Transcript exported from the video version of this episode - Note that it has not been copyedited

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:24:15
Speaker 1
When I presented it in Velo-City, I talked about what I'd read from a Dutch approach is to talk about the org where hardware and software. So the hardware is the cycling infrastructure that we ride on, the software, things like the guidelines, the funding, the standards, all those things and the org, where is really the organizational approach. So that's having the political willpower.

00:00:24:22 - 00:00:38:23
Speaker 1
It's having the advocacy organizations working together. And I talk about those three, but what I've realized is that, that so that's a little Venn diagram with those three sort of areas in it. What was missing is that sitting outside all of that is the paradigm.

00:00:38:26 - 00:01:16:22
Speaker 2
Hey, everyone, welcome to the Active Towns Channel. I'm John Simmerman and that is Sara Stace from Sydney, Australia. She is the director of city at WSP and she's also involved with Better Streets and the World Cycling Alliance. And we recently met up in Velo City and we're going to be reflecting on some of the things that really we're quite great takeaways from the city for her and really why she has a fire in the belly to really kind of move things forward with a sense of urgency in terms of creating environments which are more walkable, bikeable for all ages and abilities.

00:01:16:24 - 00:01:29:19
Speaker 2
So let's get right to it. With Sarah stays. Sarah, so wonderful to see you once again. Welcome to the Active Towns podcast.

00:01:29:21 - 00:01:31:29
Speaker 1
Thank you for having me, Sarah.

00:01:31:29 - 00:01:38:12
Speaker 2
I love to have my guests just say a few words about themselves. So who is Sarah?

00:01:38:14 - 00:02:01:25
Speaker 1
Okay, well, first I'm going to start with what we call in Australia an acknowledgment of country. So I'm acknowledging that I'm joining today from the land of the gadigal people of the era nation and pay my respects to elders past and present. Now we do this because our land has never been sated and so that's where I'm joining you from today about myself.

00:02:01:25 - 00:02:25:14
Speaker 1
I'm actually a registered architect. I work in a global engineering company called WSP, where I'm the director of cities in Australia, and then I'm also the president of Better Streets, which is an alliance of a whole lot of organized nations who really want to have those better straight outcomes from people who walk, people who cycle climate change groups and so on.

00:02:25:16 - 00:02:47:23
Speaker 1
And then I'm also the treasurer of the World Cycling Alliance, which is based in Brussels and is sort of partnered with the European Cycling Federation. So that's a bit about the various bits and pieces that I do. My I've worked for 25 years in private sector as well as all three levels of government, so federal, state and local governments.

00:02:47:26 - 00:03:00:24
Speaker 1
And I'm really passionate about how we get those better straight outcomes as part of our everyday living to get people active and outdoors. And I think that helps people's mental health and physical health.

00:03:00:26 - 00:03:31:25
Speaker 2
Fantastic. That's great. We will spend very much time over on the corporate website, but I do want to pop over and just acknowledge that, yes, your official role there is you're the director of cities at WSP and you mentioned Better streets. So here's the landing page for that. And I was fascinated to see this better street. So it looks like it really is truly a coalition of many, many different community groups.

00:03:31:27 - 00:03:35:10
Speaker 2
How did this all come about? Was this recent?

00:03:35:12 - 00:03:57:14
Speaker 1
Yeah, it is very recent. We actually only launched in November last year and we really it's based on a model that one of our members worked on in London, in the UK, where she did her PhD on better streets and how you can have, I guess, that community activism, but joining a whole lot of voices together as an alliance.

00:03:57:15 - 00:04:15:27
Speaker 1
So the idea behind this is that we often, when we talk about walking away, talk about cycling, often it's just the one voice or it's seen as this one voice. And so we realized that actually we can be much, much more powerful if we all join together. And if you just scroll up a little bit. You had the kiosks there.

00:04:15:29 - 00:04:38:00
Speaker 1
Yeah. So we did these together. So they weren't it wasn't a top down. This is really coming from the ground up about, well, what are the kiosks, what are we asking for when we're joining together as an alliance? And so this first one is talking about setting those lifelong habits for kids, in this case by having 75% of children to walk cycle or scoot or catch public transport to school.

00:04:38:02 - 00:04:59:23
Speaker 1
Now, that's that's where it used to be back in the seventies, but is clearly not the case in Australia anymore. So we've sort of set that as a stretch target. The second one is that we want kids to be safe and independent and that's through adopting 30 kilometer hour straight speeds on all residential streets and in urban centers and again, that's a straight a spade that is survivable.

00:04:59:23 - 00:05:20:17
Speaker 1
If if a person is hit by a car, they're going to survive. My own child actually got hit by a car walking to school about a year ago and he's fine. But that's because the car was driving slowly. So we want our streets to be survivable. And then the third one is supporting local businesses by improving expanding those streetscapes like outdoor dining that we saw happening a lot during COVID.

00:05:20:19 - 00:05:43:27
Speaker 1
The fourth one is sort of upgrading pedestrian crossings and improving that pedestrian access. And then the fifth one is building cycleway infrastructure at a network level. So because we've sort of set up those kiosks, anyone who signs up to our coalition basically is agreeing with those kiosks. But they could be a climate change action group. They could be a school or a group of parents or.

00:05:44:00 - 00:05:55:03
Speaker 1
Yes, there's lots of different groups who could join that as long as they agree on what those kiosks are. And that can be really powerful. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess as an example, YouTube channel.

00:05:55:06 - 00:05:58:18
Speaker 2
Active Towers, I need to sign on to this. This is great.

00:05:58:18 - 00:06:08:14
Speaker 1
I mean, for example, we did go, oh, I was going to say and I'll speak later about going and talking to the Australian Government and different state governments and so on, has given us a foot in the door.

00:06:08:17 - 00:06:37:26
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah. Fantastic. And I noticed too, you know, with the 30 kilometers per hour for all local, the local residential streets and urban centers, do you have that same challenge in Australia that we have in North America where they have sited schools outside of the residential areas and outside of the urban areas? They've they've like put schools off on their own.

00:06:37:29 - 00:06:49:08
Speaker 2
And oftentimes the schools are on dangerous streets. They're on high speed corridors and in arterials. Did that happen, you know, for you guys as well?

00:06:49:11 - 00:07:09:26
Speaker 1
Possibly not to the same extent. It depends on where it's located. So we've got existing built up areas. We have a very strong what they call a public school network site. So primary schools, basically. And if you're going to your your primary school, this could have your age 5 to 11, then it's going to be in your local area.

00:07:09:26 - 00:07:31:15
Speaker 1
So you can't go out of area if you're going to a public primary school. And so all of those are walkable because that's a set area. Like my local school, it's about a 500 meter catchment. It's not very big. Whereas the high schools definitely we went through a whole area where we just closed the public high schools and join them altogether into these super schools.

00:07:31:17 - 00:07:49:04
Speaker 1
In my area there's one public high school to serve an absolutely enormous catchment. And so the problem then is that everyone sort of move towards private schools and private schools have no catchment requirement whatsoever. So it's it has created this massive travel demand.

00:07:49:06 - 00:08:13:06
Speaker 2
Right? Yeah, exactly. You hit the nail on the head there. It's created a massive travel demand because not only are those schools located in areas that may not be walkable and bikeable, but the distance start being you no longer. And so now you are inducing the demand of driving, you know, the parents driving the kids to the school, or somehow they're having to get on busses or whatever.

00:08:13:06 - 00:08:30:10
Speaker 2
So it seems to be a worldwide phenomena and it's a huge challenge, I think, you know, because then you have, you know, an inflow of so many cars to that school area, which should be inherently walkable and bikeable and converge. Yeah.

00:08:30:10 - 00:08:53:19
Speaker 1
And I think also for particularly in their teenage years, this is where you start to set lifelong habits about travel. And so if you create the situation where kids literally just cannot walk and definitely can't cycle to school, when are they going to learn that habit? Whereas for me, and I think for a lot of people of a sort of age is that we did ride to school and that became a lifelong habit.

00:08:53:19 - 00:09:00:00
Speaker 1
And then we ride to work and it just continues on from there. So when do we expect that's going to happen for our kids?

