Active Travel Podcast

Dr. Harrie Larrington-Spencer, Research Fellow at the Active Travel Academy, interviews Professor Aimi Hamraie, who directs the Critical Design Lab, and whose research focuses on disability, accessibility, and urban design. Show notes and transcript link available at https://blog.westminster.ac.uk/ata/accessibility-and-urban-design-ata-podcast-20241/. Show notes by Professor Rachel Aldred and podcast editing by Chris Gregory of Alternative Stories. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rachel Aldred, Professor of Transport and Director of the Active Travel Academy, interviews Ellis Fannin, a PhD researcher at the University of Manchester, about their research on queering cartographic methods. Show notes and transcript link available at https://blog.westminster.ac.uk/ata/queering-cartographic-methods/. Thanks to Ellis and to our ATA interns, Rob Coates (who prepared and edited the audio files) and James Stevenson (who corrected the transcript and wrote the show notes). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dulce Pedroso, PhD researcher at the Active Travel Academy, interviews Akwesi Osei of Possible about his research into barriers to Black men cycling in London. Show notes and transcript link available at https://blog.westminster.ac.uk/ata/barriers-to-black-men-cycling-in-london-ata-podcast-3/. Thanks to Akwesi and Dulce and to our ATA interns, Rob Coates (who prepared and edited the audio files) and James Stevenson (who corrected the transcript and wrote the show notes). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Professor Rachel Aldred, Director of the Active Travel Academy, interviews Matt C. Smith of Brighton University about their research into trans in planning, and trans experiences in the city. Show notes and transcript link available at https://blog.westminster.ac.uk/ata/planning-for-trans-futures-ata-podcast-20232/ Thanks to Matt and to our interns, Rob Coates (who prepared and edited the audio files), James Stevenson (who corrected the transcript and wrote the show notes), and Chinaemerem Obiegbu (who helped with the transcript). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Professor Rachel Aldred, Director of the Active Travel Academy, interviews Dr. Therese Kenna of University College Cork about her research into experiences of neurodivergence in the city. Show notes and transcript link available at https://blog.westminster.ac.uk/ata/new-ata-podcast-season/ Thanks to Therese and to our interns, Rob Coates (who prepared and edited the audio files) and James Stevenson (who corrected the transcript and wrote the show notes). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Professor Aldred talks to Harriet Larrington-Spencer, a researcher at Healthy Active Cities at the University of Salford. Harriet, or Harrie, developed an interest in active travel after experiencing cycling in Copenhagen and the Netherlands, and after losing the use of her left arm following a collision with a driver. Harrie discovered that while a tricycle was far easier for her to use, the physical barriers and chicanes in place on many of Britain’s cycleways make the use of three wheels challenging. Harrie talks about the challenges such infrastructure poses for non-standard cycle users, about other barriers to wider uptake, such as cost, what inclusive active travel would look like, and what research she would conduct, if money were no object. And, of course, about cycling with her dog, Frida. Healthy Active Cities is a research group bringing together researchers from the University of Salford, as well as practitioners and policymakers to discuss issues in sustainable transport. You can find out more about their work here: https://blogs.salford.ac.uk/healthyactivecities/TRANSCRIPT00:00Hi and welcome back to the Active Travel Podcast, brought to you by the Active Travel Academy, and to season two. We had a little break over Autumn, and we’ve all been busy working on lots of different projects, but we’re delighted to finally bring you the second episode – and we hope to have more in the weeks to come. But without further ado, let’s hand over to Professor Rachel Aldred, Active Travel Academy founder, and our guest.So I'm really happy to be here for an episode of the active travel podcast with Harriet Larrington-Spencer, who is a researcher at Healthy Active Cities at the University of Salford. So hi, Harrie, good to have you here. 00:11Hi, Rachel, thank you for having me.00:14Great. So one of the things I wanted to start with is really about how you got into this how you got into researching active travel, because one of the great things about active travel is that it's people from a whole range of different backgrounds in the field in terms of disciplinary backgrounds. So can you tell me how you got into it?00:32Yeah, it's so my academic background is originally not active travel, I come from a geography background. So my bachelor's is in geography. And then I moved to the Netherlands to do my master's, which was in water management and irrigation. So very different from active travel. And whilst I was there, and I did my Erasmus as part of my masters in Copenhagen, just I went from kind of cycling for, for recreation and, and a bit of sport to cycling every day, when you arrive at university as an international student in the Netherlands, they tell you no bike, no life. So you kind of the first thing, the first thing they give you is a list of all the secondhand places to buy a bike. And then from that moment, cycling just became my natural form of transportation. And when I saw then I started my PhD. Back in the UK, in Manchester, I was cycling everyday for transportation, and I got hit by a car. And then I had to start changing the type of cycling. So whilst I was cycling for transportation, I was also doing cycling for sport. But I had to kind of start working out how to cycle for transportation in a way that I could do, because the the car damaged my left arm, so it doesn't work, and my hand doesn't work anymore. So it became How could I use a two wheel bike. So I started doing doing that. And even on two wheels, I found quite a lot of barriers to cycling, and doing my everyday journeys that I just hadn't considered before. And then more recently, to make it a lot easier for myself, I have a trike, and so I can do my shopping and carry my dog more easily. And the barriers that were difficult to negotiate on a on a bike have become impossible to negotiate on a trike. And so it started from there really, and and thinking about active travelling that everybody has a has a right basically, it's kind of the right to the city is that everyone should be able to move actively around their local neighbourhood, and how to enable that. 02:43Wow,Wow, thank you now I am going to pick up on different bits of that. But just to go back to the Netherlands experience. So when you went to the Netherlands, had you been cycling much before in this country? Were you completely new to it?02:55No, so I wasn't completely new I grew up in the middle of in the kind of the middle of nowhere in the countryside. So to get to see friends it was always cycling. But also, it was cycling through farmland and fields and or very small country lanes. And it was never really it wasn't an everyday thing. So to actually get anywhere, we had no bus service, you had to learn to drive if you wanted to get anywhere independently and before kind of 17,18 cycling offered that but it wasn't particularly viable to get very far. 03:39Yeah, I know I that sounds kind of familiar. And when you came back to Manchester after the or you came to Manchester after the Netherlands, how was it suddenly cycling in Manchester after having cycled in the Netherlands?03:50It’s just a complete world away. It's I think even if you remove the infrastructure from the UK from kind of that equation, the infrastructure makes a difference. But it’s also that I think everyone in the Netherlands who drives is also a cyclist. So it's, it's Yeah, the infrastructure is not there. And then also cyclists are not in the minds of drivers, either. So when I got hit by a car it was because the driver overtook me and turned left because they didn't even and it was across the segregated cycle lane as well. So it's that they didn't even think that they had to kind of consider that there might be a cyclist on the cycle lane and yeah, completely different.04:39Yeah, it just highlights the need for the infrastructure but also the need for the cultural change behaviour change as well at the same time. And then you were talking about how you cycling as a disabled cyclist using a two wheeler and then using a trike was was different. Could you say a little bit more about that and about some of the barriers that you experienced there.05:00With, with two wheels, I can I can do it and I can I can cycle in, it's fine. But moving the handlebars is quite difficult picking up my bike is difficult. So the probably the biggest barrier is if you are using shared paths and then there's barriers on the shared path. So you've got, A frames are the worst, but there's also chicanes. So I think most of you probably know what chicanes are, but kind of small fences to slow you down. So it just started with the two wheels, you kind of you can negotiate it, but it takes time and it takes energy and I can't really lift my bike and it causes pain when I do it. And then when you get to three wheels, because the cycle is longer and it's wider, you literally cannot like you can't get it past A frames, and sometimes you can get it past chicanes but to do that, my husband has to kind of pick up the trike and negotiate it around. I can't do that at all by myself. So it just it means that that certain cycle, cycling routes are completely off limits to me. And they're often the cycle routes that are the nicest ones, because they're completely away from cars and roads.06:13And why why do you think this kind of this kind of thing exists? Why given that, you know, potentially it's not in line with equality legislation?06:21So the kind of technical reason that they're there is to prevent motorcycles and and anti-social behaviour on cycle routes. Often, it's part of the planning permission to get the route and the police have to if a route is going to be off road, then the police have to agree to it as well. And the police's kind of standard response is an A frame. And some residents also want A frames as well, because there's, I think there's often a fear of this kind of antisocial behaviour from motorcycles, not necessarily that it's going to happen. So, yeah, and