Episode 6: Phil Jones

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Phil Latz: Welcome to the Micro Mobility Report podcast where we discuss how we can all go further with less. I'm Phil Latz, publisher of the Micromobility Report.

Irene McAleese: And I'm Irene McAleese, co founder of SeeSense.

Phil Latz: today we're talking with Phil Jones, Chairman of PGA. Welcome Phil.

1. Yeah. Good to see you both. Indeed.

Irene McAleese: Phil, what first sparked your interest in active travel, including cycling?

Phil Jones: I always liked cycling. When I was at school, I remember all my, Friends were starting to drive cars and I had a shiny new bike, I think I was about 16 and everyone thought it was a bit of a nerd, but I still remember that bike. It was a, it was a Claude Butler with a white frame and I absolutely loved it.

So yeah, I couldn't, like many people, I went away from cycling, I suppose. you know during my 20s but rediscovered it in my [00:01:00] 30s and just yeah just thought it's just a great way of getting as someone said once it's the closest thing to flying

Irene McAleese: Oh

Phil Jones: which I think is a really nice thing to say so yeah

that's lovely. So if we've got this right, Phil, we think it might be 44 years since you first graduated as a civil engineer. true

Irene McAleese: so what would you say would be some of the biggest changes that you've seen in cycling and other forms of active transport over that time?

Phil Jones: well I was I guess I was a bit of a latecomer to the whole kind of planning for cycling really it wasn't You know, my, my career has gone through lots of different phases. I mean, one of the early things that I remember I was building, I helped to build a coal mine. I mean, who does that anymore? I was quite late coming to the whole active travel thing. It was probably the mid two thousands when I started, working in, in the field. so which maybe says something, you know, for a long time, you know, doing transport and highways. It [00:02:00] was just kind of ignored. it was the mode that everybody forgot about actually for a really long time.

So there's been a, so the change has been quite profound. I think we've had this, you know, this rediscovery of, of the bike, which what is it? 1897 it was first invented the, the safety bicycle, I think. And it hasn't really changed very much, you know, and, we just forgot about it for decades. Not everyone's got the message yet, but they will.

Irene McAleese: So you'd say that things are getting better generally for, for cycling as things go on?

Phil Jones: I think so. It's like, you know, it's patchy, isn't it? It's, and we go forward and we go back and sometimes, but I think the, the great sweep of it, I think is getting better. I would say certainly in the, you know, I work mostly in the UK as I mean, PGA has presence in Australia too, and we're particularly strong in active trouble there, but, Yeah, I, I feel across the UK and Australia, generally things are improving slowly, not fast enough, [00:03:00] but I think if you look back to, you know, where, where things were when I began working in the field, yeah, it's, I would say there's a lot, a lot more acknowledgement of the, of the importance of designing for cycling.

I think that's recognised, even if we don't always do particularly well.

Phil Latz: So let's talk a little bit more about your consultancy, Transport Engineering and Placemaking, which I believe you started 21 years ago, and it now has over 130 staff. So that's an amazing achievement. What have been some of the keys for your business success?

Phil Jones: Gosh, finding good people, I think. I mean, I firmly would say that, you know, these days I call myself chairman and I don't get too involved in the kind of day to day running of the company. I've been very lucky to find fellow shareholders and directors who've taken on the burden of growing this thing.

You know, it wouldn't that would have never happened if it had been me. [00:04:00] Um, but, but I suppose I do. Yeah, I hope that kind of my personal ethos still runs with the company. Transport engineering placemaking is quite an important thing to me. although, yeah, as you say, I graduated in civil engineering and, you know, in my core, I'm still an engineer solving problems.

But I think we all operate too much in kind of little boxes of professional. Disciplines. And actually, we're all, we're all here to try and make the world a better place. So having a kind of collaborative approach, I think, and, and, and thinking outside your, your discipline, we're all. We're all pretty, well, those of us, I hope, working in the field, you're intelligent people and we can learn stuff.

