’t we can’t, we don’t want it. You’re the first journalist to dig into this. And we don’t want the report because obviously, it’s gonna say hey, you’re using too many towels or you know what Lesson. But that’s the key, we need to know where we’re going wrong. So we’re the first team, that’s going to highlight some very difficult to answer questions. But unless we ask a question out, we’re gonna get floofy
Carlton Reid 30:14
daft question. I know, but do you then get ever going to get teams on steel bikes just because carbon? You know, carbon composites are an incredibly non sustainable form of, of manufacturing a bicycle. So how can you cut? How can you can you recycle carbon? What what are you doing in that kind of area? Yeah,
Ricci Pascoe 30:34
so we’re looking at about two big areas, or three big areas we’re looking at. So we’re doing a lot of the obvious stuff. So we’re bringing the tires back, you know, we’ll turn them into belts, or whatever. So we got a little we got a, we got an industry around, you know, cassettes that have been turned into clock faces. And you know, so we’re actually, you know, and yeah, you’re not gonna get rich on it. But we’re already reusing everything around that sort of space. And we are started looking at cars, then what we’re doing as a team, every item of clothing that we get this year, and it’s given back at the year end. And it’s December, can we wash it? Can it go further into our ecosystem, young riders will develop carbon, we’ve got a whole Project Grant Cardone, we’ve got all our carbon back. And yes, you can recycle carbon. Okay. So we want it all back. We want to know, what are best practices around it. So again, another question that we’re asking ourselves. And the reports we’re doing are very, very scientific. So again, you know, the unit cost us a question primarily Exeter University are leading on this front. And that’s why we’ve invited them around on the Tour of Britain, you know, and it was, it was painful because you know, we were collecting rubbish that we would normally put in a bin so that you can analyse, you know, what are we throwing away? You can imagine a mechanical 14 hour day and we’re sitting there, you got to collect the rubbish, while we’re titled space in the van. Yeah, we want it bagged up. She’s gonna go through your rabbit. And we’re like, you know, it’s it’s mind blowing what we’ve done in order to challenge ourselves to talk about these issues. All right. and
Carlton Reid 32:10
Britain have already got a having to Britain already got like a gel packet recycling programme, they kind of collect every gel wrapper and stuff.
Ricci Pascoe 32:20
Yeah, that’s absolutely bang on that we like it. I mean, to the point that we’ve gone into business, some parent have set up a business with a with a bottle manufacturer. So the three way partnership though, whereby it’s a bottle, it’s available on our website, got a plug for an advert whereby gels go inside the bottle. So currently, Brian is pleasing. So you put your gel inside the bottle, and then liquid around it. Now at the moment, it’s very much leisure use, because the UCI have certain criteria around bottle design. So we have to get injection moulded bottles made in a particular design way. We don’t get gels inside bottles, that means you don’t undo a wrapper, while racing, there’s no risk of you then swelling that little bit of the top of the gel pack down your throat, you know, it’s like you bite it. You know, and I have no, you know, erotics back in the throat. shouldn’t say that. But you know, it’s been done. Obviously, in a race situation, you know, you know, the rule is not thrown away, but if there’s a jam session on and you drop it, no, so you probably think right and we think we’ve got a solution with our squeezy bottle. Again, to drive games, we want to take this back to the UCI to adopt them as a phrase marketer Payton around bottle usage. So we suddenly care. One of the problems in the peloton, is we’re trying to build some commercial reality around this space. As well as just trying to provide solutions that are politically great. We want to come up with solutions that are an economic driver to them that provide further employment, you know, and conversations around economics and sustainability.
Carlton Reid 34:02
We’ll leave there for a second and go across to my colleague David in America.
David Bernstein 34:08
This podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people that Tern understand that while a large cargo bike can carry oodles of stuff, many of us prefer something a little more manageable. That’s why they’ve come up with the HSD e cargo bike for folks with big aspirations to go car free, delivered in a compact size, with its rear shock, 280 kilos and a combined hauling capacity of 180 kilos. The robust new HSD is stable and easy to manoeuvre, even when under load. And with its Bosch eBIKE SYSTEM tested and certified to meet the highest UL standards for electric and fire safety you will be able to share many worryfree adventures with a loved one, whether it’s your kiddo or nan. Visit www.ternbicycles. That’s te r n bicycles.com to learn more.
Carlton Reid 35:08
Thanks, David. And let’s get back to me asking Ricci a question about net zero. So when when do you think you might be able to get to net zero as a team?
Ricci Pascoe 35:20
You know, will we ever get to that, you know, it frightens me the questions we bring up, but and I think we need to be doing a lot of offsetting as well, then if, if we’re never gonna get there with the car. So you know, if it moves, you know, okay, we still got an electric car, you know, and the customers use that is x, y, or Zed, and over the life of the car, we’re never going to reduce that we need to be in a lot more as an organisation, then to start thinking, Okay, we need to offset that, you know, do we send our riders into schools and kids, you know, in that coaching process there donate riding the bike, and they got, they got to do more exercise a lot of burden on the end of the jack. So then it’s not, you don’t have to manufacture more machines, or drugged or whatever, keep that property together, I think we’ve got to look at the wider issues here, as well as the individuals, but let’s look at the wider impact that the bike can actually do. If you start saying, here’s an offset, I mean, you you will know this better than I do. I think if if someone takes a car, for example, which is a cycle event, you know, there’s X amount of expenditure, both financially and physically done. But if you ride to somewhere, you know, exponentially, there’s a benefit to the economy. There’s providers within reach or an easy transport system, there’s not too far away. So think, you know, switching between various forms of transport is important. But, you know, I mean, it’s been an expert in the university, and I will put this over the podcast over wherever you bought it, if we can just cut our speed, from say, 75 mile an hour, 60 mile an hour, we would reach our our carbon targets set by government. So I think if we suddenly go, Well, hang on a minute one fails, one measure suddenly achieves them, suddenly, he’s what we’re looking for. Done. I think that should be our focus, along with the drive the net zero. I don’t know what you feel about that. But I think it’s a combination for age. I mean, I’d like to think by a certain timescale, we’ll have got much of our major items, question tackled or actions,
Carlton Reid 37:31
what are your goals for the team away from net zero, your professional goals for the st. paren? Team, say the next five years?
Ricci Pascoe 37:41
So we’re back to the drawing board? Again, after the success this week is a stellar success, that Zeb sic plays on PC? Um, you know, absolutely amazing. You know, that all means if you work on a process or a writer development, we can achieve that. So, back to the drawing board, what’s next five years look like if I had a plan for a business that they want to be in the Tour de France for five years, we could probably put one in there. So my personal thought process, we try and stay on a conti licence. But we ride pro con, or what? Pro Series races. So like for Britain for a Norway? Well, we are racing against World War Two. So we have three or four races like that. And the cool point one pros are again, we’re racing against World Tour teams in in one day events A bit like the PP, that will only today, then we can expose our riders to the highest level racing without them racing seven times a year because I think if you do that you’re being disingenuous to your riders, you’re caught up in the world of pro cycling, which puts riders on a treadmill. Because after going to races, the organisers plan a bit of a start money and it’s part of the series, you know, I want to pick and choose if we can, that keeps our riders at the centre of our vision, gonna be hard to do, very hard to do, you know, for rider centric, but that’s the key component for me, the second peak, but the second one is about how we keep amplifying our message around our family values we already do never forget where you’ve come from, make sure that the most you know, temperate with really great physical and mental well being and, hopefully use what we’ve got as a window or a palette talk about if we’re not sustainable as a team or a planet you know, the both go hand in hand there won’t be any bike racing. So you know, and we love it when we we love it when bike racing is going well don’t we because when it’s going well and we can see all the effort people making and you know, it’s just so pleasing isn’t it? You know, you know romantically imagine, you know, we represent Team TV in France in five years is love and riding a bike A good question, no one’s going to join. So he’s very tall. Most people think he’s fine. Obviously, it’s his height for me. He’s running a balanced bike, you know, I’m very conscious not to be a pushy parent, you know, I’ve seen so much in cycling. You know, if I’ve run clubs, academys, pro teams, I’ve just seen it. It’s not healthy. Yeah, it’s not healthy, really, to be pushy.
Carlton Reid 40:28
But but, you know, a balance bike is just a natural thing for a kid to get on. And just, I mean, I’ve, I have coached kids on balance bikes in primary schools and stuff, it’s just they love it. It’s not You’re not being a pushy parent, it’s just like, kids naturally want to use their Yeah,
Ricci Pascoe 40:43
I suppose. I agree, I suppose the thing is, they all do this next to that next, and all of a sudden, look, I love it, what’s the first independent thing that we sell for you or a child does put you in might swim, but get on a bike is that, you know, that smile, is so bankable, isn’t it, that’s smile that comes about independence. You know, in fact, we’re, we’re partnering up with bikeability, in the next few months, and we want to show the great work that they do, we want to throw hate to what’s great about cycling and trying to take the whole storyline from, you know, being two, three years of age, through, you know, through their sort of bike printing school, you know, and bikeability adult, the adult training as well, I’m cycling, so we want to try and bring together, you know, that elite four element, you know, take it all back through, you know, through through performance cycling, through legislating, back back through to you know, that the, the ability to ride a bike, you know, and, you know, we want to bring that back that story to everybody else, we’re gonna lend our voice to, you know, they’ve got sort of like, we’ve grown up in schools to focus the week coming up at the end of September, and we’re going to showcase in that we want to start showcasing some really good things that are not necessarily centred around ourselves. But we believe the, you know, a really good thing.
Carlton Reid 42:08
You’re really covering the whole gamut of cycling there, aren’t you? You know, you’re not, you know, you’re I’m talking to you here, you know, came, started talking about a team, you know, a payment dinner team with a payment structure where your development team, a women’s team, a men’s, you know, usually continental team, but you’re also talking about kids in schools. So you’re, you’re doing the whole thing to, to basically create new new people on bikes.
Ricci Pascoe 42:34
Yeah. So we set up a CIC Community Interest Company, and if you pop on our website, I mean, it’s, it’s under community engagement. So, you know, we we got a we got a grant from the Heritage minister, we bought her a rundown property and in a town centre, and on bank building, you know, put some imagination around, you’ll be combination at top and maybe tapping it underneath and have access to some bikes, wanting to know that your bikes or whatever, so, you know, with the whole with the whole Rubik’s Cube, you know, any subject you would like to talk to me about, and you know, an awful lot about this industry, you know, we can talk to you about we’re looking at social prescribing, which we do we’re looking at doing that to the CSD. You know, we’re looking at working with, you know, government agencies to amplify and inspire and within, you know, and yet we’re great believers in in, in campaign it’s not complaining that things are showcasing what for the greater in and around.
Carlton Reid 43:32
Thanks, to Ricci Pascoe there and thanks to you for listening to Episode 339 of the Spokesmen podcast brought to you in association with Tern Bicycles. Show Notes and more can be found at the-spokesmen.com. The next episode will be out next month but meanwhile, get out there and ride …
27th January 2024
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 345: 24 hour racing with Josh Reid on Scotland’s Strathpuffer
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUESTS: Josh Reid, Alfie Marsh
TOPICS: Hiring a Range Rover from Turo to schlepp up to Strathpeffer in the Scottish Highlands for Giant Bicycles ambassador Josh Reid to ride the Strathpuffer 24 MTB race.
- Laura Laker
Carlton Reid, April 21, 2024
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Carlton Reid, April 15, 2024
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Carlton Reid, April 7, 2024
Read more… - Turn on Strava for everyday journeys, it could reshape streets for the better
Carlton Reid, March 17, 2024
Read more… - Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett of Komoot
Carlton Reid, March 10, 2024
Read more… - Richard Fletcher, Mr Cycling on the Isle of Man
Carlton Reid, February 24, 2024
Read more… - Monica Garrison of Black Girls Do Bike
Carlton Reid, February 20, 2024
Read more… - Balance bikes, Bikeability and the Saint Piran team at the Tour of Britain
Carlton Reid, January 28, 2024
Read more… - 24 hour racing with Josh Reid on Scotland’s Strathpuffer
Carlton Reid, January 27, 2024
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First Ever Computer Modelling of How Cyclists (And Motorists) Hit Potholes
Carlton Reid, December 28, 2023
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TRANSCRIPT
Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 345 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Saturday 27th of January 2024.
David Bernstein 0:29
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.
Carlton Reid 1:04
I’m Carlton Reid. And on today’s episode we follow my son Josh with 24 hours 24 hours of mountain bike racing on the hills above Strathpeffer in the freezing Scottish Highlands, I was support crew handing Josh his food, water and bubble-free Red Bulls from a rental Range Rover at the side of a fire road climb right on the Strathpuffer course. You’ll hear audio recorded during the day when Josh was chipper, and then through the 17 hours of darkness when he was well — spoiler alert — suffering. He managed 20 laps of what’s affectionately known as the Puffer. And that’s quite some achievement for him because …
Josh Reid 1:57
it’s very technical. …
Carlton Reid 1:59
… because he’s more of a roadie/gravel rider. And that snippet of information yelled at me as Josh came past on his first lap told me he’d likely lose a bunch of time on the technical descents. Let’s get rolling, beginning with some audio of me clipped from a video recorded on the long drive up to Scotland. We stopped in Glasgow to pick up filmmaker Alfie Marsh who helped Josh produce a stunning film of the event, the YouTube link for which is on the show notes at the hyphen spokesmen.com. I’m not gonna look at you, by the way, I’m going to be keeping my eyes completely focused on the road. So I do not normally drive an internal combustion engine car and certainly not one as mental as this Range Rover that I’ve got. But Josh needs to go to this event, we’re driving on the A9 up towards Inverness, and we’re gonna go to Strathpeffer — Josh can tell you exactly what the event we’re doing, but clue’s in the name, I guess. But to get out there to get all the kit, and to make sure we’re kind of comfortable. So we have hired this car. And it’s from a company called Turo. So I last time I hired a Turo in America in 2015 when I actually got a Tesla. But here, they’ve been in the last couple of years. It’s basically Airbnb of car hire. So basically rented it off somebody into his personal so it’s Gurinder’s personal Range Rover. And obviously looking after it’s not, you know, it’s a rental so don’t be gentle, no that you can look after the car. And we’re going to be stopping shortly. For coffee breaks, beautiful day here in the Scottish Highlands. And Josh exactly what are we going to so Strathpeffer, what’s the event that we’re actually physically going to be doing? You’re gonna be doing not me. So we’re
So we’re going to Strathpeffer, but the event is Strathpuffer, or people call it the Puffer. And it’s a 24 hour mountain bike event going round a 12 kilometre circuit. And as you can see, I’ve got laden with bikes in the back here. So I’ve got my gravel bike and full-suss mountain bike. And basically the aim is to just ride around a circuit for 24 hours and not to stop at all and see if I can get on the podium. We’re in just outside of Contin. Lots of big setups here. We’re in a small, relatively small setup, just the three of us. And we’re gonna be riding for 24 hours. And how are you feeling? Yeah, all right. Ready to get going?
It was a Le Mans start so all the riderss had to run to get to there
Josh Reid 5:16
just in the two hours in on the third lap, and just keep on pushing. Make use of the up hill was very slow on the downhills.
I’ve lost track of the number of laps I’ve done. I think I’m on lap five just under four hours completed. That means there’s 20 to go Yeah, it’s starting to feel like a grind going up this hill.
Carlton Reid 5:55
Coming back fast.
Alfie Marsh 5:56
I can see on the tracker. Josh is literally is just around the corner. There he is. Yes.
Josh Reid 6:08
Yes, my four and a half hours in probably about 20 to go.
Alfie Marsh 6:16
What’s been going on with you so far?
Josh Reid 6:18
I feel a bit sick right now. I was like stuffing a wrap with peanut butter and jam in. And then like all the way up to last climb. Got it down on me. But like, coming down I was just like
Alfie Marsh
How’s the riding? good.
Josh Reid
Oh, it’s just really good. Yeah, so much fun like the top it’s really tacky, which is quite difficult, considering I’m a roadie. And then the bottom is really like flowy it’s very nice. I guess I’m just Yeah, keep keep on plugging away. Yeah, I think last lap I was fifth place. Yeah, last I think I might have missed out a few places. I think last time I looked through a seven Okay, which is about half an hour ago.
Alfie Marsh
Yeah that’s pretty damn good though. Yeah, you’re happy with that?
Josh Reid
Yeah, just keep on going. Yeah, you never know when anyone else is gonna stop please raise your own race. You’re gonna pass people you don’t know where they are. You have a clue where
Carlton Reid 7:13
the music is by Sonder, they’re next to us, and will they play music all night long? dDon’t suppose so — their batteries will run out.
Sonder fella
we can always make you on Thank you. Yeah, just coffee or tea or because that’d be nice yeah, yeah.
Carlton Reid
Thank you. Yeah, I just want to transfer any food you want to wrap? No,
Josh Reid 7:57
can’t eat it You’re good. You’re good
Carlton Reid 8:05
to what you want and then next lap right you’re still back there
Josh Reid
thank you
Carlton Reid
you need more food and there’s just more and
Josh Reid 8:27
more and you just stopped doing my pocket here? I don’t hear this okay. Thank you very much.
Carlton Reid 8:39
Next lap wrap
Josh Reid 8:50
my head was going coming down this last year but see it’s nice to see familiar tactics for the next stage. They will more often then take our sunglasses off as it’s getting darker ready. Ready for 17 hours of darkness oh good and bad camera wrap.
Carlton Reid
Wrap is here.
Josh Reid I just need some water. Did you find the tablets?
Carlton Reid
No, I haven’t
Carlton Reid 9:28
what do they look like?
Josh Reid
Make it okay. All right. Cool. Thank you guys so much. Pasta.
Josh Reid 9:48
Pasta and yoghurt.
Carlton Reid 9:51
Okay.
Josh Reid 9:55
For more much more apricot?
Carlton Reid 9:57
Yeah.
Alfie Marsh 9:59
How’s it feeling in the
Josh Reid
It was amazing to start with my first taste it was really good to start with just like fresh air it felt like a new ride. But I started to drag on now keep on plugging away I think I’ve stopped for about 10 minutes so far. We’re about 10 hours two more to halfway to
Carlton Reid 10:30
our next one I’m doing now how’s it doing? Nothing we’re doing okay now that we’re found Josh’s salts and he’s had a look at that. So that is beautiful as pasta that we cooked yesterday or today. When did we cook that pasta last night and it’s now got lovely, lovely Strathpeffer mud on it. And he’s ingesting that. She’s getting extra proteins no doubt from that nice mud. Right so that’s his next one that’s got salt in and I may as well do his next one as well. After that. I don’t he might want to Red Bull while after that lightly. We’re going to leave Josh in the mud for a moment and cut to an ad break with my colleague David in the US.
Josh Reid 11:23
This podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern understand that while a large cargo bike can carry oodles of stuff, many of us prefer something a little more manageable. That’s why they’ve come up with the HSD e-cargobike for folks with big aspirations to go car free, delivered in a compact size, with its rear shock, 280 kilos, and a combined hauling capacity of 180 kilos. The robust new HSD is stable and easy to manoeuvre, even when under load. And with its Bosch eBIKE SYSTEM tested and certified to meet the highest UL standards for electric and fire safety you’ll be able to share many worryfree adventures with a loved one whether it’s your kiddo or Nan. Visit www.ternbicycles. That’s te r n turn bicycles.com to learn more
Carlton Reid 12:24
Thanks, David. And were back in the dark supporting Giant Bicycles ambassador Josh Reid on his first stab at the Strathpuffer 24 hour mountain bike race in Strathpeffer in the Highlands of Scotland. Right here.
Josh Reid 12:41
What I’ve learned I’ve got just chop that up. Yeah, no, he’s got that one. Yep. Thank you.
Carlton Reid 12:51
So you’re sick. And you’re not far away from the the four and five and six, you’re all close together rallied about like 30 minutes. At the moment. Top Five is a possibility.
Josh Reid 13:09
Can you get my Camelbak ready for the next lap? Yeah,
Carlton Reid 13:12
it’s there with the batteries the battery thing and what battery
Josh Reid 13:17
does an Exposure battery thing in the yellow bag? But no worries are not okay. Okay, I
Carlton Reid 13:22
got it the … okay
Carlton Reid 13:26
what do you want? Okay.
Josh Reid 13:30
It’s getting harder and harder to get do the techie section. Just like tiredness yes of course change and much with the place to get where bits are. I’ll finish that Red Bull next lap somewhere. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Appreciate it.
Alfie Marsh
You got this you got this.
Josh Reid
Want to sub in for me?
Alfie Marsh
I’d love to I’d love to have a good one, man.
Carlton Reid 13:56
Up you know for a while.
Alfie Marsh 13:58
What are time are we on now, Josh?
Josh Reid
that past 11 o’clock. 11.30 maybe?
Alfie Marsh
Do you know what lap you’re on?
Josh Reid
lost count on ap four
Alfie Marsh
Do you know what place you are?
Josh Reid
No. Do you know?
Alfie Marsh
I actually don’t right now. How are you feeling now?
Josh Reid
Good. It’s good to be past halfway not hopefully I’ll get easier and easier. This is gonna be the hardest bit I think. next little bit
Carlton Reid 14:32
to three o’clock. Tough one.
Josh Reid 14:36
The laps are taking me like an hour and a half now. Yeah. Whereas it would take me under an hour before.
Alfie Marsh
Yeah. You guys Yeah.
Carlton Reid 14:48
Right, do you want some pasta?
Josh Reid
Can do.
Carlton Reid
There’s some sandwiches We’re getting
Josh Reid 15:03
it’s almost 6am Probably another two hours before light. pretty cooked, just started to snow
How are you want to stop this keep on plugging away this take it easy and just keep those legs spinning two more hours and then I can stop
Josh Reid 15:39
I’ve want some of this return yet I
Carlton Reid 15:45
can’t toast it for you…top 10 Josh keep it up how you doing the lights? I’m
Josh Reid 16:03
fine six
Carlton Reid 16:04
I mean six hours
Josh Reid 16:06
yeah but I don’t I only use it on low for what about yeah I lost about one on profit
Carlton Reid 16:13
I haven’t really helmet like
Josh Reid
It’s OK I’m going slow.
Carlton Reid
How about one of you?
Josh Reid 16:24
I can’t get it on. Can you get it on? I’m just gonna go
Carlton Reid 16:34
That flapjack was really nice. So just chomp on that it’s really soft
Josh Reid 16:41
Should be light by the next time I come around ish. What? Six there’ll be eight o’clock ish yeah all right
Carlton Reid 16:58
there’s one more can of Red Bull Yep,
Josh Reid 17:02
I’m gonna have I drank three so far
Carlton Reid 17:28
do want to establish take around with you Josh. What about more flapjack? That’s quite nice. It’s nice flapjack.
Josh Reid 17:39
Okay
Carlton Reid 17:43
Babybel here next time. Next time what else next time. You haven’t had an apple?
Josh Reid 17:59
I know one apple a horrible hurry. Okay.
Carlton Reid 18:03
Any pasta right she got some more sandwiches? Yeah, yeah. To eat more apricot. Well, pasta I mean you first sandwiches How are you doing your water? Full full. Full. Okay. That’s cool. You don’t drink much water
okay. Daily, they say.
Josh Reid 18:42
Now in the second half of the last lap 10 minutes to 10 which would be 24 hours. We have till 11 To finish the loop. So really excited to be done.
Carlton Reid 18:57
Been a long night. It was a long 24 hours never mine a long night, Josh. And he came in at just before 10 o’clock. And he was 10th, well done Josh.
Josh Reid 19:30
What’s going on? That was so much fun. The smell of it. Yeah. Just like knowing now it’s done. Well, like I was in pain on my last lap. My hands I couldn’t like because all the bumps just came to me properly. I’ve been awake for 25 hours.
Carlton Reid 19:53
When Josh was little when he’s about 5, 6, 7 I used to do 24-hour mountain bike events. So really pleased to see Josh is carrying on the family tradition — there has been quite a big gap since the time I was riding 24 hour solos, but they are good events to do. I’ve never done the Strathpeffer. That was actually after my time when I was riding, but maybeI’ll do it next. Yeah, maybe, maybe. It was certainly fun to be there supporting Josh. So well done to him for the 10th place. So many thanks to Alfie Marsh who was doing some of the recording there. And of course, all of the filming, which I grabbed some of the audio from from his footage. And thanks also to Turo for helping out with the the rental Range Rover and of course, to the sponsor of this podcast every single show which is Tern Bicycles. The next show will be out next month, but meanwhile, get out there and ride …
28th December 2023
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 344: First Ever Computer Modelling of How Cyclists (And Motorists) Hit Potholes
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUEST: Kara Laing
TOPICS: Automotive engineering analyst Kara Laing, an everyday cyclist, explains her new work on the modelling of hitting potholes.
- Laura Laker
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Carlton Reid, April 15, 2024
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Carlton Reid, April 7, 2024
Read more… - Turn on Strava for everyday journeys, it could reshape streets for the better
Carlton Reid, March 17, 2024
Read more… - Jonathan Kambskarð-Bennett of Komoot
Carlton Reid, March 10, 2024
Read more… - Richard Fletcher, Mr Cycling on the Isle of Man
Carlton Reid, February 24, 2024
Read more… - Monica Garrison of Black Girls Do Bike
Carlton Reid, February 20, 2024
Read more… - Balance bikes, Bikeability and the Saint Piran team at the Tour of Britain
Carlton Reid, January 28, 2024
Read more… - 24 hour racing with Josh Reid on Scotland’s Strathpuffer
Carlton Reid, January 27, 2024
Read more… -
First Ever Computer Modelling of How Cyclists (And Motorists) Hit Potholes
Carlton Reid, December 28, 2023
Read more…
MACHINE TRANSCRIPT
Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 344 of the spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Thursday, the 28th of December 2023.
David Bernstein 0:29
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.
Carlton Reid 1:02
In this last episode of 2023, I talk with automotive engineering analyst Cara Lang, who explains her new work on the modelling of hitting potholes. She describes how she recently spent 600 pounds for a pothole dinged car wheel, but goes on to explain that hitting the same pothole on her bike could have cost her her life. I’m Carlton Reid. And this episode could be literally and certainly figuratively, the most impactful in the show’s 17 year history. All right, you you direct message me with the fascinating piece of research, which we will talk about, and hopefully at length, and you will very quickly discover how little science I know. Tell me first of all, because you’re an engineer, [yes, I am]. Your background. So give me your trajectory in life. Before we even get on to cycling. Just tell me how you got into engineering. And then segue into what you’re doing now.
Kara Laing 2:13
I went the long way round into engineering. I’m a mathematician by education. And when I finished I finished a PhD. And I decided I wanted to do something to make the world a little bit safer. So I decided that I was I wanted to work on car safety. Didn’t know how I was going to do this. It turns out that just at that time, about 20 something years ago, finite element modelling was becoming the next big thing in car safety. So what car companies were starting to do and is now established practice is that they would take their car design, and they would build a computer model of it. And then instead of running car crashes on actual cars, they would run it on in the computer model. The way we build the model is you take your your different parts of the vehicles and instead of being one large, complicated shape, we turn them into lots of little little pieces that we called finite elements. And it’s quite simple to work out the physics for what’s happening when you when you squash something you know how much it’s going to resist, and how much it’s going to push the next element in the chain. But you just have to do it about 2 billion times two model a car crash. I went into that. And I’ve been working on that now for 23 years coming up for 24 years. I started off working in full vehicle crash modelling. And then I started working on a company for a company my current employer Vectayn where we do a lot of what happens to people inside vehicles. So that’s my job. And I’m a technical specialist there. Really enjoy it. love talking about it can talk about it for hours. But it means that I look at the world in a way of okay, how can I look at that as a model? How can I understand what’s going on why it feels like that? Or why it looks like that or why something is reacting like
Carlton Reid 4:27
It’s a tough one to throw this on you because not not your fault. But automotive crash test things in general. Clearly focus as you were saying before about the people inside the car that’s quite natural. You want to you want to protect your customer, the person who’s physically buying that you want to protect them you’re not really that fussed about the people outside because they’re not buying your car. So do you also work on protecting people that are not inside the car? Well,
Kara Laing 4:57
this is interesting that about 2010 Euro Ncap, European new car assessment programme, started looking at what happens to pedestrians outside the vehicle. And that was the first time that that requirement had come into place. There’s now also a legal requirement for cars in Europe for an A, to some extent in the States for what happens if you interact heavily with somebody outside the vehicle, shall we say? It’s actually the sort of modelling that I really enjoyed doing. For the reasons that it’s it’s more socially supportive. I’m trying to think of the right words there. It is good for people outside the vehicle is not just a marketing thing of how safe Can you keep your family, but how well can you carry out this responsibility to the people around your vehicle,
Carlton Reid 5:52
and how well they’ve had to meet the standards. So how well do you think companies are doing?
Kara Laing 5:58
They are doing better. But fundamentally, if you will, the regulations have now changed that, or sorry, the euro in cap assessment has now changed. So that it now model vulnerable road users. So it looks at cyclists as well. It’s I think it’s it’s been significant, it’s now standard to consider that standard. Consider that in how vehicles are designed. And you can actually see that so that they are more vulnerable road user friendly. Yeah, so it’s improved, it’s still not as safe as the occupant.
Carlton Reid 6:38
Because there’s theTesla cybertruck. You know, that’s clearly never gonna pass any European regulations. It’s just it’s a death machine on wheels for people outside the vehicle. I’m sure it’s incredibly safe for people inside. But outside, that’s just a death machine. And we don’t want to see those kinds of things coming across to me, we’ve got another SUVs, so
Kara Laing 7:02
don’t get me started on SUVs. I have to be a little careful what I say, yeah, I, I was passed by a Humvee the other day, I was cycling down a single track lane, on my way home from work, and I pulled into a parking space and this thing went past me and I don’t even know if they knew I was there. It was enormous. If it had helped me, I don’t think they’d have noticed. And yet, the cyber truck, I don’t know whether there will be any publicly accessible results from testing. I’d be very interested to see how it performs. It’s a truck. So it’s quite possible it won’t even need to pass through any Europe any federal requirements. I don’t know how it’s going to be sold here.
Carlton Reid 7:54
I’ve not I think it’s really easy answer that one for a very long time. And if it changes by EOB, yes, the illustration on the Vectayn website is of a kind of like an estate car with probably quite big, wide, you know, nice crumple zones. And if you you know, you get hit by that you get thrown up, I’m assuming and then shove to one side kind of thing, whereas an SUV hits you and you just get your splattered with an SUV hitting you like getting
Kara Laing 8:21
better. But I wouldn’t want to be a six year old kid standing in front of one.
Carlton Reid 8:25
No. So you mentioned cycling from work there. So what kind of cycling apart from cycling to and from work? Is it something that you’ve always done? Why do you get into it late? We’re kind of you’re
Kara Laing 8:37
My cycling trajectory. When I was a student, I couldn’t afford the bus pass. So I bought a bike. And it turns out, I actually really enjoyed it even though that bike was so terrible that somebody burgled our shed and stepped over my bike to take all the others. Cycling is part of my happy space. It’s how I get to and from work as much as I can. It’s cheaper than the gym. I cycled for leisure whenever I get the chance. It’s something I do with I’ve got a cycling buddy. I tried to cycle with my family. But of course, it’s never enough cycling. And cycling to and from work is just my way of fitting a little bit in and getting a little bit fitter and reducing my carbon footprint. It’s a win win win win scenario for me.
Carlton Reid 9:28
So since that previous bike that the thief stepped over, you’ve invested in something nicer.
Kara Laing 9:35
Yes, yes. Yeah, I it turns out I now have a winter bike and a summer bike. Mainly so that in the winter, a lot of my route. I take country lanes because it’s quieter and it feels safer. But they’re unlit and you can’t see the potholes,
Carlton Reid 9:55
which is a great segue into yours So, you contacted me? Yes. I was writing, basically about the transport minister. You’re ignoring cyclists in this announcement about London’s roads and a bit of cash that’s going to be pumped into into road resurfacing in London and you just eat basically just and in fact, the press reserves to plan for transport press release, pretty much 99.9% of it was motorists motorists known as like, oh yen and it kind of like maybe potholes affect cyclists as well. It was just like a throwaway line right then. But then your research your research shows that is completely the opposite. Absolute. So describe. I mean, yeah, I could describe this but let you describe your graph to me, which shows this in absolute me I don’t be a scientist to realise Oh, that particular curve means that hurt compared to that particular Bob little line, which is the motorists line. Yeah, might might scratch a hubcap, they ain’t gonna die. So describe your graph. Okay,
Kara Laing 11:03
well, what I did is I went around mid I carried a tape measure around for a couple of weeks measuring everything I could I have built a computer model of five different types of wheel I’ve my first question was wider potholes hurt more when I’m riding my road bike than when I’m riding my mountain bike type bike. It’s got fatter tires, there’s a lot more air in there the rubbers thicker and so on. And then I thought but what’s it like for other road users as well? So I’ve I had a conversation with a friend where I said can I please measure the wheels on your chair, I measured my my bike I found an online model I found a paper describing the modelling of a car tire. And we’ve there’s there are a couple of open source car models out there. And I also modelled a an E scooter by finding one of those we’ve got higher scooters in the city I live in So there’s me standing there with my tape measure measuring it okay the diameter is this how have how squiddy does that feel trying to find out a little bit about the E scooter tire. And what I originally did is I dropped them all with an appropriate weight on them which is the equivalent of riding off a 50 mil curb off into a 50 mil deep pothole. I’ll go back to 50 mil in a moment. And I looked at the amount of debris that the person or the top of the shock tower for the car would experience from dropping into that pothole. And basically a car experiences about a third of the amount of acceleration that a road bike does so it explains why when I when I drop into a pothole it hurts I’ve since run the what happens when you ride out of the pothole. And it’s even more stock that cars are designed to drive over curbs and bikes, scooters and wheelchairs really aren’t that the amount of force that somebody riding a bike has to be able to control with their hands is we’re talking about 300 somebody’s giving you 300 kilogrammes to hold suddenly and yeah and that explains why it’s quite difficult to ride into an outdoor pothole
Carlton Reid 13:48
you mentioned shock tower before Yeah. That’s on the car that I mean I’m assuming that says the suspension system is that your definition of a shock tower
Kara Laing 13:56
Yeah, the top of the suspension system I think I sent you some images I’ve taken as little as I can of the car model because my my work of happy to let me do this but I need to kind of sneak it through when we’re not running big crash models of something else.
Carlton Reid 14:16
I do recommend people I’m gonna I’m gonna post this high res version of the graph that you did posted on Twitter when you sent me this this high res version I will post that on on the show website so people can go and scare themselves silly basically by looking at this and and probably it will go semi viral in that when anybody comes and says oh look my you know my car was you know hubcap was dented by this this pothole, just show this graph. Yeah, but look what it happens, you know, with cyclists die, they don’t and they go into your, your, your, your modelling here. So the shock tower, we we’ve kind of got that definition. So the MTB, the mountain bike, one that again that was that’s a suspended product. You’re talking About a suspended mountain bike bike with front suspension or what
Kara Laing 15:04
I just took that That one’s nice and simple. I just took it from the middle of the wheel. I didn’t I didn’t have any model for a mountain bike suspension. So I took so there would be a little bit of extra give in the system. Yeah, so mountain bike is is an optimist is sorry, is a pessimistic curve, and suspend it shows how suspension would help. But this brings me back to to one of my initial questions when I cycling along and I thought I wonder about that. The next lunchtime i I logged on to my institutions library and started looking for information about what people had already done looking at the amount of the amount of force that is experienced through a cycle, hitting an obstacle or dropping into a pothole. And there was nothing. Nobody has done this work as far as I can find. I haven’t spent hours and hours going through the literature search but there really isn’t anything out there. And that’s quite shocking. It’s I’m also going to bring it back if I may Colton to the 50 mil. I chose 50 mil most councils in the country assess their potholes by they’ve they’ve moved over to a risk based assessment of potholes. And they it has to be 40 mil deep and however big it needs to be the county I live in. They don’t count unless they’re 50 mil deep
Carlton Reid 16:41
as the No there’s no government regulators. It has to be this deep. This is a each council does each different. Oh, okay. Yeah.
Kara Laing 16:47
So in? Well, I’m in Essex, and in Essex unless it is big enough for a car wheel to fall into. And unless it is at least 50 mil deep. It doesn’t count as a risk. So I actually I sent the initial graphs that I sent to you initially sent to my counsel, I’ve never heard anything back.
Carlton Reid 17:11
Yeah, cuz there’s all this like, Well, yeah, of course that’s gonna hurt a cyclist. What’s the way you tell us something we didn’t know. I mean, that’s that’s part of, you know, the kind of the cynical thing here is like, well, of course. Yeah. But, but that isn’t how the Ministry of Transport press release. showed it at all. It really was. This is hurting motorists. Yeah, it was like in Cyprus, just we’re just not in the equation here. But at this point, Kira was called away. So that’s a great spot to cut away to my colleague, David for a quick ad break.
David Bernstein 17:45
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Carlton Reid 18:45
Thanks, David. And we are back with Kara Laing and her work on the computer modelling of dropping into potholes. So your work all right with with with this, this is a very graphic thing that you could show the powers that be and that’s something that’s like quite physical compared to you know, here is this cyclist who died from this which you would think would actually be more powerful in many respects, but often isn’t. Whereas this is something that anybody can look at and go oh, yeah, we need to fix those potholes. Because look at that, but what cyclists when they when they when they sadly die from hitting potholes. It generally isn’t the pothole that’s killed them it’s generally I’d have to again do a literature research on this and find out exactly but it tends to be hit pothole you know, wobble and then fall into moving motor traffic that’s falling behind that aren’t breaking quickly and and they get squished unfortunately from that what’s happening base that 300 gramme await you suddenly got that makes you wobbles you’re not you’re not gonna die from the there’s no other vehicles around you’re probably okay it’s the other vehicles are Round that’s gonna kill you.
Kara Laing 20:01
Yeah, I cycling off a pothole like that I don’t think I’ve got the strength or the reactions to control it, I don’t have the skill to control it. It would be that is the kind of thing that would take somebody off their bike. We also have potholes around here that because they are wedge shaped, you can find yourself with a wheel completely trapped and no way of getting out of it. So yeah, that are a real risk for cyclists in a way. In a car. It’s uncomfortable. I mean, I recently had to pay 600 quid for a new wheel after a pothole on a country lane. But I’d far rather be paying 600 pound and having bits of me put back together or be paying or having my family paid for my funeral.
Carlton Reid 20:51
Yes, yes, that again, that is the reality behind your your graph, Bear. So tell me that the practical applications of your graph, what could activists do with your graph? What could you do with that graph?
Kara Laing 21:05
I had do some more on this on my to do list. Since this was work that I did during furlough, I sort of had to do more with this. One of the questions that somebody asked on your Twitter thread is what is the difference between a 50 mil curve and a 40 mil curve? And my plan is to run that and find out that to quantify what the increase in I’m not going to say perception what the increases of experience, because I think that minimising that acceleration pulse that is felt through the arms through the bike through the wheelchair, that’s got to be a good thing. It needs to be reduced. So that I mean, if we say if councils are saying that a car that a pothole needs to be repaired, when a car experiences that kind of Jolt, then we need to reduce the standard so that when a cyclist or a wheelchair user or a scooter user experiences that kind of Jolt, how do we need to change the requirements so that the risk level is the same for all road users? So
Carlton Reid 22:17
how do you do say effective dropping into a 10 Min millimetre pothole 20 3040 5060 isn’t going up. And then you did plot that out? As look, if it’s this level, this is what’s going to happen. So you really ought to be doing potholed at, say 30 millimetres? Is that what you can do with your, your research, you can actually plot all these things out and think, look, if it hits this depth, you got to do something about it? I think
Kara Laing 22:42
so. But what I am aware is that, for example, my estimate of the E scooter wheel is wrong. I know it’s wrong. When you look at the animations, it’s a bit squishy. It just doesn’t look right. So I would welcome any input from anybody who’s ever stuck an accelerometer on their bike and gone through a pothole, to find out what actually happens in the real world. This is, from my point of view, an initial model. And it’s as good as I can make with the data I’ve got. But I don’t have all the data I would like.
Carlton Reid 23:17
See, there’s two answers to that. That was the two things can pop pop in my mind. The last show, in fact, with Mr. And Mrs. McAleese, who have now moved to Australia, their tech, which is the you know, the See.Sense lights, well, that has an accelerometer, and that does track events, you know, pothole events. And then, you know, plot on maps when it’s linked to a link to the iPhone when when you can opt in, basically to, to, so the data is shared, anonymized but shared. So potentially See.Sense would have some of that data. So I’ll put you in touch with with them because I’m, I’m sure I’m sure they would love it right. Please do. Like it’s sort of a joke here, but also real right up the street. This, this kind of modelling will be to them, put it that way. But also just iPhones and and Google Pixel phone and smartphones, gentlemen, they do have accelerometers. So presumably you could get an app could be created to measure this either. In the CCENT terms, it’s like it’s just happening all the time. You just fit the light and you just you forget it, or you could genuinely go over. You know, a stunt stunt doubles could go over potholes and see if your graph is the real world. Yes,
Kara Laing 24:45
absolutely. We, we we just compare information. I mean, I’ve got a model of, of different sizes of wheels. I can make more models. I’d love to see it I’d also be really interested to see to understand from Wheelchair users point of view, how it affects them? Because I’ve modelled what happens at the wheel? But how does that affect the wheelchair user?
Carlton Reid 25:10
So this the model that you’ve got here, have you hit the lip of the pothole, then you go down into the pothole as a wheelchair user scooter user cycle user, you’re probably going to hardly notice it in a car. We’ve all kind of we’ve kind of established that. But then what you said before was, it’s actually coming out. That is potentially and that’s the work you’re still doing or you need to do more work on. It’s the coming out. That is potentially the worst bit. Yeah,
Kara Laing 25:37
it appears to be where I’m getting much more sharp pulses. They’re called pulses, the curves, I’m getting much sharper pulses. And the the issue is, it appears to be that the rubber does everything it can but if the pothole is too deep, then the rim of the metal hits the rim of the wheel and then hits the structure. And on a car tire because you have got 100 200 mil of space before you risk bottoming out that’s why it’s not anywhere near as much an issue on a car as it is on a road bike wheels are really thin, it makes
Carlton Reid 26:18
sort of sense that it is going to hurt hitting the second lip. Because the first lip is you’re dropping it down you can imagine your your tire and perhaps any suspension you’ve got will maybe cope with that. But if you’re then travelling when some of these potholes are pretty big, and you might travel perhaps half a metre or metre before you hit the lip but it is that second bit where you’ve got to be very careful of what’s happening coming out. So just that appreciation alone can be like a lifesaver.
Kara Laing 26:52
Yes, absolutely. And also what if you don’t hit the edge the the exiting edge straight? What if you hit it one key How can you I haven’t modelled that but I can it’s something that we can the models can become as complicated as we want them. How much strength do you need in your arms to be able to control that Yank of the wheel
Carlton Reid 27:16
here in Northumberland I’m gonna have you said this bad message in Northumberland we have cavernas almost literally caverns you down and hardly be seen by anybody Yeah, they’re pretty deep so Northumberland is notoriously bad for potholes and I’m maybe Essex is is the same but councils need to be shamed I know there’s Cyclists’ Touring Club as of bold you know we asked cycling cycling UK of today they were pretty big on potholes previously and I’ve been looking just recently when I’m when we’re doing this as an all women’s their pothole stuff and they haven’t done anything for a while but haven’t really resurrected their campaign they had an app you know fill that pothole, they had all this sort of like campaigning materials built around potholes, and the prevention of and the filling in of and they seem to have died away again. Hopefully this research can actually help them with statistics and with with graphs, literally with graphs, actually resurrect that campaign. So councils, Northumberland, Essex, wherever you live, can be shamed into filling these things in
Kara Laing 28:31
that will be wonderful. And I’m happy to talk to anybody. I mean, fundamentally, my issue is I dislike potholes as a cyclist. And I’d like them to all go away please. Anything I can do to encourage appropriate repair of potholes with round the corner from me. They’ve recently filled a load of potholes in that our wheel size, but then they’ve chosen not to fill in the ones that are cycled tire size around the corner. Anything that encourages a wider acceptance of who road uses quite might be.
Carlton Reid 29:11
And that’s good for putting the wheelchair in as well. Is that like a standard wheelchair with solid tires? Is that what kind of wheelchair was that? Or is that like a road cycling type wheelchair?
Kara Laing 29:26
This was can I find any wheelchair tires online to get any dimensions out of them? It’s an airfield we’ll talk airfield tire I’d quite like to do a rubber one but I’ve not been in not being in this position to take somebody’s wheelchair well apart and have a look at what it’s made off. Because
Carlton Reid 29:46
that thing literally saves us in that the air do pneumatics in a tire literally saves us it doesn’t just make more comfortable we can hopefully hit a pothole and survive as long as we don’t hit that wobble and then get hit from behind. Yes Speaking
Kara Laing 30:00
at speaking as an engineer, this has actually been really interesting looking at how the tire works, looking at how it stretches and how it boulders and how it recovers to carry on doing its normal job of just going round.
Carlton Reid 30:13
So you’re using … Vectayn is allowing you to use their finite element modelling computers to do this. But is this your Is this a spare time thing? So this is like a lunch break or something? And they’re not expecting you to guess, come up with anything practical for their business? Or, oh, might you be able to?
Kara Laing 30:33
I think, I think there is plenty of scope here. Unfortunately, I can’t afford to become a customer of my own company. So if anyone is out there and wants, once the modelling done, the groundwork is already there, it would be really affordable. And I’d love to do it for you. At present, it isn’t. We don’t have a client for this. If anyone if anybody is interested in this, if any councils are interested in this in a more well defined assessment of what risk based pothole repairs should look like. I’m, I’m definitely you’re definitely the analyst you need to talk to. We’re
Carlton Reid 31:16
on that note correct. And it has been fascinating. And as you said before, you could talk for hours about your day job. Or we could talk for hours about deformation of tires going into into potholes. But we can’t speak for hours and hours and hours. So we got to stop at some point. So this is a perfect juncture, I guess to say, who you are and how people can contact you. Okay,
Kara Laing 31:38
well, the best. The most detail on this is on my LinkedIn profile. My name is pretty there’s not many of us. It’s pretty obvious who I am. If you look for me,
Carlton Reid 31:49
and the Laing is L A I N G Yes.
Unknown Speaker 31:54
And it’s Kara with a K.
Carlton Reid 31:57
It’s been fascinating talk to you. I’m going to go away and I’m going to try and link you up with interested parties here. Season please. Cycling UK, they should be doing something on this because it’s absolutely essential work. You’re doing that and it’s working I didn’t even know hadn’t been done. So that’s, that’s pretty scary.
Kara Laing 32:18
Exactly. Exactly. That’s what shocked me most about this. Fundamentally, really selfishly, I’d like to get this published somehow in some format in a journal would be great, but in a magazine would be great. And then I can put it in front of my council and say, Look, you’re 50 mil assessment for curb decks. For for pothole that is inadequate, you need to reduce it, or you need to think about where you apply that and make it genuinely risk based and not just motor normativity risk based.
Carlton Reid 32:53
Thanks to Kara Laing there and thanks to you for listening to episode 344 of the Spokesmen podcast, brought to you in association with Tern Bicycles. Show notes and more can be found at the-spokesmen.com. The next episode will be out next year — dad joke there — but meanwhile get out there and ride.
5th September 2023
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 338: Bikemap: In conversation with Bruna de Guimaraes
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUEST: Bruna de Guimaraes
TOPICS: Interview with Bikemap’s Chief Operations Officer Bruna de Guimaraes
- Bikemap: In conversation with Bruna de Guimaraes
Carlton Reid, September 5, 2023
Read more… - Cycle.Travel: In Conversation with Richard Fairhurst
Carlton Reid, September 5, 2023
Read more… - ‘We’re crazy about human bikes’: Mike Sinyard on e-bikes, the new Tarmac SL8 and more
Carlton Reid, August 10, 2023
Read more… - The Potential for Cargo Bikes
Carlton Reid, July 17, 2023
Read more… - From Bam-bu to Dott via Sustrans, Fettle, Flitbike and the Diagram Club
Carlton Reid, July 12, 2023
Read more… - Playing God: Bike Infrastructure Folks at Move Conference
Carlton Reid, July 10, 2023
Read more… - Emily Kerr
Carlton Reid, June 27, 2023
Read more… - Carmageddon — LTNs, Tokyo and the libertarian case against cars
Carlton Reid, June 19, 2023
Read more… - Andy Boenau — White Collar Epidemic
Carlton Reid, June 13, 2023
Read more… -
Hilltrek’s revival of a 1950s cycling jacket: the Greenspot
Carlton Reid, June 5, 2023
Read more…
TRANSCRIPT
Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 338 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Tuesday 5th of September 2023.
David Bernstein 0:28
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.
Carlton Reid 1:04
I’m Carlton Reid. And welcome to the second episode about cycle routing apps, both episodes of which were uploaded at the same time. On the previous show, I talked with Richard Fairhurst of Cycle.travel. And here, I talk with Bikemap’s Chief Operations Officer Bruna de Guimaraes. And where are you right this time?
Bruna de Guimaraes 1:31
So I’m currently in Munich, in Germany. And yeah, but I’m from Brazil originally.
Carlton Reid 1:38
And how long have you been with with Bikemap?
Bruna de Guimaraes 1:42
I’ve been with Bikemap since November last year. And it’s been a great ride,
Carlton Reid 1:49
literally. And and
Bruna de Guimaraes 2:02
Literally!
Carlton Reid 1:52
Where were you? So let’s go through a biography of you. Before we even get into what Bikemap is? Let’s get into you. So where were you before Bikemap? Give the trajectory.
Bruna de Guimaraes 2:03
I’m happy to give because this is a really interesting way on how I landed in back live. But I actually graduated in law. So I became a lawyer. And that was in Estonia, which is a completely different story on how I ended up in Estonia all the way from Brazil originally. And I lend him in the software industry as if you know, the Estonia is like a land of digitalization. And so many companies are coming out of there. And especially so many unicorns. And I landed in Pipedrive, which is became a big unicorn in the software industry. And I fell in love with this world in a subscription based businesses and just having this contact with the users. And in Pipedrive, it was responsible for the whole business development. And I had a mini life crisis at the time because I did not know what business development actually meant. But I got the CEO at the time to be my mentor and teach me everything I know today. And as I said, business development is so broad, that my area was more related to product strategy. So basically everything when you’re trying to find a country to go to when you’re trying to find a market to expand your product to you cannot just think about going there. You have to take many things in consideration, such as localization, such as pricing strategies, such as product strategy, and maybe even a strategy or how you get into these countries. Maybe it’s through partnerships, maybe it’s through sales, maybe it’s through integrations. And what we did there in Pipedrive, was actually that my responsibility was to find these countries, and actually adapt the product and create a strategy to enter the market, with partnerships with integrations, and then a sales team would come in. And that was my world for multiple years. I continued developing in the CRM space after I moved to Germany. And that’s also a completely different story, because it involves moving to a different country because of because of a love story. But I continue to decide the SAS industry consulting and advising for a lot of CRM and software businesses.
Carlton Reid 4:34
Jump in there because anybody who doesn’t know Customer Relationship marketing is what you mean by CRM, yes?
Bruna de Guimaraes 4:39
Exactly. It’s basically a tool right that you can manage your relationship with their with their customer. So all the data you have also managing your sales processes. So it was towards all b2b. And I’ve been in this industry for eight years and I’m I had a little bit of contact with the b2c industry. But it was only last year, where then I was contacted by the headhunter of bike map to actually enter and try to help bike map to elevate to the next level. So bring a little bit more of a experience from a different industry to see if we could actually take pipeline to to the level that it deserves to be.
Carlton Reid 5:25
And have you done so far.
Bruna de Guimaraes 5:27
It’s really good. It’s, as I said, it’s been a ride. And I actually see a lot of similarities, if I must say, because as I mentioned, in the b2b space, and especially in the CRM space, where I was, I used to work with a lot of small and medium businesses. So it wasn’t working with enterprises and a long sales cycle, it was actually a very short one. So we had to deal with a lot of product lead growth, which means a lot of your product is your Sales Machine, your contact to your customer is through the product, you don’t have time to actually talk to every customer. And this is something I see very similar in the b2c industry. So this is what we’re trying to do. And this is what we have been doing in bike Mac now, and talking to our customers and really understand them based on the data that they actually use the product on the review that they give to us and the Apple Store and the Google Play Store, and the communication that we have with them through our support system.
Carlton Reid 6:31
Because you have a lot of competitors, many of whom, in fact, the majority of whom are free. And I’m kind of looking here at you know, things like you know, that people will have on their phones and use all the time, Google Maps and Apple Maps. So you are competing in a marketplace, where there’s some incredibly good free products. So why are people paying good money to subscribe for a month, six months a year to bike map?
Bruna de Guimaraes 7:01
That’s a great question. And I love to say that they are really our biggest competitor because that’s what been used by everyone until today. But the differentiator of bike map specialty is really the fact that we have this community aspect. So if you think about people going through these routes every single day, or when they plan a route to with their friends or with their family, you have actually this aspect of you know that someone has been through that through there. And they really have this trustworthiness. Because one thing is you’re being guided in Google Maps and how many times you were living in the city, for example, I don’t know what has how it’s been with you. But with me, if I want to go somewhere, even with my bike for transportation reasons, I know that there is a faster route, I know that there is a safer route for me, and Google Maps gives me just maybe what’s better regarding traffic, may be what is the fastest. But that might not be my favourite profile of my favourite decision. I have a daughter, for example. So I want to make sure that the rides that I take with her, even if it is from point A to point B, or if it is a tour over the weekend, it’s actually the safest way possible. So I want to make sure that it is the recycling lane, I want to make sure that people with kids have done this route as well, but that they can vouch for this route. This is the main thing that differentiates bike map to Apple Maps and Google Maps. And of course, our community reports as I said, so you want to know during your route to where you can have a resting spot where you can actually pump your your tires, if there is any issues or charge your eBike This is what makes bike maps special, our community aspect. So
Carlton Reid 9:01
are you saying that it’s like a ways like feature in that it’s plotting where people actually go. And that gets mixed up into your algorithm? It’s it’s not it’s not something that’s served up? From a server, it’s actually it’s all being fed back into the system?
Bruna de Guimaraes 9:19
Exactly. Nothing that you see in the system is actually done by us. It’s all by the community. So what we do is just give you the best route possible for you as a user and you as your profile. And everything else is populated by the community by our almost 9 million users worldwide.
Carlton Reid 9:43
And which countries are bigger than others? Where are your biggest markets where you’re where the not as big as market but also most the most users who are using this, you know, really frequently?
Bruna de Guimaraes 9:56
Yeah, as you can imagine as a Austrian company And Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the dark market, the back region, as we like to call it is our biggest market. But of course, Italy friends, you say the United States as well. And funnily enough, we have a really big user base in Brazil and in Korea,
Carlton Reid 10:19
and then I’ve got the app open at the moment on my phone. Because I’ve got, like, you kindly sent me a code to access this. And one of the benefits of membership is you can you can swivel through the variety of maps. So there’s open cycle map is probably the kind of the base one, but then you’ve got a whole bunch of other ones, including, like, an open like a satellite view, as well. But when you look at products, like Apple, Apple Maps, net, right now, only certain cities are being mapped, you know, with with bike routes, by Apple, but you can imagine it in the fullness of time, because they are not just they’re not providing just the routes, they’re also providing the the actual maps. So you know, they’re sending cars and people on foot around getting incredibly detailed maps, presumably, you know, with with speed limits, and signs read by artificial intelligence to learn and populate that map. So do they not have this incredible advantage, you know, companies like Apple, but once once they get up to speed, and once they you know, do other, you know, many other cities apart from just London and certain key cities, when they can map everywhere, they’re gonna eat you for for breakfast, aren’t they because they provide the routing and the maps whereas you don’t provide the maps, you’re you’re you’re sucking your maps in.
Bruna de Guimaraes 11:47
I mean, we do provide the navigations for for the users as well, right? So the differentiator really is just the community aspect. You can get this information from open street maps, we also use it and we also the Apple can do it. But the community aspect, as I mentioned before, is really what makes bike math different. You want to as a person, especially in the industry, nowadays, where technology is just consuming. Everything AI is consuming everything you want to trust the human, especially when it comes to a safety feature. And that’s why I like to say that safety is one of our biggest values, if not the biggest value that we have a sitemap because you want to trust the system, you want to trust what you’re using, and you trust more a person, a neighbour, a friend that has been through that, than actually technology nowadays, it’s kind of a paradox. But at least that’s what I see more and more happening. We want to become more and more human, every single day more.
Carlton Reid 13:00
In Germany, and in places like Cambridge in the UK, you basically have, you know, down to streetlamp level on open on OpenStreetMap, where the community of map users and map contributors have contributed so much. It’s just so so much more dense than than even an Ordnance Survey map or just you know, you know, even the best topographical maps will never have this level of detail that you’ve got on Open Street Map. But that’s that’s true in certain areas, and certain countries where there are an awful lot of willing contributors who are doing that. But in places you know, there are there are there, there are parts of the world where there aren’t that many tech tech savvy people populating maps. So you’re not going to have some cities are going to be complete. I’m presuming going to be almost completely dark to Open Street Map type products. So how do you how do you grow in in those places where the mapping probably isn’t anywhere near as good as somewhere like Germany, or places like Cambridge in the UK?
Bruna de Guimaraes 14:14
Yeah, that’s, again, the community aspect is what is fascinating about bike map. We have users that travelled the world planning trips and planning routes through throughout the world. They do big, long cycling tours. And that’s how they populate the app for us. We have most of these places, being populated by existing users, for example, in Germany, they are Germans, but they’re travelling the world, or they are Brazilians and they’re travelling the world. And this is where it makes these routes even more special from the point that you actually mentioned
Carlton Reid 14:58
and how do you know The routes that are in there are put kind of like inverted commas here, like family friendly routes, because you could have a whole bunch of, of really keen cyclists who will take the routes that they want to use, but it’s not the route that you know, a brand new cyclists would want to take. So how do you differentiate between the routes that are in your system that have been genuinely done, but be made by very, very keen cyclists who don’t mind traffic, compared to totally traffic free? How do you differentiate?
Bruna de Guimaraes 15:32
Yeah, when you’re actually looking for a route, you’re able to see all these specifications that the user used elevation, the type of ground if it was a gravel, if it was, also, if the bike was a mountain bike, if it was a road bike, you can see these differentiators. And that’s actually what makes them the user choose these routes? Yeah, and there was another question in the beginning that I forgot if you could repeat it,
Carlton Reid 16:03
where there are areas of the world that don’t have that much mapping. How do you get into there?
Bruna de Guimaraes 16:11
Yeah, that’s what I meant before with the, with the cyclists that just travelled the world. But the I remember the question was, was regarding the the people that are more savvy right there, they’re able to do it. They’re not scared of any route that comes into their way. But that’s also our app, you’re able to come in there and say, hey, I want that in that in that route. And explore it and really, find the best one that’s possible for you that we’re actually going to create this profile that is going to fit you and we’re going to suggest to you the best routes for you. So for example, if you’re more of a safer person and you have a road bike, then we can recommend you a specific route that actually fits your profile better. And if you’re more an adventurous one, that are looking for a way longer, or way, way harder with elevations that are not something that a beginner would use.
Carlton Reid 17:13
So tell me what you get with the free version of of your app. And then tell me what you get when you start paying.
Bruna de Guimaraes 17:23
Yes, so with the free version we have recording, and you can plan your route. So you can discover routes all over the world. You can also plan it, if you’re thinking of taking a trip with your friends. And you actually want to do it, you can do it with blank map and the free version. And you can record your route. So let’s say you want to go for for this route, you can record it. And then the end of this route is created for other users. This is what you can use with our free app. With a paying app, actually, you can have multiple map options. And you can navigate, you have turn by turn navigation, you can download the maps as well. So maybe you go into the area that you don’t have connection. And also you don’t want to use all the battery of your phone. Because you know it could it takes a lot of battery. And yeah, besides that we have more and more features coming in also with your like routing profiles, as I mentioned, and on the free version as well. You can keep on populating the app with discriminative reports.
Carlton Reid 18:35
I know when I would use it, if I’m in a in a different city than I would fire it up. That’s when I fire up navigation apps. But most people are not using you know that they’re just staying to the roughly the same place. So is this something that can also recommend the routes that you could go for, say, a nice a nice day trip? Can you can you like what how can what can you plot with your app?
Bruna de Guimaraes 19:04
Yes, exactly. So that also goes back to the other question about these routes that the people post into our into our system, they all come as well with pictures, you can also see what happened in these community reports. Resting spots, you can then plan around that’s actually based on that. So say for example, you want to stop at this restaurant and actually have a nice beer or you want you’re going with your kids and you want to make sure that it goes through a playground, because you want to have a resting time there while your kids play in the playground. Or you have an E bike and you want to make sure that you actually charge your bike midway or in case something happens that you’re actually able to also charge your bike so you can plan your route through that and that’s what The community gives back to us these informations that we get from the community based on the routes that they written. That’s all there for people as well to also plan their route and find this route and proud for themselves.
Carlton Reid 20:14
So tell me about your privacy level, because I’ve just clicked into a route in my local area. And it says, actually looks like a German fella has uploaded this this particular route in near my near my, where I live. So how are you? How are you? What are you doing with privacy? How are you protecting anonymizing people? Give us your privacy. Settings.
Bruna de Guimaraes 20:44
Yes. So I mean, we’re coming, we’re compliant with all the GDPR rules. So this is super important for us. And you can make all of these routes are private. So all the information that you have there can be private, it’s only public, if you want to be public, no one is going to see it unless you actually want to see it. And a profile is created automatically for you. And we don’t have any access to that until you actually allow us to have it.
Carlton Reid 21:17
Okay. And I’m also still in the app here. And I’m obviously on like, premium membership, because I’m getting all of these these things, the basically, how much are people having to pay to get the premium? What are your What are your payment, subscription levels?
Bruna de Guimaraes 21:40
So we have a monthly plan, and we have a yearly plan. And in our yearly plan, which is the best one is 49 euros
Carlton Reid 21:50
per year. Okay, and you’re getting full detection in that as well. How you doing for detection? Is that from the phone from?
Bruna de Guimaraes 21:57
That’s from the phone? Yeah. So if your phone is on, you’re on your bike, and it needs to be iOS. Right? So then if it’s in your bike, and it falls, then it gives a very big noise, that it loud that it announces that you actually fell from the bike so you’re able to
Carlton Reid 22:14
get safe. I’m presuming you’ve got Android as well.
Bruna de Guimaraes 22:18
Yes, we’re just implementing that. Alright, so
Carlton Reid 22:21
this is basically an iOS for a long time. And it’s only just becoming Android.
Bruna de Guimaraes 22:25
No. So we the app, we have an Android app. I thought you meant from the fall detection.
Carlton Reid 22:30
All right. Okay. So how long have you had the Android version of the of the full app compared to the was this originally iOS?
Bruna de Guimaraes 22:37
No, it was originally a web app. So we started all in the web app. And then for the last seven, six years, we started with mobile apps at the same time. So iOS, and Android.
Carlton Reid 22:55
And what’s the difference? Compared to us? Have you got many more IOs than Android? What’s What’s the split?
Bruna de Guimaraes 23:02
Yes, so 70% of our users are iOS users. So it’s a really big majority of our users are using iOS. And then the remaining ones are using Android. And they bought they use both web app and the and the app.
Carlton Reid 23:23
So that’s maybe a good question I had before about the the apple potentially eating your breakfast, because if they come out with an all singing, all dancing, every city, kind of bike routing, it does take away from you. I know you’d say yes, we have the community. But that’s community, but ya gotta pay for it. So are you monitoring? Are you looking at what Apple’s doing constantly? Or do you think they’ll always be so far away because of that community element, you don’t have to worry about what they’re doing city by city.
Bruna de Guimaraes 23:55
It’s not what we have to worry about. Because I think competition is always actually making us challenge ourselves and make us look into what the future brings. And I see Apple Maps, especially there is a partner. So for example, we’ve been featured multiple times in Apple, we’ve been featured at the WWDC, we do a lot of partnerships with them in regards to our features. And I think the market is very big, especially for cyclists. When you think about a generalised tool, like Apple Maps or like Google Maps, it’s it’s good. Yeah, it’s it does what it needs to do. But you as a cyclist, you wanting to actually plan a route and have an experience. You actually search for an app that actually gives you that that is focused on that. That was also why we never wanted to go into trailing or we never wanted to go hiking. We want to focus on site plus, because we know that there’s people and the market is there for really just cyclists in the cyclists experience.
Carlton Reid 25:08
So you still have the web app that will have, you can plan and do all sorts of stuff on the web, download is whatever and then and then follow up on your phone. Is that that you can do that? Yes. And plan. So you were saying before about, you know, we’re going to be adding features that, you know, when people pay for this, then they’ll be getting, what have you got anything? What amazing features do you have kind of potentially lined up?
Bruna de Guimaraes 25:38
Yeah, so for example, as I mentioned, we have the planning and tracking, navigating your routes. But if you think about it, more and more people, especially the young generation, they are actually using their bike as well for commuting. And they want to combine that. So imagine if you think about, Hey, you, I don’t know if you’re a fair parent, but maybe you take your kid to school. And you want to make sure that you take the fastest route possible, or the safest route possible with your child. But on your way back, after you actually taking your kid to school, you want to make sure that you take the fastest one back, it doesn’t necessarily need to be the safest. So we want to make sure that these are things that we’re actually giving to you and showing to you what’s the best route possible for you to do that. Also through weather, so you can also get weather, push notifications, and telling you, Hey, today is going to rain, maybe you want to leave today, and maybe want to leave now. And instead of 10 minutes from now, or in 30 minutes from now. And the same thing, of course with a personalised heat map, that’s when we think about actually a big route and planning your rides. Getting very specific ones tips on the Discover, and also from your profile, the best route possible for you.
Carlton Reid 27:10
And then I’m presuming I haven’t actually done this yet. Even though I have got one on my wrist at the moment, I’m assuming the app goes on to the smart an Apple Watch. So you don’t have to have the iPhone on your handlebars, you can have it in your pocket and be directed turn by turn on your wrist in effect
Bruna de Guimaraes 27:31
Exactly. And this is something that’s going to also be released very soon as well. We have the new updates from the WWDC that we’re actually going to be releasing for our watch OS. And that’s not only for iOS, but we’re also doing it for Android for the wherewith. So you can actually have navigation through your watch. You don’t need to have your phone on the handle bar, as you said, and you can really know where you’re going and receive the turn by turn navigation there.
Carlton Reid 28:07
And how are you reaching new people? How are you? How are you? How are you getting out there.
Bruna de Guimaraes 28:13
So we do it all through organic growth. And we have our marketing and our social media, really just trying to be there and talking to your users. So as I said, the community is a really big aspect for us is a really big point and value that really this word. How do you how do you say it in English word by word or word to word for word. So word of mouth and the very, what I like to call the organic growth from our app store, App Store and Google Play Store. This is really what takes us there. Do you get a
Carlton Reid 28:55
feeling from your from the kind of profiles you’ve got? How many people are incredibly keen cyclists? And how many are for want of a better phrase like new cyclists, you know, potentially worried cyclists who are using your app? Because they really want to have something to hold their hand when they’re starting out. Do you have any inkling of of that kind of granular knowledge of your your customer base? Yes.
Bruna de Guimaraes 29:29
So this is something that we’ve been trying to learn more and more also ever since I started like them. So really try to understand our users and talk to them. So the majority of them are actually 40 year old white, retired male, and they are doing it for fun. They enjoy this and they enjoy this route and they need this care and they need this trust from the system and I think this is where really ties together. But we have more and more younger people using the app, as I mentioned, and using it as well for community for commuting. And we’re trying to combine that now. Because we have these people that are using and they’re riding our streets every single day. And we want them as well to populate data in the app. Also, for the people that are going on these rides on the weekend, like our main user base, that is the male for the year 40. Plus, and retired.
Carlton Reid 30:36
Hmm. Because I’m gonna, I’m after if you’ve been sent the I did do an app like this many, many years ago, the bike hub app. The reason the reason for doing that? It was by the Bicycle Association of the UK, and it was in effect, it definitely wasn’t in that demographic. That’s the bulk of your customers. It was the brand new, the worried cyclists, the people who don’t know how to get from A to B, and think, Well, I really can’t do that because I’m surrounded by major roads. So it was very much to get brand new people to be comfortable at finding routes that would take them in safety. So as many bike you know cycleways as possible, all that kind of stuff. It was very much aimed at newbies, rather than it at at keen cyclists. Do you think that was wrong, you should should have been, you know, we should have you should have really targeted at the keen cyclists because they’re the ones that are going to, you know, power the app forward.
Bruna de Guimaraes 31:39
I think knowing your ICPs key, sorry, your ideal customer profile is, is key. If that was for you, then that’s your the problem you’re trying to solve. And the solution you’re trying to give. And for us is really the people that are not adventurous, they’re not athletes, but they’re comfortable riding, they want a safe route, but they are not doing it for the first time. They don’t want to go into dangerous places, but they are also not wanting to be handhold it all the time.
Carlton Reid 32:18
Do you white label for any?
Bruna de Guimaraes 32:20
No, we don’t. That’s all of us. And we have a very straightforward B to C model.
Carlton Reid 32:29
But the only reason I’m asking that is because an enormous amount of cyclists actually using the roads right now in lots of cities are actually food delivery cyclists who their apps, you know from Deliveroo from whatever system they are being routed all the time. By ineffective very, you know, algorithm similar to yours. And I’m just wondering if you provided any of your, your know how to these companies keep those the delivery cyclist safe if they’ve got something that you know, benefits, more things that you’ve got
Bruna de Guimaraes 33:10
100% and partnerships is something that we’re definitely focusing on, since this summer, not only with food deliveries, but also hotels tourism. And this is really a market that is really open for us. But white labelling, it’s not something we’re considering at the moment because it takes away the focus of the product and building the product for the users that we actually want to keep improving. And, but partnerships and actually finding a way to work together without white labelling is something that it’s growing a lot in the summer.
Carlton Reid 33:47
How do you describe how you’re doing this partnership so the tourism partnerships that you like offering like one week subscriptions to a hotel guest or something? What are you
Bruna de Guimaraes 33:56
exactly so then we can have a specific amount of like the hotels would pay us X amount of money every month and then they get this code that they all have their guests can get can use the app for free as a premium version for one month for example. And then we hope that we actually convert them afterwards and for the hotel is actually very good because they get an app and that they can offer tour their their clients and also with routes that are populated by the people that have been there.
Carlton Reid 34:28
Is that the end of the show, and then a second I’ll get Bruna to give us an elevator pitch for Bikemap. But here’s David with a short commercial interlude.
David Bernstein 34:38
This podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern understand that while a large cargo bike can carry oodles of stuff, many of us prefer something a little more manageable. That’s why they’ve come up with the HSD e-cargobike for folks with big aspirations to go car free, delivered in a compact size, with its rear shock, 280 kilos, and a combined hauling capacity of 180 kilos. The robust new HSD is stable and easy to manoeuvre, even when under load. And with its Bosch eBIKE SYSTEM tested and certified to meet the highest UL standards for electric and fire safety you’ll be able to share many worryfree adventures with a loved one whether it’s your kiddo or Nan. Visit www.ternbicycles. That’s te r n turn bicycles.com to learn more
Carlton Reid 35:38
Now, we should have done this right at the beginning. But I just wanted to start talking rather than put you on the spot here. Give me the elevator pitch, even though we’ve talked about all the benefits, and we will probably have done it just give me your very short elevator pitch of what you say if you if you had to go to an investor and you had to describe this product to somebody who knows nothing about why people would use this give it give us that pitch that you would need in order to a dragon dens you know, a shark tank type environment?
Bruna de Guimaraes 36:14
Yeah. So Bikemap is the market leader for this community generated cycling maps and routing. So besides the maps and routing, from 8.6 million users that we have out there and 13 million unique routes that we have there, worldwide, we’re also how helping you find the best route for yourself. So really understanding you as a user and giving you real time information of your routes. Okay,
Carlton Reid 36:46
I’m an investor. And I’m going to come up with a tough question here. Of those 8.6 million users, how many have you converted to paying customers?
Bruna de Guimaraes 36:57
Oh, that’s a question that we need an NDA for. But as I mentioned, we are a platform and we are really a community generated company that our vision is to be the world’s number one platform for a safer and community powered cycling world of tomorrow. So really having this in mind that it doesn’t matter if you’re free. It doesn’t matter if you’re a premium, as long as you’re keeping us to build this community and that you’re populating the app to help people out there and to help the the fellow cyclists out there. That is our goal.
Carlton Reid 37:34
Excellent, even within the NDA, and I didn’t get the answer to that I kind of assumed I wouldn’t. So So tell us now we’ll end we’ll end up now on where do people get information from? And where could they perhaps contact you or see you on social media? So two things, where did they get the app? And how do they find out about you?
Bruna de Guimaraes 37:59
That’s a great question. You can find us at bike map.net on websites, on Instagram at bike map. And of course, you can find this bike map in any app store and Google Play Store that you have.
Carlton Reid 38:14
Okay, and you?
Bruna de Guimaraes 38:16
You can find me on LinkedIn and my name is Bruna de Guimaraes and you will find me attached to bike map
Carlton Reid 38:27
Thanks to Bruna de Guimaraes there and thanks to you for listening to Episode 338 of the Spokesmen podcast brought to you in association with Tern bicycles. Show notes, and more can be found at the-spokesmen.com The next episode will be available later in September. But meanwhile, get out there and ride …
5th September 2023
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 337: Cycle.Travel: In Conversation with Richard Fairhurst
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUEST: Richard Fairhurst
TOPICS: Interview with Cycle.travel routing website founder Richard Fairhurst.
- Bikemap: In conversation with Bruna de Guimaraes
Carlton Reid, September 5, 2023
Read more… - Cycle.Travel: In Conversation with Richard Fairhurst
Carlton Reid, September 5, 2023
Read more… - ‘We’re crazy about human bikes’: Mike Sinyard on e-bikes, the new Tarmac SL8 and more
Carlton Reid, August 10, 2023
Read more… - The Potential for Cargo Bikes
Carlton Reid, July 17, 2023
Read more… - From Bam-bu to Dott via Sustrans, Fettle, Flitbike and the Diagram Club
Carlton Reid, July 12, 2023
Read more… - Playing God: Bike Infrastructure Folks at Move Conference
Carlton Reid, July 10, 2023
Read more… - Emily Kerr
Carlton Reid, June 27, 2023
Read more… - Carmageddon — LTNs, Tokyo and the libertarian case against cars
Carlton Reid, June 19, 2023
Read more… - Andy Boenau — White Collar Epidemic
Carlton Reid, June 13, 2023
Read more… -
Hilltrek’s revival of a 1950s cycling jacket: the Greenspot
Carlton Reid, June 5, 2023
Read more…
TRANSCRIPT
Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 337 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Tuesday 5th of September 2023.
David Bernstein 0:28
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.
Carlton Reid 1:04
I’m Carlton Reid. And over the next two episodes, uploaded at once, I talked to the folks in charge of cycle routing apps bikemap of Austria and cycle.travel of Oxfordshire. Episode 338 is with Bikemap’s Chief Operations Officer Bruna de Guimaraes , but this episode is a chat with Cycle.travel’s. Richard Fairhurst. Both interviews were done remotely with me firing up the desktop versions and playing with the smartphone apps. So here’s Richard …
Richard Fairhurst 1:44
Yeah, so I live in this place called charlbury which is about 20 miles outside Oxford, just on the edge of the Cotswolds. And it’s lovely this was held on the National Cycle network, which is always good also has a train station, which is good for somewhere this size. I think Mr. Beeching must have overlooked us somehow. But yeah, lovely place and very cycling friendly,
Carlton Reid 2:06
Which is like kind of helps what you do then.
Richard Fairhurst 2:08
Yeah, totally, totally. And it’s, it’s always been. I mean, obviously, Oxford and Oxfordshire is a bit of a hotbed of cycling in a lot of ways. But yes, as I say, we have a National Cycle network routes going pretty much past my house. And that was actually something that I was involved in setting up. I’m a sauce trans volunteer, in this part of the world and helped design the route. And one of the things I’ve always tried to do with cycle travel is have it so that it will find you a route which is good, as good as a human designer, that if you want to go from I don’t know, Oxford to let’s say Coventry or something like that. And no one has set out a route that goes that way, then within the confines of the infrastructure, it should find you the best route possible. At least that’s the plan.