00:09:00:03 - 00:09:16:16
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, we'll pop over here before we dive into some of the materials that you sent over. You mentioned the World Cycling Alliance. Why don't you sort of share with, you know, from a 30,000 foot level what the World Cycling Alliance is all about?

00:09:16:19 - 00:09:39:12
Speaker 1
Yeah. So the World Cycling Alliance really started, I think in around 2014 actually, when Australia last hosted Velo City is when we launched the World Cycling Alliance. So our secretariat function is provided by the European Cycling Federation. And so it's an equivalent to that. But on a global level, our members comprise, I guess, each continent across the world.

00:09:39:12 - 00:10:05:07
Speaker 1
So we've got an African, we've got a South American, North American on Oceana and Asian, East Asian and Central Asian. So we've got each of our board members represents one of those continents, and then we are essentially that global voice for cycling. And again, trying to amplify that message about how what are the benefits, how do we bring about that change globally.

00:10:05:09 - 00:10:35:13
Speaker 2
Yeah, and you mentioned the European Cyclist Federation and we just saw each other. We were, you know, together at the Velo City in in Leipzig, Germany, which is just south of Berlin. And, and you all were are interested in bringing those city back down under to you, to Australia. I'll talk a little bit about this, this campaign. So this is for, for 2026.

00:10:35:16 - 00:10:58:20
Speaker 1
Yeah. So we are thinking about bringing the city to Sydney in Australia and what we did at that velocity conference in Leipzig was to run this survey, which anyone can. It's still open if anyone wants to fill it out. We're just curious about what would it take to invite people here, What are the barriers We noticed in Europe that there's a lot of concern about flying because of climate change.

00:10:58:22 - 00:11:06:03
Speaker 1
But what would excite people and invite them to come over? So we were just collecting surveys and information on that while we were there.

00:11:06:05 - 00:11:34:21
Speaker 2
And I'll make sure that we have the link in both the the audio and the video version of this podcast episode so that folks can, you know, fill that survey out and get that going. Now, that was my first velocity conference and I was just blown away. I really do believe that it's so incredibly important that we have this global platform to meet, to talk through these issues.

00:11:34:23 - 00:11:39:00
Speaker 2
I'm assuming that you've attended more than one velocity.

00:11:39:03 - 00:11:48:01
Speaker 1
I have, yes. My first one was in Adelaide, in Australia in 2014, and then I went to one in, not in France. And so this was my third one.

00:11:48:04 - 00:12:13:05
Speaker 2
Okay, fantastic. When you look at what we have, our challenge that we have in front of us in, and I have a sense that we're going to focus in on this because there's a level of urgency that needs to be put forward on these issues that we have, we the transformations that we need to do, the work that we have in front of us.

00:12:13:08 - 00:12:39:22
Speaker 2
I get the sense that, you know, when we look at cups, you know, the cup meeting and and, you know, these these people get coming together to talk about this stuff. It's just not moving quickly enough. And so that's why I'm so incredibly encouraged by velocity. And in the organizations like the World Cycling Alliance and the European Cyclist Federation that are you know, they're they're just on it.

00:12:39:22 - 00:13:10:29
Speaker 2
They're they're keeping the pressure up and, you know, saying, hey, don't forget about active mobility. We can't just be continuing to focus on technology and and the whiz bang techno solutions of the day. I mean, that's kind of where I'm coming from. Is that sort of where you and your group is is also coming from when you think about I'm assuming it is because when I look at this, I'm not seeing a whole lot of in the in the vision or the assets here.

00:13:10:29 - 00:13:16:01
Speaker 2
I'm not seeing a whole lot of techno techno whiz bang stuff going on in there.

00:13:16:03 - 00:13:47:23
Speaker 1
Well, e-bikes, we do love e-bikes. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Cargo bikes and things like that are all part of that mix, I suppose. But I guess, yeah, what I want to reflect on, which I will try obviously will get to, is I did a lot of soul searching while we're at Valley City and immediately afterwards because I spent a week after that in the Netherlands and in Copenhagen in Denmark, and then got back home and got this amazing presentation about China, which we'll also talk about.

00:13:47:25 - 00:14:07:03
Speaker 1
And it's got me really thinking about our paradigm that we have in North America and in Australia that's holding us back like, yes, it's really lovely to go to Valley City and a lot of people talk about having, you know, the post of L.A. City Blues. I don't have the blues. I am. I've got fire in my belly.

00:14:07:03 - 00:14:07:25
Speaker 1
It's like I could.

00:14:07:25 - 00:14:08:07
Speaker 2
Tell.

00:14:08:10 - 00:14:19:04
Speaker 1
How come we be here and see this? And, you know, here's someone here with a cane on the back of his bike. Like this is someone living with a disability and the bike is giving him the freedom to just get out and do stuff.

00:14:19:08 - 00:14:24:11
Speaker 2
And I'm assuming this is Copenhagen. Yeah. And so this was after the city you continued on.

00:14:24:18 - 00:14:46:05
Speaker 1
That's right. Yeah. And I think that there's a couple of other images as well in there. This one here is a couple of teenagers just getting out there on their bikes. It's a very nice, well-to-do neighborhood with fancy shops. And here's to some teenagers going for a ride. I have realized why Vanmoof makes that really strong crossbar is so you can take a friend with you.

00:14:46:08 - 00:14:55:17
Speaker 2
Yes. Yes. And it's so funny to see this happening because whenever you're in the Netherlands especially, and I'm assuming this is the Netherlands.

00:14:55:19 - 00:14:56:11
Speaker 1
It is, yes.

00:14:56:11 - 00:15:24:03
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah. You see the kids, you know, dinking. You know, the gal here on on the left looking at her phone, she's about ready to sit down once they get rolling again and she'll sort of dink on the back rack there too. So and that's one of the things that I love about being in the Netherlands. Being in Europe is when you start to see that cycling is is not something special.

00:15:24:03 - 00:15:46:12
Speaker 2
It's just it's pedestrian. Plus, as my friend Chris Brown likes to say, it's just a practical, pragmatic way of getting around, but it's also inherently social and fun. And, you know, it's great when you see the girls giggling and boys, too, and it's just really, really encouraging when you're in that environment.

00:15:46:15 - 00:16:06:06
Speaker 1
Yeah, but I want to take it further than that. So that that image that you just showed of the girls, you know, they heading off to hockey on a Sunday morning and. Yeah, but the thing is they're, they're on a ride while they're in a cycle way next to the ride and they're relaxed, you know, the one in the front, actually, she's got a AirPods in her ear.

00:16:06:07 - 00:16:27:06
Speaker 1
Yeah, they're just chatting. One's on a phone, but they're there amongst traffic. But they are not stressed. They're not even looking at the cars. It doesn't matter that that's the kind of environment that's been created that is so safe, so supportive, so welcoming that you have got no problems letting your teenage girls get out and they just got their hockey stick in one hand and fine in the other.

00:16:27:06 - 00:16:29:00
Speaker 1
Like, wow.

00:16:29:03 - 00:16:30:06
Speaker 2
Yes, yes.

00:16:30:09 - 00:16:32:03
Speaker 1
That just blows my mind. Just setting.

00:16:32:09 - 00:17:00:12
Speaker 2
Really glad that you you mentioned that specifically because you do notice that difference is soon as you go to, you know, some of the emerging cycling cities, especially over in Europe like London and Paris, you're starting to see some really impressive numbers of people riding, but it's not as relaxed. This is really I mean, it, again, pedestrian plus this is like super, super casual, super relaxed.

00:17:00:19 - 00:17:19:22
Speaker 2
It doesn't seem like when you're getting on a bike to run an errand or go to work or go to school or go to a field hockey practice like these girls are, it doesn't feel like it's a race. It doesn't feel like it's a competition. It doesn't feel like you're having to, you know, do battle with the environment.

00:17:19:25 - 00:17:42:14
Speaker 2
So I'm really glad that you mention that, because I think that's incredibly important to to normalize raising this beyond a very, very small niche of our overall population. If we want to have big change, you have to create an environment that is truly safe and inviting to everyone so they can feel like they can be relaxed out there.

00:17:42:17 - 00:17:49:19
Speaker 1
That's right. And certainly when I ride a bike, I assume that every car, every motorist is going to kill me.

00:17:49:21 - 00:17:50:06
Speaker 2
Right.

00:17:50:08 - 00:17:50:20
Speaker 1
Which is.