And, even though I may not be a tree expert, I think I can appreciate the importance of trees in streetscapes, you know, and, and maybe, as an example, about urban design, knowing about all kinds of aspects of the built environment. And I think that's how PJ tries to operate is that although we're still quite [00:05:00] small, we work in a kind of multidisciplinary way despite that.

And I think we also have an ethos of questioning the agenda. So, you know, many, many companies, engineering companies, there's the rule book and they're there to apply the rule book. We always, like to say, well, he wrote the rule book, you know, what, why were those rules existed? Are they still right?

And maybe we need to rethink things for the society that we're in and the problems we face today. So yeah, I think we hopefully are kind of questioning out facing organization and maybe those may, maybe those qualities have helped the company to grow and attract the kind of people who want to think like that.

Phil Latz: Well, that's a very, very good thing. Now, just a quick follow up. I'd like to ask you about some of your consultancy's most important achievements or what you think are some of the best things. You're welcome to say designing coal mines, if you like, but, whatever, any, anything at all.

Phil Jones: Well actually, I [00:06:00] wasn't even designing them I was supervising the concrete linings of the concrete of the mine shaft. It was the most boring two years. As you know, it was quite exciting. It's quite exciting when you go down the mine in a bucket.

But, um, I always think manual for streets was something that. That for me was quite an important project. and there's still a bit of a calling card, I suppose, and maybe, you know, I was saying earlier about, you know, thinking outside the disciplines manual for streets for those.

It's still still current today. It's free. If you want to have a look at it on on the Department of Transport website. But it was the first time that our Department of Transport wrote a document about how to design streets as apart from roads. I mean, that was this first point. It said streets are not the same as roads, you know, and I think we're quite lucky in English.

And actually, most languages do have this distinction between an urban street and a road, which, you know, takes you somewhere else, but isn't a place of itself. And so, it was recognized that streets are different [00:07:00] and we need a different book to do that. To tell us how to design them and manual for streets is something that first talk about place place being a kind of quality that it's really hard to pin down what is place, you know, and everyone knows everyone has a different definition of it.

But if you say, what place is important to you. I think you would, you'd be able to answer that question and streets can be great can be great places and and so manual for streets. I think was the first document that, really tried to, again, encapsulate this idea that streets could be great places and could be terrible places, you know, but we need better ones.

so that for me was quite a highlight and, and led to a lot of things that, kind of moved on from that. So, and then I guess more recently I was particularly pleased it was five years ago now, but to be asked by Lee Waters, the transport minister to chair the, the 20 miles per hour task force in Wales, which, you know, proved to be very controversial in the end when he came in, but I think it's [00:08:00] early days, but it's proven to be a success in its own terms.

and I'm, I'm very proud to have been associated with that. Okay.

Irene McAleese: Yeah. Actually, it was interesting because we were lucky enough to speak with Lee, Waters as well on the podcast. and one of the things that he talked about was, you know, obviously you are going to get that political pushback when, you know, when you're introducing change, but if you're able to talk about, this isn't just, youabout creating cycling lanes or something like this.

It's a bit the concept of place and creating a place for people. it's much more meaningful and it's very hard for people to argue against that. You know, you're making the air quality better for everybody or you're making the sense of where we live better. so if, if, the manual for streets was really one of the first to start encapsulating that concept, I can see why you're very proud to have that out there.

Phil Jones: yeah, it's, that is huge. mean, it's really, you know, obviously it built on the work of others and Professor Peter Jones and others who'd come up [00:09:00] with the concept of, well, they called it link and place to encapsulate these two functions of streets as a transport corridor and as a place to be, you know, so it built on other people's thinking and it's permeated.

I mean, the whole movement in place. A paradigm, I suppose, is probably stronger in Australia now than it is in the UK, you know, it's been codified. I know,Osrodes has, has moved and placed guidance and developing more details in New South Wales. Victoria, I think, have gone very strongly on it and other states around Australia.

So, yeah, it's, it's a concept that's really, really caught on.