Carlton Reid 3:01
So in another hotbed of cycling, Cambridgeshire, you have Cyclestreets, and Cyclestreets that I know, cuz I used them for my the bike hub app many, many years ago. Now that that cleverness comes from the way that it routes. So it’s the routing engine is the real powerhouse there. And lots of sites and lots of maps have used that routing engine for their own apps, but you’ve clearly using OpenStreetMap. We’ll get into that in a second. But so how are you physically generating the route? So when you said that it’s like a human? How do you make your routing engine like a human?
Richard Fairhurst 3:44
OK, so this is an interesting one. So I think cyclestreets, I have huge amounts of time for. I know, Martin quite well. And we’ve worked on a couple of projects together. There, their angle is more towards commuting, and practical, everyday cycling, cycle travel, you can use it for commuting, and people do. But it also has really quite a strong tilt towards leisure cycling, and touring and longer rides like that. So if you are going from landscapes join groups, then cycle travel will find your good route. If you go from New York to San Francisco, it will hopefully find you a good route. But as you say, it’s all about the routing engine. The routing engine effectively with any route planner is a set of opinions. It’s a set of opinions about which road is good to cycle on and which one isn’t. cycled travels, opinions are obviously very much aligned to mine. But also, I’ve been involved in OpenStreetMap for 19 years now, pretty much since the first few months of the project, and know how the data works there quite well. So there’s a lot of sort of little things there. I think you know, if we’re going along a track in France, and it’s rated as a grade two track, well, actually the French mappers are a bit more, a bit more optimistic about the state of the unpaved tracks and the British mappers. So let’s mark it down a little bit, because yeah, that’s how they map things in France. So it’s the sort of the accumulation of all of that sort of knowledge. Pretty much gives cycled travel. It’s its personality, but also its opinions on what sort of route to follow.
Carlton Reid 5:28
So clearly, cyclestreets, the streets part is the clue there. And the dot travel is the clue there. So that’s, that’s, that’s how you’re differentiating is just your more long distance in effect?
Richard Fairhurst 5:40
Yeah, absolutely. Yes, it’s very much just says on the tin. And I remember the first time in sort of first couple of years at the site that someone emailed me and said, I’ve just used it to plan a route from Shropshire to Rome, was absolutely great. It took me down to farm track in France, which I would rather not have cycled longer apart from that it was spot on. And I thought, yeah, okay, this is what it’s meant to be about. This is the idea.
Carlton Reid 6:04
And if you’ve spent nearly 19 years on OpenStreetMap, you’re nearly on 10 years for cycle.travel. So 2014 is one of the first references I can find online. Maybe you were doing before then. So is that 2014 When you started or was it bit before it was end of 2013.
Richard Fairhurst 6:22
So a little bit of background. This is kind of it’s a bit of a change of career for me. Before this, I was a magazine editor used to editor magazine called Waterways World, which if you know anything about canals, boats, rivers, that sort of thing you may have stumbled across. And boating waterways is always something I’ve done. And for one of the magazines I’d worked for, I’d got into the habit of drawing the maps for it, because we needed a map to show where the canals went. And I sort of fell into cartography that way. And from there, it was a reasonably obvious thing, because I love cycling, I always love cycling, to start to draw cycle maps. And as I went along with a, it may be I can make a bit more of a career out of this. But also, I see these routing sites out there, I see that you can ask Google or whatever it might be for a route from Oxford to Woucester, and it’s not the route that I would want to cycle along. I do not feel happy with choosing the routes that it’s selected. So I’m going to have go to my own. And it’s absolutely taken off from there. And I’d be delighted with how much people enjoy it.
Carlton Reid 7:31
Hmm. And there’s also Heritage magazine. You had a So describe that directory waterways World Heritage magazine. It did you train in that did your How did you get into that didn’t get in to begin with?
Richard Fairhurst 7:47
Okay, so age 14, or 15 or so I was your archetypal 1980s, computer geek. And I had a Amstrad home computer, you might remember those, not that dissimilar to spectrums, and things like that. And I had to play around with it as teenagers tend to and got reasonably okay programming things on it. And for three, one thing or another, I ended up being the freelance technical writer for a magazine called Amstrad Action. And Amstrad Action has a bit of cycling connection in this it was the first magazine ever published by Future publishing, itt started the entire company off. And obviously, they went on to do Cycling Plus, mountain bike magazines, and cyclingnews and things like that. So that’s all I’m selections fault. Ultimately, I then went off to university, but I got started in, in journalism after this. So it came as a reasonably obvious thing to do, after university to go for jobs on magazines. I already had this on my CV. And because I enjoyed boating, I went to the canal magazines. First of all, I then spent a while, as you say, editing heritage magazine, which was a sister magazine to the canal magazine that worked out at the time. And that was an interesting experience. Because you think, okay, heritage magazine, it’s all about going around the countryside and country houses and that sort of thing. It must be quite a nice fluffy thing to work on. And it is. But on the other hand, actually, 90% of the readership were Americans, and they knew a huge amount about country houses and about Shakespeare and all of that, you know, this was their identity. They loved the old country, as it were. And I’ve never been that great on Shakespeare, to be honest. So I spent a few months there and it was good fun. But I said after that, I’m going going back to the canal, some controversy about canals, because I know about that.
Carlton Reid 9:41
On your on your site, you describe yourself as an Open Street Map. OpenStreetMap. Activist, so that’s not just a contributor. You’re a bit more than just a contributor on open streets. I was trying to find out the segway from Heritage Magazine. Then waterways world into how you got into being quite active on the OpenStreetMap. Community. Yeah.
Richard Fairhurst 10:07
So as you say, I have spent all this time with cycling magazines and waterway magazines and then got into drawing the maps for them. And there’s always been a problem with any map that you’ve got to get the source data from somewhere unless you literally go out and survey absolutely everything yourself, which gets impractical when you’re doing a whole new canal every month, then you’ve got to get the data from somewhere. And in historically, in Britain, you would get it from the Ordnance Survey. And at the time, Ordnance Survey would basically charge you through the nose through any data that they might daintily have. They’re so much better now. But that was the case back then. And I kind of worked out that, well, the thing about canals is they haven’t moved much. Most of them were built before 1850, I can find some old maps out of copyright. And I can just trace the canals off there. And we’re fine, we bought them suddenly got all sorts of data. So this became, this became a little bit of a project. And I ended up collecting the entirety of the Ordnance Survey one inch maps of England and Wales for the 1930s and 1940s, which was at the time, the last set that were out of copyright. So I found a place that would scan stuff in bulk for you, and said, you know, will you be prepared to scan this? And they said, Yep, two quid a map, we’ll do it. So I gave them 150 maps, they gave me a DVD with scans of the board on which was quite something. And then this guy called Steve Coast started OpenStreetMap. And all of a sudden, I think well hang on. This is a it’s a really interesting project for what he’s doing. But also, I’ve got all these old maps. And it’s not just canals that haven’t moved. Most of the railways, lots of country roads, lots of rivers, obviously, maybe this would be an interesting angle to work together on this. So this was about four months after OpenStreetMap had started. I said, Okay, I’m interested in maps, I’ve got this sort of stuff going on. I’d like to be part of this. And so I’ve been asked that as part of OpenStreetMap from its very early days. And in the first year, we literally had about six or seven or eight paths and roads in Regent’s Park. And that was the sum total of the world map. And now it’s everything is everything everywhere. It’s astonishing how it’s, and I think he did my great surprise for how the project was taking off was, I don’t know, maybe sort of seven or eight years into the project, I went on holiday to China. And it was one of these sort of things where, obviously, you’ve got fairly limited freedom of movement there. But we it mean that we had good guests, good guides, and a good itinerary planned out and all of that. And we were walking on some fairly obscure paths in a rice farming area. And the Chinese government is very anxious about people surveying their country, they don’t like it too, you know, you’ve got to have all of these permits to allow you to do this, and they don’t get permits to OpenStreetMap volunteers. And so this, this is a bit of a problem. But as a good OpenStreetMap activist, I can’t not survey where I’ve gotten here. And this is unthinkable. So I had little Garmin GPS recording a track tucked into my side pocket hoping that no one was going to notice it. And okay, fine, I do that I get a bunch of railways as well, because we travelled around by train, get all of this stuff, go back home ready to upload this into OpenStreetMap ready to map it. And I find out this already been done. It’s already been done by a bunch of Germans who’ve been to China on holiday and have done all of this six months a year before me at that point, I thought well, you know, okay, this is taking off. If even these remote places in China, where you go to are being mapped by volunteers, then this is really gonna go somewhere. And it has you know, now, now Facebook now Microsoft Now Amazon, all of these big companies use OpenStreetMap and that’s the thing we started building 19 years ago.
Carlton Reid 14:09
And then you’re talking about the effect. We’re a bit of a word a bunch of geeks basically. You know, taking GPS tracks and then uploading and then digitising etc, etc. So they tend to be geeks. I think I can’t be too but doing all effort as a volunteer you know, that’s very that takes a lot of time. Obviously a lot of expertise. But then you’re translating that into into a business. So with with your with cycle dot travel. And why did you charge so why why is cycled not travel, not charging and other other navigation sites, websites and apps that are bike friendly? bike friendly routing,
Richard Fairhurst 15:01
they do charge. So why don’t you charge, I could talk for hours about cycle navigation apps, business models is a fascinating subject, or at least its history. So if you look at the really big guys, then you look at people like Strava, or commute or whoever it might be their, you know, their business model, as you say, it’s very much based on charging, the standard thing for this sort of site is that this sort of app in particular, is that you pay five pounds a month, and get turn by turn routing, and you get offline maps and things like that. Now, the thing about Stryver and commute is they have got a staff of 1000s of think commuter employ about 120 people, they have got marketing budgets, commensurate with that, these are the big guys, I am me sitting in a little converted barn in the back of my house in Charlbury, I can’t compete on that level. So I’m not going to fight that game. Instead, what I try and do is say, Okay, I’m going to put this up there, I really hope that it finds good roots for people, I find, I hope that someone who was going to use it to go from Shropshire to Rome, or just had someone going across America with it, we have people doing routes across France across Britain all the time, I hope that people will do that, find a good route and be so happy with the site that they choose to donate. So what you can do with cycling travel as you can become a supporter, you can give two pounds a month or five pounds a month, whatever you see fit. And you know, you didn’t get a few extra baubles for that you get a few maps, which I have to pay for. So Ordnance Survey maps, IGN in France, that sort of thing. But by and large, it’s largely the same. But I hope that people will be sufficiently happy with the site and with the routes that it finds support them, that they will choose to support it. And they do. You know, others now, hundreds of people have signed up to become supporters of cycle travel, it pays its own way in terms of service costs. And all of that is getting towards paying its own way. In terms of my time on it, I think I’m not that far off. And that that’s brilliant, because it means I can spend more time doing what I love. And it means that people get great holidays, great bike routes. So that’s absolutely what I’m in it for.
Carlton Reid 17:24
So, as you said, there are quite a few other sites and apps out there. What are they doing? Well, and what are they not doing? Well? Can you can you be rude in that way?
Richard Fairhurst 17:38
Okay, so Well, I’ll tell you the easy one, which is the site that I have absolutely the most respectful and that’s Ride With GPS, I think they are brilliant. They really know their audience. Their proposition is quite different from what I do. Their proposition is more about organising routes, saving routes, saving rides. They’ve got an absolute suite of editing tools for your groups, all sorts of things that, you know, I would never dream of doing a month of Sundays. I think, you know, obviously, I am biassed, I think their core A to B routine is not as strong cycle travels, it will put you on a busy road more often than I do. But I think you know, for their audience, what they do is absolutely fantastic. They’re bootstrapped. They haven’t taken external funding. They’ve got a small team of about I think 15 to 20 people working in Portland in Oregon, now the great cycling city, and what they do is brilliant. So yeah. What I was gonna say, which is nice about other people, I mean, you know, both both Strava and commuter ecosystems, really Strava for a lot of people is cycling commute has all of this stuff where it gets you into their apps, and all of the safe, your highlights and all of that sort of thing. But which is the sort of thing you’ve got, you’ve got 120 people to do, and they pay influencers to go out and have great rides and say, does this with Caboose and that sort of thing. It’s a different level of doing things. And you know, I have plenty of time for them. As I say up cycled travels, strength, I think is the is the routing and the actual routes that it will find for you. But yeah, a lot of a lot of time for that. And of course, as you mentioned earlier, cyclestreets cyclestreets have been doing this for a long time longer than I have. They have absolutely got the city routing down to a tee. If you are going across London or Cambridge, then cyclestreets will find you a terrific route and always has done so. Yeah. And another obviously another great thing that cyclestreets does, is that they do a lot of advocacy, advocacy type work. They work with Robin lovely cert active travel England now they do stuff with local authorities. And in fact, the other year, I was involved in a project with them and TfL because TfL TfL a few years ago, spent, I think 2 million pounds on producing this cycle infrastructure database, which is this massive collection of data on every single bit of cycle infrastructure in London, it’s quite an endeavour. And this was fine. And they used it for their own purposes. And it was just sitting there and they thought, well hang on. If we get this data into OpenStreetMap, then we can actually get it out there and used by people. So you get it into OpenStreetMap, it then feeds into all the different mapping apps. And then people will start to be able to use this knowledge that TfL have gathered about where all the good infrastructure is. And so we spent a few months working on that it has started to filter through. And you will find now that most of the mapping apps, not just me, not just cyclestreets will now make better decisions in London as a result of this. And nice to follow up about this is that TfL, then, last year had a cycle routing Summit. And they invited me for cycle travel, Martin from cycle streets, and a bunch of other people from the big guys. So from Apple from Google, and such, like, and basically they put Martin and me up on stage and said, Okay, so this is cycle travel, this is cycle streets, they are finding good routes across London. And we would like you from Apple and you from Google to talk to these guys and find out how they’re doing it. Because they’re finding better routes. And we if we’re going to spend 2 billion pounds on building cycle super highways across London, we sure as heck want your apps to direct people to use them. And at that point, they weren’t doing it. I think Apple are doing quite interesting things with cycle boosting in cities. And they’re starting to do that. Google, I mean, Google have a product for cycle routing, but it’s it’s tuned to San Francisco, and it doesn’t necessarily work that well in the rest of world some places it does. So
Carlton Reid 21:45
you’re right. I mean, Apple, Apple is doing some very interesting things, obviously have got very deep pockets. And and can do interesting things. Do you think even with the deepest pocket in the world, you’re never really going to catch up with OpenStreetMap? Or do you think something like Apple could, you know, the way that they’re mapping everything that satellites, you know, they’re sending cars round, they’re sending bikes round and pedestrians round a bit like Google Streetview are doing? And then everything is, you know, obviously read so you know, you’re getting the speed limit is read from the round holes that the cameras are that AI is spotting, or do you think there’ll always be something about the crowdsource nature of OpenStreetMap that will always be done that how much money you pump into a map? Absolutely, yes.
Richard Fairhurst 22:36
OpenStreetMaps great strength is that it is an agglomeration of local knowledge. Basically, every single contributor brings their local knowledge to the map. So if you know about a little cut through, then you put that into OpenStreetMap, it might only be 1050 metres between two streets, but it could save two miles off a bike route. And that goes in that instantly makes everyone’s ride better. It’s very, very difficult for even the best street view cameras and AI processing to pick up that level of detail. And so I think OpenStreetMap has always got that knowledge, but also OpenStreetMap is, to large extent built by cyclists. Certainly in Britain, we found that a lot of the earliest OSM contributors were cyclists who wanted a decent map for cycling, and couldn’t get on anywhere else. It’s really notable that one of the earliest breakthroughs of the project was when that smart smart guy figured out how to reverse engineer the mapping format for Garmin GPS. So within a few months of this, people had got OpenStreetMap on their Garmins as the base map all of a sudden, and it had all of these cut throughs in and it had the MCN. And they had all of this sort of thing. And that obviously that then made people’s bike routing experience the cycling experience so much better. And I think it’d be very, very hard for Apple or Google with all the AI in the world to catch up with that they will be able to give you the best freeway routing experience in San Francisco, because they’ve got, you know, surveying cars going along with caught with cameras on every single angle. But they didn’t put that sort of effort into cycling. And last week, I think it was actually on one of the Silicon Valley Tech forums, there was an anonymous poster from someone who used to work for Google Maps, saying, Yeah, I used to work there. And I tried to put a bit more effort into the cycle routing, and he got stomped on from on high for privacy reasons. They said, No, we can’t really do this. And they don’t work there anymore. And they said, you know, cycling isn’t really a priority for Google to be honest. It doesn’t make them a lot of money. They are ultimately a self driving car company these days. OpenStreetMap is to a large extent Made by cyclists, it’s in our interest to make the routine better.
Carlton Reid 25:02
Hmm. So, with your Heritage magazine background, I don’t know how much you know about cycling history. But of course, cyclists have always been really keen on mapping. You know, the the Bartholomew maps, the cyclists are very interested in the, you know, the, the route books that cyclists created in the 1870s 1880s, that incredibly interested in, in road surfaces. And I’ve written whole books about this. Very interested, but it just in mapping in general, so like the CTC work, such as Touring Club, as was very, very involved with the mapping companies. One of the maps I used in my book was a, which were the CTC was heavily involved with for a long time. And was you basically using crowdsourcing to do this an early version of Open Street Map, where they were where they were mapping road surfaces. So there was a there was a batholomew map where every single street surface was mapped. And if you look at the bottom, we oh, how was this mapped? It was done by cyclists who were then contributing, you know, their information to the local council. He was then putting it or she was probably he was putting it through to Bartholomew. And then they produce these incredibly detailed maps of you know, here’s where the tarmac was, here’s where the asphalt or here’s where the macadam was, here’s where the wooden streets were. And it’s these incredibly dense, almost Open Street Map dense maps of London and done by cyclists in the 18 1890s. So you are in a rich tradition there, Richard?
Richard Fairhurst 26:47
Absolutely. And that’s, that’s terrific. Because, again, it’s looking at cycling has never had the money that’s behind the auto industry. If you are Apple or Google, then it’s in your financial interest to plough huge amounts of money into into car routing, because that’s where the money is. Cyclists, as you say, do it for themselves and always have done and I think OpenStreetMap is a great example of that. We found in the early days in Britain, that actually cyclists were keen on it the walkers because walkers have always had fabulous maps in Britain, they have the Ordnance Survey, and we’ve always had a bit of resistance there you see, say to people come and contribute to OpenStreetMap. You can put all your favourite hiking paths on it and say, Well, why would I want to do that? I’ve got an OS map, where a cyclist got it from day one. They knew that there was nothing out there at the time. That was giving them a decent map. And so yeah, right, I can get this I’m going there to put all my favourite roads in it.
Carlton Reid 27:46
I’m going to I’m going to go across to my colleague in America right now for a brief interlude, a commercial interlude. However, when we come back, I would like to you basically you talk me through how to use the online version and the the one that I’ve got on my, my my smartphone, my iPhone. So take it away, David.
David Bernstein 28:10
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Carlton Reid 29:09
Thanks, David. And we are back with Richard Fairhurst. And before David’s ad break bear or David’s not his ad break but Tern’s ad break narrated by David thanks so much, David. I was asking Richard if he would guide me. So give me so on the on the on the website. And on the the app. There is a section which actually says how to use the app and you can drill down but can you and this is like the end of the world of radio here. So it’s difficult it’s not visual but just if you can basically take what what do I start with? What what are the things that as an absolute beginner when I’m opening up either on the desktop or on the smartphone? What should I be looking for and give me some tips on being a power user give me straight into being a power user. That how you would use this app when say you reach your either plan, give me two versions, where you are planning say a holiday somewhere you’ve never been to before. And when you physically there on the ground with your smartphone, so give me the power user tips give me give me the the startup guide, even though this is purely audio and not visual.
Richard Fairhurst 30:27
Okay, so cycle travel, the URL that you type into your web browser is simply that it’s just cycle dot travel, or you can google it of course, and you go straight there to the homepage, and it will give you two boxes where you type in where you’re going from and where you’re going to. So I am sitting here with a site now I shall type in classic test that I’m going to go from Land’s End it autocompletes it so that’s fine says it lands in Cornwall, UK, UK name John O’Groats and actually second walked out on the group’s Caithness Scotland. That’s what we Yeah, so I do that it has found me a route. And you will see that the route opens up on the map, you have got the lines there with mile markers every 100 miles. It says it’s 992 miles, which sounds about right, you’ve got a bunch of little tools that you can use to play around with the route on the left, but the core of it is on the right. And that’s it’s broken it down into the various different types. So it says your 71% on paved road 14% on paved path, you’ll notice that only 8% on busy roads. And this really tells you about the sort of routine that cycle travelled likes doing, people will cycle from lands and xiana groups and spend 100 Miles going up the marches on day 49, non intimate, that sort of thing. It’s all about quiet roads, things like old railway paths, decent quality tow paths, that sort of thing. So it has found this route. The power user tip, and you can go absolutely wild with this is that you can then drag it. So you get your mouse you hold the mouse down on a bit, and then you drag it to where you want to go. So let’s say I want it to go through Oxford, I have just done that. And it has now found me the best route it can from Land’s End to John O’Groats via Oxford, and either via point has little one on it. So that is the first via point. Let’s put another one in, we’re going to go through Lincoln. Number two, you can put up to 200 in there. And people do I have seen the most amazing intricate routes that people will plot with that. And that’s that, okay. So what we can then do is let’s have a look at this. It’s 1074 miles. Now, you’re not going to cycle that in a day, I realised that we’re recording this a few days after Paris-Best-Paris, and there are people listening who probably do this sort of thing in a few days. But I’m not going to do this in a day, certainly. So you will see on the left this it says under route summary total length of 1000s centrical miles suggest overnight stops. So to click that. And it suggests that if we’re taking an average distance per day of 60 miles, then we can do it in 18 days, and there’s a little button on either side of 18 days, we can make that a bit shorter or longer. So let’s take it down to 14 days, because that’s kind of common way of doing lands and junk routes. And okay, that’s taken us up 77 miles a day. Let’s say we’ve got to get the train to pens amps on the first day. So that’s going to reduce our cycling time there. So we take a short first day, that’s fine, take split. And you will see that it’s put these points along the way, each of which has got a little moon symbol on there overnight stops, and five points as well. So you can drag those around. And you’ll see. So it’s suggesting places we might want to stop one of those, let’s say let’s have a look in it’s found walnut, which is between Bridgewater and Glastonbury, which sounds like a nice part of the world. So what I’m going to do, I’m going to click that on the map, and you’ll see a little bubble pops up. And it says, Okay, this is a via point. It’s on a minor road, we know all that sort of stuff. And you’ll see a bunch of links for stuff you can do there. One of those links is nearby accommodation. So I’m going to click that. And you see there are a bunch of icons show up and those are for campsites and for Bnbs and for hotels that are near the plates we’ve selected. You can turn different types of those off. So I’m going to say I’m I don’t want I don’t want chain hotels. I want individual ones. That’s good. So here we go. We have found Sunnyside Bed and Breakfast. That sounds nice. So I click that. It brings up this window about it. I can check availability and book, click through on that. And that takes me straight to to booking.com and that will give me a chance to book that for whatever days I’m interested in. So I can clear that out the way something that people are always He’s interested in is elevation, how much climbing you’ve got to do. And cycle travel, of course has an elevation graph. That’s one of the icons on the left. So I’m going to click that Show elevation. And it comes up with the elevation graph. What is important here is that it is broken it down into every individual day. So I can see that, for example, on the second day, because we’re going through Cornwall and corners like that. We’ve got 1700 metres of elevation. So that’s going to be a tough one. Take your mouse along there, click on an individual point. And it will take you to that particular point on the back, I recognise that I’ve written that several times. That’s the place just above camelford, where it’s sort of an old air base, and you’ve got this dead pancake pancake straight road at the top of a hill. And there was always a headwind, seriously, it must have written that three or four times and there was always a headwind. So you can find your way through the route like that. You’ll also see if you click anywhere on the route doesn’t have to be via point, you can just click anywhere on the blue line. Then, when the window comes up, within two pop up window, you’ve got two things at the bottom one says find photos. And the other says Street View, Street View is fairly self explanatory, that will open Google Street View at that particular place. So if you’re not sure about what the route is going to be like, you can eyeball it before you set off. Obviously, the disadvantage of Street View is that Google sends its Street View cars along roads, it doesn’t send the belong tracks or cycleway that often. So there’s also see photos, click that and you’ll hopefully find a bunch of photos crop up especially on right aways, railway paths, that sort of thing. And so you can have a bit of a look at what the surface is going to be there. And that comes from an absolutely fantastic project called geo graph, which is another crowd sourced based collection of photos from people who have been taking pictures of every single part of the British Isles for, again, 20 years now. So that’s where that comes from. I said blue line earlier, it’s not always a blue line, sometimes it’s a green line. And when it’s a green line, that’s because it’s an off road section. an unpaved section, I should say. So you might find occasionally that will take you along a Canal Towpath, it will try and keep you on two paths and railway paths that are a reasonably good cyclable surface. You know, I absolutely cringed when I think Google Maps first brought out cycle routing, they spoken to the canal and river trust and got their towpath data. And so it sent you a long tow patter every single opportunity including the shops union Canal, which is anyone who cycled it will know is basically a reenactment of the Somme it’s just a quagmire for miles on end. And so you know, toe pattern if it was the same cycle travelled twice to send you along the good ones and not the bad ones. But all of this to say it’s a fairly balanced type of route choice. It likes quiet roads in like scenic roads, it likes good quality tracks, you can also choose a couple of other route profiles as it were the one which is gravel cycling, and that will accentuate the off road again, you know, it will try not to send you on absolute quagmires.
This depends how much data there is an Open Street Map about surface quality, but where it knows these things, it will try and do that. There’s also a paved option that you can choose. And that will try and keep you on paved roads, or paved psychopaths whenever it can, for a bit of in subsidy routing, as well. There’s also a nighttime option. And this is fairly new and experimental. But what that will do is try and keep you on roads and paths that are going to be well lit. And so I think this came actually from an idea I think it was Ruth Hannah McQueen had on Twitter, she said, You know, I want to go cycled back from places in London in the winter. And I don’t particularly want to cycle along the Regent’s canal or across various parks in in winter. And I totally get that you know, it’s cycling supposed to be enjoyable and and part of being enjoyable is safe. So the nighttime option will try and keep you off that sort of thing. But you’ve got those those four options. If you’re using it in different parts of the world, you might not have all of the options. So I don’t do gravel routing in the state as yet, but it’s there across Britain and Europe. What else can I tell you, I think the other the other thing, let’s clear our vans into junk routes route out the way. The other thing that I would highlight is that it’s not just about a to b routing. You can also do a to b and back to A so that’s a round trip. And so let’s say I’m going to go from childfree to Banbury for an afternoon ride. So I click the two places on the map or type them in in the search boxes. And that has found the a 90 mile route. That’s fine. I now have to get home again. I would like to get home a different way. So I click the round trip button and it has found me in a slightly different way, on the way back, it’s cleaving slightly less closely to the nCn. At this place, at this case, few different countries, it’s still the same sort of route, but get so you’ve got a different experience on the way in and out. What you could also do is just click once or type of place wants to set your start point, and the little green point will show up, that’s your start, and then click suggest a ride. And if I do that, then it’s got three circular routes that have come out, come up, or from childfree, or around 25 Miles 1921 27, in this case, and they are round trip routes, which will again try and stick to country lanes and quiet roads. If I want to go for something a bit longer than there’s a slider, I can drag a drag it up to 75 miles. And it’s now sending me off into the Northampton countryside or off into the high Cotswolds and that sort of thing. And it’s found me a nice circular route for that. And that this was quite fun because I used to do this and I think it had a maximum of 75 miles. And I mentioned this to Jack first. And then he said, Oh, no, no, no, you’ve got to take it up to 200. So we can do the audax thing. So you can now take it up to 250 miles, and it will do your reading my readymade or tax that is for people who are harder than me, but it will do that if you want to. So there you go. That’s the that’s the whistlestop tour of the desktop website. If you set up an account, obviously, or free, if you set up an account on the website, then you can save your routes, you can put them in folders, all of that sort of thing. And the reason I mentioned that you can save your routes is that this then becomes useful if you have the mobile app. Now the mobile app, as you say, there is an app for the iPhone, there is one which is literally now in the last days of testing for Android. So this should be ready in the next few days, it may even be ready by the time podcast is edited, which you’ll see. And I’ve had supporters testing that for the last few months. And effectively, you can use the app either as simple ATB routing tool, so you can fire it up and say, I want to go from my current location to somewhere else. And so I’m gonna be here, Banbury, again, type that autocompletes in the app and navigate to bhambri. And it has found me a route from here to battery, that’s fine. But what you can also do is you can use it to navigate along the routes that you have saved from the website. So if I click the little routes icon in the app, then I’ve got all my folders here, let’s say what I’m gonna do, I plotted a nice circuit around Oxfordshire a few weeks back, I’m gonna click that. And that all appears on here. And it gives you turn by turn directions. So you can just put it on the handlebars, and it will say, okay, in how many metres you’ve got a turn coming up. So it says, Turn right here. And do that just the map follows you along. All of that, and, and nicely to fun detail about this on the iPhone app is that I I’ve got the app done. And I was pleased with it. I thought you know, okay, this is this is good. I can, I can have my cycling quality with this. So a couple of months after I finished the app, I went off for a holiday and I went and cycled the New River Seine recycled route from Paris to the coast. And it was brilliant. And literally the first time I used it in a French town, it started seeing turn left along Casey de la Republique way. And I thought, okay, I mean, I know my French is not brilliant, but that is the worst French pronunciation I’ve ever heard. And it’s because the phone has its own native language. And it reads everything out in that. So I spent a whole bunch of time trying to coax the phone, to work out what the native language was for the street name, and to get it to read things out in that. So now if you take the cycle travel app, and you go to France, and it will tell you turn left on then it switches into a French voice plus de la Republique, and so on. So it’s got all of these little tweaks that are meant to give you a more enjoyable cycling experience. A lot of the stuff from the website is also in the app so you can find accommodation, you can switch between the different route types as well. What you can also do in both the app and the website is that you can switch between between different base maps. So cycle travel has its own base map. As I say, I’ve got a bit of a sort of self taught cartography background so I designed something which I thought was appropriate for cycling so it brings in minor roads when you’re zoomed out a lot because that’s the important thing. You can’t see motorways,
Carlton Reid 44:35
so I’m not I’m basically looking at the map here. It’s like all weather motorways. Yes, I can if I if I click it and I can just about see them but they’re not they’re not prominent. Know Exactly,
Richard Fairhurst 44:45
exactly. It’s it’s trying to show you the stuff this is important. A cyclist but you can also choose a bunch of different base maps. So you get a few standard so there’s things like sort of obviously open street Heat Maps standard style, and a few others. But quite quite a lot of these are things that you get as a nice little bonus, nice little bobble, if you’re recycled travel support. So you get Ordnance Survey maps, because everyone loves Ordnance Survey maps, you get the equivalent in other countries. So you get IGN in France, you get things like open cycle map, a bit of satellite mapping all of that. And I find that particularly useful for the Ordnance Survey maps, because if I’m planning off road routes, then OSM doesn’t as yet have completely full coverage of vital ways. And by waste and things like that. It’s getting there, it’s getting much better. But for absolute completeness, you need Ordnance Survey. So I was the other day trying to trace out to the new cycling UK Snowdonia route. And there were a few tracks in that that hadn’t made its way into OpenStreetMap yet, so we’re gonna have a look at Oh, s Oh, yeah, go around the site of this mountain. And through that beautiful restrict an Ordnance Survey
Carlton Reid 45:55
that one of the benefits for tourists, to me as a Roman road geek would be, it tells you all the Roman road stuff. And it tells you this is a church and this is whereas OpenStreetMap, you know, doesn’t doesn’t have bound from it unless there’s a layer. I mean, you can certainly put layers on, but not like something that is there as a default, whereas Ordnance Survey has that benefit. And so but that’s basically what you’re saying is you’ve got it there. Yeah. If you become a supporter, you’ve got it there. And the benefit of the Ordnance Survey is there should you choose to go and get it?
Richard Fairhurst 46:32
Absolutely. And you know, lots of us have grown up with Ordnance Survey maps, they are evocative you, if you’ve spent, you know, your life reading our West maps, you don’t have to read them. They they kind of define the countryside in a lot of ways. And you’re just over to a part of Herefordshire and you look at this, and you can just see the image in your mind. And here we go. We’ve got Wellington marsh and answer bank and 118 foot spot height, metre spot height, that sort of thing. I think yeah, this is the definitive countryside map. And so I like being able to combine cycle travels routing
Carlton Reid 47:03
with so it’s already you’ve sold me, you’ve sold me on your project, how much do I pay
Richard Fairhurst 47:10
as much as you like?
Carlton Reid 47:10
I mean, I think the
Richard Fairhurst 47:12
standard thing that I say here is that you can support it as coffee or cake or beer, which are, you know, three classic cycling foods. And so the equivalent of buying me a coffee every month is two pounds, the equivalent of buying me a slice of cake every month is four pound 50 The equivalent of buying a pint of beer each month, well, you know, I live near Oxford, so it’s very, it’s that sort of thing. And I am, I am 100% comfortable with whatever feels good for you. If you want, if you want to support it for two pounds a month, that is absolutely brilliant. If you’ve had a terrific holiday with cycle travel, and maybe you want to give a bit more for a month or two, that’s fine. But you know, I’m I am honestly honoured by the by what people say about the site and how it has found them to have found good compensates for people. So whatever you feel comfortable with.
Carlton Reid 48:05
So you’re talking about people there. So you have a community on the site. So But basically, it’s not just you contributing advice, information, maybe even brickbat. So tell me about the community aspect of upcycle travel.
Richard Fairhurst 48:24
So I have, for example, a forum on cycle travel, just a substantive web forum where people can give feedback and suggestions. There’s also a place where you can post travelogue so if you’ve been for a ride, and you want to say a bit about it, upload a few photos, then there’s a place for you to do that. And I’m going to be building more on that in the next year. But what I also try and do is engage and support in other forums, other locations. So for example, on the cycling UK forum, there is now I think, 100 Page thread, which is all about cycle travel. And it started off with someone saying, Hey, I’ve just discovered this, and it found me a good route. And then as people have got into it, they have said, okay, yeah, it’s done this, or why did it send me that way? Or Could I could I maybe have this extra feature? So I’ve tried to, you know, interact with the community, wherever they may be, and have it have the app and the site evolve along with that. And to a certain extent now I think, you know, cycle travel is kind of the pet rooting app of the cycling UK forum, for example, because so many people there have said, Oh, this is great, but wouldn’t it be good if he could just do this? I think yeah, okay. I can make it do that. And it is very much meant to be that it’s meant to be something that reflects the way that this sort of this sort of cyclist enjoys riding. I’m not going to start developing stuff for the Strava crowd because it’s not meant to do that. It’s not meant to be about performance or athleticism. I think the Strava for that they do it much better than I ever would. But for tourists and for leisure riders and for people who like quiet routes to cities, all of that, then you know, I try to engage with people get their ideas, because I don’t have a monopoly on good ideas. There’s so much more that you get if you going out talking to people
Carlton Reid 50:17
where you’ve got a new supporter. So how quickly can how easy was that? And while you’re chatting there, the iPhone has done it because all like linked, and I’ve had to go across my bank, and okay, it, but you now have a new monthly supporter, you’ve sold a nice, terrific, thank you. So I will be using it, obviously, I think what you know where it sold me was the Ordnance Survey part. That’s the first example Hang on. You mean I can mean I pay for Ordnance Survey. So I’ve got it on ViewRanger. And so I can do some of what you’re you’re you’re you’re doing that. But it’s got to prove myself. I mean, a lot of the time, I will probably do this myself. So I will just sit there plotting between, you know, the point, I want to go and see it, then I’ll spew that out. And I’ll put it into probably into a into a garden or something. Or in fact to be a beeline, I’ll probably hook it up with a beeline and just send the GPS and then it just sends me that. But then at other times, it’s like, well, I don’t know really where I go. I want somebody to come like hold my hand and show me where to go. So the fact that I can put our lesson as the map that sold me, brilliant. Obviously, I like OpenStreetMap. I love it. But you’re right in what you were saying in that it’s almost that the countryside in a Brit mind is probably a nonland server, it’s certainly a Brit of a certain age is probably ordinances surveys is how you visualise it’s almost when you go abroad as well. Why can’t I have Ordnance Survey everywhere?
Richard Fairhurst 51:56
Oh, I know, I know. And one of the things that I would love to be able to do, and this is sort of, we all have our ambitions, but I would love to be able to make cycle travels own mapping that good for the rest of the world. So that if you are going siting in, particularly the state, the state of mapping in the States is quite, quite something. And you know, I have spent a lot of time trying to fine tune cycle travels, routing in the US because it is a really difficult problem to solve. But yeah, you know, everyone deserves good maps.
Carlton Reid 52:30
Well, there you go, I’ve now I’ve plotted a route where it’s just basically it’s just gone to obviously my home location. And I just switch the map across dead easy. And there is oh, look, there it is, in that that’s that my mind map is literally my mind map is probably a non survey. But you know, if I would then switch across to another map, because you’re not going to use one map, you know, we are we are now we’ve got richness of maps. So you will probably then go that or visualise that as but you wouldn’t use that as turned by turn, whereas OpenStreetMap is better for turn by turn. Yeah, then because it works to a certain scale. And then it gets to a you know, unless you’re you know, you’re getting the the building, you know, version of Ordnance Survey, which you’re not got, you’ve got down to 25,000 They’re having a rather, you don’t go any further than 25,000 That makes no right. You know, you’re 25,000 So you kind of that’s something that is is perfect for a certain visualisation and then I’ll probably switch across. Yeah, absolutely. Um, factual writing, I wouldn’t use it.
Richard Fairhurst 53:33
No, I agree. It’s it’s good as as planning map and then the inspiration map. And it was also it was one of these things is actually getting Ordnance Survey mapping into the iPhone app was stratospherically difficult, because I won’t go too much into the technical aspects of these things. But as you know, Ordnance Survey uses eastings and northings. That’s how a grid reference works. It has this lovely kilometre square grid, pretty much every other map in the rest of the world. I’m simplifying hugely here. But pretty much every other map in the rest of the world uses latitude and longitude. And that means that the mapping software is written to think latitude and longitude. So when you’re trying to shoehorn Ordnance Survey maps into something that was made for OpenStreetMap but style mapping, the amount of maths you have to do to get that to work is colossal. And recycled travel has got you know, probably about 200 lines of code, which is all about doing the conversion to an easting and northing and latitude and longitude. I had to sit down after doing all of that and give myself a bit of a break because it was pretty intense, but it was worth it. Mm hmm.
Carlton Reid 54:44
Well, you now have a new supporter. And I shall be using that
Richard Fairhurst 54:51
pop up on the forum and on cycling UK federal or drop me a line on Twitter and say okay, I’ve started using it. I would like it to do that. is or why doesn’t it do this? Because that’s the feedback that makes it better and I’d love to hear that. Okay, I shall do and in the meantime though,
Carlton Reid 55:07
I’ve been fascinated by your enthusiasm this is absolutely shone through people listening to this world will obviously will understand why they should become a supporter because you clearly incredibly enthusiastic about this. And thank you for talking me through how to use it because that was also eye opening that’s that that was going when I when when you were talking, I then flicked it between when it was on the London to John O’Groats, and then flicked it through to nighttime gravel is like, Oh, well, that’s, that’s quite key. I definitely like the nighttime version. That’s like that’s, that’s really, really sensible. bit of advice, you got there to improve that. But, um, cycle dot travel is obviously where you get the, the website, and then you can go and get the app, etc, including, very soon, as you said, an Android app. How about you, Richard? So where can people find you on social media? And we’ll wrap up with, with with where we can find you on social media.
Richard Fairhurst 56:12
Okay, so on Twitter, I am Richard F. Or there’s also a cycle traveller account, which is cycle underscore travel. There’s cycle travel on Facebook as well. You can search for that. And as I say, I’m I pop up on the various forums, so cycling UK, Reddit, that sort of thing, cycle chat. So you can usually flag me down there and say, hey, get your site to do this. And this is an international podcast. So you have talked about this just a wee bit. But cycletrack This is not a British site, you can do stuff if you are a world traveller. Absolutely. So at the moment it does. Britain and Europe. It does the Northern America. So that’s the US, Canada and Mexico. And it does Australia and New Zealand, I very much adaptive routing to each individual country, that our roads are different the world over. Paths, cycling infrastructure is different the world over. So there are subtly different things in for example, the US routing or the French routing from the British routing. And you can use it to find a route from DAPP to the tip of the boot initially, you can use it to find a route from New York to San Francisco, and people do so have a play around.
Carlton Reid 57:32
Thanks to Richard Fairhurst there. And thanks to you for listening to Episode 337 of the spokesmen podcast brought to you in association with Tern bicycles, show notes at and more can be found at the-spokesmen.com. Episode 338 is a chat with the Chief Operations Officer at bikemap, and it’s available for your downloading pleasure right now. But meanwhile, get out there and ride …
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5th June 2023
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 329: Hilltrek’s revival of a 1950s cycling jacket: the Greenspot
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUESTS: Dave Shand and Daniel Odermatt
TOPICS: Hilltrek’s revival of a 1950s cycling jacket: the Greenspot
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MACHINE TRANSCRIPT:
Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 329 of the spokesmen cycling podcast. The show was engineered on Monday, fifth of June 2023.
David Bernstein 0:28
The spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day, and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kinds of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.
Carlton Reid 1:03
I’m Carlton Reid. And on today’s show, I’m talking cycling history with Dave Shand and Daniel Odermatt. Dave’s company Hilltrek makes the Greenspot cycle jacket, a revival, a classic revival, from the 1950s and Daniel works with Ventile, which supplies the historically-resonant fabric. Dave and Daniel here and Dave, you’re in Scotland, Daniel, you’re in Switzerland. So Dave first whereabouts in Scotland? Well, I
Dave Shand 1:37
I am actually on the west coast of Scotland in a place called … is where I stay, but our businesses in the northeast of Scotland in the Cairngorms National Park
Carlton Reid 1:49
both beautiful areas and then I know that Daniel is in Zurich at the moment that right Daniel?
Daniel Odermatt 1:54
That’s correct. Yes at the borders of the lake of Zurich. Exactly.
Carlton Reid 2:00
Beautiful. So both of you got reasonably good and easy access to mountains. I’m in Newcastle and it’s a way for me to get to mountains but let’s talk about first of all Hilltrek because Dave that’s that’s who you work for when when you’re not where you are right now. So Hilltek clearly is making garments for hill walkers that kind of clue is in the name to how come you’re now doing or you have been doing for a few years a cycling garment. How did how did that come about?
Dave Shand 2:31
We started we started off a bit 40 years ago making garments for hillwalkers. But But that changed the developed through time. So we know make garments for cyclists, bushcraft people, bird watchers, hunters, I think the clue the clue is really in the fabric we use rather than our origins as hillwalkers if you like, and we still make garments for hillwalkers…. We’re a big Ventile user though.
Carlton Reid 3:03
Yeah. Because that’s Daniel that’s that’s that’s where you’re speaking to me from from Zurich, as many people may be confused with that because you know, Ventile is is often marketed to in labels, you know, developed in Britain, that kind of stuff. And is as it has this amazing English British that pedigree. But it’s a Swiss company now. Yes?
Daniel Odermatt 3:28
That’s correct. That’s correct. Yep. The reason is, because in the 70s or 80s of the last century, so there was a deindustrialization of the cotton industry especially so the spinners and weavers they started to disappear in in, in Manchester area where it was woven this fabric. So these people went to they came to Switzerland, first of all, also for the finishers. So they’ve been looking for finishes who can finish that fabric, because there is a lot of know how. So then that’s that was the first step when we started to shift to know how from England to to Switzerland, to finish the fabrics. Later on Stotz took over this idea and they started weaving, spinning and weaving this fabric also. And then little by little we had the full know how here. And at the same time in England, all these companies started to close down business. And then that’s where actually From that moment we produce that fabric in Switzerland. back five years ago, we have bought the brands lentil from Talbot weaving there was only one person left Mr. Mark Burrows has sold us the brand. And now so we are the producer and the owner of the rental brands.
Carlton Reid 4:56
Now, this is gonna be a history I mean, we have talked about the history of Ventile, Dave, but there’s also a history here for Hilltrek, and not just what you know, the 40 years, Dave, but also the fact that you’re making in effect, a replica jacket, a famous replica jacket from the 1950s from Bertram Dudley. Yeah. So tell me about that 1950s history and whether you’ve got to ride a steel bike, and you’ve got a, you know, Eroica. And the kind of the heritage that surrounds this product.
Dave Shand 5:31
Yeah, you’re right there. It has a famous heritage. The company was about to Dudley run in the Midlands, and they made jackets for all sorts of uses. And one of the jackets was, was the new mud jacket and the supernova jacket. And I think originally, they probably made that for golf, golfing use, but the cyclists began to use it. And it became really well known amongst cyclists. And you’re right, you know, amongst the traditional, what we would regard most traditional cyclists but, but that was the only tradition then if you like in the 1950s. So Beltrame, Dudley, the chap owned Bertram Dudley decided to retire I think, sometime in the 90s. And we were approached in the late 90s by a local customer in Aberdeen to see if we could make a green sport jacket, or green sport no been jacket.
Carlton Reid 6:32
I’ve done my research. That’s Paul Kohn.
Dave Shand 6:34
That’s one yes, yes. All right. Good. Yeah. Yep.
Carlton Reid 6:38
So he approached you and said, You’ve got to make this jacket because it’s, it’s fantastic. Is that Is that where it came from? And you just, you able to just you bought the rights to it, or you just did you know,
Dave Shand 6:48
we looked at the design, we didn’t actually make a replica of the original design, we took the design and adapted it for what we thought we could do. And for what we thought cyclists would would want it that you know, and in the late 90s, early 2000s So but actually, we made it I think in 2015 We made a green spot heritage jacket, which is more like the original green spot
Carlton Reid 7:19
and who’s buying it. I know it’s hard sometimes hard for you to answer that because anybody can be buying it but your gut feeling who is buying this jacket is it is it. If you buy a carbon bike you just can’t ride this jacket is what’s what’s the customer profile? Who’s buying
Dave Shand 7:38
what the customer profile think you hit the nail on the head earlier, the customer profile is largely those who like to write traditional bikes but we also have half cyclists who like to do you know long rides and unlike protected from the weather. So you know, somebody somebody’s doing a day cycle and a carbon bike probably wouldn’t buy a jacket but somebody you know, cycling over several weeks over the northwest of Scotland probably would.
Carlton Reid 8:19
So let’s let’s talk about let’s go back to Daniel and let’s because this is this is the history of event tile is it’s slightly disputed history. But let’s let’s go into what’s say well known about the history so 1943 Surely Institute in Manchester, which is like a cotton research organisation. It’s then meant to be abused in RAF emergency food, so hurricane pilot ditching into the, into the North Atlantic would then be rescued because the fabric was meant to go close up and and become waterproof when it got wet. So that’s the traditional history. How much of that would we say is is correct, Daniel?
Daniel Odermatt 9:07
Oh, that’s almost 100% I would have described it exactly as you did. So there’s no nothing more to add to that. Still, until today we produce that original fabric that was developed by the Sherman Institute in 1943, or Winton in mass production in 1943. It was developed a bit earlier. So still discovery we produce. That’s the 300 gramme the heaviest one of that classic line. And we we developed then lighter ones, like two underground 120 on the 70 gramme, even on the 45 gramme and they all have that same characteristics of waterproofness and all the work like the original one, they swell when in contact with water, and then the the pores they close completely Under bought the fabric gets waterproof.
Carlton Reid 10:03
Does that not make if I’m saying I’m a lightweight nylon jacket kind of person normally and yes, you sweat in them. But this jacket if if our customer will come back we said, well hang on that that’s gonna get awfully heavy. If it’s if it’s in effect absorbing the water and swelling, does that not make it a much much heavier jacket when it’s actually raining?
Daniel Odermatt 10:28
Yeah, that’s a very good question actually. But the fabric is, is evolving in a such a dense way. There is not much water that can penetrate through the fabric, there’s just it’s rather humidity. And, believe me or not, the fabric takes less than 10% of weight when it’s after ditching into the water after being into water. So that that’s not much at all. It also dries very quickly because it doesn’t take doesn’t take a lot of water.
Carlton Reid 11:01
And it’s one of the characteristics that’s really important here is ultra ultra breathable.
Daniel Odermatt 11:07
Definitely because it’s 100% cotton and cotton always briefers the fabric is not coated, it’s just the DWR impregnator Is the impregnation on it in order to make it water repellent. Without that the fibres they would soak, then it will take more humidity definitely or more water, it will absorb more.
Carlton Reid 11:29
And how long does that DWR treatment last,
Daniel Odermatt 11:32
though we have changed almost three years ago now from PFC six to total PFC free DWR PFC free nobody wants to have it anymore, we want to avoid that harmful substance. And, but this lead led also to a less it’s less durable actually that DWR. So after, after two, three washes, or after a while of wearing it, it wears off a bit so that you just can re impregnated and you will have the same characteristic as from the beginning.
Carlton Reid 12:09
So Dave, when when when I was doing the research for this, you can get you know, original Bertram Dudley, jackets made out of Ben dial in this particular you know, the Nomad. They’re like my collective gifts, and they clearly last a long time. So is that again, that’s something that inbuilt with this product is. It’s tough. It’s weatherproof, you know, what Daniel was saying? But it’s also there’s, there’s almost like, you’re gonna hand this down to your children, your grandchild? And this is, these are items that are going to not be they’re not disposable.
Dave Shand 12:44
No. And, you know, we have a lot of customers who, maybe not maybe not necessarily site cyclists, because you don’t get the same abrasion, for example, as a Bushcrafter. That would with his jacket, you know, but we get, you know, people like Bush crafters and hunters that go come back to us after 10 years wanting us to refurb the jacket. And, you know, they’ll keep it for another 10 years. In fact, we have one customer who’s who’s been in for three different refurbs over over 50 years for the same jacket. But to incite cycling, there’s less there’s obviously less abrasion. And and so it does last a long time. You know, people do hunting jackets on to on to siblings,
Carlton Reid 13:32
and it has you can always use this jacket without a rucksack and without even pannier bags perhaps because there’s lots of pockets. There’s pockets and every single place you can imagine having the pockets.
Dave Shand 13:44
Yes, loads of pockets to store stuff. Absolutely. And I think that’s one of the beauties of this jacket. And that’s what probably made it very popular in the late 50s
Carlton Reid 13:56
and then when it was in the 1950s and it was in its heyday as you said before it was like your that was a jacket. It wasn’t a jacket for a specific kind of cyclists which it is today. So were the people who are buying your jacket where are they getting it from? Are you are you in any shops or is this something that you kind of need you’re gonna have to be online only. Yeah, we
Dave Shand 14:20
are online only we do have we do have one or two outlets but not have the cycle jacket. We’ve we’ve got some outlets and the bushcraft and in hillwalking but not many but for the green sport. Yeah, sadly you have to come directly to us.
Carlton Reid 14:39
That’s not sadly that’s you get exactly what you want. You can put a hood on it you want it you can put in absolutely yeah, it’s if you’re getting a custom steel by, you know you’d get a custom Hill track jacket. Not sadly at all. Yeah. Daniel, let’s come across to you again. We’re talking before about before we We can we started recording this about other brands who use bento and I’m assuming they use it. Some of them like the stone Island was one of your biggest sellers. They’re using it the mental as as a heritage brand as an interesting with English kind of backstory. They’re not using it for I’m assuming here you can tell me they’re not using it for the performance characteristics they just liking it as a quintessentially English developed fabric. Would that be right?
Daniel Odermatt 15:35
Yeah, actually, they don’t play that much with that history. Their brand is so strong stone is such a strong brand. So they don’t want to be the fabric to be the star actually, their own brand is the star but they were rich, they chose the best fabric on the market. And they’re really I asked them also I met them several times. I asked them also why did they choose winter which is not the cheapest fabrics of all but they really wanted the best one and it’s because of the performance they ran they love the performance they play on that one the performance and they love also the feel and the it’s a bit stiff the fabric but still feels very cotton like so that’s exactly what they were attracted
Carlton Reid 16:19
well I make all my apologies there I thought stone island would have been doing it not so much for the performance characteristics okay, I stand I stand corrected there’s another name for for for vent tile. And that was developed by in partnership with with Carol marketing who’s in Newcastle here PR company and marketing company here in Newcastle. And they that they helped him it was good 1520 years ago, they helped develop a product it was called ether proof. Yes.
Daniel Odermatt 16:56
That’s correct. What?
Carlton Reid 16:57
What’s What’s it is um I’m pronouncing it wrong here at approve eater proof. How do you pronounce that?
Daniel Odermatt 17:02
I pronounce it as a proof you pronounce that’s mostly right. Yeah.
Carlton Reid 17:07
But if you’ve got if you if you have a product and it says at approve, is it the same as Ben Tyler’s at different event title what’s what’s the what’s the how’s it joined together or not joined together?
Daniel Odermatt 17:17
Alright, is joined together definitely. Because as I told with the history when the production was moved and shifted to Switzerland, so we produced pantile for the British Mark for the English market. Actually, we produced it for Talbot weaving, who sold it worldwide under the brand Venton. But we also wanted to sell or to build up our own brand. So Staats that’s the company who was producing who’s the owner of rental nowadays. Starts created a brand it’s a proof and it’s an effect that is 100% the same these are identical fabrics.
Carlton Reid 17:55
Okay. And then so who Why would somebody use as a proof and somebody use Ben tile what’s
Daniel Odermatt 18:01
it’s just, it’s a it’s a marketing it’s a brand so some of the customers they they started with a top roof so they don’t want to change the brand. Now even though when tile is the stronger brand better known. A few customer they still stick to the waterproof branch. But it is less and less I have to say so one day it will maybe disappear.
Carlton Reid 18:24
Right? Because then tile is more known
Daniel Odermatt 18:29
is the original one it is but much that unknown and holds the rich story that whole story belongs to Ben time at approvals just a little brother.
Carlton Reid 18:40
So tell me about Staats because we’re about if you’re in Zurich, we’re about to start where the actual manufacturing,
Daniel Odermatt 18:46
we’re manufacturing before we have been spinning and weaving and finish time finishing all in Switzerland, unfortunately also here to happen. So the last spinner, they had to close down couple of years back. Our last independent Weaver we’ve been working so close with they had to close down during Corona times unfortunately, and almost 200 years old company, reverse company. So then we had to look for other Weaver’s they are based nowadays in, in Italy, in Turkey, Egypt and Austria. That’s these are our partners for the weaving nowadays. Still be the thing we die and finish the fabric in Switzerland that that our warehouse
Carlton Reid 19:37
is incredibly International. So the this this product is going around and it’s travelling product.
Daniel Odermatt 19:44
Not that much. We really try we don’t we don’t want to Vivid it would be much cheaper to do all the steps in Asia for example we really don’t want so it’s it’s not that far Italy. That’s like three hours from here. By car via you can see our Italian vivre. The Austrian one is even less one hour and a half. So it’s still as close as possible.
Carlton Reid 20:09
And Dave, and if if somebody was going on your website and and ordered all the bells and whistles, and an order the hood and I’m guessing the hood is relatively not ordered much. Cyclists tend to you know, not have heard them over I’m assuming Well, you certainly you can, you can normally take her dog, you know, detachable hoods. But if somebody was if somebody genuinely was taking every single option, how much how much is the most expensive? No man, but you can you can you can buy off you.
Dave Shand 20:43
Oh my goodness, that is a good question. And you you’re testing me. The other version, we also have an organic vento version, which I’m sure Daniel will explain. Which is also a bit more costly.
So I think probably, maybe around a bit 450
is probably the most expensive. And the heritage is slightly slightly more expensive. It’s because you have the the the small design differences and the fiddly things we have to do for the heritage jacket. But you’re right, in terms of of cyclists, they will tend to order without the hood, but some cyclists will wear it for for walking as well. So you know, they’ll they’ll order the food with it for further uses.
Carlton Reid 21:33
Yes, and then just take it off. And then when they’re cycling, they just take it off. Yep. Back, I can understand that. So tell me sell it to me, why is it so expensive? Because that is that is that is expensive. So why is it so expensive? Yeah,
Dave Shand 21:48
I think there’s a couple of things. Daniel touched on it earlier, the fabric itself is quite expensive. You know, compared to other fabrics, we could we could produce the green spot and another fabric fabric and the jacket would be cheaper. The the other cost is the fact that we manufacture in the UK, we have our own small factory, I call it a workshop, it’s not large enough to be a factory. So we, you know, we produce it using people we have worked with for, you know, 1015 years, 20 years. So, and that’s costly, employing people in the UK. And, and it takes time. The skills required to use Intel to make products out of Intel are not all that easily acquired, you know, it takes probably two years to train up somebody to make a green sport jacket. You can’t just take somebody off the street, and within a few months, they can do it. So that it is costly. And so hence hence the price.
Carlton Reid 23:07
Yes, no, and I’m not I’m not being critical here. I’m just saying you try and try and sell it to me as a customer. Why is it expensive. But I
Dave Shand 23:17
think the other thing is customization. If we if we produced all the jackets with the same spec, we could we could batch produce. But once you introduce customization, you make smaller volumes of the same product. And that is cost. So this
Carlton Reid 23:38
is probably a product that you can’t just click it and get it the next day, it might take a while before it can be made.
Dave Shand 23:45
Yeah, typically, typically, our delivery is eight weeks, we do carry some stock. But we have such a variation in you know, in product specs, including customization, we don’t carry much stock. So it would typically take eight weeks to from order to delivery.
Carlton Reid 24:03
So again, that’s something that you’ve got to be a specific kind of customer. You have to be you know, I’m going to be wet for the next eight weeks because I’m not, I’ve got my I haven’t got my Hill track jacket. So you’re having to think ahead here. That’s that’s also a very specific kind of customer here.
Dave Shand 24:23
I think that’s a big problem. You know, people, people will think, you know, it’s getting cold out, it’s getting wet out, I’ll go and see if I can order a green spot that is a challenge, you know, and then eight weeks to get it and then you know, they might decide to order one in the middle of the season and then both teams get it. It’s,
Carlton Reid 24:44
it’s a bit more but before we came on air, I was thinking we’re gonna be talking about in effect, a cold wet weather jacket in a very warm spell that we’re having in the UK here. Going into the summer, but what you’re saying is it’s probably Best to actually talk about it now because it’s gonna take yes you know yeah so almost into the past the son of the boy you get it anyway but in
Dave Shand 25:07
saying that we also produce a single Vendel green spot and we produce a cycling jieli which are used this time a year. So the single Vento is a windproof essentially, and the GLA is obviously windproof with loads of pockets also.
Carlton Reid 25:26
Kathy Do you know which colours are the most popular was cyclists?
Dave Shand 25:34
A that’s a good question. I would say Orange is a pretty popular colour. Because traditional
Carlton Reid 25:45
we’ll be putting glaze on a very nice dark colour will be traditional. Yeah, so the originals were probably grey black, maybe dark blue. So you’ve modernised it by having different brighter colours. Yeah, we
Dave Shand 25:58
yeah, we offer a range of colours. You know, oddly enough green is is very popular. So not all of green. But yeah, black, black and grey we sell a lot of
Carlton Reid 26:15
because you know that the person who’s going out you know, a high vis jacket is probably not the kind of customer here so you can imagine somebody will be buying a darker colour if they’re going a bit more traditional and if they’re running a steel bike and they’re gonna be happy you’re not having you know, a dayglo colour here with with lots of knots. You haven’t got his lots and lots of reflective striping. You haven’t got anything like really heavy?
Dave Shand 26:42
Nope, not at all. I think one of the reasons for that this is
the I think event held event or jacket you know, the the life cycle of things like like a reflective strips is less than that of an event L so, you know, they would probably degrade first. And the jacket wouldn’t look good. So that’s why we wouldn’t set in the original use reflective material jackets
Carlton Reid 27:15
obviously wouldn’t have used Velcro that have used precedents for the for that.
Dave Shand 27:21
Yeah, press starts. Yep, yep. Yep. I think luckily the use of velcro I’ve got an old green spot probably from the 19 1980s 1990s. And that’s that’s got Velcro, got some Velcro on it. It’s it’s also garbled been lined. So event outside gasoline inside. Okay, so in effect, it was a single Ventile jacket, rather than double Vendel.
Carlton Reid 27:50
Okay. Thank you ever so much for talking about that the history of a particular jacket that will be as we’ve kind of identified will be a particular kind of customer. But that particular kind of customer is going to be absolutely going bananas over this kind of product. I know that because I’m I’m a member of the veterans cycle club and I know exactly the people who this is cool. So Dave, I’m gonna come to you first. If you can tell people kind of give you a company website, basically where they can get more information about this product. And then I’m going to come to Daniel, I’m gonna ask him the same thing. But Dave, you take it away, where can you get? He’ll track stuff.
Dave Shand 28:31
Okay, so our website is health track.co.uk easily reached. And we are based in a small town called aboyne and northeast of Scotland, right on the edge of the Cairngorm National Park, a beautiful place to come and visit us back to
Carlton Reid 28:47
say, yeah, that’s beautiful. So did customers come to you and say that you’ve got a online only? Or are you do welcome
Dave Shand 28:55
customers? No, no, we have a small shop. People pop in. And I’m the they talk to the people who make the jackets and design the jackets. And that’s where some of the product changes come from people walking in and saying, I really liked this idea. What do you guys think of it? And we say oh, yeah, that’s interesting. So we will incorporate it.
Carlton Reid 29:19
And Daniel, how can we find out about Ben tile?
Daniel Odermatt 29:23
The best thing is to go when tile.co.uk there’s tonnes of information. There’s also a contact button and then you reach me directly. So I’m getting inquiries via this way via our website.
Carlton Reid 29:39
Before the end credits. Here’s David.
David Bernstein 29:41
Hello, everyone. This is David from the Fredcast and of course the spokesmen. And I’m here once again to tell you that this podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern build bikes that make it easier for you to replace car trips with bike trips. Part of that is being committed to designing useful bikes that are also fun to ride, but an even greater priority for turn is to make sure that your ride is safe and worryfree and that’s why Tern works with industry leading third party testing labs like E FB E, and builds it bikes around Bosch ebike systems which are UL certified for both electric and fire safety. So, before you even zip off on your Tern, fully loaded and perhaps with the loved one behind, you can be sure that the bike has been tested to handle the extra stresses on the frame and the rigours of the road. For more information visit wwwternbicycles.com to learn more. And now, back to the spokesmen.
Carlton Reid 30:52
Thanks to Dave Shand. And Daniel odermatt there and thanks to you for listening to Episode 329 of the spokesman podcast brought to you in association with turn bicycles shownotes and more can be found at the hyphen spokesman.com. The next episode featured American transportation expert Andy Boneau, and we’ll be out in the middle of June. But meanwhile, get out there and ride
26th May 2023
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 328: BBC Bike Bureau with Anna Holligan and Kate Vandy (and Jack)
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUESTS: Anna Holligan and Kate Vandy
TOPICS: “Just two journalists building a mobile studio on two wheels”
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MACHINE TRANSCRIPT:
Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 328 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Friday 26th of May 2023.
David Bernstein 0:28
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern Bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day, and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com. To learn more.
Carlton Reid 1:03
I’m Carlton Reid and welcome to this episode of the Spokesmen podcast in which I talk with BBC correspondents Anna Holligan and Kate Vandy and the formation of their mobile news gathering studio, the BBC bike bureau. A glitch scuppered our first chat so I’m not able to produce a companion video version of that conversation but I have been able to rescue a short segment that I will place on YouTube as a clip and the audio is at the end of this episode. The segment features Jack, an elderly British gentleman living in The Hague and who saw Anna as we were recording. He was thrilled at seeing a BBC reporter next to a cargo bike, and he politely butted in. Not that he knew Anna was part of a three-way chat, of course. But he soon did and Jack became the first person to be interviewed by Anna using the new kit on the BBC’s Bike Bureau …
Kate, where are you because I know you’re somewhere gorgeous? So So tell us where you are. And and make us jealous.
Kate Vandy 2:24
I am in Sydney at the moment, which is my hometown and I am lucky enough are very lucky. The BBC sent me here for six months to work. I’m going to be covering the Women’s World Cup and a few other things while I’m here. But it is autumn going into winter and each day is 20 degrees. 22 degrees and blue sky and bright sunshine. So it’s pretty good.
Carlton Reid 2:49
It’s actually quite nice and Newcastle. To tell the truth it’s we’ve we’ve come into spring it’s beautiful. And then same question to you Anna. So what’s the weather like in I’m assuming you’re in The Hague at the moment I am in
Anna Holligan 3:02
The Hague is beautiful. It’s a beautiful sunny day, I’ve just done the school run, hopped off my bike and dashed inside to speak to you.
Carlton Reid 3:09
Yeah, cuz when you came on, because we record this, and this is just audio. But I did get a wee bit of Anna’s. And it’s like, it’s almost like I don’t recognise we are close on type thing. I don’t recognise you away from a bike. You know you’re in, you’re in a real room. It’s like over that we have that Santa. Cuz normally I just see you with a bike. Anna. How weird is that? That you are basically in my mind. And I’m sure lots of people you’re associated with your cargo bike.
Anna Holligan 3:34
It’s funny, because before I came to the Netherlands, I was just a hobby cyclist. But here, it’s just something that you do so naturally, and that you start to incorporate parts of your life on the bike. And that’s kind of been the evolution of the bike bureau in part.
Carlton Reid 3:49
Hmm. And we will get onto that because you talked about the bike Bureau at So where were you when you’re in Leipzig, weren’t you so that was like a week ago, fellow city so so tell us about what you were doing in Velo city.
Anna Holligan 4:01
So I was talking about the evolution of the bank bureaus. So how it came into being. So starting off with Kate and I growing on a cycle tour of Europe, looking at Europe cycling revolution. And during that trip, we filmed with some parents who were using electric cargo bikes. And then Kate and I started to think well, wouldn’t that Empress actually be so perfect for what we do too. So it became something all about enabling multi skilled digital first mobile journalists like us to do our jobs in the most cost time and climate efficient way. And so that’s what I was really talking about, but but also the the journey that has brought us to this point of having such a revolutionary pioneering model to show people and the way in which I’ve been using it and kind of trialling it and finding out the stories that really lend themselves to being covered by the bike Bureau because it takes us right to the heart After breaking news and places where traditional radio and satellite vans and trucks I wouldn’t be able to get to with all of the kids on board. So that was kind of what I was talking about. And it’s really interesting as well with that kind of audience because they are are already so enlightened when it comes to cycling, but then to be able to bring something brand new to them inspiring, innovative. Yeah, it felt really, it felt like it was a validation of something that case that I have been working on for so many years now.
Carlton Reid 5:34
But you were talking to a very friendly audience there, obviously, who a would know who you were B would be absolutely, you know, dialled in on the benefits of cargo bikes in cities. What about an audience that isn’t as friendly as that? Can you imagine going to, you know, another conference and discussing how mainstream Do you think this this project you’ve got going is and that’s both that can be both to both of you, in fact that that particular question?
Anna Holligan 6:03
I think Kate has already had some interesting conversations with with colleagues about this.
Kate Vandy 6:08
Yeah, I mean, we’ve actually been pleasantly surprised by how many people are super enthusiastic when they’ve seen the project. So we kind of think this has the potential to be really mainstream, and hopefully one day really ordinary, and just something that everyone has the possibility to do. Of course, it wouldn’t work in every single city. But if you if you look around you, you know, I’ve been living in Brussels for years now. But if you look to Paris, Barcelona, Vienna, Copenhagen, Helsinki, and further away, the cities like Vancouver, Melbourne, in Australia, Bogota, Tokyo, Taipei, I mean, so many cities in the world already offer the infrastructure in which something like this could exist. So I just think, what we’re doing, we’re hoping we can lead the way and show people that there’s really simple solutions to kind of change what they’re doing in their everyday life. So our hope is that it becomes super mainstream, as quickly as possible,
Carlton Reid 7:04
you kind of you kind of need it to be a bike friendly place. So you think
Anna Holligan 7:09
if you look at this, just from the perspective of the BBC News, content priorities, first of all, as journalists, they’re all about delivering for our audiences, the best journalism being the best at live news, breaking important stories, but then missing audience challenges too. So tackling news avoidance, reaching younger and underserved audiences, and building trust through transparency. And the bank Bureau has been seen and kind of understood by people as the perfect vehicle to be able to do this because we can show people how we are gathering news, how we’re going live from a bike, and one of the other priorities is about creating a fun and friendly and collaborative culture. And for me, this is the embodiment of the the bike Bureau, and there are so many places which are already suitable for riding an electric cargo bike. And over the years, Carlson, you’ll be familiar with these arguments, you know, it’s too hilly, the weather’s not good enough. Well, the fact is, an electric bike flattens or hills and I have written around Edinburgh on a non electric bike, and I know how desirable that is. But also weather wise, because I have been using this for more than two years. Now, I’m not doing it for fun, I’m doing it because it is the most obvious and practical choice. And what I want is for women, especially in journalism to be empowered in the same kind of way. So for getting to the kinds of stories where it wouldn’t have been possible with another mode of transport. And most of the time, I don’t have another pair of hands. So when there’s an explosion of a block of flats, I don’t want to park miles away in a dodgy neighbourhood, and then walk four miles with all of the kit, I have a bike that can now do all of that for me. And when I’m trying to cover two stories, two different sides of time when a farmer’s protests later on climate protests with water cannon, the only way to get to the scene of those breaking news stories when all of the roads around the climate protests were closed down by police was by bike and then I had everything I needed there. So I think, of course, in cities, there are challenges and we as Kate has said, we’re not trying to say hey, look, here’s the answer the kind of swiss army knife for all of the challenges that we face, no trying to be a more sustainable broadcaster. But actually in showcasing the potential of the bike Bureau it opens up so many more ideas and possibilities and it can inspire people in lots of other ways to think about they’re guessing how they’re doing their jobs. And I’m not just talking about in in journalism there and what we Kate and I are trying to do is is have one of these ideally in in suitable bureaus around the world once we have showed the possibilities by actually using it. So giving this tangible example sorry, okay, go ahead. Yeah, no, I was just
Kate Vandy 9:57
gonna say I think you know, we also have a responsibility Ready to look at how we work and live each day as people and as broadcasters, and I think the biochar is a really good way of showcasing that, you know, what changes can we make, we don’t want to just lecture people or be seen to, you know, flying is part of our job as well. But I think this is us showing that when we have control, we can make changes. And what I really hope and I know anecdotes as well as that, there’s just inspires people that see it and to just to step back and think, What small changes can I make each day that might make any have an impact on the environment positively, and also, all these other things. And I mentioned a really important as well, like empowerment, flexibility cost, or, you know, there’s, there’s a lot of different things going on with it.
Carlton Reid 10:46
And I mentioned speed there, because the police have got bikes, you know, they they get to incidents quicker. And then the squad cars, emergency services, you know, the paramedics use bike for that reason. So you could probably get to a story quicker than many other of your colleagues and maybe competitors, you can actually speed somewhere and get to the story quicker.
Anna Holligan 11:13
Our colleagues will be our competitors and colleagues will be inspired to hop on a bike of their own in the future, actually, to all be racing, they’re on two wheels.
Carlton Reid 11:23
Because Jon Snow, I mean, I remember interviewing him and that was one of his things he said, this is when there was like, you know, a producer of camera, sound, you know, electricians etc. And it’d be like a big squad of people would have to arrive places, but he would say he would get to incidents on his bike far quicker than his crew could ever get there, then he would start his interviews and or you know, you’re sending the prep. So that’s that’s the potential that you could get to places pretty darn quickly.
Anna Holligan 11:54
Jon is not alone in that respect.
Carlton Reid 11:56
Let’s talk about the bike itself than so we can geek out and I have I have been shown around the bike. You showed me around the last time we talked, but let’s kind of go round virtually and discuss it again. So it is a cargo bike. It’s the same cargo bike that we are familiar with. Is that right?
Anna Holligan 12:16
Yes, it’s the same cargo bikes. So this is my personal bike that we’re using for this project.
Kate Vandy 12:22
And it’s an electric cargo bike just to point out for people, especially on Twitter who seem to think it’s not, it would be awfully heavy for Anna to pedal around. Otherwise, it isn’t.
Carlton Reid 12:33
It’s got a bucket on the front in effect. And normally you’ve got your daughter in there. Yes. Yes. But you’re telling me the last time that you can actually fit all these kids in and your daughter? Yes. So
Anna Holligan 12:47
the idea was, I started doing things with news and my daughter on the side, pretty much as soon as I invested in the cargo bag, after we had filmed this documentary and realised the game changing potential in work and life. And so just within a couple of months, I was picking her up from school popping her in the bike to cycle her home, and then doing a live from just outside the school gates. And there is video evidence of this on the BBC. And then it was kind of like a playpen. And there was enough space for both of those vital parts of my life. But then, as we and especially Kate has seen more potential to do more with this vehicle we’ve built over the years. But we still want to keep it really manageable and small. And we’re mobile journalists, we’re mostly using our phones for broadcasting. But we wanted to build something that could allow us to go further and stay on air for longer. But that all still kind of fits into a backpack and can be transported from my bike to other bikes, because we have to be really clear about this. I use an electric cargo bike that I chose, but in theory, we’ve designed a bike bureau that can be transported to any bike and not even just an electric bike, you know, if you’re if you’re much fitter than I am, and you’ve got some strong side muscles, then in theory, this could be a regular a regular bike,
Carlton Reid 14:17
huh, so you can get on your gravel bike, and you can go off road and you can go and do some weird and wonderful stuff just as long as you’ve got the kit in your backpack.
Anna Holligan 14:25
Yes, that’s something we’re working on. Exactly. Because the bike is kind of like the frame at the moment. And we have all of these arms and lights coming off it. But yeah, the idea is and it is kind of morphing all the time as we are learning lessons from the work that we do with the bike bureau. But the idea is that in the future, you can use any bike it wouldn’t have to be a cargo bike electric or otherwise. And Kate wise, this is yeah has been so much trial and error. So I think Kate is well placed to talk through how it has gone from being me with a kind of selfie stick to something so much more sophisticated, which is the boat bureau?
Kate Vandy 15:04
Do we want to go through the kits? Sorry? I’m slightly interrupting our flow. Yeah.
Carlton Reid 15:08
No, no, totally. I mean, basically start with maybe the solar panels and the folding solar panels.
Anna Holligan 15:15
Do you know what we could just bring up the actual bike pure peace. I have like a photographic memory now of all of the component parts. But if we want to be really like technical, then it’s good idea to have the list in front of us. But I can talk about how we dial up while Kate looks for the kit list. I could talk about what we use in terms of broadcasting. So from our phones, we have studio capabilities through Lucy live going through to the radio studios directly, and we can choose which studios or which programme, and then we’re connected to go live on air. And with TV, we use the Live View mobile app, which I think was developed in partnership with the BBC. So when the phone is attached to the bike, it just gives us studio capabilities from anywhere in the field literally now, going to places that would have been out of reach in the past. And
Carlton Reid 16:10
5g network. So basically the 5g network as I’ve extended where you can get to
Anna Holligan 16:15
well and and being on wheels and two wheels instead of 4k.
Carlton Reid 16:18
Have you got the list then? I do? I do. Apologies. So that’s okay, so so we’re gonna we’re gonna start with the solar panels so that you need extra power. Yes, yeah. So
Kate Vandy 16:31
one of the big things that’s really helpful, I’ve seen Anna work, you know, not for 24 hours, but you know, really, really long days in the field on her own. And I know one of the biggest things that was going to be a help would be a solar panel with an energy bank, because otherwise you’re sort of scrambling around for battery packs, or trying to find sockets, when actually you need to be outside broadcasting live. So that was the main thing that we wanted to find a sort of lightweight solar panel attached to an energy bank where Anna could charge her laptop, could charge her phones, which have at least two phones on her when she’s broadcasting if not three. And we could also charge lights, microphones, very important coffee pot. So
Carlton Reid 17:17
very critical as equipment, coffee.
