Streets Ahead

In this special episode Laura goes to the seaside. It may be pouring with rain but Brighton and Shoreham-by-Sea offer a warm welcome, showing us the good stuff happening for cycling in Brighton, and the latest (largely bad stuff) on the short-lived cycle lane on Upper Shoreham road. This ill-fated cycle lane in West Sussex was removed after a few short weeks, despite huge support and a tripling of cycle trips during its existence. What's next for the frankly terrifying road it once sat on, and for the many children and their families that navigate it every day? And what's the least likely transport combination you can think of?

All this and more, in this special episode of Streets Ahead.

Thanks to Adam Bronkhorst at campaign group Shoreham-by-Cycle, and to Mark Strong, of transport consultancy Transport Initiatives, for taking the time to show Laura round and sharing their considerable expertise.

Here's some background to the Upper Shoreham Road story, which road.cc covered from the start: https://road.cc/show/tags/upper-shoreham-road/189511

And more recently, the Argus:

https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/19877352.council-acted-illegally-removing-upper-shoreham-road-cycle-lane/

https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/20293658.upper-shoreham-road-cycle-lane-not-ruled-out/

We’re on Twitter and welcome your feedback on our episode: http://www.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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Ned, Laura and Adam discuss active travel and the economy. We know that cycling and walking are great for our health and the environment, but is the economic case sold strongly enough?

This episode was recorded before the UK Government Autumn Statement on 17/11/22 but talks generally about active travel's impact on the economy and the importance of cheap transport during a cost of living crisis.

We’re on Twitter and welcome your feedback on our episode: http://www.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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The cost of living crisis is forefront in many people's minds at the moment, but while the pressure has ramped up since the war in Ukraine, for some people transport poverty has plagued their lives for far longer.

Our guest Professor Sarah Marie Hall is a geographer with a focus on geographical feminist political economy. She describes this as "understanding how socio-economic processes are shaped by gender relations, lived experience and social difference". Sarah Marie tells us how the impact of transport cuts adds to other growing pressures on people's lives - but the solutions have huge benefits too, both for broad topics such as sustainability, to intimate ones like our personal relationships.

You can find out more about Professor Hall's work here: https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/sarah.m.hall.html

You can read Laura's recent article on the cost of living crisis and access to transport, featuring Professor Hall, here (login to read, it's free): https://www.smarttransport.org.uk/insight-and-policy/finance-and-funding/transport-poverty-is-poor-reflection-on-british-society

If you happen to be in Manchester on Tuesday 8 November 2022, Professor Hall and her colleague, Professor Karen Lucas, will discuss transport poverty at the local level, at the Mechanics Institute. Book your place here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/transport-poverty-and-economic-austerity-an-open-discussion-tickets-431559073807

We’re on Twitter and welcome your feedback on our episode: http://www.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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ned, Laura and Adam hang out in a dilapidated old petrol station for an impromptu pod on World Car Free Day to discuss how we use public space, parklets, and how cycling is diversifying.

You can check out the Possible Parklet Plotter here: https://wearepossible.github.io/parklet-plotter/

We’re on Twitter and welcome your feedback on our episode: http://www.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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ned, Laura and Adam head to Oxford to ask: Why is the city so popular for cycling?

Is it something to do with the university, or is it an ingrained cycling culture? Is it because for decades they’ve filtered through traffic on minor roads? Is it because it costs £35 to park a car for 24 hours? 

In this episode, we'll be exploring Oxford’s new Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and how they have struck a nerve - but we’ll also look at older filters that are the staple of Oxford’s cycling network, and often go unnoticed. 

We’ll also confront the slightly awkward truth that Oxford doesn’t have very good cycle lanes (and shows that perhaps they’re not always needed if you filter through traffic).

We’ll talk to Councillor Emily Kerr (Green Party), who will take us on a short tour of the city's new LTNs.

We’re on Twitter and welcome your feedback on our episode: http://www.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.

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This episode Adam, Ned and Laura meet in person in the grass beside Herne Hill Velodrome. Adam also takes us on an audio journey through South London using a Beeline routing widget to avoid the main roads and discover some quiet gems - and some strange cycleway nomenclature - along the way.

As well as pondering the many uses of bollards, not least in creating quiet routes, the Streets Ahead trio discuss the challenges, and solutions, of finding your way by bike, away from the main roads, from paint to decent signage - and the role of private companies in helping create modal shift.

