Voices of Velo-city: Wins, Challenges and the Future of Active Mobility

Will is the CEO and a major shareholder of one of the most iconic bicycle brands in the world, Brompton. These folding bikes with small wheels and a unique kink in their frame’s top tube were invented by Guy Ritchie in London and first sold in 1975. Although they’ve been much refined the design is still largely unchanged, half a century on. You’d probably surprised to learn that Brompton employs over 750 people worldwide and has made as many as 90,000 bikes in a single year. These quirky bicycles are sold globally but remarkably, still all made in London. That’s where I recently visited Will. After a fascinating factory tour hosted by one of his team members, Will kindly gave me an uninterrupted hour of his valuable time, followed by posing for photos that you’ll see in our show notes. I’d met Will previously and already knew two things about him, that he’s a great communicator and that he’s passionate. Of course, he passionate about the company that he’s devoted a quarter century of his life to, but even more so he’s passionate about what bikes can do for humanity. Just days after I recorded this interview with Will, Actor Cate Blanchett was caught on video riding her Brompton home after giving a theatre performance in London. It was a scene not unlike when Timothée Chalamet rode a Lime Bike to the London premiere of A Complete Unknown. What’s Up Phil and Sara recently attended the National Transport Conference, in Brisbane, Australia. It was held at the Brisbane Convention Centre, which is directly across the Brisbane River from the city centre. There are no less than four car free bridges linking the city to the opposite bank of this wide river, all of them relatively newly built. This one, the Kangaroo Point Bridge, is recording about 10,000 pedestrians and wheelers of all descriptions, per day. On the opening morning of the conference Phil met Squeaky Wheel Podcast listener Marina Alexander, who is undertaking a PhD studying shared paths. She said her favourite podcast episodes so far have been with Prue Oswin (Season 2 Episode 9) and Ana Carboni (Season 3 Episode 5). Phil and Sara loved the conference but missed riding their bikes… See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When you listen to this month’s interview, you’ll understand why Marco te Brömmelstroet is a true lateral thinker and brilliant communicator. Marco is Professor in Urban Mobility Futures at the University of Amsterdam. He’s also Academic director of the Lab of Thought and Board Chair of the Urban Cycling Institute. With approximately a million followers on social media across his personal and organisation accounts, Marco is one of the world's most prominent advocates for liveable cities and is a sought-after keynote speaker for events around the world. Here are three of the many original ideas that Marco discusses during our conversation. The Hill of Hysteria ramps up every time a new project is proposed that will involve change such as removing car parking, lowering speed limits or re-allocating a motor vehicle lane for a protected cycling path. A small but vocal minority of resistance becomes amplified and reaches maximum volume just before the new measure is to be implemented. Marco and his colleagues have researched this phenomenon and found it to be repeated around the world. But if elected officials hold their nerve during this critical peak of pressure, they will find that it’s just a hill. The noise quickly goes down once the measure is implemented and people discover that things are actually better. The importance of language – rather than say, “We need to implement paid parking” say, “We need to stop subsidising parking.” Because all parking comes at a cost, so there’s no such thing as free parking. Marco also talks about “More meaningful mobility”. Engineers often look at journey time as a pure cost, with no intrinsic utility. But research found that most people who travelled by active modes (walking, cycling, public transport) missed their commute during covid lockdown. Marco calls this “friction”. The journey has meaning. These are just three of many highlights in this compelling conversation. Marco is also the author of multiple books and many academic papers. Two of his books that we discuss during the interview are: “Movement – how to take back our streets and transform our lives” “Mobility Language Matters – how language shapes our cities and lives” Marco recommended two books by other authors: “The Anxious Generation” by Johnathon Haidt, warning about the danger of social media for adolescents. The first part of the book addresses the loss of their freedom to roam. “To Save Everything Click Here” by Evgeny Morozov, questioning that the digital age can fix everything.