00:17:50:23 - 00:17:52:01
Speaker 2
Like very, very stressful.

00:17:52:01 - 00:17:53:26
Speaker 1
Writing. That's stressful.

00:17:53:26 - 00:17:58:01
Speaker 2
That's all that's incredibly stressful, too, to have that assumption.

00:17:58:03 - 00:18:29:02
Speaker 1
Yeah. And luckily I do have separated cycleways pretty much my whole way to work so I can comfortably commute. But every intersection, I'm worried, I'm looking, I'm alert. Whereas those girls are not. They don't need to be. And I guess that's, that's that paradigm that there was a great quote that Emmanuel John who's who's one of my fellow board members on the World Cycling Alliance, he was part of one of the plenaries and he said that you can't tell a fish to live on the mountain.

00:18:29:05 - 00:18:57:17
Speaker 1
And what he meant by that is we're all a fish. And those girls that we just saw, the people in the Netherlands and in Denmark, in Copenhagen, they're on the mountain, but we don't even know the mountain exists. And I guess that's where I'm sort of was coming to is our paradigm is the river where the fish swimming around and we don't know the mountain exists, except sometimes we go on a holiday and we kind of like, Oh wow, like, well, it does exist, but then we just come back home.

00:18:57:17 - 00:19:02:20
Speaker 1
Where does depressed about? We just couldn't have that here. And.

00:19:02:23 - 00:19:14:22
Speaker 2
And I found that quote I found that quote here on your slide presentation from your learnings. And it is in fact the same image with the with the girls. So I definitely wanted.

00:19:14:22 - 00:19:16:03
Speaker 1
To try it. We just got.

00:19:16:03 - 00:19:17:19
Speaker 2
Credit for that.

00:19:17:22 - 00:19:36:01
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing he said is that we need to put that fire in the tail of people to change the whole system, not just part of the system as the whole system. And I guess actually if you want to pop back a couple of slide, I can take you through this because there was some really interesting insights here.

00:19:36:01 - 00:19:56:20
Speaker 1
I will just start with this one. So this is actually after the conference and came back to Australia. I was asked to be part of a presentation on what we learned from Valley City and this is what I the slide deck that I gave and there was a particular quote that I think it was Rodney Knight was was it Rodney Ellis?

00:19:56:20 - 00:19:59:03
Speaker 1
I can't remember who gave that one.

00:19:59:05 - 00:20:02:12
Speaker 2
Some people will get mad, really mad.

00:20:02:14 - 00:20:21:19
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's right. But I shall I'll come back to that in a moment. But if we just go to that first slide again in Copenhagen. So the key point was to I'll remember who said in a moment to be realistic, demand the impossible. Yeah. And I've been really reflecting on what that meant. And so this is a photograph in, in Copenhagen.

00:20:21:19 - 00:20:41:11
Speaker 1
It's, it's near the cycle snake but a little bit further up and this is a traffic intersection. But if you look at it closely, there is no room for cars. It's all bikes like there's a blue stripe going right through the middle of the intersection. There's logos everywhere. This, you know, space for pedestrians because they've got to the zebra crossings.

00:20:41:11 - 00:21:17:13
Speaker 1
They're But where are the cars meant to go? They're actually stuck on the fringe like a this is completely inverted and flipped the straight the other way. So for us, this is totally impossible. And yet it exists because it's right there. And so the next couple of slides actually go through some of that. So this one here, again, we just looked at that photograph, but this is from the closing plenary saying that that as advocates, whether that's from the better straight, so other organizations that we need to say the things that politicians and bureaucrats can't say and the we can't just stand on the sidelines, we need to be sort of political, I suppose, and

00:21:17:13 - 00:21:29:17
Speaker 1
activate that. But again, he's that photo of it's completely impossible where we are in North America or in Australia. And yet it's it's right here. It happens if we slip to the next one.

00:21:29:20 - 00:21:31:10
Speaker 2
Yeah. Let me ask you this recording.

00:21:31:11 - 00:21:32:29
Speaker 1
Yeah. Sorry. Yeah.

00:21:33:01 - 00:21:48:05
Speaker 2
Why can't they say these things? Why is it. Why can't. For the audience. Yeah. Why can't the politicians and leaders say these things? I mean, is it just political suicide if they say the things that have to be said?

00:21:48:08 - 00:22:14:15
Speaker 1
Yeah, it is so an example in Australia is there's a Lord mayor, so Lord mayor sort of who's in charge of that, that sort of central part of the city. Each of our capital cities has a Lord mayor and one of them, Clover Moore, has been the Lord Mayor for I think since 2004. She's extremely popular, but her whole platform has included cycling as part of a sustainable, livable city.

00:22:14:17 - 00:22:33:10
Speaker 1
And she spent many years on the wrong side of history in the wilderness in Australia, where she was a real pariah for having this strong opinion. It's now paying off because we're now building all this infrastructure in Sydney and we can look at some of those slides in a moment. But it's taken a long time to get to this point where she is on the right side of history.

00:22:33:10 - 00:22:38:18
Speaker 1
And I think that other politicians around Australia just look at what she's been through and they don't want to go down that path.

00:22:38:21 - 00:22:58:18
Speaker 2
And I wanted to ask that question because we do look to and we see examples of strong leadership like, you know, Mira and Hilldale go in Paris and, you know, taking bold moves and saying, no, this is what we're doing. You voted me in on this platform and this is what we're doing. And I was serious. We're doing this.

00:22:58:20 - 00:23:19:26
Speaker 2
We don't see that very frequently here in the United States either. So I just wanted to clarify that. Yeah, it is kind of political suicide for many people to to say the bold things that need to be said of, you know, hey, we, you know, pants on fire. We have urgent things that need to be done and we need to start demanding the impossible.

00:23:19:28 - 00:23:40:23
Speaker 1
Yeah. And I guess actually at the city we did have one of Australia's politicians turned up Rob Stokes. He was the Minister for Planning and then the minister for Transport and had held another bunch of portfolios. But his most recent one was the Minister for Cities and Active Transport. He actually put active transport in his title as a minister, which was amazing.

00:23:41:00 - 00:24:09:23
Speaker 1
But he also has just retired from politics and so he came along to the city too to find out more and that was amazing to have him there. But he was in for one year and so in that time, you know, did some really awesome stuff. But I guess the that because the paradigm is so stuck in this car centric, like a basic genic sort of environment, I can tell it's very agonistic, but essentially we create a society that that makes it difficult for people to exercise and be healthy and that that was awesome.

00:24:09:23 - 00:24:20:05
Speaker 1
But then it's held back by things like the bureaucracy, for example, who just don't have that level of ambition. So it takes so many parts of the ecosystem for that change to happen.

00:24:20:07 - 00:24:51:01
Speaker 2
Yeah, Yeah. And speaking of obesogenic, down just down the road from me in Harris County District one Commissioner Rodney Ellis in Houston was there, also a former guest here on the podcast. And Rodney is is is one of the bright lights in the state of Texas because he just, you know, is fed up with the fact that, you know, too many people are, you know, unhealthy.

00:24:51:01 - 00:25:16:08
Speaker 2
They're they're they're becoming obese. The the diabetes rate is through the roof in, you know, his his constituents down in District one. And so it was really, really important. But he brings up a really interesting point here. And he has an interesting quote that I'll I'll let you talk a little bit about, because it clearly had an impact on you, too.

00:25:16:11 - 00:25:44:13
Speaker 1
It did, Yeah. Here it is. Here He said some people get really mad and that's right. People do. They get very angry because they see that you're taking something away. What? You're taking away is their car. And you know, that makes sense because we've created this. So I work a lot in land use and transport that that makes between where we create travel demand, we create these environments where it is very hard to get around with anything but a car.

00:25:44:15 - 00:26:01:11
Speaker 1
And so, of course, if you take that away from people, you're taking away their fundamental way to get around a city. That's fair enough. But then that's that whole paradigm where we need to change. Well, why do we create things this way? It doesn't have to be this way. And Rodney also made a point that a lot of people can't drive.

00:26:01:11 - 00:26:21:09
Speaker 1
So I did the numbers in Australia and it turns out I was actually really shocked at this. 40% of our population can't drive. That's because the kids can't. They're too young to get a license or they're old. They're too old to get a license or they're living with a disability like this. This person here in the image, or they choose to be car lot because they want to live sustainably.