it's and now, kind of, the more I get into it, the more I struggle, because I think kind of maybe a few years ago, it was that councils wouldn't know about the Equality Act and kind of the what, what their responsibilities are to disabled cyclists. But more and more, I'm seeing councils saying things like, Oh, we've looked at LTN 1/20 [Local Transport Note 1/20 – cycle infrastructure design guidance], which very specifically says, Don't use A frames, don't use chicanes, and the council's will recognise that, that they should not be using those and they shouldn't be implementing those. And that by implementing those, they're excluding disabled cyclists. But at the same time, they kind of say, we're doing it anyway. And we've got no other way to manage motorcyclists. So this is what we'll do.07:53Yeah, so that's, they'll just probably pick up on the LTN 1/20, the new cycle infrastructure design guidance. So that's seen some improvements, but obviously, isn't necessarily feeding through into practice. And does it highlight the extent to which things need to be aligned for things to change? If the police, you know, you don't necessarily just need transport just use to change in transport planning, but also the police and so on as well.08:15Yeah, it definitely needs to be a much more joined up approach. And even now, in in Stockport, we're seeing that there are routes that aren’t accessible. So if you look at LTN 1/20, they say that the ideal route be at least spaced at 1.5 metres. And so in Stockport, they're taking cycle routes and walking routes that have this spacing already. And they're putting chicanes on them. And I've just saw a proposal yesterday where they're asking for an A frame barrier. So yeah, there's there needs to be working with police and with residents and with disabled people, as well. But to me, it shouldn't be the kind of the equality of access should be the centre point. And it's what should we be do? What can we do to achieve that rather, than k

Laura Laker interviews Fare City's Charles Critchell, the Active Travel Academy Media Awards' only double winner. In 2019 Charles won our investigations/long-term follow-up category for his piece, Burning Bridges, on the closure of Hammersmith Bridge to motor traffic, and in 2020 won the campaign or research category for a two-parter on non-commercial use of cargo bikes. Judges enjoyed the detail and research that went into Charles' two pieces.Charles founded Fare City, an urban transport think tank, in October 2019 after quitting his job as an architect. Although not a media organisation the original research and storytelling that went into both pieces won Charles two awards for his work. Charles talks to the Active Travel Podcast just as Fare City is about to become incorporated into a community interest company.Charles talks to Laura about his Fare City project, about chasing a stern businessman across Hammersmith Bridge in the name of research, and how one of his award-winning pieces is about to become a research paper. Charles' winning pieces can be found here:Burning Bridges (2019 winner) https://farecity.org/2019/10/01/84/ Sharing the Load (2020 winner)Part one: https://farecity.org/2020/01/10/sharing-the-load-part-one/Part two: https://farecity.org/2020/01/17/sharing-the-load-part-two/Transcription of interviewLaura Laker 0:02  Hi and welcome back to the active travel podcast, and to the start of our second season. So we had a bit of a break from Autumn in 2020 to fit in the Media Awards and various other things that we were working on but we are now back for 2021 with season two. So, we are kicking off with a look back at those Active Travel Media Awards from November, and interviewing some of the winners. We started the Media Awards in 2019 to recognise the impact that media reporting has on active travel and wanted to recognise in particular, some of the good practice in the field. The second annual awards event was virtual this time, we had nine categories in 2019 with a special award category for Brian Deegan and Bob Davis for ideas with beers. Charles Critchell is the Active Travel Media Awards' only double winner, picking up awards in 2019 and 2020 both in categories recognising in depth research or investigative work. Charles is the founder of fare city, which is a transport Think Tank based in London. Now fare city describes itself as a team of built environment professionals advocating for sustainable transport and empowering individuals to make reasoned travel choices. They say they're embracing the in between: small things which are often overlooked, which collectively can add up to big changes. So welcome Charles.Charles Critchell 1:27  Hi Laura, thanks for having me.Laura Laker 1:29  Yeah Nice to have you on. So, you're kind of an unusual, one in terms of media angle because you are an architect. You left your job as an architect in April 2019, and launched Fare City in October that year. A month later you won our first Media Award, your piece titled Burning Bridges, which was published on Fare City's website about the closure of London's Hammersmith Bridge and second, Sharing the Load, is a two parter on non-commercial cargo bike use in London, which was published January 2020 which won our most recent award. And so that was published pre pandemic. Although your site isn't a traditional news site per se, our judges were enamoured with the research you put into the pieces which are journalistic in that you speak to people you tell a story and you do the research to put that story forward so perhaps you can start by telling us a little bit about those pieces how you came up with the ideas and how you approach them. Charles Critchell 2:26  Yeah, sure. I mean, I think it's important to point out that for Fare City we're all about co-creating fairer cities, and as you say by empowering. You know city users to make more reasoned travel choices, and for us cities are really about people, and it's about the story as well the narrative. And I think so for the Hammersmith Bridge piece first of all, when the bridge, initially closed in April 2019, and that was to motorised transport I should point out, so I was walking across the bridge several times a week, as was everyone else. And back in those days when you could go up to people and talk to people on the street, and I was actually walking across and I spoke to a lady and I said sort of said to her, well this is a bit of a drag isn't it you know we're having a walk across the bridge to get to the bus stop on the other side, you know she turned around, she said no, it's fantastic. It's the best part of my day. You know I get to sort of relax unwind after work I can walk across the river, and I really think that got us thinking about how these conversations were going on, and across the bridge, you know, across all sorts of times of the day. And people were sort of engaging with one another conversing with one another. And we sort of wondered then you know, are there broader well being benefits to the closure of the bridge because I think, as has been well established since the bridge closed in April 2019 to motorised vehicles, there was this prevailing narrative that actually this was a fundamentally bad thing, and you know everyone was sort of universally upset about this closure but actually, that wasn't the case. I think what we did then is, as you say we sort of surveyed users on the bridge, and there had been other surveys have been done, I won't name names but they were fairly unrepresentative, and a lot of sort of leading questions such as, what's the worst thing about the closure of the bridge. So, we approached it from a different point of view, where we were trying to be neutral, and trying to be trying to be sort of fair and actually conducting the surveys on the bridge itself over a four day period just to get a flavour of what people were thinking about the bridge, and I guess as importantly, how they would want the bridge opened in the future. Just a few anecdotes before maybe I'll tell you a bit about some other findings but, for instance, there was a young couple that lived on the south side of the bridge, and you know they said that they used to get deliveries every day. And since the you know the closure of the bridge to motorised vehicles, they, they stopped doing that, and they'd started cooking more, and then we had a young boy who actually sort of contradicted his mother, and go ahead to change your answer to the survey which I thought was fantastic. She wanted cars back on the bridge. And he said, you know, what about my asthma. And so, I think, again, I mean, aside from the findings of the survey it's these little anecdotes and these vignettes of city life which kind of come together in that place, and that moment in time on the bridge, which makes you feel that that really is, is this is critical sort of bit of infrastructure and that's what we talk about about trying to make city transport work harder city infrastructure work harder to unlock additional benefits for people,Laura Laker 5:36  the closure of the bridge that inspired you to quit your job was it, because I notice it happened in the same month.Charles Critchell 5:43  No I don't think so.Laura Laker 5:48  I'm just imagining. I love that you you like going up and talking to people, because I also do that and I guess that's one of the joys of being a journalist is that you kind of have an excuse to talk to people and it's a bit old school maybe because so much is online these days, but you do get quite interesting stories from people actually and they can be quite open,Charles Critchell 6:06  yeah you're right i think a lot of that stems from training and then qualifying as an architect because when you're at architecture school, part of what you're doing is trying to understand the built environment how people are interacting with streets and public spaces. And I think some of the stuff we used to do in sort of undergrad which, you know, looking back at it now is probably, particularly now as the pandemic would be frowned upon. But I think that was really instructive in sort of making you sort of forcing you to interact with people and really try to understand how other people are experiencing urban space.Laura Laker 6:42  That was one of Jan Gehl's, I think it was his wife's criticism of the famous urbanist, that inspired him to and start looking and observing people that was that, I think she's a psychologist or a psychiatrist, and she was saying, Well, the problem with architects is that you don't build for people or you don't think about people, but it really is so important, isn't it and I guess that's where the crossover is with the public realm.Charles Critchell 7:02  Yes, sir. I think you're absolutely right and i think only by speaking to people about their lived experience of the built environment. Can you really get a real sort of representative understanding of what people are doing in cities and you know the ways in which cities should be designed for them.Laura Laker 7:22  And so, you found that a lot of people basically wanted to keep the bridge open to people walking and cycling yeahCharles Critchell 7:28  so I think we have three key findings. The first one is that a greater percentage of those surveyed considered that the closure of the bridge to motorised vehicles had some benefits. So, I mean it's worth pointing out that a lot of the people we spoke to traditionally crossed the bridge using a car. And a lot of these people were telling us that actually, you know that they were recognising the benefits not only for themselves but for the wider community so we're talking about less pollution and less noise and more pleasant experience of crossing a bridge. And as I say some people actually making these positive lifestyle changes, and then I think another one is, as you said is 41% believe that the bridge should be reopened to public transport,