Kate Vandy 17:22
For journalists, getting coffee, coffee is probably number one. So that bank, obviously if it’s not a sunny day, obviously, that’s fine, because we can already have had it pre pre energise and fall for when she goes out to work. So that should last at least a day, if not longer, depending on what she needs to charge. And so then, we have this desk now, which is amazing. And it took us quite a long time to find didn’t find a lot of looking. And we’ve looked at building our own, we’ve been designing different ones. And then and I came across this amazing desk, which is like a suitcase, and you unclip it and pull it up. And it can then be set to whatever height you want. And it’s really sturdy and really strong. So we’ve got that as well in the middle of the bike. And to that we’ve been attaching small rigs with magic arms. And on the end of those are the shoulder pods. And on the shoulder pod, the phone is placed. There’s a possibility to place light at a microphone. But we’ve been using wireless rode mics for now. And I think that’s it, isn’t it? And some likes as well. Ring likes, we’ve got attached at the moment. Yeah, and
Anna Holligan 18:39
we’ve got the radio mics as well in case we want to be able to move further away. And I’ll tell you what, this, there will be people who are perhaps not so familiar with the potential of bikes and broadcasting. But actually, it’s if it was a gimmick, and we’ve read the good and bad comments if it was a gimmick, this is not something that I would have been using for two, three years. And a few months ago, there was sadly a train crash 12 kilometres from here in Bruges Houghton. And I had to get to the scene of breaking news as quickly as possible and they wanted me an hour and a half an hour. And I thought okay, there’s no way I can cycle there. I’m just gonna have to hire a car because having a bike to do my news and from my life allowed me to get rid of my car. So now I rely on rely on green wheels and various other car
Carlton Reid 19:36
sharing short term rental
Anna Holligan 19:38
car shares, they’re really big here in the Netherlands. So I took one of those instead. And as soon as I got there, I was just wishing that I had my bike. I thought you know what, I should have just waited I should have waited another half an hour and I’ll be there with my bike because on that day I was having to borrow charge from colleagues. I was having to drive back and forth. to a cafe to get a decent charge up, it was an absolute nightmare. I didn’t have anywhere to edit, it was sunny there was I hadn’t managed to carry drinks and all that kind of thing. And for me in that moment, I thought, you know, I want everyone to have one of these, I want to this isn’t about gimmicks, it isn’t about, hey, look what we can do. And sustainability for sustainability sake is not worth anything to us on the ground. But the, the, the way in which this allows us to do our jobs, that takes away the danger, the hard side of it, and it’s already hard enough being on air constantly for radio and TV, providing digital content. So to have a vehicle literally, that helps to manage that load is just so empowering. And it allows us to do more on air, because we’re not having to worry about going back and forth for for charging and drinks. And you know what it does need and Kate and I we have to discuss this maybe off air is a toilet. That’s the only thing that’s missing
Carlton Reid 21:08
because it doesn’t have a toilet. So that’s the kind of same kind of revealing.
Anna Holligan 21:16
Yeah, so it’s if I hadn’t say, oh, sorry. No, no, no, go ahead.
Kate Vandy 21:21
I was gonna have to say there were a few people asking if it was actually an April Fool’s joke when we posted it on Twitter. And I have to let them down. It actually is not a joke. But again, with Anna, you know, it’s, we just want to make sure people understand this is really sincere. I mean, this is something that the majority of time we’ve spent researching this has been our own time. And as Anna mentioned, it’s her own personal bike that she’s allowed us to experiment with. And, you know, it’s been a real passion project for us. And we just wanted to make something as best we could with what we could find. And yeah, just that it’s sincere, and it’s not a joke. And hopefully, it can only get better from here, really. And hopefully we you know, we’d find even better solutions to the kinds of things we’ve been, we’ve been looking for
Carlton Reid 22:05
the things that you’ve said your research was including that table. So what do you use the table for? But you haven’t, you haven’t explained what that was for what what exact quantity and type table comes out of a suitcase? But what do you use it for?
Anna Holligan 22:17
laptop and then editing mostly. But yeah, so it’s a desk. So you can have your laptop on you’ve got the coffee, the curves. But for editing in the field. So if we wanted to edit on location, we don’t have to go and find a desk in a cafe we can do it from from where we’re standing. So that’s a really but also like, if there’s a complicated story, you need to have some notes in front of us, containers, and data have a laptop at eye level.
Carlton Reid 22:46
That’s brilliant, actually, yeah, I’m thinking I need a concertina type table that I can just get out my
Anna Holligan 22:52
part. And the thing is, we’re still working on this. And we want to also be really clear about that, because this is a pilot project, but it’s also just a prototype. And as we’ve been building every time we’re like, hey, you know what, we could get a solar panel that’s more, that’s neater, that can be folded up or rolled up. And so we want to incorporate a bit more 3d printing to try and get exactly the right dimensions to fit with what we need to do and have the kit built into a box that then supports the desk and the woman is very portable, it’s very modular, so it can be folded up. But I think in a year’s time, the bite Bureau will look very different from the one that we’re looking at are talking about today.
Carlton Reid 23:35
I’m gonna cut to an ad break right now.
David Bernstein 23:37
Hello, everyone. This is David from the Fredcast and of course the Spokesmen. And I’m here once again to tell you that this podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern build bikes that make it easier for you to replace car trips with bike trips. Part of that is being committed to designing useful bikes that are also fun to ride. But an even greater priority for turn is to make sure that your ride is safe and worryfree. And that’s why turn works with industry leading third party testing labs like EFBE, and builds its bikes around Bosch ebike systems which are UL certified for both electric and fire safety. So before you even zip off on your Tern, fully loaded and perhaps with a loved one behind, you can be sure that the bike has been tested to handle the extra stresses on the frame and the rigours of the road. For more information visit www.ternbicycles.com to learn more. And now back to the Spokesmen.
Carlton Reid 24:47
So we’re back with talking about the bike bureau with Kate Vandy and Anna Halligan. And when we did this previously, we had a we had a few tech glitches, which means we can’t do the whole thing. But you you actually, what I’m not gonna say it costed you in a cost. You, you, you were you were welcomed by an elderly gentleman who was very lovely, who was wonderfully surprised that you were there on a bicycle and that you were the BBC. So tell us about Jack.
Anna Holligan 25:23
He thought he was dreamy, it must have just been the most surreal moment. He’s taking his dog for a walk, by the way, he was on a bike and he was 82. He is amazing. And he came out of the corner of a canal. And there I was with the bike Bureau, BBC Randy on the laptop. He was just a bit astounded, I think. But it was, it was such a fortuitous meeting, because Jack was just he saw us like that. And instantly, he could grasp the concepts. And we were talking about broadcasting to younger audiences and connecting to younger audiences being transparent and authentic in the way that we gather news. But here is this lovely old guy saying, hey, you know what, this makes so much sense.
Carlton Reid 26:06
Now, I will probably play audio, I’ll supply some audio in here of Jack and I’ll put the clip on YouTube because we can work and there was enough non glitch that we could capture that bit. But it was wonderful. And we were sitting there you know, I was in Newcastle. Obviously you were you were live with with Jack yourself. But then and Kate was in Sydney. And we were just sitting there thinking this is really cute. This is nice. This is beautiful, that you’re so accessible.
Anna Holligan 26:32
I think that has been something that has grown and is still it still feels unusual. And we welcome that if it helps audiences to feel a connection and to be able to understand and connect with what we’re trying to do and see that this is authentic, and that we are working from a grassroots level in creating this. And it’s something that I have been really conscious of over the last few years using the bike that audiences who have traditionally been showing us avoidance or been AMSI. The mainstream media just feel as though this is something different that they can embrace in a way that sometimes when you go into neighbourhoods, they don’t want TV crews there. But when you’re coming with a biker when they feel as though they already know you chatting to them as as a one to one as a normal person, then it makes our job so much easier because we don’t have those same barriers to break down because they see us as as humans on bikes rather than Cairo journalists who are going to tell them the news, which is something that BBC has moved far away from already, but audiences don’t with see that and so the bike is such a great way to access those people and those stories that might have been hard to reach in the past.
Carlton Reid 27:54
Now I know you’ve got to rush away, perhaps you’re you’re you’re busy BBC journalist, you might have to go to live in like three seconds. I don’t know, I know you gotta go away. So I just want to ask one final two, two final questions. And the second one will be please tell us how we find you on social media. But the first question, and this is straight to Kate, in fact, and that is so Anna’s talked about, you know, epiphany on the cargo bike. Your epiphany on a bicycle is a bit older than that. And you’re a bit more of a kind of spandex lycra kind of person or to tell us your kind of
Anna Holligan 28:31
proper cyclists. Okay, yeah,
Carlton Reid 28:34
I was, I was trying to be as polite as possible there. So tell us about your cycling, Kate, how you got into it and how you’re in it right now.
Kate Vandy 28:44
Well, I mean, I love cycling and bore people to death with my Instagram stories. And here I am cycling somewhere else every other day. But I’ve always been I’ve always been a cyclist. I used to do triathlons as a teenager and university student. But I’ve really returned to road cycling and gravel riding in Belgium where I’ve been living for five years. And I’m racing in, in a league there in the Belgian league. And I’m a member of a cycling club actually, which is aimed at getting women into cycling, which has been amazing. I think they founded this cycling club in Brussels two years ago. And it now has over 300 members and it’s all sorts of women all sorts of bikes. Meet on Sundays and have a fantastic time. So yeah, I do a bit of bit of racing but of serious stuff, but also really love cycling with whoever will cycle with me.
Carlton Reid 29:41
That’s wonderful. And thank you ever so much for your time today. So for ending today’s episode, how about we’ve even though we know where we can find the kind of videos but tell us your social media handles and anybody who maybe, I don’t know maybe it’s new to this and actually hasn’t seen And the bikepath videos that you do and so how do we how do we access both of you in, in the virtual world. So
Anna Holligan 30:09
Kate’s has been really instrumental in setting up our social media. And then making sure we’re actually posting from there because there’s so much going on, it’s hard to, to what we want to do is create a space or what we’re we are now doing is creating a space purely for bike Bureau content. So people who want bike Bureau and not don’t choose from the cycle first can confine this because it’s a very separate entity. So bike Bureau, we are at the bike Bureau at bike Bureau on Twitter, and same on Instagram, I think, Kate,
Kate Vandy 30:42
I think it’s at good news cycle on Instagram
Anna Holligan 30:46
cycle. Because and also, that’s something else that we have kind of in the pipeline, but we’re working on something along those lines, but can’t reveal much more just yet. So and then Dutchies from the psychopath is just on my psychopath. You know, no matter how much I try and pause and say it properly, it’s just psychopath. I really have to work on that. So it’s actually it’s from a cycle path a gesture from my regular Twitter. And it’s, you know, the funny thing about that is that it’s just three news stories done by bike, but because the psychopaths here are so incredible, so many people watch, and I don’t I’m no offence taken that I know, people are not coming from me. They’re not coming for the news. They’re coming mostly for the views. But if we can just sneak some news in there on the site, then that’s great. And I think it’s also helped to show people what more can be done because we are the first journalists to build a bike Bureau for news broadcasting and actually be using it for lives for news gathering. And in a country full of cyclists, the fact that no other broadcaster has done this here in the Netherlands, let alone anywhere else. It makes us feel really proud. Actually, it’s kind of like we’re blessing our child out into the world to see how it will find its first steps and we are at a very early stage.
Carlton Reid 32:11
Before I cut to the outro. Here’s the bit with Jack in The Hague. You’re actually recognised as the bike reporter. Even in the Netherlands, even having a bike and being reported is different to people, Dutch people.
Anna Holligan 32:29
And how crazy is that in a nation of cyclists where they carry surfboards on bikes? We’ve got a young gentleman taking his dog for a walk on the bike. I ended up Yeah.
Jack 32:45
The BBC
has a cute little doggy. We almost can’t Campos going through the middle of all of COVID. And they look like lost souls. But
Anna Holligan 33:11
I’ve taken a wrong turn must have taken.
Jack 33:16
I’ll say maybe you thought it was
Anna Holligan 33:21
nice to meet you. We’re just doing a podcast for Carlton talking about our setup, which is not actually something that’s been done anywhere else that’s quite excited to show this to you. Thanks so much. That’s really nice to
Kate Vandy 33:39
include that in the article as well. It’s a damn good idea.
Anna Holligan 33:45
It’s very useful for many All right
Jack 33:55
what’s your name?
Anna Holligan 33:56
Nice to meet you.
Jack 34:00
Congratulations to the BBC on innovation.
Anna Holligan 34:06
Thanks for the word. Thank you.
Jack 34:09
Did you come up with the argue
Anna Holligan 34:11
Kate case and I came up with this idea. This is Pete here so
Jack 34:19
I shall go back to my Dutch life and say the BBC is everywhere now.
Carlton Reid 34:26
Jack? Jack is obviously a Brit. What are you doing in the Netherlands? You’re gonna live there.
Jack 34:34
I was tricked into coming over here because my wife said oh, I can live in England. And of course she lied like a trooper. So I sort of gave up the ghost retired and said okay, I like coffee terraces and there are plenty of them. So I can live in a place with coffee terraces. This bicycles Jack, one thing to me.
Carlton Reid 35:05
And bicycles Jack plays with bicycles.
Anna Holligan 35:09
Jack is on a foldup Dunlop bike, a foldable. Right? And dog walking at the same time and walking the dog. He asked how you how old you are
Jack 35:20
82 This is
Anna Holligan 35:25
how recycling is still so
Jack 35:30
yes, we could do so
I also have a step which does 60 kilometres an hour, and but it’s not legal. So that’s why I’m on this.
Anna Holligan 35:52
It’s just incredible like your AC to this is one of the about cycling in the Netherlands that it just keeps you young, you could be 16.
Jack 36:01
If you’re going to produce things like this that can get to places that the BBC doesn’t normally go to, then that is a wonderful thing. Yes,
Anna Holligan 36:12
I want to hug you but I will. I’m so nice to have your input because this is exactly what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to be really transparent. We’re trying to get to places people aren’t able to get to and bring these types of stories. So you’ve actually just been the first interview that we’ve done, I think from the bike period. So congratulations, Jack, Down.
Jack 36:38
This is Thank you, Jack, an unexpected pleasure. You’ve made my day and a few more. Keep it up and you’re definitely on the right path.
Anna Holligan 36:51
Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Say over here. And finally.
Carlton Reid 37:01
Thanks to Anna Halligan and Kate Vandy there and thanks to you for listening to Episode 328 of the spokesmen podcast brought to you in association with Tern Bicycles, show notes, and more can be found at the dash spokesman.com. The next episode features the maker of a classic 1950s cycling jacket and the Swiss factory which makes the jackets fabric. That episode will be out in the first week of June. But meanwhile, get out there and ride …
11th May 2023
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 327: LTN Bollards Have Not Created Jesmond Ghetto: In Conversation With Dr. Tony Waterston
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUEST: Dr. Tony Waterston
TOPICS: Jesmond’s LTNs discussed on the Tour de Jesmond family-friendly bike ride
- BBC Bike Bureau with Anna Holligan and Kate Vandy (and Jack)
Carlton Reid, May 26, 2023
Read more… - LTN Bollards Have Not Created Jesmond Ghetto: In Conversation With Dr. Tony Waterston
Carlton Reid, May 11, 2023
Read more… - I Cycle Therefore I Am — Book Chat With Authors James Hibbard and Max Leonard
Carlton Reid, April 10, 2023
Read more… - Benchmarking Bicycling: How Good Is Your City For Cycling?
Carlton Reid, April 6, 2023
Read more… - Bike lanes empty? Prove gibe wrong with this €199 window-mounted traffic counting camera
Carlton Reid, March 31, 2023
Read more… - Bike Advocacy Woes In Motor-mad Malta
Carlton Reid, March 24, 2023
Read more… - Seeing Sensors With Philip and Irene McAleese
Carlton Reid, February 21, 2023
Read more… - Sustainability in action: Vaude CEO Antje von Dewitz
Carlton Reid, February 5, 2023
Read more… - Get SUVs Off Our Streets: In Conversation with Critical Mass musician Dan Abrahams
Carlton Reid, January 25, 2023
Read more… -
German word for beer diluted with lemonade is “cyclist” — oh, and Jim was probed by robots
Carlton Reid, January 8, 2023
Read more…
TRANSCRIPT
Carlton Reid 0:12
Welcome to Episode 327 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Thursday, the 11th of May 2023.
David Bernstein 0:28
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day, and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider, whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.
Carlton Reid 1:04
Hi I’m Carlton Reid and welcome to a hyper-local edition of the Spokesmen. This podcast is normally international in scope but today I’m riding on my home patch with Tony Waterson, a retired consultant paediatrician. I joined him on the Tour de Jesmond, an annual family-friendly bike ride around the streets of this leafy suburb in the northern English city of Newcastle on Tyne. Back in March, with only a little forewarning, the local council blocked some residential roads to through motor traffic by installing a bunch of bollards, creating a low traffic neighbourhood in East Jesmond. The creation of an LTN in the neighbouring suburb of Heaton attracted almost no negativity but there’s been an uproar in Jesmond. There have been two roadside demos against the East Jesmond LTN and later in the show l include audio of some of the objections raised by folks who live here. There has also been vandalism of measuring equipment and a private Facebook group quickly amassed a membership of 700 often very angry residents. Those opposed to the LTNs include a smattering of 5G conspiracy theorists, chemtrails believers and anti-vax folks, much to the annoyance of those residents who simply want the bollards to disappear and who hold no truck with those who claim that Jesmond is set to become a 15-minute-city concentration camp. I’m not exaggerating here, One media article, in all seriousness, claimed in a headline that the LTN had led to the ghettoization and sterilisation of Jesmond. Dear listener, it hasn’t. I talk about these contentious issues with Tony, who’s part of a group of local child health professionals calling on the council to stand firm. We also discuss the local elections, where the LTN issue probably caused the ousting of a Labour councillor, replaced with a Lib Dem who campaigned on a rip-out-the-bollards ticket. Be aware there’s some loud road noise soon after we start pedalling because we were riding next to the busy Great North Road; the thrum soon fades away as we’re led around quieter streets.
Tony, how many do you normally get on this ride?
Tony Waterston 4:08
I would reckon this is about 50% more than usual. We’re usually I think 20 is about the usual. Okay, this is a big one. We don’t usually have so many children, we usually have two children.
Carlton Reid 4:19
Right.
Tony Waterston 4:19
So this is a lot better than usual. And I’m very pleased.
Carlton Reid 4:22
So this is a tour of Jesmond, but you’re getting to a fair bit of not Jesmond.
Tony Waterston 4:28
Well, that’s because we pretty well, we’ve pretty well done Jesmond in the past few years. So but it is beginning and finishing there. But we do sometimes go a little bit into neighbouring areas. But it’s starting here. Always start here and go through a bit of Jesmond in it
Carlton Reid 4:45
Tony, you said your your intro speech that you said we’re ending in a controversial area. The LTNs which is controversial, not to us. Yeah, but controversial to certain people. Who believe we should rip the bollards out. So we’ll just had a local election. Where the Lib Dems, in effect said that’s what they wanted to do they want to rip out the bollards. Do you think that’s gonna? Are they going to carry on doing that, do you think? Are they’re gonna stick to their promises and keep on asking to rip them out?
Tony Waterston 5:20
I think they’re, it’s very interesting because they’re saying two contradictory things, which is that they like and approve and want to have LTN. But think the whole, this whole thing is dumb and they want to start again. And I don’t think those two statements are reconcilable. So I think they’ve done that for political reasons.
Carlton Reid 5:43
So, kind of traditional. Well, sitting on the fence saying different things to different people.
Tony Waterston 5:50
Well, I think it’s, I think it’s a bit sad, really, but it has got them elected. So I think what they’re what they’re, what they’re going to have to do is to try and amend the scheme. I don’t see how it’s possible for two councillors to have it all pulled out.
Carlton Reid 6:07
Well, that they’re lib dems, not a majority council.
Tony Waterston 6:08
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So we’re going to meet them actually to talk about how you might get some members of the community more members in the community behind them. But what kinds of compromises might be possible that will actually help to resolve the difficulties in the community? So but I think it’s going to be very hard for them to actually do something that is actually because the way people,
Carlton Reid 6:42
Jesmond, North Jesmond, is almost by my reckoning, the only ward in the country that has actually done what lots of people have threatening to do, which is vote out councillors who are in favour LTNst. Whereas nationally, the Lib Dems have been incredibly supportive of LTN in many cities. And they’ve been voted in on that ticket. So north Jesmond is, is an outlier. Why do you think why do you think Jesmond is an outlier, nationally?
Tony Waterston 7:18
Well, I think that’s a hard one. But I think the the labour councillors have made themselves very unpopular with that community. It’s always been a marginal seat. They did. There’s been alternating between Lib Dem and Labour for a while. But I think Labour’s very unpopular, because of the LTN. But also from previous schemes. They’re seen as perfidious. So you may wonder how they were voted before because obviously a strongLabour group. Yes. But I think this has become the focus. The council has become the focus of this latest
Carlton Reid 7:59
It would be fair to say that, that there was a massive swing, massive swing, I guess, in marginal I agree. But then there is this massive swing to the Lib Dems. How would how much of that do you think was the LTN? A great part?
Tony Waterston 8:14
I think it probably was, it’s difficult to see what other issues there are, really are open to this extent because I mean, there are plenty of other issues. There was antisocial behaviour, students, bins, but these are the same everywhere. It’s difficult to see any other issue that’s really divided the community to this extent, we did have a previous one we had Acorn Road, which also led to this kind of business. And so I think it’s people remember that as well, possibly, and hold it against the council. So I can’t see there being another issue that would have been so.
Carlton Reid 8:57
So I’ve been doing shock horror, this one, Tony, but I’ve been going recently for some a whole host of different reasons. I’ve actually been using a car to go through Jesmond Road, roads, that people are saying, you know, now totally blocked because of the LTN as though it was never blocked before. Yeah. But all the times I’ve been going through I mean, I went through deliberately once at peak time. Yeah, to see what people were complaining about. And yes, you probably put 10 minutes on the journey. But then just an hour away from peak and you pretty much get through those those troublesome junctions almost straight away. So we are talking about a problem that’s maybe an hour, two hours tops per day. So is that an argument for saying Well, look, yes, there is a potential problem at peak. And what do we do about that problem? And clearly people are suffering. They say they’re suffering enormously. For, for not being able to get through.
Tony Waterston 10:09
Yeah. Well, I think there are three things that could be done. But are real, real, genuine issues. And one is the right turning lane off of Jesmond road to get into Osborne Road, which could be improved. And the council has already said it’s going to improve it. The second is buses, bus services, not very easy. And I think there’s a real concern about all the people who haven’t used the bike, don’t really feel are up to using a bike again, might have a mile to walk, don’t want to really have to be in a car to go around a long way. But really they should be there should be recognition of that. And then at the council obviously finds a different, it’s difficult for the council to do that. But I think that’s an issue is improving public transport. That’s its should really been done before. The third one is the businesses who we don’t know. I mean, I haven’t seen any data on the impact of LTNs on businesses. And I think it’s usually said that more people walking and cycling will be good for business. Yes, but the businesses are very afraid and anxious. So I think something needs to be done. And the council has also said they will do that. The Cradlewell, to make it a more pleasant area. So that the width will show show the businesses that something is being done. And I think probably there should be a bit more data collected, actually, to see you using those businesses. Yeah, using using the usual kind of
Carlton Reid 11:49
Of course people can get to these businesses in the same way they can get before Yeah, we’re where we are right now is on the Great North Road that we’re getting here. All this massive traffic noise. And we’re going into Jesmond here now. So that’s clearly one of the boundary roads near the LTNs. But that’s always been busy. And Jesmond Road always been busy. But these are not. These haven’t been created by the LTN have they?
Tony Waterston 12:14
No. But I think the point, the point is we don’t know whether the main, they have a real fear. You know, the fear may be completely false. We don’t, we don’t know. And I think they’re so I think we’re attempting to reassure them without really knowing what the impact is, is I think they need to be taken seriously rather than just say, Oh, well, it’ll be alright.
Carlton Reid 12:38
So you’ve been a bit of a lightning rod with your role as a former consultant paediatrician and you have written a kind of an open letter on the LTNs, I mean, who was that open letter to. just just literally everybody?
Tony Waterston 12:54
It was really to the pres, all the candidates and the council. It was really to to highlight the the health issues, which are an important part of this. And I think this group of of health professionals has been anxious about this for quite a while and actually had a really ever since this group was set up, which is a national group over the COP26. And did this cycle, I think, and you were on it. That was amazing. It was an amazing event. And that led to really this group of people here in Newcastle feeling that they need to continue to publicise this.
Carlton Reid 13:41
So these are northeast. I mean, they looked at like mainly paediatricians.
Tony Waterston 13:46
All child health.
Carlton Reid 13:47
It’s all child health. And that you wouldn’t one would think would have resonance? You know, we are talking about children’s lungs. Yeah. So do you think your letter in the, in the local newspaper, you’ve had the antis and then you’ve had, you know, this statement that the local childrens’ health headline doesn’t really portray it very well to about you know, conflict, gridlock, etc, etc. And whereas your your statement is, is child health? Yeah. So do you see any of that argument which you’ve, you’ve put forward having resonance?
Tony Waterston 14:29
Well, I think it needs not on one occasion, and to continually be be put, because I think it’s like always with local issues. The bigger picture gets lost in the in the local issues, and in particular, the individual issues for individual people. And they say everybody thinks, Well, my action doesn’t cause pollution. It’s everybody else that does it. It’s because everybody else is driving all the time. So they probably will want other people to stop and not necessarily themselves. But on the other hand, I think it will have an impact. You know, if it’s a drip by drip thing.
Carlton Reid 14:32
We have some very loud people who put their point of view but we don’t even the local actions and wasn’t actually that many people voted. Okay. It was a big swing, but it wasn’t like every single person in Jesmond by any means. So the loud people, do you think they are perhaps not actually representative of the population as a whole, but they’re just very loud. And we hear about them when we see them in the press?
Tony Waterston 15:30
Oh, that’s definitely the case. I think that’s definitely the case. And I think there is an overlap in these very loud ones with the awful group who were at the hustings, which was a very, quite a large group of climate denialists, who were conflating all this with the three minutes city conspiracy theory. So I think there’s a bit of crossover there.
Carlton Reid 15:53
Do you think that it’s actually will turn a lot of people off? So people who might have been consider it as moderates normally? And would have been opposed to the LTN see these conspiracy denialists or conspiracy theorists, climate denialists, anti 15 minutes cities, anti-LTN people and go, actually, I would have supported the anti LTN movement, but because those guys are there, I’m probably going to pull back? Do you think there’s an element of that?
Tony Waterston 16:21
I think so. I think so. And I think I think I think what I’ve always felt about this is that in six months or nine months time, you’ll find that the majority are accepting it. And quite happy, then the small minority remains a small minority are working against it. And I think it will help. I think that came up with the hustings and one person who was part of the resident’s group against it spoke up after this climate denial thing, saying, I’m not one of those, I believe in climate change.
Carlton Reid 16:54
However, I’m still willing to pollute still.
Tony Waterston 16:56
Yeah, exactly. Right. Exactly. But, but I think there’s this way also, there’s real concern they have, which is I think force also that it just displaces the pollution.
Carlton Reid 17:07
Yes, that was gonna be my next question. How do you address because that that is one of the key things is this is worsening climate change? Because you are worsening congestion on the boundary roads, you are then making more pollution. So this is why me as I’m saying, I’m gonna an anti LTN hear me. I am now causing more pollution. And I don’t want to but you are making me. So how do you address that? That argument?
Tony Waterston 17:40
I think it’s I think it’s data. I think they need to be data from the council of road traffic numbers in the surrounding areas and showing that they’re just they haven’t increased or they’re only increased at certain very short periods. And also looking at the pollution monitors, and seeing what they’re saying.
Carlton Reid 18:02
So I’ve looked at the data, because you can get real time data on the Coast Road. Yeah. Both pollution, air pollution and on traffic stats. Yeah. And nobody tends to believe you when you say this, but actually, last year, the traffic was six up to 62% up, probably post pandemic, this year we’re actually post LTN, we’re up to 6% down. But probably that’s across the whole day rather than being peak. So do you think any amount of data will actually shift people? Or is this data only really going to convince the council that they’re doing the right thing?
Tony Waterston 18:42
No. I think like you said before, there’s some people wouldn’t be convinced the majority, I think, well, and I think it needs to be the thing is, it’s not always easy to get information out to people, because people are very selective in what they read. So I would hope that the council would actually this is where they need to really get going with some local information flow, possibly through people’s doors.
Carlton Reid 19:11
Do you think there’s been enough consultation? Because again, that’s one of the things that, you know, we want consultation, we know what that means. It tends to mean, we actually want to rip these out. Yeah. And you know, if you give us a consultation that will ask for the veto is what they’re actually after. But do you think there has been some mistakes made?
Tony Waterston 19:30
Yes, I think so. I think I think you have to admit that there were. And I got some ideas about how it could be done. And in fact, after, after the Acorn Road business, the JRA which I was chair of them, the Jesmond Residents’ Association did put out a report on the consultation process. But basically, I think that I think it’s never going to be possible under the present circumstances of democracy to do have local local consultations because a lot of people don’t use the media that the council puts out information. So the best way probably would have been to put them through the doors. If they did 3500. They said, a lot of people say always say they didn’t receive. So, and I personally did put on arrange a meeting at the library at least a year ago, about the LTN that had about 15 people at it. So it’s it’s difficult to get information out and people will always say they didn’t see it. Probably should have been more local meetings.
Carlton Reid 20:40
We have varied, me and you and a bunch of other people who were actually on this ride. And other people who were anti measures for streets for people. And we’ve been on various panels. Yeah, I think it’s since 2016. Yeah. So the fact that people are saying has been no consultation, the council has been talking to people and getting their opinions for a number of years. Probably even before 2016. So when you when you quiz people about that, they say, Ah, okay, the counters only consulted special people only consulted the pros. Do you see any validity in that argument?
Tony Waterston 21:21
Well, I think that people this is back to a general concern about people being unaware of what goes on and local democracy. And for example, there used to be group constants used to have four meetings a year in local areas. And they stopped those completely now. And also city, City Life [newspaper] is less frequent. And they’re also used to be Jesmond Residents’ Association newsletter, which is also stopped. So I think the channels have got less, and I think people feel less connected, generally with local democracy. So these are excuses. But I think I think that the council probably needed to have recognised that they needed to be a special effort to either do letters to doors, or to have local meetings.
Carlton Reid 22:10
As we have seen the most effective thing to do is actually put the bollards in. Because you can do any number of consultations prior to this, and it’s all airy fairy. Bollard goes in, and then all hell yeah, send it back. That’s what the trials were for, you know? Yeah, we’ve got to do these to actually see what it’s really like.
Tony Waterston 22:31
I know. But I agree. But I think the risk is that, if the opposite is, if the opposition is very enormous, then they do feel they have to do something about taking it out, which will be disastrous. And I think in future, we need to use a more representative democracy system, such as the citizens’ jury or citizens’ assembly, when you’ve got a very contentious issue that we
Carlton Reid 22:54
We did have that we had a bunch of people, the city, employed people to talk to residents, about their concerns and come up with ideas. And they brought in experts in who took those concerns. So that was us. It was a small citizens assembly.
Tony Waterston 23:10
They weren’t was there wasn’t there an attempt to get the local population representatives involved in what was happening? I think we don’t have a good system at the moment. It needs to be improved. And I think there needs to be some experimentation with
Carlton Reid 23:27
Are you know, kind of calling for what many people are, in fact, calling for Swiss-style, canton-style referendums?
Tony Waterston 23:35
No, I don’t think referendums are good, either. Because it’s not a yes or no issue. But I think generally, people need accurate information, to help them to decide, can be the needs to be a real effort to get the people involved, who are not normally participating in these discussions which is what a citizens’ assembly …,
Carlton Reid 23:57
But that’s what it has done. I mean, the bollards have got people talking, you really cannot escape the fact that that was literally in your face. Yeah. And it has, some people are going to be very anti, but many people are certainly on certain roads, which are now very quiet. Yeah, I know, previously, you know, awful roads to drive up or cycle or walk up there just to be nice. And in a few months time after the trial, people are gonna be just going actually, I’m not going to stop or put my head above the parapet and say I’m in favour of this because you’ll get screamed down. Yeah, but they’re gonna be in favour because it just it just obviously makes where they’re living nicer.
Tony Waterston 24:36
Yeah. Well, I think you and I agree on that. But it’s the it’s, I don’t think there’s much of a dialogue going on. I think it’s, it’s people shouting and not many people listening. And, and that’s not very good for a local area to have that kind of angry angriness. The, the level of anger has been extraordinary and I’ve tried a few times to get have been through a dialogue and haven’t managed to do that. Yes. A proper dialogue.
Carlton Reid 25:04
Yes, it has been very difficult. And I mean, one Facebook group, private group, 700 people, but only if you’re anti it, you can’t join if you’re not. And they’ve been slagging me off something rotten and I can’t do much about it
Tony Waterston 25:20
The things that have been said have been quite disgraceful, yes. And it’s really sad to see that happening. And the meetings that have been held haven’t been an opportunity to bring out the facts, because it needed to be meeting when all the facts were presented. And that hasn’t really happened to a general, to a general audience, and I think if you tried to do it, now, it will be very difficult that we’re gonna have to concentrate on getting across this.
Carlton Reid 25:48
We’re going to leave Tony there for a second, and hear from some of those opposed to the bollards. But first, here’s my colleague, David, with a short ad break.
David Bernstein 25:59
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Carlton Reid 27:08
Thanks, David. And as mentioned before the break, it’s time to hear from some of those residents who are very much opposed to the LTN. I caught up with them at the first roadside demo. And you can watch all of the interviews on a half hour YouTube film I made of the protest letting residents speak their minds. Llink in the show notes.
Jesmond anti-LTN 1 27:30
Just because they cut Jesmond in half. Any traffic wanting to go into town now is either gonna go one way or the other. And if they’re going from the other side of the bollards, then really they’ve got to go come out onto the Coast Road. And if they’re going, if they’re going south or potentially into the city via Sandyford Road, then they’re gonna go along Sandyford Road, whereas in the past, they would have come down here or longer.
Carlton Reid 27:58
But residents can get to every property in the in the street, yes?
Jesmond anti-LTN 1 28:04
I would have thought so, yeah.
Carlton Reid 28:05
So the things that have been stopped, the council would say, the Rat runs the people who don’t?
Jesmond anti-LTN 1 28:12
Well, they would say that they say they’re conducting a consultation, but in my view, it’s a window dressing exercise. They’ve decided what they want to do. They’re not really very interested in whether people want it or not. And they won’t be very interested in whether the people have objected to it or not.
Carlton Reid 28:29
Do you think any of that is caused by the LTN? Or is that something that might have existed beforehand?
Jesmond anti-LTN 2 28:35
Well, ccertainly traffic existed here beforehand. But anecdotally, I would say this traffic jam was two or three times as long as it normally is, at this time of the day. And that’s a direct result of the LTN.
Carlton Reid 28:47
Okay, what would you like the council to do? What what’s what’s what would be your idea?
Jesmond anti-LTN 2 28:52
I would like them to do what it says on the sign. Consultation, there was zero consultation about this LTN. The council will tell you otherwise, but there was not a consultation. Clearly some form of LTN might have some form of advantage. But this is draconian. And it’s ruining people’s lives.
Jesmond anti-LTN 3 29:11
And I just feel that I’m fenced in. I can’t move about, you know.
Carlton Reid 29:17
You’ve got grand …
And I’m presuming here that these are your grandchildren.
Jesmond anti-LTN 3 29:20
These are my grandchildren. They’ve got to go to school. So they live in Southeast Jesmond. The school is in West Jesmond. It’s about a mile walk, which is fine if you haven’t got anything else to do apart from just take the children to school and not go to work and do other things. And if the weather’s good, but if the weather’s going to be you know, it’s bad, it’d be horrendous, you know, I just feel kettled at the minute you know, I don’t want to rule the road in my car, I just want to participate in life in the community of Jesmond.
Carlton Reid 29:49
You say “kettled”, which which has the connotation of “I can’t physically get out.”
Jesmond anti-LTN 3 29:53
Wel, I can physically get out.
Jesmond anti-LTN 4 29:55
Simply because they’re channelling all the vehicles on the streets, so you get massive tailbacks. That means you’re getting more pollution, if you really believe that the combustion engine is really harmful, which Ie personally don’t.
Carlton Reid 30:07
You don’t believe that combustion?
Jesmond anti-LTN 4 and 5 30:08
No.
Carlton Reid 30:08
Would you put your mouth over that exhaust pipe on that car?
Jesmond anti-LTN 4 30:12
Of course not.
Carlton Reid 30:12
So it must be harmful then… Let’s get back to riding along with Tony Waterston.
Tony Waterston 30:19
Yeah. And the thing is, Carlton, that what worries me is it’s going to derail the future developments in Jesmond because there are plans underfoot for a low traffic street, or School Street, and also a low traffic neighbourhood in West Jesmond. So, and I’m afraid that one of the councillors said I think at the last meeting that when asked if there were any further plans, that not at the moment now,
Carlton Reid 30:52
Prior to the election, so election out of the way, they can probably be brave enough to do it. Yes.
Tony Waterston 30:58
Well, I hope so.
Carlton Reid 31:00
Because at the end of the day, the city council has got to improve air quality. It’s a legal requirement that failing. And one of the simplest and easiest ways of doing this is by reducing the amount of motor traffic which LTN’s don’t do that instantly? But all the data, all the scientific studies done to date seems to suggest that it certainly isn’t making things worse. And a lot of the claims that people are saying, you know, using anecdata, yeah, it’s just not panning out.
Tony Waterston 31:33
Yes, though. Well, I think that’s why the needs to be wider discussion, this comes back to climate change, really, with a bigger group and the community as to what measures need to be done to reduce emissions for the benefit of clean air and for the benefit of avoiding 1.5. Or keeping within 1.5, I should say, and I think a lot of people aren’t really, I think, haven’t thought about the methods that you can use to reduce motor traffic, and what’s realistic and what isn’t. And obviously, there are measures national government could make, which it’s not doing, and there are measures local government can take. And this is there seems to be one of the most used, that local government can can take. It’s quite difficult to actually bring in a stick that that works. So I think this this debate, it’s important for people to realise that this this is part of the bigger picture.
Carlton Reid 32:42
Thanks to Tony Waterston there and thanks to you for listening to Episode 327 of the Spokesman podcast brought to you in association with Tern bicycles. Shownotes and more can be found at www.the-spokesmen.com. The next episode out really very, very soon will be a chat with the BBC’ss Anna Holligan and Kate Vandy and the formation of their mobile, news gathering studio, the BBC bike bureau. Meanwhile, get out there and ride …
10th April 2023
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 321: I Cycle Therefore I Am — Book Chat With Authors James Hibbard and Max Leonard
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUESTS: James Hibbard and Max Leonard
TOPICS: From highbrow psychedelia to being defined as a cyclist — discussing “The Art of Cycling: Philosophy, Meaning and a Life on Two Wheels” with author James Hibbard and blurb supplier and author Max Leonard.
- I Cycle Therefore I Am — Book Chat With Authors James Hibbard and Max Leonard
Carlton Reid, April 10, 2023
Read more… - Benchmarking Bicycling: How Good Is Your City For Cycling?
Carlton Reid, April 6, 2023
Read more… - Bike lanes empty? Prove gibe wrong with this €199 window-mounted traffic counting camera
Carlton Reid, March 31, 2023
Read more… - Bike Advocacy Woes In Motor-mad Malta
Carlton Reid, March 24, 2023
Read more… - Seeing Sensors With Philip and Irene McAleese
Carlton Reid, February 21, 2023
Read more… - Sustainability in action: Vaude CEO Antje von Dewitz
Carlton Reid, February 5, 2023
Read more… - Get SUVs Off Our Streets: In Conversation with Critical Mass musician Dan Abrahams
Carlton Reid, January 25, 2023
Read more… - German word for beer diluted with lemonade is “cyclist” — oh, and Jim was probed by robots
Carlton Reid, January 8, 2023
Read more… - Chris Boardman explains Active Travel England’s Capability Fund
Carlton Reid, January 2, 2023
Read more… -
Masterplanning Milan: Real Estate Developer Reshaping the City With Active Travel
Carlton Reid, December 22, 2022
Read more…
TRANSCRIPT:
Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 326 of the spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Monday, April the 10th 2023.
David Bernstein 0:28
The spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day, and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.
Carlton Reid 1:03
I’m Carlton Reid and on today’s longer than usual show, one hour and 45 minutes, I talk with ex professional cyclist James Hibbard, author of The Art of cycling a lyrical book on philosophy and a life lived on two wheels. And joining me in a sort of tag team was fellow author Max Leonard, who supplied one of the blurbs for James’s wonderful book. I am honoured today to be joined by two authors, one of whom Max Leonard is actually on my timezone. So Hi Max, and whereabouts are you Max Today
Max Leonard 1:49
I am in sunny East London.
Carlton Reid 1:51
It’s sunny in Newcastle as well you know we’re living the dream here in the UK at the moment, not in the UK and not on our timezone. We have another author another cycling connected author because we’re all cycling connected authors here at James Hibbard. So hi there, James.
James Hibbard 2:09
How you doing Carlton? Very good to actually be on the podcast and it’s sunny as well in Northern California. Although that’s probably a little less funny than a less surprising than sun in the UK.
Carlton Reid 2:20
Now, people on this podcast, we have a frequent number of guests from Southern California who I always joke and say what’s the weather like there? Because I know it’s going to be you know, the worst that’s going to happen is they might have to put arm warmers on you know bad that literally is generally the worst they have to do
James Hibbard 2:37
up here it’s actually been a bit a bit bad Carlton it’s been bad in Northern California here it’s been like like rain like I never recall since childhood so it’s not it’s not always saw
Carlton Reid 2:49
you on I guess it Northern California is different isn’t because most of the guests who are regulars on here are Southern California. Oh, we’re gonna be do get more weather that we get a lot more
James Hibbard 2:58
and we’re going to be talking a lot hopefully about California. And yeah, I think we can dive into some of the big cultural differences
in fact, between southern and northern California when it comes to cycling culture, okay.
Carlton Reid 3:09
So at first I want to I want to because we’re going to be doing a tag team sort of here or a Madison you know, thrown off kind of thing here with with me and Max, we are going to be ganging up a little bit on on James and we will talk about it because it’s James as in effect, Second Edition, so paperback edition of his book, rather than that that first paperback hardback version of his book. But let’s get to max. First of all, Max, I’ve done numerous stories. Well, at least two on your Kickstarter books, including one of which I know you’re working on now on a famous California mechanic. So you can tell us about that. But can you first of all, tell us about you’ve done other books, you’ve done a kind of a cycling climbs book and what and why cyclists are attracted to going up against gravity. And you’ve also done a book about the last rider in a race I almost want to say lose it there. But of course the the person’s last in a bike race isn’t a loser at all. So to ground us on this this show by first of all, Max telling us about
Max Leonard 4:17
your books. Okay? Yes, my first in inverted commas. Proper book was called lanten Rouge, the last man in the Tour de France. And that really does exactly what it says on the tin. And the last guy in the tool was given the nickname the lantern Rouge. The Red Lantern, probably after the lantern that used to swing on the back of a on the back of a train to show the guard that every character has passed through. And I think it was a kind of underdog thing given by the fans. It was never an official Tour de France classification. They didn’t like it because they thought it you know celebs I did failure and it took the shine off the winner and took the focus off. But actually, I thought, you know, cycling is a nice road cycling is a team sport and you have all these other aspects to the story, you’ve got, you know, self self sacrifice. You’ve got, you know, working for your leader, you’ve got the teamwork aspect, you’ve got sort of horrendous injuries, you’ve got incredible stories of really great cyclists who’ve managed one way or another, to come last. So really, that was digging down into, you know, trying to subvert the ideas of success and failure. And, you know, take a look at what we mean when we think about those things. And, you know, for in a lot of ways, if cycling, cycling race is just a publicity game, then, you know, the last guy in the race gets a lot of publicity, then he’s really done done a dozen responses and, and guys use people used to hide a hide behind cars and you know, lose time deliberately to try and get last place.
Carlton Reid 6:04
Right, and then and then your gravity book.
Max Leonard 6:06
Yeah, well, it’s called a higher calling. And this is maybe where we’re getting kind of more into Joneses kind of territory, because high calling was was the subtitle is, cycling’s obsession with mountains. And, and that end is really trying to work out why we like going to the mountains and why we like doing something that’s so difficult in a way. And so that breaks down into a few different things you can say, Well, partly there’s the kind of, you know, competition thing. So I, I went to a mountain in the south of France, but the bonnet in the Alps, which is the highest mountain, the highest road passed in the Alps, or at least, that’s what the signs say, and how to try to dig into, you know, the kind of competition of Tour de France and the dirt Italia and all the beautiful history, but also the natural environment you’re in the kind of the training that goes into it, and people who are around there and and the history of the place, and all the different things that make mountains such sort of special obsession for cyclists.
Carlton Reid 7:12
And the Alps and mountains and bikes comes into the jobs Bradbrook really he was, he was a big champion of cycling in Europe, wasn’t he? Yeah, it
Max Leonard 7:23
gets Brian was he was a, a strange character, who I heard of, because he he he made what is the kind of the definitive text on wheel building, or at least it was back when people used to actually build wheels and not just buy them ready made it from a factory. And he was a California cyclists to kind of a mentor to people like Tom Ritchie and other frame builders in the area, and he died in 2015, I should say so. So if you were alive now he’d be he’d be 90 or so. And he wrote, he wrote in the Santa Cruz Mountains and the Sierra Nevada and all these amazing places in California and just took his road bike into the dirt in ways that people in the 50s and 60s 70s 80s just didn’t really do, I’m talking about before mountain biking, before mountain bikes were invented, and definitely before gravel bikes and all of that. But he also would come to the Alps every year for 50 years, and do kind of exactly the same route, or pretty much but depending on the weather, each time staying in the same places and taking pictures in the same place at the same place for 50 years in a row. And he left behind this amazing archive of photos and ride reports and stuff like that. And he was he was pretty influential and into it big in the bike industry to his own sort of weird outsider kind of way. So he he worked with a local company in California not far from where James is called avocets and came up with all sorts of stuff that they then put on the market
Carlton Reid 9:07
and local computers and and all sorts of things like that.
Max Leonard 9:11
Exactly. He was a was the guy who came up with the idea of riding trendless tires, which people thought was crazy when when he when he he proposed it and everyone else had some tread on it. He said you know he was a real kind of engineers engineer and he proved to Avocet and then to the rest of the industry that that be you got more traction from a from a trendless tire and that you can actually lean further at least you know if you’re talking about a perfect tarmacked road anyway so so yeah, he was really interesting guy and I remember seeing these photos of him years ago and being blown away by this. He was six foot five and so he had a bike frame that was about I think we had a 65 centimetre frame with a head tube as long as as long as my arm basically and There it is, then there’s pictures of him in the Alps on on gravel roads before they’re all tarmacs and just, you know, sort of expanded the idea of what cycling could be for me.
Carlton Reid 10:10
And what stage are you at with that? Because you you were successful in your Kickstarter. So what stage are you at now?
Max Leonard 10:15
We are just finalising the layouts and spreads and it goes to print in the next few weeks. So it is it. The hard work is almost done. But it’ll be a while till it’s out. It’ll be around in your sometime in the summer.
Carlton Reid 10:34
And then there’s, there’s a slight link there in that, you know, you’d unmade up roads, cycling in the Alps. Sunny cycling in the mountains, is a link to another one of your books, which is also kickstarted, which was like the rest of fellowship?
Max Leonard 10:51
Yeah, exactly. And probably the context of these these photo based books is I decided that I started a publishing company a few years ago, and have just by accident, I guess or by luck come across these amazing archives of photos and things. The rough stuff fellowship was, they’re known as the oldest, the world’s oldest off road bike club, founded in 1955, in a pub in Leinster, which is in Herefordshire, not far from the Welsh Welsh border. And that it seems funny to think about it, but back then the idea of off road, they call it rough stuff. And actually, the roads themselves can’t have been, you know, lots of them in very good quality at all. So the idea that they’d go off and seek the kind of byways and bridle paths and that kind of thing. Really set them aside from cycling of year and they would not, they’re very non competitive, it was all about camping and enjoying the outdoors and that kind of thing.
Carlton Reid 11:54
And also masochist, there’s an awful lot of masochism, there wasn’t that there was still like, you know, there were quite happy to walk up stuff, which was
Max Leonard 12:05
one of the founder members, he, his famous, infamous quote from him says, I never go for a walk without my bike. And so I think basically, that, you know, they just wanted to get out into the great outdoors. And you know, we’re happy pushing their bikes if if it meant that they could go across, you know, pass in the Lake District, or through a field or up on the walls or the Fells. And, again, they left behind this incredible, I say, left behind, the club is still going strong. But you know, over the past 50 6070 years, they’ve created an amazing archive of beautiful pictures of people carrying their bikes through fields, essentially.
Carlton Reid 12:48
So that masochism, and the outlier ism is definitely going to be picked out here when we’re talking to James because James is the author of and I’m going to just name the whole title here and it’s subhead, the art of cycling, philosophy, meaning and a life on two wheels. Now I’ve given before before we came on air here, I gave maxed, complete carte blanche to jump in whenever he wants to on this. But I have got a bunch of questions for James as we go through here, but I’m going to start by by by maybe describing before I even come up with the first question I kind of described because I’ve read James’s book is fascinating. It’s wonderful. I know it’s been shortlisted for a bunch of awards. And this as I said before, this is like the paperback edition that we’re talking about now, because the hardback clearly has been successful. And the publisher who’s the publisher,
James Hibbard 13:54
it’s quick, it’s in the UK and Pegasus in the United States, we’ll be publishing the hardback on May 2 of this year. So it’s the first American edition.
Carlton Reid 14:03
So I’ll just describe it to people. I mean, I want people to go out and buy of course and read it for themselves, but I’ll just give it a brief thumbnail sketch just kind of philosophy for Dummies, but we’ve added spandex. And then you’ve got this challenging three day ride with two of your fast mates. So you’ve got two, two former pro cyclists because you James, you’re from a pro cyclist in the US, right? So there’s this it’s this kind of interplay between the history, mostly of Western philosophical thought there’s some Eastern stuff, there’s certainly a fair bit of Zen stuff in there towards the end of it’s only Western stuff. Then it’s that it’s almost like why we cycle there’s a definite section there and that the pain and the suffering and the masochism definitely comes out there and then the kind of the almost the owner ism comm comes out there and how cycling attracts perhaps a certain kind of person. And but then you’ve got this, this, this, just it’s a narrative of how I’d like to say enjoyable, but of course it’s cycling. So it’s not enjoyable. It’s just something that you suffered with fellow riders. So there’s you leave your wife and your young child, and you go off and you haven’t written for a long time. And they’re 10 years, since you’d written
James Hibbard 15:32
at least 10 years since I’d written seriously. Yeah.
Carlton Reid 15:35
So it’s there’s a nice die certainly associate myself with that period of not riding and then getting back into because you’re like, basically training to go on a training ride, right? So there’s, there’s that huge segment of the book is power hub in Canada, but it’s probably the biggest segment of look is actually this narrative of this ride in California, with with with your your mate. So that’s basically what the book is about. It’s a very long book, very interesting and fascinating books. I’m not belittling, like there, but I’m kind of trying to precis it anyway. But first of all, because there are bits in there, that I’m when I’m reading this I know parts of where you are, because you’re Morgan Hill. Yes, indeed.
James Hibbard 16:20
So yeah, really a little bit south of San Jose is where I grew up. So that that gives you any
Carlton Reid 16:25
Morgan Hill is is um, you say in there, it’s like it’s saw the convergence of cycling and the counterculture and as soon as I read that, I thought of Gary Fisher. I thought of mountain biking I thought of Grateful Dead right and and their connection with cycling and then Morgan Hill of course, you have I’m sure you must all the time. When you go riding you must see Mike’s in yard. And and the specialised Indian riders who go out and suffer. Every lunchtime
James Hibbard 16:55
I did and actually spent some time working
working for specialised as well. So I know, I know, Mike. And certainly that whole sort of ecosystem that Max was alluding to, of really a counterculture meeting, cycling, is very much grounded in the Bay Area, the peninsula companies like Richie Avocet, specialised in Mike’s vineyard, Jim genties, and Jiro. So this whole sort of confluence of 1960s counterculture meets European road cycling. And and I think that that was certainly a pre Lance Armstrong era, and very much an era that that influenced me through my first club. And the shops owner, who I mentioned in the book named Terry Shaw. And this whole sort of ecosystem of looking at the Kony manual and juniors ride rollers in small gears, a very sort of, I think, lost lost art view of what the sport of cycling is, in a very sort of describing
Carlton Reid 18:05
the book. The coding manual is, yeah, SEO and I dot dot, dot, dot, dot, then in Italian, purely translated book, so but just tell people who don’t know what the coding manual is.
James Hibbard 18:16
So it’s this, when there was very, very little information on what European cyclists were doing. The Kony manual was a training manual that was translated from the Italian into English, and essentially, was the only sort of insight window into into how it was that that European cyclists were so much better than American cyclists, right, when there was this sort of continental European mystery about the sport, the sort of first insight in I believe, was the late 70s, that it first showed up in the United States. But this was the sort of of manual that that was up there with, okay, how does how to all the great Italians, how does even sort of great Belgian writers, how is this being done, and this the coney manual versus sort of proxy insight into European cycling at a time when there was this very, very little knowledge of what was was actually being done from a physiological perspective.
Carlton Reid 19:16
So just bringing Max back into this in that the reason I’ve connected you to is because I got a press release from from your publisher in the US asking me to, to write about this book, and I needed to go back and said, Well, yes, I’d like to get more information. But what jumped out at me of course, is that because I know Max, and Max is one of the names that’s on the blurb of your book, and he is on the press release. So it’s like oh, well, Max, I you know, I’ve been in you know, in rooms writing with Max in on the same publication. So let’s Max in here. So Max, what What is your connection? And you could even maybe even read out your blurb But you’ve said for for James But But what? What is your take on James’s book? Maybe you want to like maybe change my precis into a different precis?
Max Leonard 20:10
Oh gosh, well, I don’t have the blurb in front of me actually, I was I was searching high and low for my physical copy only, but I do have I do have the PDF, thankfully. So I managed to brush up on it again before coming on air but it’s just a coincidence that James and I are published by the same guys and in the States. But James wrote to me, I can’t remember when but you know, back when this before it was published in hardback and said, he really appreciate me giving it read and quiet and, and I did and while I gave it and read and I was just sort of enchanted by the way that it mixed together, the kind of personal story and the stuff that’s very grounded in in him and, and his his journey through through being a pro cyclist and became perhaps becoming a bit disillusioned with that and then picking up a biker gang and then going on this, this ride down the coast of California with the kind of wider things, you know, wider questions of life and bringing all these different philosophies into it and, you know, slotting names that I knew a bit of but not very much about, you know, Nietzsche Vidkun, Stein, Sartre, you a bit bit about Sartre actually, but but, you know, bringing them in and making them applicable both to cycling and into the kind of things that happen to you and your cycling, and whether that’s physical or emotional, or, or, you know, the kind of the pain that you’re talking, you’ve talked about Carlton already, but also, I think that I liked, particularly in the you know, I spent a while on a bike over the years, putting out different things and quite nice things about mountains and history and that sort of thing. I guess, but my higher calling book, you know, trying to ask the why of why we why we like mountains, that kind of thing. But one of the things I always thought about cycling was was that, you know, you know, you say I’m gonna get on my bike, and I’m gonna go out and, and think about something, maybe I’m stuck on something at work or something like that. And you got enough to two minutes, you don’t think about anything, you know, your brain has completely, completely wipes and then you come home, and then usually to me, it happens, I get in the shower, and then I suddenly have a brainwave. But but the idea of not thinking, I think is really super important. And that’s something that James comes to very quickly in the book and kind of explores, I don’t know what you think about that, James, with, there’s more more you can say about the kind of perverse attraction of not thinking?
James Hibbard 22:49
Well, I think, I mean, I keep sort of bringing it back to California culture. And I think what’s very interesting about the current cultural moment, that’s, that’s very California, but it’s very spread Absolutely, globally, is the sort of internet and this hyper rational belief that everything that can be accomplished, and the things that are most significant and most pressing, all have very tangible, rational answers, right? Where sort of what we’re talking about in terms of thinking is, in fact, price so highly in our in our current cultural moment. That what we’re talking about and trying to describe in terms of sort of using Zen or using Nietzsche or a figure like Heidegger, this idea of not thinking, because you’re so engaged in the physical world. And then the tangible is, I think, increasingly being lost by always being online and plugged in, and what tends to be valued things like writing code, or being productive. And I think that that while those are very, very important, and have certainly been emphasised, by 2500 years of Western philosophy, you’re losing a lot of what it is to be human by thinking that that is the only important experience of what it is to be alive. So I think that that the art of cycling could have been about playing the violin, it could have been about digging ditches, it could have been about chess, anything that just really pushes you back into the tangible world and not this world of rational abstraction.
Carlton Reid 24:30
That tangible world, which you describe in the book, and you talked about how cyclists are very much concentrating on the moment and and yes, as as Max was saying, you know, you almost think about very little, but when you’re what you don’t you don’t see cyclists generally on their phones, looking at screens, bringing it back to that, that that point you’re raising, right, but you do see motorists on this. Unfortunately, you see motorists on their, on their screens, very frequently, so there’s something about cycling and not just the fact you’re on skinny tires. And if you crash, you’re gonna hurt yourself, there’s potentially something more about cycling, the VIS serial aspect of cycling, that where you you’re really not enveloped by anything right very close to nature in a way that you know, even a sports car, a driver of a sports car is not connected to nature in that way. So what is it about cycling that makes you not be attached to your screen? Whereas in a car, you are you potentially you want to be attached to a screen. So because you think it’s so boring that you can just do it without having to pay attention?
James Hibbard 25:39
Well, I think I think if you you think through let’s go back to car. I mean, you’re absolutely right. But let’s go back and not lumped cars all together, let’s think about 1960s MG with a manual transmission being driven on a mountain road with a convertible, right, that’s the sort of one spectrum of driving an automobile. Another would be driving a Tesla down Highway 101. In California, right, you’re completely isolated, you’re your temperature controlled everything else. along that spectrum. I think that what’s what’s interesting to think about is this idea of how mediated it is, right your your experience in your interface with the automobile and, and hence with the road. So in one instance, you’ve got a manual transmission, and you’re trying to sort of feel through the gearshift, you’re having to sense what’s going on on the road surface. And that’s coming through direct actual mechanical interfaces rather than some computer system. So I think that that you just keep on that spectrum in terms of things either being mediated through different computer interfaces or not. And the bicycle is, of course, even less mediated than even a bike with di two and electronic shifting is less mediated than, for example, that mg. So I think that the amount of feedback that you’re getting from the environment, and whether that feedback is direct, or run through some other system to make it ostensibly easier to control or handle, is really the the way to start to think through that this idea of mediation, I think is huge when you’re operating a vehicle that’s hurtling through space, what that vehicle is telling you and how.
Carlton Reid 27:34
Because you make the point in the book about how you know speed, we all like speed, cyclists don’t like speed and logic like speed, but it’s not in the real world, you know, we are very often going very fast in our car, in an aeroplane or whatever. But we’re divorced from that, right. Whereas on a bicycle, you’re not divorced from that speed, you you’re potentially in spandex. You are that you as you say the two square centimetres of rubber is, you know, you’re gonna hurt yourself, if you fall off, or if you get in a car, you seem as though you’re going to ride 70 miles now I’ll survive that.
James Hibbard 28:07
Right? Right, the lack of of feeling that there’s consequences in a car is certainly different than, than when you’re on a bike. I mean, you you sort of 35 miles an hour on the descent feels like 85 miles an hour easily in an automobile. So yeah, this sort of sense of existential threat and consequences is on a bike is massively different than, than that of being in a car, particularly being in a modern, modern car with air conditioning and everything else. You’re just you’re, as you say, absolutely divorced from the environment in a way that you’re not. You’re certainly not ever on a bicycle.
Carlton Reid 28:51
And you make a good point. I hadn’t actually thought of this before about why, you know, people might say the pros, preferred tubular tires. And you’re describing that very well. And you’d like two or three paragraphs of it, just it just you feel the curve. You feel everything much more because of that particular profile. Right. And I hadn’t really thought of it in that way before. It’s like, yes, you should, is daft to have a tubular tie for all sorts of reasons. But you just described as like, yes, but the feeling you get from a tubular tie is unlike the control you feel you have, right.
James Hibbard 29:27
I mean, it’s just to sort of illustrate I mean, a tubular tire has a round profile that’s glued to the rim, whereas a clincher has a U shape. And you can just sort of think as you’re leaning a bicycle over, having a very consistent round profile as the bike is is leaned over to a greater and greater extent as opposed to a U shape is hugely advantageous to just have a sense for you’re not you don’t have a changing profile along with the change in the angle of the lean of the bicycle. which is a massive advantage. And yeah, I mean, I love the feel of a beautiful Italian made tubular like nothing else. The way it rolls over pavement and just resonates. Max, what
Carlton Reid 30:12
do you what are you writing on? Was did that resonate with you? Is that the were you like nodding your head heading? Oh yeah, I’m at my tubeless this afternoon. Are you? Are you a tubular rider? Are you a clincher rider? Are you a gravel bike? You want the fatter? What are you?
Max Leonard 30:28
I’m just trying to think I don’t think I’ve ever written a to the tire. Unless it was on a higher bike a track bike somewhere. But no, I’ve only ever had. clinches and latterly on my gravel bike, I’ve got tubeless but no, I, I mainly ride a what was it a kind of pretty traditional steel framed road bike with with rim brakes and you know, everything tried and tested and it’s a it’s a nice it’s a new frame and it’s stainless steel and it’s a it’s it’s pretty advanced in a lot of ways but but that’s my main ride and then I do have a gravel bike. So that’s that’s tubeless and that has squirted gunk on me all difficult situations when I would have preferred to mate well, when I’ve had to put a tube in and, and deal with it like that. So far out in the world. There was nothing else to do. But um,
Carlton Reid 31:29
so as any one of us on this podcast is a is a tubular fan. I’m with you there, Max, I’m not writing to you.
James Hibbard 31:36
They’re a royal pain. So there’s no there’s no in many ways they’re they’re indefensible.
Max Leonard 31:42
It’s funny, I don’t I don’t know when high end clinches came in, in the USA because working on this Yoast Brand Book has has it when he was writing right the way through the 60s in the 70s he would be taking his his road bike out onto the dirt roads of the Santa Cruz Mountains with tubular tires and and then every Wednesday they’d have they’d call them patching parties. So everyone and they’d have they’d have like an assembly line of people doing jobs because to men that cheapen the tires, because obviously, you know, you’re pretty likely to get flat if you take a road bike out onto a dirt or gravel or rocky, rocky road but but I think the rough stuff fellowship who also like to take their bikes on suitable places, they always look to be riding them to be riding clinches with an inner tube. So maybe it was just the hot kind of higher end of clinches that didn’t come through in the States or maybe they’re just a different culture.
James Hibbard 32:47
Yeah, I think it was really a higher end closers that didn’t show up until about 2003 2004. To be honest, I mean, anything that one would want to race on. I mean, I remember it being very late for higher end clinchers. And that used to be a situation where, yeah, train on clinchers race on tubulars was sort of the, the go to through I’d say about like, man, like 2004 2005 I did it pretty late.
Carlton Reid 33:14
So So James, I want to I want to drag this back to your book, and I will drag us back to philosophy, even. But I want to start I mean, because because there is I’m gonna I absolutely want to get in and there is depression in your book. There’s suicides in your family in your book, and I absolutely don’t want to to not talk about them because they’re important parts of your book. But I’d like to talk about something that I don’t even even know how much you’re paying attention to this but as a former pro I’m guessing you must have at least a thought on this. So you talk about Lance Armstrong era in your book obviously and the doping parts of it but that that era you know famously and you describe the Moser the our record where you almost like date the how technology took over cycling your data from like the Moser, our successful beating the max record. But the Lance Armstrong era is when when I think what most people recognise that really has come to its absolute peak. When it’s very regimented. It’s fixated on equipment there’s there’s there’s doping. Oh, martyrs. There’s Mod all these sorts of marginal gains, you know, with which again with the sky team took to it instead of, but we’re now in the era, a different era. We’re in the era of pocket char. Who’s a throwback to mercs that riding on gut instinct and pain and strength. You know, the blood and guts kind of writing that maybe you grew up on because you in your book, you describe it about how much you you grew up on that kind of European fantasy of nine Tene 50s cycling, so I’m not going to bring into the into the philosophical realm. So my question is, is pocket char, if you are paying attention to to his feats right now, which are just super, super dominant. So is he an example of nature’s own image, not the Superman, as you quite rightly point out in your book, but overmatch
James Hibbard 35:25
that there’s certainly athletes that fall into the category. I’ve I think that as I’ve moved away from sport, I’ve become a little bit more measured in terms of an athlete’s ability to fully sort of fulfil. Nietzsche has overmatch category, I think that that there has to be a measure of of artistry in it as well. And I think that poker chart comes close on that front, I think that only time will tell sort of what, if anything, is is fully legitimate. And I still worry a little bit about that in the back of my mind about the sport. So I’m, that’s why I’m a little bit guarded. But certainly his sort of style of racing, I think, is refreshing, and absolutely good for the sport. As opposed to sort of what we were talking about, and what you alluded to the sort of sky Armstrong, not just not merely the doping, but as you mentioned, a very sort of marginal gains obsessive approach to the sport that makes for very boring viewership or not emotional racing, sort of just a game of power metres and attrition. So I think that that he’s absolutely closer to this sort of Nietzsche and ideal. But sort of given my distance to the sport, I always remain a bit a bit sceptical, and these things take as we’ve seen, not just the years, but sometimes decades to fully come out. So I think the the jury is still out a little bit to be
Max Leonard 37:03
honest, it’s very, it must be very difficult being being like a, like a sort of mid or late career pro cyclist at the moment, if you’re, let’s say, you’re like 28, or, or 30. Right? Because Because, because like because there’s this new generation of just totally come and blown everything away. And it’s like, they basically they have let anyone else have a chance and Pikachu is is obviously one of them. And but you know, you there’s Evan pool as well, right, even Tom Pidcock there’s just guys that seems, you know, pretty neat other level and kind of training and stuff that they do is,
James Hibbard 37:46
yeah, there’s a whole there’s a whole group of guys about a five to eight year age band that just appear to have been totally leapfrogged over. I mean, we went from like, yeah, Valverde to
Carlton Reid 37:57
pokitto.
James Hibbard 37:59
With with I don’t I don’t know the math off the top of my head for birth years there. But it there’s there’s a sort of a big, big, I’m being a bit hyperbolic there. But a pretty big goals in terms of, as you mentioned, Max, yeah, guys that are 28 to 3435, who just apparently that that generation just didn’t have the the talent and bubble that you see for, for some of the younger guys,
Carlton Reid 38:24
that probably just doesn’t seem to have a troubled background. So it’s relatively reasonably famous that, you know, the best athletes, or the perhaps the best entrepreneurs, the best of everything, tend to have some sort of damaged, family background, personal background, and that’s what makes them strive. Is that something that you recognise, James, is that something that?
James Hibbard 38:50
I think? Yeah, I think that I think it’s a double edged sword. I mean, I think that certainly a sort of troubled background driving someone’s succeed, properly can can sort of be spun into fuel. And, but I think there’s a razor thin line in terms of that fuel turning self destructive. So I think that that for some number of people, it works and some number of successful athletes, it works at least for a given period. But then I think that there’s there’s also I recall seeing years ago, and obviously this is extra convoluted by the matter of, of doping, but some East German studies about the psychological profiles of elite athletes, that sort of just found almost the opposite, that being calm, level headed, good family background, able to deal with setbacks. Well all of these sort of pretty straight laced psychological profiles actually succeed as professional athletes at a higher rate than the sort of pro Both characters who might turn bad childhoods or ill psychological health into results in their given sport. So I think that that’s a definite double edged sword.
Max Leonard 40:12
It’s an interesting one because I had a guy speak recently cool them think he’s a doctor Dr. Lou Hardy, Professor Lee Hardy. He’s a climber and as it was a became a top level sports psychologist and he was part of various studies where he was where he made it made a distinction between, quote unquote, normal Olympians ie those who just, you know, maybe get a bronze medal or maybe even a gold but don’t do it over and over again. And and the kind of multiple med medalists the people who produce and who, who outstrip up their own achievements year after year. And and his his conclusion was that yes, there was this kind of element in, in, in a lot of their parts, there’s a common element of having a really a troubled childhood or some kind of, you know, something missing that they were trying to make up for.
James Hibbard 41:12
I think that that’s an interesting distinction, I think makes sense. I mean, you can think of, for example, the American swimmer, Michael Phelps, who has been very candid about some mental health struggles after his retirement certainly fits that that category of super Olympian. So I think that that distinction seems super interesting to me, Max and spot on, as you sort of run through the laundry list of
Carlton Reid 41:39
James. That’s that at that point, because in your book, you’re very open about the depression. Yeah. And the mental health issues you went through. So again, without wishing to spoil the whole book, were you to this? Can you just summarise it? And talk about what you you mentioned in the book? And also, was the book cathartic for you? So did it actually help your mental health? writing it?
James Hibbard 42:12
So it’s a tackle that one tackling that one? First? I would say? Probably not. I think that that there’s this idea in terms of writing that.
I think perhaps writing that is not for public consumption. Can can be cathartic. But I think that when one is writing with the idea of the knowledge, contract sign, things like this, that a book is going to be consumed publicly. I think that there’s an entirely different mindset that a writer brings to it. And you have to move away from personal, perhaps indulgent catharsis, to sort of hopefully artistic success and something that’s pleasurable for a reader. So it ended up for me definitely, unfortunately, not being cathartic. But in terms of in terms of sort of general mental health, and the way I’ve thought about it and approached it. I think that the two, the two things that I’ve pursued very vigorously my life have been cycling and philosophy, where I certainly had the idea that I was going to be an academic philosopher for a time. And I think that both of those things, in retrospect, I was trying to outrun a lot of my own demons, and it’s difficult to tell the extent to which those demons are situational or environmental or genetic. As you mentioned, there certainly is a history of depression and suicide that runs through my family. And I think that that one one is struggling with mental health. Everyone is familiar with with Rene Descartes and this idea of Cartesian Dualism, and you certainly run into that on a minute by minute basis when you’re really struggling with with depression, you sort of think well, is this owing to some genetic predisposition constitution and the way certain neural chemicals are being taken up in my synapses? Or is this something that that I can think or snap my way out of? And, and, unfortunately, the snap my way out approach, as ridiculous as it sounds, to any sort of person who’s suffered with depression or mental health, there’s an odd temptation to it. And you can sort of think that, geez, if I just try harder, there’s some way out of this thing. And it’s, it’s a very tricky, bizarre thing to navigate. And I think for me that the thought was for me Initially, if I’m just a successful enough athlete, everything will feel better. And there’s something very tempting about having depression, having anxiety, and going and riding your bike for five hours and a difficult training session, you’re just exhausted, you’re no longer anxious, you’re no longer depressed. So I think that that the sort of obsessive nature and the striving of sport sort of kicked the ball of my mental health challenges from the first sort of, I confronted in my my late teens, kicked at much, much later. And then I saw some of those answers in the same things and philosophy thinking that boy, if I if I merely understand things, things are going to be different in my mind, and my outlook is going to be entirely changed. If I somehow grasp philosopher XYZ in some fundamental way, this will shift my my brain and hence my relationship to the world and in a very basic way that will be beneficial. And the the gist of the book is, both of those don’t work well.
Carlton Reid 46:10
You describe that very well, in the book, and you’ve certainly got a background that I didn’t have, in that you seem to have conversations with your parents and your father about sugar from a very early age your father, you can’t see any cycling background to the rest of your family. philosophy comes very much from your your father’s you are having deep conversations, and it seems from like 10 years old, with your father on philosophy, but is that right in saying your cycling is a disconnect with your family, but of course, the philosophy has come from your phone.
James Hibbard 46:48
Yeah, there’s more definitely more familial continuity with philosophy. My father studied philosophy under a relatively renowned Heidegger scholar in the 60s who came from Germany at Stanford. So very much a familial connection to particularly German philosophy through my father. And generally the fact that he was around the sort of Bay Area 1960s counterculture where this sort of whole idea of not just philosophy but philosophy, changing your mind and changing your perceptions, right, this sort of can Kizzy Timothy Leary, guided ideal of what thinking could do. And that reality,
Carlton Reid 47:35
as well. Yeah. Not just
James Hibbard 47:37
not just thinking but yeah, absolutely. Yes. bound up with with with psychedelic drugs and but sort of what I was exposed to it was a sort of, I suppose high brow psychedelia. Where, where? Yes, certainly, like drugs were discussed, but sort of in service of reality, not being what it appears on the face of it. And in retrospect, I’m not sure how useful this is to convey to to kids, to be honest.
Carlton Reid 48:12
But you see, you’ve come from a milieu which discussed drugs. Yeah, I’m not saying you took LSD, or your family took LSD. And then you went into a sport that was famously certainly in the era that you were in and you were disgusted. Yeah. That you’ve seen discussed that frequently. Not just in your own book, but forward. Other books, right. The Paul Kimmage book, right. So there’s drugs have suffused both parts of your world potentially and you haven’t partaken of either.
James Hibbard 48:43
That’s funny. I’ve never really connected the two to be honest. I’ve always thought of, I guess just performance enhancing drugs just being on a different planet than then sort of anything psychedelic
Carlton Reid 48:57
Mind Mind enhancing drugs. Yeah. So what is body? Mind enhancing?
James Hibbard 49:03
Yeah, I just, I honestly, never really thought of them in the same sentence. And yeah, to be candid to begin, and like, while I was a teenager, I did with a good high school friend
took psilocybin and thought it was very interesting, thought that it was nothing I needed to return to continually it was not the I don’t know if you’re familiar, I mentioned Alan Watts, the sort of English popularizer of Zen, who had a long standing Barry of radio programme. He sort of, there’s a quote from him that I always remember when it comes to psychedelic drugs which was you know, once you get the phone call, you hang up you sort of have this experience, you realise that that reality is not constituted as the way your your teachers and your mentors and your parents and and the sort of local Lions Club would How do you believe If and then you take that information and live differently and hopefully better in a more sincere way than then everyone going to a nine to five job. And that was the sort of message that that I’ve received not only growing up, but also was was the one that permeated the cycling culture that I found.
Max Leonard 50:19
I think that’s really interesting, because because I think that the sense that you get, at least partly in in the US is that cycling is a is a kind of rebellion, isn’t it, it’s kind of against the, against car culture. And it was a very much a subculture for a long time. And from what I’ve read, and people I’ve spoken to, you know, Northern California was, you know, a kind of hotbed of, of cycling, and in a country that didn’t much care about it for for a long, long, long time. And, but I you know, I went to Palo Alto, which is not far away from where you are, last year to talk, guys and, and just as, it’s kind of, like, magical, and you’ve got these amazing mountains, and it’s beautiful, and like, like we’ve seen the sun shines most of the time. And then you’ve got these, you know, you’ve got the kind of rebels of cycling you’ve got the Gary Fisher’s and the and the Tom Richards and Joe breezes and Charlie Cunningham of the guys who invented a new thing and had like, kind of amazing attitude that comes through in New York, that part of California and so many different ways, but I was Why do you think cycling and and you’re a part of California and has been such a fruitful kind of thing?
James Hibbard 51:36
What is it? First of all, I think it’s very much changed. I mean, I think that that that sort of counterculture was allowed to flourish before Google and Apple and and sort of the financial pressures have come to dominate the Bay Area and the Santa Clara Valley and Palo Alto. Now to such an extent that I think that sort of counterculture is is really being greatly squelched. So I think that was, first of all, a sort of cultural snapshot moment from, say, the 50s, through perhaps the early 90s, if you’re being generous. But I think that the reason that that, that that confluence of factors allowed for cycling to be the sort of counterculture thing was, first of all, the the number of universities that are very close proximity. There’s Stanford University, obviously, in Palo Alto, University of California at Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley, San Jose State. So there’s a huge clustering of of universities and the sort of energy that comes from young people in universities and the counterculture. And I think that going back to psychedelic drugs, there were even a lot of government experiments about the usages of the usage of LSD for more nefarious purposes. Those were done at the Palo Alto VA. People like Ken kz, were very famously involved in some of those experiments. So going back to colleges, I don’t know if if this is the case in the UK, but almost all psych experiments throughout the 20th century were done on college undergraduates, including psychedelic drugs by the US government. So I think that that’s an interesting compounding historical factor that drove some of this.
Carlton Reid 53:40
And interestingly, the Yes, Max, the absolutely the amazing cycling culture of the Bay Area is just Yes, it’s amazing. But you’ve also got almost counter to that, in that Palo Alto, is the home of vehicular cycling. So John Forrester, that’s where he was was nabbed for cycling on the sidewalk at one point, which then leads to a huge movement of, you know, rejecting bike paths, you know, for for a good time in America. And you could almost argue that America or that that part of America has given Yes, and mountain biking and counterculture of cycling, but it’s also given you 2030 years of not going down the Dutch route and not asking for bike paths because we’re policemen pulling over a cyclist John Forrester in Palo Alto.