00:26:21:09 - 00:26:34:05
Speaker 1
So how do so we're providing for 60% of the population and that doesn't even take into account people who can't afford a car or the costs of that. So I think that was a really valid point that Rodney made.

00:26:34:07 - 00:27:01:08
Speaker 2
Yeah, Yeah. And I think one of the most important things that we can do is, is acknowledge that we shouldn't be focusing on what people are going to have to give up, you know, in, in, in this brighter future that we're imagining. And when we look at the the assets that you had that we were focusing on earlier, this is creating a better society.

00:27:01:08 - 00:27:26:20
Speaker 2
This is creating a society of choices. And so we get so wrapped around the political angle of of what we're losing in or, you know, as a society in that really kind of gets people, you know, into loggerheads and you know, an us versus them thing versus I'm starting to really trying to embrace the concept, especially in America, because man, we're America.

00:27:26:20 - 00:27:47:29
Speaker 2
We want freedom, we want choice. I'm like, Oh, you want freedom, You want choice. Have I got a deal for you? It's called Active mobility. Let's transform our communities so that they you know, you can literally, you know, not be a slave to having to drive everywhere, because that's one of the things that has happened with Motor Home.

00:27:47:29 - 00:28:08:08
Speaker 2
Of course, historically starting in the 1940s on is the the car was seen as freedom freedom to drive the open roads. You look at the commercials and it's all about you know you don't look at traffic jam, you know, cars and traffic jams. You don't look at pollution. You don't look at, you know, climate change in the commercials.

00:28:08:10 - 00:28:52:10
Speaker 2
It's all about, you know, freedom and all that. So I really love this idea of trying to emphasize the fact that, you know, having mobility choice and having the ability for the girls to be able to go out in a no stress environment and be able to have active mobility as a choice, whether it's walking, biking, taking transit or even you're driving, you know, that's, I think, something that is really, really helpful to try to to try to help alleviate or mitigate some of the knee jerk reactions where people feel like this is a, you know, fight or flight situation where they need to get mad.

00:28:52:13 - 00:29:11:06
Speaker 2
And so, yes, people are going to get mad no matter what we do. And some are going to get it really, really mad. And there's a subset of the population that, you know, creates a lot of noise, even though they're not very many, they're not a huge number of people, but they they have influence and they do scream loudly.

00:29:11:09 - 00:29:25:18
Speaker 2
But I think that if we can, you know, really lean in to the fact that, you know, hey, what we're talking about here is empowering for many people of all ages and abilities. I think we can you know, be much more successful as we go forward.

00:29:25:21 - 00:29:26:26
Speaker 1
Yeah, absolutely.

00:29:27:03 - 00:29:31:07
Speaker 2
And I love that. I love this part of it, too. So. Yeah, go ahead.

00:29:31:10 - 00:29:53:13
Speaker 1
Yeah. So this some that's actually a little cart full of babies is in Leipzig in Germany. Apparently it's a it's actually a vestige of East Germany where this is very common. But here are some very, very young children being taken on a bicycle in a trailer off to their daycare center. So I love that image. And again, you know, it's completely impossible in in our society.

00:29:53:16 - 00:30:20:04
Speaker 1
But the first mantra that kept on being said over and over in Valley City is that a good bike plan is a car plan. And saying that you can't build that cycling infrastructure if you don't manage cars and if you don't manage car parking. And I thought that was really interesting because again, we in Australia, we've moved to this new era movement in place where we're trying to sort of balance movement against place outcomes and so on.

00:30:20:06 - 00:30:40:24
Speaker 1
But at the end of the day you have to be talking about tradeoffs. You have to give up some car parking or you have to give up car flow. If you don't make that trade off, you're never going to get that cycleway in. Or if you do, you're spending like we've just put in a psychopath beautiful in in Bondi near Bondi Beach.

00:30:40:27 - 00:31:04:22
Speaker 1
It's more than $15 million a kilometer. But that's because we couldn't trade off any car parking and we had to keep the traffic flow going. And so we had to actually create space away from pedestrians. It's the pedestrians who lost the space and we had to move the curbs. And I mean, we had to move in trees and we had to move the stormwater and we had to move electricity conduits and then the cost just blew out to an enormous amount of money for a short section of cycleway.

00:31:04:26 - 00:31:25:18
Speaker 1
So it is beautiful, it is great, but at a great cost. And so we need to have these discussions about, well, what do we really want to trade off? And I also thought amongst this context was that Oslo, Norway, they love their electric vehicles. That's been very successful. But then they're also having to now say, well, yeah, that's great, you've got your RV, but it doesn't actually solve all of our problems.

00:31:25:21 - 00:31:37:28
Speaker 1
We're going to have to lose some parking, for example, and Paris has done the same. And Kent so when you look at I can't think of any cities globally that has been hugely successful with cycling infrastructure that hasn't given up some cars.

00:31:38:00 - 00:32:02:25
Speaker 2
Yes. Yeah. You know, some some of that real estate. And again, it's not saying that we're going to ban cars, but at the same time, if you are looking to get some balance in terms of mobility, as the as you pointed out in the image in the very first image, you know, here it's your rebalance here. What are we what are we incentivizing?

00:32:02:25 - 00:32:26:22
Speaker 2
What do we need to see more of? Oh, that's right. We need to see more sustainable transportation, more people walking, biking, taking transit. And so you start reallocating the space. It's not that you can't drive, you still can. And there will still be places for you to park somewhere, but it's not going to be as subsidized and as easy as it always has been in the past.

00:32:26:22 - 00:32:53:08
Speaker 2
And I think that that's an important thing to to really hone in on, is that, you know, it's and I'm glad you brought up the the 40% of the folks that that are not driving in. I'm glad that you also said you know some are of them are is because they can't drive but some of them is because they don't drive because they choose not to drive.

00:32:53:10 - 00:33:18:28
Speaker 2
And it was interesting because that came up in my episode with Cathy Tuttle, where she also talked about this. This was actually the whole name of that particular episode. And she actually produced an entire report for the city of Portland, Oregon, about this. Is that a good bike plan Is is a car plan? And I would even go so far as to say it's not about the bike.

00:33:19:01 - 00:33:43:24
Speaker 2
It's like a good city plan, a good public, you know, realm plan, a livelihood and vibrancy, plan for a community is to have a plan to manage the negative externalities of cars and and being honest about that impact that cars are in fact having on the health and well-being of the city, as well as the residents in the city.

00:33:43:28 - 00:33:51:16
Speaker 2
So good stuff. Now, this is huge. This is the new paradigm. Yeah.

00:33:51:17 - 00:34:17:02
Speaker 1
Look, Philip, Christ was on fire like I've heard him speak before and he's he's amazing. But he was just in there, you know, like, just blazing in his plenary session. And it really took my breath away. I actually. And his what's the International Transport Forum as part of the OAC day. And he said, we really need to take this deep rooted human approach to our city.

00:34:17:07 - 00:34:39:08
Speaker 1
I'm going to sort of repeat some of the things he said there. But one is that cars have appropriated our public space now straights, which is just what we've been talking about and that it's been taken away from life and put towards this fast movement and that we've by doing this collective embracing of codependence, we've shackled our suburbs and asked humans to car dependency.

00:34:39:11 - 00:35:01:13
Speaker 1
And look, I love this image on the right. This is taken in Copenhagen near the super kiln and you've got a couple here where he's riding and she's in the little cabin in the front. Again, like I've never seen anything like this in Australia. I've certainly seen kids being cut around that, not a couple where that sort of an elderly couple at this happens.

00:35:01:15 - 00:35:33:12
Speaker 1
And I guess what he was saying around our paradigm is that you can't just drop that bike infrastructure into a car centric environment and car centric in society. And he talked also about taking cars away from our minds and away from our streets. And I just thought that was a really lovely analogy. But yeah, I think that's where we that's the paradigm that we live in, in Australia and New Zealand and the US and, you know, all over the world we're stuck in that.

00:35:33:13 - 00:35:57:10
Speaker 1
The cars have taken over our minds and so we this is that fish and the mountain component where we're stuck in this train, where we're surrounded by cars, they feel my everyday existence. And so we kind of imagine that life or a society or a city without those cars dominating the noise, dominating the space. I think that's that paradigm that we're really stuck in.