Irene McAleese: absolutely. listen, I think that, in addition to running your business, Phil, you are on loads of different advisory panels. And so, so Phil, Phil Latz and I were trying to sort of wade through all of these and we got up to about six, I think. So we'd love for you to sort of rattle those off, tell us what they are, and then also tell us if you ever manage to get any sleep in between all these things [00:10:00] that you're doing.

Phil Jones: I'm a, a non executive director of Active Travel England. so Active Travel England is,an agency of our department for transport. so, Department of Transport makes a policy and assigns the money. So that's all decided by ministers. But then the actual role of improving provision for active travel through the work of other agencies, local authorities in particular, falls to Active Travel England.

So, yeah. So, Chris Boardman is the chair.and he set up the, the board of directors and he asked me to be on that, which is great. and that really is there to scrutinize. We don't have kind of, you know, direct, dealings with the workings of Active Travelling than day to day, but we're there to be to be a scrutiny board and a governance.

So that is, is really great. And it gives me an insight into, the work, the great work that they're doing. It's still quite a young organization, but you know, I think, I think they are, it is having an impact, which is, which is fantastic. what else do I do? Well, I do a lot of design reviews, so that's really interesting.

We have a system in the UK. I'm not sure how prevalent is in [00:11:00] Australia, but we have a system of independent design review. And, and this is. usually fits in with the development industry, actually. So when schemes, whether it's new housing or office developments or whatever, really, is going through the planning system and the local authority decides whether to grant it consent or not, there's encouragement to have an independent panel with, if had no previous involvement in the project at all, and don't have any power of decision making, But they will look at the scheme and just give their honest view of how, what they think of it from a purely design quality point of view and how could it be made better.

and I sit on a number of those. So, some are kind of place based. So, Cambridgeshire, for example, I sit on one that looks at planning applications in Cambridgeshire and some are, Associated with big infrastructure programs. So National Highways has a panel. So sometimes, you know, we're called on to look at big road schemes and how can they be made better if you can and I know you actually usually you can.

You can usually [00:12:00] find something to say. Well, you haven't quite thought of this and maybe you could do this a little better. So, so that that I find really interesting and keeps me quite busy. but I also take part. I these days I do.on the side do a little bit of advocacy and so I occasionally, well I do quite a bit of pro bono work and, and speak, you know, for,different groups, sometimes 20's Plenty, the, campaign group and the Walking and Cycling Alliance, I've done some work pro bono with.

So, yeah, a whole, a whole kind of range of stuff really, paid and unpaid.

Irene McAleese: Fantastic. Well, we can clearly see your passion because they're all, you know, there's definitely a thread that, that is running through there. and,it, it is interesting with the design reviews. I wasn't, so aware of that, but it sounds like there's some space for innovation in there too, when you're looking at things, how you can improve those designs, and make an impact that really tangibly.

Phil Jones: yeah, yeah, yeah. I absolutely loved doing design review, mainly because I find it such a great learning [00:13:00] experience, you know, so firstly, you have a really expert group of people who've designed something and they will present to you all of their thinking. So, you know, we can, we can learn from that and then go and steal their ideas on the next project.

So, so that's, that's always, that's always,

Phil Latz: we won't, we won't tell anyone.

Irene McAleese: Yeah. Some good heads around the room too. Yeah, you're all thinking, yeah. It's great.

Phil Jones: but, but also, yeah, but learning from your fellow panel, I mean, usually I'm the only transport person on the panel. And then I'm usually sat with architects and landscape architects and sustainability experts and energy experts, you know, so we look at this building or this, this thing or whatever this master plan and everyone looks at it through their own lens.

And sometimes we disagree, you know, which is really great. And so we, you know, you get a discussion going on here. The poor chair of the panel has to draw this thing together and come up with some conclusions. So, so yeah, design, if, if, as I say, I'm not sure how well embedded they are in Australia, but it is a really, really interesting [00:14:00] process, and one that's been supported for many years in the UK.