Low traffic neighbourhoods have been around for decades – but recently many more have been deployed as part of COVID-19 interventions to help people walk and cycle more, and avoid public transport. New analysis of three years of the People and Places study in “Mini Hollands” in London, by Dr Rachel Aldred and Dr Anna Goodman, has found that, in ‘high dose’ low traffic neighbourhoods, not only do people walk and cycle more, but over time there was a decrease in car ownership.Rachel and Anna’s newly published article is: ‘Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, Car Use, and Active Travel: evidence from the People and Places survey of Outer London active travel interventions’The Low Traffic Neighbourhood, or LTN, is a qualitative intervention to improve cycling and walking trips. In LTNs short car journeys become longer, while walking and cycling are made more pleasant by reduced interactions with motor traffic. These factors combine to change behaviour – not just for cycling, but for walking, too.In this conversation Professor Aldred says while LTNs are typically thought of as measures for cycling, they can boost pedestrian trips, by making walking on, and crossing the streets more pleasant. With traffic flows of less than 100 vehicles per hour at peak, which equates to around 1,000 vehicles per day, people start walking in the carriageway, because they feel safe to do so. She argues by reducing traffic levels low traffic neighbourhoods particularly benefit disabled pedestrians, who are more likely to be injured on the roads.Historic research from tube strikes in London that shows while disruption to our lives is difficult and inconvenient, if made to think about our trips we sometimes end up with a better solution for ourselves as well as local businesses, by walking and cycling for shorter trips.While more research is needed, including around decision making in buying and keeping a private vehicle, this suggests potential societal reductions in car ownership if low traffic neighbourhoods were more widely implemented, with the prospect of freeing up road space for other activities than car parking, such as parklets, cycle lanes or wider footways. This new analysis could mean that, in terms of getting people out of their cars, low traffic neighbourhoods, or LTNs, are an important part of the active travel puzzle.Links:Published study ‘Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, Car Use, and Active Travel: evidence from the People and Places survey of Outer London active travel interventions’: https://transportfindings.org/article/17128-low-traffic-neighbourhoods-car-use-and-active-travel-evidence-from-the-people-and-places-survey-of-outer-london-active-travel-interventionsPre-print of longer article calculating health economic benefits of the mini-Holland schemes: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/5ny4c/Rachel's blog on the research : http://rachelaldred.org/research/low-traffic-neighbourhoods-evidence/Manual for Streets:  https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/341513/pdfmanforstreets.pdf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sustrans’ and Arup’s new report, Cycling for Everyone, was published at a time when both the Black Lives Matter movement and the active travel movement are at the forefront of public discussion. Susan Claris is one of the report’s authors, and Global Active Travel Leader at Arup, and Daisy Narayanan is Sustrans’ Director of Urbanism.Coincidentally launched the day Boris Johnson’s government announced its Gear Change document, setting out a path to cycling growth in England, Cycling for Everyone identifies through interviews, data and analysis who is cycling, but also crucially, who isn’t, why, and how greater diversity in cycling can be achieved.Cycling in the UK is predominantly white and male: 85% of people aged over 65, as well as around three quarters of disabled people, women, people at risk of deprivation and people from ethnic minority groups, never cycle. Quantitative data can only tell us so much, however, and although different people face different barriers, many of the issues stopping us cycling more are similar, from safety fears, to access and affordability, to perceptions of competence.As Susan Claris puts it, inclusion is more than making things step-free – it's about looking at the impact of infrastructure from the broadest possible perspective. This means where we design our cycling infrastructure, how, and with who in mind - and the report acknowledges we need to do better in our public spaces, and offers some pointers as to how we can do that.Cycling for Everyone provides not only a call to action to level the field for more people to cycle, but a platform to achieve greater diversity in cycling at a time when we could be on the cusp of great leaps in active travel participation and, if we heed the report’s lessons, far greater diversity, too.As Daisy Narayanan writes in her forward to the report: "Only by ensuring that voices of underrepresented groups are integrated in policy, planning, design and implementation, can we ensure that we create places that meet the needs of the diversity of people who want to use them."You can read the Cycling for Everyone report here: https://www.sustrans.org.uk/media/7377/cycling_for_everyone-sustrans-arup.pdfTranscript Laura Laker 0:00  Hi and welcome to the Active Travel podcast. Brought to you by the Active Travel Academy, which is part of the University of Westminster in London. I'm Laura Laker, an active travel journalist. Now we know cycling has benefits for physical and mental health as a low cost transport, for independent access to services, work and education, but there are people across society who can't access cycling. The most recent National Travel Attitudes Survey found two thirds of adults feel it's too dangerous to cycle and cycling is still predominantly something done by a small proportion of the population. In other words, it's not very diverse. According to a new report by Sustrans and Arup, Cycling for Everyone. 85% of people over 65, and around three quarters of disabled people, women, people at risk of deprivation and people from ethnic minority groups, never cycle. This report is what we're talking about today, what it tells us about why certain people don't cycle and what can be done to change that. So with me today, is one of the report's authors, Susan Claris, who is the global active travel leader at Arup. Hi, Susan. Susan Claris 1:07  Hello,Laura Laker 1:08  and Daisy Narayanan, who is Sustrans' director of urbanismDaisy Narayanan 1:13  Hi Laura. Laura Laker 1:14  Hi. So, yeah, thanks for coming on the podcast. It's great to have you both on; can you just tell our listeners a little bit about how the report came about, and who it's aimed at.Susan Claris 1:26  It's actually got quite an interesting story because I had to remind myself of this one it was it was actually from the Arup side, it was a colleague who joined us as a graduate back in 2015, and he'd done his dissertation on cycling, and older people. And shortly after joining us he sort of said, you know, there's not much guidance out there, wouldn't it be good if we could actually do something to look into this subject. And it took a bit of while to get it, get it all going but from that we had discussions with Sustrans. And the idea came about drawing on the Sustrans Bike Life data to actually produce his guide that would actually show how cycling can be made more inclusive and really can be made for everyone so that that was the background of it from the Arup side I don't know whether Daisy wants to talk about it from the Sustrans perspective.Daisy Narayanan 2:12  Yeah, I mean, just adding to what he said Susan from a Sustrans perspective, all Sustrans strategic priorities have 'for everyone' at its very heart. So, the whole concept of inclusive design has been something that me and Sustrans are really wanting to focus on, so it is so timely, this conversation with Arup, what bike life was saying to us as well. For the past year, you know, talking about diversity and inclusion and all set within the wider context of climate change, and the whole conversation around black lives matter and inclusion I think this is such a timely report, and you know it's been wonderful working with colleagues at Arup to bring this together.Laura Laker 2:53  It's really exciting isn't it because, as you say, inclusivity has become so much more prominent in public discussion as has the need for cycling infrastructure and active travel infrastructure in general, it feels like these agendas have really, risen just at the time that this report has come out. I know that you're working on it since 2019 and there's been a bunch of stages, including a literature review there was the bike life data, you've had focus groups where you've talked to people about why they don't cycle or why they do, and working out what you can do about that, you've had workshops with decision makers in the transport sector. And there's a database now of case studies of successful projects. And one of the things that Sustrans has found out through its Bike Life surveys, it's not that people don't want to cycle. 