Our guest speaker at the 2024 AGM was Phil Jones, Push Bikes member and founder of Phil Jones Associates (PJA), a leading design consultancy in transport planning, engineering, and placemaking based in Longbridge Town Centre. Phil’s background had been in civil engineering but he and his firm got drawn in to work on active travel in 2008/9 after the London Cycling Campaign’s Love London Go Dutch campaign calling for segregated cycle lanes and protesting with mass “die-ins” about the spike in cycling deaths in the capital. PJA’s research influenced Transport for London’s new guidance replacing painted lanes with proper kerbed segregation. The subsequent developments in London under Boris Johnson as Mayor and Andrew Gilligan as key special adviser began to take off. Adrian Lord (now Active Travel Commissioner in Auckland New Zealand) joined the practice and worked on the early plans for the Birmingham Cycle Revolution. PJA was founded 21 years ago now has 140 staff and 25 of them are active travel experts supporting clients. PJA (Including Phil) provides support for Transport for West Midlands’ Active Travel Team on quality as a consultant.
There are contested voices in politics and society and we need to pull together. Birmingham is the highways authority but Transport for West Midlands now relates to Active Travel England and holds the money. Nationally Phil helped produce Local Traffic Note 1/20 which sets national standards for building active travel infrastructure. This is the basis on which local authorities and combined authorities are assessed in terms of “competence” and on which bids for funds are evaluated by the Regulator Active Travel England. West Midlands is currently at Level 3 of potentially 4 levels. Push Bikes needs to relate to the Combined Authority as well as the City and build alliances with walking interests etc. Walk Ride Greater Manchester and the London Cycling Campaign are very successful examples.
Prior to the Combined Authority and TfWM Centro had an active travel section but it was mainly concerned with supporting “soft measures” (behaviour change) not infrastructure. When Adam Tranter was appointed by Mayor Andy Street this changed and he wanted to create a centre of excellence at Regional level. Devolution means that Regions will be much more influential on transport using devolved funds. Officers at “borough” level and Region vary some for and some against good active travel measures. Phil saw his role as supporting the good ones as a critical friend.
There is a danger in the term “cyclist” being stigmatised as a special out group and to get change and attention you need a wider constituency essentially “more unhappy people” to bring pressure on politicians.
Phil talked about the relationship between politicians and public policies based on his work on the radical 20 mph limit legislation in Wales with Lee Waters, then Transport Minister. Politicians can be “weathervanes” responding to pressure and popular opinion while the braver ones are “signposts”, willing to challenge and influence the weather. Death on the roads is a major and growing concern and parents want to be able to walk their kids to school.
Public transport inevitably involves walking as well as cycling and the new government’s top transport priorities are around public transport buses, Sprint, Metro and connectivity, active travel is a key part of this. Danny Williams has moved on as CEO of ATE to lead on Transport Strategy integration at the Department for Transport. Danny Gouveia in now Delivery Director for Sustainable Transport at TfWM.
Discussion
Phil’s talk provoked a wide discussion continuing into to the refreshment break.
A notable idea which captures much of the politics about active travel and cycling is “pluralistic ignorance”. We know from surveys nationally and locally that about 65% of the population are broadly in support of measures make walking and cycling better. Noisy opposition to 20mph, ULEZ or Clean Air Zones, 15 minute cities and traffic filters can be whipped up by social media, and some politicians so that the supportive sections of the community do not realise that they their positive view is in the majority. Finding ways of reaching and giving this silent majority the confidence to speak out, across different communities, is an essential part of achieving change.
The technical term Low Traffic Neighbourhood has been made unhelpful although many residential estates have been built that way for generations. Chris Boardman has suggested “child safe zones” but “area based traffic management schemes” is a non-contentious description.
Formal consultation responses from Push Bikes are generally well received but their weight with officers and politicians is enhanced if individual members and supporters add their voices by completing a response indicating that they endorse the Push Bikes view.