Irene McAleese: Fantastic. So we mentioned Lee Waters. You are just back actually from Australia, aren't you?

Phil Jones: Yeah,

Irene McAleese: You joined Lee on that fantastic tour around many, many cities. So I think you went to nearly all of the major cities except for Brisbane.

Phil Jones: I, I actually, I did bail out, so I, I left Lee in Canberra and then he went on to Adelaide and Melbourne. So I had to get back.

Irene McAleese: You've got offices here, so it's not your first trip to Australia. You're pretty familiar with what's going on here in the landscape with active travel. What's your sort of impressions of, of how we're traveling here in Australia in regards to active travel compared to what you're seeing back in the UK?

Phil Jones: I would say it's not so very different. I mean, I think some of you know, when we come here, when when some of us coming from the UK and we speak about things, we will try and speak about the best, don't we? And show off [00:15:00] our best stuff. And maybe people in Australia might get the impression that it's really good in the UK for active travel.

Yeah, I mean, there are some good aspects, you know, and, and, I think there's been some fantastic progress in places like London and Cambridge is doing really well and other cities. Nottingham is doing well, but it's still quite patchy. so there's many parts of the UK where there is resistance, a lack of appreciation of, of, the importance of designing for cycling and walking.

and maybe Australia, I think he's perhaps not so different. You know, this is my impression that again, some of the cities are getting it. I was really fortunate,visited some of the bike lanes and bike facilities with Fiona Campbell in Sydney,

Irene McAleese: The fantastic

Fiona.

She's great.

Phil Jones: She was great.

She took us out a little. Beautifulelectric. Bikes, and just, yeah, because it's quite a hilly place, isn't it, Sydney, but we're up and we're up and down and it was, it was fantastic. So, so, I mean, you can really see that, that they're in [00:16:00] this and, and, I know Melbourne is doing stuff and Perth, it's got, it's got a real, I think on some major highways to do.

Which we don't, you know, we don't have in the UK. Our national highways organization, which looks after,the main roads. It's still a very patchy implementation of cycle facilities. Whereas I think in Western Australia, yes, they're building a lot of big roads, but there seems to be a commitment to always putting the bike facilities with them.

So at the time, I think there's some really good stuff happening in Australia, but probably like the UK, you know, needs to go further and faster.

Phil Latz: Well, thank you for being so charitable about Australia, but

Phil Jones: You

Phil Latz: want to,

turn back to have active travel England. Cause we don't really have an equivalent in Australia. yet, unfortunately. I'd like to ask you two things about that. Firstly, without putting you on the spot, and we don't need exact numbers, we wouldn't know anyway.

But if you could firstly paint a [00:17:00] picture of roughly how many employees they might have now and what their annual budget would be. And then secondly, We, I attended the Parliamentary Friends of Cycling Group in Canberra where you spoke and you talked about their Active Travel Capability Ratings, which I found very interesting indeed.

So if you could speak a little bit about that as well.

Phil Jones: Yeah, so Active Travel England is quite small. when it was set up, it was capped at 98 full time equivalent people. And then I think with some government cuts, it came down to 90. So it's really quite a small organization. It was promised, I think it was, the figure was about a billion, a billion pounds, so about two billion dollars. But, you know, the economy in the UK is not going so well at the moment, and progressively that was cut. and I think it, at the moment, it is working its way through its last fund, four, Active Travel Fund four, which I think was about another 100 million, [00:18:00] like that. Now, you know, obviously groups are pushing, for a new round of funding. Department of Transport would always say we're not a highway authority. We are just a ministry. We can make policy and we can offer guidance, but we don't make standards and we can't tell highway authorities, local authorities that is, how to spend their money because they're the technical experts here.

and we just give them the money and we trust them to do the right thing. And I think, you know, be,when, when you come to kind of road building and, and major junctions and things like that, there is that expertise in highway authorities for sure. And it, it's always been there and it, and, and it's still within the consultancies that, that supply them.