55% of people from ethnic minority groups, 38% of people at risk of deprivation 36% of women and 31% of disabled people who don't cycle would like to start. So that's a that's a huge amount. Susan Claris 3:54  I think if those surveys were actually redone now those numbers would be even higher. So if you think those those surveys were pre COVID pre lockdown and we've seen what a huge upsurge there's been an interest in cycling, as I said those numbers I think would be so much higher now.Daisy Narayanan 4:09  Absolutely I couldn't agree more. You know, we've seen that in our own areas and over lockdown we've seen this massive increase in in cycling and all kinds of people cycling, not just the usual people that you expect to see on our road cycling and I think that's been, you know, it's not you can have surveys and reports and all of that out there and statistics, but for me what has been really really powerful about this process is getting stories from people you know just understanding, getting right into the depths of why what the barriers are. And I think that's been really powerful in the report but more than that, you know, as Susan was saying, during lockdown. That's being so visible now, all of us can see how that change is required and people want that change to happen. And that, to me forms, quite a strong foundation for for going forward into policymaking going forward.Laura Laker 5:10  And the report, sort of touches on issues affecting different groups of people as statistics from earlier older people as women as people from ethnic minorities, people with disabilities. And although there are different needs across different groups there is a commonality isn't there there are sort of common themes that come up, and you have to, you know, obviously the roads have been quieter and so a lot of people have been cycling so road safety is going to be one of them. Can you say a bit more about other sort of common themes that we saw across different groups in terms of what's stopping them from cycling what would help them to do so.Susan Claris 5:46  Yeah, I mean in terms of the report we've sort of grouped the actions into into three main areas, so better places is certainly one of those three themes which is about safety, road safety, but it's also about sort of personal safety and harassment. That sadly has come through quite strongly. It is about the importance of cycling infrastructure being fully inclusive. So there's a very strong focus on the places but that it that that's not enough so that's why we focus on the other two key areas which is to be more inclusive in terms of governance and planning and decision making. And then also this welcome and support for for people to cycle. It sort of, it's not just I think we've moved from, you know, a few years ago. Cycling was not much thought about at all then we will onto the wall stick in a cycle lane and tick the box and we've done that. We've moved to well let's count how many people use it. And now we're moving on to saying well actually, you know, who are those people and who aren't those people and I think it's understanding, broadening the understanding of what inclusion is all about. So I think, you know, for TfL, Transport for London, for a long time inclusion has been about making things step-free. Make it step-free, that's inclusion. I think many people who think about it in terms of gender, but actually it's actually looking at it from the broadest possible perspective to make sure it's fully inclusive for everyone, and that's that's a real shift and that's going to take a lot more than, than purely infrastructure, it goes much wider than that.Daisy Narayanan 7:21  And adding to what is missing as well you know there's something about the language we use, and making sure that the imagery that we have, you know, that that talks to cycling is

The current global pandemic has pushed most cities in the Global North to rethink how we envision our streets to create car-free, safe, healthy and clean environments for its citizens. However, in the context of African cities, this transition is marked by extreme poverty, unequal access to good quality infrastructure and lack of resources. Dr Daniel Oviedo works at the Bartlett Development Planning Unit at UCL and specialises on the social, economic and spatial analysis of inequalities related to urban transport in developing countries. In this podcast, Dr Oviedo talks to Luz Navarro, a Research Associate at the Active Travel Academy, discussing the methodological challenges and findings from two research projects on walkability at different urban scales in the Global South. Both research projects offer a qualitative look at walkability and walking experiences to unveil how shows social norms and perceptions of walkability heavily influence who walks, when, where and why. The first one is on pedestrian space and the Right to the City in Maputo and the second on is on the social constructions of walkability in informal settlements in Freetown. In Maputo, the project explores the different attitudes towards walking between two income groups. Those with higher income see walking as a choice among other modes, something mainly done for leisure - and have alternatives at hand easily when they don’t feel safe, or they face poor weather conditions and poor infrastructure. Those from the lower income group have no other transport choices, regardless of other conditions. The main findings show that feelings of safety, race, gender and level of education and occupation play a strong role in walking behaviours and attitudes, as much as the quality of the walking environment. The second project offers a fresh insight on the subjective and objective dimensions of walking, not as a choice but as an imposition in the informal settlement of Moyiba in Freetown and how this reveals existing urban inequalities. Daniel also talks to us about the pleasurability of walking in terms of aesthetics and comfort in such a context and the role the built environment in the perception of walking as a pleasurable experience and how residents of Moyiba see and experience their neighbourhood. Finally, Daniel talks about the lessons we can learn from both projects and how governments can facilitate walking improvements in a more effective and inclusive way.You can find out more about Daniel's research project here: https://www.t-sum.org/And a partner from the Sierra Leone research project here https://www.slurc.org/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our second PhD pod showcases Dr. Rorie Parsons’ PhD research. Rorie used a range of different qualitative methods, including archival analysis, interviews, and ride-alongs, to explore cycling cultures and cycling advocacy in Newcastle. This takes in both contemporary practices and those that came before them, exploring links between what cycling means, how infrastructure is designed and used, and what kinds of skills people cycling are expected to have. Tune in and find out what a ‘practice theory approach’ can offer to understanding problems of advocacy and activism.Dr Rorie Parsons is a geographer who completed his PhD in cycling cultures, advocacy, and practice, at Newcastle University in 2018.Rorie is now a post-doctoral research associate at the University of Sheffield as part of the Plastics: redefining single-use project. For this episode, he talks about his work around cycling, with a little bit of his current work thrown in for good measure. ESRC is the Economic and Social Research Council, a national funding body for social sciences, and 1+3 is four years’ funded postgraduate study – one year of a Masters and then three years of a PhD.Rorie’s work thesis can be found here - https://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/handle/10443/4687And an article based on Rorie's masters thesis, here - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02665433.2017.1348973 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Some of the most exciting active travel research is done as part of a PhD, and this is our first Active Travel Podcast to showcase a couple of recent PhD studies.These two projects, from Dr. Katja Leyendecker and Dr. Emma Mbabazi, use qualitative methods to dig into the how and the why of travel. Katja’s project tackled questions around policy, advocacy, and governance, with a mix of methods from retrospective video diaries to semi-structured interviews. Emma conducted over 80 in-depth interviews with commuters, to get their ‘mobility biographies’, i.e. how transport has fitted in with their lives, and vice versa, over time. They’re both very different projects, but each tells us a lot about how and why things change – or (perhaps more often) don’t change. Katja’s work can be found at https://katsdekker.wordpress.com/ , including blogs and links to her published thesis and articles.Emma’s LinkedIn page, with info and article links, is here https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmerentian-mbabazi-ab6b7459/?originalSubdomain=ug, and her PhD thesis is here https://www.ros.hw.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/10399/3292/MbabaziE_1216_egis.