00:35:57:10 - 00:36:24:13
Speaker 1
So just to give it a witness this early show the slides, but when I presented at Valley City, I talked about what I read from a Dutch approach is to talk about the way hardware and software. Yeah, so the hardware is this cycling infrastructure that we ride on the software, things like the guidelines, the funding, the standards, all those things and the all gear is really the organizational approach to this.

00:36:24:13 - 00:36:46:28
Speaker 1
Having the political willpower. It's having the advocacy organizations working together. And I talk about those three, but what I've realized is that that so that's a little Venn diagram with those three sort of areas in it. What was missing is that sitting outside all of that is the paradigm, right? And so apparent. Like if you think of that paradigm as a circle, I'm going to try to show that on the screen and I haven't drawn this before.

00:36:46:28 - 00:37:05:09
Speaker 1
I was just thinking about it this morning. A paradigm puts all of that over here, but the paradigm in the Netherlands is over here like they just that's the part that I really want to get to is, well, how do we shift that paradigm completely away from where we are? And I want to talk about China in a moment to explain that.

00:37:05:11 - 00:37:33:22
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah. I was blown away by that image in your presentation at Velocity of the Org where software or the hardware, software and org where for years I've been talking about, you know, hardware activity assets and software activity assets and, and using that as an analogy. But then, you know, it made so much sense to see the org where part of that in and it was neat to to see that in your presentation as well.

00:37:33:24 - 00:38:04:13
Speaker 2
I did want to emphasize something that is really, really important about this slide and this paradigm of a deep rooted human approach is the fact that, you know, zooming in on this, I like this part right here of taking cars out of our mind. One of the one of the sort of catch phrases that has come up recently, especially out on by Twitter, is car brain and people talking about, oh, this is another great example of car brain.

00:38:04:19 - 00:38:36:00
Speaker 2
And so I love that he honed in on this here we need to do take the cars away from our minds and on our streets in the sense that yes, so much of what we end up dealing with is because we've been almost brainwashed into believing that cars will be ever present in our life at such an amazing level that we do end up having this this concept of car brain where it's like, well, what about the cars?

00:38:36:03 - 00:39:13:04
Speaker 2
So it's really, really cool to see, you know, more and more people are honing in on that because. I do think that that's a a critical aspect. The other thing I wanted to zoom in on here, too, is this bike is a Christiane, a bike. And so this is manufactured right there in Copenhagen. And they have a version of this bike that is used to take elderly individuals out so that they can get, you know, fresh air and be able to experience, you know, life after they've lost some of their mobility.

00:39:13:07 - 00:39:39:01
Speaker 2
And in it's called cycling Without Age is the international organization that does that. So they have a version of this bike which is a little bit wider so that two people can sit up front. And then a pilot who's, you know, cycling behind can take them out and get some fresh air. And I think that's another thing that is part of what we're talking about here, of, you know, giving ourselves a deep rooted human approach.

00:39:39:08 - 00:39:57:04
Speaker 2
I mean, to me, there's nothing more human than being able to give somebody the opportunity to get some fresh air and be able to enjoy the outdoors, and especially if otherwise they would be indoors and immobile. So I just wrote that brought a big smile to my face.

00:39:57:06 - 00:40:01:20
Speaker 1
I like that. Yes. And we do we do have this. I can say that age here in Australia as well.

00:40:01:27 - 00:40:16:08
Speaker 2
Yeah, that's great. Now, this is kind of interesting because this is what you're really talking about here, is we need to be thinking, you know, rethinking our streets and your you're framing it here of, you know, from the outside in.

00:40:16:10 - 00:40:19:21
Speaker 1
Yeah. It has lost a little part of the image on the right, but that's okay.

00:40:19:23 - 00:40:21:23
Speaker 2
Essentially can bring them in. Yeah. Here we go.

00:40:21:26 - 00:40:49:29
Speaker 1
Oh, yeah. That one that. Yeah. Thank you. Yes, that's the one. Yeah. So basically, I'd read just before going to Valley City a blog by Robert Wightman and the blog post was on I Want my Street to Be Like this. And so the image in the bottom left hand side there is from his blog and he was talking about, I mean, I'm an architect, I've been studying this stuff and working in this stuff for 30 years and I'd never thought of the street like this.

00:40:50:01 - 00:41:07:13
Speaker 1
So he talked about thinking of straits from the outside, and that's the Dutch approach. We think of the streets from the inside out. So we've go in a two lanes of traffic in each direction. Then we need the parking, then we put the curb line. So everything that's inside the curb line, it's all asphalt. And that's going to be where the cars go.

00:41:07:14 - 00:41:29:20
Speaker 1
They're either moving or they're parked. There's no space. They're pedestrians and bikes and trains and so on. They go on the side of all of that. Then they get whatever's left over. And he talked in this blog about flipping that the whole other way around. So you have the building line, the blue on the outside. So that that plan there on the right is my very body diagram of what we see and the perspective there in the photo.

00:41:29:23 - 00:41:51:24
Speaker 1
So they think about these straight first that the blue where the buildings are then they put the space for the pedestrians. And then in this case it's a slow straight. So they don't need separated cycling infrastructure. But you would then put your cycleways in, then they would put in where the trees and that parking go and then they finally have some space for the vehicle movement.

00:41:51:24 - 00:42:12:28
Speaker 1
And in this case it's room for one direction of traffic is left, but also the line of the street, you can see a sort of flashing in that photograph there. The line of the street is quite wobbly. It's not. Whereas ours would be, you know, as I said, the curb line and all the asphalt that's black that sort of sits in between is all for cars here, The space for cars actually moves in and out.

00:42:13:00 - 00:42:39:14
Speaker 1
And so it creates what we like to call a self-reinforcing environment. It forces you to slow down as a motorist, and that means that you can make this space where the car is against and the riders have predominant. And so just it was a real paradigm shift for me. It was like, wow, I never conceived of that. And as I was walking around the Netherlands, I really had this in my mind looking at every street going, It is it it fits.

00:42:39:14 - 00:42:44:15
Speaker 1
It fits. It works, right? Yeah. So yeah, that was really mind blowing for me.

00:42:44:17 - 00:43:26:05
Speaker 2
So this brings up Bondi again of, you know, that transformation that took place there because the the stuff that was on the inside, you know the motor vehicle lanes since there was that commitment that we can't, you know, upset the motor vehicle drivers and the throughput of motor vehicles. You know, again, everything off to the outside was, you know, left over and then you end up having trade offs and, you know, and basically pedestrians lost out because, you know, trying to squeeze in some cycling infrastructure in limited resources.

00:43:26:07 - 00:43:42:05
Speaker 2
Whereas if, you know, this was applied in that in that environment and said, okay, let's wipe the slate clean here and let's reimagine what this this streetscape could look like for Bondi, it could have looked much differently.

00:43:42:07 - 00:44:02:29
Speaker 1
Absolutely. And that's what I want to talk about, China, because I guess the next question that came up for me is, is it even possible to do this paradigm shift? Like, is there anywhere in there? I know that Paris is going through this at the moment. Paris is under Anne Hidalgo, as you mentioned. They're taking a lot of parking space for cars.

00:44:02:29 - 00:44:25:21
Speaker 1
They're putting those on that they call the corner their streets. They're putting in bike parking and trees and those sorts of things. And the scale is amazing. Like I was in Paris in January and one morning I woke up and I was sitting outside the Airbnb and, watched as this a van pulled up and three people hopped out in their work gear and they literally worked for 2 hours.

00:44:25:21 - 00:44:45:13
Speaker 1
Absolutely no traffic control would never, never even dream that in Australia to have to have so much traffic control. And they got out and they got some paint and they painted a wider footpath right into the roadway and then they left and suddenly the footpath has doubled in width. Right? That just blew my mind. I was like, Yeah, we can't do that.

00:44:45:15 - 00:44:46:11
Speaker 1
It's like.

00:44:46:14 - 00:44:48:25
Speaker 2
Wait, wait, what was that?

00:44:48:28 - 00:45:12:06
Speaker 1
What happened? And here we are, you've doubled the footpath with right like that and it's only costs you know, whatever the cost of the workers and the paint was and that was, it was, it would be like oh well we've got to go through a community consultation for several years and to have some NIMBY complaining about it and then you know, then we'd have to do traffic control and they're going to have to get the meters, the stormwater and $15 million later, you know.

