Ned and Laura join a bike bus! This celebratory, festive episode of Streets Ahead includes an East End bike ride with tinsel, some Christmas tunes, and a joyful pedal through the streets of West Ham with adults and kids, to Park Primary School.

A bike bus is simply a group ride to school, with both adults and kids joining at different points on set days, similar to a school bus. Except everyone pedals, or wheels their way together. Some bike buses are weekly, some fortnightly, some monthly. The idea is to make the cycle, wheel or scoot to school safe and fun - and to spread the word that cycling to school is possible.

Bike buses began in earnest in 2019, with a handful of pioneers riding to school in groups. Our own Adam Tranter ran a bike bus with his wife and kids after fellow parents expressed an interest in their cargo bike commute: https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2019/10/11/pr-company-bosses-lead-20-child-pedal-posse-to-show-council-that-cycling-to-school-is-unsafe/

As pandemic-era school streets were introduced by more and more councils in the UK, restricting motor traffic at the school gates for the start and end of the academic day, more streets felt safe for cycling, and more families formed their own bike buses. There are now an estimated 70 of them - at least those that are publicly advertised.

Because a bike bus is simply people riding to school together, not all of them publicise their activities. They can be as informal as a few parents or carers and their kids getting together.

Some bike buses are registered on www.bikebus.org - there are an estimated 50 of these, for inspiration.

Thank you to Hamish Belding, for his advice for this episode. You can follow Hamish's adventures here: https://bsky.app/profile/bikewalkscoot.bsky.social

FRideDays Bike Bus is hosted by active travel charity Sustrans, and offers support for organisers, with materials like marshal tabards and a free guide. Find out more here: https://www.sustrans.org.uk/campaigns/fridedays-bike-bus/. There are around 20 of these bike buses. Hamish says Cardiff x 8, Swansea, Caerphilly, Pembroke, Plymouth, Cheshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Dorset, Reading, London and Edinburgh. There are more Bike Buses in pipeline to be launched during Spring/Summer term – potentially in London, Wolverhampton, Tonbridge and Cardiff.

Thank you to Better Streets for Newham for the photo of Ned in action: https://bsky.app/profile/betterstsnewham.bsky.social

Thank you for tuning in for 2024! We appreciate all of our listeners and supporters and look forward to more adventures in 2025.

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A community group has raised £75,000 to take its local council, Tower Hamlets, to the High Court. Save Our Safer Streets is seeking to retain and improve the changes to the streets in Bethnal Green, implemented in 2020, but Mayor Lutfur Rahman wants to fulfil a manifesto pledge to remove them.

Laura and Adam spoke to Jane Harris, spokesperson for Save Our Safer Streets and Ricardo Gama, senior associate solicitor at Leigh Day.

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This time Ned and Laura go behind the walls of Pentonville Prison for this very special episode. Listeners may remember Stef Jones, founder of XO Bikes, who trains ex-offenders in cycle maintenance in south London to help them turn their lives around. 

With UK prisons full to bursting, people like Stef, along with prison staff themselves, try to break the cycle of reoffending that sees an estimated 55% of those released going on to re-offend. That figure is halved if someone has a job to go to – but it’s not an easy journey. Pentonville Prison houses those on remand, often awaiting sentencing decisions or hearings. A rehabilitation programme is challenging in this transitory population, but the team behind XO Bikes, including ex-prison officer, Paul, have defied expectations and are working with people as they return to regular life, to try to give them a fresh start.  

Ned and Laura meet a prisoner working towards a brighter future, and talk with the XO team about the power of bikes to give people a second chance in life. It’s an experience Ned and Laura won’t forget, and they hope you won’t either.

Find out more about XO Bikes here: https://xobikes.com/

By the way, if you want ad-free listening, behind-the-scenes and bonus content and to help support the podcast - head to (https://www.patreon.com/StreetsAheadPodcast). We’ll even send you some stickers! 

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Our last episode, an interview with Secretary of State for Transport, Louise Haigh MP, caused a bit of a storm and went viral. Laura's interview was picked up by a host of UK national media including BBC News, The Sun, GB News, The Times and more.

We discuss how the story happened, what it means for active travel - and why the wider media picked up on it so extensively. Helping us navigate this is Henry Zeffman, the BBC's Chief Political Correspondent and contributor to BBC Newscast.

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Louise Haigh MP, the Secretary of State for Transport, joins Laura Laker on Streets Ahead for an insightful discussion on the future of active travel in the UK. From her own cycling experiences to the role of walking and cycling in tackling public health and climate challenges, Haigh outlines her vision for a national integrated transport strategy that prioritises active travel and discusses "unprecedented funding", as well as her support for councils implementing Low Traffic Neighbourhoods. Ned, Adam and Laura discuss the interview and what it means for the direction of travel for cycling, walking and wheeling in the UK.

By the way, if you want ad-free listening, behind-the-scenes and bonus content and to help support the podcast - head to (https://www.patreon.com/StreetsAheadPodcast). We’ll even send you some stickers! 