But when it came to cycling in particular, I think a lot of campaigners would say and advocates that the money wasn't always spent widely by local, local authorities. And the, you know, and the quality of provision that we were getting in the UK, compared to say the Netherlands was pretty poor.

So Active Travelling then is there to raise [00:19:00] the quality of provision through inspection. So one of its, one of its key functions is to inspect the work of local authorities. and to put a bit of teeth to that, they've come up with the idea of, of the local authority rating system. And this is the first time I say that Department of Transport has ever done anything like this, as ever kind of inspect, that, and that's not true of other arms of government.

So, you know, education inspects schools and health inspects hospitals and doesn't just trust them to do the right thing, but, but for some reason, transport has always just left highway authorities to do, to do their thing. and, yeah, so, they invented the rating system, it has a scale of zero to four.

so four would be, and you might have cities like Utrecht and Amsterdam and Copenhagen on that list. And there are no UK local authorities at level four, which I think is quite interesting. So even the best ones have got something to aspire to. there's a handful at level three. And then the, the majority are level one and level two, and then you've got, again, a handful on level zero. and, and it's really, and it, it, it's called capability, but actually also includes political ambition.[00:20:00]

So it's, it's not just how skilled the the officers are. or their supply chain at designing for active travel. It's also about how committed they are to perhaps reallocating road space, you know, taking away some parking spaces. Are they willing to do that? and it's had quite an effect. and, and it's really interesting that, you know, the press have picked up.

So some, some authorities on level zero local press have then use that as a bit of a stick to beat them because that's what local press like to do. You know, usually they're complaining when they're building bike lanes, and this is flipping it over the way. This is saying, why is our local authority so bad at building bike lanes?

and, and so that's galvanized a few to kind of get their act together and get them, higher up the rankings. what it means though, is that when active traveling does have money, it affects what money they will give them. So hopefully, as, you know, if, if more budgets come through in future, then that will give it, I think, greater strength to the capability ratings because it's, it's the amount of [00:21:00] money and the complexity of the scheme.

So, you know, if you're a level. zero level one authority and your ambition is to do some really grand, facility that is very complex and involves a lot of public relations to get it right. ATU would say, well, we're not even sure you're quite at that level. You know, here's, if you want some money, do this, do these easier things first, whether it's, you know, some better pedestrian crossings, which is a bit more kind of routine and demonstrate that you can deliver that well and bring the public with you.

And then if you, then we'll give you some more money and we'll give you. Money for more complex things. So, so far it's proved very successful. And, it's really interesting that the Department of Transport has looked at it and think, and, and I mean, whether they're thinking of doing that on other areas, I don't know.

But it has, attracted a, a lot of interest, and I think, congratulations from other parts of government for, for doing something quite in innovative.

Phil Latz: So that cuts across something we were discussing before this recording about the intersection or interaction [00:22:00] between the technical advisors and the political will, and you said that that's an area of interest. And so from your perspective as a technical consultant, if you like, how do you think that that interface

Phil Jones: can be improved between the technical and the political. I think first of all, those of us who spend all our time, you know, writing reports and producing spreadsheets and gathering data and evidence, we first have to recognize that actually that doesn't convince many people.Danny Williams, who's the chief executive of Active Travelling and a really smart guy.

he said, as soon as we start talking numbers, people fall asleep.People just, you know, I've found this in Spades and the Welsh work, if someone is convinced that what you're saying is wrong, it doesn't matter how much evidence you give them, they won't say, Oh, yeah, I thought it was wrong.

But now you've shown me that. that chart, I realize how wrong I was, you know, and I [00:23:00] now agree with you. They don't do that. They people defend their position. They take that position for all kinds of reasons. they have beliefs underlying beliefs and systems and they, they, you know, suspect your motives and if you present evidence that they do right.

tells them they're wrong they'll actually question the evidence and say well that can't be the evidence i'm right i know i'm right the evidence must be wrong and they'll just question that and they'll keep picking holes in the evidence and and you know the whole conspiracy theory thing so i think first of all we have to just recognize and that's not to say evidence isn't important it really is because we have to certainly our decision makers have to have that because They need to defend that, you know, if they were going to make a difficult decision, they have to have the evidence to, to, to push back and say, no, we're right.