00:45:12:09 - 00:45:36:27
Speaker 2
And that's our reality in North America as well as you have to go through each and every one of those steps. And that's one of the things that one of the things I caution about is you're using Paris as an example. It's a very, very unusual example where you have a truly strong leader and a strong mayor who has just said this is what we're doing, and she's doing it and she's following through.

00:45:36:29 - 00:46:09:09
Speaker 2
Not everybody is happy about it. You're there's some people who are mad, very mad, as Rodney was saying, but they're pushing through. And and I, I really applaud that level of leadership and I hope it inspires more leaders to to see what true leadership looks like because she's unapologetic about it. She's like, you know, in 2015, when I was there to see the very first car free day in Paris, she said, Look, we're doing this because we have a problem.

00:46:09:11 - 00:46:37:10
Speaker 2
If we can't see the Eiffel Tower through the smog, you know, we are not Paris. This is not the city. And, you know, and so it's it really kind of hones in on the existential crisis that exists because cars have been allowed to take over. And again, there are still there will be cars. We're not saying you won't be able to drive at all, but at the same time, it's not going to be the same level of unlimited access.

00:46:37:13 - 00:46:41:15
Speaker 2
Okay, talk, China, what's going on with this? Why are you suggesting China?

00:46:41:16 - 00:47:24:00
Speaker 1
Yeah, I mean, China makes Paris look tiny in. In what? It's changed. So I really you got the link up here. We did a presentation with 8 p.m.. So that's the Institute of Traffic Planning Management and also with Better Streets is cycling walking Australia, New Zealand. And we so we did this joint presentation, We got someone who is works for the World Bank, Sam Johnson who had just spent two months in China looking at what Beijing and Tianjin are doing, and I can't even remember any of the stats because we just spent.

00:47:24:00 - 00:47:47:26
Speaker 1
We spent a whole day in Canberra talking to the Federal Government going through his presentation multiple times and then I heard it here. But the numbers are so mind blowing that I can't actually retain any of that data in my head. Right. And so he was doing things like, you know, they refurbished 3200 kilometers of cycleways in four years.

00:47:47:29 - 00:48:14:16
Speaker 1
Another stat is that they've decided that so that every single street in in a very large area, about a 20 kilometer diameter area, every street that is 12 meters or wider is going to have a cycleway put in in each direction of three meters in each direction. So that's going to leave just one lane of moving cars in each direction or one lane of current one lane of parking.

00:48:14:19 - 00:48:39:14
Speaker 1
Like that's just on a scale that we can't even conceive of. And I guess that China, up until the late 1980s was probably had about a 50% mode share of cycling. So it was very much a cycling dominated cities. But then they changed all of that and they were like not don't want the bikes, they're blocking the traffic, we want to have cars moving and busses and trucks and we're going to invest in the metro stations.

00:48:39:18 - 00:49:07:19
Speaker 1
And so they put all the investment in that. And I think what's happened recently is very, very recently is they've realized that that doesn't work. So from a purely economically rational and I guess spatially rational reasons, they've gone, hey, actually the solution is bike. So right in front of us all along. So they've got very low mode share cycling, but their ambition is they're going to be the Netherlands in ten years time and they're going to get there.

00:49:07:22 - 00:49:33:11
Speaker 2
I think it's a I think it's a wonderful story that's not dissimilar to the story of the Dutch in the sense that especially the the story of Rotterdam in particular, which was destroyed in World War Two and then rebuilt based on the car, and then realized afterwards that, oh, yeah, that was the wrong thing to do, you know.

00:49:33:11 - 00:50:06:13
Speaker 2
And now they're transforming their streetscape in Rotterdam to be more people oriented and making more people oriented places, including more pedestrian rail and more protected bikeways. I think the same thing, you know, clearly has happened in China in the sense that, yes, you know, it was amazing the the number of people who used to cycle throughout China. I mean, it was the one relevant thing that people would comment about if they were, you know, traveling there in the eighties is, oh, my gosh, there's just so many people riding bikes.

00:50:06:16 - 00:50:44:19
Speaker 2
But it had to be incredibly embarrassing when, you know, you've built out these motorways and you've invested, you know, literally trillions and trillions of dollars in in building out highways and and everything. And then you have multiday gridlock, which happened, I don't know, about a decade ago or whenever that was. And so I think it really was to your point that they learned that, oh, yeah, this doesn't work, you know, and they are quickly you know, they're they're quickly backpedaling or more importantly, to put it phrase it in a much more positive way.

00:50:44:23 - 00:50:54:20
Speaker 2
Just like the Dutch, they tried it didn't work. They're they're they're, you know, re retooling and going in a different direction. And I'm very, very.

00:50:54:20 - 00:50:55:05
Speaker 1
Excited to.

00:50:55:05 - 00:51:09:27
Speaker 2
Hear you. You. Yeah, you had that take that they're doing it and obviously because of their governmental structure, they don't have to go through all the open house meetings and all the deliberations and they can just plow forward and do it.

00:51:09:29 - 00:51:27:19
Speaker 1
In some ways. Yes. But actually, if you listen to the webinar, you'll find that it's not that easy. Like it's not just something where they've been able to just decree from the top down. It's done. It has taken a huge amount of advocacy and it has required the actually some of the biggest advocates, the public transport network provider.

00:51:27:19 - 00:51:45:17
Speaker 1
So the metros, because they were finding that people couldn't walk or cycle to the metro station because it wasn't easily accessible. So they've been some of the biggest advocates for this change to happen. So it's not just been a completely dissociated decision.

00:51:45:25 - 00:52:08:04
Speaker 2
I'm glad you I'm glad you corrected that incorrect assumption that I had there, because now that I think about it, too, there's a huge automobile industry that's behind there in China. And so I'm sure that there's tensions between, you know, just like what we saw in in Germany, where you've got a very, very strong automobile manufacturing culture there in Germany.

00:52:08:10 - 00:52:27:18
Speaker 2
But you have cities that are striving to become more walkable and bikeable. There's a natural tension there because there's money to be made in selling more automobiles and more motor dumb infrastructure. So it is I appreciate you said that the you know, it's not as easy as just decreeing to do.

00:52:27:20 - 00:53:13:07
Speaker 1
Yeah, but mostly most important for me is that the paradigm was martyrdom. Their paradigm was was the big metros and so on. That's the investments gone and they've suddenly gone, wait a minute, we can change this. And that's the part where I think we in Australia and New Zealand and the US and all over the world can think, well, okay, and look, I, we didn't come and present this, this presentation on China to some, some bureaucrats in another department and they didn't even ask questions, they just launched straight into excuses about why we can't, you know, heritage election cycles, NIMBYs like, I don't know, they're just a litany of excuses.

00:53:13:09 - 00:53:37:02
Speaker 1
But actually and they one of them was, oh, they've got a different system of government. And I'm like, Well, okay, that that's the case. But then there is a more similar system of government in Europe, and yet we also come up with excuses about why you can't be them. Like it's not government is not the problem. Our system of governance or election cycles or yeah, we've got a car industry.

00:53:37:02 - 00:53:43:28
Speaker 1
All of those are not the reason. Yeah, yeah. The reason is we just have a car brain and we don't want to give it up.

00:53:44:01 - 00:53:45:22
Speaker 2
Exactly. Yeah.

00:53:45:25 - 00:54:08:00
Speaker 1
That's why. But we, you know, there are examples like Paris, like Ghent, like the Netherlands, London, you know, they're really moving along. Oh, yeah. Thank you. I'm glad to put this one up because I put this diagram together. I'm it's a work in progress at the moment is on the left hand side. We've got our current knowledge standards and guidelines, much of which has been brought from the US.

00:54:08:00 - 00:54:30:18
Speaker 1
So the UK, we have these business as usual practices, but behind that are subconscious thinking is this car dominated world view, the car brain where bikes and pedestrians are just a side issue and the result that result is always going to be the same. We cannot change the result if we've got those that current knowledge and that's current subconscious thinking.