Roxanne De Beaux is a highly skilled, energetic and enduring cycling advocate who has been making a difference in her adopted home town of Cambridge, UK. As the first employee and later CEO of Camcycle – the Cambridge Cycling Campaign, Roxy spent a decade building the capacity of the organisation. Staff grew from one to seven and income increased approximately 10 fold. Meanwhile Camcycle achieved some major “concrete” achievements in and around the university city of Cambridge. One major piece in this puzzle, the Chisholm Trail, took no less than 20 years of campaigning to bring into reality. In our interview with Roxanne, she shares many great insights into how to build an effective organisation. Roxanne has also been a co-organiser of the Active Travel Café – a vibrant online meeting place for a wide range of people across the UK. She accepted an invitation to become a Board Trustee of Cycling UK – one of the largest and oldest national cycling organisations in the world. All of these activities were coming to a conclusion at the time of our interview because Roxanne is about to move back to her home town of Perth, Western Australia to take up an important State Government transport role. We wonder if the WA establishment is ready for the whirlwind of energy and ideas that is about to blow in their direction! What’s Up? Towards the end of each episode, Sara and Phil share news of the day and events they’ve been taking part in. In this episode Sara shares about a ground-breaking project carried out in the western suburbs of Sydney, New South Wales. It involved giving a diverse group of previously non-cycling women subsidised access to e-bikes, skills training and other support, then monitoring and reporting upon their changes in travel habits. This link takes you to a YouTube video of the evaluation report launch: Transforming transport in Western Sydney Unfortunately the audio in that video is not ideal. Here’s a link via which you can download a .pdf of the report itself Meanwhile, Phil honoured two leading active transport planners, Riley O’Neil and Louisa Gag, located in Chicago and Boston respectively, who were both tragically killed by motorists in separate incidents barely one month apart. Both were riding their bicycles at the time, either to or from work. Streetsblog Chicago’s long-time writer, John Greenfield wrote this excellent article honouring the two young experts who were making a difference in their cities. Greenfield calls for their deaths to become a turning point in the ongoing battle for safe streets. The article also contains many links where you can see more specific stories about the lives of Riley and Louisa and reports of events that have been held in their honour. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Henk Swarttouw had a distinguished career as a diplomat in the Dutch foreign service, serving in the US, France and the UK. This culminated in becoming Dutch ambassador to Finland and later, to Denmark. At the end of his term as ambassador to Finland the President of Finland granted Henk with Grand Cross of the Order of the Lion of Finland. This is an extremely select honour. Henk is now an independent advisor on sustainable mobility and international cooperation. In 2019, Henk joined the board of the European Cyclists’ Federation (ECF), and became President in 2021, a voluntary role that he still serves in today. Henk is also a certified EuroVelo long distance cycle tourism route inspector and served on the EuroVelo Council from 2019 to 2025. He’s married with two grown-up daughters and when not on the road, divides his time between Amsterdam and Helsingborg, in Sweden. In our conversation Henk talks about his transition from diplomat to cycling advocate, that began while his was still serving the Netherlands as Ambassador to Finland. He then shares about some of the biggest wins and challenges during his seven years on the board of the ECF, which is one of the world’s largest and most influential cycling advocacy organisations. Henk also talks about the wonderful annual Velo-city conference that the ECF owns and oversees, first held in 1980 and why they choose to hold it in relatively far-flung locations such as Matsuyama, Japan next year, rather than sticking to central, safer bets such as London, Paris or Berlin. What’s Up? We always finish each podcast with “What’s Up?” in which Sara and Phil share what they’ve be doing, about to do, or interesting things they’ve seen. Sara is in the middle of running three marathons in three months, Gold Coast, Sydney and Berlin and raising funds for Better Streets. Phil is not nearly so athletic these days, but about to head for four weeks’ holidays to the UK and Ireland that, all going to plan, will include a in person factory visit and podcast interview with the CEO of one of the UK’s most iconic bicycle brands. Meanwhile, Phil also spoke about the successful Initial Public Offering (IPO) on the NASDAQ exchange in New York City of bike and scooter share operator Lime. This IPO valued Lime at over US$1.7 billion and is a financial vote of confidence in the future of bike and scooter share schemes. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ana Carboni is a cycling advocate living and working in a super-challenging environment. Brasilia is the purpose-built capital of Brazil. It has some famous modern architecture including its sculptural parliament building. But Brasilia was designed in the 1950’s, entirely around the automobile. The result is a sprawling, high speed car-dominated city that is deadly for cyclists and pedestrians and very poor public transport options. Ana graduated and later practised as a clinical psychologist, before moving to a career in human resources. She moved to London where she worked at the Brazilian Embassy and also completed a masters degree in Human Resource Management and Organisational Analysis at Kings College London. Upon returning to her home city of Niterói which is a beautiful coastal part of the greater Rio di Janeiro urban area, Ana became deeply involved in advocacy. She later moved to Brasilia where she is a Project Manager for the UCB (Brazilian Cyclists Union), the peak national lobbying organisation in this vast country of over 200 million citizens. Very rarely do cycling podcasts, including ours, stray far from the usual pattern of guests from Europe or North America. So it was both fascinating to learn more about Brazil, but shocking to hear how bad things are there, compared to many other developed nations. Here are some stark statistics that we share during this episode: Cyclists Between 2014 and 2024, Brazil recorded 14,834 cyclist deaths, maintaining a tragic and steady average of roughly four fatalities per day nationwide. Fifteen years ago, cyclist fatalities made up less than 1% of total traffic deaths. Today, they account for roughly 3.5% of all road fatalities. Most victims are male, working-class citizens, who rely on bicycles for transport. By far the largest cause of death is being hit by motor vehicles. Pedestrians The annual pedestrian death toll ranges from 5,000 to 6,500 per year. In 2023 5,340 pedestrians were killed, comprising 15.6% of the total road toll that was a staggering 34,110 people killed. Overall Brazil’s death rate through traffic violence was 15.7 people per 100,000 inhabitants in 2021, ranking it 118th in the world. By comparison, “best practice” countries such as Japan, UK, Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries are in the range of two to three deaths per 100,000 inhabitants per year. The Netherlands has 4.1 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. Canada is 4.7 the USA, 14.4. Niterói’s Exceptional Example Niterói is a coastal city of about half a million residents located just across the bay from the centre of Rio de Janeiro. It is the wealthiest city in Brazil on a per capita basis. It has a citywide speed limit of 30 kph, extensive bike infrastructure including the three busiest bike lanes in Brazil. At least one of these lanes counts over 7,000 riders per day. In stark contrast to the rest of Brazil, between 2020 and 2024 there were no cyclist fatalities at all in the city of Niterói. Useful Links If you’d like to learn more about advocacy in Brazil, Ana provided us with the following extensive collection of links: Social media links: https://www.instagram.com/uniaodeciclistas/ https://www.instagram.com/sistemas.seguros/ https://www.instagram.com/rodasdapaz/ https://www.instagram.com/biciculturabr/