So the evidence is really important, but I think we just have to recognize that it's not enough, that we have to be, much smarter and I'm not even sure that transport professionals are the right people to do this. You know, I think again, working with comms, people who really understand public opinion and advertising [00:24:00] and, You know, how people really get their ideas and people really get their beliefs.

the technical experts need to work much more closely with those people because they're in the business of understanding and changing public opinion. That's what advertisers do, isn't it? You know, they sell us something we didn't really know we wanted and they convince us that we know we, they convinced that we want it even though we didn't think we did. And that, and, and, and that's, and that's the game that we're in, I think. Because if you ask people, yeah, you know, and this is, Chris Boardman, I think, gets it. he talks about that, and I've heard him speak, you know, a number of times, obviously, and then about what convinces people. And if you say to people,do you want a better bike route through your neighborhood?

They say no, because I don't cycle. Cyclists, I don't like cyclists. There's nasty sweaty people, you know, who jump the red lights. I don't identify with them. So if you're talking to me about cycling, that's not of interest to me. but if it's, you know, would you like your children to have a greater freedom?

Would you like to breathe cleaner air? [00:25:00] Would you like your house prices to better? Would you like to know your neighbors better? Would you like to sleep better at night? Would you like less traffic? You know, those are the kind of things that they can, They can get to grips with and understand and so we have to just, yeah,work out how, because we know that, you know, a world, with fewer cars and a few more bikes is a good place.

It will be a better place.But, but it's how do we package that up in a way that resonates with people? I think, and yeah, it's not easy, but I think that's what, that's the challenge that we

Irene McAleese: Mm.

Phil Latz: So speaking of public opinion, I believe that certain members of the public in Wales actually actively petitions against you reviewing 20 mile an hour speed limits and I read that in a media report when I was doing some research. So how did that make you feel and what was the ultimate outcome of that?

Did you end up doing the review or

Phil Jones: Yeah. Yeah. No, it was, it was. Quite difficult, actually, and it gave me the [00:26:00] tiniest taste of what politicians must face. I chaired the 20 mile an hour task force, which recommends the government, Welsh government, how to do the 20 miles an hour.

And then after that was, and then they accepted the recommendations and went, went ahead with the project. And that was invited to chair the steering group as a kind of external chair, just to draw together all the different threads of government. And, and that was really, Interesting and saw the project all the way through to implementation, which was, September 2023 when the law changed and overnight over 90 percent of Welsh urban roads became 30 kilometers, 20 miles an hour backlash wasa petition was signed of nearly half a million people, which is about a sixth of the population of Wales, I think, you know, against this thing.

And the politicians were being vilified. and one of the criticisms was that, that, the implementation across Wales wasn't consistent. So in South Wales, More roads were kept back at 30 miles an hour, 50 kilometers [00:27:00] than they were in North Wales. And so there's a difference of approaches. There was inconsistency.

That was, charged at the government. So what Lee Waters then said was, he was under a lot of pressure and he announced a review. And the review wasn't into how this whole project had gone. The review was about how local authorities had gone about the process of deciding which roads to keep at 30.

So, and that was, and he felt that was quite reasonable for me to lead on because I'd been intimately involved, not in the work of the local authorities, but in setting the policy. Under which they were working. And so I was reviewing how well they'd done it and that was announced. But of course, the opposition politicians, you know, jumped on this and said, this is a completely unfair.

You, you, the guy who's been advising you for five years, you're now asking to review the project. And that wasn't what I was doing, but that's what they said. And that's what the media got a hold of. So, it, it blew up. and we start and what was [00:28:00] really, Surprising and not very pleasant was that I started getting,some abusive emails and messages, but so did the company.