00:54:30:20 - 00:54:51:25
Speaker 1
And so I guess that's kind of how do we get to that new paradigm, that new way of thinking. We do need new guidelines and policies. You know, I take that's the software, but that how do we change that subconscious thinking about actually the solution is people bikes and public transport and cars are a last resort. That's the last thing we think about.

00:54:51:27 - 00:54:57:20
Speaker 1
That's I don't know how we get there. John I'd love to to hear from how we get to that point.

00:54:57:23 - 00:55:19:14
Speaker 2
Yeah, I think, you know, a big part of it is, is trying to tell these stories. I mean, I was so happy to see that you had plenty of time to stay in Europe and travel around and do that. I was very, very grateful that in 2015 I was able to spend a month going around to different countries and different cities.

00:55:19:14 - 00:56:05:16
Speaker 2
And last year I was able to hang out in Delft for three weeks as my home base and and then make side trips from there. And I think it's really, really important to to just be immersed in it and and get a sense of of what it's like to live there. I think that one of the key things of being able to get to where we need to get to is for us to to really acknowledge that a big part of this is like transforming our our cities so that they are a more livable, more welcoming place for everyone, all ages and abilities, and increasingly it's I realize that because we're so scripted and thinking

00:56:05:16 - 00:56:38:04
Speaker 2
about fixing the car problem that we go towards active mobility of like the that busyness of getting to places. And and I think that that's part of it. I mean, active mobility is is is a big part of the solution. In other words, it's a very pragmatic, very practical, sustainable mode of transportation. But increasingly, what I'm seeing is how do we transform our cities into places where we're not always flowing through them.

00:56:38:07 - 00:56:59:28
Speaker 2
We're treating our cities like pipes of of, you know, well, we're busy people. We got to get to places. And it's like, well, yes, that's true. But streets are so much more than that. Streets are for people in and for the platform, for building wealth and vitality and vibrancy. And so that kind of shifts the paradigm of what streets are for.

00:57:00:00 - 00:57:09:01
Speaker 2
And and I think it's that's much more possible if we're not just thinking of streets as pipes and trying to move as many motor vehicles through as possible.

00:57:09:04 - 00:57:32:12
Speaker 1
Yeah, it's interesting when we first started down this path of movement and place, so that's that rebalancing of the movement against that. The place outcomes. The very first step that I saw the transport agencies take is to say, okay, well how do we, how do we have, how do we measure what place is? I know it's because cars are parked.

00:57:32:14 - 00:57:51:04
Speaker 1
So no, no, I mean, I know that is not a measure of a good place. And measure of a good place is that there are people lingering, staying, lingering, enjoying. That is your number one indicator of a successful place. And I can say here, yes, that's one of the hardware parts. But COVID was a real opportunity for us.

00:57:51:04 - 00:58:16:20
Speaker 1
I think that did bring about a pretty big paradigm shift for us. I just want to say in the context in Australia, we've we've literally now just started to come out of four years of national disaster, like nonstop national disaster. So before COVID hit we had bushfires, much like you're getting in Canada right now. Sydney was covered in smoke for I think three or four months straight.

00:58:16:20 - 00:58:42:26
Speaker 1
Like you could not see the Sydney Opera House, you could not see the ocean. The ocean was covered in ash. It was it was horrendous and we couldn't get masks. And then and that happened for months on end. And I thought, you know, things are going to change now. Like surely people understand this is climate change driven, which they did, but then COVID hit, which and then then floods hit, and then the places that have been burnt out had huge floods and the trees that all died.

00:58:42:26 - 00:59:08:02
Speaker 1
So there was no roots. And so houses have sort of slid down the mountainside. And so we're only just emerging from that now. And I hope that that brings about paradigm shift. But I, I don't think so. But anyway, let's come back to the this fun stuff, which was yes, during COVID, hundreds of cities around the world took this massive leap of faith into creating space for people.

00:59:08:05 - 00:59:25:17
Speaker 1
And there is a great website space for health with it, with a Twitter and Instagram and so on, which I actually ran during COVID, which was was looking at examples all around the world that that had changed. And here in Australia we put in pop up cycleways, so we went from taking nine years to delivery cycleway to nine months.

00:59:25:20 - 00:59:43:07
Speaker 1
We put in all these outdoor parklets, we did these open streets, we made those pedestrian big buttons. You didn't have to press them anymore. Unfortunately, we've gone back to that and we changed business as usual completely. So this was a very exciting time in particularly in Sydney and Melbourne, that were really, really hard hit by COVID lockdowns.

00:59:43:10 - 01:00:13:01
Speaker 2
Yeah, Yeah. And I think that that that's really when we we're looking at this concept of this slide here says happy citizens, you know, what we need to do to, to be able to to acknowledge that having freedom of choice of mobility options, not feeling like the only way to get around is to be able to is you have to get in a car.

01:00:13:03 - 01:00:43:22
Speaker 2
I think it really does, you know, create an environment where you can have happier citizens. I mean, we all know the data shows, you know, active mobility, people who walk or bike are much happier and much healthier and have lower stress levels. And so it it's just one of those things where, again, trying to lean in towards having really authentic, legitimate, safe and inviting all ages and abilities, mobility, choice, that's freedom.

01:00:43:22 - 01:00:50:16
Speaker 2
You know, that's that's real freedom not being, you know, kind of tied to the automobile as the only choice.

01:00:50:18 - 01:01:08:16
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's right. And just in these images here, it's a bit hard to say, but there's a there's a lady in the top left hand corner. She's got an L plate on the back of her bike. Okay. I just love that. Yeah. And and on the right is someone who's living with a disability and like, look at the smile on his face, like he's just loving this new infrastructure.

01:01:08:20 - 01:01:27:11
Speaker 1
Yeah, he. He came to one of our pop up cycleway openings and just the sheer joy and happiness. It just opened up worlds for him. And then on the bottom right is actually my seven year old son. He was seven at the time. And after watching him go up and down this new piece of infrastructure, I was like, you know what, kid?

01:01:27:13 - 01:01:39:22
Speaker 1
You can do that on your own you don't need me to be alongside to protect you because that cycleway infrastructure is going to protect you. So, yeah, that was that was a fantastic time for us. That's and always cycleways have been made permanent.

01:01:39:22 - 01:01:49:00
Speaker 2
Now they have. Oh wow, that's so cool. That is so cool. What haven't we talked about that you really want to emphasize I.

01:01:49:00 - 01:02:28:17
Speaker 1
Guess some it depends on whether you want to go here on a paradigm. I think it's a little controversial. So whereas Australia in the US are very similar with our car brain paradigm is, is pretty much identical on that. There is one where we have a very different paradigm on, on guns. So you know, there is a gun brand in the US that I know this is very controversial, so you may not want to go there, but I guess I just wanted to compare that Australia was down the path of the US with gun, you know, gun ownership until a point in 1996 where we had a massacre, 35 people were killed and we had

01:02:28:17 - 01:02:57:18
Speaker 1
a very conservative government in at that time and they decided to bring in gun control and they, they, they had a gun buyback scheme. They really clamped down and it was controversial and people got really mad. And yet and yet now we live in a society where we don't have guns like no one has one. I think something like three and a half per cent of the population has has a gun, but they're very tightly controlled.

01:02:57:21 - 01:03:17:19
Speaker 1
But I guess that's to me that was a paradigm shift where we decided at that point there had to be a tipping point, something had to happen. But that's where I come back to this question about where we in Australia we've had the, you know, the fires and you guys are going through that right now. You've got, you know, the smoke coming through New York and people are really upset and saying this is climate change.

01:03:17:21 - 01:03:37:10
Speaker 1
Is that going to be enough? Is that is that what it's going to take or is it you know, and Don't Look Up is a classic example of that, where, you know, they've got the asteroid coming as that as the metaphor that the asteroid is in is it's into the atmosphere with Cobb. Right, Right, right, right. It's right there.

01:03:37:11 - 01:03:39:04
Speaker 1
And we can see it.

01:03:39:06 - 01:04:05:06
Speaker 2
Well, and I guess and the the analogy that I have is if we take some of the lessons that that we see from from Europe, that really was their tipping point. It was their their their inflection point in terms of changing direction. post-World War two. They were all in on the car. They were heading down that road in the 1950s and 1960s and into the 1970s.