Tom Putnam, the cofounder of Beeline, joins Streets Ahead to discuss these issues, and explain how Beeline works to provide quiet routes for people cycling. Beeline's routing is based on Open Street Map, with user feedback helping to constantly improve information around which streets work for cycling, and which ones don't, using simple plus and minus buttons on the routing app or widget. Lighting, low traffic volumes, hilliness and cycle lanes are among the things the algorithm uses to define 'good' routes.

The Beeline Velo 2 is the latest widget iteration, and the Beeline routing software is also available via a phone app. You can find out more here: https://global.beeline.co/

We’re on Twitter and welcome your feedback on our episode: http://www.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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A special edition of Streets Ahead, in which Laura travels to the Isle of Wight to meet Detective Superintendent Andy Cox for day one of his nationwide challenge to cycle and run 30 miles a day for a week, raising awareness of road danger, and money for charity RoadPeace.

Andy is on a mission to drive a culture change around roads policing and road danger, having this week revealed, via the Times, a major shakeup in how police record contributory factors in road collisions, which revealed speeding as the number one cause of crashes, contributing to three times more collisions in Manchester and London where a pilot took place. He's pushing data-led policing, taken from his time investigating murders, having targeted the most dangerous roads and drivers in his time as head of Vision Zero in London's Metropolitan Police, and is having a huge impact in his goal of tackling what he insists we call road crime.

Andy's challenge is all about raising funds for a charity that does a huge amount of good with not a lot of funding. He's hoping to raise double - or more - than last year, at least £100,000, and police forces around the country are taking part in their own challenges to help the charity help even more people whose lives are changed by road crime.

From a clifftop near Lands End, having just fallen waist deep into a nettle-covered rock crevice with a half-eaten cheese sandwich, Laura introduces us to Andy's challenge - while Ned's somewhere in Italy covering the Giro d'Italia, and Adam's working away on the West Midlands' cycling and walking transformation.

You can donate money to Andy's challenge here: https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/andycoxchallenge2022

You can read about his shakeup of how contributory factors are recorded, in the Times (paywall) here: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/8959cbb4-d3a3-11ec-b39a-dd0cbc8c6f6d

We’re on Twitter and welcome your feedback on our episode: http://www.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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For Streets Ahead's second birthday, Adam, Ned and Laura go rogue - or at least go outdoors - sitting together on the banks of the River Thames to shoot the breeze. We are, for this episode, a pod without portfolio - drifting beside the Thames like an empty crisp packet and seeing where the current takes us.

The Streets Ahead trio reveals the topic, if not the title, of Laura's forthcoming book, and a street that's being named after her late dad, as well as discussing e-scooters, e-bikes, the strop that got Ned his own bike racks at City Airport (sort of) and how Adam's dad once broke his arm doing a flying leap and yelling 'who's the daddy'. There is also some minor aircraft trivia, Ned's new book about football, a real-life trip to Paris to see just how many people are velo-ing on its new cycle lanes - and nobody falls in the river.

We hope you enjoy this episode of Streets Ahead, a podcast dedicated to the world of active travel, liveable streets and people-focused urban design.

We’re on Twitter and welcome your feedback on our episode: http://www.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.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cities around the world used quick, cheap materials to transform streets for people during the pandemic, but tactical urbanism can, in theory, be initiated by communities and individuals to transform a bare patch of their neighbourhoods at any time. Laura, Ned and Adam talk about their greening efforts, and Laura shares recordings from her giant planters project, during two weeks of construction and two community planting days. Adam also talks about £254m of funds recently awarded for active travel in the West Midlands.

Some links:

http://tacticalurbanismguide.com/

Adam's van made the news https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-57569344 

Possible's campaign to enable more community parklets nationwide https://www.wearepossible.org/actions-blog/get-parklets-on-your-streets

London Parklets Campaign: https://londonparkletscampaign.wordpress.com/people-parking-day/ 

The story of Brenda Puech's People Parking Bay: https://www.peopleparkingbay.com/

We hope you enjoy this episode of Streets Ahead, a podcast dedicated to the world of active travel, liveable streets and people-focused urban design.

We’re on Twitter and welcome your feedback on our episode: http://www.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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ned and Laura chat with Dame Sarah Storey, not only Britain's most successful Paralympian, but the new Cycling & Walking Commissioner for Greater Manchester, having previously held the role for three years in South Yorkshire.

We hope you enjoy this episode of Streets Ahead, a podcast dedicated to the world of active travel, liveable streets and people-focused urban design.

We’re on Twitter and welcome your feedback on our episode: http://www.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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.