Max Leonard 54:37
Interesting, interested know that I didn’t know that.
James Hibbard 54:40
I didn’t know that either. It I’m not I’m not surprised, though, in a lot of ways, because I do think that what’s what’s difficult to pin down, I suppose about any complex intellectual problem or cultural area, but the number of sort of competing threads and To weird enigmatic things where you try and sort of pin something down as being bike friendly hub. And then you have an example like that sort of pushing all against it. And I think that that those sort of enigmas are throughout the the Bay Area’s DNA in a lot of ways.
Carlton Reid 55:20
I guess because you’ve got, yeah, you’ve got both pro and con there at the same time, because it’s such a rabid bicycling culture, you’re gonna get both sides of it. And at this, at this juncture, I would like to cut for an ad break. So I’m gonna go across to my colleague, David, who also happens to be in America.
David Bernstein 55:36
Hello, everyone. This is David from the Fredcast. And of course, the spokesmen. And I’m here once again to tell you that this podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles, the good people at Tern build bikes that make it easier for you to replace car trips with bike trips. Part of that is being committed to designing useful bikes that are also fun to ride. But an even greater priority for Tern, is to make sure that your ride is safe, and worryfree. And that’s why turn works with industry leading third party testing labs like E FB, E, and builds it bikes around Bosch ebike systems, which are UL certified for both electric and fire safety. So before you even zip off on your Tern, fully loaded, and perhaps with a loved one behind, you can be sure that the bike has been tested to handle the extra stresses on the frame, and the rigours of the road. For more information, visit www.ternbicycles.com to learn more. And now back to the spokesmen.
Carlton Reid 56:47
And we are back had Thanks, David. We are back with James Hibbard, author of a philosophy book, a cycling book, a book about a nice trip with his mates, going to almost credit card touring because you sent your your your stuff ahead and you you didn’t carry stuff on your bike. So you sent stuff ahead, James. And we also had Max Leonard, who as we heard in the intro is an author of a goodly number of fantastic books on a wide range of very Catholic interest you’ve got on cycling, I can’t even think about thread that pulls them all together. James, I want to because we’re talking about your book is is philosophy book. Nietzsche is probably one of the philosophers that may be cyclists, if not understand, the most certainly quote the most because you know that that quote, the famous quote, you know, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? Well, that’s that’s a Nietzsche, quote, to link it to max. Nietzsche, of course, also loved suffering in the high mountains, so that there’s that kind of link. But Nietzsche was also appropriated by the Nazis and not his fault, but he was appropriated by the Nazis. So maybe he’s not the best feller for cyclists to follow. After all, I give, give, give the maybe the positive sides of Nietzsche, and why we should discuss Nietzsche.
James Hibbard 58:16
So I think the positive sides of Nietzsche are immense. I think that that his Nazi appropriation was very unfortunate. And he’s someone who’s easily appropriated owing to his style. You sort of thumb through Nietzsche and you can you find some examples certainly have his anti anti semitism. And in fact, his concerns about Germans in Germany. So Nietzsche is an interesting character on that front. But where where I think Nietzsche is truly fascinating is when you look through the history, and the sort of thrust of 2500 years of Western philosophy. It’s increasingly from Plato on driven by this idea of abstraction. So you walk into any sort of intro to philosophy class, and when Plato or Platonism is explained, it’s essentially like, Hey, you can have a table, this table here in front of us, the professor knocks on and touches, is going to eventually rot and decay and go back Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, but the idea of a table is solid and everlasting and immutable, and beautiful in a way that any actual table never is. So you end up with ideas and concepts being more important, and in some ways, more quote, unquote, real than an actual table. And I think what’s very interesting is this is allowed I would for tremendous success and scientific progress, because you’re dealing with with concepts. But implicit in that is also a sort of denial of things that are that are nearest tangible, actual things, actual tables made of wood in front of you. And you can see this same sort of, of tendency, certainly in Silicon Valley. So I think that this idea that philosophy doesn’t matter or some silly, useless discipline is is just on the face of it not true, you can see that that idea is in fact, massively important to this day, this idea of the abstract and intangible mattering more than the tangible so we’re Nietzsche comes into this is Nietzsche diagnosis this right at the at the end of the 19th. Nietzsche just to orient everyone who might not be the sort of familiar Nietzsche dies, and very symbolically in the year 1900. So Nietzsche sort of sees the end of famously not only declares God dead, this sort of Judeo Christian, true belief in God, but also senses that this platonic Christian denying of the world and of bodies is is an incredibly dangerous tactic. And in fact, one that is the hallmark of, of modernity. So I think that that Nietzsche is interesting for for a number of reasons. But that is really the crux of where I wanted to engage Nietzsche, this, this desire to what he do what he calls overcome metaphysics, overcome this idea to that, that the abstract matters more than the tangible. So cycling is tied in here and as much as it’s clearly a very tangible thing to do. And, and a very Nietzsche and thing to do and as much as demands presence. It demands a tangible visceral engagement, rather than an abstract one.
Carlton Reid 1:02:11
They don’t get on a bike, because he would have liked bikes, wouldn’t he? I mean, if he died in 1900, How old was he died about he died,
James Hibbard 1:02:20
he died relatively young and was in a sanitarium. He famously debated what what took place with him, but he spent the last the last decade of his life in the sanitarium under the essential conservatorship of his sister, Elizabeth, so
Carlton Reid 1:02:38
I’m just I’m just trying to roughly black out but he must have been
James Hibbard 1:02:40
he certainly saw I’m sure he saw early bicycles, but I don’t think there’s any evidence that he actually ever rode one.
Carlton Reid 1:02:49
His is because if he’d been frightened the right time to be it’d been 30 years old. Yeah, roughly, ya know, when when bicycles first came on the scene, so he he would have been right before getting on, he wouldn’t be surprised. He hasn’t. He
James Hibbard 1:03:01
was in ill health, he had poor eyesight, he had poor digestion. So I think that’s the other interesting thing autobiographically, about Nietzsche, is that for all of his talk about sort of virility and physical strength, he was, in fact, a relatively sickly individual from from the time he was a professor. And that’s why he left his professorship in fact, was just poor physical health, sort of going from from one spot in southern Europe to another sort of looking for better air or general recuperation
Carlton Reid 1:03:41
mountain air.
James Hibbard 1:03:41
Exactly.
Max Leonard 1:03:43
He was a big aficionado of the mountains wasn’t a and and a big Walker, I think I think he was very much embodied in that sense is that he you know, walking and thinking were quite well interconnected for him
James Hibbard 1:03:57
walking, thinking, hiking, all all of that. So certainly, yes, fresh air, physic Alpine physicality, we’re, we’re, it’s all sprinkled throughout his writings. There’s also
Max Leonard 1:04:09
the kind of, I didn’t know much about Nietzsche before I read James’s book. But you know, he’s a kind of easy caricature as well. And there’s a re cycling sort of element to it. Like, I’m just I’m thinking about Henri de Mirage, the guy who started the Tour de France, and this idea of of, you know, surpassing yourself and going beyond your abilities and the Tour de France, the first sort of the ideal race is something often quoted by Henri de grandes because I’ve never found the actual quote so it could just be apocryphal but the perfect order France be one where only one guy crosses the finish line, you know, that is stripped away everyone else and everyone else has fallen by the wayside and you know, expired because they’re, they’re not strong enough, and there’s this one sort of thing. Uber men’s guy is gonna it’s gonna win. I think it’s obviously kind of caricaturing and you know, using the, the perception of Nietzsche that without actually knowing much about him, but I think it’s all quite feels quite relevant and close, doesn’t it to a certain attitude? It’s like,
James Hibbard 1:05:20
No, I think it certainly does. And I think that that it’s funny, I mean, the, from the Tour de France to sixth day racing to sort of, I’ve heard about, you know, dance contests that go on for 72 hours straight or something, it seemed like, like it was in the air in that era, this sort of whole going to one’s absolute physical limit, physical exhaustion, these sort of feats of endurance. And yeah, I couldn’t agree more Max in terms of them being very, sort of self overcoming, Nietzsche in. And I think that’s what’s key to understanding Nietzsche, I think it’s easy to read Nietzsche, poorly, and sort of think that it’s this sort of outward process of winning or beating other people or succeeding as a capitalist or something, something awful like that. But for Nietzsche, it’s very artistic and very self overcoming as opposed to beating out a system.
Carlton Reid 1:06:26
And then you mentioned in your book, James about the style and his style was important to Nietzsche, they managed to define what he meant by style.
James Hibbard 1:06:35
So I think that what he means by style is very much what we’re talking about in terms of not just doing something on a sort of external basis, not merely succeeding, not merely looking at your your power metre and winning l’Alpe d’Huez, but rather attacking with one kg to go doggedly after having been dropped and then winning. Right. It’s, it’s, it’s sort of how something is done that matters to him. Because you’re taking your own will and imposing it upon yourself. So I think,
Carlton Reid 1:07:12
isn’t there like a, sorry, isn’t there like a quiet, you just described this in the book as well, there’s this, there’s quite a lot of, you know, underdog stuff in cycling, and the person who comes second is actually more important, more famous and more lauded in cycling than the person who comes first by pure, you know, skill. It’s the one who strive and fail, right, so the failure is quite a big thing in cycling.
James Hibbard 1:07:40
I think that maths can speak to this too, from from his first lantern Rouge book, and as much as I think that there’s, there’s something very French to say about that, about not, not respecting, not being obsessed with just the winner, but the sort of perennial second place, even the the final finish are in the Tour de France, and sort of really respecting that. And I think that there’s something that perhaps Max can even speak to that is very intrinsic to French culture, and French racing, cycling culture around that. I mean, it seems like there’s a perennial Tour de France contender who never quite succeeds who’s always French.
So I think there’s something culturally to that
Max Leonard 1:08:30
that’s that’s funny. I hadn’t thought of that but I can see I think you’re right and you know, the most recent example would be Tebow Pino and well and that the poor guy was never really given a chance he was so over it’s such such a passion there you know in French cycling style gets so much energy exposure and pressure heaped upon them I think and and you’re right for every for every jacket on Catia. There’s there’s a Roman Pulido who is the eternal secondaries coming on behind him and the US for lunch and Rouge it I don’t know how that how it really happened it I think it was a sort of spontaneous I think the underdog feeling is is pretty is British as well, I think we’d go for the underdog whereas in in the in the US I think might be sort of more straightforwardly rooting for for the winner but but in Britain we like the underdog in France. The lantern roof definitely came about in the first 10 years of the tour. So it happened pretty quickly. It was it was pretty much there before world war one as far as I can tell, though, I haven’t found the first reference to it in print. But the French public really took it took it to heart They you know, they would make a Red Lantern and give it to the rider for the last stage into Paris and the carrot or the carrot along with his teammates would hang it over his head
Carlton Reid 1:10:10
so it was it was it always proudly from from the from the get go so it wasn’t like a shame mark of shame it was I’m carrying this proudly was that early
Max Leonard 1:10:19
know it from it seems so and and then sort of post Second World War you’d get with the kind of explosion in not just cycling media but all media you know with with the with the kind of mirrors sprint and those kind of picture magazines and then the radio and then TV with with media and with the sponsorship that came in the last guy it would would become quite famous and he’d get invited to all the post tour. criteriums. So, you know, these, were talking about a time and you know, the Domestique the team riders would be making really, really terrible money compared with the champions or even with a, you know, anyone else and so they’d get to earn you know, maybe their whole year salary in a couple of weeks after the tour or you know, or more than that. So, so it became very attractive and it became it became identity I didn’t never know completely positive feelings about it ever and left definitely people that felt ashamed come last but but you know, on the other hand, that say you’ve got a guy who, who, thinking in 1993, a guy called Jackie do wrong, who won the Tour of Flanders in an incredibly long break, which that was his his main major achievement in his career. But then he became lanten Rouge in 1993. After a terrible, terrible crash in I think it was stage three, and was fighting along injured and it became became a matter of pride. But he stayed in the race and, you know, pushed on to the end. And actually, he was a sort of very mercurial character always attacking and he got the the convertibility prize as well. So in that particular year, the lantern rouge, the last guy in the race got to stand on the podium at the Sean’s Elisa alongside none other than Lance Armstrong. Yeah, I think it’s in for the French public as well, I think the French, you know, proletariat always had a, you know, stick when I put the government or the you know, the rule is the authority is that kind of thing. So I think there might be an element of that, and it take
James Hibbard 1:12:46
well, and I do think it’s interesting, I think you hit the nail on the head Max in terms of, of American culture, as opposed to either British or French culture on this front. And I mean, we sort of keep, we keep dancing around it to some degree. But I think that what’s what’s very interesting is the way the sport changed, not just in the Bay Area, but sort of demographically, in a post Armstrong era. I mean, the sport went from what we’re talking about, sort of in Northern California to being the sort of from being this sort of counterculture exercise, too. I’ve heard cycling described as the new golf amongst like venture capitalists in in Palo Alto, and things like that. So I think it very much changed. And I think there was a particular cultural moment, that was far larger than cycling, that you can sort of put the Armstrong era under the heading of write you sort of, I think, now with a little bit of distance, we can think and reflect back about not just someone like Armstrong, but a general, let’s say from, you know, the late 90s through arbitrarily here or something like 2005 2010, this sort of Nike driven, when it all costs Bernie Madoff type, cultural moment. That was perhaps American lead, but certainly global. It and I think that that’s an interesting way to start to think about the Armstrong era, in a perspective that transcend cycling,
Carlton Reid 1:14:24
because in your book, Jamie, you mentioned that the biggest insult, you could say to an American, is it you’re a loser. Absolutely. That’s that’s like, and that brings like the Trump thing, you know, when when he says, you know, you’re a loser, that that’s where that’s coming from that there’s a very loaded term, whereas what we’re discussing before about you can be the loser you can be the lantern Rouge in in a European perspective, and that’s absolutely fine. And there’s, there’s lots of examples of, you know, heroic failures have been, you know, loaded, whereas you’re saying in the American culture, it’s winner takes all that’s it. Yeah. Ah, no, I
James Hibbard 1:15:00
think that that is absolutely correct and and very insightful to even invoke Trump in this instance, it and I think that yes, the sort of American game of winner take all capitalism was applied to the sport of cycling with the US Postal Service Team to disastrous results. And I think that when you do a little bit of digging about who the backers of that team were, it also becomes very apparent. I mean, they’re, they’re American Finance billionaires. So I think that there’s a very particular American, we are going to win by whatever means necessary ethos that was applied to the sport of cycling, for the first time. And sure enough, a lot of Tour de France is were won in scare quotes. But I think that that particular moment, obviously, was very damaging to the sport, and in very matte, very damaging, culturally. And I think we’re still sort of backing our way out of that, in a lot of regards.
Carlton Reid 1:16:10
But as we’ve mentioned before, the pocket child thing is that the air is, is cleaning that yeah, is almost making that just a bad membrane. You know, we have, we have a mercs of today, right? Doing superhuman stuff, Nietzsche and stuff. But without the drugs without the marginal gains, it almost seems as though you could be on any bus, right? Who cares? What, on you know, who cares where they wash their duvet? Or that, you know, they take the shower? You probably doesn’t need that, you know, he doesn’t need a pocket chart is just a superhuman. He’s just an Uber man. Right? Yeah,
James Hibbard 1:16:43
no. And I think that that’s absolutely great for the sport, that that’s that’s the case. And you’re right, that he’s he’s on a Colnago. And not, there’s not some huge push in terms of this is the newest, greatest lightest bike. It’s I think that’s nothing but good. In an era where super bikes are now costing 10 or $12,000. I mean, it’s great.
Carlton Reid 1:17:09
In the book, you do you do make the point that you’re you’re on the cusp of this era, where people were still riding bikes that are custom built for them. And then you came in and you’re, you’re the bride that you did with your mates across California was on an on your last bike, which was carbon, but you kind of you remembered the days of steel, and, and, and and maybe even experimenting with certain materials, but then carbon comes in, and how much do you think carbon has killed? The aesthetics, the feel of the road, that all of that kind of romantic stuff that you talk about in your book, but carbon potentially has killed a lot of that and it’s just a mass produced Chinese product?
James Hibbard 1:17:57
I think it has to some extent, I think it’s kind of unfortunate. I mean, I remember just images of Ernesto catalogo shop or, you know, consulting with mercs about the our record bike and things that were just beautiful where bicycle frame was bespoke individual come sort of thing rather than merely a commodity. sort of put into context. I turned professional with a team called Shaklee in 2000. And as soon as the ink was dry on the contract in the fall, we sent our measurements for custom steel frame sets, with aluminium frames for the road, or for the track, which were also custom. But I think that was about really near the end of that, and probably one of the last professional squads to be on Handmade Italian steel frames, which is American rebadged. rebatch is American but Italian made. And I think that obviously you can’t get away with that with carbon frames any longer. And yeah, just as you say, the fact that sort of, they’ve become a bicycle frame has gone from this sort of magical thing that is that is made by a particular builder for particular rider to a commodity. It’s unfortunate, but I think it’s also difficult to claim that a steel bike is objectively better from any performance metric. Perhaps you can make an argument about the way it resonates over the road and things like that certainly durability but if you’re looking to so where do
Carlton Reid 1:19:40
you stand on this? Are you a carbon guy? Are you a old school steel guy? What are you where do you sit on the spectrum?
Max Leonard 1:19:49
I I have I have owned I’ve owned bikes in in most most common materials. I was just started thinking about bamboo and Things like that can be bought in aluminium, steel carbon, and I’ve enjoyed them all I now have two three beautiful steel handmade friends and I think the aesthetics of it is it will always something will always look right to me about a steel road frame with with a horizontal top tube. I’m lucky that I think the bikes in my size are the best looking bikes I think the proportions of even that kind of thing are all All right, but one of my bikes actually made made by a company called spinner in Santa Barbara. So not Yes,
James Hibbard 1:20:47
I know I know spinner frames Well, yes, those are beautiful.
Max Leonard 1:20:51
Yeah, is it a beautiful bike but but I didn’t get to go and see see them and talk to them about it in person but but with my feather, which is my road bike that was made up by Ricky feather in Yorkshire and to be able to go and chat with someone and see the workshop and at you know, actually, the it’s a 54 centimetre square frame it’s in some ways it’s not remarkable that I was there from the start. And we talked over everything and considered everything and took in the input and thought about the angles and materials and you know, little tiny little custom bespoke things that he wanted to do that that’s what what makes it it’s made it special. And I just realised actually talking to some guys about it realise that that bite now is 10 years old, which is incredible. And it still feels just as good and fast. And I love riding just as much and my carbon bike I never had the same connection to it was objectively it was a faster and lighter and all of those kinds of things, but but it just didn’t feel feel the same emotionally.
Carlton Reid 1:22:02
So steel is real. So this this obsessing over equipment and this this is also in your your book. James, you talk about, you know, the feeling of the sizing of God as going to be writing like the kind of merch, right, you know, every millimetre has got a count on your bike, and you clearly were obsessive. And you talked about how obsessive Yeah, yeah, and all of the equipment choices. You are making your time now that you mentioned before about cycling, being the new golf or golf also attracts that creative feeling, you know, people you know, choosing the right goal, fine. I know what the description of what these things are called. But anyway, the right kind of, you know, golf bits that you hit the white ball with, you know, it also attracts the same kind of obsession with it with equipment, but that that also attracts oddballs, outsiders and outliers. So both golf and cycling attract those kind of people. Is that fair to say? I fair to all cyclists that.
James Hibbard 1:23:10
Yeah, I think that no, I think that’s it’s an apt
comparison. And I don’t I’ve look, I’ve increasingly sort of as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate the sport of golf. So I don’t want to sort of poopoo on it by any means. But I think the reason that I sort of invoked golf there was the fact that I think that there’s there’s some socio economic things at play, where I think that certainly I would not have become a bike racer, as a junior, if a sort of entry level bike that I could raise a local cat for criterium, Junior criterium on cost $4,000, it just simply wouldn’t have happened and I was outgrowing them every six or eight months. So I think that from a sheer sort of who is going to be included and brought to the table of development as a young junior I’m a little bit concerned about the bicycle as eight or $10,000 commodity and the the sort of club system in the United States where you would get a hand me down by that all has sort of languished and been been superseded by coaches and and everything has to be paid for. So I think that we’re talking about equipment, talking about elite development and and anything else this sort of question of demography and inclusion looms large and and I just want to make certain that it doesn’t become a sport for the elite and I don’t think that cycling has ever been True traditionally, a sort of elitist sport. It’s been a European sort of working class sport. So you’d be
Carlton Reid 1:24:57
in favour then of the UCI bringing in old The regulations to stop technology
James Hibbard 1:25:02
Oh, I think whatever happens at the elite level, that’s an even Enough playing field. I think at the at the pro level, everyone’s being given bikes by suppliers. That’s not a problem. I mean, I’m concerned about the about the 11 or 12 year old whose parents saunter into a bike shop, looking for something that’s that’s, or even looking at the used market for something that’s a capable bike, and it’s just cost prohibitive. So I think that that’s, that’s where this conversation about equipment, really where the proverbial rubber meets the road. And I worry a little bit about some of those costs, and, and bicycles as expensive, merely expensive commodities.
Carlton Reid 1:25:44
So so let me bring it back a little bit to philosophy and anti cycling at the same time, and I’m just gonna quote you some Yeah, on your book there. James. So this is a quote from you. Cycling is at once profoundly social, and a tensely an intensely attractive to loners, and outsiders. So that’s what we are before anyway. So this sense of alienation of feeling cut off not just from one trues one’s true self, but from society, pulses through the very veins of existentialism. So why does it pull through the veins? Why is cycling? Can cycling be likened to that.
James Hibbard 1:26:27
So I think that, let’s go back to like, I’ll give you a sort of personal story to sort of illustrate this. I remember being like many people were at this age, I don’t know what it’s called in the UK, but in in what we call in the United States middle school. So I think I was maybe 12 or 13 years old, in seventh or eighth grade. And I remember, we were sort of on and I described this in the book, but the school I attended, there’s a sort of like elevated area with basketball courts and a chain link fence, which in retrospect, looked rather almost prison yard like, and I thought the whole thing was kind of kind of stupid, we had to do stupid things that I thought were either inane or, or boring or both. And we were positioned, though from this vantage point above a relatively large Boulevard that connected San Jose and Morgan Hill. And I remember seeing a pack of cyclists behind their team car on, I don’t know what must have been 11 on a weekday, and not just being attracted to it, but being attracted to the fact that they seemed far freer than than my life. It was a weekday, they weren’t stuck in commute traffic, they weren’t going to algebra class, they were on their bicycles going 35 miles an hour behind the team car. And that struck me as just the absolute epitome of freedom. And looping it back to philosophy, existentialism too. And just to sort of bring listeners up to speed existentialism is a predominantly French, but also German, essentially postwar philosophical movement that’s very concerned with human agency and freedom and questions of meaning, sort of in the in the wake of the Second World War. How do we create meaning in this after this? I don’t know what can only be described as moral atrocity for humanity. How do you sort of go on in the wake of every cultural norm being shattered in the face of that? And and sort of people like John Paul Sartre say that it’s in our absolute freedom. So there’s a clear sort of through line for the freedom that sort of being described by the existentialists the the freedom that I saw on the sport of cycling, and the freedom that I think is a very, particularly probably you guys can correct me if I’m wrong, but particularly American, sort of counterculture idea, this sort of wet Old West, hyper freedom. Reality is what you make it idea, all of those sorts of things were swirling in my head, and I think, brought me to the sport of cycling for that reason.
Carlton Reid 1:29:32
James, he talked about freedom. And in the beginning, the book you talk about, when you first got on a bike, it was like flat Yeah, that’s a very, very common, a very common way of describing riding, so that that freedom is is obvious when you’re going down, you know, a sinewy beautiful road ride in your neck of the woods. Yeah, in Northern California, but that that team comes Yeah, and bunch of riders behind being you equated that to free. When you read your book, that description of your youthful cycling experiences when you brought in the Olympic programme and all that kind of stuff is described talk to me like a monk. Yeah, you weren’t in a cult, you you you were not free, you are very much going along in a prescribed programme, following you know, a biblical texts in effect. You know, the Kony manual, what you mentioned was a religious experience. You were you were a monk, if you described your your your ascetic lifestyle, you know, and you took away the bike that is basically a Zen monk, you are you are just doing stuff that a religious order would do. No, you’re that wire is that’s very astute in that that team car? Well, I think what’s
James Hibbard 1:30:52
interesting about that is in the difficulty with with the American concept of freedom writ large is freedom to do what you sort of freedom is the sort of openness. And then the question quickly becomes, oh, shit, what do I do now? What do I do with this newfound openness? And and unfortunately, the responses are far more. And you see this throughout existentialist informed fiction and film, the responses are far more difficult to sort of formulate anything coherent on the other side of that freedom, then the sort of the wrestling against it is that is the easy part. So as you say, Yeah, I think I was able to escape the sort of restrictions of being an adolescent and attending school, I was able to move to the Olympic Training Centre. And to me that felt like that exit from the life of my peers felt like freedom. But in fact, it was far less free probably than than what my peers were doing at the time. It was very nutrition based sounds like
Unknown Speaker 1:32:08
prison. It was,
James Hibbard 1:32:09
I think the models that were imposed at the time by the Cycling Federation were very Eastern Bloc, it was essentially let’s let’s put several 100 Junior talent identified through competition or physiological testing or whatever else, put them into a proverbial meat grinder. And at the end of this, we will have one world champion. And at the junior and youth 23 level there, there were some world champions that came out of of that may loo but unfortunately, there were a lot of also a lot of other rather talented athletes that that washed out of that system. Looking back now, it’s just I was essentially like, an endurance track rider who could who could ride a kilometre or Team Pursuit. So relatively short events, and looking back now at at training logs and things that I kept. There were times where I was literally doing 35 hours a week on a bike plus strength training, plus additional ergometer workouts. So it was just it was absolutely crazy by today’s standards. And like I say, very attrition based staring at rollers and we were not to drop below 90 RPM or or the coach would admonish us it was lots of going so hard. I threw up and collapsing in the shower after rides and just wondering how I was possibly going to do the next day of training.
Carlton Reid 1:33:44
So are you still cycling?
James Hibbard 1:33:46
Very little, very little. I’ve got got a young son. I’ve had problems with my eyesight, so and some corneal transplants. So I basically have have just taken to running and the occasional day on the trainer. So not a whole lot to be honest. Because your
Carlton Reid 1:34:05
family is clearly important to you. Yeah. In the book, you mentioned your wife, you mentioned Graham, your child Yeah. Frequently, they’ve clearly grounded you and have suffused your life with something above and beyond the kind of the meaning that you are maybe trying to get by being a competitive cyclist.
James Hibbard 1:34:27
Absolutely. I think that that, for me that the entire sort of trajectory of the book is back to not just the tangible, but back to being capable of loving things in the tangible world. Without fear. I think there’s a lot of people that sort of escape. Escape the realities and the impermanence of the world through either trying to achieve things or through it desiring things that stand outside of space and time and are thus safe. And I think that the sort of confidence to love and return to the world is really the primary thread that I hope to convey in the book. And I think, frankly, the only, for me at least the only conceivable way forward.
Carlton Reid 1:35:23
Now the note that I made when I was reading your book, and I, of course I’m plagiarising here is I cycle, therefore I am. Because that’s what it is across as it’s like cycling is it certainly was for that part of your life, something that defined you. But you’re not showing you’re not you’re no longer cycling, no longer defined, you know, and I
James Hibbard 1:35:50
think that I think it’s very easy to, for young athletes to be defined by their sport. I mean, you sort of think of the incredible sort of feedback that one gets, as a young athlete in almost any sort of town in America. I mean, I remember being on the cover of local paper when you’re 1415. And you just sort of assume this identity, and it’s the sort of shorthand identity that is sufficient, and you’re recognised for it, and everything feels good in a very superficial, straightforward way. And I think that a lot of the mental health challenges that that sort of athletes confront after they’re done with their sport, is shedding that identity. Because it’s, it becomes so baked in, and sort of coming up with a new identity away from your sport is not an easy process.
Carlton Reid 1:36:49
So when you’re on that TV programme, but the Oprah Winfrey style TV programme of Trinidad and Tobago, and you were described as an American cyclist, and you got this big kick, yeah, I had been called an American cyclist it defined, what are you now if you are if you’re on the programme today, how would you describe yourself?
James Hibbard 1:37:11
I’d hope to be not easily defined other than by my relationships with the people that I’m closest to and care about. I think that sort of the moniker is like that. And this is perhaps where I show show some of my cards, I suppose, politically, or economically or something. But I think that that sort of monikers, like that, that are easy to categorise, are sort of always end up being reductive and dangerous and work real well if you’re trying to sell yourself as an identity in a sort of hyper capitalist system, but I think that they’re dangerous and dehumanising. So I think that perhaps writer I’m a little bit more comfortable with, but beyond that, I think that that it’s it’s dangerous territory,
Max Leonard 1:38:06
it’s, it’s tough, isn’t it? I think that, you know, you can invest? And I did and do and lots of people do, you can invest so much in the idea of being a cyclist with inverted commas, right. But then that can get back and get taken away from you in so many ways. Like, if you’re a pro, then then your career may, you know, come come to an end, I had a, you know, a pretty, like, long term injury, that meant I didn’t ride my bike for eight years. And so suddenly, okay, I’m not exactly just, what am I? It’s quite a, you know, it’s, there’s a hole to fill there. And it’s probably the same about being a writer because, you know, quite a lot of the time, the vast majority of the time being a writer, you’re not actually writing enough, right. A point Yeah. No, well, and and I think, you know, cite the idea of it’s the cyclist has been, you know, kind of embellished and garnished and it’s been marketed to us as well. And then you know, as as a kind of lifestyle, but it’s not, it’s not, it’s not an easy path to stay on, even if, you know, with everything going in your favour,
Carlton Reid 1:39:24
because we’re technically not cyclists right now. Where assets where we’re sitting, we are not cycling yet. I certainly me and Max, we would if somebody had to say what would you Yeah, I would say I’m a cyclist. But yeah, you’re not doing it right the second time. So why are you a cyclist? You’re not physically doing it now?
Max Leonard 1:39:45
No, I’ve never shown somebody to talk about as a party because you’re always the guy that you people can talk to about, you know, the, you know, what’s wrong with their breaks or what kind of like they want to buy or that kind of thing for us is, you know, is that the a foundation of the dangerous opposition between cyclists and motorists, because I bet that, you know, the majority of cyclists, a lot of cyclists anyway, know how to drive a car. And quite a lot of people who drive cars also ride bikes. And yet
Carlton Reid 1:40:15
somebody generally wouldn’t say they were like, if they’re away from the car, they wouldn’t say, I’m a motorist, it wouldn’t define wouldn’t define them, whereas cyclists, it defines them. Many, many signs.
James Hibbard 1:40:25
And I think what you raise Max is dead bang on. I think that that as potentially sort of banal as it sounds, the sort of people coming up to you at dinner party or cocktail hour and asking about your breaks or your training or whatever else. And I can certainly vouch that when one’s highly competitive cyclist or a pro that’s only exacerbated tenfold. So So that sort of whole sort of idea of this is, your entire identity is I think that the real danger for any, any elite athlete. And I think then
Carlton Reid 1:41:06
it is a philosophical problem, if you’re identifying as one thing is that something that the philosophers can talk to us about?
James Hibbard 1:41:15
I think it’s both a philosophical problem, and also a psychological one. from a philosophical perspective. I mean, I used I think I used the word a few sentences ago sort of reductive, where you can sort of say that you’re sort of this is a thread, particularly in in Sartre, but you can sort of think of any person sort of being defined by one character quality, or one aspect of their selfhood sort of working well to exploit them in some way, but not really fully grasping every element of their humanity. And I think that that certainly applies here. And I think that that Sartre was astute on that front, as were many of the existential, it’s this sort of idea of there being an essential quality about a particular person. So I think that that there is something philosophical to say, and it highlights some of the dangers that that existentialism points out to the previous 2500 years of philosophical thought,
Carlton Reid 1:42:31
James at that point, and that that seems like to be even though I want to carry on talking and I could certainly absolutely talk to both you and Max for many more hours. I think we have got to stop at some point we do. Thank you. First of all, Max, if you can tell me more tell the listeners where they can get hold of your books and then we’ll come to James and get the exact same so websites all that kind of stuff, where can we get your book
Max Leonard 1:42:58
you can get my books in the proverbial all good bookshops and also the big online ones that I would urge you not to buy from going buy from an independent bookshop. But if you want to buy direct from me which is brilliant because it means that a lot more of the money of the cover price goes into my deserving pocket. You my my publisher website is is an oppressed.com it is a Lowe’s I wish I’d chosen a company name that people knew how to pronounce or spell but i s o l a press.com. And on there you can find the books that I wrote for other publishers and plus the ones that I’ve published myself including the Yoast soon, and raster fellowships, stuff like that
Carlton Reid 1:43:45
brilliant and James where can we get the art of cycling philosophy?
James Hibbard 1:43:48
So the art of cycling is available. As Max said, all good book shops in the United States is published, will be published on May 2 by Pegasus books, and is already available in both hardback and softcover in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia from Quercus books,
Carlton Reid 1:44:06
thanks to James Haven and Max Lennar there and thanks to you for listening to Episode 326 of the spokesman podcast. Show Notes and more can be found at the hyphen spokesman.in the next episode, I talk with BBC journalists, Kate Vandy, and Anna poligon. Meanwhile, get out there and ride
6th April 2023
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 325: Benchmarking Bicycling: How Good Is Your City For Cycling?
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUESTS: Rebecca Davies, Malcom Davies (not related)
TOPICS: Drilling down into the cycling ranking system City Ratings from People for Bikes
Rebecca Davies, People for Bikes — Malcolm Davies, Trek * Benchmarking Bicycling: How Good Is Your City For Cycling?
Carlton Reid, April 6, 2023
Read more…
* Bike lanes empty? Prove gibe wrong with this €199 window-mounted traffic counting camera
Carlton Reid, March 31, 2023
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* Bike Advocacy Woes In Motor-mad Malta
Carlton Reid, March 24, 2023
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* Seeing Sensors With Philip and Irene McAleese
Carlton Reid, February 21, 2023
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* Sustainability in action: Vaude CEO Antje von Dewitz
Carlton Reid, February 5, 2023
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* Get SUVs Off Our Streets: In Conversation with Critical Mass musician Dan Abrahams
Carlton Reid, January 25, 2023
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* German word for beer diluted with lemonade is “cyclist” — oh, and Jim was probed by robots
Carlton Reid, January 8, 2023
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* Chris Boardman explains Active Travel England’s Capability Fund
Carlton Reid, January 2, 2023
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* Masterplanning Milan: Real Estate Developer Reshaping the City With Active Travel
Carlton Reid, December 22, 2022
Read more…
* Milan to banish cars, Mayor promises manager of Eroica Caffe
Carlton Reid, December 13, 2022
Read more…
MACHINE TRANSCRIPT:
Carlton Reid 0:12
Welcome to Episode 325 of the spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Thursday, April 6, 2023.
David Bernstein 0:28
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Carlton Reid 1:03
I’m Carlton Reid. And on today’s show, I’m talking bicycling benchmarking with Rebecca Davies, programme director of the cycling ranking system city ratings, which has been assessing the bicycling friendliness of cities since 2017. And that’s an international initiative from a US Bicycle Advocacy Group people for bikes of Boulder, Colorado. And joining Rebecca, from here in the UK, is bike industry veteran Malcolm Davies, of Trek based out of Milton Keynes. You two I’ve got a complaint to make. I don’t know who wants to take this. Malcolm who’s in the UK or Rebecca, who is in Boulder, Colorado, but my complaint is your website or the website for city bikes, the city ratings says put your city in here and get the details on it. I put Newcastle in and I got not a sausage. So I’d like to register a complaint. What do I do? What does Newcastle have to do to get on the city ratings programme to make cycling and Newcastle better?
Rebecca Davies 2:11
Yeah, that’s a great question. So we have an option on our website, there’s a form that says add my city. And anyone can navigate to that form and then enter a little bit of information about the city they want added. And then we take that into account when we update results in the future for the city ratings, so typically annually. So that would be the best way to get your city added. We try to add as many as we can. So there are limitations sometimes but but that’s the that’s the best way to do it.
Carlton Reid 2:45
Well, it is phenomenally comprehensive. I’m not really complaining. Because it’s something about Newcastle’s going to have to get escaped on and actually do because the comprehensive in that London is very comprehensively covered. And we will get on to that. But first of all, Jen and Rebecca, tell us who you are because you’re the program’s director for city ratings. Yes. People for bikes programme.
Rebecca Davies 3:09
Yeah, yeah, that’s correct. And the city ratings programme director, so I spend a lot of time on on the data, and both generating the data and helping people understand the data and working with my colleagues to communicate how the data connects to changes that cities can make to improve bike networks in their city.
Carlton Reid 3:34
Oone of your colleagues is Jen. So I do apologise for saying Jen in that reply to you because Jen, I have talked to them before. From from from from people, for buyers. So just for those who don’t know, what people promote, is you are an American organisation. So just give us a thumbnail sketch of what people provided. And perhaps more importantly, or as pertinent anyway, is when you get your cash.
Rebecca Davies 3:58
Yeah, so it’s kind of a two part answer to that question. So peopleforbikes is National Bike advocacy organisation based in the US. And we were both nonprofit organisation that does bike advocacy, and but we’re also a trade group for the bike industry. So we have over 300 industry members who support our work. But we’re supported both both by the both by the industry members and then also by grants and charitable donations that allow us to expand the scope of our advocacy work, including our data driven infrastructure analysis work represented by the city rating.
Carlton Reid 4:41
And Malcolm I know where you fit in here. But let’s you tell the listeners where you fit in here. What Why, why isn’t Malcolm Davies on this show with Rebecca?
Malcolm Davies 4:52
Yeah, sure. So so I’m Malcolm Davies. I’m a longtime Trek bicycle employee. Worked for trek since the early 80s. Early 1990s recently retired fairly recently retired. And I now look after advocacy and trucks initiatives around getting more people to ride and making it better for people to ride their bikes.
Carlton Reid 5:15
John Burke, Trek’s John Burke, has been a massive, massive bicycle advocate and pushing the industry forward with organisations like people have a bike. Is that a fair characterization? That that John was massively into advocacy before maybe other industry leaders were?
Malcolm Davies 5:36
I think that’s a reasonable characterization. Absolutely. Yeah. I think John has been a real presence in the industry for many, many years. You know, certainly, in my tenure, it was always something that he’s been very passionate about continues to be passionate about, continues to speak publicly about and tries to motivate the industry to do more to you know, to enhance the experience of cyclists the world over.
Carlton Reid 6:05
And Malcolm, you might be retired, but you will keep your finger on the pulse, you will know intimately that the bike industry is not exactly doing very well at the moment. So we need more bums on seats, we need more people to get on bikes probably than ever before, because because we’re kind of in the doldrums here.
Malcolm Davies 6:23
I think it’s an it’s an interesting time. I mean, I think we all know that the industry had a real uplift as a part of something that people could do during the COVID crisis. And then there’s been a bit of a lull since I think you and I have been in the bicycle industry in the UK and internationally for a long time. And we’ve seen these peaks and troughs many times before. They’re not they’re not unusual to us or many colleagues. That really reality is I think that if you look at the user data, people actually riding that has not dipped, people people went out and they maybe bought some bikes, but they literally apologise My dog is kicking off. So I think that people are out there riding bikes, and I think there is good usership data that shows that. So you know, let’s not get too disheartened that the industry is having a bit of a bit of a downturn having had a big boom, it will come back more people all over the world are seeing the bicycle as a good solution for their, their transport needs, their leisure needs, whatever it is, and they are they are using bikes and riding all the time, which is great, we want
Carlton Reid 7:28
more we might ask it on more but in your role, your Trek person or a bike,
Malcolm Davies 7:34
I am attracted I am try and employed by Trek to look after their European advocacy initiatives and represent track in various places in the industry,
Carlton Reid 7:45
and apart from Trek supporting and being a massive supporter of people for bikes was any greater involvement on the city ratings programme from track?
Malcolm Davies 7:57
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that work, we work together I’ve worked for you know, over the last couple of years with Rebecca and the team in in the US to try and figure out a way that we can do what they’re doing in the US and make it useful and meaningful. So you know, we talked to right at the beginning about great deal of detail are in and around London, that was something that was very much driven by us and by me because I think you know, as you can imagine saying rating of London is kind of meaningless when you have such a big geographical space, both in terms of number of people who live there, but also the way that it’s structured. And you and I know that writing in one place in London is very different to writing in another and so I wanted to get into the detail a bit to make the analysis more meaningful to people and so we focused we focused our efforts on London we focused on the West Midlands we focused on for Manchester,
Carlton Reid 8:59
when all those cities have had put in have invested in bike infrastructure so Manchester with with the Beelines and Chris Boardman and all that kind of stuff. West Midlands with with a mayor is very proactive on on active travel and then of course London famously well starting with Ken Livingstone, then Boris Johnson and then the current Mayor Sadiq Khan is also pro so those those that’s the reason that you’ve gone for those cities. It’s not you know, low hanging fruit, this city could be great if they did this. It’s they’ve put an infrastructure, we’re going to focus on them.
Malcolm Davies 9:37
I don’t think that’s necessarily correct that we because they’ve put in the infrastructure because we know for a fact that some areas of London have put in the infrastructure and done an excellent job if we talk about Hackney or we talk about Waltham Forest, for example. But if we talk about you know, our friends, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea we can clearly see though that they’ve done nothing and they’ve done their best to avoid it. So you know, There was some there was some considerable value in understanding the detail and being able to present the detail in a way that people could say, Well, look, look what happens here and look what the experiences are. You know, this is by no means. And I think Rebecca would certainly confirm this, we’re not, we’re not saying this is definitively how cycling is in a, in a, in a situation in a location, we are saying, Here’s his way of measuring what we currently have. And you can definitely challenge that measurement, you can definitely challenge that output. But it’s a way of making a comparison and seeing how things sit. We can also say, if you look at some of our scores, compared to many US cities, we’re we’re in pretty good shape. But if you start looking at you know, as we know, that cities in the Netherlands or in Denmark or elsewhere, on the European mainland, we’re we’re also way off the pace in many areas. So it’s a it’s a way of promoting a conversation or provoking a conversation. I should say that we’re looking at here. Started,
Carlton Reid 11:03
Rebecca, People for Bikes has been doing this since 2017. So this, this is basically an annual thing. So the information that’s on the website is current as of end of last year. Yeah. 2022.
Rebecca Davies 11:19
Yeah, correct. We updated results for the locations in the UK. It’s actually the beginning of 2023. But But, yes, yeah, we generally released results annually. And we had a separate release for US cities and other international cities in this past year, but in the future, we’ll combine those and release results and update them all at the same time, once a year.
Carlton Reid 11:49
Now, let’s get on to some American cities in a moment, but just kind of like sticking to European cities. See, you’ve got the number one is actually the Hague. So I’m going to you can tell me what this means. But I’ll just I’ll just say the numbers for now. So the Hague is just under 89. In the city rating, that’s out of 100, I’m assuming you tracked 84, Amsterdam 82. And then, you know, coming almost out of nowhere, rather, famously, is Paris, which has got 82, which is two, to hundreds of appoint a joke as close to Amsterdam, which is an amazing transformation that Paris has made. So in your tracking since 2017, can I go back? And can I graph Paris’s trajectory and see how in effect, they’re there, they’re about to overtake Amsterdam.
Rebecca Davies 12:47
So we unfortunately don’t have the international data for that whole span of time. Because when we started, we started with us smaller set of US cities. And then we grew that that number over a few years. And then just a couple years ago, we started adding international cities to the data. So we don’t have as much of a time horizon, unfortunately, for international cities, but it’s definitely something we’ll be able to build up now, as we update the results for these places annually. So we’ll get to start to see that change over time. Although we had, we have run Paris a couple times before. And you could see the improvement, you know, as it really tracks with a lot of the what we’re hearing, as far as you know, anecdotes and stories and reporting out of Paris about everything that’s being done. And I was lucky enough to have the chance to, to see a lot of that and I visited in late 2019 to see a lot of the change underway. So yeah, so it was it’s really been a great example of, of a place that’s that’s changing quickly. And is that is reflected in our city ratings scores, but it was just just under over a relatively short period of time.
Carlton Reid 13:59
I was throwing out just a whole bunch of numbers that which which in effect are quite meaningless at 84 is what what does it mean? What does 82 mean? Berlin’s got 77? Tell me exactly, I mean, looks like see, London has an average of 49. As Michael was saying, some borrowers are going to be much higher than that happening, you know, pleasantly high that but just generally what what are those figures mean? How do you get there? And and who was doing it? Who was physically looking at these, these data points?
Rebecca Davies 14:36
Yeah, so those are all great questions. So So there are two main inputs to our city ratings this year. And that’s a community survey where we asked people how they feel about bicycling in their city. But the biggest input is a metric from what a tool we have called the bicycle network. analysis. And we actually didn’t steal the community survey in all international places. But we did field it throughout the places we measured in England. So England has that combination of this community survey where we asked people what they think about bicycling where they live, and combine that with our our network analysis measure. But most of the other international locations, we just did the network analysis measure. So there’s a slight difference there. The network analysis was worth 100% of the score, for instance, in a place like the Hague, but worth 80% of the score in the boroughs and cities of England. So that’s just some context there. But as far as that network analysis, the bicycle network analysis, so what it is, is a piece of software, essentially, custom software we, we built, some years back, back in 2017, it was completed. And it essentially evaluates the quality and connectivity of bike infrastructure in a given area. Usually, that area is a city or borough that we’re looking at. So it’s saying, you know, given the conditions on the road, whether there are you know, how many lanes are there for cars? Are there safe crossings? What’s the speed limit? Is there any bike infrastructure, what kind of bike infrastructure, it takes all of those things into account, and then either assigns the street as low or high stress given those other factors. And then it of course, includes things pads too, that might be disconnected from the street, but are but allow bikes. So so it evaluates every single, every single path and streets throughout the given area? And then it says, Okay, well, well can people bike from where they live to places they need to go using only what we consider to be low stress or comfortable bike routes. And when we say comfortable, we really mean for the average person, not necessarily the average person biking today, but the average person in general. And we know there are a lot of people who don’t ride bikes, because they’re, they feel unsafe, right, because of the conditions on the road. That data, there’s not enough bike infrastructure, or it’s not sufficiently separated from motor vehicle traffic. And so, you know, they don’t get on a bike. So we want to think about what gets those folks on a bike. And so that’s the standard we want to use for what counts as comfortable, high quality bike infrastructure. So so it runs that analysis saying, Okay, if you start from the area, if people start from the area they live, and they want to get to their school, or their job, or the grocery store, can they make that trip on a bike, safely and comfortably, and if they can, the software rewards points. And if they can’t, it doesn’t, it can repeat this calculation over and over throughout a given area to get to eventually aggregate into this total score. For the whole for the whole region. So that’s essential. So a 100 in our network analysis would mean that you could start from anywhere in the city and get anywhere else using completely safe connected comfortable. bikeways that’s what that would mean. And in practice, we don’t know city scores 100. But the best get into the low 90s. Yeah, upper upper 80s. As we see here, yeah, almost almost 90. But
Carlton Reid 18:25
if Sorry, sorry. If if this was a motoring advocacy organisation, but imagine history is completely flipped. And, you know, bicycles are in the ascendancy and is the bicycle lobbyist groups who are doing this. If this was a motoring lobby organisation, do you think there are any cities that are at 100? For motorists, you think all cities are at 100? For motorists? Where is siping? In the pecking order? Do you think?
Rebecca Davies 18:56
I love that question. I’ve never received it before. And, you know, in some ways, it’s kind of interesting, because you might think, well, it’s the opposite. But that’s not really the case. Because there are we know that And research shows that when you make cities safer for people riding bikes, those improvements make cities safer for people who walk and people who drive as well. A lot of the improvements that that make a road safe are important for for people who drive too. So if we’re saying that a city that’s good for driving is a city that’s safe for driving, where we don’t have a lot of negative outcomes, you know, fatalities or serious injuries, then that actually that wouldn’t be you know, often some of the same cities that are good good for bicycling these things are not inherently at odds. Now I see. It’s the goal was Well, we, we don’t care about safety outcomes. All we care about is how fast somebody can get somewhere. You know, that’s a different that’s a different measure. But um, But even then, you know, having cities that move cars quickly, sometimes are also cities that have at times have a lot of congestion. So, by what by which I mean, maybe you have built your roads to make it easy for cars to go as fast as possible. But the reality is, if that means a lot of people end up driving, then that actually slows everybody down, because now everybody’s driving, and the car is congested roads congested. So
Carlton Reid 20:29
it, could you have a city, that’s 100, the motoring and 100 for cycling as well. I know this is all theoretical. But just think of it as like an experiment or a thought experiment. You know, could you have a city? That’s fantastic for motoring, and fantastic recycling at the same time in some sort of weird utopia?
Rebecca Davies 20:52
Yeah, yeah, I think so. Because it’s really at the end of the day, you want people to be able to move between different modes, safely and comfortably. To know that no matter what way they’re getting around, that it’s going to be safe. And they have efficient options, enhance efficiency, you know, whatever, whatever combination of modes that is, you know, you want them to be able to have an efficient trip. And I think, an efficient and safe trip. And so all of those things need to work together, all the modes need to be complementary in order for that to happen. So, so yeah, I think I think the ideal is a place where all of those things work together. harmoniously. Yeah.
Carlton Reid 21:37
So yeah, I’m thinking of, say somewhere like Los Angeles, but with loads of bike paths, so I’m gonna flip it to Malcolm. And because Rebecca, were kind of we read European, so we kind of probably have a slightly different perspective on you know, how you you kind of have cars and bicycles interacting on perhaps even mediaeval streets? So Malcolm, the same question to you really? Do you think you can have a hyper connected car city, just as the same as you got a hyper connected bike city? And could you even have that in Europe, considering you know, we’ve our cities are already built, and you probably can’t have that hyper connected car city.
Malcolm Davies 22:20
I think, you know, the word record didn’t use perhaps what was she was alluding to as balance isn’t it, you’ve got to find a balance between the different modes of transport. And that’s all modes of transport and all the all the ways people get around, from walking, to cycling, to cars, to public transport, if you really wanted to have a utopia city, let’s say all of those things would have to be in balance. And what you have right now, is an imbalance, right? Because you have, you know, access cars, you have x, you have congestion, you have inefficient public transport, you have inefficient and, you know, high risk, in many cases, in infrastructure not suitable for people to ride on. So I think you can, I think you can make a difference, you can massively improve the, the transport network for people walking and cycling, and even for public transport. But in order to do that, you are going to face the reality that you’re probably going to take some space away from cars from automotive. That doesn’t mean though, that you’re going to make it worse for for cars, because actually, what you’ll do by getting more people onto bicycles and walking and into public transport is you will take cars off the road, so there’ll be fewer cars, yes, there’ll be less space, but there’ll be significantly fewer of them. So you know, I, I actually think you can make a difference in that way. And I think there are a number of, you know, a number of examples all around Europe, they’re even examples in in in England, and the UK where that’s happening, and you’re seeing the benefits. And, and what you’re also seeing is that the people who live there, the residents really like it, they’re really they love it. They’re really happy with it. And when you don’t, you know, one of the things we always say is, do you ever see the people of Amsterdam or Copenhagen or Utrecht, asking to take away that bike paths? And I don’t think I’ve ever heard that happen. No one’s really doing that. And so there is there is value in that conversation. But it is a hard conversation, because you are starting from a premise that if you want to make more bicycle infrastructure or walking infrastructure, you’re probably going to have to take some space away from automotive.
Carlton Reid 24:34
Rebecca, that’s kind of not what you were saying. But do you want I do want to come back to that one, because because what Malcolm is saying you need to take space away from motorists. And you were saying no, you can have you can have both you can have great motoring infrastructure and biking at the same time. To
Rebecca Davies 24:47
be fair, that might be there might be a difference between Europe and the US.
Carlton Reid 24:52
I would like to tease that out. Exactly. I’d like to find out. Is that a European perspective and me and Malcolm come at this at a different way, Rebecca. And do you come at this from a US perspective? So, so talk me through that.
Rebecca Davies 25:07
Yeah, I, you know, I completely agree with everything Malcolm saying, and I think it is true. We have roads in the US that are far too wide. Even some of our neighbourhood streets are just absurdly wide. It’s, it’s kind of crazy how wide some of our streets are. And we know that wider streets lead people to drive faster, which results in poor safety outcomes for all road users. And so we do need to rethink, rethink how we reallocate space. And you know, I’d even argue a city that we definitely think of as a very car centric City, Los Angeles. And it’s true that it can be hard to get around without a car there. It’s not necessarily a great city for driving, I’ve lived there. And I’ve spent, you spent a lot of time sitting in traffic on highways, and there are a lot of roads that are pretty frightening to drive on. And it’s not always very efficient to drive. And, in fact, often it isn’t, but it’s just your only choice. So I don’t think it’s a city that’s working well for cars, either. And it would it would be just such a fabulous city for bikes, you know, if it had the bike infrastructure it needs it’s it’s flat, it’s sunny, it’s beautiful. It’s actually quite densely populated. Despite despite being spread out, in many ways, it’s, there’s a lot of high density in certain parts. But yeah, I mean, I definitely think that conditions are different, you know, because a lot of US cities were built, when, you know, the car was already around and access growing, you know, growing and accessibility. As far as affordability to a lot of people, a lot of cities were built around cars and really subsidised driving and continue to subsidise driving through how the city is designed. So I think there’s a difference that way and kind of what we’re starting with, and, and I’m envious of cities that were of the cities that you know, developed. to a greater extent before, you know, cars were was widespread because some of their conditions are better suited for more multimodal transportation. But But I definitely agree that there has to be a reallocation of space. In order to achieve that that correct balance, it’s very imbalanced in a lot of cities that have given 90 Over 90% of the travel space to driving alone. And that hasn’t resulted in great outcomes, it’s resulted in congestion. It’s resulted in lack of choice for people when they you know, really their only option is to drive. Yeah, and I wouldn’t say it’s, it’s not it’s not making for an efficient system. So, yeah, so I think I think we’re very much aligned on on that. And, and then and the needs in that regard are similar between cities around the world. But there are certainly different starting points, given that a lot of cities have very different kind of designs.
Carlton Reid 28:04
For sure, now, I know that on your website, you talk about road diets. So you know, that’s that’s something that is, you know, what you’re talking about there about, you know, reducing road weights, can you have some very wide and we’re gonna be talking about stroads, and what and what that means to a European, which we’ll, we’ll probably don’t come across that term as much as an American does. But first of all, I’d like to go across to my colleague for an ad break.
David Bernstein 28:28
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Carlton Reid 29:39
Thanks, David. And we’re here with Malcolm Davies. And we’re here with Rebecca does not relate to you. So no, no. The same second name completely different geographic. Okay. Just just to get that settled. Now, before the ad break, I was asking, Rebecca, about stroads and rode diet. So first of all, for anybody who’s who’s unfamiliar with that term strode, Rebecca, can you can you tell us what that means?
Rebecca Davies 30:09
Sure, yeah. So a stroad is the idea that, you know, you have some roads are built, or in theory are built more for moving cars more quickly, like a highway, that has limited access, where there aren’t many ways to get on the highway, you know, there’s, there’s on ramps here and there, but you can’t, it’s not that, you know, not every street allows you to access that highway, might cross under it or over it, but doesn’t necessarily get you on. So there’s there’s limited access roadways, and then their streets, which tend to be in more densely populated areas, and our, you know, facilitating travel for shorter distances and slower speeds. So, you know, these are places that maybe maybe it’s a street grid, with lots of intersections, and so there’s a lot more activity on streets. And the idea with a stroke is that it’s a kind of unfortunate combination of both of those things, and not achieving either of their aims very well. It’s a road that’s built in many ways, like a highway, and that it’s supposed to try to move cars quickly through an area, but it’s not limited access, it has a number of intersections with other streets. And so so you end up with this, this sort of the worst, worst kind of combination, where it’s quite dangerous, because it’s built for moving cars quickly, but it actually might have a decent amount of activity it might have, you know, shops or residences along the street and intersections along the way, a lot of intersections, and those often might not have very safe controls on them. We see there quite a few roads in the US that don’t have don’t even have sidewalks. So, or if they if they do the distances between crossings are so far that people just crossing the middle of the street, you know, they could be crossing a 567 lane road. And that’s very, very dangerous. So yeah, so they just make for a really both inefficient and kind of unsafe type of roadway. And that that hasn’t decided whether it’s a street or a highway.
Carlton Reid 32:19
And does the road diet does that cure a city of stroads Is that something that is anti stroad?
Rebecca Davies 32:27
and it’s can help rethink you know, what that space is meant to be? I think it’s important for people to be intentional about what that road needs to become. Whether it’s that usually Yeah, get turning it more into a street and thinking about what its main purposes, you know, is its purpose to move cars quickly, or is its purpose to help people travel locally in the area and support the surrounding land uses. And it’s the land use piece, I think is really important there to you know, how you build cities along these roads. And so it’s both about reallocating that space in a thoughtful way, and implementing other safety improvements. So it might be that you reduce the width of the road, you convert lane, one lane that isn’t needed into a protected bike lane, for instance. But there are other improvements to like slowing, like changing the speed limits or adding more safe crossings, so people don’t have to so people don’t have to cross in the middle where there is no crossing. So there’s a variety of ways to improve it to improve that kind of roadway. But certainly some of these overbuilt, overly wide strobes. You know, they just have so much excess capacity that rethinking how some of that space is used is is often an important step.
Carlton Reid 33:52
I want to come back to Malcolm in a minute, and we can dig down into some of the city ratings for for the UK cities. I’m mostly familiar with Manchester and worth, obviously with London, not quite as familiar with Birmingham. But first of all, I’d like Rebecca to talk to you about it because you’re in Boulder, Colorado. I’m assuming I haven’t looked at the figures of your city ratings on on your website. But I’m assuming you’re in the top city in the US are certainly in the top three. And if I had to name the top three cities in the US in innovative hospital, if I wasn’t out to North America, then I’d also add Montreal but if I’m just going purely for the US then I would choose Boulder, Colorado, Davis, California, and Portland, Oregon. As as the top three cities and I know Portland, Oregon, has kind of faltered in the last few years. I know Davis, California has you know, obviously was was incredibly, very bicycle friendly in the 1960s 1970s and for various reasons. Hadn’t been quite so busy. And that Boulder, Colorado is the one that’s taking off is that, again, is that characterization that I’ve just said there does that does that reflect any form of reality at all?
Rebecca Davies 35:11
Those are definitely all leaders, I would say, a lot of boulders, but builders, it is a good city for bike by US standards. And a lot of its network of paths was actually built a few decades back. So it got a bit of a head start. It will say, you know, Boulder has a lot of these kinds of roads that that need to be addressed in the same way other US cities do, you know, these kinds of arterial roads that like we were talking about with strokes that are, too Why don’t have enough safe crossings aren’t really safe for biking. So it has plenty of those. The city actually recently introduced a plan to focus specifically, their their transportation work on those arterial roads, because we know those are the ones with the worst outcomes, and that people don’t feel safe biking on, however Boulder has the benefit of having invested in a network of off street paths a few decades back, and continue to build upon that path network. So so if you’re travelling places that are along that path network, you know, you can have some really wonderful, you know, bicycling opportunities, and experiences, the challenges those, those paths don’t go everywhere in the city. So So, so definitely, it’s a leader, but also still has plenty of work to do. Similarly, Davis invested, you know, was an early leader and investing in their bike, a bike lane network and has continued to do so. And so that’s reflected in our city ratings. And, and I do, we do generally, generally try to compare across cities of similar sizes, because they have both because of how the analysis works methodologically it’s, it’s it, for instance, small cities tend to score a little higher in the ranking. So that’s just something to keep in mind when you compare between cities that are a very different size. But yeah, among larger cities, Portland, definitely one of the leaders in the top 10, but it has it it is it is behind some other large cities in the US. Its neighbour to the North Seattle has in the last few years just kind of crept ahead by a few points in our rankings. And so you know, it’s kind of fun, fun, when you can kind of pull that sort of friendly competition out of the data and see how cities, you know, move together or how one moves ahead, and Seattle’s kind of pulled ahead in in recent years, San Francisco is also a bit ahead of ahead of Portland at this point, but
Carlton Reid 37:44
any other cities that are totally maybe people that obviously heard of the cities, but wouldn’t put them down as a, you know, an up and coming bicycling city? Any surprises in the data?
Rebecca Davies 37:57
You know, it’s a good question. There’s, there are some cities that are doing all the right things and are making great progress, but aren’t very high in our rankings. And that can be because, because, you know, they’re they’re very much in there, their work is underway. But also some of them are starting from a harder starting point. So for instance, Austin, Texas, is a city doing a lot of great work to build out their bike network. But you know, the city also started from a tough place in terms of you know, it’s a very, it’s a very large city that’s experienced a tonne of growth, and has a lot of starting from a very car centric infrastructure landscape. So has the cities built some phenomenal, some phenomenal bike paths, and we’ve seen them climb up in our ratings, but but because they’re starting from that, such as tough spot, and and, you know, a lot of their momentum has been more recent versus cities that might have done some of their investments some decades back, you know, it’s just not as apparent because they’re not, they’re not in the top 10. And it’s going to take a long time for a city like Austin to get to the top. But there’s a lot of great progress being made.
Carlton Reid 39:13
Okay, let’s come over to this side of the pond. And let’s talk to Malcolm about Malcolm, how much are you familiar with let’s let’s rather than talk about London and Manchester, which I’m familiar with. How familiar are you with West Midlands? And what’s been happening there?
Malcolm Davies 39:32
reasonably but not not massively, I would say. Yeah, I mean, obviously, there’s there’s quite a good amount of effort going on. There. Isn’t there there is
Carlton Reid 39:43
politically that I mean, I’m sure that comes up at high on any rankings is when you’ve got the political leadership taking an interest. Well, that’s that’s the absolute critical step you need. So West Midlands has that?
Malcolm Davies 39:56
It does. It does. And that’s undoubtedly making something roads, but it also shows up that they probably are only really just getting started. So you’re not necessarily going to see that in the data. I mean, a Coventry is a good example that I used recently in another conversation where they scored pretty low in Coventry in the birthplace of the bicycle as we know it. I know for a fact that there is there are some really good things going on in that in that city and in that part of the West Midlands,
Carlton Reid 40:26
but it’s what we have, as the, as the Adam Tranter, who’s kind of doing great things. But you’re right, it’s it’s from a low start
Malcolm Davies 40:36
it Yeah, exactly. But, you know, this is not a definitive statement of what your community or city is necessarily doing. It’s, it’s a way of measuring where things sit. It’s almost like a snapshot, snapshot in time. If and I think you’re right, right, right. Right back to the beginning, when you talk talking about Paris, if we looked at you and I and perhaps went to Paris 10 years ago, and, you know, tried to get on a bicycle in it, and pre the bike share system that they had, even when they had it for quite a while you took your life in your hands. And it’s only in the recent past when you’ve seen massive infrastructure investments, but initiatives on the part of Anne Hidalgo, the Parisian mayor, that huge transformation. So I think we have to be very conscious of those kinds of conversations when we’re saying to a community or a city hall that you only scored 30. Too often. For me. This is a snapshot in time. It’s a challenge in a way it’s so it’s a way to start a conversation, which is, which is all you need here.
Carlton Reid 41:49
Malcolm Well, we both came in into the industry when I mentioned before about John Burke being being a champion of bicycle advocacy because that’s now a mainstream in the industry is that what you do in the UK Bicycle Association is hugely into into Bicycle Advocacy. But these organisations when we came into the industry, we’re not anywhere near as in touch with with bicycle advocates as they are now. So my question is, from an industry perspective, do you see do you think you can you can track where there’s lots of good built infrastructure, you sell more bikes? Can you get as granular as that? Or is that just too hard to track?
Malcolm Davies 42:33
I think we can get that granular on what the industry lacks is where bicycle jobs and bicycle sales, because that’s what we’re talking about, where they where they have enough data and enough data in detail to match that into geographical space. I think we’re actually quite fortunate in the UK in as much as the Bicycle Association, Great Britain has a very good set of data that they’ve been working on that that does describe very well where, where the bicycle economy is. And I think that’s quite valuable. So overlaying that kind of data with, you know, the data that that Rebecca is presenting here, or being for bikes presenting here will be will be interesting. And we need that’s the next kind of phase of the kind of work we need to do. Because I think we know politically, of course, economy matters. You know, that’s what politicians want to have a successful community, they’re going to have to have a strong economy. And if we can,
Carlton Reid 43:34
you can line the two maps up. You could say, Look, if you put the infrastructure in the industry support infrastructure or support, advocacy, in general, this leads to a recognisable uptick in sales.
Malcolm Davies 43:47
Yes. I mean, and what in some ways that can be a negative for the industry, right? So I can sit in a room with a with a bunch of local politicians and say, we should have more bicycle infrastructure. And the first thing they’re going to say to me is, well, of course, you’d say that because you want to sell more bikes. It’s been interesting for me, one of the things we did here was we rated Milton Keynes, because that’s our hometown, but there’s track in the UK, that’s our hometown. And I’ve had a couple of conversations with local politicians in the room. And you know, the community of who has a vested interest in cycling, and it and it sparks a conversation it it talks, it gets people talking about okay, well, how do we improve the infrastructure from an active travel standpoint, which is really what we care about. And what does it mean to to the economy? What does it mean for our for our community for us, its people who live here.
Carlton Reid 44:40
Rebecca, I know that Trek does have its fingers very heavily in the bike share pie in many US cities and perhaps even worldwide, but just talking about bike share in general because because Paris if you if you kind of like try and work out where did Paris is Bike revolution come from? Well, many people, myself included would would certainly put Velib. You know, when the when the bike share was put in that seemed to have some sort of transformation. Just getting more bikes more visible, because many more people because it was made Democrats, Democrats, bikes, you can get more people on bikes with a bike share scheme, is that something that ranked highly in city ratings, if a city has a bike sharing, it’s guaranteed to get X number of points, and it will lead to some sort of exponential rise in cycling overall.
Rebecca Davies 45:38
Yeah, so we currently the ratings does not include measures related to bike share or other access to bikes themselves, we actually used to include more measures in our city ratings, we had a variety of data sources we use to measure multiple different facets of bicycling, which is really interesting to see this sort of different views. But we found a couple challenges. And one of the main ones was that when you you’re measuring bicycling, and a lot of different ways, when you want to talk about well, how do you improve your score, it ends up being quite a long list of things you could do to improve your scores. And there are you know, I always say there’s 1000 Ways to Improve bicycling, you know, but you kind of have to focus on a few at a time to really, it’s really kind of centre, your, you know, sending your work and, and be effective in a given area. And so we decided to make our city ratings very narrowed and focused on the infrastructure in a city or the infrastructure on the ground, not not including Bikeshare stations. So but we do actually, as an organisation, we have a programme called the better bike share partnership that is focused on bike sharing, specifically equitable access to bike share, so ensuring that the way Bike Share functions, it is accessible to all kinds of people throughout the city. So we definitely recognise that as important part of the whole kind of ecosystem and bicycling. And similarly, another another piece we don’t measure, but that we know is so important is bike parking, just the availability of bike parking. And, you know, I would, I would love to see a similar ranking system that’s for bike parking in cities, sort of what am I dream extensions of this? One day? But yeah, but we did the readings is very, is very focused on infrastructure on the ground, because we wanted to communicate that that is a major priority, and that we’re not going to see the kinds of shifts in vice clean that we want to see until you know that infrastructure gets built. But that said, we recognise all of these things are very complementary and important to just supporting people in enabling them to, to, to ride so yeah, so definitely very supportive of cities that aren’t investing in their bike share systems, as a way to help get get more people riding
Carlton Reid 48:05
that before, you’re also saying that you’ve only got a certain amount of international data here. So you obviously started to 70, with with American cities, and you’ve been growing with the European statistics. So this is maybe a tough question for you to answer. But the city of Seville in Spain, rather famously, almost overnight, not quite overnight, almost overnight, you know, lay down a bicycle network and in your ranking systems, you wouldn’t weren’t doing it that when they were doing it, but if they hadn’t been doing it, when you were doing your rankings, they would have gone, you know, from this very low score, presumably to a very high score in the space of you tracking over a year. So do you see any indications that there are potentially more Seville’s out there, cities that are willing to just flip and just completely change overnight? Or do you think this is going to be a very long term over 30 years? Kind of timescale?
Rebecca Davies 49:24
Yeah, you know, I want to say there are tonnes but there, you know, there are a few there aren’t that many. There are a few that are kind of positioned like Seville to to make a quick change. And I think annual Paris does, again come to mind is just one that’s that’s really made that kind of rapid pace of change. But then there’s a lot that are looking at these longer, these longer time horizons. And actually, a lot of our work some of my colleagues work that’s complementary to mine is to work with cities that show That promise towards being able to make rapid change, and, and help provide them tools and resources to get on that different trajectory to get on that, that faster trajectory. Because we know that there are a few things that that help cities kind of move from that long term horizon to that shorter term horizon. And that’s, you know, building political will, that’s supporting advocates, so that they can hold leaders accountable. And also supporting changing public sentiment so that people understand why these investments are being made, and how it will benefit them over time, so that they’re supportive of the project. And then of course, finding the dollars if they aren’t there. I mean, the dollars to invest in the infrastructure, so you have to have all the right ingredients come together for that kind of rapid pace of change. And we’re definitely seeing that in a few cities known the US that, that movement towards that. And, and some cities that have made a lot of progress in a relatively short period of time, but, but if they don’t have the political will, the political leadership there to do that, you know, it’s it’s, it’s very, very hard, if not impossible to move at that that rate of change. So it’s really important that that groundwork is laid, and I’d say, a lot of places that have the potential to move quickly are in that political will building capacity building stage, but they’re getting closer, definitely getting closer. And, and, and there, there are a few cities, I can think of that we are seeing a relatively good pace of change. So Cambridge, Massachusetts has done a lot of work around implementing policies to build out there to support building out their bike network and investing the financial resources, they need to do that. And we’re and we’re seeing that change happening, you know, their score is going up. And so you see those kind of signs of places that are starting to move more quickly. And I’m hopeful that in 510 years, you know, we’ll we’ll have a few more of those examples like Seville that that have have have proven they can make a lot of change in a relatively short period of time, but still more places in that sort of groundwork phase, and we’re working with a few cities to try to try to get them on that faster growth trajectory.
Malcolm Davies 52:24
Call? No, I would, I would add, I would add to that, that there are cities in England for sure that you see quite significant mood for change. You know, I’m thinking about Oxford, for example. It’s not part of the ratings. But, you know, you’re seeing you’re seeing political will there, you know, make change quickly. Even some of the London boroughs in Hackney, Hackney didn’t used to be a great place to be a cyclist and it seems to come out of the out of that in the very recent past. So, I think there is, there is traction there. And there are examples all over the place of things can can be better and when they are made better, people want that they like it.
Carlton Reid 53:04
Okay, that’s a very positive note. I’m going to end there. Thank you very much to Malcolm Davies and to Rebecca Davies. Not related. We kind of like established that used to collect a genetic test you just never know some some common ancestor so thank you ever so much for spending the time talking to me today about the City Rating scheme Rebecca where can where can people find out what’s give me the website basically of where people can find out about where their city or where they can complain as I started where how they can complain to get their city on the city rating system?
Rebecca Davies 53:44
Yeah, thanks. City ratings at peoplefor bikes.org is the website where they can see all the results. And yeah, submit that and my city form to us and we’ll try to get to get their city ranked next time we update the results.
Carlton Reid 54:02
Thanks to Rebecca Davies and Malcolm Davies there and thanks to you for listening to episode 325 of the Spokesmen podcast. Show notes and more can be found at the-spokesmen.com. In the next episode, already in the can, I talk philosophy and cycling with authors James Hibbard and Max Leonard but meanwhile get out there and ride.
31st March 2023
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 324: Bike lanes empty? Prove gibe wrong with this €199 window-mounted traffic counting camera
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUEST: Kris Vanherle of Telraam
TOPICS: The Telraam traffic counting system uses a camera and AI to work out exactly what’s going by on the road. And it’s not just for professionals, you can buy one for your window and start measuring traffic 24/7, perhaps to prove that your road suffers from excessive speeding. Telraam’s developer Kris Vanherle of Belgium here describes his neat new system and whether it could be used to counter those tabloid newspaper columnists and others who claim that bike lanes are empty.
Kris Vanherle of Telraam * Bike lanes empty? Prove gibe wrong with this €199 window-mounted traffic counting camera
Carlton Reid, March 31, 2023
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MACHINE TRANSCRIPT
Carlton Reid 0:12
Welcome to Episode 324 of the spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was recorded on Friday the 31st of March 2023.
David Bernstein 0:28
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day, and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.
Carlton Reid 1:04
If counting sheep makes you sleepy, imagine how difficult it must be to count cars and cyclists. Boring Yes, but such traffic surveys provide essential data. I’m Carlton Reid, and today I’d like to introduce you to a different way of measuring road use. away that’s more accurate than the pneumatic tubes, you’ll often see stretched across carriageways, but which don’t measure very slow moving, or static motor traffic and aren’t even so hot on recognising bikes. The tell ramp system uses cameras and of course, a AI to work out exactly what’s going by on the road. And it’s not just for professionals, you can buy one for your window and start measuring traffic 24/7 Perhaps to prove that your road suffers from excessive speeding. This morning, I talked with tal rams developer Kris Vanherle of Leuven in Belgium. And I started by asking him to describe his neat system. And whether it could be used to counter those tabloid newspaper columnist and others who claim that bike lanes are empty. Kris there’s a there’s a today there’s a report in a in a British tabloid newspaper. And it’s very frequent kind of complaint. But it’s about empty bicycle lanes. So this particular right wing commentator is basically banging on about bicycle lanes being empty. Now you’ve got a product there that that might help to either prove or disprove that. So what’s your product?
Kris Vanherle 3:08
So our point is called Telraam. It’s it’s a small IoT traffic counting device. Actually, Telraam is a Dutch word. Funny word of play of words, because tell means counting. And is window and it’s the device what you put on the window. It’s you make your window Accounting window, but also telling them as a word in itself in Dutch is abacus. So it’s a nice play of words. So that’s, that’s our, what we do. So basically telling them is a small, low cost, traffic counting device which is owned and hosted by private citizens. So typically, traffic counting devices are used and deployed by professionals and so industry professional but also policymakers, local authorities, just to monitor traffic, what we’ve made first with the Raspberry Pi system, and now with a with a new custom made, hardware and software is a commoditized, let’s say cheap or affordable traffic counting device to also allow anybody to just start counting with with a very simple device. And indeed, like you said, that helps to objectify any discussions on traffic flows are either on there’s too much car traffic in my street, they’re speeding. Bike lanes are not being used, like this example. With data it’s just there so you can have you can at least have a discussion about data rather than gut feeling.
Carlton Reid 4:32
It’s that private citizens but that really interested me when I looked at your product information because yeah, this is not some is you there is like a professional version. You know, you can you municipalities can can get this from their own uses. But this is very much you could you might have a road that you’d quite like to your municipality to close off. You can put this in your window and then you can save that municipality. Look, we’ve got you and X number of cars coming through X number of bicycles coming through why don’t we do this? Is that the idea because because many bicycle advocacy groups already go out there manually counting this stuff. So you’re basically bringing something that that would manually counted and you’re doing this with, with AI in effect.
Kris Vanherle 5:20
Yeah, that that’s partly the objective. So just for some background, so I’ve been working as a traffic engineer over 15 years. And why we started with this project, because out of the frustration of lack of data, so we are either the technical data is lacking, and you basically need data to give property advice, or it’s usually expensive. So we started with this project to make it affordable. And our angle was to work with citizens because like you mentioned, local debt is a very hot topic, and local residents are very much willing to contribute time voluntarily to collect this type of data. Like you said, people can’t manually I’ve even seen people who have done origin destination studies with licence plates. It’s also I mean, people invest time are gorgeous, we should give them the tools to do it properly. So that so that the default so that the data which is being generated is actually useful for policy advice. We offer the device for private citizens, but we do want to work in a collaborative way. So actually, our model is to work with local authorities, and citizens together. So the most common model that we basically have is that we have a discussion with a local authority, they want to do something in their, in their jurisdiction on traffic, like closing a street, low traffic neighbourhood, for example, slow street, but they want to monitor before and after. So they buy devices from us. And we support the local authority to deploy these devices with citizens. So you get the dialogue immediately between the policymakers and the citizens. But apart from that, it’s also possible to just for a parameters to buy a sensor and start this discussion with with the local authority based on their data. So it’s a bit double. So we’re still professional with local authorities, but also enabling directly to towards citizens.