01:04:05:06 - 01:04:34:15
Speaker 2
It was all about, you know, more roads, more cars faster. But in the 1970s, of course, they had that inflection point of the oil embargo hit. There was the Kinder Morgan movement in the Netherlands saying this is unacceptable. And so it really started to change that paradigm. The paradigm wasn't, oh, the car is mobility and freedom. It's like, oh, wait, there's negative externalities here.

01:04:34:18 - 01:05:07:07
Speaker 2
We just don't see it here in the United States. I mean, literally 115 people or more die every single day on our roads. It's the size of a medium sized jet airliner crashing every single day, day after day. If it actually was a jet airliner, there would be congressional hearings there. It would be front page news. It's just that because these are all, for the most part, individual crashes and occurrences that are happening and collisions that are happening.

01:05:07:09 - 01:05:30:27
Speaker 2
So it's one these two, these three, these for the most part, if it's something more than that, usually it'll make the local nightly news. You know, God forbid, if it's a bus that crashes in and children are involved, then you might get some people following up and saying, well, what were the safety measures? And but there's you know, to get to your point, it's like, okay, well, what is that tipping point?

01:05:31:00 - 01:05:57:29
Speaker 2
Is 150 people, you know, per day dying, not enough to create a tipping point, 40,000 plus people a year, not to mention literally in the United States, millions of people having life altering serious injuries because it's not just the fatalities. It's also, you know, the fact that many of these people have truly life altering, you no injuries, that they have to live with the rest of their lives and it's still not enough.

01:05:58:01 - 01:06:07:21
Speaker 2
So I don't know. It's weird. We've been so truly, truly brainwashed in car brained that it's we accept. Yeah.

01:06:07:24 - 01:06:30:25
Speaker 1
Yeah, I agree. I mean, in Australia our fatalities are much lower, but that's because our population is much smaller. But people worry about going to the beach because they're going to get eaten by a shark, right. People avoid some people don't want to go in the water, but in Australia we have that maximum. We might get three shark fatalities in a year, but we have 1300 road fatalities in a year.

01:06:30:28 - 01:06:54:20
Speaker 1
And as to put that analogy together in my strait a few months ago a woman was killed, she was standing on a driveway and two drivers each other. You know, I don't know the circumstances, but one of them came off and killed her. Right. And the street was shut down for about an hour while the ambulances and police came along by comparison.

01:06:54:20 - 01:07:18:09
Speaker 1
And then the you know, there's there's nothing we can do to fix this problem. It's just it was a terrible freak accident. And we're just going to put some tube counts. And I don't I just don't know what we can do about this. On the other hand, about a year ago, someone was killed by a shark in the same area and we shut every single beach down for 24 hours.

01:07:18:11 - 01:07:40:09
Speaker 1
We put out helicopters. Drones were deployed. We came up with a whole new technology system to to do shark spotting and changed the system. Right. To try and reduce the risk of shark fatalities. And I was thinking, well, what if we did that? What if we actually said, you know, any street where there's a pedestrian is killed, we're going to shut the straight down, Not a massive investigation.

01:07:40:13 - 01:07:48:05
Speaker 1
We're not going to let up until it's fixed. And, you know, maybe we'll bring in a 30 kilometer straight line, straight like we're going to do real action. What if we did that.

01:07:48:08 - 01:08:20:23
Speaker 2
Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We could go on and on and on. Could I want to end with a on an up note here and, and end with a sort of a plea here for the, for Sydney being able to host the 2026 velocity. So this is the second to the last slide. Talk a little bit about this royal royal support.

01:08:20:23 - 01:08:22:13
Speaker 2
Royal who.

01:08:22:16 - 01:08:43:02
Speaker 1
Ah well yes it's, it's our Princess Mary. So Mary who is the princess of Denmark, is actually an Australian, she's from Tasmania and she was visiting Australia and she hopped on a bike and went for a bike ride with the Lord Mayor of Sydney. And here she is riding through. She had to wear a helmet, which I think she was a little bit mortified.

01:08:43:02 - 01:09:02:09
Speaker 1
A back kind of ruined hair a little bit, I guess. I added this an example of the awkward where you've got your hardware, the infrastructure, the software, the guidelines, and then here is the the OR with the it's safe enough in a tiny little section that we could bring a a royal to come for a bike ride on a brand new infrastructure.

01:09:02:12 - 01:09:28:00
Speaker 2
Yeah yeah. And you and I chatted in in Leipzig at Velocity a little bit about helmets and all of that and the challenges that that presents from from the software side of things. But we also I also mentioned to you, I think that that we had Queen Maxima join us, the Queen of the Netherlands was here in Austin to go for a bike ride.

01:09:28:01 - 01:09:54:10
Speaker 2
So I was delighted to be able to film her along with our mayor at the time, Steve Adler, and she jumped right on to her Tesla electric bike and the two of them rode off without helmets. So experience it yourself. Yes, I would love to come to Sydney. You and I had talked about this as well at Velocity.

01:09:54:10 - 01:10:22:23
Speaker 2
I have never visited. I've always wanted to to go to Australia and New Zealand to make it down into that area. I'm actually a lifelong surfer, so I've always dreamt of being able to surf some of the classic spots there in Australia and hopefully that will happen. And and folks, if you'd like to complete that survey, I think this little, little dude right here, if you if you hit that, it'll if you actually use your camera, you'll launch that.

01:10:22:23 - 01:10:23:27
Speaker 2
Is that correct?

01:10:24:00 - 01:10:48:17
Speaker 1
That's correct, yes. And I guess what we wanted to look at, if it did come to Sydney, is there are so many cities around the world where we don't have it great. And so we really wanted to focus on, well, do we do for all these cities? How do we do that paradigm shift? Right? We really want to bring in the Chinese examples, examples from the Asia Pacific area because we didn't hear a lot about that in the in Belize City.

01:10:48:17 - 01:10:59:16
Speaker 1
When it's based in Europe, we hear about the awesome stuff happening in Europe, but we'd like to hear more about what happens in the Global South and in Asia Pacific region.

01:10:59:18 - 01:11:18:18
Speaker 2
Yeah, and I went to this particular title slide here of your presentation because you get to the point with that it, you know, Sydney was Australia's worst place for cycling not to very, very long ago and good things have been happening very quickly.

01:11:18:20 - 01:11:32:19
Speaker 1
Yes, that's right. We've got a long way to go, but I think we definitely did go from a pretty bad situation to being much, much better in a pretty short space of time. And that's, I guess the kind of stories that we want to share is how do you shift that dial from a very low base?

01:11:32:22 - 01:11:51:12
Speaker 2
Yeah, Yeah. And I think that's really, really important. I mean, that's one of the things that I've been trying to do with the Active Towns initiative over the past decade is trying to tell the stories, the inspiring stories of, cities making change happen because it's like a ho hum, you know, we don't want to hear about Amsterdam again and again and again.

01:11:51:12 - 01:12:11:28
Speaker 2
You know, if they're a city that's out there around the globe, you want to hear, you know, the success stories of, you know, this sort of transformation in seven years. That's that's that is really inspiring. Yes, I love it. I love it. Sarah, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast.

01:12:12:01 - 01:12:14:15
Speaker 1
You're welcome. It's been a lot of fun. Thank you for having me.

01:12:14:18 - 01:12:29:29
Speaker 2
He thank you all so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Sarah Stace, and if you did, please give it a thumbs up. Leave a comment down below and share it with a friend and if you haven't done so already, I'd be honored to have you subscribe to the channel. Just click on that subscription button down below and ring the notifications below.

01:12:30:00 - 01:12:50:05
Speaker 2
And if you're enjoying this content here on the active ten channel, please consider supporting my efforts by becoming an active town's ambassador through Patron. Buy Me a Coffee. Are buying things from an active town store like these active towns. Streets are full of people schwag that's out there as well as you can make a donation to the nonprofit.

01:12:50:07 - 01:13:09:20
Speaker 2
It's all out on the active town's website. So active towns. Georgie, again, thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time, this is John signing off by wishing you much activity, health and, happiness, cheers and again sending a huge thank you to all my active town's ambassadors supporting the channel on Patron Buy me a coffee YouTube super.

01:13:09:20 - 01:13:21:06
Speaker 2
Thanks as. Well, as making contributions to the nonprofit and purchasing things from the active town store, every little bit adds up and it's much appreciated. Thank you all so much.