The Freewheeling Podcast

What should the new Government do about transport?

Big question: so the Labour party asked an independent group of experts to come up with the answer. Their report, which was published in September, is all-encompassing.

Allan Cook, former Chair of HS2, joins me to talk about their recommendations and why it’s so crucial for the Government to take them forward

When Rishi Sunak stood up in a disused railway station in Manchester to announce the cancellation of HS2 to Manchester, he created something of a problem.

One of the world’s most expensive railways is still being built, but will it be useful? The trains are too long for the platforms in Manchester, Birmingham will have too many platforms and Euston too few. Excess track capacity in the south will give way to insufficient in the north.

In summary, it’s a mess.

One person who thinks he knows how to fix the mess is Chris Gibb, who - amongst other jobs - used to run Virgin West Coast, the vary railway HS2 was designed to replicate.

On this week’s edition of The Freewheeling Podcast, we chat railways in general for a while and then get into the detail of - precisely - how we can make the best of what we’ve got.

Laura Hadzik is one of the UK’s pre-eminent specialists in Transport Law.

In this week’s edition of The Freewheeling Podcast, she tells me about the dangers of badly-drafted legislation and advises how to maintain compliance while also promoting innovation.

Laura isn’t only a lawyer, however. Despite being a proud Mancunian, she’s a Freeman of the City of London and a member of the Worshipful Company of Carmen. Puzzled? Listen on to find out more…

After what felt like a lifetime of waiting, we finally found out yesterday what was in the budget.

This morning, I got together with Sir Michael Holden (former Chief Executive of Directly Operated Railways, the Government’s own train company) to discuss what it means.

Join us for a wide-ranging discussion of the potential and pitfalls of this landmark first budget by a Labour chancellor for 14 years.

Shin-pei Tsay has had what you would call a varied career in transport. She's worked in advocacy organisations, as an exec in Uber and now leads innovation in the City of Boston.

In a wide-ranging conversation, we discuss how to make change happen, how to deliver innovation within big organisations and the importance of inclusivity of wider society.

Pete Dyson is the author of Transport for Humans, a book with influential readers. Louise Haigh took it out of the House of Commons library and enjoyed it.

I’m not surprised: Transport for Humans is essential for anyone involved in the transport and mobility sector. In our discussion, Pete explains why our focus on rigid metrics risks distracting us from the things that users most care about, and how groupthink threatens the quality of our decision-making.

He’s passionate that we need to consider more than just punctuality, and believes behavioural science has much more to offer the transport sector than we realise.

Bernt Reitan Jenssen is the Chief Executive of Ruter, the public transport authority for the Norwegian capital Oslo.

He has a vision: for a data-driven public transport network so responsive to user needs that it replicates the freedom offered by the private car.

This may sound unachievable but Ruter has a track record. They have nearly achieved total decarbonisation of their vehicle fleet (four years’ ahead of schedule) and Oslo is one of the only cities on earth to be within touching distance of Vision Zero (meaning no deaths on the transport network at all - including the roads).

Bernt is passionate about sustainability and convinced that we cannot continue with public transport as usual in the face of the climate crisis.

Do join me for a fascinating, inspirational but also pragmatic conversation about the future.

Leila Zegna is co-founder and Partner of Kindred Capital, one of the top venture capital firms in the UK. In her day job, she backs entrepreneurs with small startups but huge ambitions. She is also a Trustee of Boston Children’s Hospital and spent most of her career in Silicon Valley. So she has a great perspective on what corporates can learn from startups and the differences between British and American business culture.

In this episode of The Freewheeling Podcast she tells me about the characteristics of successful entrepreneurs, what an established safety-critical business can learn from the tech sector and why British business culture needs more self-belief in the potential for change.

She also has a warning: the world is faster and more unpredictable than ever and businesses of all sizes need to be ready to respond.

This week I’m joined by a council officer. But no ordinary council officer. Colin Knight is doing something extraordinary: working with scientists and automotive engineers to develop an entirely new form of transport.

When challenged by his political masters to reduce the costs of a new tram network for Coventry, Colin realised that the only way to achieve a step-change was to reinvent trams from the ground up. Literally. He has formed a team that has reinvented the both tracks and vehicles.

He joins me on The Freewheeling Podcast to tell me what they’ve done, why they’ve done it and what will happen next with the monumentally ambitious project known as Very Light Rail.

Vernon Everitt is Commissioner for Greater Manchester at a time of rapid (transformational?) change.

Manchester is the UK’s pioneer for re-regulating buses as part of a wider integrated Bee Network, which is intended to bring together buses, bikes, trains and trams.

On this week’s Freewheeling Podcast, we talk about how much has been done, what’s left to do, why Manchester has been able to move at such pace and whether there are obstacles holding them back.

We start by finding out if the Bee Network is simply a product of Vernon’s favourite colour being yellow…