Carlton Reid 7:11
And how much is the product for one product for one person, one private citizen, how much they’re going to pay?
Kris Vanherle 7:16
Yeah, so we’re trying to distinguish. So if, because we really much in favour of grassroots organisations. So if you just want to buy a device that says no strings attached and simple, it’s one at 199 euro, which is still expensive, but if you compare to other ethical techniques, it’s like, three, four times more cheaper compared to limited use, for example. But if you work for a local authority, we set up a full project, we do engagements, we do, we have much more analytics in the dashboard. And then we’ve got the model, right? Where we are more or less, I think, maybe two to 400 euros per device all in. And that’s basically a model how we tend to survive. So provide professional services to local authorities, but give the devices for free via these local authorities. So they can contribute to the to the ethicality. And it works
Carlton Reid 8:06
as well for their for the telecom. So yeah, like a connection. Yeah,
Kris Vanherle 8:11
yeah. So the old device used Wi Fi for data connectivity, but the new device is using a SIM card. But that’s, that’s included. So for the private citizens, we want to make this one of cheap and we’re basically subsidising and because we’re the one off cost just for grassroots organisation. So the 199 is, it’s actually less than what we want, it’s costing us but we want to support these girls with initiatives are revenue models more from the project that we do with the local authorities, and provide more support and ethics and so on. And this is the model that we tried to build also trying to bridge this gap between citizens and local authorities because local traffic very antagonistic.
Carlton Reid 8:53
A minute ago, you mentioned pneumatic tubes, which are, which is often how, you know these these rubber strips that are laid across the road. There’s a bit of a box next to them, which is counting traffic. Now that’s been relatively controversial in the UK recently, in that somebody discovered that for a low traffic neighbourhood, it was in London, the traffic counts potentially could be out, because the pneumatic tubes don’t measure static traffic and effects of it if a traffic jam, you know, the cars are not going anymore, whatever, like I’d know five kilometres an hour, they don’t get counted. So it’s clearly a problem. So your product is solving that problem.
Kris Vanherle 9:39
Yes, in part. So I mean, again, this is technology. So it’s got limitations, but like you mentioned Dometic tubes. It’s been, let’s say the industry standard for a long time. I mean, I’ve I’ve bought this type of data many, many times and I know the limitations like you mentioned, slogan in traffic is an issue and because it depends on timing of signals, so if it’s really slow Although it cannot distinguish between a car passing by or it’s like a single pulse. By counting as an issue as well, I mean, there are two tubes which include by counting, but because they are less heavy, the signal which you get from the kinetic poses is less, so the accuracy is lower. So, these are all issues with pneumatic tubes and there are more, we’re trying to solve this indeed without without garlic, so its chemical based system. But that doesn’t mean it will be 100% accurate. Still, there’s still a trade off between cost and accuracy. But slow, slow going into effect for sure it’s not an issue because it’s taking objects and it is going faster, the objects are going very slow. But the object will be recognised. In fact, I think actually accuracy will be higher, if the traffic is slow, because there’s more frames where the object is, is in the view.
Carlton Reid 10:47
So the accuracy of this, you can track this just by setting your your product up on a window, and then at the same time, at a fraction of a moment in time, you then physically count. And then you tally the turn, and you say, you know how genuinely accurate this is, and you found that it is accurate.
Kris Vanherle 11:10
You can so what we have with, especially without a new device, there’s a screen on top of it. So and it gives you life counts. So if some some when some object passes by, so a car that skin cycle or glass vehicle, you will see the counter increasing. So and that’s also I think, for us important to have this transparency. So we are expecting an accuracy of 90 95% for cars and 80% ish, maybe a bit more for for bikes, it will depend on the locations we’ve tested in length on different sites. But it’s also useful for people in the field to have a device to can just validate and cross check, okay? The device on this period of time is indeed counting on a typical day, and you can do some manual validation. So this type of conspiracy for us is really important because it’s often lacking with with other technologies. So primitive tubes, we know that in some cases, it doesn’t work. In some cases it doesn’t. So you don’t know if you can rely on the data. In some cases, yes or no. In our case, what you see is what you get them and if you don’t work on your site, you will at least see it on the on the screen.
Carlton Reid 12:15
Now the advantage, I’m guessing of it, and we discussed the disadvantages of pneumatic use. But the advantage of it is, you know, their lateral there on the ground, and nothing can really obscure them. But presumably your product has its camera based things could obscure them so that there must be an optimum placement. style. So if you had it in somebody’s window, and say the bike lane that you’re trying to measure is frequently blocked by you know, traffic, car traffic and buses, and you can’t actually see the cyclists See you then that’s where your product isn’t quite so good. So how, what is the optimum placement of your product?
Kris Vanherle 12:58
That’s a good point. I mean, like you said, metal cubes. And basically you can assault anywhere where there’s where there’s room. In our case, you have to indeed, you’re limited by like a free field of view of the street. So there’s a few rules of thumb. So what we always recommend is, first of all, your first or second floor window, so not the ground floor, so you’ve got a bit of a downward angle. So that that that negates or avoids having blocking objects passing by. So that’s that’s one thing very clear, need to have a clear field of view. So no trees, preferably no parked cars in front. And not to this bit not too short, not too distant. So I mean, the houses which have like a small garden in front, like five metres or something perfect, because then you’ve got like a very nice view of the street. Now, we are very much aware that this is a limitation. So when we do a project with a local authority we have we’ve got a full onboarding mechanism candidates applying, and they upload a picture where they would instal the device, you’ve got clear instructions on what suitable sites? And then we evaluate if this is a suitable site. Yes, no, and be allowed to inform them? Yes, I mean, it will work on your site. So you can you you’re eligible for a device so so at least we have some control where the device is installed on locations where the count should work. Now, based on our experience, now we are working for two, three years now, I would say that about two thirds of the candidates that we get that probably eligible. So in most cases, if you have a clear view view of the street, the device should work
Carlton Reid 14:33
the product that you’ve got there 199 euros for the consumer, I’m assuming a bit more for local authorities, but when you when you place them either by the private citizen or the local authority, buying a bunch of them, and you place them in a window. I’m assuming there’s some sort of algorithm that you’ve got, which in This prevents double counting. If you’ve got a street and you’ve placed five of these counters next to the street, you’re not going to get you know, the counting the bike bicyclist five times the motorist five times, it kind of knows where it is where the device knows where it is. And it knows if there’s another device 500 metres away, it doesn’t doesn’t count those. So how do you how do you square that?
Kris Vanherle 15:26
Okay, that’s important, because the way we’ve set up our system is that you’ve got one device with a single code segment, what we call a code segment is not the full state, but the street, which is divided by the next intersection. So in principle, the road ethic on the street segment is the same on the full street segment, except for people who should be somewhere on the street segments or incidents, or anybody who’s not transit, basically. So we, we don’t really deploy multiple devices on a single segment, we just take one device, or if we have a volunteer as one device in a seat next segment, and we report the volume of this segment segment on a map public map for this segment, so we don’t really do this, for five devices on a single segment, it’s been done for validation purposes. So then you can take an average, for example, or you can make some small distinctions between a location a bit further up the segment and put it down. But they should be very, very much similar in terms of volume. So yeah, there’s no way of double counting in that sense. If we have to segment two devices on the same segment, we report the average of the of the of both devices on the segment. I think I didn’t mention this explicitly, but we tell them is on one part, this traffic counting device, the sensor, but it’s also an open data platform. So if you sign up with with Telecom, you are also sharing your data and we reporting that on on our website. Landing Page is basically a map with all this data.
Carlton Reid 16:58
So where where have you had your product placed in internationally where where has been counted so far? So
Kris Vanherle 17:08
we started three years ago, but earlier and mostly belted, because we live a Belgium based but gradually we have done some studies internationally. So we had we had a big European project in 2019 to 2021. That was in Dublin, Cardiff, Barcelona, Madrid and Ljubljana we’ve had a nice project in Berlin as well with with across with organisations like I can biking advocacy group, we’re deploying about I think, 100, it’s in the Berlin area. in Utrecht, Netherlands, we’re working with a governance. So again, it’s about 150 200 orders of magnitude. So gradually, also reaching the highest of of Europe, not just Belgium,
Carlton Reid 17:56
how have the results been used? Do you know how they’ve been used?
Kris Vanherle 17:59
It depends, it really depends on the use case. So I can give a few examples. So in some cases, it’s it’s really about monitoring the impact of an intervention, so an intervention low traffic neighbourhood, or whatnot. So anything which is changed, which would expect some fundamental changes to the traffic flows, and then you’d mentioned three, four months before the intervention, three, four months after you direct typical traffic before intervention, typical tactic after the intervention, you could just make comparisons. And that’s super useful. And because what’s typically be done is the stopgap measures have been dealt with the main roads, but for the small underlying roads, like the most smaller essential roads, that really being assessed when you have a change in the circulation plan or installation of a low traffic neighbourhood. And you want to understand if there’s not to say, spillover effects to adjacent streets and so on. So with this, because it’s cheap, you can you can really blanket an area with these devices. And you can do typical perfect pre intervention and typical African post intervention. So that’s, that’s one case. Another case is speeds, that’s also a good one, we have had a very nice case in Louisville, but there’s more which are similar. Where there was an issue of compliance to speed limit of 30 kilometre per hour. So you could really see from the telecom data that compliance was like 50%, half of the cars were driving faster. And there were two interventions. So one intervention was this this digital sign with your speed when you’re passing by, so you could really see when this intervention was done, because compliance increased from I think, 50% to 60%. So these things actually work, apparently. But then you could see a second adventure it was installation speed bump, and then you could see compliance with the speed limit, go to 95%. So, those are examples of how the data is being used to demonstrate the effects, impact of off interventions.
Carlton Reid 19:57
You know, one of the complaints from, from people Is the surveillance society we have here. And you know it capturing numberplate. It’s not what you are. But you’re not capturing numberplates here, you’re literally just there’s a lump going past at a certain velocity. And you are statistically measuring that. So there’s, there’s no, there’s no arguments here. Nobody can say this is surveillance society, you’re just counting numbers and the speed of the things that you’re counting. Yeah,
Kris Vanherle 20:23
exactly. And I mean, that’s really important. I mean, everybody says it, but it’s really genuine. And privacy is important for us. So it’s really, it’s really a thing. So we deliberately don’t do tracking, we deliberately don’t do number plate commissioning. We just do counts. So basically, what’s what’s coming out of the of the traffic counting device is the same type of data you would get from a pretty metric tube, a manual count, whatever, it’s just automatic, long, long duration, and there’s just much more data. But that’s the type of data which is being spit out of the device. And this is enough to do any quite some useful impact analysis of transformation. So yeah, obviously, when you would, when you do something with Ghana based systems, and especially if you give them citizens, you’ll get into controversies we’ve had our share of controversy has been every time we explain how the other device works. So it’s an example of edge computing. So the images which are being collected from the from the camera system, I instantly process on the device itself. And it’s just count data, which is going to our cloud. So you still images leaving the device, it just count data. So these types of things are very important to reassure users and stakeholders nearby. That text, no surveillance,
Carlton Reid 21:45
the objects that you are capturing, and you know, just just counting immediately and not sending anywhere else. And can you differentiate between a car, a van, a lorry and HGV a large truck, a bicyclist, a pedestrian, maybe even a cargo bike user? How how granular is your data?
Unknown Speaker 22:07
Yeah, very good question. So we’ve been working up to now with the Raspberry Pi based systems, we’re not the new flashy device you see now. And the old device categorises in four categories, so pedestrians, bikes, and cars and large vehicles, that classification is quite rudimentary and simple. So basically, it’s using Object properties. So for example, axis he have an object, so pedestrians are very narrow and very tall. So x axis ratio of the object is four. So it’s likely pedestrian while cars wide and not at all. So axis ratio is 0.5. We use a few other parameters to then classify that those objects but there is there is a clear risk of misclassification. So for example, the motorcycles and bikes there would likely be in the same category with the new device, it’s different. So it’s it’s immediate AI commission. So when you see an object and an object is associated, okay, this is clearly a bike or a pedestrian. So while we were now still bundling them in the same four categories, in fact, the device can see more categories. So you’ve got car, you’ve got no longer two wheelers. With the old device, the bikes and motorcycles with the distinction has already added. There’s pedestrians and then what we have now as large vehicles will be categorised in lorry so trucks and tailors, buses, and light light trucks. There’s still a risk of misclassifying cars and vans because yeah, sometimes they just look physically the same. But in terms of
Carlton Reid 23:39
like, what do you call an SUV? I mean, that’s that could be a van.
Kris Vanherle 23:44
So that actually actually the risk of misclassification with a new device is the same as a human would have. So if you’re counting manually, you would say, Well, is this event of an SUV? It’s the same time type of doubt that this device, but other than that there would be no clear misclassification?
Carlton Reid 24:00
And what about a scooter? Because that’s clearly a use scenario that many cities either want to clamp down on, or increase. So do you measure scooters, so these these push scooters,
Kris Vanherle 24:10
motorcycles, so for sure, but again, speed pedelec it’s a good example. So you’ll get to see the the blurrier area of very high end and fast electric bikes speed pedelecs which almost look like it’s good and you’ve got these electric scooters as well, which are more coming down from the scooter towards the bike as they insulate the grey area. I can’t tell for sure how the device will look or counters because sometimes they’re really physically look look quite the same, but anything which looks like a scooter will be counted as a motorcycle. So
Carlton Reid 24:48
the terminology I should I should I should I should have clarified that so when I meant scooters, I mean, the stand on things, steps that propelled you.
Kris Vanherle 24:58
So how would you what would you call them just apps like these small, small wheels, and basically walking on driving on pedestrian walkways, right, or
Carlton Reid 25:11
when you measure them, and you spot them tricky.
Kris Vanherle 25:15
Again, you don’t, it will be difficult to make a distinction between pedestrian and bike in that sense because they are small. So you might get missed out to the to the bulk of an object which is passing by is there is a person which is on the step, and the step itself is quite small. So, if the device misses the step, it will not see it, and it will go to this as a pedestrian. I think it’s a bit too early to make any definite statements on that we’ll have to see we just launched a new sensor. And we’ve tested extensively before, but these are specific cases which we have not had any definite validation on. So we’ll have to see.
Carlton Reid 25:53
So you mentioned a few times the old raspberry pi version, and the new version. So talk me through the history of this when when you first had this idea, your first product, what year was it? Was it for instance, crowdfunded Kickstarter, whatever, to your, your current product. So So talk me through the history of your product,
Kris Vanherle 26:15
the origin, the needs of why we started with this project was was because of relaxed data, affordable data. So we started with that from within the company where I work, which is a spinoff from the University of K Leuven, with a research can’t like, not too big. And we basically said, let’s try this, let’s let’s try to make something with it as a pie and see if it works, what studies and we did a small pilot here in Louisville. And, to our surprise, I mean, there was two key outcomes there. So to our surprise, it worked fairly well, because we made something very simple, with actually available off the shelf hardware and software. So we were wondering, why isn’t this being done before. So that was one. And the second thing is that we had no issue whatsoever, finding people who wanted to host the sensor and do some debugging and developing with us. Now, I appreciate live is a bit of a special university town. But still, I mean, we had I think 250 candidates for 100 devices, and it was like this to find them. So that made us think, Okay, this is a model which could work. So if we can further debug and improve this device, we will definitely find people to host something like this. So that was 2019 2020, I would still call this a proof of concept, we have a bi based system over time, and we did support it and also did the European project and Dublin guidance and so on, we basically came to the conclusion that if you want to reach a large audience, we have to detect the sensor. So they have a bio based system is nice for techie, tech lovers and enthusiasts who want to go to the pain of installing this because it does require some, some technical, know how Wi Fi configuration installation. So pretty soon, we have chosen to go down the path of making a dedicated sense of hardware for for this purpose, which is focused on ease of installation, to also be able to reach anybody who just want to count ethic and I mean, prefers not to go to the pain of installing it has been a buy. And so that’s been done for the past two and a half years. And it’s been a long road. We have also had research funds to do that and some development funds. And we only just launched, I think two months ago with with the new sensor. And now we really ready to scale up with this new device. So we’ll still support the Gatsby by base system because we also tech lovers and we’ve got a nice community of tech lovers and we really want to support them. But for the future, we will definitely look at the new sensor because it’s simpler, user friendly, and we will be able to reach a much larger audience for the public.
Carlton Reid 28:58
I’m going to I’m going to cut to an ad break now I’m going to go across to my my colleague David in America but I will be right back with his I do hang on there for a second. Take it away, David.
David Bernstein 29:08
Hello, everyone. This is David from the Fredcast and of course the spokesmen. And I’m here once again to tell you that this podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern build bikes that make it easier for you to replace car trips with bike trips. Part of that is being committed to designing useful bikes that are also fun to ride. But an even greater priority for Tern is to make sure that your ride is safe and worryfree and that’s why Tern works with industry leading third party testing labs like E FB E and builds its bikes around Bosch ebike systems which are UL certified for both electric and fire safety. So before you even zip off on your Tern, fully loaded and perhaps with the loved one behind it you can be sure that the bike has been tested to handle the extra stresses on the frame, and the rigours of the road. For more information, visit www.ternbicycles.com. To learn more. And now, back to the Spokesmen.
Carlton Reid 30:18
Thanks, David. And we are here still with Kris Vanherle. And Kris is from Leuven. And I want to dig into Kris, I want to dig into your because you mentioned a couple of times now that you are you’re, you’re a traffic engineer, basically. And I’m assuming that’s exactly now. So what does that job entail? What have you been doing? How does this improve maybe the life of fellow you know, the people who are who are doing your job now? And is that product taking you away from that job. So that’s three different questions.
Kris Vanherle 30:53
15 years I’ve been doing this, I’ve seen the the space of graphic data being evolving immensely over this last 15 years or so. Cell phone data, for example, let’s start with that. It’s been I mean, when I started my job, I think cell phones weren’t weren’t even that prevalent yet. And casually. Cellphone data was being recognised as something useful for doing origin destination tracking. So you know, where people are coming from where they are going to super useful to, to calibrate different models, for example, which then allow you to do an ex ante analysis and try to model on before and before we do an intervention, how traffic would behave, if you would do an intervention. Before that was all speculation and theoretical. That type of data has really, really evolved. And it’s like now the standard go back to Google traffic, for example, is a product which provides origin destination data, travel time data, which is usually usually interesting, and has really changed the environment of traffic engineering, allowing different models to be much, much better.
Carlton Reid 32:00
Now, basically, that that’s using the Bluetooth on a phone to basically measure where people are going to and from it knows probably where people are just by speed, you know, they’re on a bicycle or in a car. And then it’s the origin destination means, you know, are they genuinely doing one mile trips? Is that Is that what you mean?
Kris Vanherle 32:18
Or they live in this area and go to that area where they work. And it’s generating congestion in between? Because there’s so many people coming from there and who choices for example, why are people or why are people taking a restaurant, for example, those things you can all make visual. Now. I mean, at the beginning of of when this data was useful, there were sincere privacy concerns which completely justified but by now you have topped with data products, which all are hashed and anonymous, and non Nice. So it’s much safer and clearer now. But still, sometime, it’s a bit creepy. But this type of data are extremely useful to calibrate traffic models, which you really need to give to make corporate data and appropriate and policy advice. So we had the epic moments 50 years ago, still, but they were scarcely calibrated, and they were to get the best. But now, I mean, definitely much more performance much more accurate. Now, the point where I want to come to and my time is still important and useful is that this type of origin destination, which is floating garden is one super useful, but it’s still just a sample. So you still you will will not have all traffic, which is having a cell phone in the car, for example. So you will not it will not provide you absolute values on a specific site. So that’s still valuable to collect them to calibrate models. And secondly, this is still just cars. So we have achieved to calibrate effort models for cars properly now, in the traffic engineering world. But bikes, bike models, only scratching the surface at this point. And, and we already know that route choice behaviour and so on with bikes is completely different. The steepness of the hill, the quality of infrastructure, the perception, or the heel safety, those are all things which are influencing good choice of of bikes. And there’s there’s definitely a capsule to get that right. And we tell him, you know, we’ll have to have accounting data not just regarding also for bikes. So it will allow to get to make the next step, let’s say and also get good corporate traffic models with with bikes. So you can do also proper policy development, which is supported by data, not just for cars, but also bikes.
Carlton Reid 34:36
And then the one of the other parts of that question was are you still doing the traffic engineering? I’m always like, taking you away from that field.
Kris Vanherle 34:47
Yeah, yeah, I’m completely consumed now by Telraam development. So I mean, we so Telraam was started as a project from within TML we we did this epic engineering but because it’s that was consultancy, Telraam as a product, so we spin it off as a different company, because it’s completely different. And I would say we’re in our own startup life and trying to get this product as good as possible. So it’s a completely different focus, to a development firm with development, use management, and so on. So, yeah, I’m, unfortunately, I’m not really doing much anymore. When I when I, when I’m lucky, and I can do a workshop with data analysis, then I can dive into the, into the telecom data and do some good old data analysis, which is really fun. So if I get the chance I come to it, but it’s more for the colleagues from from TML, who were working with a data and third parties,
Carlton Reid 35:42
TML. What’s TML?
Kris Vanherle 35:45
TML that’s the agency where the traffic engineering Bureau where it was within the spinoff from the key. So the colleagues.
Carlton Reid 35:52
So you guys, because your background, as a traffic engineer, you know, this product is going to be incredibly useful around the world. You know, this is not something that you’ve come from the world of tech, and you’ve brought this to an alien world that you are from this world, you know, this product, it will be incredibly useful.
Kris Vanherle 36:13
Yeah, yeah, that’s correct. And, and that’s why, but I’ve grown to understand over time, that’s why I at first, I didn’t understand why tech world hadn’t already done this, because it’s not that hard. And the use case is very clear. So while we came in from the immediate the application side, and we had to learn the back, let’s say, so we had to learn how this technology works and work with partners, but the application for us was evident. And we also can see it and the development towards what we think is definitely the most applicable use case. So simple, cheap, and very specific on a very specific type of traffic, counting data. So on the specific sites, no intersections, no origin destination, because once you go down that route, you’ll get you’ll end up with high end system, which will cost you multiple 1000s of euros per device. And we think there’s definitely a use case for her first cervix, very simple, low cost epicanthic. device.
Carlton Reid 37:10
So talk me through it because you said it. This is like two months in which you’ve you’ve had this the the newest iteration of your product, where do you see your company going? How many devices do you think you’re going to be able to sell to a to private citizens and be to local authorities? So what’s what’s your Give me your business plan, so not just your business? Product history, your business plan? If you don’t mind, Kris,
Kris Vanherle 37:36
we’ve seen what the current has been by this system that we’ve gotten a lot of attention from Belgium. But we’ve also seen that it’s, it requires all support. So we were a bit reluctant and hesitating to go international with this, because we want to be closer to be able to provide support. So. So while we’ve been having a lot of questions, in the meantime, while we were still working with it has been a buy and developing the new system, we have been holding back a bit on international inquiries. Now we’ve got the new sensor ready. And it’s not, I would say 90% validated, we still need to check off a few things. But we just want to open the international tab, let’s say and want to roll out as fast as possible and as many as possible, because the need is there. So if you if you’re asking me for numbers, I am hoping to deploy at least 2000 a year but rather looking at several, I mean, five to 10,000 additional new devices per year being deployed worldwide. We’re having a focus because we’re based in Belgium on Benelux or Belgium or the Netherlands. But we have somebody who’s working for us already in London. So UK will be a focused market to expand. And we already also getting some inquiries from from the US. So hopefully, we can also quickly built on that and serve that market. Now in terms of the distinction between the private citizens and the local authorities. I think that’s really the crux that’s really important for us. So the way we have gained traction in Belgium is always via a single citizen citizen who bought the device and made a lot of noise about his device and his data for the local authority, which then initiated local authority to set up a project. And then we can help to local authority or a commercial client consultancies working with a local authority to set up a network of of devices. And that’s really crucial because we like I said, halfway, I think we are almost subsidising the individual ones we want to make make it really cheap for the enthusiasts for the cars, fruits initiatives. We want to keep them but our sustainability is dependent on projects. So networks of, of devices for it’s for these commercial clients, consultancies and local authorities. So we really hope to go in, find that we’re looking for partnerships for example, large organisations who have have access to a big community who would buy these devices from us, we provide them a management platform and management tool to, to basically manage the fleet of devices in the community. But give them device for free towards volunteers. So that’s a bit the model that we were hoping for to achieve.
Carlton Reid 40:19
Took me through your dashboards, I know, tech people get really excited by their dashboards. So when you instal this, or when you when you when you when you upload the data when you’re not you, but when the device uploads the data to the cloud, and then it’s all graphed and mapped, and what have you, what do you see? So can you see not just numbers, this is the number of people who’ve cycled walked, driven past your window, we also get like peaks. So there’s a graph there showing you at 5pm you’ve got a massive amount of car traffic, bum, bum, um. So what what is your what are your stats show?
Kris Vanherle 40:57
Good question. So I invite you and your listeners to go to our website, because basically those things are all open. Also, there’s a private dashboard, but there’s also a very big public website. So I’ll just go over what’s what’s there. So we report the total numbers by day and by hour. So just to sum up of the cars pedestrians and, and the four categories. But like you mentioned, there’s also an interface where you can select a time interval, for example, three months, four months or four year, and then it calculates a typical traffic volume for this period, a typical traffic volume for a weekday or a weekend. And that, like you said, that will demonstrate these these typical patterns. So the short morning peak and a bit more prolonged evening peak. So those are interfaces, what’s also reporting on speeds and so we report the speeds of passing cars in bins of 10 kilometre per hour, we’ve also changed it to miles per hour for UK. So that’s also possible. So that will give you an idea on what what they share, or what are the speed profiles, let’s say of cars in your street. And finally, the VAT five. And speed is like a traffic engineering concept, which I have to explain. So if you would have 100 cars, and you would sort them by fastest to the slowest. It’s the 85th fastest car. So there’s 15 cars driving faster and 84 driving slower. So the V 85 gives you a good indication of what we call free flow speed. So how fast you guys drive when there’s no congestion. So on a disagree indication of how our streets are typically used by cars in terms of speed. So those are all in the open dashboard and in the private dashboard. So the telecom user has got a bit more extra analytics, for example, a monthly report with big peak hours last month has to have to increase last month to the to the to the previous month. So a bit more extra gimmicks, which are useful for the individual use of it, the core thing is that everything is open. So that also if you’re not at a telecom device owner, you can still interact with the data, you can do analysis yourself if if you want and we encourage that.
Carlton Reid 43:05
So traffic census as has been carried out since the dawn of motoring, you know I’ve I’ve, I’ve looked at various statistics down down the years of, you know, the usage of roads, and even of 1920s and 1930s, bike paths, etc. So censuses have been carried out since the dot. But they’ve always been this, you know, they pick a date, they pick up probably a 24 hour period. And that can be very, very misleading because it you know, do you do it in the winter? Do you do it in the spring, do it in the summer, or you tend not to do it, you know, loads of times, because it’s just so expensive, because it’s manual. Counting is phenomenally expensive and complicated to do, what you’ve got is a system that is 20 477 days a week, every single week of the year, blah, blah, blah, it’s just constant. So you’ve got much, much more robust data there that will build up. And I know, like, folks is the the Bicycle Advocacy Group for Edinburgh, has been doing traffic counts and traffic sensors for a long time. And they do it manually. This is going to I’m sure would excite them because it will be an adjunct to the database built up over many years. But instead of just doing it on a certain day, they’ve now got it every single day.
Kris Vanherle 44:31
Yeah, that’s correct. Yeah. What’s important is to know that because people think of data accounting data and data candidates in traffic counting today, but that’s not the case. So you’ve got different types of traffic counting. So for starters, you’ve got this floating Carta, which I explained from the cell phone site, but also the point location so and maybe supplies do what you would expect, would expect but all All these different types of traffic entered into on a single site are valuable. So even manual counts are still valuable. Although they are fragmented to show they’re very scarce. So either it’s expensive, or it’s or it’s very one off. But it’s still valuable because in some use cases, you really need it. So for example, if you want to optimise traffic lights, to want to know which site needs to have the green light alarms, and so on. For that type of thing, you need queue lengths, for example, to monitor queue lengths, is usually difficult, even with high end optical systems. So for those type of applications, you still need manual counts. But that being said, for two traffic counts for for for a long period. What well, we used to work with, like you said, every Tuesday of every Tuesday, every two or every two weeks, do a manual count, that’s gone, those times are gone. And either weapon or metric tubes or in the future with Telecom, that just the sheer volume of data will will will blow away even the bit more accurate manual counting data, which is much more fragmented. So yeah, it’s indeed, it’s indeed, the potential of a big change in mental mental change of evolution in terms of how we collect difficulty data on specific sites.
Carlton Reid 46:20
And @fietsprofessor, the on Twitter, he had a very, I think he did a an academic study on this, but he also did it on Twitter, and he kind of like, showed the video of this. So he had a camera above a promise intersection in Amsterdam. And then he talked about swarms, and flogging, and he showed how, you know, bicyclists just flock through this particular intersection, whereas cars are very regimented. You know, in narrow trails, bicyclists were going everywhere. So what that suggests is, as we know, there are an awful lot of bicyclists in Amsterdam. So does your system cope with high use bicycling city, where if there’s 10,000 cyclists going through an intersection, it can count that even though they’re flocking together? How do you count the ants?
Kris Vanherle 47:20
Yeah, that’s a very good question. And it’s very important to realise how you should tackle those issues. So in short Telecom, the sensor is low cost device, it’s not made for counts on intersections, because like you said, You’ve got you got flux, you’ve got everything, which is going, one going left going, right. I mean, if you do anything with it’s just impossible, I mean, it’s not impossible. But if you want to do those counts, right, you need the high end camera system, which will cost you five to 10,000 euros just for a single site. So we’ve deliberately chosen for, let’s not, let’s not try to fix that problem, because it’s just too complex. But you can fix the problem. If you focus on a bit more simpler sites, which are just seat segments where you have bikes passing by left, right, left, right. So it’s very clear that object is passing to one side and exiting the other side. And if you’ve got a bit of a downward angle, you can just basically see all object passing by. And that’s a face a much more simpler setup where AI systems can much easier more easily cope with. So if you would have such a situation, what we would do is not monitored the intersection, because it’s too difficult, but just take the branches, so maybe even a few sights on the branches. So you know, the absolute volumes on on, on the branches. As long as you don’t have like, I would say, a big cycling haze or something where you have like 567 people, not side to side, and maybe even swapping positions. I mean, that’s a nightmare. But just one or two side by side, as long as they’re clearly segmented. So like different objects, and it will go it will count those devices. Again, I just want to point back out about some technology choices that we’ve made. Our core focus is it has to be simple, simple to instal and, and cheap so it’s affordable. I mean, anything that you describe now it’s all solvable with technology that will just cost you a tremendous amount of money so you can indeed make a camera system and we should to an online image conditioning system and then will you have to pay for every object that you I mean, it’s all possible but will just cost you a lot of money.
Carlton Reid 49:47
Yes, now I think that’s what @fietsprofessor did. They basically tracked it and then they used AI to count every individual and in that and it was it was a highly complex and probably expensive thing to do. So, Kris, thank you ever so much for taking the time today to talk about this system. So give us the where can people buy these from, your social media stuff get? Give us all your information of how we can find you.
Kris Vanherle 50:14
Yeah. So first of all, first up our website. So www.telraam.net, I think if you go to the website, things will become very apparent, you can also engage with the data. There’s much more two links on what the device is like. And there’s a webshop. So you can if you want to devise yourself, I mean, that’s the way to go. If you want to push for that, let’s say you do this with my local authority. I’ve got to reach out to us via the website, and we’ll see if we’ll see if of course it is possible. So that’s our website. I think that’s the first place to go. We’re active on Twitter. Our handle is telraamtelraam two times next to each other. So that’s the probably the social media that we’re using the most. We’re not on Facebook, not on Instagram, and LinkedIn obviously, if you want also telraam. So that yeah, that’s how to find anybody interested, reach out to us via our web form. We are ready to go with our new sensor.
Carlton Reid 51:16
Thanks to Kris Vanherle there and thanks to you for listening to episode 324 of the Spokesmen podcast. Show notes and more can be found at the-spokesmen.com. I’m still waiting to with BBC journalists Anna Holligan and Kate Vandy who have yet to take delivery of a rather special outside broadcast unit: a tricked-out cargo bike. This will be the bike bureau, a mobile news gathering studio like no other. I’m hoping that chat can happen some time next month, meanwhile get out there and ride.
24th March 2023
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 323: Bike Advocacy Woes In Motor-mad Malta
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUEST: James Craig Wightman
TOPICS: Flush with EU cash Malta is deepening its car dependency by building wider roads, dystopian flyovers and paying just lip service to sustainable modes of transport. Urbanist bike commuter James Craig Wightman shows Carlton Reid what it’s like to live on a tiny island that’s being eaten alive by car use.
TRANSCRIPT TO COME …
21st February 2023
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 322: Seeing Sensors With Philip and Irene McAleese
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUESTS: Philip and Irene McAleese
TOPICS: Talking smart cities, road surface data and more with the cofounders of light and data company See Sense.
- Seeing Sensors With Philip and Irene McAleese
Carlton Reid, February 21, 2023
Read more… - Sustainability in action: Vaude CEO Antje von Dewitz
Carlton Reid, February 5, 2023
Read more… - Get SUVs Off Our Streets: In Conversation with Critical Mass musician Dan Abrahams
Carlton Reid, January 25, 2023
Read more… - German word for beer diluted with lemonade is “cyclist” — oh, and Jim was probed by robots
Carlton Reid, January 8, 2023
Read more… - Chris Boardman explains Active Travel England’s Capability Fund
Carlton Reid, January 2, 2023
Read more… - Masterplanning Milan: Real Estate Developer Reshaping the City With Active Travel
Carlton Reid, December 22, 2022
Read more… - Milan to banish cars, Mayor promises manager of Eroica Caffe
Carlton Reid, December 13, 2022
Read more… - World Champion Transportation Cyclist Beryl Burton — Book Chat With Author Jeremy Wilson
Carlton Reid, December 8, 2022
Read more… - Book Talk With Hannah Reynolds and Ned Boulting
Carlton Reid, November 26, 2022
Read more… -
Tour de Luxe — riding with legends on Ibiza with upscale Leblanq
Carlton Reid, November 17, 2022
Read more…
TRANSCRIPT: to come
5th February 2023
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 321: Sustainability in action: In conversation with Vaude CEO Antje von Dewitz.
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
Antje von DewitzGUEST: Antje von Dewitz, Managing Director, Vaude, Germany
TOPICS: Vaude was on the road to being green long before Antje von Dewitz took over the running of the company but she significantly ramped up its corporate sustainability.
- Sustainability in action: Vaude CEO Antje von Dewitz
Carlton Reid, February 5, 2023
Read more… - Get SUVs Off Our Streets: In Conversation with Critical Mass musician Dan Abrahams
Carlton Reid, January 25, 2023
Read more… - German word for beer diluted with lemonade is “cyclist” — oh, and Jim was probed by robots
Carlton Reid, January 8, 2023
Read more… - Chris Boardman explains Active Travel England’s Capability Fund
Carlton Reid, January 2, 2023
Read more… - Masterplanning Milan: Real Estate Developer Reshaping the City With Active Travel
Carlton Reid, December 22, 2022
Read more… - Milan to banish cars, Mayor promises manager of Eroica Caffe
Carlton Reid, December 13, 2022
Read more… - World Champion Transportation Cyclist Beryl Burton — Book Chat With Author Jeremy Wilson
Carlton Reid, December 8, 2022
Read more… - Book Talk With Hannah Reynolds and Ned Boulting
Carlton Reid, November 26, 2022
Read more… - Tour de Luxe — riding with legends on Ibiza with upscale Leblanq
Carlton Reid, November 17, 2022
Read more… -
Good Move: How Bicycles Could End the Occupation of Cars in the EU capital of Brussels
Carlton Reid, November 4, 2022
Read more…
TRANSCRIPT:
Carlton Reid 0:12
Welcome to Episode 321 of the spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Sunday, fifth to February 2023.
David Bernstein 0:27
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern Bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e bikes for every type of rider whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.
Carlton Reid 1:13
I’m Carlton Reid and welcome to the 300 and 21st episode of The spokesmen podcast in which I chat with Antje von Dewitz, Managing Director of German hiking and biking company Vaude or as you will soon find out how it should be pronounced, “Faudi.”Anyway, in this 40 minute conversation, we talk about Vaude’s stellar green credentials and how sustainability is now baked into the Vaude way of doing things. Can you please tell me that the correct German pronunciation of your company name because I’m pretty sure that we get it wrong here. But just tell us how you pronounce it.
Antje von Dewitz 1:51
Okay, the correct pronouncing is “Faudi” and Vaude is the pronunciation of the two first letters of my last name von Dewitz V and D and in German, you would say Vaude? Yeah, and I’m not necessarily we don’t know how to pronounce it, because that’s a very current problem. People say also Vode and Vouder and Fouder, but the correct pronunciation is “Faudi”.
Carlton Reid 2:18
yes, thank you for that. Now now. We definitely pronounced I’m saying we hear the North American market, certainly the UK market will be pronouncing that with a with a hard v. So it’s not that so we can now pronounce your company name correctly.
Antje von Dewitz 2:37
I’m glad to hear that.
Carlton Reid 2:38
You make a tonne of stuff. So you make outdoor kit, basically. But bikes. So tell me about your bike kit and how long you’ve been making bike kit, whether it’s been you know, from from when the company was founded?
Antje von Dewitz 2:54
No, it was not when the company was founded. The company was founded in 1974. And we started out with backpacks. That was the first product backpack and climbing gear. And about 10 years later, we started with bike first product was bike pioneers, because coming from the main competence in back making backpacks, the switch to bike pioneers what’s not so far we require the same sort of competence. And we started with, with waterproof, backpacks, waterproof, on machines, so we have live production here also, in Germany, where our headquarter is for making bike pioneers, how big
Carlton Reid 3:40
is bike in the company, how bigger share is bike in amongst all of your, your outdoor range.
Antje von Dewitz 3:49
So we have a turnover at totally 150 million euro from this year from last year on and bike is is about 45% of that. So it grew really heavily in the last years. Especially so because we started out as being an outdoor company so 10 years later, we started with bike products and and especially during the last three years, the bike segment was was growing very strongly because of a new mobility, the urge of people going out outdoors also with a bike during Corona so so we are almost up to 50/50 outdoor and bike
Carlton Reid 4:30
and is that is that where it’s going? It’s that’s the growth part of your business.
Antje von Dewitz 4:35
When I said the last three years, I was not really correct because the last year especially was not so good of a bike here because I was probably in the UK also like this. There were a lot of bikes in the market and and at the same time the bikes couldn’t be sent out so there’s a lot of liquidity problem in the with the bike dealers. So and as as having bike apparel and bike pioneers and bike backpacks, this is the last, the last product and a big change. So if the bikes are not being sold, the other products are also not being sold. But I think last year was a very special year. In general, I think outdoor and bike will now grow at the same pace. Because we are in times of, of, of almost crisis every year. And in times of crisis, people go outdoors, and people tend to look for their little escapes. This is why I think bike and other people look for that at the same time plus bike is also what people are looking for in terms of a new new mobility, a new greener and more sustainable mobility. So I think both both segments will know this at the same pace.
Carlton Reid 5:57
Hmm. I have looked at your your company’s CSR, Corporate Social Responsibility report where you do say you’ve got a mobility plan. So I’ll get onto that shortly. But first of all, I’d like I mean, I have been very close to wear your bass because Jo Beckendorf, the journalist when I used to get left with him on going to and from bike, the bike shows in Friedrichshafen, he would often point out where your bass so I know you’re very rural. So you’re you’re basically you’re not far from Friedrichschafen, you’re you’re you’re near Lake Constance or Bodensee. But you’re in a very, very small village. So just describe where you are.
Antje von Dewitz 6:43
We’re close to the Lake Constance, which is this Swiss Austrian German border. So we’re in the very deep south of Germany. And when I look out of my window, which I do right now, I see the little church of our little village, where we are, we’re in in the middle of the, on the countryside, close to the Lake Constance, which is a good side, which is a bad side for a company who needs insert infrastructure. But which is a good site for a company with employees that are outdoor and bike freaks, because that’s a really beautiful part of Germany, where you have great outdoor experiences by bike where you can greatly go biking in the mountains or at the lake.
Carlton Reid 7:23
So it was founded by your father it basically in a hops barn on a farm. And then you grew from that.
Antje von DewitzAntje von Dewitz 7:32
That’s, that’s true. So we are now at Oba Eisenbahn. And 50 years ago, he founded the company, one smaller village, little close to here, Otter eyes and bath. And indeed, in a farmhouse, in summertime, when the hop came in, we had to take all the all the work yet the warehouse had to be cleared for the hub possible to be to be stored there. And two months later, all the products could return to the warehouse within this farm farmhouse, so that was a very special founding story that God has there.
Carlton Reid 8:12
So you’ve grown up with this company? Quite, quite literally, you’ve grown up with this company.
Antje von Dewitz 8:17
That’s true as I was two years old when the company started.
Carlton Reid 8:21
Yes, now, so let’s talk about you. So you’ve managed the company, since 2009. But describe your career before that, because you have a doctorate. And then you have a member of all of these incredible German sustainable business associations are all that the sustainability stuff that we’re going to be talking about, is very much embedded in your corporate DNA for you personally. So tell us a little bit about you and where you’ve come from, from that two year old girl who saw the company founded and how you’ve, you’ve grown into the company.
Antje von Dewitz 8:58
Yeah, I think part of the story and part of understanding my my way of life is growing up here at the village site. We were kind of an outsider, or I felt like it’s growing up, because it’s very rural countryside. And the farmers here don’t at that time, they looked quite critical at entrepreneurs. So growing up to be not a farmer’s daughter but a daughter of an entrepreneur. Was was strange, the people to me and in the class were saying, oh, probably he exploits people, he exploited probably children to grow his business. And I grew up to know that confidence. That trust is something you have to earn trust you can earn by transparency, and to lead a company you have to earn trust in order to feel good. And in order to earn trust, everything has to be alright. Word wild. And this is something that that never left my mind. And when I grew up and I didn’t want to overtake the company I firstly, I wanted to work in NGOs like Greenpeace or WWF. To take, take responsibility in keeping this planet a livable planet. And so it was a surprise for me when my last traineeship that I did, after a lot of traineeships within NGOs and media and in all sorts of organisations, and my last traineeship, during my studies was at Foudy and it hit me like a surprise that if I wanted to overtake responsibility for a livable planet, then I I’m here at the right spot, with a broad set of responsibilities not only in making the products but also in caring for the working conditions about worldwide and caring for the working conditions here at the headquarter in overtaking responsibility in the whole supply chain and in also politically as an enterprise. So, so that’s, that’s why that’s why I ended up in the country in the company of my father, which also benefited me very, very well because I’m a very enthusiastic outdoor lover.
Carlton Reid 11:26
What kind of stuff What what are you what are you doing outdoors?
Antje von Dewitz 11:30
I, I bike, and I hike, I love long distance. So for example, last last year, when I turned 50, my birthday present to myself was a three year three month a three month hike through the Alps, with with my backpack and going from heart to heart every day, 1000 metres height and 15 kilometres distance for so total, I was I walked 4100 kilometre and 60,000 metres in height. So that’s, that’s something I love.
Carlton Reid 12:13
And use it obviously all of your own products.
Antje von Dewitz 12:17
Yes, I use not all of them, but I really love to use them. I love to have them in. In practice, yes.
Carlton Reid 12:25
Okay, now, so 2009 When you came in and started managing the company, and then did you start straight away at making the company climate neutral. So it took until 2012. When when you got there, and then you’ve been a Climate Neutral worldwide since 2022. Last year. But describe how what you had to do when you joined the company to make that switch.
Antje von Dewitz 12:54
When I joined the company that was directly after my studies in 1998, I first worked in marketing and I firstly i i was the product manager for for new bags for modern bags and packs. So that’s the part where I started it. And when I overtook the company, that was in 2009, as you just mentioned, so that was much later. And I already knew a lot about Saudi and the way of our day. And so I was not the one that introduced sustainability to God, we had a long history already. And we had the history that we had and great, great singular proud projects. For example, we had a whole collection made out of mono material, and a whole network of industry partners that could first of all, take the returned one goods of this mono material collection, and then turn it into new products. So we had a closed loop recycling. But when when we looked at it when I overtook the company, and my my biggest goal was to turn this company totally into a green direction. We said okay, this way was not successful. The singular products had a lot of effort for us produce a lot of effort for us producers, a lot of work a lot of cost, but we didn’t get back so many use products. So the closed loop never really closed. And for me, I was very convinced that if we want to go a greenway if we want to overtake responsibility holistically, it would not be the answer to do this in one project and another project but we would have to do this totally entirely. So we started out with analysing Where is where we have responsibility and where should we where should we act? And we found out that we have two different ways. Two different points where we should overtake responsibility One is here at the headquarter at Foday, here at the South in Germany, and the other one is in the entire product cycle. So when we started out here at the headquarter so where we were our business unity is where meanwhile 650 employees work. And that was at a time in 2009 when the consciousness for sustainability was not very high, very high neither at our with our dealers or clients, or customers nor here at the headquarter with our employees, they were very sceptical because they saw the more work bureaucracy that would that was growing with sustainable work and, and they were not sure if this was more than a marketing idea. So there was a lot of scepticism. So we started out by a few things in the beginning, turning the coffee to fair trade coffee, or finally get a grip on on the real, the garbled, how to collect the garbage here, and stuff like that. And at the same time, we started out with emails, emails as the European management team, how to how to collect and measure all the emissions that you have all the emissions and consumptions that you use at the headquarter, so all electricity, oil, stuff like that, and, and we measure this day by day by day for the entire year. And then we were able to find out, okay, where do we have the greatest emissions at the headquarter and then we began programmes to cut them down. So we changed our energy to, to renewable energy we had, we have the whole roof of full with photos with solar panels. We cut down on our catalogue with the paper catalogue at that time was the most important marketing tool that we had. And but we saw that this is also the second biggest source of emissions. So we cut we cut that turned only to digital versions. And every use of paper was from then on in 100% recycled paper. And we found out that mobility is the third biggest cause here of emissions. So we created a whole mobility programme, where the best parking lots are not for the people of the management. But for the people that share their car, for example, we got ourselves a pattern, a whole bunch of E bikes to lend out to our employees so that they could use the bike to come to work and created showers so that they get a shower and they come with a bike and stuff like that, to get people to make people consider a choice not to come with a single car but to come by bike to come by bus to share cars. And so we cut down dramatically on these emissions from from ability to and in 2012. When we cut down I think by 70% of all emissions at the whole headquarter. We decided okay, from that point on, we will still work on emissions but at the same time, we will also compensate so that that means that since 2012, we are Climate Neutral at our headquarter.
Carlton Reid 18:19
You pay for offsetting?
Antje von Dewitz 18:22
Yeah, that’s right. We pay for offsetting we, we have a partner my climate and that means that all the emissions that at the headquarter we cannot, we cannot prevent. They are. They are turned into into monies. And we spent money on projects or climate friendly projects. But this is only the headquarter and then the biggest part was in the product cycle.
Carlton Reid 18:49
That’s good. Because the product cycle isn’t, you know, you make some stuff in southern Germany, but the bulk of your stuff is made in mostly in Vietnam. So, right, how tough is it to green, the supply side of your business? So?
Antje von Dewitz 19:07
Yeah, it’s, it’s a huge task. It was it was an even huger task in 2009. That was why it was so important also, to have the whole team behind this idea. It was very important for us to show it at our headquarter that we really mean it seriously and that it’s good that it feels like live quality to support sustainability. So stuff like the green mobility concept at our headquarter was strategically important to get our team on track and to fight for this idea of sustainability worldwide. Because this was a real big transformation process that we had to start on. We even though at that time in 2009, we were a rather small company with 50 million euro turnover. We still had a huge complexity. We had about 65 production sites we work with, we had about 150 materials suppliers we work with, and our task force, our self chosen task was to transform all of them, we created an own label, green shape. And that is until today, like metal label, that means only in terms of materials, only certified materials and the highest standards can approve to be green shape. And in order to get to the certifications, like blue sign, for example, we had to ask our all of our suppliers to please audit in terms of blue sign, which is quite expensive when audit costs 20,000 euros per year, and then you have to act on all the findings. And we were a rather small, small brand, that means they didn’t make the big business with us. So in the beginning, it seemed like to be a really, really big task. And many of the production side sets etc. once said to us, that they wouldn’t do this for us this was too much work, or they said okay, we do this for you, you pay the money. So we and so it was a difficult task on that one cent and one hand to turn them to to convince them and the outside and it was a difficult task on the inside. Because for our product manager, the task of Product Management totally changed. Before that time, they could just choose any material and they can just choose any design. Now, in order to follow green shape, they have to start the design by showing that the design they have chosen is recyclable is is able to be repaired, then they have to choose the material. And in the beginning, they said okay, but we only have three materials that are anthracite fabric, do you want to make us You want us to make products from just three different fabrics? That’s not impossible, it’s impossible. And they said, it’s the sales team says very clearly to us, it cannot cost more because the consumer is not willing to pay more for sustainable, but it costs so much more. How can we ever solve this. So it was very, very difficult to get a grip on how to deal with these existential conflicting targets. But we made it step by step.
Carlton Reid 22:22
No change in that consumers, it’s now a selling point. So this this green shape, your label is now something you can use to actually earn more money because you can sell more products because you are a greener company. Is that something that you now see consumers coming to you
Antje von Dewitz 22:40
for? Yes, I see two points I’ll come to the consumer in a second. First is that that the start was very difficult and it’s still difficult, but in the beginning it felt like okay, we will never be innovative because we have such a huge mountain of work to go step by step and this has changed completely our our very strong focus on sustainability has become an innovation pusher. We now make pipe pioneers from from a plastic garbage we make functional apparel, from recycled tires and so on and so on. We really this this has has been an enormous pusher on innovation innovation for us. And for the consumer. In the beginning, we always heard the consumer doesn’t ask for that. And it was slowly slowly changing step by step it was changing. And now especially in the especially when the Friday’s for future where we coming something of a thing, the conscious the global, the European consciousness was rising very highly in the end the the will to overtake responsibility as a consumer was was you can you could feel it that there was no more interest. And and now in terms of Corona again. So and and the more the global crisis, different global crisis are being evident for consumers out there, the more the the willingness to, to first of all overtake responsibility for themselves in their consumption. And secondly, also to pay a little bit more for that is rising, you can really feel it. So it helps us a lot to be recognised as a very sustainable brand and to picture have a have a credibility as a sustainability, T brand. That helps us a lot to to to always grow stronger than the rest of the market.
Carlton Reid 24:43
I’m gonna interrupt Antje there and go across to my colleague David for a quick commercial break.
David Bernstein 24:48
Hello, everyone. This is David from the Fredcast, and of course, the spokesmen. And I’m here once again to tell you that this podcast is brought to you by Tern Bicycles, the good people at Tern build bikes that make it easier for you to replace car trips with bike trips. Part of that is being committed to designing useful bikes that are also fun to ride. But an even greater priority for Tern is to make sure that your ride is safe, and worryfree. And that’s why Tern works with industry leading third party testing labs like EFBE, and builds it bikes around Bosch ebike systems which are UL certified for both electric and fire safety. So, before you even zip off on your Tern, fully loaded and perhaps with the loved ones behind, you can be sure that the bike has been tested to handle the extra stresses on the frame and the rigours of the road. For more information, visit www.ternbicycles.com to learn more. And now back to the spokesmen.
Carlton Reid 25:58
Thanks, David. And let’s get back to Antje of Vaude. So green shape is your own certification label that you use. But then yes. If then you go green button, which is a that’s a national scheme. Yes, fabrics, the National diamond scheme for fabrics then you’ve got when you’ve mentioned my climate before, which is a Swiss certification scheme. And then you’re also a member or you get certification from fair wear. So that’s like, you know, fair trade almost making sure that the your your supply chain is the practices are, are good practices. So just describe how those certification schemes fit into your business.
Antje von Dewitz 26:51
Okay, as you just mentioned, green shape is our own, it’s like a metal label, which is, which is, I think the highest standard that is any certification out there any standard out there, because it’s very broad and very, very deep. What in order to become a green shape product, and almost 90% of our whole product is in green shape, in has green shape label. And when three years ago, the German government said they want to also make a metal label the green button, we got green shape recognised as, as, as being. So every product that we have that has the green shape label automatically gets the green button label of the German government because our it’s stricter than, than the green button. So that does that. And you mentioned fair aware, fair wear is also included in green shave. So all of our products are farewell products, that means all of our productions 100% Our audit are being audited by by in terms of green affair where so that’s that’s that’s the very strictest labour or standard for working conditions worldwide in the textile industry. So if you look for fair products, you have to look for fair wear
Carlton Reid 28:28
textile production, no, no sweatshops, that kind of thing.
Antje von Dewitz 28:31
No sweatshops? No, no, don’t children, no work of children. They are in fair where you have to fight for existential wages, that means wages that that, that you can not only minimum wages, but living wages, wages that help people to really survive with the family and not to send the children to work but send the children to school, that that make it possible to have a lot of real life with a family. So that’s much higher than just minimum wages. And that’s something that every every brand that is part of fair wear has to work for to really reach this. So it’s a very strict and and good standard, because it’s a continuous work in progress that you have to prove year by year through the out audits and other also through the audit for your own company. So we are audited every year. You have to prove that you really give the best and you really put a lot of effort and in supporting all the companies the production sites to make to create good working conditions to you can
Carlton Reid 29:47
be more profitable if you didn’t aspire to the standards if you didn’t have the fair wear. If you didn’t have to meet those, those those criteria. You could in more money.
Antje von Dewitz 30:02
Yes, that’s that’s rather strange, isn’t it, it’s much more difficult and much more expensive to overtake responsibility than not to do it. That’s a strange road we’re in. But it’s true. But from an economical point of view, it’s still it’s still worth to, to follow this sustainable path. Because it helps your brand image, it helps to really focus on a good way. It convinces your own team that they’re working for purpose. So it helps you to get to get good team members of your own team, it helps you to sell your products more and more. So it helped, it helped us to grow stronger to be a really strong brand and a strong company. And but at the same time, we needed this growth in order to finance the transformation, which costs so much. So.
Carlton Reid 31:06
So going back to your your, your very, very beautiful rural location, on your online on your website, on four, you’ve got a specialist website, just on your CSR, your corporate social responsibility. It says I’m quoting here, due to our rural location, most employees have to commute longer distances to work. Now, we can’t force anyone to give up their car. But we can provide incentives. So what are those incentives?
Antje von Dewitz 31:40
The incentives is I mentioned that before a little bit. The incentives are not fun of a financial thought. But they are the best parking spots for people who share their cars, for example. So we, in eight years ago, we just sort of made 60 parking spots disappear. And made in the inner circle of our of our campus here, where we have our company, there is now a green area with a climbing wall and No, no 60 parking spots. So we have not so many parking spots here. So park a parking spot something really valuable, you have to walk a long distance from from another place to here, if you come late in the in the day, so a close close to the company parking spot is something very valuable, the best parking spots are for the people that share their car. So that is an incentive. And an incentive not to take your own car is when you come by you can you can without cost you can lend the bike here from us with with E motor so you can get over the hills, it’s very hilly region and get here then you can shower here, you can you have a parking spot, close to the company under the roof to park your own bike. And we have also you can also acquire a bike very, very cheaply. Because we have connections and you can use the connections together to to own a bike by yourself. So we help people to get good bikes, and to ride the bike. And it’s become some sort of a social incentive to because here are a lot of bikers. And it’s sort of the status of your bike here. And not so much the office status if you have a big car. And we also have some sort of mobility lotto, so every week with the help of a coincidence generator, somebody is chosen. And he is he or she is asked Oh, so how did you come to work today. And then if if it’s in a sustainable way by bike or by bus or whatsoever, he gets a nice price and a nice award. And is and it’s shown in our intranet with a nice picture in a winning pose. So it helps to keep the the topic of green mobility in everybody’s mind. And it helps to get get out little incentives to to make people think about or change their way of coming to work.
Carlton Reid 34:26
Because that’s slightly easier. If you were in an urban location you you’d have lots of bike paths, you’d have lots of buses and trams and all sorts of you know what Europeans come to expect, but you’re not in an urban location. You’re out in the farmland. So that must be tougher for you than it would be for if you were in in a large city.
Antje von Dewitz 34:47
You know, that is true because in the beginning, we didn’t even have a bus stop here. So no buses were were coming to our countryside. So we also had to lobby and to cooperate with The local bus provider and the city and the country to to make it possible that we have a bus that is coming here to the company. So I guess you have other tasks or tasks in first of infrastructural nature, if you’re a company that is sustainable in the countryside, because there is not often not a lot of infrastructure here, we have to provide
Carlton Reid 35:22
infrastructure, you had to have bike paths close to your place.
Antje von Dewitz 35:25
And now since I think five years, we have bypassed Yes.
Carlton Reid 35:31
And was that because where you’re situated, so the municipality or the locality put these bike paths in? Because you were lobbying for this? Or they’re just putting these in? In general? No,
Antje von Dewitz 35:44
that was part of a bigger plan. So we were just very happy that we finally got them.
Carlton Reid 35:51
Right. Okay. Now, so that’s, that’s, that’s the travel that you can, you can sort of almost control but business travel is much more difficult to control because obviously, if you’ve got to, you know, plants, you’re having to fly to Vietnam, etc. But talk about your, your policy, because on the CSA report, it talks about how, you know, car travel, you know, cannot be made by car, if it’s over 400 kilometres, and then if it’s, you know, 600 kilometres, and, you know, you’re not going to fly, you’re gonna go by train, especially within Germany, Switzerland, or Austria. So how do you police that
Antje von Dewitz 36:36
it’s, it’s a, it has become a rule that we won’t take a plane within Germany, or the German speaking countries, we all take the train, and how, how did we manage everybody to go on this check, by taking this route very seriously, for the whole management team, so I don’t take the plane, I take the I take the train to Berlin, and that’s, that’s the travel of about eight hours from here. And we just got very used to use this time very efficiently, we work in the in the train, we have very normal business meetings in the train, and it has become, it has become sort of a normal situation for for all of us, you have to understand that for us. Since since last year, we are climate neutral in the, for the whole for everything worldwide that we do, that doesn’t mean that we have with that we managed to get all emissions down to zero, but we are working on this very, very heavily according to the science based targets, and the rest that we cannot prevent, we compensate. But that means that every emission counts for us and and we take this so seriously, because we understand we understand the serious situation of the climate change. And we we the whole team is very often talking about it, we talk about the crisis that is out there, of the of the very serious situation, we are really dedicated to keep this planet alive for our children and in the coming generations. So every time we can overtake responsibility, it is clear that we do this, it’s it’s just become normal. And it’s sort of observed that we would take a plane if we can take a train. So so with the same with the same with the same responsible approach, it is very clear that that we have a canteen here that serves vegetarian food, okay, we have one day left where we where we eat meat, but the rest of the days are a vegetarian, because this is something where we can act where we can to overtake responsibility to not to cut down on emissions. And I think it’s still it’s still I make it probably sound too easy because this has been a transformation process for us to in mobility and in eating. But it’s for our day and for the whole team of our day. Everybody understands it that it’s clear a clear step of our day because it makes so much sense because we’re dedicated to sustainability but dedicated to keeping this workplace this world a wonderful place. So everybody is like okay, we understand it’s still not easy. We still sometimes hate it, but we understand. So that makes transformation process within the company easier.
Carlton Reid 39:39
Because you’re you have very strict policies that appears on on a business travel trip. You should only get a taxi for instance, if there’s a few of you and there’s only a certain distance you can go in and a taxi and then you’re meant to be using Bike Share, Scooter share whatever in cities, so that’s embedded in your mobility policy, the fact that when you go somewhere on business travel, you’ve still got to travel in a sustainable fashion.
Antje von Dewitz 40:12
Yes, that’s true. Yeah. And I never take a taxi, I always take the subway or walk. When I when I get into town, that is the end that also has become normal. Because it’s a normal for you.
Carlton Reid 40:30
But what about people coming into the company that where they get, you know, expense accounts where they will track fly everywhere, they’ll get taxes everywhere? Is that strange for other people? Are you changing people? How do people who are coming into your company, look at your policies,
Antje von Dewitz 40:50
and it was more difficult for the people who who already have been at the company because for them, it has been a trend transformation process they had to do. There was a lot of discussion why they should now not take plane anymore, or why they shouldn’t take a taxi or whatever. For people that come into Fody that come newly into voting for them. It’s they have chosen Foudy as their favourite employer because we follow values that they support. So it’s much easier with new employees that have chosen us very consciously than it was in the beginning to change policy for the people that already worked here.
Carlton Reid 41:28
Thanks to Anjou von Dewitz of Vaude there and thanks to you for listening to episode 321 of the Spokesmen podcast, brought to you in association with Tern Bicycles. Show notes and more can be found at the-spokesmen.com. The next episode will be a chat with another inspirational business woman but meanwhile get out there and ride.
25th January 2023
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 320: Get SUVs Off Our Streets: In Conversation with Critical Mass musician Dan Abrahams
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUEST: Dan Abrahams
TOPICS: Musician Dan Abrahams has written a couple of jaunty protest songs, one about oversized cars and another about getting around safely by bike. Both are accompanied by great videos, one of which stars a young girl riding her bike, alone, in Edinburgh before being joined by Critical Mass riders.
LINKS:
Dan Abrahams Music
Bikes for Refugees, Scotland
The Spokesmen, Brussels episode
- Get SUVs Off Our Streets: In Conversation with Critical Mass musician Dan Abrahams
Carlton Reid, January 25, 2023
Read more… - German word for beer diluted with lemonade is “cyclist” — oh, and Jim was probed by robots
Carlton Reid, January 8, 2023
Read more… - Chris Boardman explains Active Travel England’s Capability Fund
Carlton Reid, January 2, 2023
Read more… - Masterplanning Milan: Real Estate Developer Reshaping the City With Active Travel
Carlton Reid, December 22, 2022
Read more… - Milan to banish cars, Mayor promises manager of Eroica Caffe
Carlton Reid, December 13, 2022
Read more… - World Champion Transportation Cyclist Beryl Burton — Book Chat With Author Jeremy Wilson
Carlton Reid, December 8, 2022
Read more… - Book Talk With Hannah Reynolds and Ned Boulting
Carlton Reid, November 26, 2022
Read more… - Tour de Luxe — riding with legends on Ibiza with upscale Leblanq
Carlton Reid, November 17, 2022
Read more… - Good Move: How Bicycles Could End the Occupation of Cars in the EU capital of Brussels
Carlton Reid, November 4, 2022
Read more… -
You don’t have to be horrible to win
Carlton Reid, October 30, 2022
Read more…
TRANSCRIPT
Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 320 of the spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Wednesday 25th of January 2023.
David Bernstein 0:27
The spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.tern bicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.
Carlton Reid 1:03
I’m Carlton Reid. And welcome to the 320th episode of the spokesmen podcast in which I chat this episode with Dan Abrahams. Dan is one of those loosely involved with Edinburgh’s critical mass. And he’s also a musician who has recently written a couple of jaunty protest songs that I think will resonate with the audience of a cycling podcast. Both are accompanied by great videos, one of which stars a young girl riding her bike alone in Edinburgh, before being joined by Critical Mass riders.
Carlton Reid 1:44
Dan, thanks for talking to me. You’ve got a new video out today. So let’s talk about that first, I’m sure saying that that’s probably the thing that’s fresh in your mind. So you’ve given quite a few car brands, some plugs? There haven’t been
Carlton Reid 2:02
any idea? Yeah, I was expecting a few more, you know, Aston Martin or whatever. So
Carlton Reid 2:07
why pick on those? I mean,
Dan Abrahams 2:11
mean, I’ve got to be honest.
Dan Abrahams 2:15
I think there’s way too many big cars as I put them, but I think when I when I say that I think people understand what I mean, you know, the kind of fuge city four by fours SUVs, which are just so enormous physically. And also, you know, the engines are so powerful, they have absolutely no place in a city, probably even in the countryside. You know, they’re not that they’re not designed to work on farms. They’ve just been designed as luxury cars. And I think they shouldn’t be allowed. And I think it’s ridiculous that people
Dan Abrahams 2:48
are charging downtown in them. They’re so dangerous, like, you know, kids are literally obscured. You know, when you when you put a kid in front of, you know, the bonnet of one of these cars,
Dan Abrahams 3:03
the person at the front cannot see that kid. They’re so big.
Dan Abrahams 3:08
And this song is just basically to poke fun at them, you know, and, and the choice of the brands is kind of more to do with rhyming than to do with any particularly bad brand. You know, they’re all just as bad as each other. They just want to sell expensive cars. So yeah, the choice of the brands is purely just for alliteration and rhyming.
Carlton Reid 3:33
See, you’re in Edinburgh. Yeah. And I believe Edinburgh. On the TomTom index is basically every single year it winds up being the most congested city.
Dan Abrahams 3:44
Is that right? I didn’t, I didn’t know that.
Carlton Reid 3:47
Yes, Edinburgh is the most congested city in the UK year after year after year. In the TomTom index, I’m TomTom is using you know,
Carlton Reid 3:56
sat nav data, right. So this is not like, you know, people standing up on the side of the street. This is your genuine, you know, computer from computer data, right.
Carlton Reid 4:08
So you’re living in the kind of city where you cars aren’t gonna go very fast anyway. Yeah, the city centre. So yeah, there is no point having these big things and perhaps even big cars are part of the reason why there might be congestion.
Dan Abrahams 4:21
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I am surprised that I’m surprised the TomTom index hasn’t been surpassed by Google Maps index. But yeah, that doesn’t really surprise me. Edinburgh is really bad for congestion.
Dan Abrahams 4:35
I mean, I guess I’m quite surprised that London is not at the top but I guess it’s kind of when you think about Greater London maybe that makes sense. But yeah, in the middle of Edinburgh
Dan Abrahams 4:46
it’s it’s crazy especially like the road which is just off for my road. It’s kind of the route into Edinburgh from the south. And you know, it’s it’s kind of four lanes chock a block because
Dan Abrahams 5:00
You’ve got the two lanes of parked cars on either side. And then yeah it’s just chock a down this major shopping street actually, with people trying to like you know, go about do their local shop. It says chocca with cars and yeah, a lot of big cars.
Carlton Reid 5:15
Hmm. But then you also have a very good and I suppose I don’t you told me was very good the tram system which is relatively new
Dan Abrahams 5:23
the tram system basically takes you currently from the airport to the middle of town. So that’s the main to use a bit like it does serve some areas of Edinburgh but effectively it’s a kind of airport shuttle
Dan Abrahams 5:39
which there is also a bus shuttle to the airport which is faster and cheaper than the tram.
Dan Abrahams 5:45
But the tram extension which probably you’ve heard about, it’s kind of been like an ongoing fiasco is because due to open in the new year, that will be that will be really good because it will go then from the centre of town to the north to the shore through Leith. And when that’s opened, it should be really good and
Dan Abrahams 6:08
should be really good thing for the people in Leith who’ve been suffering the tram works for like
Dan Abrahams 6:13
10 years or something ridiculous.
Dan Abrahams 6:16
And with that, there’s also a bike lane going down. Leith, which at least is like the big region in the north of Edinburgh. And there’s a big bike lane going down there. And it’s got its faults. There’s lampposts in the middle of it. There’s ridiculously tight turns and kind of crashes with pedestrian areas. But still, it’s a bike lane.
Dan Abrahams 6:39
Which is, which is good. So yeah, there’s there’s positive things happening.
Dan Abrahams 6:44
There’s other bike lanes being made. But the pace of change is
Dan Abrahams 6:50
beyond slow. It’s kind of you know, all these parties have been elected in last May, the council, the council, the parties, which had the most votes, were all parties, which said, we want to have more active travel, we want to make infrastructure to enable active travel.
Dan Abrahams 7:08
Yeah, the convener of the transport convener, and the council is saying stuff, like, we’re gonna have a plan by the end of the year. And we’re thinking, you’re gonna have a plan by the end of the year. So if it takes six months to make a plan, and your you know, your term is four years, then you know, what hope do we have to get these things built?
Carlton Reid 7:32
And then you are it is there such a thing as the organiser of critical mass in Edinburgh, because of course, there are no organisers. But I, I really want the people involved in critical mass in Edinburgh put it that way.
Dan Abrahams 7:48
Yes, I’m involved. And I think, actually, you know,
Dan Abrahams 7:53
at the start, we kind of came under some criticism from some people for, like you say, basically organising it, you know, I think critical mass and Edinburgh at the start was,
Dan Abrahams 8:05
well, many years ago, it was like you say it was a kind of spontaneous thing with no official organisers. And it was on the last Friday of every month at, I think 5pm. So pen of peak traffic time, Pete kind of this is going to piss off car drivers time. And when we restarted it two years ago, we decided to make it on a Saturday at 2pm to make it family friendly, to make it a bit less antagonistic against car drivers,
Dan Abrahams 8:37
and became under fire from that there’s some people who saying that’s not critical mass. And, you know, we were doing we started social media stuff. And we were kind of organising it and publicising the route before, to make it accessible to people so that they can join midway, they could know how long it’s gonna take, wherever they’re going to manage it. People are saying that’s not in the spirit of critical mass, it’s meant to be spontaneous. But our view is like,
Dan Abrahams 9:03
we think this is a really effective way of showing the support for cycling, which exists, but it’s kind of silent because people, you know, too scared to get on their bike, or, you know, they’re just the silent majority who wants more bike infrastructure, but, you know, they’re not making a fuss about it.
Carlton Reid 9:21
And isn’t it more almost more of a kiddical mass in that case? Because Kiddical Mass is almost based on that, you know, publicising the route, obviously having lots of kids there, because that that will be the name.
Dan Abrahams 9:36
Yeah, I mean, we’ve done we’ve done a couple of critical masses as well. Now. Yeah, maybe it’s more like that. But I guess the point is that we don’t really
Dan Abrahams 9:44
we’re not really mind what the tradition of Critical Mass is, like, we respect that. There’s been like a long history of like people making great protests, but what we wanted to focus on is to be about making accessible and getting people to come and get him not
Dan Abrahams 10:00
Just the usual white middle aged males to come, but to get like people of all types to come and feel welcome and feel safe,
Dan Abrahams 10:08
you know to do that ride, which is and feel safe to doing that, you know, rather than in
Carlton Reid 10:16
the bike video Yeah. Which is where where I found you from your sister.
Carlton Reid 10:23
Was that shot on a critical mass? Or did you just do that on a different day? Yeah, you did that. Yeah. So
Dan Abrahams 10:33
that’s the kind of like that video is a total sort of smashing together of my music life and my sort of bike activism life. And
Dan Abrahams 10:45
my, my friend,
Dan Abrahams 10:49
who’s a big cycle campaigner, his daughter and their family agreed to take part in the video. And they had this idea that
Dan Abrahams 11:00
it would be her riding around the streets of Edinburgh, and you know, being really scared that it’s not safe to cycle of course, it’s not safe for an 18 year old to cycle by themselves in Edinburgh. But it’s something which people doing in Amsterdam, or in Holland, and then slowly more and more people would join her. So basically what we did was on the day, the day before critical mass, we filmed the kind of solo shots of the girl riding around Edinburgh. Then on the morning of critical mass. I got a few pals together and we shot the scenes were kind of a trickle of other cyclists start to join her. And then yeah, at the start of the critical mass ride we basically did a shout out and said
Dan Abrahams 11:42
Hey, everybody, we will want to you know film some shots please let us know if you don’t want to be in the shots are kind of go to the back of the critical mass. And we’re just going to do a few few shots. So basically, we are the little girl came to the front of the credit commerce and I was on like a Tern bike riding right in front of the critical mass and the cameraman was sitting on the back of the Tern back facing backwards towards the critical mass of
Carlton Reid 12:07
GSD. Is that the type of Tern bike?
Carlton Reid 12:12
it’s the it’s probably the most popular one. It’s like the electric cargo bikes. Electric wave. Yeah, like all sorts of fittings on the back.
Dan Abrahams 12:21
Yeah, it was basically like a kind of bench on the back. And it was like, Orange. Yeah, I don’t know what the name was. Yeah, but really cool bike anyway. And cool organisation called bikes for refugees and Edinburgh. Lent that to me because they had that
Dan Abrahams 12:38
bike.
Dan Abrahams 12:39
And they bikes refugees is an organisation Edinburgh who takes like old disused bikes and fixes them up for refugees to donate to.
Carlton Reid 12:51
So then you spliced it all together?
Dan Abrahams 12:54
That’s fine. Yeah, splice it together. And then part of the narrative was the kind of the girl going to Amsterdam and discovering what cycling could be like, in a kind of ideal world. And
Dan Abrahams 13:10
that obviously was going to be very expensive to to do in film. So I
Dan Abrahams 13:18
got an animator to kind of realise those sections.
Carlton Reid 13:23
Because that means the same animator, presumably who’s done the car. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.
Carlton Reid 13:30
And then
Carlton Reid 13:32
what do you do with the films apart from putting on YouTube? Because I’ve seen them on what how do you physically promote them? How do you get them out there?
Dan Abrahams 13:40
It’s a great question.
Dan Abrahams 13:44
I am just doing my best to get them seen by as many people as possible. And for me, that’s been social media and
Dan Abrahams 13:55
you know, kind of sending them round bicycle organisations hoping that they might share them cycling UK
Dan Abrahams 14:03
shared our streets video. And
Dan Abrahams 14:07
I employed a PR company to help me with the streets video, but I’m afraid to say they didn’t have much success, for whatever reason. But I really want
Dan Abrahams 14:19
you know, more than the usual, like cycling campaigning group to see them, you know, the idea is that they can have catchy pop songs, and people might come across them who are not into cycling, and they might actually get hooked by the music first, and then then the message kind of hit afterwards, you know?
Carlton Reid 14:41
Yes. And then tell me about your music. So how are you?
Carlton Reid 14:49
How are you? You said you’re, you’re merging the two lives together there. But tell me about your music part of your or your life there. Yeah.
Dan Abrahams 14:58
So I mean, you mean more
Dan Abrahams 15:00
Generally or specifically for the songs,
Carlton Reid 15:03
generally so so so we’ll just Yeah. The second part. So talk about the music part. So
Dan Abrahams 15:12
I mean, I was an engineer for about 10 years and
Dan Abrahams 15:18
working for a company who was doing kind of sustainable technology stuff. So it was like we worked on a wind turbine, and then we’re working on some hybrid vehicles and
Dan Abrahams 15:27
the music was always on the side. And then this year, for many reasons, I decided to kind of take the plunge and do music. And my music in Edinburgh is a mixture of stuff apart from the cycling songs, which is kind of like a kind of one off special thing. I play in folk bands. So I have a group called Dowally who we make, we make music
Dan Abrahams 15:56
in the kind of traditional Celtic vein, but we were kind of more progressive, modern, kind of feel. And we do a lot of stuff for archive films. I also have a band called Wayward Jane who play more like old time Americana music of banjo and fiddle and double bass. And then I also play jazz soul have a band called the Foo Birds who do that kind of thing. So it’s, it’s a real mix of stuff. And the cycling songs is kind of
Dan Abrahams 16:26
I knew that my bands wouldn’t probably be into that. So I kind of decided to do that as, as myself as Dan, Abrahams, which is kind of a first for me.
Carlton Reid 16:36
Now, you’re not from Edinburgh?
Dan Abrahams 16:37
No, I’m from originally from Sheffield. Yeah. Yes. Yes.
Carlton Reid 16:41
So how can you remember was it through that job that you had described before with uni?
Dan Abrahams 16:45
And then the job? Yeah. Alright. Okay. Yeah.
Carlton Reid 16:48
Because the the video the streets video?
Carlton Reid 16:51
Yes, it’s very Edinburgh based. But it can be any city that that it’s not, it hasn’t. It’s not like grounding it completely. Only in Edinburgh. Is it?
Dan Abrahams 17:01
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think that’s the idea that anyone could could could feel like, you know, that looks like my city totally unsafe to cycling. And, you know, wouldn’t it be amazing if we could all you know, cycle mass together and, and live with less cars. And that that was the idea behind the section right at the end of the video, where you basically see critical masses from right around the world, which is the idea was to kind of zoom out and be like, this is a worldwide movement. You know, there’s stuff going on right around the world, in Africa, in South America. And I didn’t manage to get any footage in Asia. And for now, it’s not true. There was some in Nepal. And, and, and Europe as well. So.