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=yTRANSCRIPTRachel 00:01Hello, and welcome to the Active Travel Podcast. I'm Rachel Aldred and I’m the director of the Active Travel Academy. And in this episode I'll be talking to Dr. Katja Leyendecker and Dr. Emma Mbabazi about their two PhD research projects. PhDs involve somebody focusing on the topic for at least three years and doing some really in-depth innovative research. So I wanted the Active Travel Podcast to also capture some of this and translate it into a form that hopefully people will be able to engage with over around half an hour of conversation with the person who did the PhD. Katja’s PhD focuses on cycling, advocacy and activism and transport planning, and Emma's focuses on commuting behaviour, and what are called travel scripts. In the first half I talk to Katja and in the second half to Emma in the about their different but complementary PhDs, both using these really exciting and in-depth qualitative methods. I hope you enjoy it. Very excited to have with me today Katja Leyendecker, who completed her PhD last year in 2019, which is on cycling advocacy, activism and policy. And so hello, Katja really pleased that you're with us.Katja 01:16I'm certainly the one who was pleased, Rachel. Great. It's great to be here.Rachel 01:20Brilliant. So I've got some fairly general questions. And we'll kind of drill down into bits of the thesis as we go. But I wonder if we could just start by because you had maybe a slightly unconventional path to the PhD as well. A lot of people do. So I'm just wondering when you started the PhD, and before you started the PhD, so maybe four or five years ago, maybe even longer when you're thinking about doing a PhD? What motivated you? Was it a sudden decision or something you'd been thinking about for a while?Katja 01:52I started thinking about, let's call it going back to university. When I was still working as an engineer, so, I came out of these kinds of technical – I'm a civil engineer by training. So it's all about the applied natural sciences, big data sets, and I worked in water engineering, which certainly had to do with big data sets and analysing them, and it was numbers and figures was my life. Engineers get themselves into these careers of team leaders, project managers, programme managers, and that was part of what I did as well. But I had started to be a bit uncertain about how the future would pan out. That it felt as if there was a almost like a bit of a dead end. It was interesting to be in engineering to start with, I think I'm someone who always likes the excitement of something new, I like starting new things as well as I might add that here as well as finishing them! So it's not that I'm one of these kind of starting off projects and finishing nothing kind of person.I kind of looked ahead in engineering and couldn't really see where I was going and was slightly kind of started to be disillusioned. And it was a time of my life where I also felt being a woman in engineering is hard work. There’s a lot of inequalities in that and it’s often quite difficult to talk about them as well because if the field is not prepared to listen and to receive maybe a bit of mild criticism and deal with it flexibly, you know, it can be unwelcoming, and that's kind of what it felt to me at the time. And so I started looking at what's going to be my next step. And bearing in mind I was let's say 37,38 at the time that I started to think like that. And yeah so there was always the open mind to well, I've got a master's degree, go to university do another master's degree, a PhD sounds great actually, now that I think about it and and as I've always found in my life anyways, that when you start to think about something and then talk about it as well, sooner or later, some doors open and that's happened to me here that I got together with Seraphim Alvanides, who works at Northumbria University and is also interested in geography and the sociology of cycling and especially the big data streams of it. And we started to think about how we could get me into university. And that was our little project for a couple of years. And eventually it, it turned out to be the case that I had written a PhD proposal. I applied for it, interviewed for it, and it was supposed to be about infrastructure, women and space and politics. And, and that's where I started. I was 42 at the time, I was just almost on my 42nd birthday that I started my PhD jungle journey. And yeah, and that's how I got into it so sort of developed over the years and became more and more possible. And then really concrete in the end and that was exciting and scary, huh?Rachel 06:05Wow. Yeah. And that this sort of this specific idea of the PhD was something presumably very linked to some of the advocacy and activism that you were doing yourself as well as to some extent your engineering, the engineering experience.Katja 06:19Definitely. I realised Of course, later on that my mind was quite heavily shaped by my engineering training. But also when I started the PhD, it came about because I was interested in in cycle activism so nothing to do with water engineering at all, nothing with engineering and not much with water, either. And, yeah, that was the starting point for that, that in 2010. I was really starting to be frustrated and disillusioned with Newcastle Council and the politics that happened there around transport. And I had started to form a campaign, co-founded a campaign with Claire Prosper in Newcastle. So two of us got together, and then set up a petition had garnered 800 signatures, handed it over to the council. That's kind of the history to that before my kind of disillusionment started, but nothing is happening. Yeah, everything's so clear, we need to do something, we need to devise ways of getting out of this and allocating space to cycling and walking and yeah, it was the activism that got me into university it was the activism that that Seraphim and I collaborated on. That was the point where it came together.Rachel 08:04So that motivated you to sort of study it to study the activism and the advocacy and to learn more about it through the PhD?Katja 08:11Definitely. Well, that's that's almost, two years into the PhD because I got into the whole thing, with an engineering mindset, technical figures, numbers, and let's create some data sets and let's analyse them and it took me two years to figure out and it's not, through the lack of helping from others, from university folks, it took me for me personally to understand these two years to, to see that it's the activism that really interests me in it. It's the activism, how it clashes with the politics for transport that interests me as well as being a woman campaigner interested me in it as well, because we've had all sorts of talks about such as me being a woman in this, that makes it so difficult or where does it all come from? And yeah, so yet again, another not so straightforward pathway, it started off with me doing a lot of reading, talking to people, the term ethnography started to come up. And I started in something that for an engineer, ethnography, that’s wholly sitting in sociology, it had nothing to do with me. And it took ages. If I look at it, through really rather critical eyes, it took kind of two years for me to have the confidence to understand ethnographic methods, feminist methods, critical theory methods, as well as you going one step beyond, which is using not just ethnography, but also ethnography. So, that was yet another final step that I, that I took. And I have to say, I mean Rosie Parnell, my supervisor, she was just, so helpful. And so patient I mean, Seraphim was patient as well, with this, this journey that I underwent. And Rosie really supported me in auto ethnography, and not just supported me, but made me understand, the important aspects of it, what I should focus on, sort of slashed the pathway free a little bit for me so that I could start to look ahead and so whilst I say it's my own journey, in the end, there were so many people sitting on the sidelines, kind of cheering me along, and really helping me and, kind of the research community as well as the activists and so many different aspects coming together that meet the PhD so multitudinous somehow as well, that's quite a few aspects in it that needed to be brought together.Rachel 11:18Yes, I mean, and that's one of the things that I found most fascinating about it was this intense mix of qualitative methods and I've dabbled a little bit with ethnography, but nothing like the intensity of what you've done. So I wondered if you could describe, for the podcast listeners who may not be familiar with this kind of methods what you specifically did in this?Katja 11:39And now just pearls of sweat start forming on my head!Yes. So that's,

Data in active travel is big news right now, and this is our second in a two-part series discussing some of the latest research in the field.When a global pandemic required us to avoid public transport and, ideally, cars, making cycling's usefulness for everyday trips even more apparent, transport authorities needed to know quickly where a network of cycle routes might be built. In a country with no historical cycle network, let alone a current one, this was a challenge.Enter Dr Robin Lovelace, with Dr Joey Talbot, at the University of Leeds' Institute for Transport Studies, part of a crack team commissioned to work out where cycle lanes could be installed, both in terms of where there's physical space on the roads, and where protected space would be useful for people looking to get cycling for everyday trips.So it was, over four weeks, the Rapid Cycleway Prioritisation Tool started life. Robin and colleagues' open data was added as a layer to Widen My Path, which lets people say where they think local cycling and walking infrastructure is needed in their area. Within the first week and a half this function received 30,000 interactions - perhaps indicating the demand from citizens to get involved in improving their local streets.Robin Lovelace talks about the potential, and the limitations of this new tool, the role it gives citizen activists in shaping cycling and walking policy, and what it was like being part of the project.You can find it, and have a play with the interactive map, here: https://www.cyipt.bike/rapid/And on Widen My Path, here: widenmypath.com TranscriptLaura Laker [00:00:00] Hi and welcome to the active travel podcast. A brand new podcast brought to you by the Active Travel Academy. It's part of the University of Westminster in London and works in collaboration with people from inside and outside the university. I'm Lauren Laker, I writes about cycling and walking as a journalist, and I work with the Active Travel Academy. On this podcast, amongst other projects, we have. Robin. Robin. Robin. Robin Lovelace [00:00:25] We have Robin Lovelace with us for the second half of our two part on data in active travel. Laura Laker [00:00:31] Robin is associate professor of Transport Data Science at the University of Leeds Institute of Transport Studies. Robin is a geographer and environmental scientist by training with expertise in geographical information systems, data analysis and modelling. And that and his knowledge and love of active travel helped him to co-produce the Rapid Cycleway Prioritisation Tool with Dr Jerry Talbot. And he's here to talk to us about that today. Welcome, Robin. Great to have you on the podcast. Robin Lovelace [00:01:05] Hi, Laura. Hi, everyone. Listening. Laura Laker [00:01:08] So podcast time. Has your week been? Robin Lovelace [00:01:11] So far, it's been a good week. It's been a great week because I fell way off my shoulders after this very intense contract with the Department for Transport to develop the rapid cycleway prioritisation tool. And certainly, the infrastructure side of it has to be done in a very tight schedule. But the same is on the research side. We were kind of round the clock to go from a prototype to national deployment in four weeks. So, I think a lot of the COVID-19 response stuff, especially in the medical sector, has been very, very impressive. And I'm so glad