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In this episode Laura travels to Paris, to meet one of the campaigners behind a successful push to put cycling at the heart of the city's transport plans for the 2024 Olympics. Paris en Selle is one of a cohort of campaign groups who staged an 'Olympic relay' protest that inspired Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo to roll out cycleways linking every one of the city's 35 Games venues. This would mean visitors and staff could get to events in a healthy, sustainable way without overwhelming the existing transport network.

What followed, within two years, was the rollout of an impressive 34 miles of routes that met, campaigners say, 90% of the brief given to city officials. Even previously reluctant boroughs, they say, were persuaded to do their part. In addition, 20,000 new cycle parking spaces, many but not all temporary, were introduced. Some cycleways are shared bus lanes, but for the most part what's been built is dedicated cycle lanes.

We would like to thank Paris en Selle's Corentin Roudaut, who used his lunch break from his day job to give Streets Ahead listeners a tour of the rapid transformation over the last two years.

Find out more about Paris en Selle's advocacy work: https://parisenselle.fr. The campaign group even produced their own guide to help Games visitors get around during the Olympics https://parisenselle.fr/2024/07/17/cycle-around-paris-during-the-olympics/

Read Laura's CityLab piece about Paris' Olympic cycling transformation: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-24/paris-summer-olympics-2024-cycling-at-the-games-bike-lanes-parking-sharing

By the way, if you want ad-free listening, behind-the-scenes and bonus content and to help support the podcast - head to (https://www.patreon.com/StreetsAheadPodcast). We’ll even send you some stickers! 

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If you're reading this, please can you take 1 minute to give us a rating and write a review? It helps us more than you probably think.

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This time we're talking with our guest about life across the Pond. If early US cities were inherently walkable, what on earth happened? Is an active travel revolution possible in such a car-centric nation? Why are there parking minimums in new developments? And what on Earth is Euclidian zoning?!

John Simmerman, of the Active Towns podcast and YouTube channel, joins Adam and Laura at the start of a two month European odyssey, to talk about his work promoting active lives in the US.

John spent the first 15 years of his career promoting healthy living among employees in the corporate world, before shifting his focus to the built environment and its impact on health. In the USA, roads and motor traffic dominate public space, and interstate freeways divide and segregate communities, often along racial and socioeconomic lines. John's videos and podcast promote the benefits of walkable, bikeable costs both in terms of health and beyond, to quality of life and community vibrancy.

Links:

You can find out more about Active Towns, and John's work, here: https://www.activetowns.org; and his YouTube channel is here: https://www.youtube.com/activetowns

Euclid, it turns out, is a US village where zoning powers were first established by a local government.

And Adam shared that Simpsons clip on Twitter a while back: https://twitter.com/i/status/1347530929816932353

By the way, if you want ad-free listening, behind-the-scenes and bonus content and to help support the podcast - head to (https://www.patreon.com/StreetsAheadPodcast). We’ll even send you some stickers! 

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Episode edited by Clare Mansell.

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Adam's left his job, Ned's won an award, Laura's touring the country, oh, and there's a general election in the UK. It's been quite a hectic few weeks at Streets Ahead.

By the way, if you want ad-free listening, behind-the-scenes and bonus content and to help support the podcast - head to (https://www.patreon.com/StreetsAheadPodcast). We’ll even send you some stickers! 

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Episode edited by Clare Mansell.

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Laura's got a book out and we're here to plug it, 1) because it's brilliant and 2) because it'd be awkward if we didn't.

Potholes and Pavements: A Bumpy Ride on Britain’s National Cycle Network is the story of the UK's fitful, sometimes painful transformation from a car-dependent nation of villages, towns and cities into a connected, bikeable network of communities.

It's out on 9th May at all good bookstores. Go and get a copy!

Buy: https://linktr.ee/lauralakerpotholesandpavements

For in-person events, head to laura-laker.com/book.

-

By the way, if you want ad-free listening, behind-the-scenes and bonus content and to help support the podcast - head to (https://www.patreon.com/StreetsAheadPodcast). We’ll even send you some stickers! 

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In a special emergency episode, Ned and Adam try to make sense of the Plan for Drivers announcement. What does it mean for active travel and public transport? Will it actually change anything? What are the politics behind the announcement?

You can read the Low Traffic Neighbourhood review here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/low-traffic-neighbourhood-review

In the episode, Adam mentioned there wasn't reference to air quality on boundary roads. The report actually said the view is mixed: "LTNs have succeeded in improving air quality on internal roads but this benefit has not always been shared with boundary locations which show a mix of minimal reductions, no reductions and some increases in emissions of air pollutants."

The fourth location for the LTN review was Wigan, in addition to London, Birmingham and York.

By the way, if you want ad-free listening, behind-the-scenes and bonus content and to help support the podcast - head to (https://www.patreon.com/StreetsAheadPodcast). We’ll even send you some stickers! 

We’re also on Twitter and welcome your feedback on our episode: https://twitter.com/podstreetsahead

If you're reading this, please can you take 1 minute to give us a rating and write a review? It helps us more than you probably think.

Episode edited by Clare Mansell.

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