Dan Abrahams 17:48
So yeah, that was yeah, I hoped I hoped. I think, I think that was that was cool. Because I think, you know, it kind of it spoke to people, you know, right across the globe, which was really nice.
Carlton Reid 18:01
If you go back to, you mentioned that there was a bit of conflict there between how you’re organising your critical mass, and how traditionally, it’s organised, you know, last Friday of the month, yeah.
Carlton Reid 18:16
Bang on, yeah, commute time, which is kind of, you know, the raison d’etre. But if you’re doing it when you’re doing it, that doesn’t stop somebody else doing it at the quotation marks here the traditional time. So could you have two critical masses? In Edinburgh?
Dan Abrahams 18:33
I mean, you probably could, but I mean, do you know
Dan Abrahams 18:39
getting these things organised this? You know, it takes the we’ve got quite a lot of people involved, you know, designing the flyers, printing the flyers, putting them up and doing social media, you know, organising stewards first aid. You know, we don’t sort of like, we don’t take it lightly to sort of do things well and safely. So
Dan Abrahams 19:03
if people were up for organising your Friday one, they’d be welcome to and, but, you know, I guess they need to find the people to
Dan Abrahams 19:12
do that.
Dan Abrahams 19:14
And I guess there’s a good thing about consistency is like people know that it’s going to be at that time in that place. They know that they can always turn up and how many really getting their done. We’re getting about 250 a month.
Carlton Reid 19:27
That’s really good.
Dan Abrahams 19:28
I think it’s good. Yeah, I mean, we kind of our benchmark is Brussels, just because
Dan Abrahams 19:35
right at the start we were in touch with some of the people involved in critical mass Brussels and they gave us some tips and advice, and they’re getting 1000s of people at their ride. So you know, when you compare yourself to that, then 250 Doesn’t seem amazing, but when you’re on the road, it feels great, you know?
Dan Abrahams 19:54
Huh, because I mean, that comes across in the video how it’s like it’s liberating to be on it
Dan Abrahams 20:00
And people say that, you know, exactly people say that when they’re on the ride, it’s like, it’s like, wow, this is what our roads could be like, This feels amazing to be on my road, because it’s my road as well as the car drivers roads, but, but I feel totally safe, you know, and we’re, we’re playing music and loudspeakers, you’re chatting to people, you know, meeting new people, there’s people who’ve borrowed bikes to come on the ride, and they’ve come off the ride. Having like, three offers of bikes, like they, you know, they go on the ride, and someone saying, I had to borrow a bike to go home, I don’t have a bicycle. By the end of the ride. Multiple people have said, I’ve got a spare bike, you can have it, you know, so it’s like, I know, there’s a big cycling community on like Twitter and stuff, but it’s actually great to have the cycling community meet once a month in person, and, you know, chat to each other.
Carlton Reid 20:52
There is I mean, Edinburgh is one of those cities with just that does have a very active cycle campaign.
Carlton Reid 21:02
Outfit team organisation, one of you and I call it your spokes.
Dan Abrahams 21:05
it does many, many. Yeah, it does a fantastic. Yeah.
Carlton Reid 21:10
So is there any meshing there between you and spokes?
Dan Abrahams 21:14
There is, I mean, spokes are great, they always share. Like, they always like, kind of promote our rides, and they sometimes come at the start of the ride to kind of sell their maps, they have these amazing maps of like, cycling routes, and Edinburgh.
Dan Abrahams 21:33
And also, you know, I think it’s just,
Dan Abrahams 21:36
there’s a really good synergy between organisations, like spokes, who do the really hard, laborious work of like going to council meetings to give deputations and, you know, meeting with counsellors and doing that kind of behind the scenes work that has a good synergy with critical mass, which is the kind of like,
Dan Abrahams 22:00
let’s be on the street, having a physical presence, you know, having showing the counsellors that look, what are the cyclists who want to be riding on the roads, if only it was safe to do so.
Dan Abrahams 22:12
In your face? Yeah. minor thing.
Carlton Reid 22:16
So tell me about your any future projects. And that way, you’re going to merge these two, you know, the Dan Abrahams two worlds. So you’ve got big car out today?
Dan Abrahams 22:27
Yes, big streets was three months ago. So
Dan Abrahams 22:32
ideas for projects, I’m sad to say that, that’s, that’s the kind of
Dan Abrahams 22:40
the kind of that’s the kind of cycling songs for the moment.
Dan Abrahams 22:46
I’ve had some people get in touch saying that they’d be interested in collaborating to do some more cycling songs. So definitely, that’s possible in the future, but actually, I’m going to be releasing some more sort of Dan Abrahams and his emotions songs. So less cycling more sort of,
Dan Abrahams 23:07
you know,
Dan Abrahams 23:09
just about, you know,
Dan Abrahams 23:12
love life and that kind of thing. So, maybe less interesting for the cycling community. But, but, you know,
Dan Abrahams 23:21
hopefully, people will like that music too.
Carlton Reid 23:24
Okay. And tell us about how you got into cycling, because your sister won’t mention her full back.
Carlton Reid 23:34
Now. I’m just thinking when I was speaking to your sister, and
Carlton Reid 23:38
then she was in my Forbes.com piece she didn’t want her second name. Okay. But of course,
Carlton Reid 23:45
it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realise I wonder what her second name might be.
Carlton Reid 23:52
But she’s clearly into cycling, you’re into cycling. So how come that the Abraham’s family is into cycling?
Dan Abrahams 23:58
Yeah, it’s interesting. I mean, my
Dan Abrahams 24:02
when I said into cycling, I don’t actually do cycling for leisure. Like I don’t go occasionally go out for for kind of bike rides have fun, but for me, like bike cycling, is just how I get around, you know, and my interest in cycling is about
Dan Abrahams 24:18
you know, protesting for people to be able to use the bike as their means of getting from A to B, you know, a cycle everywhere cycle to my to I cycle to gigs on my bike, or wherever on my bike. Whereas my sister and my dad, cycling is like, it’s a sport. It’s about on the weekend going out with the group and how fast are they going? And have they got the latest gear and stuff?
Dan Abrahams 24:43
So it’s it kind of bothers him obviously, my sister’s into like, the campaigning side of it too. But I think it was it was kind of just chance the we all kind of got into it. I guess. We were brought up me and my sister you know
Dan Abrahams 25:00
Thinking about, you know, social and environmental issues in the world. And I think
Dan Abrahams 25:09
just sort of both separately
Dan Abrahams 25:12
came to the understanding that,
Dan Abrahams 25:16
you know, cycling is just such an easy solution to so many problems in the world, like it says, in our streets, song at the end, you know, pollution, hurt people’s health, mental health, congestion, climate change,
Dan Abrahams 25:36
air pollution, you know, tyre pollution, all these issues become easier when more people are cycling. And
Dan Abrahams 25:49
I’ve lost track of what was gonna say,
Carlton Reid 25:53
you kind of on your, on your family and how you Cycling is a good solution.
Dan Abrahams 25:57
Yeah, you know, I was, you know, I was working in a in a tech company for 10 years, you know, on kind of this like solutions like with for reducing co2.
Dan Abrahams 26:08
But I think at the end, I was really quite frustrated that the technology was taking so long to to mature and get commercialised. But at the same time, all these sort of just absolutely. Basic solutions, which just about political will, they’re not about technology
Dan Abrahams 26:27
being so slow to kind of be become realised.
Dan Abrahams 26:33
Apart from in Holland. So, yeah, and I think I think I think, you know, masochistic, you know, it’s the same kind of thing in Brussels, although I think they’re further ahead than in Edinburgh.
Dan Abrahams 26:47
So, I think so yeah, she kind of combines her sport, sporty cycling with the kind of, you know, getting, you know, the kind of community and campaigning cycling thing. Whereas for me, it’s kind of, I don’t I don’t have any lycra or anything like that.
Carlton Reid 27:05
Thanks to Dan Abrahams there. By the way, Dan’s sister, Alison, was featured in the Brussels episode back in November last year. Thanks for listening to Episode 320 of the spokesmen podcast brought to you in association with turn bicycles. dance videos are embedded on the shownotes at the-spokesmen.com. The next two episodes will be with inspirational women in business. But meanwhile, get out there and ride
8th January 2023
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 319: German word for beer diluted with lemonade is “cyclist” — oh, and Jim was probed by robots
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUESTS: Jim Moss and Donna Tocci
TOPICS: Kidneys and beer. For an hour. Really.
LINKS:
Does cycling have a drinking problem? Bicycling.com
- German word for beer diluted with lemonade is “cyclist” — oh, and Jim was probed by robots
Carlton Reid, January 8, 2023
Read more… - Chris Boardman explains Active Travel England’s Capability Fund
Carlton Reid, January 2, 2023
Read more… - Masterplanning Milan: Real Estate Developer Reshaping the City With Active Travel
Carlton Reid, December 22, 2022
Read more… - Milan to banish cars, Mayor promises manager of Eroica Caffe
Carlton Reid, December 13, 2022
Read more… - World Champion Transportation Cyclist Beryl Burton — Book Chat With Author Jeremy Wilson
Carlton Reid, December 8, 2022
Read more… - Book Talk With Hannah Reynolds and Ned Boulting
Carlton Reid, November 26, 2022
Read more… - Tour de Luxe — riding with legends on Ibiza with upscale Leblanq
Carlton Reid, November 17, 2022
Read more… - Good Move: How Bicycles Could End the Occupation of Cars in the EU capital of Brussels
Carlton Reid, November 4, 2022
Read more… - You don’t have to be horrible to win
Carlton Reid, October 30, 2022
Read more… -
Cycling legends roundtable with Mark Cavendish, Oscar Freire, Adam Blythe, Johan Museeuw & Matt Stephens
Carlton Reid, October 27, 2022
Read more…
TRANSCRIPT:
Carlton Reid 0:14
Welcome to Episode 319 of the spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was recorded on Sunday eighth of January 2023.
David Bernstein 0:27
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern Bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e bikes for every type of rider whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.
Carlton Reid 1:02
happy new Yeah, it is when Yeah. And it’s really it’s a real big struggle to say there’s 20 It’s 23 Isn’t it done. And it’s it’s happy new year, and it’s 2023. We’ve been doing this since 2006 or later, the podcast has been going since 2006. And you guys were on from relatively early. So we’ve been doing this an awfully long time. So just happy new year for this incredibly strange year that we now have in the future. In effect, we are 2023. So we have with us, Jim, and Donna. So Jim and Donna, welcome to the show, Donna,
we have been discussing what we’re gonna be talking about on the show today. And we have realised that me and Donna don’t really have any major bodily traumatic episode to recount. Whereas, whereas
a certain attorney might have something including, you know, being probed by robots.
You’ve been probed by robots. Jim, tell us about your robot probing.
Jim Moss 2:14
And just to clarify things quite quickly, it was not a sexual activity.
Carlton Reid 2:21
Never said it was Jim, you went there.
Jim Moss 2:22
I know. But I know that several other probing does not mean. Yeah. And we’re and we’re off and running for the new year. That’s right.
They found that I had two large growths in one of my kidneys, and large meaning baseball size and golf ball size. I tried to send new records, you know, me always wanted to be number one. And, but I didn’t quite make it I found out.
And so I went to I think it’s called a nephrologist, who looked at the scans looked at me and said, We’re removing your kidney. And 15 days later, I was in the hospital for 26 hours where they took out my right kidney by a robot DaVinci Robot, phenomenal surgeon. I mean, just a really nice guy I got enjoyed him. Even when I came off the drugs. sort of interesting, I have six holes in me three for the robot, one for an assistant, one for a camera, one where they actually remove the kidney. It’s almost like a tic tac toe board
Carlton Reid 3:50
video to get a video of it after it’s been, you know, die scanned with it. You know, with cameras, there must be an episode you can put on YouTube.
Jim Moss 3:57
I actually asked him. And he said, we don’t save them unless you request them. And I said, I mean, I really I would have watched it now. I wouldn’t have watched the first couple weeks. But now you know that you pretty much healed up pretty much. I think I would have watched it. It’s quite interesting just to hear him talk about and I’ve He keeps looking. He says you have all sorts of questions about how we did it. You don’t really have that many questions about what’s going to happen to you. I know what’s going to happen to me. I’m going to heal up and fall down again. And his response was, you should fall less.
Carlton Reid 4:34
Have that. Did he have that same advice for another one of our beloved members?
Jim Moss 4:38
Yeah, yeah. I think Tim needs to learn how to fall maybe that’s it. I fall. I’ve had a doctor tell me that I bounced better than anybody else he’s ever seen. I put it on my resume. Yeah, we were mountain biking, knock myself cold. And he’s a neurologist. He said you bounce better than me. No. So
Donna Tocci 5:02
we digress. How are you feeling now? I’m okay.
Jim Moss 5:06
I’m great. I really am great. I it’s, you know, there’s a lot of muscle there layers there, even though in my case they weren’t that prominent. And so those lower layers are still healing, but the scars are great. In another couple of days, I get back to full activity, although I’m full is gonna be a different definition for a while.
Carlton Reid 5:28
But I’m happy can when can you get back on a bike?
Jim Moss 5:31
Well, I was told I could get back on a trainer Thursday. And so yesterday, Friday, I went down to the basement where I had my trainer, and I set everything up. And then 20 minutes later, I still hadn’t been able to get my leg over the back. Or to get on.
Carlton Reid 5:53
Like a road bike hooked up. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you could just I mean, I’m not saying go and get one. But you if you had a like, a one that’s not quite so strictly road shaped. You could perhaps get on one of them. I mean, a lot of recuperation. You know, even when cyclists they recuperate on exercise bikes.
Jim Moss 6:12
Yeah, I even put a stepladder next to it. I’m still figuring out how to pull it off. Because once you get out of balance, there’s just anyway, so that should have been videotaped. But so I’m going to try again. Maybe this afternoon, I have another idea. involves two milk crates, one on either side, and a pulley system. So
Donna Tocci 6:37
I think you need maybe big cushions on either side. Oh, yeah.
Carlton Reid 6:43
And then you get the advice from from from the table. Yeah. So Donna, you were you were mentioning you’ve brought Tim’s crashes up? Because if we go back in the archives of this show, we could probably have quite a few hours of discussions with with Tim about his crashes. So so tell us what what do you know about his latest escapade?
Donna Tocci 7:08
Oh, only unfortunately, I haven’t talked with Tim but only what I know from his
from his Instagram feed, which anyone can can check out it’s Timothy V. Jackson. But he had another crash where he needed a new hip. And he had a fracture near his knee. So he had to have some pretty big surgeries was in the hospital for quite a while. And but his home and is okay, let’s let’s go with that. He’s home and, okay, now.
Carlton Reid 7:50
Well, our best wishes to Tim because his his his Instagram, um, be quite gruesome at time, when he does show us his injuries. So sometimes he shows his shots of him with his hand in the air riding his bike and they look great. They’re not going to offend anybody who might be squeamish, but then he will show his his injuries and he has had a lot of injuries that are best wishes, temporary recovery. And also he gets on his bike. Really, really soon. Now. What have we been doing over the last time was we talked over the Christmas and the New Year so So Donna, first what I’ve actually been doing, you’ve been out on your bike March what we’ve been up to.
Donna Tocci 8:35
Now we’ve discussed this, I’m a fair weather person, and it is cold here. So no, but my better half has been on his trainer and out on the new year’s ride and all of that. So I support that. And but, but no, I am very much a fair weather outside person. So we will will reiterate that but but good holidays. I actually not for this podcast, but I have been diving into my ancestry on ancestry.com. So that’s that’s a good insight activity for me for the winter. But But yeah, oh good. And hope everyone out there is having a good new year so far and a healthy one. And looking forward to doing more of these podcasts in the new year.
Carlton Reid 9:25
While I’m while I’ve got you both on and we started talking about medical stuff there, and this will interest people I guess, everywhere. But certainly where we are in the UK we have a socialised medical system where you don’t have to worry about crashing your bike or having nephrologists poking around you with a with a machine because it’s you know, it’s paid for by the state but well by people we pay for it via you know, very, very standard National Insurance. Now, what about in the US it is a worry that you mustn’t crash your bike because you’re going to have loads of injuries. So somebody like Tim, you know, he’s crashed lots and lots is that he’s just uninsurable? I mean, how do you guys cope with your medical system for, for what he’ll be quite routine? So Jim first, I guess?
Jim Moss 10:18
Well, the The fortunate thing in my case right now is, is that I’m over the age of 65. So the government, the medical programme, Medicare picked up 90% of it, and then I have a supplemental policy that picked up the rest. But for somebody like Tim, it would be purely private health care. And that would be something that he would pay a monthly premium for, that could be anywhere from, you know, $300, and he writes a big check to get out of the hospital, or, you know, $5,000 a month, and he writes a smaller check to the hospital. And, and, and for years, you know, because of my activities, I couldn’t afford to write the check to buy the, the insurance,
Carlton Reid 11:12
for skiing. So things are dangerous, you just can’t insure yourself. Yeah.
Jim Moss 11:17
In there, in the past, you filled out these forms, once they found that you took risks. And I was a pilot. And I’d been above 20,000 foot climbing, and I had skied out of bounds. And I was a rock climber. And, you know, I was quoted $15,000 a year with a $15,000 deductible one time.
Carlton Reid 11:42
So the crazy thing is, if you’re doing those kinds of activities, that means you’re going to be fitter than the average person less likely to keel over and die of a heart attack, I’m guessing than the average person because you’re getting out there, and you’re doing very active stuff. So if anything, the insurance companies should be like, supporting that, but they don’t operate out that they just operate on pure figures that they get, I guess,
Jim Moss 12:05
yes. And even more importantly, the law got passed, federal law got passed 2000 2002, something like that, that allows the health insurance company to exclude high risk activities. And so things like skiing, I mean, going up to your local ski hill, and skiing, those injuries can be excluded in your policy, if they notify you in advance, indoor rock climbing or going to a gym, all those can be excluded. So it’s something that you need to pay attention to, or you may have, you may think you’re covered, and you may have an injury and find out that you’re writing while you do the writing checks, or you’re dodging, you know, bill collectors. So if you say, and I’m not so sure cycling is covered in those things that is included, but mountain biking, I know can be so
Carlton Reid 13:06
yeah, I just know from like, when we’re getting travel insurance. Yeah, myself, for my son it yeah, these things are very often is great. And certainly racing of any sort, you’re always gonna be excluded from insurance, from those sort of things. But can I ask Donna, um, Jim’s gonna come in on this as well, but they’re just Do you think any of this that kind of, you know, thought in the back of your mind, well, I can’t afford to crash my bike, I’ll just drive to the shops, you know, I can’t afford to, you know, to go along the dirt road or on the road and have any sort of injury? I’m going to protect it in the car. So is that potentially just the the insurance the medical system you have in the US? Could that potentially be putting people off? Doing things that are not protected by steel exoskeleton?
Donna Tocci 13:56
Just speaking in a very general way, not for everybody? I don’t think so. Because I truly don’t think unless I’m so sorry, Tim, unless you’re someone like Tim, you don’t ever think you’re going to crash or you don’t ever think that you’re going to get hit by a car. You may say I’ve got my helmet on, maybe even, you know, jacket or something like that, or any other kind of protective items. But until it happens, most of us I it’s it’s human nature, right? That’s not going to happen to me. You know, and you’re not thinking about insurance. So Could someone think about it? Sure. But in general, I don’t think so. That’s just my opinion. I don’t know Jim, you could have another one.
Carlton Reid 14:45
So not knowing any names here. We’re not saying this is Tim. But if there was somebody liked him in another sport, maybe somebody maybe somebody who just scared for instance, or one of the adventurous board? Would they be thinking? I can’t do this? Because I’ve had 10, catastrophic excursions to the to the local hospital, and I can’t be insured anymore. And I can’t do this. So, so yes, for general people, they might it might not be but what if you’re like a super athletes? Would it stop them? In the gym? Or?
Donna Tocci 15:23
Sorry? If you’re a professional athlete that No, probably not, because you may have sponsors, you may have whatever, but you may be part of a team that has a team, you know, has, has a team policy, but I think if you were a general, you know, like me, who, goodness, you don’t ever want to see me out in the snow but and has had several, several accidents, you would probably have bills. And you know, just as Jim said, you know, you may be paying off monthly and think, you know, I’ve already had two spills and had to go to the hospital, and I’m still paying for them. So I think I’m gonna sit this season out.
Jim Moss 16:08
Yeah, once, once you’ve had one, you’re constantly thinking about the cost. On the second one. And let me even give you a better example, when I was working in the ski industry, we looked at pre employment, physical tests, not physician tests, but a physical trainer who athletic trainer type of person, who would see if the employees who are getting hired had ACLs or not. In the ski counties, there are hundreds, hundreds of people who have torn their ACLs can get around fine and can afford to get them fixed. Because it’s just too expensive. And they don’t have any health insurance. And so we were testing because what would happen is they come on board, they get a ski job. And three weeks into the season, they would have a fall and workers comp, you know, the health insurance, if you’re employed would pay for your ACL surgery. And so that was a I mean, it was you call it a scam. But it’s the simple fact that, you know, people if they don’t have the insurance, even if they do have the insurance, they don’t have enough money to pay the deductibles their share of insurance. So that
Carlton Reid 17:39
yes, you’re sort of saying that if you if you get enough of these, say crashes or injuries, then in effect, you you’ll be uninsured. For the insurance. All right. So you’re uninsured, you’re going out on the hill, you’re doing whatever thing you’re doing in the full knowledge that if you crash the next time you’re bankrupt,
Jim Moss 17:57
yep. The number one reason why people individuals file bankruptcy in the United States is medical records. Number one reason you know, they get injured somehow tax. Excuse me. You said
Donna Tocci 18:12
you’re full of fun facts. That’s the number one.
Jim Moss 18:18
When am I not full of fun facts?
Donna Tocci 18:21
That’s the sad one, though, you know, like, that’s just sad.
Carlton Reid 18:27
So we are having this to live there is no club asking that is because it is a live discussion in the UK at the moment because our health service for political reasons is being is falling down. And an awful lot of the podium call it conspiracy theories. I think just the very big worries that were one of the reasons is because an awful lot of politically well connected people want to actually have an American medical system. And it’s just it always has surprised me that that’s where you’d want to go because what Jim was saying there about the bankruptcies, you know, these things are often brought up as scare stories, but they’re not scare stories. They’re kind of they’re out there. They’re real. And you guys are crazy.
Jim Moss 19:12
You know, I
Donna Tocci 19:15
for a lot of reason.
Carlton Reid 19:17
Yeah, they are scare stories. And I think the people who are pushing to have our medical system are those that are not looking at the financial, personal financial costs, either because they have not understood them, or they have enough money, it doesn’t matter to them.
Donna Tocci 19:39
Or they have they are invested in an insurance type company, they’re going to start you know,
Carlton Reid 19:49
it’s also a libertarian type of thing like the, you know, the government, the government or whatever you want to say it as they shouldn’t have a say A in such a thing that I don’t understand that but that seems to be a thing?
Jim Moss 20:07
Well, it’s, I think that you could probably find somebody that would call themselves every type of political name, who is for and or against every health insurance opportunity the United States is currently looking at or has looked at. In the United States nowadays, I think that the political designation we attach to somebody’s not based on how they really think, but how they want to be perceived. So, you know, it’s okay. Yeah, it’s it. I mean, yes, Libertarian, the government should stay out of my life, until they look at the cost of triple bypass, you know, liberal, we should take care of everybody, until they realise how many people really, really are sick, conservative, and that no more of my money should go to take care of anybody else. But me. You know, whatever, whatever your opinion is, you’re welcome to it. I took an oath to defend it. But it’s scary. I mean, I have the most phenomenal policy supplemental policy. And it was based here again, on a fluke, I have taught part time in the State College, school education system for years, and I qualify because of that, for what’s called pierra, public employee retirement account health insurance. And it’s unbelievable. So 18 years teaching one course a year qualified me for that. And I have this supplemental policy. That’s just, I mean, it’s everyone who I know is just amazed at it. It’s it’s fantastic. You know, and here, again, a fluke, a fluke found this issue and a fluke paid for it.
Carlton Reid 22:09
So we were straying. I guess for some people, we’re straying way too far into politics, recycling. Yeah. But before we go any further, I would like to invest pass on I know, Jamie already responded to it. But we have had a message from Tim. And he said he couldn’t couldn’t make it on the recording today. Unfortunately, he’s had an utterly sleepless night due to, as you can imagine, from what we were discussing before injury issues, and he says he’s feeling really way, way, way sub PA. So hopefully, we’ll get him back on a future show. And he can talk about his latest injury so we can add it to him to the archive. Or, you know, by all means, Google on the hyphen spokesman.com. For Tim Jackson’s many, many escapades where he talked about his crashes, his his falls, and his track injuries, and all sorts of stuff like that.
Donna Tocci 23:05
And I do have to say, he’s a good healer, and we’re thankful for that. Yes.
Carlton Reid 23:10
He’s always back on his bikes. He’s like he has these major crashes. But there he goes. He’s back on his bike within a couple of weeks. And normally he does Jim doesn’t the use case images of him on the trainer first. So good thing to have.
Jim Moss 23:23
Yeah, he posts them from the hospital. That’s what blows me away. I couldn’t, I didn’t even know how to get my thumbs to work, let alone a phone and yet he’s posting pictures laying in bed all drugged up. So he is at a person.
Carlton Reid 23:41
And before we do go on to talk about some topics, I would like to bring David in here just to segue into a very brief commercial break.
David Bernstein 23:52
Hello, everyone. This is David from the Fredcast, and of course, the spokesmen. And I’m here once again to tell you that this podcast is brought to you by Tern Bicycles, the good people at Tern build bikes that make it easier for you to replace car trips with bike trips. Part of that is being committed to designing useful bikes that are also fun to ride. But an even greater priority for Tern is to make sure that your ride is safe, and worryfree. And that’s why Tern works with industry leading third party testing labs like EFBE, and builds it bikes around Bosch ebike systems which are UL certified for both electric and fire safety. So, before you even zip off on your Tern, fully loaded and perhaps with the loved ones behind, you can be sure that the bike has been tested to handle the extra stresses on the frame and the rigours of the road. For more information, visit www.ternbicycles.com to learn more. And now back to the spokesmen.
Carlton Reid 25:01
We are back with the first show of 2023. And we are with Donna. And we are with Jim. And we had a message even from our buddy who falls off his bike blogs can. Now now, in the show notes when we discussed what we’re going to talk about on the show, we put names on and and we say you should go read this. And one of the pieces that Jim flagged up, and it was also I’d seen on social media a lot. And it was a good time for this particular piece to go online. So it’s by Gloria Liu. And it’s in it’s in bicycling.com. I’m assuming it was in the magazine as well, it might not have been made to go online. But anyway, it’s in the health and nutrition section section and it just says, Does cycling have a drinking problem? And now I haven’t done a word count, but it’s a massive, massive article. It’s not just like a quick slug bear at all. It’s huge. And Tim was actually was on social media was saying he actually had we don’t think he’s in the piece, but he think we think he might have contributed. Cuz he’s teetotal isn’t me, Donna isn’t that he’s like eight years he’s been? That’s what he says on social media. Yeah,
Donna Tocci 26:22
yes, he has. He says here on his LinkedIn posts, if anyone wants to read it.
Carlton Reid 26:27
LinkedIn, I was wondering, okay,
Donna Tocci 26:29
is that he spoke with Gloria Liu for this piece. Since I’ve been sober for more than eight years now and have first hand experience with both sides of the good slash bad alcohol coin. Kudos to Bicycling magazine for allowing Gloria the column space for this article. Yeah.
Jim Moss 26:46
It’s it’s a massive article she just dwells, dives into every aspect of it. And right,
Carlton Reid 26:54
Jan? And Jan first. I mean, when when was actually published, I mean, I’m assuming that was kind of like timed for a time where you might have more alcohol, and then even more alcohol than you would have, normally. But whenever an article has a name for this phenomenon, but whenever a magazine or newspaper has any headline, with a question mark, you can invariably just say, No, you know, that’s the answer to that generally. And but in this particular case, do we think Cycling has a drinking problem, Donna?
Donna Tocci 27:32
For a lot of group rides, and things like that they do end with a couple of beers. Is that a problem? Maybe. I know, when I was going to Interbike in Vegas, I was I was tend to hang out with a lot of folks, including a lot of bike messengers, and there was a lot of drinking, but that was kind of the culture. And again, culture equal problem question. So, you know, it could be the same with runners as well, which is an industry that I am very well in ingrained in, you go out for a group run, you come back, you have a couple beers. You do pub crawl runs. So it is definitely there and
Carlton Reid 28:20
had done a how different is that? You said mentioned running? How different is that to? Just at the end of a workday? You do exactly the same with it. Your your your fellow workers. So I was wondering how different might that be from just basical social stuff. So this is just a this is an issue? It’s an issue for every single sector of society, not just a small subset of cyclist?
Donna Tocci 28:50
Yeah, and the article is talking about that there. You know, to quote this, it’s in the bike shops where customers steal tip mechanics and six packs. It’s an industry trade shows where people are drinking in their booths at cyclocross races, gravel races, where aid stations offer whiskey shots. Okay, that’s me, but but, so maybe, you know, she’s talking about much more part of not just what I was talking about that social piece after we’ll go have a beer after a run or a ride that is usually in her in currency and in marketing and all of that, and that would make it very different than, hey, let’s go grab a beer after work. That’s, you know, to equate it to, you know, a, you know, a job in an office or something like that, where, hey, you wrote a great byline, here’s a beer, we’re not going to pay you for it. That doesn’t make any sense. So yeah, I think it’s it’s ingrained Is it a problem? Again, question mark. Jim, you’re saying something probably sure
Jim Moss 30:05
you want a good ski tune, you bring a six pack with you. You want a good bike tune, you take a six pack with you? Well, in my case, since I’ve already worked on the bike, it usually takes a case. But it’s just part of the outdoor industry. I knew one ski tuner who I mean, and this guy was one of the best in the world, who didn’t shrink the beer that one gave him and would just stack it up. And then at the end of the ski season, he and his friends would go camping for a week. And they would have a pallet full of beer to drink. Oh, I mean, literally, that’s how much beer he was tipped. But he was smart enough that he, you know, shared it. So is it any more any less, I do drink more when I’m with friends, I don’t drink that much at home by myself. But I don’t drink that much anyway, two to four drinks a month. You know, and that can be who knows why shifted to that. But But I don’t think Cycling has any more of a problem other than one small aspect. And that sponsorship, everybody goes someplace after an activity. And bars are the number one place because we can talk, you know, we, we could go to a library, but then we’d have to sit, sit and look at each other. You know, we could go to a park. But nobody’s going to bring us food. So yeah, bars are the place we go because they offer everything we want to do at the end of activities. But we have sponsorships in cycling. If you look at the back of a jersey that says you know or order the front, nine times out of 10. And I count both of these. There’s a brewery and there’s a law firm. The brewery wants you to stop by after a ride and the law firm wants you to call him if you get hit by a car. Cracks me up. And I’m putting on cycling events now. And the first thing we get a list of is what brewery or what you know, liquor distributor, whoever can we get to give us money? Because they want cyclists they they want softball players though? They want runners, they want all those people because probably because of the activity, they can drink more with less issues? I don’t know, maybe? Or maybe they just do drink more. Is it a process?
Carlton Reid 32:45
I mean, most most of the article seems to I mean, it does mention other forms of alcohol. But it is basically about beer, which almost has its self limiting aspect to it, you get lots of shots, you know, you don’t you’re not going to pay for for much after that. But you have quite a few beers, and you’re going to be up putting that out. And that’s going to take your time away from that alcohol. So it’s just a beer is that less of a problem than say, spirits,
Jim Moss 33:15
beer, that several studies and at least one book have proved, is the reason why we exist. You know, since water was going to kill us in the Middle Ages, and before that beer allowed us to survive. So I mean, yeah, just beer does it, you know, contain the plague or whatever.
Carlton Reid 33:39
But I mean, second thing, cyclists tend to be certainly a certain level of cyclists, they tend to be pretty much fitness. certainly aware, and they will know the damage that alcohol can do. So we’ll self limit and you know, they’re not going to be the 10 I’m assuming here. And I’m asking the questions, not assuming I’m asking questions. Would that not just be you’re not gonna have such a natural problem because Cypress or fitness freaks and they’ll just limit
Jim Moss 34:05
but they also limit carbs. And they limit you know, protein and they limit sugars, they limit everything. You know, it’s you know, and if they if they have more beer than whatever, they’re going to limit something else. If they have a doughnut in the morning, they may have less beer in the evening. So so it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what the name of the carrier is. What matters is what is inside, you know that you put in your mouth. Right sugar is 25 times more addicting than cocaine. Okay, I can have a doughnut or I can do a snort. What
Carlton Reid 34:48
does cycling have a cake problem? Right? You know when we can’t get enough of that cake? Right?
Donna Tocci 34:56
I have a cake problem.
I would say Yeah, right. But, you know, so I’m looking through this article and they’re talking about, you know, the bike scene and, and bike mechanics, being women and feeling pressure to be one of the guys and go out and drink and get drunk. And and I could see that. But to your point, would that be in any other industry as well, I don’t know. And but there is a, there is a person here talks about a cycling team out in Kansas City that they don’t go for drinks after ride, like because of the health reasons, just as you’re talking about people gain weight, cognitive, you know, all of that hurts their health. So the article really does go back and forth a little bit on you know, that, yes. And, you know, cardiovascular disease and heart failure and stroke, and you know, nobody, nobody needs that. So, so it’s interesting, but I also wonder, you know, is it is it the younger group, as well, you know, when you’re trying to make a name for yourself, so you’re going out and you’re doing all of these things? I don’t know. But I do think that if you are prone to have a problem that just as you said, Carlton, it, you could find it anywhere. You can find it in running, I know at the end of races, there’s beer gardens, there’s, you know, we just we don’t go to a pub, you go to a quote unquote, beer garden, because it’s right there at the finish line. You don’t even have to go anywhere for it. So I think if you’re, if you’re prone to have a problem, or be on the verge of having a problem, yes, there but you could find that anywhere.
Jim Moss 36:49
Yeah, post ride post run. spaghetti dinners are more dangerous for me. I mean, first of all, it’s bad piece.
Carlton Reid 36:59
The piece mentions, you know, checked historian so she didn’t come to me. And, and that’s my views on this as a cycling historian. I would have told her one thing, and that is in Germany. There’s a drink called shandy is no, like a mix between lemonade and beer. What would you call that?
Donna Tocci 37:21
Euugh!
Jim Moss 37:22
Yuk!
Carlton Reid 37:23
That’s really well, that’s a standard drink across in here in Europe. But it’s called Shandy. So if you’d ask for it in a public basically limits your your amount of alcohol, so you might have a full pint. But half it’s party more. It’s gonna be lemonade, and it’s quite sweet drink. Well in Germany, that’s called Radler. In there are any German speakers in the audience, they will know that Radler actually means cyclist. So the German word for diluted beer is cyclist and where that came from was there was a there’s many places where it’s attributed to but it’s basically 1870s 1880s When Radler as a drink as a kind of drink first appeared in Germany with that name. And it was meant to be I think it’s Bavaria, where bar which was attracting lots and lots of cyclists in the 1870s. You know, everybody’s on their bikes going out to places and drinking. And the Publican had ran out or was running very low, low on beer. And so we knew those 1000s and 1000s of cyclists were going to be appearing that day. So he told his staff, well dilute it with lemonade. And they did this. And the cyclists loved it because it wasn’t a full beer. It was just half a beer, which meant they could drink a bit more and be hydrated. And so the German word for this particular drink, which is a phenomenally popular drink, everywhere in Europe, you know, Snady stroke Radler is bicyclist cyclist. So there you go. There’s a historian that could have actually contributed to this this this particular article.
Jim Moss 39:08
Well, here in the United States, we would call it a softball. It’s when the United States you know, something was developed because groups of people came in we call it a softball.
Carlton Reid 39:22
I mean, I’m spell that incident ball as the ball.
Jim Moss 39:29
Softball is, you know what we all play. You wait until at least the beginning of the first inning to have a beer. You don’t wait till you get done at the end of the game to go to a pub, you start drinking when the game starts. On some cases, there are lots of serious softball players don’t want to get you know cards and letters. But there’s all sorts of sports that drink and this one just got named after cycling because the that’s just coming into town. If it were trapped leads coming through, they’d probably have that, you know, word for an awful concoction of lemonade and beer.
Carlton Reid 40:11
It’s nice, you should try it.
Donna Tocci 40:14
Well, in the article, she says that a 2017 report by sponsorship monitor Ieg estimated that US alcohol companies spent 74% of their sponsorship dollars on sports and not only mainstream spectator sports like football, but also participant participatory events, like five K’s triathlons and cycling races. So, so, Jim, you know, you’re right. The, the example of the the jersey? No, no, that is that that’s true. So yeah, I interesting. It’s a great article. And I think that people should, should read it and see, you know, what, what their thoughts are about this? And but it’s you pay your Do you pay your bike mechanic in in cases of beer, or 12 packs or six pack?
Carlton Reid 41:08
And maybe bike mechanics should be asked? Would you rather have the cash?
Jim Moss 41:10
Yeah. Yeah. And maybe you should ask, How much do you drink? You know, do you think you have a drinking problem? Should I be contributing to this drinking problem? You know, when when you get invited to have a beer at the end of the day, and you watch the other mechanics work on bikes with a beer next to him? Are they having one before they go home? Are they having six before they go home? When you see that
Carlton Reid 41:42
post that post activity, right? Yeah, in skiing gym, which is your skier, it’s a relatively strong culture to have alcohol in the middle of the day, perhaps when you’re still on the slope, you know, gluwein and all this kind of stuff. Now, I’ve also found that crazy, you know, skiing is hard enough, and I’m going to equate cycling, isn’t it? These are hard enough activities to do sober. Nevermind, a little bit drunk. So skiing while inebriated seems to me to be absolutely crazy. Yet, it does seem to be a cultural thing where you will have alcohol on the slope. Oh, it’s
Jim Moss 42:18
it is in skiing, it’s even worse. And I can give you a couple quick examples. One in Colorado, it’s against the law to ride a ski lift, intoxicated, and yet, we sell beer and wine and drinks at mid mountain and top of the mountain restaurants at every resort in Colorado. So you can’t get on the lift drunk, but you can use the lift to get up and get drunk. Right and it is a an absolute defence. If you are loaded to any ski injury lawsuit you may have, you don’t you won’t get a dime. And in the 70s and 80s, you knew that this guy was a great skier because he carried his own Bota bag, you know, the little fake Italian bags, leather outside that carried wine. And you would ski down the hill. And you know how good of a skier you were was based on how far away you could shoot the wine from your boater bag into your mouth and share with your friends. And, you know, somehow it got refilled at the bottom of the hill and you went back up again.
Carlton Reid 43:29
So this is where I’m kind of go with it is that I don’t think this is a cycling problem. The headline is de cycling have the problem. No, it’s society has the problem. And you can link you can go to lots of activities where people are probably being tipped with with six packs. And people are drinking during the the downtime during lunch before they carry on doing that activity skiing being I would say as a prime example because it is so embedded the alcohol in it really, really embedded in that particular activity. So I’m just saying yeah, cycling isn’t special here. Right? Society is doing and more importantly, cycling.
Jim Moss 44:10
Yeah, whatever the sport is not the sport. It’s the individual. Okay, if you is a cyclist or softball player or a skier or a professional tiddlywinks player, need to figure out what your relationship with alcohol is and whether or not that’s good or bad.
Carlton Reid 44:29
I’ll come in today in pairs. So why would you do a incredibly dangerous activity like skiing or cycling in any way impaired? Why would you do that? Because you
Jim Moss 44:41
don’t have enough guts to do it sober.
Donna Tocci 44:43
Well, you’re saying for you, you truly have the disease. You have a problem? Yeah. And so maybe what we can all do as part of the site. The sports industry, if you will, is give people the choice right if you want to tip your bike mechanic, give him you know, 10 bucks, 20 bucks, whatever or her or them and let them decide how they want to spend it. If they want to go and buy, you know, a six year for the rest of the mechanics, then they can do that. And
Carlton Reid 45:16
yeah, talking about tipping again, this is out of my comfort zone.
Donna Tocci 45:18
Okay, so sorry. But, but also, you know, and same thing with events, you know, so if you’re gonna have a quote unquote beer garden at the end of an event, and you’re giving away Hey, you get, you know, a nice event pint glass with your beer, we’ll give the pint glass if somebody orders a seltzer water to write, you know, so make it more inclusive. And give people that choice. And if somebody really is struggling, because they have that that disease or they’re on the borderline, make it easier for them to say no.
Carlton Reid 45:57
But might not also be easy to say no, if there is no availability. So what Jim was saying there was if you’ve got mid station and at the top if you’ve got copious amounts of alcohol, isn’t that a bit crazy? Should we not be limiting it a bit more always that nanny state and you shouldn’t be limiting it. It should be up to individuals.
Jim Moss 46:18
Now we’re back to a political discussion. I’m not going to touch that one.
Carlton Reid 46:26
Nope. Okay.
Donna Tocci 46:28
And I think we need Tim I think we need him for a further discussion on this. And maybe we have this conversation again, or a similar conversation when we can have Tim for a little different perspective.
Carlton Reid 46:42
I’ve not done this event, but there is an event. I mean, it’s talked about, you know, hand hand ups, you know, in cycle races and stuff. And we have something similar. There’s an event or there used to be an event, I don’t think it’s run now, there used to be an event called the Real Ale Wobble. And that was a mountain bike event, from way back in the 80s. It’s a very old event. And I’ve never actually done it, but I’ve been to the place where it’s done it and it’s very small place in mid Wales. And it’s basically a pub in a pub a publican started this off. And it’s basically you, you start this race, and every checkpoint, there is a real ale, to to imbibe. And then clearly by the end of this, you’re probably not able to balance on your bike much anymore. So clearly, that was a that was an event that was specifically tying cycling, and the the physical action of drinking while you were cycling, that may be similar to the handout. In cyclocross,
Jim Moss 47:45
we have dozens of those around here. There’s one where and motorcyclists are big on this one, but I’ve seen it in cycling now, where you go to each bar, hand you a card from a deck, and you have a beer, and then you hop on your motorcycle, you hop on your bike, you go to the next
Carlton Reid 48:00
motorcycle, your motorcycle, you mean motorcycle, that’s a that’s a, that’s a vehicle that goes on public highways, right? Can you possibly have that, oh, it’s
Jim Moss 48:10
every day. And at the end of the run, you may have gone to 10 bars, and you take your 10 Playing cards and come up with the best poker hand that you can figure out after X number of beers on a bicycle or on a whatever, and I’ve done it on bikes, it’s a phenomenal game. Especially if you can win a couple 100 bucks with your poker hand
Carlton Reid 48:35
to discuss that this is potentially a social, you know, across many different sectors. But what’s what’s taken, you know, the driving under the influence has been made socially unacceptable, whereas in the 70s, you know, it was acceptable to drink and then get into it, okay, we’ve made it socially unacceptable. So is this something that has to happen in drinking, while taking part in sporting events should also become that’s just socially unacceptable, that’s just, we don’t have to be woke or anti woke about this. This is just society will eventually say that that’s not a sensible thing to be doing. And we won’t do that anymore. In the same way that you know, driving under the influence is also seen in that kind of, you know, you can crazy to do this category,
Jim Moss 49:22
but it won’t because it became socially unacceptable here in the United States, because of the damage to other people. In in, in cycling, you know, I mean, you could crash into another cyclists. But if you crash into a car or a tree, you’re the one that’s going to get injured so nobody cares. It won’t create any society woes or backlash.
Carlton Reid 49:51
Donna?
Donna Tocci 49:54
I don’t know that nobody cares.
Jim Moss 49:58
The people that Who check you into the hospital care?
Donna Tocci 50:02
Yeah, but think about it too. So if you’re, you know, in Carlton’s example of going from, you know, L to L, and, and the name is, you know, expects you to be wobbly at the end, right the room. In some cases, those people are going to pack their bike into a car and then drive. Right. And so, you know, if you go to this real ale wobble or any other, you know, let’s ride from bar to bar to bar and have drinks, or drink after a mountain bike ride on a Sunday, most of those people are going to get in cars. And not great
Jim Moss 50:46
that transition from a bicycle to a car is where it goes from fun activity. normal activity, socially acceptable activity to a non socially criminal activity. I guess you can get a you can lose your driver’s licence here in Colorado for riding a bicycle drunk. Yeah, is your driver’s licence? Yes. And we have bicycle
drunk. And you can lose your driver’s licence for riding a horse drunk. And we
Carlton Reid 51:25
had I think many jurisdictions around the world will will have pretty similar if you have a driving licence, you can have it taken away if you’re caught drunk, or another form of transport
Jim Moss 51:35
on a horse. I, that one’s the one that stretched me. So anyway, and we have a case, we have a case where a guy was convicted, and the appellate court upheld it. And both riding a horse drunk and riding a bicycle drunk. So
Carlton Reid 51:48
there is of course, these jokes. Like cartoons in there often that these are like 1890s and early cartoons, but they’re basically often brought out when driverless cars I talked about because we’ve had driverless cars in effect for a long time, because farmers when they’d get drunk on the with their horses, they would just get in the back of their cart, and the horse would know exactly where it had to go. So you had a driverless car back in the 1890s. Just because the your horse knew exactly where home was. And you could just get in drunk and off, it would go.
Donna Tocci 52:24
Okay, I just looked it up. Because Google knows everything. In my state, it is not illegal and does not have Oui conviction consequences to drunk or drug impaired biking. Really, it is a terribly reckless thing to do is what? Yeah, so
Jim Moss 52:45
if you want to ride your horse, yeah, go to Connecticut. Massachusetts, Massachusetts. scuze. me the best.
Carlton Reid 52:51
So definitely. Yeah, yeah, one of the old ways of finding it if somebody is drunk, so a police officer, before that you have breathalysers that we’ll be just asking them to ride on site. So walking in a straight line. Whereas on a bike, if you’re drunk, if you’re really drunk, surely you’re gonna fall off. If you are able to actually balance a bike and go in a reasonably straight line, you can’t be that drunk. Whereas this is all similar advocate stuff here. I’m not advocating any of this. But if you get into a car, it’s somehow different in that your cocoon, possibly very, very warm. You have music, you have all these distractions. So you shouldn’t be driving while drunk. But cycling while drunk is somehow kind of okay, because the very fact you are staying upright means you’re not actually that drunk. What do we think about that?
Jim Moss 53:44
I agree with you, but boy, are we gonna get cards and letters? And I’m sure I mean, we have all met in our life. Somebody who is constantly loaded. You know, who I was sitting in the courtroom one time talking to the sheriff who’s there, you know, as the guard who said, Yeah, we had to call flight for life because a guy blew a point five, three, on a breathalyser when he got brought in.
Carlton Reid 54:17
point that’s high, I’m assuming
Jim Moss 54:19
Oh, that’s five times higher than Well, point. Oh, eight is against the law to drive this guy blue. 8.53. That’s That’s mean. That means he is drunk his entire existence. You can blow that much unless you’re you’re walking around and a point two, which is, which most people be unconscious of point two.
Donna Tocci 54:44
Yeah, I was gonna say how was he even alive? Right.
Jim Moss 54:47
And that’s why they call flight for life. You know, they didn’t take UAV you know, he was going to live. And so but there’s those people out there. They just wake up, loaded and maintain that. So they could probably ride a bike for a while. But they’re the exception to the rule. And for a cyclists yeah for cyclists is seriously a cyclist he can’t ride a bike loaded. But he does provide entertainment and YouTube videos or he Tiktok videos.
Carlton Reid 55:18
Mm hmm. See, when you get that wobble or go back to the word wobble, you’ve, it’s kind of a death spiral, you’re gonna fall off your bike, where do you see drunk people, but they’re actually keeping a straight line when they are reasonably straight line when they’re riding because as soon as you start that wobble, that wobble doesn’t end anything else apart from nine times out of 10 a crash, although the drunk cyclist basically cures themselves because they crash whereas a drunk motorist, you know, can actually keep going.
Jim Moss 55:49
Although there is a new bike that I just saw press release about that won’t crash the three wheel? No, no, a three wheeler, two wheel electric bike that has, you know, a pewter that keeps it upright. So now you can be totally Blotto. And, yeah, so
Carlton Reid 56:05
it’ll get you back.
Donna Tocci 56:07
I mean, the flip side of that is that’s more enabling.
Jim Moss 56:12
Sure. So isn’t that
Donna Tocci 56:15
or maybe makes the case for the cycling have a drinking problem if somebody is creating a bike to stay upright? If you can’t, yourself? But But
Carlton Reid 56:24
wouldn’t that just be for people with balances us in general, rather than drunk people with balances?
Jim Moss 56:29
Sure, we always create. So So beer was created, and ended up being a lifesaver, because you could drink beer and not die of some disease. That’s how to
Carlton Reid 56:42
boil water. Why
Jim Moss 56:45
didn’t you know? But they didn’t know about, we’d
Carlton Reid 56:48
have to put hops in it. And you’d have to put barley in it, you could just boil the water, but they
Jim Moss 56:53
didn’t know that in the 1500s of 1300s. That, you know,
Carlton Reid 56:57
it’s accidental just that the beer being healthy is just Well, yeah. Boiling is doing it. Right.
Jim Moss 57:03
It just happened. They didn’t know that there were germs. They just knew that people who drank beer seem to live. And so everything in life can also be turned into an addiction a problem. You know, rock climbing evolved into bungee jumping, involved into static jumping. And I had a friend die because you know, static jumping, meaning your rope does not stretch. And you take this great big swinging jump, and you know it’s harnessed. Right?
Carlton Reid 57:41
Hey, yay.
Jim Moss 57:43
It’s sort of you find videos on it happens a lot in Utah, where you have great big cliffs and arches and you can take this giant swing underneath an arch.
Carlton Reid 57:55
Does that do amazing things to your whole body when you hit that?
Jim Moss 58:00
Well, you try and do it in such a way that you curve into that, you know, point of, you know, no more stretch. And I’ve not seen a video of anyone over the age of 35 doing it
Carlton Reid 58:17
for obvious reasons. Yeah.
Jim Moss 58:18
I mean, it’s such a big thing in the state of Utah that the attorney for the Utah State Lands attorney and I became friends because it became an issue then he finally got to the point to say look if they want to died, let them die. So anything can become a problem. You know, what was used to get out of to cross the canyon to get to better lands to grow food evolved into rock climbing.
Carlton Reid 58:53
Jim, have you still on the hell site that is Twitter? Are you are you migrating to Mastodon what you
Jim Moss 58:59
I’m on Mastodon and I’m on Twitter and I’m on stimuli. I’m not even sure what mass I mean, Mastodon I’m learning stimuli. I’m not even sure what I’m doing there. But I thought I would try them all because I wanted to grab recreation law. Yeah. To hold on mice. Yeah, yeah. And so I’m posting to it. The best way to find me is recreation-law,
Carlton Reid 59:24
and Donna. So I still see you on Twitter and I have got a mastodon but I really don’t think I’ve done one one posting. I’m pretty poor. That’s why I’m sticking with the health side. Are you sticking with the hellsite? What are you what are your thoughts on that?
Donna Tocci 59:39
For now? Yes. So you can find me on Twitter at DonnaTocci and also on Instagram.
Carlton Reid 59:47
So thank you ever so much for being on today’s show. And Jim, and as I said, this has been show 319 And the next episode because this was this is like Can I show that almost shouldn’t be here because I did say in the last episode that the next show will be with somebody who’s talking to Critical Mass person who uses the world of song to actually get across his message about getting more people on bikes so that will be the next episode rather than this. This this interim episode talking about kidneys and literally were the only subject to talk about was my kidneys and so it’s been excellent for the our first show of the year. So next episode will be critical mass, but meanwhile, get out there and ride
2nd January 2023
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 318: Chris Boardman explains Active Travel England’s Capability Fund
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reidhttps://twitter.com/CarltonReid
GUEST: Chris Boardman
TOPICS: Active Travel England‘s new £32.9m Capability Fund
- Chris Boardman explains Active Travel England’s Capability Fund
Carlton Reid, January 2, 2023
Read more… - Masterplanning Milan: Real Estate Developer Reshaping the City With Active Travel
Carlton Reid, December 22, 2022
Read more… - Milan to banish cars, Mayor promises manager of Eroica Caffe
Carlton Reid, December 13, 2022
Read more… - World Champion Transportation Cyclist Beryl Burton — Book Chat With Author Jeremy Wilson
Carlton Reid, December 8, 2022
Read more… - Book Talk With Hannah Reynolds and Ned Boulting
Carlton Reid, November 26, 2022
Read more… - Tour de Luxe — riding with legends on Ibiza with upscale Leblanq
Carlton Reid, November 17, 2022
Read more… - Good Move: How Bicycles Could End the Occupation of Cars in the EU capital of Brussels
Carlton Reid, November 4, 2022
Read more… - You don’t have to be horrible to win
Carlton Reid, October 30, 2022
Read more… - Cycling legends roundtable with Mark Cavendish, Oscar Freire, Adam Blythe, Johan Museeuw & Matt Stephens
Carlton Reid, October 27, 2022
Read more… -
Old crew is back
Carlton Reid, October 10, 2022
Read more…
TRANSCRIPT:
Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 318 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Monday 2nd of January 2023.
David Bernstein 0:27
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern Bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e bikes for every type of rider whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.
Carlton Reid 1:02
Happy New Year. I’m Carlton Reid and welcome to another year of the Spokesmen podcast, which has been coming to you non-stop since 2006. Amazingly, it’s now 2023 and on the first working day after the festive break there’s this here announcement about a new 39 million pound fund that plans to empower local communities to create people-friendly environments through design. Active Travel England’s new Capability Fund will, the words of the press release, “create a national network of experts to work with communities, enhance high streets and make regional roads safer for everyone.” Working with the willing, Active Travel England will be doing what urban designer Brian Deegan did so well in Greater Manchester and that’s engaging with people, asking them not whether they wanted to limit car use but what they wanted their streets to look like and how they wanted them to function. Brian is the Director of Inspections at Active Travel England and I teased Active Travel Commissioner Chris Boardman over whether the Capability Fund was a sort of cloning exercise, replicating Brian’s expertise in lots of local authorities … but first I asked Chris to explain a little bit about the fund and the announcement.
Chris Boardman 2:45
The emphasis is a lot less on encouraging people and more on enabling them. And then when you start digging into what that means some of its political some of its psychological. But a lot of it is capability behind the scenes. So the point of this and it sounds rather melodramatic, but it’s true: we need to build an army of engineers and local officers who are capable of delivering to a consistently high standard across a whole country. And this fund is part of starting that. So it’s to enable local authorities to make active travel even higher value than it already is by by creating in-house capability. So reduce their dependency on consultancies. And it’s the start of several large announcements this year to get people ready. So they’ve got a pipeline of schemes that we can start delivering consistently as we go forward. So active travel is it will become a mainstream part of transport.
Carlton Reid 3:49
You’re basically cloning Brian Deegan. So you’re creating lots of Brian-Deegan-type people in local authorities, is that kind of is that the template?
Chris Boardman 4:03
Yeah, well, Brian’s, obviously our director of inspection, and he’s worked for decades in this area and knows that both politically, and technically we’d right down to how high is a curb what is required to enable people within the laws of this country to get around easily under their own steam and feel safe doing it. So that’s why we we put them in that position. Now we need people like that in every council across the country, or every council that wants to, you know, they think the important bit that we’re also injecting here is choice. That’s what this is about giving people a genuine choice in how they travel, because one of those choices is underrepresented. And we need skilled people who can navigate the system. Now that the reason I said engineers and local officers or officials is because it’s different. It needs to be cost done for each local authority, what it is that they’re lacking some engineers but the the knowledge amongst local councillors on how to do it and how to how to conduct an effective consultation that takes people with you doesn’t exist. So the training is in a different space. Whereas somewhere else, they’ve got great political will, and they’re frustrated that they officers aren’t capable of delivering. So that that comes from years and years of knowledge. And over the next, while by the spring, we hope that we’ll have a package of training for all authorities to help them develop their capabilities,
Carlton Reid 5:41
is that the way it started? £39.2 million is that is that where the money is going on things like training up to make these mini like, Brian Deegans. And it’s like, you know, when you when you put money down for a brand new cycleway or new bus route, or, you know, a widening pavements, whatever, that’s capital, that comes out of one fund. But when you actually want to do stuff with council officers, that obviously comes out of a different pot, revenue. So is that what this is for, to fill in those gaps?
Chris Boardman 6:15
To a large degree, yeah. And the reason it’s, it’s slightly more opaque than that is because it needs to be customised. But ostensibly, is to create a national machine that produces a pipeline of high quality schemes across the country, and then need to be consistent across the country. So wherever you are, you are, you see, you see a sign with with a bike on it, or somebody walking and you know, you’re going to have a good experience. So this scheme is about creating that capability within all the local authorities who want to do it. And obviously, that’s a rapidly growing number for, I mean, for a lot of people because they simply can’t afford the status quo, or realising rather, that we can’t afford the status quo. So when people go, there’s, you know, there’s hundreds of millions for active travel, it doesn’t just design itself, that capability isn’t the map consistency is what we need, probably more than the quantum of cash, we, we actually need the consistency and the ability to design and deliver when cash is available.
Carlton Reid 7:20
So criticisms potentially, could be I’m not this scheme in particular, but just, you know, people want infrastructure first. So you kind of you’ve kind of got people who just say, Look, we just want infrastructure, forget anything that you know, is ancillary to that just give us infrastructure. And then the other criticism from from a totally different point of view will be these kinds of things aren’t a nanny status? And why do we need people to tell us how to cycle how to wear all these kinds of things? So so how do you, how do you square those two circles?
Chris Boardman 7:53
Well, the environment is, is everything, you know, we can dance around, we can look at all the stats about you know, we know that we’re inactive and costly health service a billion pounds a year and all of that. But the only thing the reason we’re gonna get on a bike or, or walk to school every day is it’s the easiest choice. And it feels safe, simple as that. And so did the job of active travel endurance is to strip away the noise and go, but what really makes a difference. And it’s safe space. Number one is safe, convenient routes, where I want to go continuously. And that’s what we have to focus on. Once that is there, then you can start giving people the tools to use that space. So by kind of schemes and really inject into bike training, bikeability training, specifically concentrated in the areas where you’ve created safe space. So the layers of things that are needed. But I’m tempted to use a metaphor of baking a cake really you need, don’t you need all the ingredients and you need them in the right proportions, and you need them added in the right order. You know, otherwise you just end up with with stuff that’s inedible or unusable.
Carlton Reid 9:04
Now, am I right to be thinking that this is not new money? So this isn’t a government announcement of this is a brand new pile of 39 million pounds, a big pile of cash, new, this is coming out of your existing budget and you’re just apportioning it?
Chris Boardman 9:20
Yeah, there’s no you know, there’s no disguising the fact that last year is the politics last year meant that things got slow down, you know, we had, we had three prime ministers in a matter of months, and behind them as a team of people and behind them as another team of people. So all of that changes in the decision making is, is slowed down. So we’re several months behind where we want it to be. But we’re now very much on the move. There’s been some great activity in the last few weeks. And we’re finally getting out a lot of the stuff that we wanted to do in active travel, I’m pleased to say is there very highly valued in inside the Department for Transport. And politically, there’s really good support for it now as well. So, as I said, I hope this this will be the first of several announcements over the next few months. This is the one that enables people to use and capitalise on everything that comes next. But no, it’s not new money. It’s part of the £2 billion dedicated funding that was promised in 2020. And now we’re actually in a position to start to, to utilise it and make sure it’s spent properly. I mean, to set up an entire business, which was Active Travel England to deliver that and make sure it is spent properly. It’s something that’s incredibly technical ask anybody who’s who started a business. So we’re well into recruitment, we’ve had to put officers in place, those are now open all of the mechanics of creating first a national machine that then can drive the regional machines. So it’s, it’s quite exciting, actually. And exhausting. I think it’s, it’s taken a long time to get here. But at last, we’re ready to actually start doing the job at pace. And consistently.
Carlton Reid 11:11
And how hands off or potentially even hands on is the DfT? How much leeway do you have, Chris?
Chris Boardman 11:18
DfT is an essential partner. I mean, we’re an arm’s length body, we choose how we deliver government’s policy, how we how we get this mission done, that’s down to us. But we have to interact with buses and trams and trains and national highways and department for health, even over a DCMS, you know, and my other role in Sport England, they’re also a statutory consultee in the planning system. So there’s so many partnerships, you we have autonomy in how we deliver the mission, but we have to work really closely with other people, if we, if we want to do it well, and forming those relationships is well underway. Now. I’m really quite excited and enthused, actually by the level of enthusiasm and desire to see change that we’ve encountered.
Carlton Reid 12:09
Is any of that to do with Jesse Norman? Or is there something that it doesn’t matter who the individual is you think this is baked in now?
Chris Boardman 12:17
I think it’s essential who the people are individuals are critical. I mean, if if I could have walked into parliament, and looked into into the rows of seats and said, right, pick a minister, then then Jesse Norman would have been it. We have we’ve known each other for several years. He understands politics very well, obviously, he’s done a considerable stint at Treasury, which is very helpful. And he actively asked for the active travel brief. And that’s really important that that you get somebody who’s chosen to be here who wants wants to make a difference. So it’s quite exciting. We’re really, really looking forward to working with him closely over the next year.
Carlton Reid 13:03
Potentially, this administration, as you said before, the we’ve had many changes within even this administration, but but going forward, every electoral cycles, you might have a different administration. So the building blocks you’ve put in place here, presumably, you considered would survive any change of administration, perhaps even be strengthened in a future administration?
Chris Boardman 13:33
Well, not wishing to, to sidestep your question. This, this should go beyond politics. This is for any administration, who purports to follow the evidence, until want to do the thing for a community, then this is where you end up. You know, I mentioned earlier that people are doing this because they’ve realised they can’t afford not to. Well, that’s where we started in Greater Manchester four years ago. What’s it cost you to travel as you are now? Can you afford it? And I think there’s been a turnover of people that we’ve worked with from officers to politicians, in the last few months, often have come at this fresh and gone ‘why are we doing this’? And then they realise, well, I have to, I’ve got climate commitments that we absolutely have to meet. We’ve got a health service that is, is being well, severely burdened, shall we say, by by inactivity, you know, one in six deaths in the UK is down to inactivity, and I mentioned a billion pounds and it costs nearly 8 billion pounds to the economy. You look at all of those, and then you follow the thread and you realise that active travel is a huge part of the solution. It’s the transport mode that punches above its weight. It’s a it’s a quiet but powerful industry that is growing, not necessarily because people think ‘I love cycling’, you might absolutely have nothing to do with cycling but they realise that there’s never been a more important time in history to allow people to get around under their own steam. So our supporters have amassed for different reasons. But they all end up in the same space because it’s the cheapest, quickest, most logical answer. So I would expect, fully expect and I’m highly confident that the active travel agenda will just get stronger and stronger and stronger.
Carlton Reid 15:27
I’ll stop Chris there for a quick message from this show sponsor from my colleague, David.
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Carlton Reid 16:44
Thanks, David. And we are back with Chris Boardman. Do you think your your time obviously in Manchester will cover this? There’s the answer to this. But do you think devolution helps with this going forward so that nine times out of the whole of of of the Tyneside region is going to have a Manchester style administration? So do you think those kind of localised regionalized administrations are going to be much more powerful going forward for for what you would like to see happen?
Chris Boardman 17:25
Yeah, well, the macro and micro are, I mean, this is this is huge change delivered at a very, very local level, you know, hyper local, this is me going out the front door to go to the shops, or to go to the train on the tram station. And that’s where the change happens. And then you scale that up. Now, the time in Greater Manchester, was invaluable. And it made me realise that local councillors are in charge of climate change, because you realise that if there’s a local councillor, and he’s got a majority of for somebody screaming in his face about removing the car parking space, and his job is to represent that individual who he knows and has known all his life, then if they don’t change, well, you scale that up and nothing changes. Therefore, you you know, climate change is severely impacted and health and all the other things that I mentioned. So we need to give that local councillor what they need to be able to go, Well, we’re going to remove that car parking space, but this is why it’s good for you. This is how I’m going to get you or hopefully this is this the method I’m going to use. So we arrive in the same solution, we both want the same thing. So it’s, you need to mesh the two things together. And devolution can very much be a part of that, I think, I think it needs to be to go further at the moment. I mean, that local politicians need the powers to do interact with the strategic road network. There’s work in the pipeline, as we know about pavement, parking all of these things. But devolution can very much be a part of it. And I was in Newcastle a few months ago and had a look around. And I saw the work that had been done to stitch bits and pieces together to make a cohesive network and, and the desire that was there. But without that local desire. It doesn’t happen. And just to add on. I mean, that’s one of the reasons that I mentioned earlier. This is about choice. If there’s a local authority or an entire region that has no interest in increasing active travel, then good luck to them. And we will not be forcing anybody to work, but we won’t. We won’t do things badly. So we will learn to use the overused cliche, we will work with the willing and create examples at such a scale that they become on a global and that’s already happening.
Carlton Reid 19:58
And these examples that you have to create via local authorities will come mainly from Do you think existing officers being trained up? Or do you envisage councils maybe actually creating jobs that take this on board,
Chris Boardman 20:16
It should report our support is proportionate and targeted, and there’ll be more on this and then in the next few months, but a local authority who has no, no trained officers doesn’t know how to conduct consultations, but is rocket keen to do it, then we’ll help them with training, excuse me. And with schemes that they can win up from where they’re at, at the moment, and we’ll try to help them grow as fast as possible. For those that are already, excuse me, like Greater Manchester to Birmingham, and the West Midlands in particular, who are already on the journey and already have people in place, I have the capability to deliver and I’ve learned a lot of the lessons, we’ll both will just say, hey, crack on, you know, the standards will check you meeting those standards, but crack on, and tell us what you need. Because we have to do it. If we’re going to deliver government’s targets of 50% of all journeys, cycled, or walked by by 2030, then we’re going to have to work with those that are already capable intensively, and we’re going to have to work with concentrations of people are, but that doesn’t mean that other areas that are just turning to this will get left behind, they absolutely won’t.
Carlton Reid 21:35
Because in the press release, it says the fund could see up to 1300 new green jobs created across England. So where are those jobs coming from?
Chris Boardman 21:44
Well, you have to design, you have to design and you have to consult all of those, all of that capability, which is why it’s called Capability Fund is generally people, you know, you, you need people to be able to go and speak to local communities and run a really effective consultations that help the people that design the network that they want. So we have to have a network of networks and a machine to create that. And this is a very personal thing, changing how people travel in region and giving them real choices, the ones that they that will actually change behaviour. And all of that is people. So I think that’s an underestimation. And that’s, you know that that’s specifically to dob with this fund and how it can be used. And it says up to because again, it’s a choice. And it’s quite possible, that that’s where all of this, this, this particular fund will go on engaging people officers capable of conducting all those tasks.
Carlton Reid 22:52
So urban planning courses and schools and what have you 20 years ago, wouldn’t have had a great deal of active travel in there wouldn’t probably even much bus stuff either, it would have been pretty much predicated on cars, cars, cars, cars, that presumably has changed over the last 20 years. And then the throughput of trained people we’re gonna get out of these courses and be much, much more aware of, of mode other than the car. Is that something that you’re seeing that you’re seeing that the old guard are falling away, and you have a new thrusting bunch of millennials perhaps, who are now wanting to change the world in the way that they’re the people who before changed the world, but for cars, and now changing the world but not for cars?
Chris Boardman 23:43
I think we’re we’re, we’re actually we are and have been on the same side. You have to bear with me with this one. What we haven’t realised it. And I think that’s that’s a key difference that certainly the learning in Greater Manchester, if if you say do you want to ride a bicycle? People say no. But do you want a place that’s quiet and you’d like to sit? And you can you can let your kids walk around on their own and or go to school? Yeah, I’d like one of those things. Would you like to save money by having one less car in the household? Not not driving, but but one less car? Yes. That’d be great. What would you need for that to happen? Well, I’d have to be sure the kids were safe. Okay. What would that look like? Well, you know, there’s no real fast cars everywhere. So lower speed limits where you live? Yeah. Yeah. And they’d have to get across the main roads. So you mean like crossings or well lit underpasses? Yeah. Yeah, those things. Okay. So you mean this? So, so that’s the key, I think, for me, is that we start to talk about the outcomes of all of this, we start to talk about what does this actually give me that I value in a language that I choose so that it could be money saved? It could be time saved, it could be easier life, it could be a better place to live, it could be something for my kids. I mean, you probably saw the piece on Kesgrave High School that we did a few months ago, I was just can’t believe was embarrassed the fact that we didn’t know about this place, you know, nine, eight to 900 kids every day 61% ride to school and we went, that’s got to be a mistake and to go to see it. If you actually talk about kids getting to school and being able to avoid bullying, because they don’t have to be kettled, on a bus after school, all of the benefits that this can bring, if you speak to people about that, then suddenly you’ve got common ground. And I think that’s absolutely critical here that we actually want the same thing. And we know that by the fact that when we introduce high quality cycling, and walking facilities in an area, give it a couple of years, and people would fight you tooth and nail if you wanted to take it away. So we know the majority want the same thing, just not everybody has realised it and doesn’t see it in the same way. So it’s it’s the way that we’re going. And there’s examples all over the world, maybe you’ll be very familiar with Paris, you know, which is, which is one of my favourite examples, because it’s not the most people travelling actively, but it’s the one that’s changing fastest. And it’s a it’s a society that’s close to ours. And seeing what’s happening there. And they, they play to another part of human nature, which is, which is positive peer pressure, really, it’s just a case of here’s somebody doing something and I’m feeling a little bit uncomfortable not doing it well, the more of those examples that we can create in our country, the better.
Carlton Reid 26:46
Going back, I mean, absolutely, Paris’s is kind of poster child for that. But going back to Kesgrave, Ipswich, my theory on that and it is just a theory out you can’t can’t pin this down was the United States Air Force dropped 2000 bicycles on that community in in the Second World War. And as far as I can tell it, it was the only United States Air Force or any military base that that just dropped so many bicycles out at one time. That must have, I posit, created a community of people riding around the the air force base, they must have then gone to the local pubs, but and that must have created a community of cyclists. And that’s why in the 1960s, the local authority decided to put those those those cycleways in for that particular school when it was when it was expanded. So just putting bicycles getting getting people with bicycles, I mean, maybe that’s even why by Paris, you know, with the Velib scheme, you get more people on bicycles, you almost don’t need many of the other things is just get people on bicycles?
Chris Boardman 28:00
Well, that would be true if you could introduce 1930s to 1960s levels of traffic at the same time, because that that, that that theory has just missed the fact that that that they started with much quieter and safer space. And I think if you dropped 2000 bicycles, now, you wouldn’t have much of an impact because people still wouldn’t feel safe, and they still wouldn’t want to go on a road with cars that are travelling fast around. So I think that’s the difference. I mean, the story of Kesgrave is definitely you know, worth exploring and local farmers. And when they sold the land. They they one of the stipulations was now to keep the network in place and build around it, not over it. And I think I’d have you ever been there?
Carlton Reid 28:46
Yes.
Chris Boardman 28:48
I mean, you’ll see it’s not perfect by any means. And it’s not shy. And there’s lots of shared use and all the things are not supposed to work. But it works because the core of it is there. It’s joined up, and it deals
Carlton Reid 29:00
Yeah, it’s a network. I think the word you said there before was that was the key there. It wasn’t isn’t just two or three cycleways beside a road. It’s a quite a dense network of very, very different kinds of facilities.
Chris Boardman 29:13
Yeah, and the underpass to get to the school itself is just horrible. The I guess 1980s on the past that, you know, volumes of people have made it usable, you know, the safety numbers, natural security,
Carlton Reid 29:27
and that was that was built in something like 1964, 65. So it’s because very early. Yeah, for what they were doing. Yeah.
Chris Boardman 29:35
And it’s, it’s horrible, but it functions. And I think that’s key. I mean, there’s a lot of lessons to be learned from that area. I was almost relieved to find that when we spread out I went on a tour down there for a full day and we wrote miles around the whole area that move away from that. That probably what is it 10 square kilometres and it’s very normal. Still very car dominated. And it was almost a relief, to be honest. But they’ve inherited something and then built on it, and made it work for them. But it’s just a brilliant test case of what happens when you give people what they need. And it’s great to have an example that’s not in London.
Carlton Reid 30:19
Hmm. What have I was Ipswich? About 50 miles out 45 miles out from London? Yeah.
Chris Boardman 30:25
Pretty easy train journey.
Carlton Reid 30:27
Mm hmm. Yeah, very much. So. Right. So this this announcement on second of January, do you think it’s technicall press will pick up on this rather than mainstream? What do you think is gonna happen with the announcement?
Chris Boardman 30:46
I don’t expect and don’t require it to be to be hugely newsworthy. I mean, it’s, it’s the start is to get ready for a sustained big push that’s coming throughout the year. And I think there’s bigger stories in the pipeline. So this is just a case of, we’re letting people know that there’s 32 million pounds worth of funding now available for local councils and local authorities to start getting ready to deliver a network of networks.
Carlton Reid 31:16
So people, I’m talking about people here as in the general population, can expect to be consulted. And and taken on board by Brian Deegan clones and asked what they want, which was what you were saying before about, you know, do you want this and it turns out to be that’s what they actually want. So we can expect much more localised planning on the ground, in certain areas?
Chris Boardman 31:45
I’m not quite sure that where the question was there, I think consultation is a big part of it, and the capability to run and good consultation. And harping back to Greater Manchester again, the best thing that we did that was give the pen to the people who lived there and said, Okay, first of all, you don’t have to draw anything, when you don’t have to do anything. But if you did, where would you go? And what’s in your way? And what would you do about that, and we helped them to design something that worked for them around their shops and local communities in places where they knew that they, and that ownership was absolutely everything. And that’s, that’s been witnessed across the country has been really effective when you give people a choice. And I mean, a genuine choice, including the choice to do nothing, you end up getting to the same space. But the choice is really important when you’re talking about people’s homes and their communities. And this one will be heavily weighted towards making sure that capability is there. And the training to be able to do that consistently.
Carlton Reid 32:51
That you talked about people’s homes, their residential road. There’s bete noire, I’m sure you come across it all the time in media interviews, when you get asked about this, but LTN low traffic neighbourhoods is absolutely seems to be the the most hated thing from from from, from some commentators, you know, that’s taken some sort of freedom away from them. But LTNs have got this reputation of inequity, in that you’re in effect, giving facilities to middle class people. And if you’re forcing the traffic, the motorised traffic away from residential streets, and people’s houses go up in value, etc, etc. But then you’re actually forcing the motor traffic to go on the boundary roads, which then makes it people live on those boundary roads, and they tend to be poor people live on those boundary roads. So displacement, how do you get around the fact that any measures to make it nicer for people to walk and cycle can actually make it worse for other people? Because it increases traffic on their roads, much traffic on their roads.
Chris Boardman 34:06
There’s, there’s no, there’s no solution. And God knows we’d all love one. There is no solution that says we’re going to change how we use our streets that is pain-free. And that’s why it takes political will. And that’s why political will is one of the things that we require. We know as we mentioned earlier, and you’ll be well aware of with the likes of Waltham Forest, is that once you’ve pushed through that for two years, if it’s a well designed scheme, or well considered, then people prefer it. And we know that 70% of the stuff that was done during COVID and attracted a lot of those headlines has been made permanent because people wanted to keep it and that hasn’t made headlines, the fact that actuallt Low Traffic Neighbourhoods or whatever you actually want to call them, it’s just local traffic management really, and traffic being managed for the type of roads that it is where it had been allowed to be repurposed for moving traffic is actually it’s a very sensible and, and just a standard thing to do. I mean, there’s lots of lessons I think to be learned. I’m not sure packaging them up into one big thing that’s visible, and it’s change all at once is necessarily the way to go. I think it can be done in stages. Rambling a bit here, but I think LTNs are, if you actually describe the content I mentioned earlier, the outcomes there most people agree, yes, I want that. Then there’s going to have to be, there’s going to have to be some compromise, if you want to induce to introduce choice back into society. And I think when you talk about choice of kids travelling to school parents with prams, this disabled, don’t feel that they have to travel in a vehicle all the time, because actually, the pavements work for them, they’re clear, the crossings are all in the right places, then all of those things people want, we need to make sure that this is portrayed as the this is what it actually gives you. This isn’t taking away, it’s actually given people something back that they’ve lost.
Carlton Reid 36:23
Can society, can British society, create this, this nirvana of people walking, cycling, taking the bus, all these different modes? Doing that more? Can you create that and have elevated levels of car use? Or do you have to have a reduction in car use to get the former?