that we delivered something that hopefully will be useful. This week, I've got my head down in marking. So, it's gone into a more tranquil routine of working from home. But yeah, I think it's been it's been a good week here in North Leeds, where I am based. Laura Laker [00:02:14] Can you just start by telling us a bit about the ITS Institute for Transport Studies? Robin Lovelace [00:02:20] Yeah, sure. Say ITS is a longstanding research department focused on transport. I think it's one of the longest standing, if not the longest standing in the UK and certainly the largest in terms of postgraduate torts. And we have a long history of engagement with policy makers and doing high impact research. So it very much feels like the place to do transport policy research. It's had a huge influence on transport planning, both in terms of the kind of established motorised transport planning, but increasingly this stuff on transport decarbonisation and active modes, which is what I'm interested in. The other thing I should say is that ITS is part of the University of Leeds and it's quite unique in a way, because it's one of the few universities that's got a really big quantitative geography department and it's also got a transport department. And as someone who's at the interface, it's a good place to be. You've got both sides and they can be kind of mutually reinforcing. Laura Laker [00:03:43] And so at the moment, there's obviously an enormous push for a new kind of infrastructure on our roads in terms of cycling, pop-up cycling lanes and pop-up walking infrastructure. And you've been up to your neck in this project for the last four weeks, it sounds like and it's only really just come out. So what we are here to talk about today is the RCPT, which which is using data to identify roads with the highest cycling potential, which is those that can carry the most cycling trips and those with enough widths to accommodate new protective cycleways. And it's really cool, it's got this interactive map, hasn't it? And it's got different layers, it's got the existing cycleways, which are quite often disconnected, disjointed, mixed quality, and then you've got the top ranked cycleways, which is where the greatest demand for cycling is, a cohesive network, which is where you link them all together; roads with spare lanes and then roads with an estimated width of more than 10 metres. How did you go about doing this? Because it's quite it's quite a task, isn't it? When you look at the maps of the UK and then you zoom in and there's all these different coloured lines that you can click on, it's quite a thing you've produced. Robin Lovelace [00:04:57] Say it. We certainly had a very clear brief. I think it's useful to have general purpose tools to inform transport policy because transport shouldn't be seen in isolation. Modes of travel like walking, cycling, cars, buses shouldn't be seen in isolation. So, in the long term, I'm actually in favour of quite general tools. But the Rapid Cycleway Prioritisation Tool was really developed to tackle a very particular question, which was how to invest most cost effectively, the 250 or part of the 250 million pounds that's part of the emergency active travel fund. And that was only announced, I think maybe it was the 9th of May when this was announced by Grant Shapps and it was suddenly clear the councils needed something on which to base their submissions. I think another bit of background is the fact that new statutory guidance has been created by the Department for Transport to support the COVID-19 response, so it's not just the funding it's also the statutory guidance. And this is quite a big departure from the status quo in terms of transport planning. So for the first time ever, to my knowledge, anyway, the Department for Transport has provided advice on what to do in terms of creating extra space walk in cycling, and it specifically said that there should be road space reallocation and that something hasn't been on the table, so to speak. So most of the tools that I've been involved with are assuming that you are going to build new infrastructure either parallel to or in a separate place from the existing roads, whereas this is very much focused on road space reallocation and it's designed to inform rapid decision making. So rather than this tendency of making tools more complicated, we needed to make to simpler so that people could use it to inform their policies as quickly as possible. So that's the kind of policy context, there's also a bit of an advocacy angle because the first early prototype of the work was done in collaboration with Cycling UK, and we did a sketch up. Well, we did some data analysis of major cities in England and we found that most of them have major roads that have this kind of spare space for cycling. So the idea actually came from an advocacy angle. We did a bit of a description of the methods and the Department for Transport picked up on this and eventually commissioned this research to support that emergency active travel fund. Laura Laker [00:08:17] And it's striking, isn't it, when you look at the maps that you've produced, all of these dark blue lines that you see across different cities that represent the top ranked cycle ways that could be built, and they are everywhere. And like you say, it just allows a council to look at a map of the road that they look after and say, "this blue line is where a cycle way needs to be to get the most people travelling for cycling trips". So, the data behind the maps, that was a mixture of things, wasn't it? Was the propensity to cycle tool, which is another thing that you've worked on, which takes data on which journeys people are doing where, and then kind of works out which of those journeys can be cycled. Robin Lovelace [00:09:05] Yes. So the tool is very much building on the strong foundations of previous work. So essentially there's two main input data sets. One of them is on cycling potential at the road network level. So that is every cyclable road, more or less, across the country has got a level of cycling potential that we have calculated in a great multi-disciplinary and muti-university team, including Rachel Aldred at the University of Westminster, James Woodcock at the University of Cambridge, and Anna Goodman, at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. And that is really important for long term strategic planning. But if you have a very specific need to identify where you've got extra space, to make more space for walking and cycling, you also need data on the infrastructure that

Big data is a big issue right now - and we are perhaps about to realise just how much information Google and Apple have on us. Data is hugely important in understanding how we travel, but while we've been very good at measuring car traffic, how we measure cycling and walking is far more primitive.David McArthur, at Glasgow University's Urban Big Data Centre, is trying to change that. Using Strava Metro data, and 'spare' CCTV camera capacity he was busy trying to work out who cycles and walks where - until the COVID crisis hit. Now his work is being turned to measure some of the changes we are facing around how we move around, and the new importance active travel is playing in the new normal.Most methods of measuring active travel only give us part of a picture, however - and while the granular data on our lives is held by tech companies like Apple and Google, we might be glad that data isn't more widely available.No one method of can capture everyone, though. Is there a way of making sure we are all visible in the right ways, in this new big data world? Is a national data centre for active travel the answer? And where on earth does government cycling data come from?You can find out more about the Urban Big Data Centre, and David McArthur's work, here: https://www.ubdc.ac.uk/TranscriptDavid McArthur interview FINAL MP3.mp3Laura Laker [00:00:00] Hi and welcome to the active travel podcast. A brand new podcast brought to you by the Active Travel Academy, which is an academic think tank on all things cycling, walking and micro mobility. It's part of the University of Westminster in London and works in collaboration with folks from inside and outside the university. That's people like me. I'm Laura Laker an active travel journalist working with the Active Travel Academy on this podcast. Amongst other projects, and this is the first of a two part on data in active travel.Laura Laker [00:00:28] The Active Travel Podcast is joined by David McArthur, who is a senior lecturer in urban studies at the University of Glasgow. David is with us today to talk about two pieces of research. The first is using crowdsourced data from Strava Metro to establish cycling patterns. And the second is using spare CCTV capacity to identify pedestrian volumes and movement, which is not as 'Big Brother' as it seems. David assures me so. Welcome, David. Nice to have you with us.David McArthur [00:00:56] Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here.Laura Laker [00:00:58] So you specialise in big data around transport and urban analytics. Can you just tell us a bit about how that works?David McArthur [00:01:05] I'm based at the Urban Big Data Centre. So this was a center funded a few years ago with the idea that the UK wasn't making the most of the big data revolution. Our job was to try to establish ways in which new forms of data could be used to address substantial social science questions. So my stream of work was in transport. We've tried to look at what datasets are out there, what can they tell us about our transport network and how to improve our cities and what make the limitations of this sort of data. People were quite it was the hype curve where people were very excited it was going to change the world. We were trying to be a bit critical to those ideas.Laura Laker [00:01:44] And people get very excited about new tech developments as shiny new toys kind of. But it's not always as wonderful as you might think. So can you tell us where transport data is right now and where it's going and presumably focusing on active travel?David McArthur [00:01:59] It's quite interesting. There is amazing data out there. It's not always accessible, though. One thing we tried to do in the center was to price it out of the hands of data owners. But that's not always so successful. Sometimes there's legal regulatory licensing issues with the data. So if some local authority has used the commercial product or ordinance survey data, they can't necessarily share that data with a third party afterwards. There's also issues of perhaps