Chris Boardman 36:51
I think you’re almost talking about the same thing. If you if you make space for your kids to walk to school, or ride to school or scoot every day, then you don’t need to drive them there. And that’s that’s where the chicken or the egg and where the pain comes as your the discomfort is that change over period, because you make the space and then the behaviour changes to make the space, then there’s not enough of it the moment places where it’s saturated, particularly at rush hour. A match that’s the political hump that you have to get over time. And again, it’s show that that change happens. And I think I think that’s the juxtaposition that’s where the political will is required for that first step where people don’t necessarily they’re worried about change. And they don’t can’t see the alternative until they’ve experienced it; a lot of people won’t change until they can experience something. And so to create that takes courage. And I think, just to go slightly sideways, where we often get it wrong. And we’ve actually been alluding to it subconsciously all the way through there is by we pose the wrong question. If we pose what’s the place you live look like forget cycling and walking, what’s it look like? And what would you give up for that? Or what would you change for that? Would you like to have one less car? And I think we need to really think carefully about the questions that we’re asking. So a counter question to the one you’ve just asked me was, what happens if we don’t? What happens if we don’t? Can we afford it? Do you like it? And I think that’s, that’s probably the underlying the most important thing is that we need to start asking the right questions.
Carlton Reid 38:46
So do you think you can get the Daily Mails — and I write for the Daily Mail — but do you think you can get the Daily Mails of this world onside and how?
Chris Boardman 39:03
I don’t know, is the answer. I’m not sure I should care. Because I, I can’t we have to spend time creating a message that’s attractive and asking the right questions. So you know, if we don’t do this low traffic neighbourhood how are you going to tackle climate change? Do you like it? And there’s there’s lots of things and wouldn’t you like your kids to be able to get around under their own steam? I think the asked constantly asking the right questions. You know, what happens if you win? What have you won? It is there’s there’s a there’s a raft of really good questions that make the nice thing about questions. They cut through emotion and connected with the person and make them stop and think and you won’t win them all. This is not this is not a an easy journey change. Culture change never is, it’s always slow, and it’s always painful. So the best way we can do it to come back to the start, is to work with those that are prepared to go through that first bit of discomfort. And take people through that slightly scary bit of change, and then create examples. And to hark back to Greater Manchester, again, when we went when we put our draft network online, way back in 2018 and asked people for their opinion, just put it out there and said, tell us what you think the biggest complaints were ‘where’s ours? Where’s our bit? They’ve got it, we haven’t got it.’ And that’s, that’s the kind of battle that you want. So I’m not I don’t think we we can and we should try to persuade everybody. We should just speak to the evidence and the evidence of outcomes that have been seen elsewhere and crack on. Because what happens if we don’t?
Carlton Reid 41:00
Thanks to Chris Boardman there and thanks to you for listening to episode 318 of the Spokesmen podcast, brought to you in association with Tern Bicycles. Links about the Capability Fund can be found on the show notes at the-spokesmen.com. The next episode will be with a Critical Mass campaigner looking to change hearts and minds through song … that show will be out soon but meanwhile, in 2023, get out there and ride.
22nd December 2022
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 317: Masterplanning Milan: Real Estate Developer Reshaping the City With Active Travel
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUEST: Stefano Corbella, Sustainability Officer, COIMA, Milan
TOPICS: Parking Minimums, Forests In the Sky and Dutch-style cyclist roundabouts in Milan
- Masterplanning Milan: Real Estate Developer Reshaping the City With Active Travel
Carlton Reid, December 22, 2022
Read more… - Milan to banish cars, Mayor promises manager of Eroica Caffe
Carlton Reid, December 13, 2022
Read more… - World Champion Transportation Cyclist Beryl Burton — Book Chat With Author Jeremy Wilson
Carlton Reid, December 8, 2022
Read more… - Book Talk With Hannah Reynolds and Ned Boulting
Carlton Reid, November 26, 2022
Read more… - Tour de Luxe — riding with legends on Ibiza with upscale Leblanq
Carlton Reid, November 17, 2022
Read more… - Good Move: How Bicycles Could End the Occupation of Cars in the EU capital of Brussels
Carlton Reid, November 4, 2022
Read more… - You don’t have to be horrible to win
Carlton Reid, October 30, 2022
Read more… - Cycling legends roundtable with Mark Cavendish, Oscar Freire, Adam Blythe, Johan Museeuw & Matt Stephens
Carlton Reid, October 27, 2022
Read more… - Old crew is back
Carlton Reid, October 10, 2022
Read more… -
In conversation with Justin Williams
Carlton Reid, October 6, 2022
Read more…
LINKS:
COIMA REAL ESTATE, MILAN: https://www.coima.com/en/homepage
BOSCO VERTICALE: https://www.coima.com/en/media/press-releases/bosco-verticale-named-one-of-the-worlds-50-most-iconic-skyscrapers-of-the
DUTCH-STYLE ROUNDABOUT: https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2013/05/09/a-modern-amsterdam-roundabout/
CYCLOPS JUNCTION: https://cities-today.com/uks-first-cyclops-junction-opens-in-manchester-to-boost-bike-safety/
TRANSCRIPT:
Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 317 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. The show was engineered on Thursday 22nd of December 2022.
David Bernstein 0:27
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern Bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e bikes for every type of rider whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.
Carlton Reid 1.01
In the previous episode, I had a coffee and a cycle-related chat in the new Eroica cafe in downtown Milam. I’m Carlton Reid, and apologies for my croaky voice—I was at a Newcastle United match last night and may have shouted a wee bit. Anyway, the visit to Milan was a research trip to visit Porto Nueva, a formerly neglected part of the city, but which has been transformed by urban developers such as COIMA. The most famous part of this regeneration project is COIMA-commissioned Bosco Verticalle, or vertical forest, two high rise apartment buildings covered in trees and plants. I was part of a study group given a quick and inspirational tour of the tallest of these towers, and from near the top, I could see some of Milan’s new protected cycleways. I also spotted a Dutch-style roundabout and a Cyclops-style staggered road junction on a busy arterial. Later, I interviewed COIMA-sustainability officer Stefano Corbella at this junction, and then we walked through an urban park built over another arterial and chatted about the changing face of Milan and how private developers work with cities on increasing the number of active travel journeys.
Carlton Reid 2:16
Stefano, where are we are we are we in Milan right now overlooking this road? What is this road?
Stefano Corbella 2:43
This is Via Melchiorre Gioia, one of the main streets that connects the outskirts of Northern Milan, to the to the city centre going towards the Brera neighbourhood, one of the most historic and nice
neighbourhoods in Milan.
Carlton Reid 3:04
So, we’re on a pedestrian bridge over the road, yeah, flanked by each side by bike paths, how new are those bike paths here?
Stefano Corbella 3:13
Yeah, those bike lanes we developed as part of the Porta Nuova development.
There was nothing at all before we started working on the project. And we added approximately four kilometres of cycling path integrated with later other development that the city of Milan is done.
Carlton Reid 3:38
So this road was wider here. So there was more lanes for cars. And you’ve taken one lane away.
Given to the cyclists and the pedestrians?
Stefano Corbella 3:48
Exactly, exactly. And this was part of the bigger master plan that connected the four neighbourhoods and around because the Porta Nuova project stands for about one kilometres in length. And for a total of 190,000 square metre of total masterplan, which include the park and so on. So the it was important for us to create
a connection for pedestrian cycling, separated by, by design with from the vehicle or vehicle or roads.
Carlton Reid 4:25
So we’re not just walking past where you work. For COIMA. You’re the sustainability officer. Founded in 1974,
which is the developer of a number of plots, projects in Milan, but we are now walking through
into the park. So what’s this park?
Stefano Corbella 4:46
This is BAM, Biblioteca degli Alberi di Milano, is a park that we developed on behalf of the city of Milan and then now we manage to an agreement with the city and we take care about
Security, maintenance, but also and most important cultural activity and culture activation in in our neighbourhood.
Carlton Reid 5:10
And we are higher than road level here.
Stefano Corbella 5:14
Exactly.
Carlton Reid 5:14
So this is on stilts this is your this has been built up above the arterial road or the rest of the road.
Stefano Corbella 5:21
Yeah, on top of the road. Yeah, exactly one of the key issues of this master plan. And the challenges that we face when we started the design was the fact that the Melchiorre Gioia, and Via Della Liberazione were cutting in four corner it was to street just cut the, the entire site in the middle. So in order to make the public spaces more appealing, more quality to give quality spaces, we lift everything up about six metre. And we work with the landscaper to gently make the landscaper not even perceiving these six metre differences between ease or a neighbourhood that is down there with the Bosco Verticale. And the Piazza Gae Aulenti, that is here where we are walking at the moment.
Carlton Reid 6:16
So describe because this is the famous one that many people will have seen photographs of I’m sure what we can see now the as you said at the Bosco Verticale, so what is what is this?
Stefano Corbella 6:25
it’s
Bosco Verticale is a residential development, there are two towers, which we design with the I think the smart idea and interesting idea to implement trees, but I mean real trees, we have trees, about four metre high, five metre high in the balcony of the, of the,
design because it was nothing new in some ways because there are plenty of green spaces on balcony but this scale that we put into this project and the size of the trees that was the you know the the things that was pretty new.
Carlton Reid 7:28
Was it 2015 when it was finished?
Stefano Corbella 7:30
Yes, pretty much.
Carlton Reid 7:32
And then no well now what so we won’t be hearing the the car noise any more because it’s it’s as you say six metres below us. Yeah. So come into a very modern Deluxe office complexes are parked over that way but this is still a very vibrant space Yes 6pm at night.
But tell me what this was before before that obviously the road is here. But now what is this whole area what was it?
Stefano Corbella 8:02
It was a former railway yard. It was used in the beginning of the 19th century, then the train line was pushed back a little better. And but the area was left there for decades now with the abandoned railway with the you know nothing. They’re only you know, ground polluted by you know, the things that happen in in a railway and in the municipality of Milan and other developers try to develop the area for decades until a back in 2004, 2005 COIMA with the joint venture of investor started the development of Porta Nuova and with the with the entire site in one go, no and that was pretty amazing because finally, the project succeeded. We have been lucky that different mayor of Milan that pass through the time that we build everything
promoted the site promoted the development so we have been able to complete the project in fairly good time and at the end that we completed.
Carlton Reid 9:21
So your colleague Kelly in one of her talks of the day was talking about how when Isola when that was like reconnected yeah so you could you could then walk across from Yeah, in fact the park to go across you no longer had to go across the railway line or the busy road. That was a very joyous.
Stefano Corbella 9:39
Absolutely. Isola in the Italian word and in English is highlands and highlands because was surrounded by the former railway yard. And in order to get there from the city centre was a kind of a journey because you have to go through the railway. You have to
a tunnel within the train. So it was not an easy travel despite the distance from each other and Brera it few 100 metres but was completely blocked by the former railway yard. So when we open up the Piazza Gae Aulenti, and we have been able to connect it through that passage was was a kind of
joy moment for the residents of Isola.
Carlton Reid 10:32
And the bike infrastructure, the bike paths that are there now, were they planned originally or was this a later addition?
Stefano Corbella 10:39
No, no, it was all planned was all planned all the pathway. The design of the landscape was planned since the beginning. We build up in in phases, but there was a part of the plan that works, actually, after the project in the city of Milan also increased the connection further, because they
they find out that that was a good connection through Isola and the city centre.
Carlton Reid 11:11
So do you monitor as a developer do you monitor how many people are arriving by car, how many people arriving by metra, because we are surrounded by public transport here.
Stefano Corbella 11:22
Yeah, yeah.
Carlton Reid 11:23
And how people many by bicycle? Foot?
Stefano Corbella 11:25
Yeah, we we have a close monitoring of the pedestrian footfall, which has now reached more than 10 million people here in the Piazza Gae Aulenti. We are working to increase that footfall to 15 millions in the next few years by
addressing the cultural events here, the leisure
people enjoy to live in Porta Nuova and better it is because make the site more attractive and more livable and so on.
Carlton Reid 12:09
Now, COIMA is also involved in a Porto Ramona.
Ramona?
Stefano Corbella 12:17
Porta Romana.
Porta Romana
Carlton Reid 12:20
At least one of those is correct.
Which is going to be the site of in 2026, the Winter Olympic Village.
Stefano Corbella 12:30
Yeah.
Carlton Reid 12:31
That has obviously the the student accommodation on top. Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s that’s kind of your part of the development. But underneath, there’s an awful lot of car parking space, which in today’s presentation was was very much you know, this is a very boring bit, we’re not going to talk about this very much we’re going to what the surface stuff, but then there’s an awful lot of space underneath — is it half? — is car parking.
Stefano Corbella 13:02
Exacty.
Carlton Reid 13:03
So, is that
And I kinda know the answer to this is that the municipality having a parking code. So, if you have a development you need x number of car parking spaces?
Stefano Corbella 13:16
Yeah, there is a national law which obliges new developments with certain end with a certain typology of building use to provide for parking space and that is a mandatory requirement.
Carlton Reid 13:31
So, there is no way you can avoid that?
Stefano Corbella 13:35
There are only few places where you can not apply that law and is in within historic centre like Rome, because obviously, there is no physical space to create or you know, technical difficulties to create any basement in such a historic centres. But for other for other parts of typically, all the development has to provide that amount of capacity even though in some cases, we as a developer, we know that we will probably not need such amount of parking.
Carlton Reid 14:12
This is student housing …
Stefano Corbella 14:13
Exactly
Carlton Reid 14:14
… you’re building and students famously probably do not have their own cars so you will not need all that space.
Stefano Corbella 14:20
What we have done, what we are doing, is that the first level of parking, we design and we will build with a slightly higher floor to ceiling height.
with in order to build up some flexibility to repurpose that area in the future if we will be able to change the use of that.
Carlton Reid 14:42
Do you think it will be used as parking during the Olympics for the month but you haven’t yet but then maybe afterwards is you so no, no, I’m gonna say look forward and do so far with this law?
Stefano Corbella 14:53
That is going to be a kappa there’s no way we can change. One day if this law
will be no, no longer applicable. And because the car parking we expect that will be used less and less, especially in well connected cities, we will have a lot of space that is unfit. No? And so the idea is let’s build a floor that would be able to accommodate other function. So to use the space, otherwise, we will have an empty space for nothing.
Carlton Reid 15:25
Yes. So many cities or many countries around the world are removing those or trying to remove those parking minimums, because this …
Stefano Corbella 15:34
France, London
if you’re closer to public transportation, you have a derogation on that.
Carlton Reid 15:41
So, do politicians in Italy recognise that other countries are removing the parking minimums be no matter what other countries are doing we should remove parking minimums because from a sustainability point of view, parking minimums now kind of crazy.
Stefano Corbella 15:57
Yeah, I don’t know.
I certainly hopw that with this will be taken into consideration by future legislation, because I think in some places make totally sense not to push for that amount of parking, because sometimes we believe is not needed. So it’s a waste of money. It’s
an impact on on the environment, because you build more space for for things, but we will see. Hopefully, they will at some point will be taken into consideration.
Carlton Reid 16:35
And going back to this development here. Again, something that I think it was Kelly, who mentioned this was that in the in the original master plan, the there was much more of the roads that are around here. were much, much worse, supposed to be much narrower. Yeah. cobbles, maybe. And it was the municipality who said no, leave it as a highway now. So do developers, such as yourselves? Try and do things and municipalities, for whatever reasons, push back? Are developers actually, further ahead of what we need in this world?
Stefano Corbella 17:21
Sometimes, yes. But it is as as you know, it’s it’s a negotiation, you know, we may not see something that the municipality see or they have in the plan, what we can do is to try to demonstrate our, you know, thesis with calculation, we are the, and we always have
all the all the things works, and we don’t want to necessarily narrow streets, because they look pretty, we want the street that works for the purpose of the function that have to do. So we have transport consultant. And if we believe that
street could be smaller is because there’s there’s a calculation that demonstrate a simulation that demonstrate that, but you know, is a negotiation with the municipality, and sometimes we win the discussion. Sometimes we lose the discussion. At the end of the day, I think the project is, is is is beautiful is a nice place. People love it.
Carlton Reid 18:37
So are he roads that are out, basically are outside of your development. So the exterior one, obviously the one that’s coming through here, you’re above it, you’re not you’re not interacting with it below, but the ones outside. So that’s the municipality who have put
the bike paths in? Or is there?
Stefano Corbella 18:58
No, no. As part of the in for this project, because it was so big. And in general for big, huge urban regeneration project.
There’s uban agreement between the developer and the public authority, and typically happens that the developer has to pay taxes for the building that they built, and for the urbanisation, and that is two way, you can pay by cash to the municipality or you can give back in equal value infrastructure works. So we take we we’ve been taking care about the design of everything, including the public spaces, all the infrastructure, and we built on behalf of the city. And then once we completed the ownership
was given back to the city so we did everything and we gave back to the city
Carlton Reid 20:00
Because outside when we’re when we’re very high up, and we’re looking down at everything you had some from from I’m a I’m a bike geek. Yeah. I kind of know the infrastructure that’s been built here. But there’s like a roundabout. Yeah. With it’s like Dutch style roundabout. Yeah, the priority to the cyclists go round it outside. And then at the junction where we started the UK, that’s that’s called a cyclops junction, where the red is for the pedestrians and the cyclists, it gets, you know, cyclists and pedestrians across these major, major junctions. So were they, you might have built them, did the municipality provide the designs for them?
Stefano Corbella 20:44
No, we did the also the design and we had to, you know, get their approval from the municipality. You know, everything has been designed and built by us. There are certain rules that we have to follow those design guidelines, specifically provided by the municipality, so we had to follow those guidelines. Once we completed the design, we gave back to the municipality for approval, we had to provide the bill of quantity than the cost because obviously, you have to match the equivalent of the taxes that you have to pay so and that has to be checked by a third party. And in order to match the equivalent amount of money that you have to give back through taxes. But the design is, is all by as, approved by the municipality.
Carlton Reid 21:36
At this point, let’s take a quick commercial interlude with my colleague, David.
David Bernstein 21:40
Hello, everyone. This is David from the Fredcast, and of course, the spokesmen. And I’m here once again to tell you that this podcast is brought to you by Tern Bicycles, the good people at Tern build bikes that make it easier for you to replace car trips with bike trips. Part of that is being committed to designing useful bikes that are also fun to ride. But an even greater priority for Tern is to make sure that your ride is safe, and worryfree. And that’s why Tern works with industry leading third party testing labs like EFBE, and builds it bikes around Bosch ebike systems which are UL certified for both electric and fire safety. So, before you even zip off on your Tern, fully loaded and perhaps with the loved ones behind, you can be sure that the bike has been tested to handle the extra stresses on the frame and the rigours of the road. For more information, visit www.ternbicycles.com to learn more. And now back to the spokesmen.
Carlton Reid 22:50
Thanks, David. And we’re back with COIMA’s Stefan Corbella as we continue our amble through BAM.
Rather than looking at this this particular project where we are now going just in general across maybe any number of projects that COIMA is involved now are going to be involved with
do you see the pedestrianisation that you have here and the bike paths? Do you see that as something that that’s only going to get bigger and bigger and bigger in the future?
Stefano Corbella 23:23
I totally agree. In fact in Porta Romana, we are actually doing the same exactly the same things. Porta Romana has two lines of train cutting in the middle of the master plan. We are rising the landscape to get across with the park get across the railway. And we are building up like a bridge the
the forester spacer the suspended forest in this case, that cover with a pedestrian path, all the two train lines. So in the landscape will be way better. The train will pass without any any interruption. And most important pedestrian and cycling paths will pass without any trouble and problem without crossing any cars.
Carlton Reid 24:19
And so in the London Olympics, and I’m many of the Olympics, I guess there were the roads because London’s a very congested city they had VIP Olympic lanes. So only a Olympic officials, athletes could drive in these lanes. Is that something that?
Stefano Corbella 24:39
Yeah,
Well, the, the I’m not sure. What I know is that within the Olympic village or the there are there will be a protection around it. And certain parts of the street will be restricted for security purposes. But I’m not I’m not
aware about the street that is being given the VIP path? That I don’t know.
Carlton Reid 25:06
Okay. And do you envisage athletes and people who are connected to the Olympics to use bikes to get around?
Stefano Corbella 25:15
I don’t know.
I don’t know. I don’t know.
Carlton Reid 25:19
Because that isn’t part of the sustainability plan. No, we need X amount of people to be not in cars?
Stefano Corbella 25:26
No, there is no requirement. Although all the Olympic village and the building that we are built, building, there is quite a huge cycling storage for the future student because we will build the Olympic village but then the buildings will be converted straight afterwards into the student housing. And the idea is to make it very design and the properly the building in order to make these changes very quickly. Because the academic year starts in September. So we want to be sure that we have the students that can use the buildings straight after the Olympic
Olympic season.
Carlton Reid 26:14
And every chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
Stefano Corbella 26:19
Yeah.
Carlton Reid 26:19
So as a developer, you may provide very, very good bike paths through Olympic village and through through here, etc. But then when people get outside of the perimeter there, then just the municipality, yeah, is what they provide. Now, do you lobby Do you ask the municipality look, if we’re going to build all these fantastic bike lanes here, can you please make sure that this extends to the Duomo, extends to here, extends to the station?
Stefano Corbella 26:52
Yeah, it’s, yeah, when we when, as I mentioned, we have traffic consultants in our projects. And obviously, we we check the continuity of the bike lane, and you know, not to build a bike lane that is 100 metre long and then start and stop in the middle of nothing. No, because that will be
will be okay, but a waste of money.
Carlton Reid 27:22
So I know this is Isola as an island. But yeah, so you’re not looking at a development as an island and you provide great stuff. You know that for the plan for it to work it has to be an area.
Stefano Corbella 27:35
Yeah, yeah. And to be honest, at the beginning, I remember that the beginning of the project.
to tell you on other things is the city of Milan has changed the the mindset, in bike lane, in green areas, and so on. I remember 15 years ago, 20 years ago, the municipality or in general the city was sceptic about planting trees. Now the city of Milan has a plan to plant 3 million trees, now is completely change their mindset fortunately.
Carlton Reid 28:35
I was in a brand new cafe that opened this afternoon on Via Tunisia. Eroica.
So that’s a famous race in Italy. And this is the third cafe. And the manager who I was speaking to there, had had just been speaking to in fact, they left as as I came in, with the mayor
with about five or six people from the, from the municipality, yeah, talking to the manager and looking at this new cafe. Now, the managers said, and I know politicians will say anything, but the mayor said that they are very serious, very serious about getting rid of cars.
Stefano Corbella 29:21
Yeah, I know.
Carlton Reid 29:22
And is this something you’ve heard before?
No, no, no.
Stefano Corbella 29:40
it’s a much more pleasant city with less cars, way more pleasant. And
Carlton Reid 29:48
But is it feasible though?
Stefano Corbella 29:52
Yeah, yeah. I think I believe in certain in certain areas, with well connected public transportation
it should it could be feasible.
But, you know, we will see how we develop certainly is an improvement of quality of the city. That’s for sure.
Carlton Reid 30:11
I should do my research here. But how long is the mayor being the mayor for? How long has he got left? And if if a city mayor went to the city’s resident and said, I’m going to be taking lots of cars
out of the city, would that mayor be voted in again?
Stefano Corbella 30:31
He just started his second mandate? So he has other almost four full years. He’s just started the second mandate. So has a long way.
Carlton Reid 30:44
Would he be voted in again? And this is a hard question, but would he be voted in again if he had a plan to remove many cars? Is that something that you think Milan people would be?
Stefano Corbella 30:53
Well, that would be I think, Milan has several things. That will be one of the many. I’m not sure they will, these aspects will be key to
Carlton Reid 31:09
being voted in again?
Stefano Corbella 31:11
I think there are many other reasons. I think he’s done a very good job. And, you know, there’s four years to, in front of us.
Carlton Reid 31:21
So it’s a good sign that he’s he’s going into a bike cafe.
Stefano Corbella 31:24
Exactly. That’s definitely a good sign.
Thanks to Stefano Corbella and thanks to you for listening to Episode 317 of the Spokesmen podcast. Links to COIMA’ developments, including Bosco Verticale, can be found on the show notes at the-spokesmen.com. The next episode will be on the role of data in getting more people on bikes, but meanwhile have a Merry Christmas and here’s to a green and happy New Year and, as always, get out there and ride …
13th December 2022
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 316: Milan to banish cars, Mayor promises manager of Eroica Caffe
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUEST: Andrea Benesso
TOPICS: Eroica cycling cafe in Milan.
- Milan to banish cars, Mayor promises manager of Eroica Caffe
Carlton Reid, December 13, 2022
Read more… - World Champion Transportation Cyclist Beryl Burton — Book Chat With Author Jeremy Wilson
Carlton Reid, December 8, 2022
Read more… - Book Talk With Hannah Reynolds and Ned Boulting
Carlton Reid, November 26, 2022
Read more… - Tour de Luxe — riding with legends on Ibiza with upscale Leblanq
Carlton Reid, November 17, 2022
Read more… - Good Move: How Bicycles Could End the Occupation of Cars in the EU capital of Brussels
Carlton Reid, November 4, 2022
Read more… - You don’t have to be horrible to win
Carlton Reid, October 30, 2022
Read more… - Cycling legends roundtable with Mark Cavendish, Oscar Freire, Adam Blythe, Johan Museeuw & Matt Stephens
Carlton Reid, October 27, 2022
Read more… - Old crew is back
Carlton Reid, October 10, 2022
Read more… - In conversation with Justin Williams
Carlton Reid, October 6, 2022
Read more… -
Kidical Mass: How, Why, Where, When
Carlton Reid, September 24, 2022
Read more…
TRANSCRIPT:
Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 316 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Tuesday, the 13th of December 2022.
David Bernstein 0:27
The spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern Bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e bikes for every type of rider whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.
Carlton Reid 1:02
I was in Milan the other week and popped into the brand new Eroica cafe in the city centre. The mayor and his entourage were there also. And after they left I asked cafe manager Andrea Benesso whether Mayor Sala really aims to reduce the dominance of cars in this most motor fixated of cities. I’m Carlton Reid, and I enjoyed cycling along Milan’s new cycleways, including the one that got me to the Eroica cafe. This cycling themed cafe — owned by the 25-year-old-this-year Eroica ride has taken over a former car accessories shop. So maybe that’s a sign of things to come. Here’s my chat with Andrea …
Andrea Benesso 1:55
So, henre we are sorry for.
Carlton Reid 1:57
That’s okay. You have important guests.
So good to meet you. Thank you for
Andrea Benesso 2:04
thanks to you for being here.
Carlton Reid 2:05
Oh, that’s okay. So this is really new, like a week.
Andrea Benesso 2:09
Actually is the first day because we opened 15 days ago, but then COVID
There was a COVID problem with the staff. Okay, so
today is the second day yesterday was the first one.
Carlton Reid 2:25
So you are quite busy for being very, very new.
Andrea Benesso 2:28
Yeah, it is very good too. Yesterday it was also the first event with a bike traveller, and we had 300 people here. It was super cool evening. Very nice.
Carlton Reid 2:39
Who was the bike traveller?
Andrea Benesso 2:40
Is Lorenzo Barona. He travelled from South Africa to Siberia.
This year, and then three years ago, he pedalled the inci barrier during the winter is a super tough and super nice guy, but he’s very young. He’s 26 years old, but he has already a lot of stories to tell and also is an inspiration.
Carlton Reid 3:03
Like my son, my son, he’s 25. And he is in Morocco right now?
Andrea Benesso 3:07
Really? Great. Yeah, great.
Carlton Reid 3:10
So this is the fourth third cafe?
Andrea Benesso 3:14
Actually is the second one because the first one is in Padova.
This there is another one but I very small in in Tuscany …
The second one is in Tuscany, but it’s very small. It’s more like it’s more like a shop than a cafe. And then there is another one in Barcelona, which actually is the first one but it’s not.
The
the ownership is not from by Eroica. It’s something is a little bit different. I can say that this is the second one.
Carlton Reid 3:56
Is it a
name a brand name or owned by one company?
Andrea Benesso 4:02
Yeah, one company, one company, one company. Yeah. And half of this company is Eroica and the other half is
an entrepreneur of
food and beverage
entertainment.
Carlton Reid 4:19
Who’s that? Who’s the who’s the partner?
Andrea Benesso 4:22
Is Totaro.
The name of the family is Totaro.
Carlton Reid 4:26
Okay. And
with the event,
so you kind of make money on the event only at certain times. This makes money throughout the year. Is that the reason for cafes or what there is a cultural reason.
Andrea Benesso 4:42
First of all, it’s a very nice story to tell because, you know, the founder of Eroica is Giancarlo Brocci is a journalist. Yeah, he’s an extraordinary man with a lot of stories. It’s very interesting person. And he always is he has a nicer about it because he says that we
When he was a really little kid, I mean, three years ago, four or three years old, four years old, old, he was already able to read. And he did Tuscany of 60 years ago. And most of the people was unable to read. And so they old man, T two came on the cafe over the, you know, the old Cafe Italian Cafe era, to read the Gazzetta dello Sport about cycling. Because, you know, 60 years ago cycling in Italy was was everything more than football more than politics more than everything. So Brocci grew up reading Gazzetta dello Sport to the farmers and very humble people unable to read reading about Coppi and Bartali and Tour de France and everything else. So great.
So when Giancarlo grew up and become a man, he invented Eroica and the roots of Eroica was in a cafe. Because his first experience about cycling was reading newspapers about Coppi and Bartali in a cafe in in Tuscany. So the idea of taking back right corner on a cafe was there since the beginning. Okay, and so the idea behind that Eroica Cafe is to take this spirit, these emotions, you know, it’s very traditional of the values of historical cycling the values of historical cyclists back here and in Milan is very interesting, because you know, Milan is like London, you know, everything is very fast about business.
But the idea is to take here, also the idea to take time for your passions, for values to meet people to enjoy food to enjoy a coffee, and wine. It’s not all about cycling is, is especially about one viva, you know, it’s while leaving.
Carlton Reid 7:08
Yes. So that moved on my next question. I guess you’re not just attracting cyclists here. These are people who are probably not cyclists.
Andrea Benesso 7:15
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Carlton Reid 7:18
It’s a way of branding it and
setting that
is an aesthetic to attract a general.
Andrea Benesso 7:31
Exactly. You said. You said that perfectly. I mean, that cycling, is this a starting point?
To speak about everything about life, you know that the claim of Eroica is?
Common with me because I don’t remember exactly in English is.
Yeah, exactly. You know,
moving to the cafe
is the beauty. Exactly, and the trailer with a common question, and this is about cycling. But is this about life, you know, it’s not only cycling. So what we like to do is to take people here, and to enjoy this value, even if you’re another cyclist. But a cycling is a starting point, because it’s fascinating.
Carlton Reid 8:18
But in Italy, do you think the general population and I’m talking to like a UK perspective? Yeah, where a cycling cafe would not be terribly exciting to a general population. But do you think in Italy, because maybe cycling and the sport of cycling is more recognised? This is more mainstream that it would be an analyst difficult question, but it’s more mainstream in Italy than perhaps it would be in another country?
Andrea Benesso 8:43
I have to say that in Italy, we have a stronger you have a stronger roots on cycling
on a cultural point of view, because of you know, Giro d’Italia is something that when I was a kid a little too, a little kid, I saw that every day on on TV, because for my father, it was a tradition, you know,
Carlton Reid 9:04
You’re a cyclist?
Andrea Benesso 9:05
yeah, sure.
And, and for every men of my age, and or even older or younger, to see Giro d’Italia is a tradition that you can’t avoid.
And so it’s it’s true that in Italy, cycling is for everyone. If you’re even if you’re another cyclists, you know what we are talking about. But I think that now, everywhere in the world, I also in England, in England, I was there a month ago. I think that more and more cycling is, is becoming global because it’s
isn’t not more about racing. It’s about enjoying life, enjoy moments,
being good and
Doing good moments with friends so or even alone, but you know when when you’re alone and you feel good on a bike, you’re living good.
Carlton Reid 10:08
So dolce vita?
Andrea Benesso 10:10
Yeah.
Carlton Reid 10:11
So what was this building before?
Andrea Benesso 10:14
Yes, very fun.
Carlton Reid 10:17
There’s an auto on the …
Andrea Benesso 10:19
Yeah, exactly. It was a traditional shop of
motor and bike pieces.
motorbike or motorbike. Motorbike a PC is very can be in Italian in English. Exactly. You know when you small parts.
Carlton Reid 10:37
Okay, accessory.
Andrea Benesso 10:39
Yeah, accessory. Exactly. So it’s very fun because we decided to take the
brand outside to leave it here because it’s fun to to read from cars to bike. You know, it’s a it’s a nice and fun evolution. Yes, yes, absolutely.
Carlton Reid 10:59
Swords to Ploughshares.
Andrea Benesso 11:01
Yeah. And also the details that you can see inside this one. And this one is old. It’s the old elements of the of the traditional shop.
Carlton Reid 11:13
Okay. And then you have bikes hanging on the wall, some some new bikes, the Canyon.
Andrea Benesso 11:19
Yeah, yeah, sure.
Carlton Reid 11:19
That’s obviously a new gravel bike.
Andrea Benesso 11:22
Yeah, because Eroica is not only classical bikes, but it’s also gravel bikes. It’s also modern cycling, but it’s also with
traditional style. I mean that even if you bike, if you buy a carbon gravel bike from a Canyon, or from Colnago, that’s okay. But we ask you to pedal it with Eroica style. I mean, enjoy your moment. Enjoy your life. And after the ride, have a beer with your friends, meet people.
Carlton Reid 11:56
It’s more than 25 years old now. It’s been a surprising amount of time.
Andrea Benesso 12:01
Yeah, it’s 25. This is the 25th year of Eroica is very good.
Celebration is it was this year.
There were 9500 people taking part to Eroica in Gaiole. And we are talking about one one of the greatest nonprofit cycling event in the world. With people coming from everywhere in the world, more than half of the people was from abroad. And that means that your that you had the possibility to meet their people from Japan that took one week to come there to find an historical bike to pedal and it’s you know, it’s a very stronger
Carlton Reid 12:54
The strade bianche, you can you can there’s a on the website, you can ride the route, even when it’s not the event.
Sure, you can the event it the route is mapped.
Andrea Benesso 13:01
And yeah, because this is the this is very important because it is not only an event, it’s a community movement, if I can say that. So it’s important to say to everyone that
Eroica one, first of all to promote
an area which is Tuscany, and style. And you can do that every time in during the year not only during the event.
Gaiole in Chianti, which is the main stage, I can say that to have the Eroica is a very small community and town. But now it’s an international, small town about cycling. Everyone in the world knows. Everyone in the world knows that Gaiole in Chianti thanks to Eroica.
Carlton Reid 13:49
And so this is a gravel bike. So strade bianche, gravel roads.
Andrea Benesso 13:54
Yeah.
Carlton Reid 13:54
So this was this is many, many years before gravel cycling.
Andrea Benesso 13:59
Yeah, sure.
Carlton Reid 14:00
Gravel cycling is way ahead of the trend. But you’re also you’re in other countries. So on the placemat here. You’re talking about other countries you’ve expanded to. Yes, South Africa …
Andrea Benesso 14:14
Yeah, a lot of countries.
I don’t know remember exactly the number I think more than 15 countries in the world, California, Japan, South Africa,
Carlton Reid 14:25
UK,
Andrea Benesso 14:27
Eroica Britannia and
yeah, that is
you know, a symbol in some way of how these values are international are not Italian are for everyone. Every cyclists can enjoy this kind of
way to pedal and to enjoy moments.
Carlton Reid 14:53
Where do you come from so we know where the buildings come from, but where have you come from?
Andrea Benesso 14:58
I’m ….
Ah,
Ciao. Ciao ciao. I’m from Padova
Carlton Reid 15:05
Workwise What were you doing before this?
Andrea Benesso 15:08
Before?
I, I work for Eroica.
Carlton Reid 15:15
Okay.
Andrea Benesso 15:15
I work organisation already.
No Eroica I, the first,
the founders of Eroica are from Tuscany. Giancarlo Brocci is the first one is the real founder. There are now many people that work for for Eroica, right the family is so big family now.
Carlton Reid 15:37
How many people?
Andrea Benesso 15:41
I don’t know exactly the name the number. But
in only in Italy, I can say more than 10.
And if you consider also Eroica caffe, I can say more than 30 people.
So it’s like a
big family. And what I can say about that is that you can feel that to every people that work in Eroical family is very passionate about the Eroica, even if you’re some people inside the Eroica family is not a cyclist, but it’s not, it doesn’t matter.
Carlton Reid 16:18
And then the model is your first days loads last night was an event. So this is what you plan to do your hang ups.
Andrea Benesso 16:29
Yes. You can imagine right a cafe as something with the two souls and one is on our cafe and restaurant, where you, you can come here and enjoy the food or Ryan or a cafe. And the other one is cultural space, cultural space where you can enjoy events, or bike rides, or
many moments
that we build for every
kind of cyclist, road cyclists, gravel cyclists or bike travellers,
urban cyclists, we have to, we want to we want to be the house of every kind of cyclists, every kind of people that use bikes. You’re during his day, and your race is life.
Carlton Reid 17:21
Are there plans for, say, Rome, other cities.
Andrea Benesso 17:25
Yeah, we plan to expand to everywhere in Europe, and also
the States. Eroica Caffe is a big, really big project. Wow. Yeah, there’s a while.
Carlton Reid 17:37
And then you mentioned the urban cyclists. So tell me about, like cycling in Milan, and maybe how it’s, you tell me if it’s changed?
How is cycling here in the city? Is it improving?
for urban cyclists?
Andrea Benesso 17:54
Yeah, it’s improving a lot is not
Carlton Reid 17:59
Such any roads. I was on a bike lane all the way here.
Andrea Benesso 18:01
Yeah. Yeah.
It changed a lot during the last five years. Also, thanks to the last
mayor that was here some minutes ago. And the cycling community is really important, and only in Milan. More and more people
here are using bike bikes to move in the city. So we have a community, a big community, made by different people, I mean, you can find the urban commuters and then
people that use cargo bikes to deliveries, and then
classical road cyclists, and then gravel bikers, every kind of cyclists, the community is getting bigger. And I think that after COVID bike is now our concrete option to move in the city is something that I saw in London for example, I noticed that more and more people are
so that and realise that bike is
often the best solution to move in the city.
Carlton Reid 19:20
Well, I
I am 20 minutes away by by walking. So I was looking on my app should I cycle here should I walk, you know, get my bike out, my bike at the exact all these things I’m thinking about but then there’s the will I can see within about five minutes if I cycle so that’s just for me a no brainer. I got many things to do today. So I will cycle to get here and then I was wonderfully surprised by how many nice bike lanes that were. So So I got like a the breeze, but it is cold right now. Anybody who thinks that you know I’m in Milan and I’m sunningg myself I’m not it is cold here as in the UK, yet there are still
So lots of people cycling. Yeah, they’ve wrapped up incredibly warming at Woodlands. And just as you would be in, in northern Europe, you know, way Northern Europe.
So that’s been surprising that people are cycling. Clearly year round. It’s not a summer thing.
Andrea Benesso 20:15
Yeah, yeah. Cycle all the time. Yeah, yeah, this is
an evolution that I saw during the last three or four years
here need to do we realise that biking is possible also during the winter, I, in my opinion, I can say that it’s better in the winter, if you have to go gloating, then in the summer, when, you know, when it’s very hot, it’s hot. You can have you can escape, you can’t escape.
Carlton Reid 20:45
So what can the municipality do to improve things for cyclists? What because they there’s some bike lanes, I’m guessing they’re not everywhere. So there are some major ones on the major routes, they put bike lanes in, but what else could the municipality do?
Andrea Benesso 21:00
some very complicated matter matter, because, you know, it’s about safety, it’s about culture, it’s about offering people inter modality, if I can say that showed the possibility to take the biker on the underground on the train on the buses. So, I think that you can, you have to work on the bike lanes, build the spaces, where you can cycling safe, but you have to work also on the cultural side,
saying by saying to people that biker is
useful, is some is faster, is cheaper, that is, is almost always the better solution. And it’s not simple to do that because if you speak with a cyclist, you know, you seem immediately it can understand that. But if you if you think if you speak with a peep with a man of 50 years old,
who always used car is not easy to to convince him to switch to a tall bike younger people you think that the younger people is easier in my opinion, because they they are growing up with
a cultural
there they are aware about, you know, the climate issues, and they are not so for them, it’s not important to have a car as a status symbol.
In my opinion, young people
under already understood that we have to convince adults about switching they are about changing their lifestyle.
Carlton Reid 22:51
At this point, I’d like to get across my colleague David for a short ad break.
David Bernstein 22:56
Hello, everyone. This is David from the Fredcast, and of course, the spokesmen. And I’m here once again to tell you that this podcast is brought to you by Tern Bicycles, the good people at Tern build bikes that make it easier for you to replace car trips with bike trips. Part of that is being committed to designing useful bikes that are also fun to ride. But an even greater priority for Tern is to make sure that your ride is safe, and worryfree. And that’s why Tern works with industry leading third party testing labs like EFBE, and builds it bikes around Bosch ebike systems which are UL certified for both electric and fire safety. So, before you even zip off on your Tern, fully loaded and perhaps with the loved ones behind, you can be sure that the bike has been tested to handle the extra stresses on the frame and the rigours of the road. For more information, visit www.ternbicycles.com to learn more. And now back to the spokesmen.
Carlton Reid 24:05
Thanks David. And we are back in the Eroica cafe in Milan with Andrea Benesso. And if there were no cars here in such a dream world, would it be very easy to cycle everywhere in Milan Anyway Is it a good city for getting around on a bike?
Andrea Benesso 24:23
Yes, perfect. It is completely flat is more is really small because if you compare Milan to London for example, I don’t know exactly but I think that is
very very small. By in half an hour you can cross Milan.
Everything is very close.
And also a nice thing to say that it is that you feel go outside to Milan in 20 minutes you are in the countryside. So why not?
Carlton Reid 24:55
You will have road groups leaving from the shop?
Andrea Benesso 24:58
Yeah, we’re going out
you plan to do normally it’s probably not know yet, but we are working to do that every week there are there are also other bikes in Milan that are already doing that because it’s nice, you know, to, to enjoy cycling with our friends and to go on the countryside also even in the mountains, going into the mountains from here is not too far it’s something more than an hour by bike.
Carlton Reid 25:26
And where exactly are we? Maybe such that’s a strange question to ask this this for it, but where are we in Milan?
Andrea Benesso 25:34
We are close to the train main train station. So it’s a very one of the most important point of the cities and we are five minutes by bike from the Duomo 10 minutes, you know,
Carlton Reid 25:47
that’s what I’m doing afterwards. I’m gonna
Andrea Benesso 25:48
Yeah, exactly is everything is very close. Yet. This is also
up now, Mara with the city that is becoming more and more cool.
So it’s interesting to be here, it’s a good point for for a bike cafe.
Carlton Reid 26:06
And then I mentioned there that if you remove the cars that other cities are doing that in Paris is doing this and removing parking places and living cars. Is Milan, does Milan have that meant to the municipality? Do they not only want to encourage cycling and encourage walking but also have in their mind that we must actually reduce the number of cars? Do you see that as a concept?
Andrea Benesso 26:33
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we were talking about that with the mayor of the city just yeah, half an hour ago. And it’s
this is the point. Because you have to
push people to use the bike. But you have also to
Carlton Reid 26:51
the carrot and the stick.
Andrea Benesso 26:52
Yeah, exactly. The carrot and the stick is perfectly.
Carlton Reid 26:56
But when you talk to the mayor, that is something that you can talk to the mayor about. And the mayor will say yes, this is what we want to do.
Andrea Benesso 27:05
Yeah, sure. The mayor told told us that he wants to reduce the number of cars in Milan.
And if if you want to if you want to do that, if you are have this goal, you have to do many things.
Carlton Reid 27:22
But when in other cities, other mayors
even breath such a concept, they may not get voted in this next time. So this is very political.
Andrea Benesso 27:36
Yeah, it’s very political.
Carlton Reid 27:37
See, he doesn’t envisage any. He thinks this is a vote winner?
Andrea Benesso 27:43
I don’t know. I don’t know. But you have to be. I think that a good politician has to be brave now, right now, not only about cycling, but also about the environment,
about the quality of life. You have to be brave and to change things, even if maybe a lot of a lot of people won’t be happy about that.
Carlton Reid 28:07
Then many people wouldn’t be happy about that. But maybe the older people
don’t know. We’re all older.
Andrea Benesso 28:14
Yeah, I suppose. Because I hope you know, for me, I have two kids. And I hope that for them that we as generation
of adults will be able to change something. We can’t leave to our children this world like that.
More coffee shops, less cars.
Carlton Reid 28:40
Bicycle themed coffee shops, less cars.
Andrea Benesso 28:43
Yeah.
Carlton Reid 28:45
Thanks to Andrea Banesso there and thanks to you for listening to Episode 316 of the spokesmen podcast.Details about Eroica cafes can be found on the show notes at the -spokesmrn.com. The next episode will also be Milan shaped. But meanwhile, get out there and ride.
8th December 2022
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 315: World Champion Transportation Cyclist Beryl Burton — Book Chat With Author Jeremy Wilson
SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUEST: Jeremy Wilson
TOPICS: The amazing Beryl Burton, with author Jeremy Wilson
LINKS: Beryl (Jeremy’s book)
TRANSCRIPT: to come
- World Champion Transportation Cyclist Beryl Burton — Book Chat With Author Jeremy Wilson
Carlton Reid, December 8, 2022
Read more… - Book Talk With Hannah Reynolds and Ned Boulting
Carlton Reid, November 26, 2022
Read more… - Tour de Luxe — riding with legends on Ibiza with upscale Leblanq
Carlton Reid, November 17, 2022
Read more… - Good Move: How Bicycles Could End the Occupation of Cars in the EU capital of Brussels
Carlton Reid, November 4, 2022
Read more… - You don’t have to be horrible to win
Carlton Reid, October 30, 2022
Read more… - Cycling legends roundtable with Mark Cavendish, Oscar Freire, Adam Blythe, Johan Museeuw & Matt Stephens
Carlton Reid, October 27, 2022
Read more… - Old crew is back
Carlton Reid, October 10, 2022
Read more… - In conversation with Justin Williams
Carlton Reid, October 6, 2022
Read more… - Kidical Mass: How, Why, Where, When
Carlton Reid, September 24, 2022
Read more… -
Eco Adventure on Proposed Sail-powered Bike and Foot Ferry From Dover to Boulogne
Carlton Reid, September 22, 2022
Read more…
26th November 2022 The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast EPISODE 314: Book Talk With Hannah Reynolds and Ned Boulting SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles HOST: Carlton Reid GUESTS: Hannah Reynolds and Ned Boulting TOPICS: Hannah Reynolds talks about her LEJOG1000 book “Britain’s Best Bike Ride” and Ned Boulting discusses the fifth year of “The Road Book.” TRANSCRIPT Carlton Reid 0:13Welcome to Episode 314 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Saturday 26th of November 2022. David Bernstein 0:27The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day, and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words,…
17th November 2022 The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast EPISODE 313: Tour de Luxe — riding with legends on Ibiza with upscale Leblanq SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles HOST: Carlton Reid GUESTS: Justin Clarke, Mark Cavendish, Monica Dew, Sophie Power, Jamie Criddle, Johan Museeuw, Rob Gitelis, Margaret and Joyce from Taiwan, Matias Bjork, Sean Yates. TOPICS: Balcony views, posh food, drafting behind legends — listen up for what guests think of their luxury bike break with LeBlanq in Ibiza. Carlton Reid also interviews Mark Cavendish and Johan Museeuw while riding with them on the party island, and Leblanq cofounder Justin Clarke reveals why c-suite execs love rolling with world champions. TRANSCRIPT: Carlton Reid 0:13Welcome to Episode 313 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast.…
4th November 2022 The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast EPISODE 312: Good Move: How Bicycles Could End the Occupation of Cars in the EU capital of Brussels SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles HOST: Carlton Reid GUESTS: Elke Van den Brandt, mobility minister for Brussels; Luxembourg councillor and EU Committee of the Regions rapporteur for mobility Linda Gaasch; Alison Abrahams from the Casual Cycling Club; Philip Amaral, policy directer of the European Cyclists’ Federation; Kim Smouter of the European Network Against Racism; and Philipp Cerny, author of the European Mobility Atlas. TOPICS: The burgeoning of bicycling in Brussels TRANSCRIPT: Carlton Reid 0:13Welcome to Episode 312 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on 4th November 2022. David Bernstein 0:27The Spokesmen cycling…
30th October 2022 The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast EPISODE 311: You don’t have to be horrible to win SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles HOST: Carlton Reid GUESTS: Donna Tocci, Jim Moss TOPICS: Roundtable discussion on Cav’s chances of winning a stage of the 2023 Tour de France, Musk’s takeover of Twitter, Mario Cipollini’s three year prison sentence for domestic abuse, and will Denver’s super popular e-bike rebate program reduce car trips? See links, below. LINKS: Joe Lindsey article on Cav in Bicycling LeBlanq Denver’s e-bike rebate program Mario Cipollini sentenced to 3 years in jail Jim’s article on Bicycle Retailer
27th October 2022 The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast EPISODE 310: Cycling legends roundtable with Mark Cavendish, Oscar Freire, Adam Blythe, Johan Museeuw & Matt Stephens SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles HOST: Carlton Reid GUESTS: Mark Cavendish, Oscar Freire, Adam Blythe, Johan Museeuw & Matt Stephens TOPIC: This roundtable discussion was recorded at LeBlanq’s Joyride in Ibiza LINKS: LeBlanq
10th October 2022 The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast EPISODE 309: Old crew is back SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles HOST: David Bernstein GUESTS: Tim Jackson, Donna Tocci, Jim Moss, Carlton Reid TOPICS: What is everyone up to these days? The Hour Record UCI Gravel Worlds Cycling Tips Reporter Disallowed From Worlds in Australia UCI Changes Rule to Combat Aero Advantages in Time Trials Official at Finishing Line Gets Handsy with Lorena Wiebes National Cycling League Electric Bikes David says: Filippo Ganna’s Hour Record Excellent WSJ Article “How Far Can You Ride a Bike in an Hour? Start With An Aerodynamicist” The Armstrong $30,000 ride? I don’t know if I want to touch this one. Up to you all. (How about LA allegedly…
6th October 2022 The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast EPISODE 308: In conversation with Legion’s Justin Williams SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles HOST: Carlton Reid GUEST: Justin Williams TOPICS: On today’s show, six days into Black History Month, Carlton talks about the inspirational 19th century black American professional cycle racer Major Taylor with his modern equivalent, Justin Williams. Like Major Taylor, Justin raced in Europe but unlike Major Taylor he’s entreuprenial, using his Los-Angeles-based Legion racing team, which he founded with his equally fast brother Cory, to increase the diversity of cycling. In this 45-minute chat they talk about Justin’s cycling mad dad and the crazy popular cycling scene of Belize. LINKS: https://www.ternbicycles.com https://www.instagram.com/juswilliamz/?hl=en https://www.instagram.com/l39ion.la/ https://www.l39ionla.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_Taylor http://majortaylorassociation.org https://www.cyclekids.org https://www.instagram.com/nationsnumber1beast/ https://www.rapha.cc/gb/en/stories/legion-of-los-angeles https://www.instagram.com/ayesuppose/?hl=en…
24th September 2022 The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast EPISODE 307: Kidical Mass: How, Why, Where, When SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles HOST: Carlton Reid GUEST: Kat Heath, Kidical Mass, Reading TOPIC: Hundreds of “Kidical Mass” rides are taking place across the UK and Europe this weekend. A more family-friendly version of Critical Mass, these rolling demos show decision makers – with an abundance of cuteness — that children need safe space to cycle and that roads are theirs too. Kat Heath of Reading’s ride explains more. TRANSCRIPT Carlton Reid 0:13Welcome to Episode 307 of the spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was published on Saturday 24th of September 2022. David Bernstein 0:29The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern…
22nd September 2022 The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast EPISODE 306: Eco Adventure on Proposed Sail-powered Bike and Foot Ferry From Dover to Boulogne SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles HOST: Carlton Reid GUESTS: Andrew Simons, Brandt Williamson, Robert Tickner, Tom Treasure, Caroline Tyndall, Wayne Godfrey TOPIC: A pioneering wind-powered cross-channel ferry for cyclists and pedestrians from Dover to Boulogne operated by startup SailLink had a series of test runs earlier in September, and Carlton Reid was on the first crossing to northern France. SailLink plans to commission a bespoke craft for its 12-passenger service, but the demonstration crossings used a smaller vessel, the Mago Merlino, a 12-metre catamaran certified to carry six paying passengers and two bicycles. LINKS: SailLink Tres Hombres Guardian…
29th August 2022 The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast EPISODE 305: Sexy Urban Bike: In Conversation with Knog CEO Hugo Davidson SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles HOST: Carlton Reid GUEST: Hugo Davidson, CEO, Knog TOPICS: Knog, 20 years young this year, started with a scattergun portfolio of bike products, a messy mix of messenger bags, shoes and cycling gloves, tapping into the zeitgeisty fixie-cum-singlespeed scene of the early to mid 2000s. But there was also the Tadpole, a LED handlebar light with front and rear facing LEDs. This turned out to be the Australian design company’s breakthrough product, far more in demand from a global audience than the eye-of-the-beholder soft goods. But it was the next LED offering which made the company’s…
10th August 2022 The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast EPISODE 304: In conversation with e-bike guru Ed Benjamin SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles HOST: Carlton Reid GUEST: Ed Benjamin TOPICS: The growth of electric bikes since the 1990s and their future, with e-bike guru Ed Benjamin. TRANSCRIPT Carlton Reid 0:12Welcome to Episode 304 of The Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was published on Wednesday 10th of August 2022.. David Bernstein 0:23The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day, and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to…
20th July 2022 The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast EPISODE 303: How five US cities built 335 miles of separated cycleway networks in two years SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles HOST: Carlton Reid GUESTS: Sara Studdard and Zoe Kircos TOPICS: Urbanists Sara Studdard and Zoe Kircos of Denver-based nonprofit City Thread discuss how the Final Mile project and People for Bikes enabled five US cities to build 335 miles of separated and often protected cycleway networks in only 24 months, several years ahead of schedule. LINKS: TRANSCRIPT: Carlton Reid 0:13Welcome to Episode 303 of the spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was published on Wednesday 20th of July 2022. David Bernstein 0:23The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles.…
18th July 2022 The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast EPISODE 302: Three ultracyclists explain how and why SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles HOST: Carlton Reid GUESTS: Kabir Rachure, Josh Reid, Ruth Sutherland TOPICS: Kabir Rachure was the first Asian to podium at the Race Across America, or RAAM, which finished a couple of weeks back. Ruth Sutherland was a rookie rider at this year’s 620 mile All Points North race in northern England. Josh Reid also rode All Points North but in preparation for the Transcontinental, a 2500 mile unsupported race across Europe from the cobbles of Flanders to the shores of the Black Sea. LINKS: Kabir’s RAAM podium result Ultrahuman All Points North Transcontinental Giant Revolt Luchos Dillitos banana leaves wrapped…
18th June 2022 The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast EPISODE 301: A Milan-shaped Conversation with Janette Sadik-Khan SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles HOST: Carlton Reid GUEST: Janette Sadik-Khan TOPICS: The miracle of Milan, with Janette Sadik-Khan. Sorry, no transcript for now. And there are also problems with the feed so the audio won’t auto download for now.
18th June 2022 The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast EPISODE 300: Chef’s Bike Tour of Sardinia SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles HOST: Carlton Reid GUESTS: Tourissimo guides, tour guests and US chef Mary Sue Milliken TOPICS: 38-minute travelogue of the Chef’s Bike Tour of Sardinia by Tourissimo. Sardinia’s so-called Blue Zone has many locals living robustly into their nineties and beyond, with a much higher than normal concentration of centenarians including Uncle Julio who was still cycling at 104. Show — topped and tailed with Cantu a tenore folk singing — also includes some chomping of Sardinia’s banned-in-the-EU mountain cheese riddled with live maggots. LINKS: Tourissimo’s Chef’s Bike Tour of Sardinia Cantu a tenore folk singing Maggot-riddled cheese TRANSCRIPT: Carlton Reid 0:10Welcome…
1st June 2022 The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast EPISODE 299: In conversation with Marco te Brömmelstroet SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles HOST: Carlton Reid GUEST: Fietsprofessor Marco te Brömmelstroet of University of Amsterdam’s Urban Cycling Institute TOPICS: This show is a conversation with Fietsprofessor Marco te Brömmelstroet of University of Amsterdam’s Urban Cycling Institute LINKS: “Movement,” by Thalia Verkade and Marco te Brömmelstroet. TRANSCRIPT TO COME:
28th May 2022 The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast EPISODE 298: Why are Dutch children cycling less? Ask BYCS SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles HOST: Carlton Reid GUESTS: Aya Achaboun, Simón Alvarez Belon, Lucas Boer and Maud de Vries TOPICS: BYCS, bicycle mayors and why a Dutch NGO felt the need to create a program to stop the drop in child cyclist numbers in … the Netherlands. OTHER LINKS: DFDS ferry. Eye Cafe, Amsterdam. Tourissmo’s Chef’s bike tour of Sardinia. World Bicycle Day, June 3rd. Are cyclist numbers dropping? These official stats say not; ANWB says yes. TRANSCRIPT: Carlton Reid 0:09Welcome to Episode 298 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was released on Saturday 28th of May 2022. David Bernstein 0:22The…
23rd May 2022 The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast EPISODE 297: Stop motorways, remove parking, boost bicycling, says Sweden’s Climate Law Inquiry SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles HOST: Carlton Reid GUESTS: Anders Roth TOPICS: This show is a 37 minute conversation with the secretary of Sweden’s Climate Law Inquiry. 44 page English-language summary starts on p. 41 of this PDF. TRANSCRIPT: Carlton Reid 0:09Welcome to Episode 297 of the spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was recorded on Monday 23rd of May 2022. David Bernstein 0:22The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern Bicycles. The good people at Tern committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day, and dependable enough to carry the people you love.…
8th May 2022 The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast EPISODE 296: Explore Your Boundaries SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles HOST: Carlton Reid GUESTS: Marcus Stitz and Mark Beaumont TOPICS: This show is 45 minutes with round the world cyclists Marcus Stitz and Mark Beaumont discussing their “explore your boundaries” bike-boat-ferry tour of Argyll, Scotland. TRANSCRIPT: Carlton Reid 0:05Welcome to Episode 296 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Sunday, eighth of May 2022. David Bernstein 0:21The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern Bicycles. Good people at Tern committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day, and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kinds…
21st April 2022 The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast EPISODE 295: The best electric car is a bicycle — in conversation with sustainability scientist Kim Nicholas SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles HOST: Carlton Reid GUEST: Professor Kim Nicholas TOPICS: This show is a little under an hour with Professor Kim Nicholas, an American sustainability scientist based in Lund, Sweden. She’s co-author of a new study which ranks the 12 best ways to reduce car dependence in cities. TRANSCRIPT: Carlton Reid 0:13Welcome to Episode 295 of The Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on 21st of April 2022. David Bernstein 0:24Hey everybody, it’s David from the Fredcast. And of course, I’m one of the hosts and producers of The Spokesmen cycling roundtable…
27th March 2022 The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast EPISODE 294: Building a Better World — an Activist Planner’s Network Analysis of Bike Lanes in Paris SPONSOR: Jenson USA HOST: Carlton Reid GUEST: Marcel Moran TOPICS: This is a show about network analysis, specifically of the coronapistes of Paris but also how the University of Californina Berkeley has a strong history of what’s known as “activist planning” where there is an acknowledgement that scholars will want to build a better world. With Marcel Moran, a PhD Candidate at the Department of City & Regional Planning University of California, Berkeley LINKS: Marcel’s study on Paris. Marcel on Google Scholar. Marcel’s website. MACHINE TRANSCRIPT Carlton Reid 0:13Welcome to Episode 294 of the…
28th February 2022 The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast EPISODE 293: Beacons with Kevin Mayne SPONSOR: Jenson USA HOST: Carlton Reid GUEST: Kevin Mayne, Chief Executive, Cycling Industries Europe TOPICS: 40 minutes or so with Brussels-based Kevin Mayne the Chief Executive of Cycling Industries Europe, the bike industry advocacy group. We talked beacons. You know, the detection or connection tech I’ve been banging on about since 2018, and which potentially has ethical and safety ramifications for all forms of cycling, and just getting about as a pedestrian for that matter. Kevin puts my mind at rest, at least from an advisory groups point of view. I’m still not too sure the bike industry is fully cognisant of the concerns myself…
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 0:14Welcome to Episode 292 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on the 5th of February 2022. David Bernstein 0:25The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Jenson, USA Jenson USA, where you will find a great selection of products at…
16th January 2022 The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast EPISODE 291: Bike bubble has popped says industry analyst Rick Vosper SPONSOR: Jenson USA HOST: Carlton Reid GUEST: Industry veteran Rick Vosper TOPICS: Any bursting of the bike boom bubble will reverberate widely and could destabilise global bicycle advocacy efforts. This is therefore of potential concern to cyclists in general, argues bike industry veteran Rick Vosper. LINKS: Rick Vosper’s Bicycle Retailer articles. Carlton Reid’s bike boom of the 1970s article on Forbes.com TRANSCRIPT: Carlton Reid 0:13Welcome to Episode 291 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Sunday 16th of January 2022. David Bernstein 0:25The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Jenson USA. Jenson USA where…
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 0:14Welcome to Episode 290 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was recorded on Tuesday 11th of January 2022. David Bernstein 0:25The 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…
22nd December 2021 The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast EPISODE 289: Two Volcano Sprint winner and bike entrepreneur Andrew Phillips SPONSOR: Jenson USA HOST: Carlton Reid GUEST: Andrew Phillips of Orb LINKS: Orb Zolla Sinewave lights TRANSCRIPT: Carlton Reid 0:12Welcome to episode 289 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Wednesday 22nd of December 2021. David Bernstein 0:25The 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 Fred cast. And of course, I’m one of the hosts and producers of The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast since…
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 0:15Welcome to Episode 288 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was recorded on Monday 13th of December 2021. David Bernstein 0:25The 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…
22nd November 2021 The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast EPISODE 287: Chris Froome and Hammerhead CEO Pieter Morgan SPONSOR: Jenson USA HOST: Carlton Reid GUESTS: Chris Froome and Pieter Morgan TOPICS: Chris Froome’s investment in Pieter Morgan’s Hammerhead. LINKS: Hammerhead Next Ventures TRANSCRIPT: Carlton Reid 0:14Welcome to Episode 287 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Monday 22nd of November 2021. David Bernstein 0:25The 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…
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
- What Would Jesus Ride? An Audience with @PedalingPastor
Carlton Reid, February 5, 2022
Read more… * Bike bubble has popped, says industry analyst Rick Vosper
Carlton Reid, January 16, 2022
Read more… * Launch of Gravel cycling Hall of Fame with Guitar Ted
Carlton Reid, January 11, 2022
Read more… * Two Volcano Sprint winner and bike entrepreneur Andrew Phillips
Carlton Reid, December 22, 2021
Read more… * Why is anti-roads campaigner John Stewart against LTNs?
Carlton Reid, December 13, 2021
Read more… * Chris Froome and Hammerhead CEO Pieter Morgan
Carlton Reid, November 22, 2021
Read more… * COP26 SPECIAL: The Transition to Zero Cars
Carlton Reid, November 14, 2021
Read more… * ride for their lives
Carlton Reid, October 29, 2021
Read more… * Birmingham to become a super-sized low-traffic neighbourhood
Carlton Reid, October 4, 2021
Read more… * Autonorama
Carlton Reid, September 19, 2021
Read more…
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!
29th October 2021
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 285: Ride For Their Lives
SPONSOR: Jenson USA
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUESTS: Childrens’ health professionals on the Ride for Their Lives ride.
TOPICS: 30 or so childrens’ health professionals are riding from London to Glasgow to deliver a letter to world leaders at COP26. I joined them on day six between Newcastle and Carlisle.
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MACHINE TRANSCRIPT:
Carlton Reid 0:14
Welcome to Episode 285 of the spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was recorded on Friday 29th of October 2021.
David Bernstein 0:25
The spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by JensonUSA, 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 www.the-spokesmen.com. And now, here’s my fellow host and producer Carlton Reid and the spokesmen.
Carlton Reid 1:10
Hi there I’m Carlton Reid and today I had the honour to meet with a bunch of health professionals on day six of their ride from London to Glasgow. This is the Ride for their Lives rolling demo and they left on Sunday 24th October from the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. There are a core bunch of 30 or so riders with additional day riders joining from different cities en route. Most are children’s healthcare providers and they’re riding to Glasgow to deliver an open letter to political leaders gathering at the COP26 climate conference. Polluted air causes an estimated 7 million deaths annually, and of course, shares the same root causes as the climate crisis. We discuss this and much more on this episode of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. The riders were heading to Carlisle and I jumped between the groups to record audio with as many folks as I could grab as we were riding along or stopping for breathers. We left from Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary in pouring rain and first off I interviewed the CEO of Great Ormond Street hospital Matt Shaw. Well, I thought I did. Well, I did, but the radio mics clearly didn’t like the rain and they turned themselves off without me knowing it. Very gamely, Matt agreed to be interviewed again later in the ride but first here I catch up with Dr Mark Hayden, one of the co-organisers of the ride. Mark was recently awarded as Active Travel Campaigner of the year by London Cycling Campaign, as you soon hear.
Mark, caught you up. Yeah, just through this friends.
Dr Mark Hayden 3:09
Is it? I don’t know. I’m following my little way up. And I’m just looking looking at that. And
Carlton Reid 3:15
it’s a beautiful route now me it wasn’t it Harry coming out of Newcastle was Yeah. But now the rain stopped and you’re now in you know, the, the tires to the side. It’s lovely. It’s beautiful route. Yeah. So, Mark, tell me who you are.
Dr Mark Hayden 3:29
Me?
Carlton Reid 3:30
Yeah.
Dr Mark Hayden 3:31
Well, I’m a paediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Consultant in London, which is a bit of a mouthful and largely irrelevant. That major mainly pays my pays my salary and like allows me actually more time than you’d expect to concentrate on what I think for me is the most important thing I can do at the moment, which is dressed addressing the climate health emergency and like, we all know it cop 26 coming up the situation that we’re in, but not everybody is actually doing anything about it. And you know, you do
Carlton Reid 4:05
lots of stuff because you were active travel campaigner of the year. Yeah, absolutely. With the London cycling campaign.
Dr Mark Hayden 4:12
I was surprised I didn’t apply.
Carlton Reid 4:15
Do you do? Yeah. How did you get that award? What are you in London to make people sign up notice?
Dr Mark Hayden 4:23
Well, I think they mentioned this the right for their lives, which we’ll talk about in a bit, I’m sure. As part of that, because it does fit as you know, there is a strong association between cycling, cycling, infrastructure and riding. But the main thing I was really doing in London was initially focusing on our staff at Great Ormond Street at the time of the pandemic, mainly, and getting cycle infrastructure sorted within gosh, so we actually used a mob called cycling UK he probably heard Yep, and they have something called a cycle friendly employer scheme. Have a think I wrote some one of my usual angry letters to an MP or something. I think there’s a MP cycling group. And they wrote back and said, Why don’t you talk to this guy called James pallisa. So wait, I got together with him. And we, we got Gosh, to be the first NHS Trusts to be a cycle friendly employer. And of course, because I always have to overdo things, we made sure that gosh, was a gold cycle friendly employer. So that gave a lot of opportunity for you know, changing structural things like parking is the main thing. You really need showers, stuff like that. But also information sharing and encouraging people and groups that help. There’s riding along all of that sort
Carlton Reid 5:45
of stuff. Your electric bike there, which might be the sound that people hear it is yeah. Is that what you normally like? Or is that your everyday bike apart from
Dr Mark Hayden 5:54
when it gets stolen, which is either if I ever leave it on the street, which I never do anymore, or AFI was on I think Sakura one or something one of the SAS trends rates going north, up the Lee Valley when I got pulled over by a couple of guys threatened to be shanked, and they relieved me of my previous bike, which was a much more expensive one. But it is a better bike. So I’m not sad about that. So is that one
Carlton Reid 6:19
of the things that you do? Gosh, then you make sure that number one? Well, number one, that’s certainly one of the major things is the people who are coming to work on their bikes are going to have somewhere secure really secure. Yeah, especially in London. Yeah, it’s
Dr Mark Hayden 6:32
got to be behind swipe carded stuff system, if their stuff.
Carlton Reid 6:37
So it was a one already have you put that in? Well,
Dr Mark Hayden 6:40
funnily enough, the guy who actually thought of this ride, Vince, is just ahead of us in a group called silky Oh, he’s been sort of working on that for years. You know, he’s sort of been running that for years. And actually, when I sort of got involved with him, there was a lot of secure cycle parking at Gosh, which is an unusual situation. But nobody used to, you know, there was one section that people could easily get into. And that was always full, and all the rest you couldn’t get into, because you have to ask the security guards for the right door to let you in. So there’s all of these barriers, which were the easiest barriers in the world to kick over once you got organised and did something about it. And you organised an active travel group, which we did rather than a bicycle Users Group, which I think are an impediment to everything. I don’t like bicycle Users group, they just focused on cyclists. And I’m interested in active travel. And Cycling is a great part of active travel. But yeah, so it’s for that bit for the cycle friendly employer. A lot of it was stuff I just did by talking to people, and I didn’t need money and I didn’t need changes. So that was fine. But the junction at Holborn where the paediatrician who works at the Evelina, there’s a bunch of Evelina riders riding with us was killed that the beginning of August Yeah, I can’t do anything about that. The you know, that needs to be changed by,
Carlton Reid 8:15
okay. You got this on your your gang right here.
Dr Mark Hayden 8:19
And we’re on Komoot. And, you know, the only people that can actually change that are Camden, and the mayor, and some clever people who understand how to design a junction, which isn’t me. So that was really the next step. And it wasn’t a conscious step. You know, he was just, I’ve roughly got my stuff cycling, I’ve roughly got them safe. And now someone’s been killed. And that could have been one of my stuff. And several Gosh, stuff are being killed near Gosh, and one’s being killed on that junction before. And everybody knows about it. The mayor, Camden, they all know about it. They all know it’s wrong, and they’re not acting. So people are only going to act if they’ve got the money to act, or they’ve got the inclination. So really, that’s when I sort of moved further into the advocacy quite air. And I think that’s really why the LCC gave me this award, which they probably just made up this year. As far as I know, I don’t know. But so the I think it was around the advocacy. That was the main thing,
Carlton Reid 9:26
advocacy in London. Yeah, let’s segue to what you’re saying about Vince. And coming up with the idea for this ride. Yeah. So when did you start planning this? Why did you start planning this? How did you start planning this?
Dr Mark Hayden 9:39
Yeah. Well, I did talk to Vince about we have lost your group. By the way. Let’s just drop the pace then. Because it’s hard for me to ride lead and
Carlton Reid 9:49
no, I’m taking you away from your role there.
Dr Mark Hayden 9:52
So yeah. Should we just talk?
Carlton Reid 9:55
Yeah, shouldn’t we maybe have
Dr Mark Hayden 9:57
a chance? Sara Do you actually you don’t work in the Bristol Children’s Hospital? Do you? Your mum’s cutting in your hair to support your mama? How old are you 79. Your youngest thing is Toby’s 18. And one of our other writers who left us in Sheffield was 18, too. So you might you make our youngest rider, we were just talking about how the ride came about.
Carlton Reid 10:22
It’s the electric bike, you say?
Dr Mark Hayden 10:24
Well, it is to turn it off.
Carlton Reid 10:28
No, no, no, we’re back together. I think almost
Dr Mark Hayden 10:32
no, it’s off now. And you’re right now, nowadays, now I can use my legs to tell me the pace to go rather than my than my mind. I don’t need electricity on the flat. Should we go back to
Carlton Reid 10:45
when So Vince is up ahead? And yeah, so maybe when maybe when did this all come together?
Dr Mark Hayden 10:49
As I said, I just saying what I was talking about is just on the ride the other day, and we were going, when did we think this happened? He goes, I’ll go and look for the email. And he hasn’t done that yet, because we’ve been a bit busy. But I would say it’s about a year ago now nearly a year ago. And the way it came about was the fertile ground of the safe, effective and sustainable travel group, which I was talking about, which is better than a bug because it focuses on how people get to work in any method other than the car, basically, including hybrids, hybrid methods, not hybrid cars. And we were just in that group, and we declared the emergency or we’re about to declare the emergency, which we all know is a bit of, you know, what does it mean when someone does that? So we were sitting in the group going, what can we actually do? What actions can we take that are real? So that’s when Vince said it. We all said, Well, that’s a stupid idea. Because pliers goes a long way away. But about a week or so later, it’s thinking in and people thinking about it. The next time we had the meeting, we said that’s a great idea. And we’ve been planning it ever since. So that’s how it came about.
Carlton Reid 12:05
So it’s always gonna be the cop 26 was the goal. Yep. To tell world leaders that things are going to change. And then there’s a letter from 45 million. So tell me about the letter from 45 million health professionals. Right, which is what you’re carrying
Dr Mark Hayden 12:21
is that, well, we’re carrying a series of messages, really, I mean, obviously, just what we’re doing is a message. And perhaps the most powerful one, because we’re doing it with our bodies. Lots of letters and things like that have happened in the past, I guess the main thing we’re trying to do differently is to get people to read them, and then get people that act on them. Like Greta says, we know what the problems are. We know what the solutions are. None of it is difficult. None of is tricky. We can fix this completely easily. And we could have done 20 years ago. What’s missing is the will. So that letter that you’re talking about is the healthy prescription. And it’s been signed by I don’t know how many people but the the number you’re quoting is the organization’s that have signed up to it and how many people they represent. And that’s basically a very simple letter. And I couldn’t tell you, at this point, the exact wording, but very simply it talks about adjust and rapid transition away from fossil fuels. It doesn’t mention cycling at all, and nor should it because that’s just a method to do that. But in addition to that, the Royal College of Paediatrics of Child Health and we’re cycling with the college president president today Camilla Kingdon, she’s, which group she’s in. She’s in Sequoia group.
Carlton Reid 13:42
Are they ahead of us all behind us?
Dr Mark Hayden 13:43
Good question. I think they I think they’re behind us.
Carlton Reid 13:47
Okay.
Dr Mark Hayden 13:48
So Camilla Kingdon. She’s a neonatologist at the Everlina, a colleague of the lady who died and she’s the she’s the president, and that college on Monday this week, put out their statement. So we’re carrying that we’re carrying the letter. And we’re also carrying a letter that came from Geneva, from the World Health Organisation. A letter and a report, which came out very closely together, which Dermott who’s the head of head of health, climate change and health at the World Health Organisation cycled from Geneva to London, to give us and then I was lucky enough to cycle with him, from Geneva to from London to almost Oxford where his mom lives. And he turned off left. And so all of those documents represent what we want people to hear. So we’re not trying to say what we want them to hear all the time. We’re trying to direct them to the experts to the adults in the room, and to tell them to listen to them. We’re healthcare professionals. We’re not for Climate scientists, but we know that this is the greatest threat to our patients. And that if we’re not protecting the planet, we’re not protecting our patients. So that’s the simplicity. That’s the synthesis, I suppose of our message. And
Carlton Reid 15:18
if you clean up the air for people to breathe that exactly the same time mitigates against climate crisis anyway?
Dr Mark Hayden 15:27
Well, I can’t. I mean, humankind is very inventive. But I can’t honestly think of a way that you could reduce pollution and make air quality better, but make the climate crisis worse, because they’re both the same thing. They’re both caused by the burning of fossil fuels, and fossil fuels of coal, oil, and its derivatives and gas. So you need to stop doing both of those things. And both of them work together. But the problem in the UK? Well, it’s not a problem. But one of the issues in the UK is making it relevant to people. And, you know, floods and typhoons, and all of these terrible things that are affecting billions and billions of children across the world aren’t necessarily directed, directly affecting people in the UK. But air quality is, but they don’t know about it, they should know about it. It’s again, like the climate crisis has been known about for years. But the truth has not been told. And the focus has not been on the right place. So that’s why we were using air quality because it’s a direct impact on children all over the world. And particularly in the UK, where cops taking part. And our initial target is UK health workers. And then health workers more broadly. We’re not aiming to speak directly to the public, we want to speak to healthcare workers. We want us to all realise it’s our jobs as our colleges say. And then it’d be nice if politicians listened. And even better if the general public felt that we were trustworthy people who were speaking the truth. So I guess that’s the bottom line. So glad I had a battery there otherwise, I wouldn’t have been speaking at the top of this hill.
Carlton Reid 17:21
So trust medics, well,
Dr Mark Hayden 17:24
they trust nurses and pharmacists, I think at the top. medics are sort of not at the top quite appropriately, I think. And that’s why we’re not medics. You know, there’s a few doctors but we’ve got doctors and nurses, OTs and speech therapy, occupational therapists, speech and language therapists, pharmacists. We’ve got electricians that work in the States, we got sustainability professionals, we’ve got young people who either used to be or even still our patients of Gosh, we’ve got, we’re not a bunch of doctors cycling to Glasgow, we could have been, that would have been way easier to organise. There are millions of doctors with lycra and carbon fibre bikes that I could have brought along. But I didn’t want to not because I don’t like them. Some of them are my friends. But because we’re not gonna, we’re not going to get people cycling. By sticking to the same old stereotypes. We’re going to get people cycling, by making everybody feel welcome. So that’s really the message and we’re not going to fix old white men like me, I’m going to fix climate change. You know, we’ve tried that look at all of the sort of conservation efforts and stuff that’s failed in the past. The only solution is diversity. So if we weren’t following that, as a principle on the ride, I think it would have been pointless doing the ride.
Carlton Reid 18:59
Well, Mark, I’m gonna I’m going to turn round in a minute, and I’m going to try and get some other people find Camilla. Yeah. We’ll try and get some other groups back there. Brilliant.
Camilla, first of all, we are well, we’re just coming off Route 72. You’re now going into into Corbridge. Is this your first day with the ride? How many days?
Dr Camilla Kingdon 19:18
My only day with the ride. So I’ve come up from London to do Newcastle to Carlisle.
Carlton Reid 19:23
Nice. rainiest day.
Dr Camilla Kingdon 19:26
I know. But you know
what? It’s like, late October. I was actually fully expecting it to be cold and wet. Yeah, it’s not particularly cold. So no, all good.
Carlton Reid 19:34
That’s good. Yeah. Right. Tell us on tape who you are. And you’re the president of an august organisation. So tell us that.
Dr Camilla Kingdon 19:43
So I’m Camilla Kingdom. And I’m a consultant paediatrician, and I’m the president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.
Carlton Reid 19:50
And where do you normally do your doctoring?
Dr Camilla Kingdon 19:51
So I, I work at the Evelina London Children’s Hospital which is in central London.
Carlton Reid 19:56
Sadly, a colleague of yours was killed.
Dr Camilla Kingdon 19:59
She was.
Carlton Reid 19:59
On a road in
Dr Camilla Kingdon 20:01
very near the college. Yes, yes, yes.
Carlton Reid 20:04
Yes. So is that I know this has been planned along before. But are there colleagues who would have known that person?
Dr Camilla Kingdon 20:13
I knew her. So she worked in my hospital. She said her name was Marta Krawiec, yes. She was a consultant, paediatric allergist. And in fact, she and I went, went to Cairo together to run. I was running a conference with paediatricians in Egypt. And they were desperate to hear learn more about allergy. And she volunteered to come. And so we spent, in fact, I saw the pyramids with her. So it’s absolutely heartbreaking. She was cycling through central London. It’s a route that I do very, very frequently. Everybody in London knows that interchange. And I think she was the seventh or eighth person to diet. So it’s absolutely heartbreaking.
Carlton Reid 20:59
Let’s look to the future. The Royal College has got a new policy on climate change. When was that announced? And what is it?
Dr Camilla Kingdon 21:09
This week. So we’ve launched our climate change statement. And this is on the back of us declaring a climate change emergency back in 2020. And, in fact, a group of our members brought it as a motion to our annual general meeting. And of course, it was passed unanimously, it was cleaning out no argument to be had about that. But what was it’s one thing passing a motion, that we’ve declared a climate emergency, it’s another thing to do something about it. And so what we’ve got is, we’d look, we put a call out for volunteers we had at paediatricians volunteer. And so we’ve divided them up into five work streams. And we’ve got a work stream doing, looking at the research in relation to impact of climate change on children, we’ve got another work stream, looking at how we advocate for children and young people in terms of so a bit like the cycle road, you know, this is about raising the awareness about the impact of pollution on children’s health. So that’s the advocacy group is a group looking at international children of the impact on global child health. So we’ve got this series of workstreams. And they’ve all got some targets to achieve. And this was sort of at the beginning of our journey, but we very much see this as a continuous effort in the college over the over the years, you know, until we’ve solved the problem, we’re not going to stop the
Carlton Reid 22:32
work and just cycling hook into that. Well,
Dr Camilla Kingdon 22:35
cycling, of course, cycling hooks into it, because you’re not burning fossil fuel in your engine. And so many of us cycle anyway, to work, I commute to work on my bicycle. And I think this particular cycle ride grabbed people’s imagination, because you know, it’s a good hard slog to Glasgow, you’re putting yourself out of your comfort zone. But you’re really kind of trying to get the message out that the children’s lives are impacted by poor air quality. And, you know, a nine year old died not far from where I live, in fact, in South London a few years ago. No, exactly. And, you know, it was a landmark case, because the coroner ruled that air pollution can be contributed to her death. But there’s a wider issue in as much as this is also about health inequalities because we know that children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds are more impacted by poor air quality and other aspects of climate change than children from advantaged backgrounds. And actually, sadly, globally, children in the poorest countries where actually they’re probably causing the least impact on the on the planet are the most affected in terms of poor air quality, dirty drinking water, etc, etc. So, this is a real child health issue.
Carlton Reid 23:58
Earlier in the morning, and long before I circled back to talk to Dr. Camilla Kingdon. I had to become disconnected from the group’s after some of my recording equipment fell from the bike. A rider in fluoro, yellow kindly dropped back to be with me. I didn’t know it for about 15 minutes or so. But this was Dr. Mike McKean, a name I was actually familiar with because A, he treated one of our kids and, B, my wife knows him well. My wife is a hospital paediatrician, you see, she should have been on this ride really? Anyway, me and Mike rode in tempo to the town of Prudhoe, where we were expecting to meet with the fast roadies who had gone ahead to buy a replacement tyre following a blowout. Instead, we got to the bike shop first. And what we’re twiddling our thumbs waiting for the group. I use my dried out radio mic to talk first to Mike. And then when the roadie group finally arrived to Janet Poon who had ridden off earlier with my other radio mic. That’s a lot of mics. I know, let’s be professional. Here’s Dr. McKean. Okay, well let’s just walk across here are waiting for the rest of the fast road group to to arrive. We’ll use one microphone because the other microphones up the road there with Janet. No idea where they are. So Mike we have arrived outside. Well it used to be bike highwayman or bike repairman? Giant Newcastle giant Newcastle. No,
Dr Mike McKean 25:29
it’s the two companies. Yes.
Carlton Reid 25:31
So we’re kind of in the cycle area of Prudhoe.
Dr Mike McKean 25:34
Yeah.
Carlton Reid 25:34
And we are waiting for the crew because we’ve had a bit of a mechanical so I’ve had a bit of a tyre. That’s burst. So the crew, I guess, hopefully will arrive quite soon. But in the meantime, let’s let’s talk to you, Mike. So Mike, tell me first of all, who you are, even though I know who you are, because my wife knows you. Anyway, who are you, Mike?
Dr Mike McKean 25:50
So I’m going to Mike McKean. I’m a children’s respiratory consultant at the Great North Children’s Hospital. And I’m also clinical lead for the child health and wellbeing network in the North east North Cumbria.
Carlton Reid 26:01
So that’s basically children’s well being so not just their physical health, but also what they’re breathing, their mental health, their exercise, all of that kind of stuff is that yeah,
Dr Mike McKean 26:12
but also also a lot of is about education to an early intervention, I think. I’ve often thought you know, that, that we we’ve got some fantastic people working in children’s health, all over the country, really. But we shouldn’t forget that actually, the children’s workforce in the UK is massive if you include our social workers, our voluntary sector, but most importantly, our teachers. And I think we’ve all got a part to play in supporting our kids to become as healthy as possible that’s both physically mentally, but also in their learning their education so that they can reach their potential.
Carlton Reid 26:49
And now you’ve been on the ride since day one. So you joined in London, from a pair from your full timer. But you joined in London. So you’ve been riding now for five days.
Dr Mike McKean 27:01
Yeah, this is this is I forget which day it is now, stay six.
Carlton Reid 27:06
And this is the first time you’ve had relatively poor weather because you got a meal. It’s actually dried up now. But you’ve had some poor weather today. Yeah, we’ve
Dr Mike McKean 27:15
had a tailwind for yesterday, which was the long run from Harrogate was nearly 90 miles. So having a tailwind was fantastic. And it was overcast them. But other days we’ve had sunshine which has been been unseasonal, perhaps, but nice.
Carlton Reid 27:29
And how
many people are doing the ride, because obviously, people are joining in each city and riding a bit like me, of course, but how many are in the core group so that people like you when you’re doing it every day.
Dr Mike McKean 27:42
And I think there’s the tea, something 33 of us, I think during the call, and then there’s often another 10 or so riders joining us each day. And then of the 33, you know, they come from all sorts of backgrounds, really, I guess, all focused on children’s health. And so there’s therapists, there’s nurses and doctors, but there’s also charity workers for the children’s hospitals as managers, IT people and and very importantly, now a new a new breed we’re seeing in the professionals we’re seeing coming into the NHS, which is sustainability officers who really are educated and trained in trying to help us develop an NHS service, which is hopefully going to become carbon neutral, or even carbon negative. Now, wouldn’t that be a thing? The NHS is a huge part of the UK. And if that sector and that that working sector was actually carbon negative one day, that would be a great example, because we will know that that climate change is having such a big impact on everybody’s health, and that includes the NHS workers themselves.
Carlton Reid 28:49
So not just NHS workers arriving at work and tootling around electric cars, but you’d hope the sustainability officers are also saying walk more cycle more. It’s not just the the pollution you’ve got to worry about. It’s people’s health.
Dr Mike McKean 29:04
It’s people’s health as a whole and so within an environment in the in the UK, you know, thinking about our ability to cycle and walk to work is quite important and we’ve learnt lessons as we’ve gone along of the country. And you know, cycling from London you know, through London, Oxford, Sheffield, Leeds now into Newcastle, it’s quite apparent that psychopaths are not maintained, they’re not joined up. There’s the so many obstacles in crossing main roads, motorways dual carriageways, and they’re simply kind of cyclists if you like a second class citizens, and therefore that puts people off and involves a little bit of risk and danger too. So you’re going to cycle through a city at the moment you know, it’s initially no way you go in there’s a little bit hazards in the way. But I think sustainability in the NHS is not just about cycling and getting to work. It’s actually in the work environment. So that’s the electricity we use. It’s how we conserve energy, but also how we Bring greenness into our environment. So there’s a big movement about city farms now, and a lot of hospitals looking at kind of green areas within or within them or next to them to help, you know, grow fruit vegetables have pleasant places to come off the know, that’s really good for people’s well being as a whole, not to be confined into brick walls all the time. And there’s lots of evidence to show that actually, for patients, whether it’s kids or adults, actually being in an environment where there are flowers or trees is actually kind of quite important for them. Of course, you can then see green corridors coming through cities, which is interesting. I would say the other thing that that I’d like to raise who’s just been thinking a bit about it with some colleagues on this, right, which one of the best thing about is right, you speak to people who’ve got different ideas and thoughts. And one of the best things that are one of the most important things I’ve heard, there’s really educated me is about education, really. And of course, getting bringing education into our, our children’s lives about sustainability. They get it, in fact, they’re probably teaching us, I must say a thing or two. But across the world, there’s still large amounts of children who are disenfranchised who do not that good education. Sadly, in large areas of the world, it’s often the girls who struggle more than the boys to get a good education. We know that if kids get good education’s that actually systems they can engage with systems and make them work. And particularly, we have to shout out for the girls, we need more girls across the world to be getting involved in education to being educated. And that I think, is where the power of change can come from.
Carlton Reid 31:39
Power of change COP 26 How hopeful are you?
Dr Mike McKean 31:43
I think we now know we got the knowledge. There’s a lot of people who now have a belief. I don’t think it’s wide enough in the in the UK, let alone across the world and people really understanding the problems you’ve got, but also that there’s very positive solutions ahead of us. Am I optimistic? I’ll be very honest and say no, because I don’t think we’ve got that groundswell yet that we need. But, you know, turning a big tanker around takes time, they said, Isn’t it so I firmly believe if we can create the nudges, that will move in a direction that will be better, and hopefully, we can keep doing that each year.
Carlton Reid 32:19
Now, my wife is a cycling paediatrician. So that’s how I already knew your name. So as soon as we were on the road there, because you very kindly dropped back when all my electronics fell off, and it was raining, it was horrible. And the riders went off, and my bike was one of the bits you currently dropped back there. And then we’re riding for a bit and then you said to us, okay, yeah, I know Mike McKee. So I know Mike McKean is a keen cyclist, and my wife told me that so tell me a bit about how keen Mike McKean?
Dr Mike McKean 32:51
not particularly. I’m a runner, now.
Carlton Reid 32:53
Come on.
Dr Mike McKean 32:54
I’m a runner. And, and of course, as you get older, you get bad knees. And my knee surgeon said, you know, you’ve got to be careful now. So mixing it up, has been my what I’ve been doing for the last few years personally. So I’ve been doing some triathlon, swimming and cycling. I cycled to and from work when I can, and probably should do it more and I intend to do more.
Carlton Reid 33:15
But that’s from Tynemouth all the way into Newcastle. So that’s, that’s a canny ride, and you do it on the main road. It’s not a very nice ride, not
Dr Mike McKean 33:23
not always very pleasant. But if I’ve got the right gear, I know where I’m going. Now I know the routes actually does feel very safe now. So it’s just me deciding to do it and making a change and making a mental shift. Actually, I can do it. By the time I’ve actually if you’re driving and queuing and parking, it’s actually probably just as quick and you get a bit of fitness in and do I enjoy I mean, cycling and commuting don’t always particularly enjoy it, I enjoy a run. But cycling out in the countryside is got to be one of the most pleasurable things I’ve learned over the last two, three years. And having you know, and coming to a place like this cycle art and, and giant in Provo, where they’ve got some serious bike specialists who can get you kitted up, but also measured so you can get on a comfortable bike, you know, so people were shouting at bikes with discomfort and I used to I had an old bike that was a row, a bone shaker, I would describe it as. So it was never really a pleasure. You get a good bike that’s well set up. It feels safer, more comfortable and actually more enjoyable. So the last few five days, although been hard work, I would say it’s been a privilege and a pleasure, actually.
Carlton Reid 34:31
And did you know anybody on the ride before you started?
Dr Mike McKean 34:35
Well, I there’s three, three colleagues, two colleagues of mine and myself from Newcastle doing it and but there’s a load of other people who are just cycling in now.
Carlton Reid 34:46
Yes, we have people arriving just
Group 34:48
We missed you.
Carlton Reid 34:50
We’re fast. We’re very fast.
Group 34:53
I assumed you were cycling ahead. So I just went oh It was a little bit. It was hairy, hairy, so I think it was.
Carlton Reid 35:07
Yeah. So Janet, you’ve only just arrived here after you left us a wee while ago and you had the microphone on and off you went and microphone separate fine. So I think we might have started talking. But anyway, tell us who you are. Janet, what’s your name? I’m Janet. And what’s your second Janet?
Janet Poon 35:28
I’m Janet Poon. I work with Gosh,
Carlton Reid 35:31
which is a Great Ormond Street Hospital
Janet Poon 35:34
in London, and I am an electronic paediatric pharmacist. I work for the EPIC system. So I configure the pharmacy side of the aqueous grading system that Great Ormond Street Hospital.
Carlton Reid 35:46
Okay. And the bike you’ve got here. Is that white one over there?
Janet Poon 35:51
Yes. With the pink handles,
Carlton Reid 35:54
yes. Now, how much of, cos you’ve? You always kept up with the group as you’re doing pretty well. But how much riding have you done before in this kind of, you know, fast roading?
Janet Poon 36:04
I pretty much to none to zero because I commute to work. That’s all. That’s all the cycling experience I have. In preparation for this. I did do one 100k light day ride to Westerville North London, like two weeks before this. And that’s really
Carlton Reid 36:20
it. And have you found it?
Janet Poon 36:23
It’s been really fun and challenging times. But I’m really glad I’m in this group, because I think everyone has grip. It’s so elite, and they’ve got so much experience and they just helped me through so much. They taught me how to go uphill, how to go downhill.
Carlton Reid 36:36
How to ride in the rain today.
Janet Poon 36:38
We’ve had pretty good weather. And so I think the fourth day was a hideous word yesterday. It was like the longest of distance of the four days. But all pretty good weather until today, because we’re getting close to Glasgow. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s been really fun.
Carlton Reid 36:56
And you didn’t know people before some people you didn’t know. You kind of you joined here as a big group. Some of you didn’t know. I didn’t
Janet Poon 37:04
know anyone beforehand. We all met briefly and assume corporate projects resume course before the actual day. Mark, the organiser actually had to speak to one of my colleagues to check that I was real busy. You know, I’ve never met anyone before. Yeah.
Carlton Reid 37:19
So why did you join? Why did you how did you for how did you find out about it? And why did you join?
Janet Poon 37:25
My colleague said said colleague and Carlos said our you know, Mark is going right into Glasgow, do you want to join them? Like, yeah, sounds like fun, why not? And then I found out the court that you know, what they’re doing, which is obviously political air pollution. I thought that’s such a great course. And I’ve learned a lot about not just cycling, but a lot about air pollution as well, during this ride,
Carlton Reid 37:47
is because you’ve got sustainability officers who are joining the ride. It’s not just doctors and nurses. And you also have
Janet Poon 37:55
Yeah, we have we have quite a few hedonistic sustainability from different NHS Trust joining us charity heads as well, but mostly because of the pollution pods. So we saw pollution pot yesterday at the Royal Victoria. And is demonstrated they have five in London and five in Glasgow and they all represent like air quality of different cities. But in between, I think Birmingham, Newcastle, correct me if I’m wrong, and one other cities also have a just one port and that port. That pot is like a future version of what our air would be like in 20 years time. We don’t do anything today. And it’s quite eye opening, like when you go into it, even before you go into a pod, you can see the pod is very, like polluted so and just even before getting to report you can smell it yeuck and really nasty. So it’s quite, it’s quite a wake up call.
Carlton Reid 38:46
So we’ve got to clean our air.
Janet Poon 38:47
Definitely.
Carlton Reid 38:49
Not just for the planet, but also kids lungs. In the future. Everyone’s lungs, not just kids’ lungs.
Janet Poon 38:56
Yeah, I mean, we’re all adults with children once and no children will become adults is for everyone.
Carlton Reid 39:02
Yeah. And is that what you’re hoping the politicians, the world leaders will will take away from cop 26 that look, there’s a groundswell of support for this. Come on, get your act together, do something real. And
Janet Poon 39:18
I’m just hoping they’re public. Everyone was status. It’s not just you know about the leaders everyone doing their part and it’s how healthcare professionals we have the closest contact with public and very often it is us who will kind of miss the kind of passing on the baton and letting the children and the patient and family know that how important air pollution is to their health. Even when Ella died, so they they’re the family didn’t realise how how severe how there’s a VA disability and the velocity of air pollution impacts their children and unfortunately, passed away.
Matt Shaw 39:57
So I’m Matthew Shaw I’m an orthopaedic surgeon by background and I’m the Chief Executive of Great Ormong Street Hospital.
Carlton Reid 40:04
So you’ve been with the ride from from London from London. You started at Gosh, Great Ormond Street. Yeah.
Matt Shaw 40:10
Yeah. Indeed, and then we went to Kings Cross to see the pollution pods altogether as riders and then went to Oxford on day one,
Carlton Reid 40:20
right. And how many people were was started off in London,
Matt Shaw 40:24
or I think there’s about 40 of us everyday, this around about 40. We have some cool riders from all the hospitals that ride the whole event. And then we have day riders that come join us just for a stage. So the Evalina hospital, they’ve decided to cycle their idea so that there’s a couple that are doing the whole thing, but a lot of them come for one or two days, which is great.
Carlton Reid 40:50
So this is basically the roadie group. So you’ve got a few different groups and you’re kind of like, named after trees. Which tree is this? Which group is this? Well,
Matt Shaw 41:00
I think it’s changed. I think it’s silky oak. It was originally silky. Oh, then it was Sequoia. Okay, that it was. I’m not sure what we are now a hybrid is what I would say.
Carlton Reid 41:11
The other fast roadies, I heard you got on your Did you know who you’re even riding with?
Matt Shaw 41:16
Yeah, so we’ve got a pharmacist from Great Ormond Street, some intensivist. from Glasgow from Newcastle. A couple of riders from Sheffield. Head of sustainability in Sheffield. Teri, who’s the head of the Newcastle charity? She’s a really keen cyclist. Yeah, so a really good spread of people.
Carlton Reid 41:36
And then how long have you riding each day roughly? Because they’re obviously going to each groups can be a bit different. But there’s this group, the roadie group?
Matt Shaw 41:42
Yeah. It’s around about 100 and 107 to 140k’s a day. And it varies in height between kind of about 600 700 metres to about 1500 metres, which is the biggest.
Carlton Reid 42:01
And have you always been a roadie?
Matt Shaw 42:04
You know, I’ve never been into mountain biking that much. It’s I guess living in London. Regents Park’s relatively nearby. It’s just the natural thing to do, rather than, you know, there’s no easy to mountain bike. So yes, I’ve always been into road bikes, and then
Carlton Reid 42:22
riding into work also.
Matt Shaw 42:24
I’ve got a scooter. I pushed me to Okay, so I haven’t got a car. got into the car about three or four years ago. I’ve got three kids 15, 10 and eight. And it was just, I just wasn’t using the car. So decided that time to go. So yeah, so scooter. I use the electric scooters now that are in London where you can hire them. So which is great. It’s good.
Carlton Reid 42:54
And this ride you’re doing here now, It’s raising awareness of two things. But mainly it’s air pollution. Yeah. And getting to the job, paediatrics its kids lungs. But that also links into the wider picture, which is why you’re going to COP26 of all climate change.
Matt Shaw 43:11
Absolutely. And I think for most people, you know, if you talk to NHS staff, nine out of 10 staff will be really into this agenda, the whole climate change agenda. But I think the way into that, for many is around health. Because I think people always look at the green agenda in a bit of a weird and wacky thing. Rather than mainstream. I think it’s becoming mainstream. But from a health perspective, I think everyone gets it. Especially when you’re monitoring levels of pollution outside your hospital, which is way above what they should be.
Carlton Reid 43:45
So should the NHS be doing more on preventative medicine, you know, preventative stuff, rather than getting somebody into hospital and they’re already
Matt Shaw 43:53
Yeah, well, of course it Yeah. But of course, the long term plan suggests that prevention is gonna be a real key pillar for that. The question is, is how do you catch up, recover and deliver a Prevention Agenda at the same time? And that’s the real challenge that we’ve got. But absolutely, prevention is at the forefront of that plan. It’s just delivering it. And it can’t just be health alone. It’s got to be social care, got to be local government. And it’s multifaceted in terms of exercise.
Carlton Reid 44:23
Have you seen a difference how long you’ve been the NHS obviously came in as a surgeon, so it must be a good 20
years?
Matt Shaw 44:28
Yes. Yeah. 98 turning unqualified.
Carlton Reid 44:31
So have you noticed much of a difference on the issues you’re talking about today? And they changed.
Matt Shaw 44:38
So I think for the last five years, I think things have been slowly changing. And this year, last year, I’ve seen a real shift. It’s cut driver. I think people are naturally attracted to this agenda. I think mud guys slow Sorry, I’ll just get down the mud first. And the bumps
Carlton Reid 45:05
the Northumbrian roads, unfortunately a quite a lot of potholes. Yeah.
Matt Shaw 45:12
Yeah. So I think in the last couple of years, I’ve seen quite a change steady. I’ve seen quite a change. But I think that’s driven by the people, the workforce society. And then I think the NHS has then started to legislate and regulate in relation to that. So we know that, you know, in time, our regulators gonna be looking at what our green plans are. And we’re going to be judged as symmetric. And that’s important, because that will drive change and change.
Carlton Reid 45:46
And when this is handed in, when the letters and and the, you know, the ride finishes, and you hand this in, yeah, what do you expect to actually happen? Well,
Matt Shaw 45:56
I think, you know, this, this action alone, this event can achieve anything in isolation. But I think that this combined with many other things that are going on, and really, I think the public driving change in this agenda. I think our politicians will need to be more ambitious, need to be more upfront about it and prioritise environment more. It’s not a choice anymore. Is it the economy or the environment? It’s, it’s both. And I hope that’s the message.
Carlton Reid 46:35
I left Matt and the roadies just before Corbridge and turned back for home hoping that I’d bump into the final group on the road. And dear listener, I did. They were stood laughing and joking on the corner of a quiet country lane and I could see why they were always the last ones to get in at night serenaded and cheered by the earlier groups
Nathan Elliott 46:59
I’m Nathan Elliott I am the actual cycle mechanic helping helping the teams get get through the day. I am the non medic spoke shed mechanic I’ve literally been helping helping everyone out with literally just the journey so we started off in London, obviously going to Glasgow. I’ve been the one like just helping out on the repairs on the way so I am the non medic
Group 47:28
Bicycle medic Okay,
Carlton Reid 47:33
yeah, sure the bicycle
Nathan Elliott 47:36
and resuscitation anyone so far?
We’ve been good though. We’ve kept all the bikes going everything and everyone’s got their hopes up in the best group. By far this has been the best morale, morale and banter so it’s been very, very good.
Carlton Reid 47:50
Okay, you can see why you got red wine here? Is that what it’s like? There’s no water in these water bottles it’s red win. Now, I don’t know how much to trust you because you said that rain is refreshing and you quite enjoyed it. So but anyway, who are you?
Alexandria 48:07
So I’m Alexandra. I’m a paediatric immunologist from Great Ormond Street Hospital. And it’s travelling on the heels. So rain was refreshing. Yeah, so I’ve also been cycling from London, hopefully to Glasgow.
Carlton Reid 48:23
Yes. And to Carlisle today. And so this is the last group this was at Sequoia Acacia sorry, Acacia. So Acacia is the last group almost having the most fun. But that also means that you’re getting in probably at eight o’clock at night compared to people getting out for
Alexandria 48:42
long long days, but also I think when we’ve made it the whole team, like it’s a bigger group of people every night. So where are you guys
Carlton Reid 49:05
okay, thank you and who have we got here drinking?
Dr Fin Craig 49:08
I’m Fin.
Carlton Reid 49:10
What’s your second name Fin?
Dr Fin Craig 49:11
Craig.
Carlton Reid 49:12
Okay
Dr Fin Craig 49:13
And that’s Fin with one ‘N’.
Group 49:18
[Laughs]
Carlton Reid 49:18
and where are you from? And
what do you do?
Dr Fin Craig 49:20
Great Ormond Street palliative care consultant.
Carlton Reid 49:22
Okay, and do you normally cycle the cycle to where cycles work?
Dr Fin Craig 49:25
I cycle everywhere but I don’t cycle for fun. I cycle for transport.
Carlton Reid 49:29
See everybody I’ve talked to so far all the doctors on the trip are saying roughly the same. So there must be an enormous amount of doctors at GOSH riding?
Dr Fin Craig 49:38
No, there’s not Well, there is a fair number of people I don’t think it’s doctors necessarily. It’s multi professionals and probably more than, a lot of doctors that drive.
Carlton Reid 49:49
Is that changing?
Dr Fin Craig 49:51
I don’t know. I think it needs to the hospital there’s a lot more cyclists I think since lockdown. But I wouldn’t say it’s predominantly talk to us. I would I would say it is amongst doctors, it’s probably the more middle grade junior staff. I was going
to send consulted doctors, even before the pandemic, junior doctors, and all
the allied professionals much more. So I’d say it’s probably more physios. You think likely? We’ve got a good yeah. Okay, there’s only two people in my team, that cycle
Carlton Reid 50:22
has been notice a change, though, in the last say, three, four years, if you’ve been riding in that long if you see more people coming into work now on bikes.
Dr Fin Craig 50:32
I don’t know because I, it’s that’s hard to tell because I lock my bike somewhere where most people don’t lock their bikes, that
Nick Martin 50:38
there are more people cycling into. In general, we know that. Racks are used a lot more, got more racks, we’re getting some data to show these few more people. So I’m not sure if they’re all.
Carlton Reid 50:52
Okay, in general. So right now, now I’ve come to you. I’m out of sync here in the in the group. But so who
Nick Martin 50:57
you are Nick Martin. Okay, what are you doing head of sustainability at? Gosh.
Carlton Reid 51:02
See, that’s one of the other things that people have been telling me. And they’ve been impressed with the saying there’s, there’s more and more sustainability officers in hospitals. And that can only be a good thing, because you’re basically telling people to get on their bikes. Is that one of the things you tell people to do, or advise them to do?
Nick Martin 51:17
Don’t tell anyone. Yeah, I mean, no people have made, made their own minds, especially the pandemic is very useful thing to avoid, you know, getting on trains and tubes, when people were a little bit worried about what the consequences might be.
And when to check, it was less than
Unknown Speaker 51:35
a good gateway opportunity for people. And then we’ve set up a group. In fact, this ride came out of a little group we set up to support people to get themselves actively into work during the pandemic. And this, this whole idea came out of that colleague, Vince, and then Mark Hayden, the intensivist. We took it from there. So that was all around helping people get into work. And then what should we do with cop? And then let’s write the essay.
Dr Fin Craig 52:01
And we have three we have this really good effort, gosh, called cheer app, which encourages sustainability dare points for riding and that sort of points, everything I’m Mager on it should load up.
Nick Martin 52:13
So the hospital recently declared a climate emergency. So we have a target to get to net zero by 2030’40 emissions, we can control 2040 for the broader emissions, things like that tie into the ability for staff take it into
Dr Fin Craig 52:27
pieces. A lot of us have got into this so like you report your actions every week, because today’s Friday it might be time so I’ve been reporting more than 12 weeks. So I have to say my exercise of exercise five days. I’m switched off my computer my monitor my charges my lights, heaters and fans. I don’t have a printer. Now active travel can I start commuted everyday this week. Okay, so I’ve muted tune from overdue I’ve done loads of points. I’ve done 10 Miles five times this week. Yeah. Plastic pledge I managed to stick to my plastic pledge. I haven’t gotten meat free this week. Sadly, because of eating I haven’t TerraCycle but I learned all about Terracycling from this app. I didn’t know you could TerraCycle blister packs for medications. So now you know when you you put your pills out one of these right it’s written been bring it best way bring it to Superdrug and they there was a way of tetracycline so they separate the foil from that. Yes. That is recyclable. And you know in a month at home we’ve got an absolutely not monster about three months massive bag to be recycled. I didn’t know about that. And people don’t know about this. Have I used three cups reusable cups and bottles. Yes, everyday this week. Have I had outside breaks? I think this counts as five days outside breaks. My I’ve done up to 70,000 steps, right for their lives. How many kilometres Have you cycled this week? I’m going to say 90 plus and then I submit it. And hopefully that will go in and then we have a leaderboard. I’m quite good at staying top of the leaderboard. And if you win if the top of the leaderboard month to get a 10 pound gift voucher or place of your choice, well no, there’s a choice of three or four. Not getting them in the garden centre with the moment wanted to garden centre. Nice, okay, we’ll look at
Nick Martin 54:15
that. But then this app shows how your personal well being and your, you know, opportunities to contribute to the environmental broader picture are integrally
Carlton Reid 54:24
linked. So that’s all nudge nudge technology, basically, people are then going oh, I don’t do that.
Dr Fin Craig 54:32
Yeah, totally. And it’s become the norm in our family now but but only since getting this app and as you can see, I’m at the top of the leaderboard at the moment. Vince is a real competitor of mine, I have to be quite careful in
Carlton Reid 54:46
any events because he’s been so far ahead. Thanks to all of the right for their lives riders and thanks also to Jo Rogers and climate acceptance studios for inviting me to join them the right way side is at the climate acceptance studios.com forward slash ride for their lives. You could donate your rating miles to them via Strava or an email as they aim to collect as many lives as possible before they reach Glasgow. But 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
Play
19th September 2021
The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast
EPISODE 283: Autonorama
SPONSOR: Jenson USA
HOST: Carlton Reid
GUEST: Peter Norton
TOPICS: US academic Peter Norton, author of the classic “Fighting Traffic,” talks about his new book “Autonorama” which details the historically-resonant threat to pedestrians and cyclists from driverless vehicles.
TRANSCRIPT:
Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 283 of the Spokesmen Cycling Podcast. This show was engineered on Sunday 19th of September 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 wwwthe-spokesmen.com. And now, here’s my fellow host and producer Carlton Reid and the spokesmen.
Carlton Reid 1:10
I’m Carlton Reid and one of the perks of my job is get my mucky little paws on books before they’re published. A few months back I read the new book by US technology historian Peter Norton and he promised me the first of what will be many media and podcast interviews. And this is it. Peter is an associate professor in the Department of Engineering and Society at the University of Virginia. You’ll likely know him from his classic book “Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City.” As you’ll soon hear, Peter only wrote a book per decade so it was a rare treat to get my hands on a pre-publication copy of “Autonorama,” an historically-resonant warning about driverless cars and how the tech bros need to get cyclists and pedestrians out of the way. I got an early copy of Peter’s book so I could write a cover blurb for it. Janette Sadik-Khan also penned one. The former commissioner of New York city’s Dept. of Transportation wrote that Peter’s book shows that “safer, more livable cities will be achieved not by the tech in our cars, but by our actions on our streets.” Amen. And here’s Peter.
Carlton Reid 2:42
Peter, I have I’ve had a copy of your book in digital form.
Carlton Reid 2:48
It’s a few weeks ago now. And when I read it, it was absolutely fascinating, as I would expect, of course, from you. And then I was just looking now, at the date of this book right now is going to be probably October ish, I think when it comes out. But that’s 2021. Your last book, which I’d like to talk about first actually was 2011. So you’re basically doing a book every 10 years, is that right?
Peter Norton 3:14
Well, that’s a that’s a small data set for a trajectory plot there. Let me add also that my first book actually came out in 2008. And the paperback came out in 2011. So if you saw 2011, then then you saw the paperback.
Peter Norton 3:33
So I don’t know what my trajectory is. I do have another book project now but I don’t have an expected date for it to come out yet. And, you know, I, since there’s other work involved besides books, I don’t I’m not confident giving you a sort of mathematical projection.
Carlton Reid 3:56
Well, what we’ll look forward to it in 2036 it’ll be worth the wait.
Carlton Reid 4:02
so what what is it what it tell us what you do? You know I could do this in the intro, of course, but why don’t we hear from the man himself? So what do you do when you’re not writing books?
Peter Norton 4:14
Most of the time, I’m teaching and that especially means grading papers. I have a lot of students they write and I read their work and that’s really the biggest part of my working time is is that um, and when that’s not happening, then I really enjoy some of the other things that I get to do. Like, for example, you know, talking to you is is a delight.
Peter Norton 4:39
talking to other people. One of my favourite things is when an advocate of some kind comes along somebody who thinks that walking should be normal, or cycling should should could really make a big difference in terms of sustainability and affordability.
Peter Norton 4:57
When those people come along, transit, advocates
Peter Norton 5:01
and they say that they find what I’ve done useful. Well, that really brings me joy, because you know, they’re the ones actually doing something I just write about it,
Carlton Reid 5:10
Because you are one of these authors, who will be perennially paraded in effect, because what you wrote about when I would like to talk about that even you’ve been on the show before, I think we absolutely should. We should talk about your your first book and where you’ve come from, because that kind of feeds into the into this, this this next book, your new book.
Carlton Reid 5:32
But you’re paraded because you talked about something which happened in the 1920s 30s 40s. But it’s absolutely still with us today. They said there’s a dominance of a certain four wheeled thing. So “Fighting Traffic” brought into the public sphere that jaywalking is not a natural thing, it was an invention. So I don’t want to pigeonhole your book to say that’s all it’s about. But you could say that’s one of the good takeaways is it’s bringing that history of jaywalking, being motordom creating that. That’s why a lot of people quote your work.
Peter Norton 6:16
I think that’s a useful way to sort of distil it down to something very elemental, and, and concrete and specific. Because while jaywalking is obviously just a very small part of the story, it really captures a lot of what has been missing from the story.
Peter Norton 6:36
So the story that we get in the States especially, is that car domination, which you know, is ubiquitous, is the effect of mass demand of a free market of, of democracy of values, such as individualism, and freedom, and so on. And sure, there have been critiques of that dominant narrative. Since automobiles began. That’s still the dominant story. The USA is a car culture, this is what people want. And, you know, in the end, they got what they wanted. And so we get jaywalking says, Well, now Hang on.
Peter Norton 7:21
There was a time when few people drove and walking in the street was normal, and that had to be denormalized. And once it was denormalized, well, then actually, part of the motive for getting a car was that the alternatives were getting worse, not just the walking, but also riding a street car, taking the bus or riding your bike, all of those got harder as they inevitably do when you have an environment that favours driving. And that that fact of course, then complicates what it means when people say they prefer to drive Well, you naturally prefer to drive when all of the alternatives have been, you know, impaired, so much. So yeah, I think I think that’s a nice way to capture the the gist of “Fighting Traffic.”
Carlton Reid 8:11
I don’t know how much this comes across in the US. But in here in the UK, we have this huge issue, and it does go mainstream now and again, in the mainstream press, low traffic neighbourhoods. And then when you start talking to people who are very much not in favour of low traffic neighbourhoods, you just see this just amazing mindset of they really cannot imagine not being able to get places in their car. And just a slight thing, like putting bollards in the way of where they used to driving, they can still get into these these areas, but the narrow driveway a little longer. They use all sorts of arguments, including, you know, well how are disabled people going to get around. And they’ve never been interested when you look at their social media and disabled people before but they, you know, use this, they also use air pollution. It’s just it seems to be such a favourite of people in favour of motoring. It’s a strange one, but they talk about how cars when they’re standing still in traffic jams are incredibly polluting, so we must have them moving freely. So free up the roads, and then we will have no more pollution. So these these arguments come out just
Carlton Reid 9:29
so frequently, it’s been taken on board by these people so so carefully, and they regurgitate this, but there’s just no imagination of a life without a car. So how on earth Peter, are we going to have a different future when there are an enormous amount of people, probably even worse, where you are, who really cannot imagine a future without automobiles?
Peter Norton 9:59
Well,
Peter Norton 10:00
Carlton, there’s a word you used, I think three times in that question, imagine or imagination. And I think that’s exactly the key. So a failure to imagine is exactly the, you know, for. First of all, I should say that the people who wanted to sell us car dependency recognise that imagination is essential. And they helped us imagine futures, where car dependency is liberating. And they were extremely good at it. And I think we have a lot to learn from the people who sold us car dependency about how you make different futures. Imagine it imaginable because they excelled at it. Now, when you have generations growing up in a car dependent environment, well, it’s not too surprising that, you know, if that vehicle that they depend on literally depend on is threatened. Now, this becomes a source of anger or opposition to to even elementary reform, like putting in a bollard to make the space more accommodating to anything except driving.
Peter Norton 11:18
So, yeah, that opposition is, is there. And yet at the same time,
Peter Norton 11:26
we know from harder and experience from the past that that these kinds of obstacles can be overcome. I think one way to do it is to frame it correctly. So you can frame
Peter Norton 11:41
the change we need to make as taking away driving. But we can also frame it as giving people choices.
Peter Norton 11:49
In it’s interesting fact that the Netherlands ranks very highly on places where people like to drive, I got a top rating on that from
Peter Norton 12:02
some app company. But
Peter Norton 12:06
at the same time, you have choices. And I think one of the reasons why the Netherlands scores high on places to drive is that the people who are driving or driving by choice, they don’t have to drive there. And that takes off everybody off the road who is there by compulsion, and makes the, you know, the driving experience and experience of choice? Well, if we give people choices, then,
Peter Norton 12:30
you know, we I mean, we can frame this as now you can choose to walk now you can choose to ride a bike, and yes, even now you can choose to drive so that that’s another possibility. I’d like to offer one more.
Peter Norton 12:45
Which is that when it became quite clear that cigarette smoking was shortening people’s lives, often by multiple decades. And this is going back to the 60s especially the tobacco companies were very good at framing that as a threat to people’s preferred way of living. And their advertising helped delay the transition by presenting cigarette addiction as pleasurable. And what people have gradually figured out, at least most people is that even more pleasurable than enjoying a cigarette when you’re addicted to a cigarette is not being addicted at all. And of course, that transition from a state of addiction to a state of non addiction is a very difficult one.
Peter Norton 13:35
But in the end, that destination of being addiction free, has a liberating feel. And that extends even to being free of your car dependency, as long as you have the alternatives that you need for that to work.
Carlton Reid 13:51
So your latest book
Carlton Reid 13:54
is very much extrapolating forward on on car dependency.
Carlton Reid 14:01
Let’s go into the book. First of all, it was called “Autonorama.” Why the no, but why is it auto no roma and not autorama?
Peter Norton 14:10
Well, it could be Autorama because autorama was the name of some shows, automobile shows that were put together in the USA in the mid 20th century. And this all goes back to the word diorama you make something vivid three dimensional experiential. I mean, this is an immersive experience before you know video games gave us immersive experiences. There were these giant shows. And the the American automobile companies in particular General Motors excelled
Peter Norton 14:42
at these shows, and General Motors hit on this in the biggest way back in the late 30s when they developed a famous show called Futurama combining the words future and diorama you’d like you’re travelling to the future.
Peter Norton 14:59
This was their way of making a future of car dependency, both vivid and apparently liberating, because after all, it’s a model, it doesn’t have to really work. And now, to get to the word autonoma, which is you know how I choose to pronounce it, I can’t correct your pronunciation because it’s not even a word. I just made it up. But when we in, in 2015, note, said again, said again, so I write a net again. So I get it the way I say it is Autonorma, Rama, which is like autonomous.
Carlton Reid 15:37
Okay. yes, right? Yes. So it’s just a matter of new cars autonomous driving does come a lot into into the books.
Peter Norton 15:45
Yes. And so “Autonorama” is a fusion of autonomous and futurama. And I’m claiming in the book that this is the fourth generation of a sales spectacle of a futuristic fantasy. It’s being presented to us to influence us, and to, frankly, deceive us about the feasibility of car dependency.
Peter Norton 16:10
And so the book argues that there have been really four waves of this each about 25 years apart, so roughly 1940, 1965, 1990, and 2015. And in each one of the these waves were presented with a futuristic spectacle of car dependency made possible by the latest technology. And the people presenting these spectacles recognise the power of imagination, and they help us imagine these futures, not in ways that are realistic, but then in ways that are persuasive and attractive. So it’s called autonoma, Rama, because I’m trying to argue that while it looks like the last 10 to 20 years of this futuristic spectacle has been about something that’s fundamentally new. I think it’s really the same show. It’s it’s a retread of a show we’ve been seeing for over 80 years. It’s, and what makes it seem new each time is it’s dressed up with technology that’s brand new until this time, above all, it’s machine learning, LIDAR, and so on. But it’s what matters isn’t so much the technology, but just that the technology is new enough and dazzling enough to lead us to drop our scepticism a little and believe that anything’s possible. Arthur C. Clarke said one…
Carlton Reid 17:49
Do you not think that …?
Peter Norton 17:50
Go ahead.
Carlton Reid 17:52
Sorry, Peter, that the scepticism
Carlton Reid 17:56
wasn’t there, say four or five years ago in the mainstream?
Carlton Reid 18:01
I just I just get much more
Carlton Reid 18:04
inkling from the press now that that there does seem to be more scepticism. So people like you and me who have been sceptical about autonomous vehicles for a number of years, are now becoming a bit more mainstream. And if things like you know, even just recently at the,
Carlton Reid 18:20
at the Paralympics in Japan, where, you know, a certain form of autonomous bus, ran into a blind athlete, what these these things are just terrible, terrible stories. And then the head of Toyota comes out and says, Well, you know, autonomous vehicles, you clearly haven’t got a future, certainly with the current technology. So do you think the technologies and the sorry, the, the scepticism around the technologies is catching up to where it should be, which is these technologies are nowhere near ready for for human consumption?
Peter Norton 18:56
Yes. In other words, the degree of the extravagant promises that were ubiquitous five years ago, are scarcer now. And the promises are more modest now. But what hasn’t changed is the same basic claim, which is that the technology is coming. It may take a little longer than we thought. But it is coming and it’s the technology that will determine what we do not we who will determine what the technology does. And companies are very smart about adapting to these, you know, these disappointing or these broken promises and the disappointing news like the one you just referenced from the Olympics, the Paralympics
Peter Norton 19:43
and for example, right now Waymo has been building up a reputation for itself as the people who are actually today, in 2021 every day of the week, delivering
Peter Norton 19:57
fully autonomous driving or
Peter Norton 20:00
For riding experiences in Arizona, and this way of framing it, in other words, we’re doing it right now is deployed in a way to sort of
Peter Norton 20:15
expose people like me and you as the Luddite naysayers, that that, you know, they would like to characterise this as, in other words, then they’ll say, you know, the the somebody will say, Well, you know, can this ever really happen? And we must says, we’re doing it right now. It’s, it’s bogus for a lot of reasons that you already know. But it’s rhetorically very effective when they can say we’re doing it right now.
Carlton Reid 20:42
What are you doing?
Carlton Reid 20:42
What are Waymo doing? What are Waymo claiming and not able to actually stack up?
Peter Norton 20:47
Yeah, so Waymo can, in fact, pick you up in Chandler, Arizona, and then take you to another destination in Chandler, Arizona, in a vehicle that has no driver, including no so called safety driver, the person who you know, is there to supervise the vehicle and take over in the event of an emergency, there’s not even that. And now, of course, the vehicle is under constant monitoring, and the passengers are in close communication and so on. But it really is autonomous, in that specific sense that there’s nobody operating the vehicle who is in the vehicle. Now, I think this is a sort of
Peter Norton 21:45
And of course, then the the operation costs, the overhead are very, very expensive as well. And this is all because it’s operated at a loss by Alphabet Incorporated, the company that owns Google. And, you know, this is this is another words, they’re paying a lot of money to get a claim of credibility across. It’s not a profitable business model or anything close. Also what makes Waymo possible is that it operates in a — I’m I was about to say town, but it doesn’t hardly is recognisable as a town — in an in an semi urban environment, in which there are almost no pedestrians because it’s so unwalkable The streets are enormously wide. You know, there’s ample there’s a left turn, you know, two or three left, turn lanes, right turn lanes everywhere you go.
Peter Norton 22:46
In other words, they have to have a highly contrived environment. And this, to me is another repeat of history. Because to make car dependency work, the environments, urban environments had to be completely reconstructed, just so you could move each person in their own 100 square feet of of automobile space and park them when they got there. And so what Waymo is proposing implicitly, they’re not saying this, of course, is sort of rebuilding America again, or the world again, around what the vehicle needs instead of around what people need.
Peter Norton 23:23
Now, I know you have a lot more that you could probably offer about what what makes Waymo more an illusion than a reality and I’d love to hear it. But
Peter Norton 23:45
An extremely influential public intellectual named Malcolm Gladwell has a podcast that’s hugely popular and he has an episode called “I love you, Waymo.” And it really presents Waymo as delivering us from every imagined and real evil in the urban environment. It’s It’s It’s really the vehicle as a magical deliverance, again, presented by a very eloquent and appealing intellectual in a way that makes it seem credible. So that’s, you know, an illustration of the fact that public relations is a really big part of this as it always has been.
Carlton Reid 24:27
So, yes, we haven’t got conditions like
Carlton Reid 25:06
It’s a natural conclusion? That’s that’s where the technologies have to go. They have to say, “Well, okay, we can’t see everything. But if we just chip your, your cap, if we just chip your trousers and we just chipped your phone, if we’re just chip everything, then everything will be found in future” will be fantastic if we chip everything?
Peter Norton 25:24
Yeah, that’s certainly what we’re we’re hearing, often implicitly, sometimes in explicitly that this is where we have to go to make this work. And
Peter Norton 27:33
I’m laughing, too, it’s almost incredible, how we will go to such elaborate lengths to solve problems at the high tech end of the spectrum, only when we could solve them at the low tech end, or already do solve them. At the low tech, and there’s a, an expression I’ve taken to using with students where my students are all engineering students. And so I draw a line at the on the board. And at one end, I write high tech. And at the other end, I write low tech. And I circled the high tech end. And I say, if you’re only looking at the high tech, and you may be missing something really useful at the low tech and and to help them overcome the bias against low tech, I say, why don’t we call this high sosh, like, if it’s high tech, then high social, or high social would be the better counterpoint rather than low tech, which sounds like, you know, something primitive or
Unknown Speaker 28:34
simple. So I think we’re missing the low tech end of the spectrum. It’s not being a Luddite, to say it has a lot of value, or a lot we can value in it. And often, the low tech end can help us make the high tech end work. You know that a lot of the most useful systems we can have in the world, combine high tech and low tech instead of pitting them against each other.
Carlton Reid 29:02
There is a technology Peter that you mentioned in “Fighting Traffic,” your first book, and you mentioned it in this book, and I believe we haven’t discussed it before, but that is the speed governor so the speed limiter so this is technology that you would think would be a preamble, a precursor I should say really to autonomous driving if we’re really gonna have autonomous driving well the next stage should be let’s let’s let’s take over some of the takeaway some of the human element and put speed governors in cars and that technology as you’ve discussed it in both books is not exactly brand new that you’ve been able to have speed governor speed limiters since early 19 hundred’s so why haven’t we gone to that stage? Why? Why are we missing out quite a critical stage which would actually have unbelievable speed, safety benefits if you had every car, GPS speed track.
Carlton Reid 30:00
Or in previous technologies just literally speed governed?
Unknown Speaker 30:04
Well, you know, the the early version of that the speed governor from the 1920s, which a lot of city people in America were calling for is a way to make streets for pedestrians device that would make it impossible to drive faster than 25 miles per hour. I think there’s a lot to be learned from why that was so zealously fought by the automobile interest groups. And I am pretty confident I know why, because they read their own statements to each other. And in effect, they said, people have to pay a lot of money for a car. And that means they wanted to do something that other vehicles don’t. And that one thing that cars do best relative to the other vehicles of that era, is go fast. And so if you make it impossible for the car to go faster than say, an electric streetcar, well, then people will just keep taking the electric streetcar. Why would they, you know, pay a lot of money for an automobile. And I think that basic reason is still with us. I mean, one of the biggest obstacles to among many obstacles to the autonomous vehicle future that’s being sold to us is that an autonomous vehicle can be extremely safe. If it doesn’t matter how fast or slow it goes. But, you know, the people who want to make a go of this in a business sense, know that no one will pay money to ride in an autonomous vehicle that has an average speed of eight or 10 miles an hour. So that, you know, the speed is is is, you know, essential from a business point of view. In the US in particular, it also was sort of built in to our urban geography, it because of engineering standards.
Peter Norton 31:58
I mean, it to an American audience, often the first objection I’ll get when I criticise car dependency is people will say, well, it’s a big country with long distances. And this is, of course, a kind of a silly claim, because what the distance that matters is not the distance from one coast to the other coast. The distance that matters is the distance between your home and your workplace, or your home and your school, or the shop and your home, or whatever it is those distances. And those distances can be extremely short. But in the US are our, our highway engineers, when they look at the fact that the time it takes you to get your to your destination, is the product of two factors, namely the distance and your speed. the only factor they actually worked into their calculations was speed. In other words, they never bothered with the distance. And they never made any serious effort to ask, how can we keep our destinations, close enough together, that we will save you time on your way to work? Instead, they said, How can we get you travelling faster? Now, it’s the same problem, how much time does it take you to get to work, but they chose to attack it only from one side of that equation and not from the other. And because they committed themselves immediate a public responsibility to fight what they called delay, delay being travelling slower than the speed limit, then every time you were delayed, the problem had to be solved at public expense by adding new highway capacity that would let you go the speed limit again. And as a consequence of all of that, we already have destinations so far apart, that you cause anxiety, when you tell people that we made in need a future where you go slower.
Carlton Reid 33:53
Your definition when you when you’re saying use high social instead of low tech. That’s kind of interesting and worthwhile. It doesn’t seem to be something that people would tend to use apart from, of course, advocate, because you mentioned the phrase before you I term Luddites, so you know, autonomous vehicles, speed, even
Carlton Reid 34:22
capacity of roads, and making roads fit for whatever car whatever motor vehicle is on the road at the time, for instance, Tesla’s now this is all progress. And Peter, what you’re doing, and if you say things like, well, we could use public transport and we could use bicycles, or we could walk that’s anti-progress, that’s not moving forward. We already have got that.
Peter Norton 34:47
What’s interesting about that, it’s a great question. And it’s actually one of the reasons why I thought, why don’t we call low tech high social, because then we can sort of try to characterise social
Peter Norton 35:33
As you know, for ‘Autonorama’ one of my inspirations is Rachel Carson in “Silent Spring.” And her book was highly critical of the high tech,
Peter Norton 36:24
you know, “Silent Spring” is a reference to a future where there are no songbirds because of chemical pesticides. Well, there equivalents of that for urban mobility, like,
Unknown Speaker 36:37
you know, a future where we can have parks that you can walk to, we can have playgrounds that your children can walk to safely without you having to drive them to the playground, children going to school, these are attractive images, like songbirds are that, you know, high tech, incidentally can help us get to because there’s a place for high tech in a sustainable, Livable Future, there’s a vital place for high tech and that, but it’s then again, a question of making sure that we are the ones choosing the tech that we need for our chosen purposes. And not, and we don’t turn into people sort of waiting for tech to happen to us, which is how it’s getting framed right now.
Carlton Reid 37:25
Are you worried about the Apple Car? Because that, you know, every time they do Apple do take on a technology, they they pretty much transform it in their own making, and make it incredibly popular? Or do you think they will be burned just as, as other companies have have actually been burned in this this this space? Because clearly they they’ve lost? An executive just recently has gone to another company for I think,
Carlton Reid 37:52
and and they haven’t brought out this this is this much vaunted car, despite working on it for a long time. So do you worry about Apple? Or is it thing you’ve got no real worries?
Peter Norton 38:04
Well, I do worry about all of these companies, including Apple, and maybe apple in particular, for the reasons that you mentioned, they’re very good at this. You know, the iPhone is something that people feel an attachment for, which is unlike, you know, the phones we remember as kids, which you weren’t strictly, you know, utilitarian objects.
Unknown Speaker 38:26
I also worried because not just Apple, but also the companies to get apps onto your phone are very good at commanding our attention. And a lot of the thinking around autonomous vehicles right now is that they can be profitable if they’re really massive data collectors. And that’s what has made the iPhone profitable for many companies. And it can also make a sort of Apple Car. What some people in the industry call the ultimate mobile device, a device we will be as attached to as our phones. Now, part of your question is, will this will they actually succeed at this and I actually don’t think autonomous vehicles will ever succeed at being anything like what they’re represented as to us as as something you know, you’ll be able to summon it anywhere, anytime. And it will take whisk you away to your destination, right away the way all the public relations shows. But the fact that I don’t think that’s possible. I don’t want that to distract us from the fact that the pursuit of that goal can be really, really destructive. In other words, you may never get to the goal. But the destruction in the wake of that effort could be profound. And I mean, I think history is trying to teach us that because in America, we’ve been pursuing a city where you can drive anywhere at any time without delay and park for free when you get there, we’ve never achieved that city. And yet we’ve never stopped pursuing it. And in pursuing it, we have really destroyed the pre automotive cities of America and turned the post automotive cities into kind of car dependent energy, wasteful, vast expanses of pavement. So I think we could we could repeat history, we’re at risk of repeating history, because the unachievable promise of the autonomous vehicle may lure us along a path of extravagant spending over use of energy. Carbon emissions, I mean, the list goes on.
Carlton Reid 40:45
Peter, many people, and this is where the Luddite comes in. Many people have said, you know, technologies will be unachievable. And then lo and behold, they become achievable. And the Luddities are proven wrong. And before you said somthing about choice, and how, if only you had the choice of a form of transport, so the Netherlands, you’ve got lots of choice, and you choose whichever transport mode you want, whereas other countries, you know, there’s really ones, it’s monolithic, only one
Carlton Reid 41:14
transport choice, really, because that’s been designed. But autonomous vehicles, if they get it right, and if we are wrong, and where we are proven to be Luddites and Apple, a miraculously in in a year’s time, 18 months time comes out with a product that is just genuinely the real deal? Isn’t that something that could potentially
Carlton Reid 41:39
make bicycling and walking, perhaps not public transport, but certainly those two modes, that can be a golden age for those modes, because you get rid of the nut behind the wheel, you get rid of the most dangerous part of the motor vehicle. And that’s the human driver. So surely, why is you as a technology, intellectual or technology academic? Why are you not saying we can do this, but maybe have parameters in so we steer in a certain direction?
Unknown Speaker 42:14
That’s a wonderful question. And so rich possibilities about about how to approach it.
Peter Norton 42:22
So I mean, first of all, in any book about the future, and “Autonorama” although most of the actual text is about the past, that’s there to help us get the future. Right. So the book I think of is fundamentally being about the future. And I think every author of such a book has to admit they may be wrong. And I, I admit, I may be wrong about autonomous vehicles. But I think, I think the weight of evidence is overwhelmingly on the side that says,
Peter Norton 43:33
There was a an article that came out maybe three or four years ago, by Adam Millard Ball, where he concluded and the conclusion he presented the conclusion with extremely high confidence that autonomous vehicles will return streets to pedestrians and cyclists and even children playing games, because the vehicle will be programmed to avoid injuring those people at any cost really. And here’s that, to me, this is a perfect illustration of why we have to study history or we will get the future wrong.
Peter Norton 44:59
autonomous vehicles would either be mostly stopped in cities, and therefore no one would pay a penny to ride in one. Or they would operate only in wastelands like Chandler, Arizona, where no one walks anyway. So those two alternatives I think are equally unlikely. And here’s here’s where history comes in.
Carlton Reid 45:23
Well,
Peter Norton 45:23
Go ahead.
Carlton Reid 45:26
Well, there’s your future. The future is every single place in the world looking like Chandler, Arizona. In other words, you get rid of the pedestrians, you get rid of the cyclists, because they’re the ones holding back progress, Peter!
Peter Norton 45:39
Exactly. And and, Carlton, I do believe that it’s possible. In other words, it is possible that, that to make these things work, they will, you know, they being policymakers, engineers, corporate interest groups, and so on, they will make sure that
Peter Norton 46:54
designed with such that the pedestrian comes first that automatically you have a pedestrians paradise neglects the fact that the laws, the engineering standards, the social norms, and so on, are all subject to change from the groups with the most at stake and with the most influence. So motordom’s response, the automotive interest groups response to the fact that their drivers were getting into deep legal trouble and deep financial trouble every time they hit a pedestrian and to the fact that the newspapers were were demonising vehicles and their drivers wasn’t to say, well, we have to make cars that only go 10 miles an hour or something like that. Their response was to change the social norms. The jaywalking campaigns were part of that, to change the laws, and to change the engineering standards, such that now, you know, in a typical American city or suburb, a pedestrian wouldn’t even dare try sometimes to even exercise their legal right at the typical American crosswalk, especially on the fringes of a city, you see people waiting patiently at a marked crosswalk where they have the right of way, while drivers just race on through. So I think you’re going to see the same thing with autonomous vehicles. In other words, the autonomous vehicles will, there will be ways to make sure the pedestrian gets out of the way might be an obnoxious noise or a flashing light could even conceivably be cameras that ultimately have facial recognition in them. They’ll make sure that the laws are a certain way.
Carlton Reid 48:40
China already does that.
Peter Norton 48:41
That’s right.
Carlton Reid 48:42
The Chinese already have that. They have that right now. If you if you jaywalk, you can be instantly fined.
Peter Norton 48:50
Right. So China decided at some point they wanted a national automobile industry and suddenly the you know, when you have an authoritarian country like China, the that can be a policy that’s implemented quite quickly. They promoted that industry in part by becoming changing from a country where everybody cycled to everything into a country where it’s hard to walk safely and where you are treated like you know, an enemy of the state if you if you exercise, a little resourcefulness just to get across the street. And that may, I hadn’t thought of that illustration, but that may be the ideal illustration for why the Malcolm Gladwell Adam Millard Ball thesis won’t stand up. I think the other illustration is historical.
Carlton Reid 49:40
Do you know, I’ve never actually thought about this because this autonomous driving is very much a tech bro thing is very much Silicon Valley. Google. Apple. Now we’ve talked about them. We haven’t talked about China. Do you know is this something that never come up on your your LIDAR and then China will
Carlton Reid 50:00
What is China doing with autonomous vehicles, you know, they’re ahead in so many other ways. If this was a viable technology, you’d think they would be at least equal to the Silicon Valley Tech bros, or potentially even further afield, especially because there are, as you said, there are authoritarian country, they can do what the hell they like with their streets, whereas in some respects, even in auto-dependent USA, and then the UK, there’s still gonna be some kickback, whereas in China is gonna be no kickback, if they want to do the whole system where it’s gonna be autonomous vehicles, they can do autonomous vehicles.
Peter Norton 50:37
Well, I’m not privy to a lot about what’s going on there. Besides what, you know, I can pick up fairly easily in journalism, but
Peter Norton 51:01
an example I spend some time on in the, in the book is a 2010 movie that was co produced by General Motors, China and its Chinese partner, SAIC used to be Shanghai AutomotiveIndustries Corporation,
Peter Norton 52:08
Maybe not so much in the vehicle, if not in the vehicles themselves, then in the technology, the world would need to have these vehicles.
Carlton Reid 52:16
I can imagine they would also chip if, literally, you know, we we worry about this is like, Oh, you know, we’re gonna have to have chips on our phones. And then of course, we’re gonna have to have chips in, you know, embedded in our skin. We’re in China, that wouldn’t be a problem. Yeah, everybody who’s born, there’s your chip. And then all of a sudden, you’ve got a system where Yeah, China has got autonomous vehicles, no problem, because everybody wouldn’t be a
Carlton Reid 52:40
better dream come true for an authoritarian regime than to have not only chipped people, but they’re also travelling in vehicles that can be tracked, their location is known at all times.
Peter Norton 52:52
You know, it, it really is an authoritarian’s dream come true. Which of course is ironic, because car dependency was sold on the claim that it was personally liberating.
Carlton Reid 53:04
You talk in your in your book about “transport sufficiency,” what’s what’s transport sufficiency?
Peter Norton 53:10
I’m presenting transport sufficiency as the alternative to a sort of transport perfection. Now, obviously, perfection sounds more attractive than sufficiency. But that comparison changes when you recognise that transport, perfection is actually never achieved. It’s frequently invoked and frequently promised, because that has a way of opening up wallets of opening up public money for roads and so on. But it’s never actually achieved. And the result is actually kind of worse than transport sufficiency. Because in the pursuit of transport perfection, you get all kinds of nuisances, that are, you know, worse than transport sufficiency, and that are ubiquitous in the US, such as, for example, you know, buses, if they come at all come once an hour or something like that, or walking means walking next to a six lane highway, and having no place to cross and so on. So transports efficiency is saying, Well, if we forego perfection, then we have possibilities that are actually very attractive. This, incidentally, is another case where I want to give the credit to Rachel Carson, also to to Jane Jacobs, who were saying very much the same thing. They didn’t use the that vocabulary. But Rachel Carson, for example, was in effect saying, if you give up the dream of, say, pest free agriculture, where you have no insect pests at all, then you can actually do some quite wonderful things, you know, by crop rotation, varying your crops, you know, finding the suitable, the crop right crop for that
Peter Norton 55:00
environment and so on. Jane Jacobs was offering a version of that same kind of message, namely, the perfectionist visions of the planners was never really achievable. And the pursuit of it was destructive. But if we sort of agreed that it’s okay to have, you know, a mix of, of building stock, some of which may be a little decayed. And it’s okay if we have people who sometimes find it frustrating on the sidewalk, because there’s so many people walking and so on. If we accept those things as part of the deal, well, then we can take take that as a serious possibility as an alternative that looks very attractive compared to the pursuit of perfection, we never actually approach.
Carlton Reid 55:48
Also in your book, I’m now I’m going to pick out because I I’m lucky enough to have been sent an advanced copy. And I’ve, I’ve read it, and I picked up it, so I’m not gonna just pick out bits and throw them at you. And you’ve got to explain to us to everyone who’s listened to this. So you wrote “a city optimised for drivers keeps not only drivers dissatisfied, but everyone else, too.” So explain that.
Peter Norton 56:16
Well, this is actually related to the previous point, namely, a city optimised for drivers is ultimately unachievable for the simple reason that
Peter Norton 57:34
you will find that you can live further from work and maybe save yourself or rent or get yourself a lower price on your house. If you choose to live another 10, 20, 30 miles from your daily destinations, which in turn means more total driving, it means more people coming into the city from a wider radius of origin points, and all needing a place to park their vehicle all day. And so it’s a kind of a treadmill, where the more you accommodate drivers, the more driving there is, and therefore the more effort you have to take to accommodate them. And if you the ultimate example of this would be Houston, Texas, where if you you know do a Google image search for Katy freeway, which is interstate 10 near Houston. You see, I think it’s now 26 lanes of congested traffic. Which, which is it makes the most dystopian dystopian science fiction seem, you know, mundane by comparison. So it’s, it’s it’s an absurdity.
Peter Norton 58:46
And, you know, that’s the point I was just trying to make.
Carlton Reid 58:48
But 28 lanes will fix it.
Peter Norton 58:52
That’s right.
Carlton Reid 58:53
One more will fix it. We’re just looking for that sweet spot.
Peter Norton 58:57
Exactly, yeah, one more lane is what it’ll take.
Carlton Reid 58:59
So both you
Carlton Reid 59:02
and I, we, our research interests often coincide. Mine from the UK angle and from the US angle. But they often talk about or look at eventual dystopias and and but you when you’re reading the literature of the 1920s, 1930s, it’s full of optimism and and ditto for for here. So I’m I’m currently reading lots and lots of literature, from that time where modren was going to be perfection. It was you know, we weren’t going to ever reach
Carlton Reid 1:00:00
That’s basically where we’re coming we’re the Grouches is here, we’re, we’re the, the boring old Luddites, or not even Luddites. We’re the boring old people pointing out that, yes, you can have this technology, but it won’t actually do what you say it’s going to it’s going to do. And we did have to look at history to kind of prove that in all this optimism.
Carlton Reid 1:00:24
Now really ever we’re just stuck in traffic. Yes, this this, this is a freedom machine. If you’re the only one driving it, as soon as everybody else has this fantastic technology, it ceases to be practical.
Peter Norton 1:00:39
Quite so. You were reminding me of a word that might be applied to both of us as well? That’s very common, maybe more here than there naysayers were the naysayers. But yeah, certainly, if you compare the utopian visions of the 30s, or the 40s, or the 50s, with what we have now, it is profoundly disappointing. I think this compels us to ask why do we keep falling for these techno futuristic fantasy lands that can’t be achieved? And that was a question that was very important to me in autonoma? Why do we keep falling for these things? And of course, one of the arguments in “Autonorama,” is that we actually do get sceptical after each wave of these things. There’s a credibility gap that sets in
Peter Norton 1:02:33
inspire gets applied to make us believe futures that are both undesirable and unachievable?
Peter Norton 1:02:40
Well, then then we’re being manipulated again.
Carlton Reid 1:02:42
That sort of reminded me of a like a visual joke like, you know, you know, “Punch,” Punch, there are satirical magazine in the UK, I’m pretty sure it from them. So it’s there’s a, there’s an illustration of a horse and cart, a drunk farmer. And I’m sure this has been used in the US as well, I’m sure you’ll be familiar with this trope. But the farmer is drunk, leaning back, in effect, asleep in the in the back of his, his vehicle of the day, his character of the day driven by a horse, but the horse can actually get him home from the pub. So these technologies of autonomous vehicles, I’ve actually been with us before, you would just have the horse would take you home from the pub drunk. So nothing that they’re really dreaming of now are something that we couldn’t have done using other forms of technology previously, and you kind of make that point in the book where you say, and I’m quoting you here,
Carlton Reid 1:03:43
where “walkability, cycle routes and basic transit are so much less expensive, that even if we diverted a 10% of the funds now going to building, maintaining and policing roads, and and the future of these roads, means we can actually start to see beneficial trends in a year or two, never mind in 10, 20 years.” So that’s where we need to be brave and actually funding technologies
Carlton Reid 1:04:11
that work, that are proven to work,
Carlton Reid 1:04:15
but maybe not sexy.
Peter Norton 1:04:18
I love the way you put it. In fact, that opening analogy really ought to give us pause because that farmer’s horse, got the farmer home, even if there was an inch of snow and it was sleeping, and it was night. All of which would have made it you know, a technical nightmare to sort out at the best high tech companies r&d divisions today. It’s true that you know, the resources necessary just to make walking practical and cycling practical and to give people more reliable and better bus service and so on are not that significant. And he would finally give
Peter Norton 1:06:23
You know, yeah, that would be restoring choice to people and technology could be part of it. Because one of the reasons why we over built roads is that, you know, the excuse was, it’s not practical to charge people for their road use by the actual cost of each mile, their driving, that would require, say, a toll booth on every mile of road, and everybody would have to stop and get coins out of their pocket to pay the toll. And therefore, we’re gonna go with the gas tax instead. And the gas tax was this incredibly clumsy and stupid, low tech way to create a funnel of money for roads that became a self perpetuating treadmill of road building. Well, technology can let us undo that. So I’m being a high tech fan here and saying, why don’t we, you know, charge people and then put that money into giving people choices.
Carlton Reid 1:07:14
Do you see any? Because you mentioned many times in both books, how the automakers basically got everybody else to pay for their infrastructure, you know, society paid, governments paid on their behalf. Do you see
Carlton Reid 1:07:32
that happening with autonomous vehicles, because if we are going to have autonomous vehicles, and we know that the technology they’ve currently got aren’t going to be sufficient, they’re going to have to have a remodelling of the streets, which we’re going to have to pay for at the end of the day, it won’t be the automakers and never has been the automakers. And it’s never been the users, the motorists either. It’s always been society as a whole. Do you see in for instance, in the latest Biden’s infrastructure bill, you know, how much of that is actually going to subsidising all of these tech dreams?
Peter Norton 1:08:06
Well, I can’t speak very specifically about Biden’s infrastructure bill because I have some homework to do to get better acquainted with the details. I only have the headline level information about it. But what I can say is absolutely the costs, entailed in accommodating and enabling autonomous and other highly automated vehicles on the roads has already been getting picked up by the US taxpayer in a big way. And this goes across parties and administrations. At the end of the Obama administration, there was a smart cities competition where one US city got a enormous amount of money to promote.
Peter Norton 1:09:37
autonomous vehicles are coming in. It’s our job in the Federal Highway Administration to help it happen. And she announced large sums of money for that. And without even checking, I think we can be certain that there are substantial public funds from US DoT even under Mayor Pete for
Peter Norton 1:10:07
So yeah, these interest groups, these trade associations and lobbies are simply too powerful for that not to happen.
Carlton Reid 1:10:16
So, Motordom Mark II?
Peter Norton 1:10:18
Yes, I think we still have Motordom and in fact, the Motordom club is expanded to include tech companies.
Carlton Reid 1:10:25
Peter, as always, it has been fascinating. Your book was excellent. I was kindly asked to write a blurb for it. That’s why I got an early copy, in which I hope I was as glowing as I ought to be. Because it was a fantastic book, and a very, very good follow up to “Fighting traffic,” like the kind of the next stage. So tell us, when’s it gonna be available? Where is it going to be available from tell us all of that detail.
Peter Norton 1:10:57
So the press is Island press, and Island press says it will be available October 21.
Peter Norton 1:11:06
A nice feature of the book’s title is that you won’t get a lot of irrelevant hits. If you type in the book’s title “Autonorama,” it t ought to be the first thing that comes up on any search engine. And it will be available through essentially all the book channels that people are already using.
Carlton Reid 1:11:28
And that’s all IslandPress.org. Now, where can you find more about you, because you’re not on Twitter.
Peter Norton 1:11:36
I know, I have a an About Me page on my department’s website, my department being the Department of Engineering and Society at the University of Virginia.
Peter Norton 1:11:52
I think if anyone searched just for “University of Virginia” and “Peter Norton,” it would probably come up near at or near the top.
Carlton Reid 1:12:01
So you’re proving yourself here to be that Luddite.
Peter Norton 1:12:05
Well, you know, I recently had a friend who so use of social media, I had a journalist friend I like very much recently tell me I have to be on Twitter. And then in the next sentence, he said, but I lose an incredible amount of time on it, I have to say, so I’ll consider joining the twittersphere. Again, but you know, I have some
Peter Norton 1:12:31
costs and benefits to to consider.
Carlton Reid 1:12:34
Yes, I wouldn’t encourage anybody to do it. Because it is can be a time sink, and you do tend to talk around in circles. But at the end of the day, it is good to, to have like,
Carlton Reid 1:12:49
cuz I use it the other day, in fact, for a Forbes article, in that I was taken on a whole bunch, I don’t know why they’ve adopted me, but a whole bunch of anti low traffic neighbourhood folks have adopted me as their bet and one of the name I have mentioned why I’m the one at the moment, which they’re there that they’re piling in on me. And so I try and win when I take them on. You know, it’s like, this is not radical, you know, a low traffic neighbourhood is not radical, you know, the Romans had low traffic neighbourhoods. 600 years ago, the York Minster had low,, these are bollard, these are not you know, the throughout history we’ve had, you know, motor carriages restricted. This is not unusual yet all the mass media and these people are seeing this as this incredible, new and novel to them dystopian future where you can’t go exactly where you want in your motorcar. So I take these people on, and I try and move it on. So because it’s not a very radical concept, they consider it radical. I just say, well, let’s just ban cars.
Carlton Reid 1:13:56
They then flip their lid, because that is just something that they haven’t is like, Whoa, we just thought we’re talking about you know, just a few bars here. Now this this lunatic is talking about banning all cars. Now, of course, I don’t have any power in it. I can’t do anything about this. But just mentioning that concept that that is your future and I kind of scared them. I hope it just nudges the Overton window for them, just nudges up a little. So they then think that LTNs or maybe they’re not quite as crazy, or as radical as we think because this nutter is talking about banning all cars. So maybe we will just keep quiet. Mostly you’re talking to the wind, you’re not gonna convert anybody people have got their their rigid points of view and I don’t know why they even start arguing about it. But there was a glimmer, it was two or three posters, who when you actually started chiselling away, and you actually showed them because they one particular one came on and was very anti LTNs but then
Carlton Reid 1:15:01
I started talking about highway removal. And how it didn’t lead to Carmageddon, there didn’t lead to congestion everywhere. And then I showed them a photograph of this particular the poster child of highway removal in South Korea and showed them how it is now a park today. And their argumentation had been about how all LTNs was shoving
Carlton Reid 1:15:27
all the heavy traffic onto these major freeways where there was actually lots of houses next to it. But when I showed them, like other countries have done this, they actually came around to this concept, and I just got one convert from this argumentation, I would consider that to be a success. So some Overton windows might be nudged open, but then one person who was anti LTN is gonna think ‘Well, actually, there is a different future, because South Korea did that.’ So that’s why I use social media and and I don’t mind spending time arguing with people, even though 90% of them, you’re not going to change their mind, you might change 10% of people’s mind. And perhaps those 10% could be an important 10%.
Peter Norton 1:16:15
Well, I am delighted by this story, and you’ve given me something to think about very carefully. I read that piece in Forbes, by the way, and I absolutely loved it. And the reason I saw it is that I am on social media. I saw it on Facebook. And I recall your sort of attention getting statement in that post, which was the first sentence is been banned cars are approximately that. So I loved the deliberate provocation that that was that was amusing. And I shared, of course, I shared the article because it’s it’s it’s common sense presented bbsolutely refreshingly. Well, yeah, I think I’ll give it a try.
Carlton Reid 1:17:09
Don’t blame me though.
Peter Norton 1:17:10
No, no,
Peter Norton 1:17:11
if I if I ended up
Carlton Reid 1:17:12
I didn’t, I didn’t.
Peter Norton 1:17:14
Yeah, if if my career stalls to a halt, because I’m constantly tweeting, or, and so on I’ll take full responsibility. And you have that on Zencastr.
Carlton Reid 1:17:27
Thanks to Peter Norton. There’s a photo of him and a link to “Autonorama” on this show’s website at the-spokesmen.com. Next month, I’ll have a chat with Lachlan Morton, who, as I’m sure you know, rode this year’s Tour de France by himself, but meanwhile … get out there and ride.