it's commercially sensitive. So with a deregulated bus network, for instance, the data may be helped by the operator of a bus service. So it might not be available easily to outside researchers, which is a shame because it would be nice to have better data on who takes the bus and where do they go, but it's commercially sensitive information. So there's lots of great data, but the governance issues tend to pose far more challenges than the technical issues of analysing it.Laura Laker [00:02:55] Obviously, there's going to be privacy issues around people's data, and especially if it contains demographic data or even personal data. So you've got to be very careful about who gets that, haven't you?David McArthur [00:03:05] Absolutely. We would definitely want the data owners to protect the data subjects. And it's a legal requirement after GDPR especially. Well we always had data protection legislation but I think GDPR sharpened people's focus on this idea. But some of the data, I don't think needs to be shielded quite as much. So cycle counter data of how many people go past that particular point in time, I'm not sure it's so sensitive, but certain people are not happy to share it or they're worried that something might be done with it that they don't like.Laura Laker [00:03:38] Really? cycle counter data - numbers?David McArthur [00:03:42] Yes, I've had some arguments with local authorities because they don't want to release it, even though it's six people past this point in an hour. So I think it's as far removed from personal data as you might be able to get.Laura Laker [00:03:55] That's interesting. I remember writing an article last year, I think it was, collecting cycle counter data from around the UK. And I got maybe a handful, and those are just the visible ones with the totem poles. But it was quite hard to get hold of, which was quite a surprise. And I think I was working on it for a few months, actually, partly because there were a number of issues. Some of the cycle counters broke down and some of the London ones have broken down. So I was kind of waiting on them. But also, like you say, it's quite hard to get information from people, and that's just the ones with the totem poles and the numbers on that are visible. And I guess there must be a lot more embedded in pavements that you just never see.David McArthur [00:04:33] Yes, there are, there’s some hidden. So the council will have data on them, but maybe you get it, maybe not. But it's a shame not to have that data available for people to use.Laura Laker [00:04:44] So you're working on both these projects, the pedestrian project and the cycling project, and that was pre-lock down, and obviously life changed for everyone. Since then, people stopped moving around as much. And I'm just wondering obviously the scope of the project is changing as the transport environment changes. And you wrote a couple of blogs about this, didn't you? The phenomenon of COVID and the changes that are happening. And I'm just wondering how much you've changed what you're doing since then.David McArthur [00:05:10] It's been a really interesting time for transport data because we've often had this fragmented ownership of the datasets, trouble having access to them. Suddenly, though, everyone needed data on who was where and who was moving where and what modes of transport they were using. It's been interesting to see that the tech giants, Apple and Google have been the ones stepping in to provide consistent data across the UK. But a bit of a black box in terms of how does it go from raw data into these aggregates that they're publishing. But this has been used to formulate policy now, so we might be a bit concerned that if we had our own data and we had a national data service for transport data and it had all been there [LNE1] in a consistent way, we could easily have pulled up the information that we needed. But at the moment, as you said, it's a big job to try and gather all of it and that other people have stepped in to provide other versions of it. So it's interesting.Laura Laker [00:06:07] And where is this Apple and Google data coming from?David McArthur [00:06:10] I believe Google's using their location service, which sense for people are through combination of G.P.S. and Wi-Fi, looking at what Wi-Fi networks are nearby. I believe Apple is using where people are searching for directions about. So from that, they can infer something about the purpose of the travel was and where it is. And then they've published these mobility reports that you may have seen getting some media coverage, about how activity at different locations has changed over time. So it's very valuable information at the moment, but it's unfortunate we don't necessarily know all the details about how robust is it and is it excluding certain types of people from the analysis.Laura Laker [00:06:52] People without mobile phones?David McArthur [00:06:54] Yes. It's one of the key challenges for big data. So it could be people without mobile phones or the privacy conscious people who've opted out of sharing this sort of information. Apple data, it's a particular subset of people that use Apple products. So if you formulate policy based on a subset of people using the technology who are you excluding and who's not been seen?Laura Laker [00:07:19] Yes, transport poverty is a big issue and we know a lot of inequalities are being exacerbated by the crisis. And Apple products are extremely expensive, not everyone has a smartphone even so, it's fascinating. Can you tell us about how your crowdsourced cycling project works?David McArthur [00:07:38] One of the first datasets we acquired at the Urban Big Data Centre was from Strava. So you may be familiar with going on, you have some physical activity, usually running or cycling and you log it and then it gives you some information about how fast you are, and did you beat people? Str

The Active Travel Academy's (ATA) Dr Rachel Aldred and journalist Laura Laker talk media reporting of active travel, in this two-part pilot episode of the Active Travel Podcast.First up, your hosts speak to researchers Tara Goddard (Texas A&M University) and Kelcie Ralph (Rutgers University, Alaska), on their paper Does news coverage of traffic crashes affect perceived blame and preferred solutions? Evidence from an experiment. Our guests answer that question and discuss how, when it comes to news reporting of road collisions, framing is everything.In the second half of the podcast, Cristina Caimotto, (University of Turin), speaks from Italy about her new book Discourses of Cycling, Road Users and Sustainability. An Ecolinguistic Investigation. Much of the language we use is subconscious, and that applies to journalists too. Cristina's analysis of media reporting of the death of Kim Briggs is startling and eye-opening - she discusses whether there are parallels with racist discourse on reporting of this issue, and why we need a new way of talking about the environment.Kelcie and Tara's paper can be accessed here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590198219300727And Cristina's book is just out, from Palgrave:https://www.palgrave.com/9783030440251.TRANSCRIPTATA Podcast PilotLaura Laker [00:00:00] Hi and welcome to the active travel podcast pilot episode. The active travel podcast is the podcast for the Active Travel Academy, an academic think tank, if you like, on all things cycling, walking and micromobility. Is part of the University of Westminster in London. I'm Laura Laker. An active travel journalist, collaborating with the Active Travel Academy.Rachel Aldred [00:00:21] And I'm Rachel Aldred, I'm the director of the Active Travel Academy and I'm a reader in transport at Westminster University.Laura Laker [00:00:28] And to kick off, we're talking about media reporting of active travel. So, Rachel, as it's our first podcast, could you start by explaining a little bit about why we're here, how the active Travel Academy came about and the tiny bits about what it does?Rachel Aldred [00:00:41] So the Active Travel Academy has been going since autumn last year. It's funded by a grant from the Quintin Hogg Trust, which is affiliated with the university Westminster and basically set up to bring together interdisciplinary expertise, academic, non-academic expertise around all things active travel related. And we had a whole lot of different ideas, we have been doing a range of different projects, collaborations and so on. And one of our ideas with the summer programme, where we had various guests who were going to visit and collaborate and so on. Now, obviously, the physical collaborations have been on hold for a while, but we instead we've been setting up some virtual collaborations, including this podcast. So we hope you enjoy it.Laura Laker [00:01:23] And one of the things that we did was do the Active Travel Academy's media awards, wasn't it? last year, which was great because it gave us a bit of an opportunity to launch the Active Travel Academy. And it also made us think a bit more about the kind of role in the media has in how we see active travel as a society and how powerful that is. And it was just around that time, I think, maybe a month before our guests came up with a study which is super interesting, which they are here to talk about with us today. So those guests are all the way from Texas A&M University. Tara Goddard, who is assistant professor at the School of Landscape, Architecture and Urban Planning, and from Alaska, Kelsey Ralph, assistant professor of transportation planning at Rutgers University. So could you tell us a bit about yourselves, how you ended up collaborating on media reporting of road collisions from different sides of the United States?Tara Goddard [00:02:24] Sure, Laura and Rachel, thanks for having us both here. It's really fun to connect this way. So we have been friends and colleagues for many years and mostly through Twitter, I think, we had realised that we both have a shared interest in a lot of the way that we talk about active travel, traffic safety, road design, things like that. So when we both kind of realised we had that interest is where we started talking about a collaboration. The two of us as well with our colleagues, Calvin Thigpen, who's been at Arizona State and is now with Lime, and then Evan Iacobucci, a graduate student of Kelcie's.Laura Laker [00:03:06] On Twitter, connecting us across the world.Kelcie Ralph [00:03:12] There came a point where it was sort of daily screenshots of Tweets of news coverage. And I think that both of us are a little bit motivated out of a place of anger and rage, like "this is unacceptable! Let's do a project to show that."Laura Laker [00:03:26] I think. I think all of us who work in this field have had those moments. And it seems to be a commonality with English speaking countries that are media reporting of road collisions does seem to be so biased towards drivers. So can you tell us about your about your study and how you kind of decided what you're gonna do and what you did?Tara Goddard [00:03:50] Sure. So the first study we did we really just wanted to see, OK, we have this idea that these patterns are happening. There's victim blaming, this focus on the pedestrian, the absolving the driver. But, you know, it was just like, do we have some kind of confirmation bias? Are we just noticing these more or these patterns are really happening? So we wanted to even just inventory and get a sense of what are the different ways that this language or framing is used. How pervasive is it? And so we looked at two hundred articles across the US from local news reports about crashes that involved a byciclist or pedestrian, serious injury or crash and 100 involving a bicyclist and a 100 involving a pedestrian. And that's where we do a process that we developed, pretty fine grained way of coding or analysing the articles for use of passive voice, use of victim blaming, whether they focus on the driver or the car, for example. And even though that was pretty fine grain and we went through all that, then we were able to kind of really distil it down into two issues. Just how pervasive this victim blaming is and then looking at the potential effects. And so through that we confirmed essentially what we thought we were seeing, this was just this was widespread. It was very common. Kelcia do you want to add it on.Kelcie Ralph [00:05:20] Yeah. So we actually found two different kinds of problems. And the first is like a sentence level issue. And this one's the easiest one to fix, right? We, in the way that we cover crashes now, we tend to focus on the pedestrian or the victim of the crash. We say the pedestrian was hit rather than saying a car or a driver hit a pedestrian. And that doesn't sound like a major issue, except for that we know from a whole host of studies and media studies that the focus of the sentence gets more of the blame. So this tiny, tiny little shift from a pedestrian was hit to a car or a driver hit a pedestrian is going to absolve the pedestrian of blame and sort of shift our attention back to the driver.Laura Laker [00:06:07] And that's the kind of act, active or passive voice.Kelcie Ralph [00:06:10] Well it's not quite active or passive, that's also an issue. But this it's even simpler than that focus. Who is the star of the show within the sentence? The other sort of sentence level thing we found is that we do very funny things with agency. So who's the actor in the story and at the sentence level we found that a lot of the times we were just leaving out an actor entirely. A pedestrian was hit. By what? By whom? We have no idea. And often stories left out a driver entirely. So not mentioned anywhere in the article at all. We do have one other funny thing with agency, and that is if we do mentioned an agent, four times more likely we were likely to refer to the vehicle rather than the driver. And as far as I know, there's not quite a lot of autonomous vehicles yet. Most of these crashes have drivers associated with them and they are entirely absolved of responsibility.Laura Laker [00:07:13] Yes we get the same problem here. Some of these stories just don't mention a driver at all, and it's not uncommon at all. I was thinking about it actually, and I was wondering, because, if you're going to put focus on anyone but you don't know who is responsible for the collision, obviously it's more likely that someone driving was the cause of a collision than somebody walking. But I guess you can't assume that as a journalist. I'm wondering what you think about that.Tara Goddard [00:07:42] That's a great question. So the intent isn't to place blame before we know what happens, right? It's just the fact that we know from communication and media studies that if you only focus on the pedestrian, people are more likely to think they're at fault. So even just making it more objective or it's actually making it more neutral, to phrase things correctly, as when an actor does something. It doesn't necessarily assign them blame, but at least brings them into the conversation. And then this larger issue that we found of treating all these crashes as one-off events is also part of the problem. So it isn't just that someone behaved badly, often the driver, not always, but often the driver, but it's about their responding to the cues of the environment.Laura Laker [00:08:38] I'm wondering actually now if, um, if now's a good time before we move on to bring Rachel in, because this talk about mentioning a driver versus mentioning a car is something that you've looked at as well, Rachel, isn't it, in the UK context?Rachel Aldred [00:08:56] Yes. but not around media discusses, but around participant, like public discourses, people just describing things that they've seen or experience they've thought about. And it's interesting that

Cycling has always been about more than its health, economic and environmental benefits. The rise of women cyclists coincided with the age of the new, educated and independent woman. The early moral outcry over women’s cycling outfits and alleged damage to their feminine physical features may seem ridiculous today yet cycling continues to be linked to discourses about who can be visible, who can take space, and how.Over the past decades, cycling has been represented as a self-indulgent leisure activity. The media loves portraying cycling as an unsafe annoyance to other road users; something that only middle aged men in lycra engage in and benefit from. To some extent, the cycling culture has done little to change that perception and only very recently has started becoming a little less exclusive.My name is Dulce Pedroso and this project seeks to move beyond the discussion on barriers to cycling to understanding how those who are often not part of the cycling discourses experience and challenge dominant representations of cycling. Thanks to a grant through the Active Travel Academy Justice in and for Active Travel initiative, I was able to get my bike and myself on the train to travel to different parts of the country to ride with and talk with nine women who all identify as a Woman of Colour and, for whom cycling is a big part of their lives.In the previous episode we heard how the women I interviewed got into cycling and the role cycling now plays in their lives. In this second part, Zoe, Vera, Susan, Eden, Mildred and Sidrah reflect on how discourses around cycling interact with what it means to be a woman and a Person of Colour in our society especially when cycling and being visible in public space.We recorded these conversations while riding our bikes in late spring 2021, when the UK was just starting to emerge out of lockdowns. You will hear some traffic noise in the background and the sound quality isn’t always great. Most annoyingly, the technology failed during a couple of rides, so you will not hear everyone I spoke to, but if you are interested in the research and want to find out more, you do so via the Active Travel Academy, or find me on Instagram.I feel privileged to have been able to talk to the women who took part. They are challenging the status quo whether that is as ride leaders, social media influencers, cycling advocates, cycling industry insiders or just as individuals who are encouraging their friends and families to ride more. I hope you enjoy listening to these stories as much I enjoyed recording them! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So, in a culture, where the car is really dominant, being a cyclist can make it feel like you’re a second class citizen. And if you already feel invisible in society, because of your identity, because of who you are or the way you look, it may seem odd that you would opt for more of these othering experiences by choosing to cycle, especially if you then also don’t see yourself represented in the cycling culture or don’t feel like you’re part of the wider cycling community.But how much do we know about the different experiences of underrepresented groups who do cycle? How much do we know about the experiences of Women of Colour who cycle? And we know that they do – I know we do – as I am one myself. My name is Dulce Pedroso and I live and ride my bike in Bristol. I got a grant through the Active Travel Academy Justice in and for Active Travel initiative for researching this topic for my Masters. So, what I did for my research, I got my bike and myself on the train and traveled to different parts of the country to ride with and talk with m nine women who all identify as a Woman of Colour and, for whom cycling is a big part of their lives.I feel really privileged to have been able to talk to these women who are all really impressive and influential in different ways, whether that is as ride leaders, social media influencers and cycling advocates or cycling industry insiders or just as a friend or family to encourage people to ride more.So, what you are about to hear is the first part of a two-part mini podcast put together from the conversations we had back in May. I recorded these conversations while we were riding our bikes so the sound quality isn’t always great and unfortunately you will not hear everyone I spoke to, but if you are interested in the research and want to find out more, you can find out more via the Active Travel Academy, or find me on Instagram.In this first part you will hear how Sahar, Vera, Mildred, Tina Susan and Sidrah got into cycling and the role cycling now plays in their lives. You’ll hear about the impact of cycle friendly infrastructure, different community projects and initiatives, cycling clubs and family, friends and partners have had on their cycling. You can also start to get a sense of the way cycling has been represented in the mainstream as largely masculine, often White and middle class, sporty activity which may make it trickier to those who don’t see themselves in that image to identify as a cyclist. But I hope you will also take away the positivity and joy in these conversations and I love how these women are talking about how cycling has given them confidence and mental resilience and voice.I really enjoyed recording these conversations and I hope that you enjoy listening to them. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.