So our company Facebook account started getting a lot of abuse and our company LinkedIn started getting a lot of abuse. And I remember one of, one of our, kind of our staff, you know, who'd got absolutely nothing to do with this at all, was, getting Called getting abuse on LinkedIn. And LinkedIn is meant to be this kind of professional place, isn't it?

Where we all kind of polite to each other and it was even there. And so we had to close down our company accounts for a while, and I had to kind of, you know, we had an online briefing of all our staff. I had to go and talk, you know, talk to our, all of our staff and explain to them what was going, because they were reading it in the, of course they were reading the press reports and thinking, well, yeah, I understand that this is really unfair.

You know, obviously, yeah, we know Phil and he's doing this, but. But this, this doesn't sound right to me, and I had to explain, no, it's not what the press is saying it is. Anyway, so, so that was pretty unpleasant for a while. And, and then actually after Lee stood down, the review was meant to go on for longer, but Lee stood [00:29:00] down, and then the new, transport minister decided to kind of call an end to the work that we were doing.

You know, he wanted a change of faces and that was completely understandable. But we did finish our review and it is published and it led to some new guidance. So now local authorities in Wales are working under some new government guidance. and as a result of that, some of the roads that are now 20 miles an hour will probably go back to 30, but it won't be, it won't be a massive change.

It'll just be a bit of a tweaking. But that, that is still, you know, to play out and hopefully the thing will then kind of settle down, but yeah, it was interesting for a while. Yeah,

Irene McAleese: a fantastic initiative, though, because I think there's been some great results that are starting to come through, though the proof in the pudding takes some time to cook, doesn't it?.

Phil Jones: I mean, there's a, a company, Agilisys, don't mind mentioning them, who, the road safety specialist, and they have access to real time information on [00:30:00] traffic speeds that comes through in car GPS systems, and within a week, they published a report that showed that average speeds were down just under three miles an hour.

Yeah. which are about 5 kilometers an hour, which is pretty much in line with expectations. And, you know, it doesn't sound a big number, but it's really a lot that that the rule of thumb that's research is pointed to that for every one mile per hour, so 1. 6 kilometers, a 6 percent reduction in collisions. so three miles per hour is nearly 20 percent

Irene McAleese: that's amazing.

Phil Jones: It's a lot, you know, and, and then what's been found after six months, we've only got six months of post implementation data. The next three months will be out pretty soon.

Now, casualties are down just under 30 percent on 20 and 30 mile an hour roads. So that's, you know, Remarkable, you know,

Irene McAleese: Mm

Phil Jones: in six months. so yeah, that's quite astonishing. And it was never claimed that the 20 miles an hour would be a panacea. we know that, you know, [00:31:00] of itself, it won't bring speeds down enough and they'll have to go back and do further work.

But over time, the view is that compliance will increase. and, but in terms of cost effectiveness, It is the most cost effective thing. I mean, it costs 30 million pounds, 60 million to do the signs, which, you know, a lot of, opponents, there was a huge amount of money actually, you know, to drop in the ocean, really for government spending.

And, and, and what. I haven't printed the numbers, but it won't be very long before it based on official values of a casualty saving, which run to hundreds of thousands of pounds for a serious injury. It doesn't take very many to win back that investment and in terms of benefit to society. So it'll pay for itself very

Irene McAleese: Yeah. Well, I think this is another thing that you should feel very proud of in, in your career. 'cause it's, it is amazing. Every life saved is, is it's, it's a fantastic thing. [00:32:00] So,I'd like to know what advice you might have for countries like Australia or New Zealand, that are in some ways so far behind, you know, this great work that has happened in Wales and England.

Phil Jones: I came to the, the AIATPM conference in Perth again this year, which is, really, Really great event, Kirstie Kelly, the chief exec did a fantastic job and Fiona Goodbody of organizing the conference. And they launched, they launched a, a policy paper, about decarbonizing the transport system in Australia, which I thought was really, really fantastic. And it, you know, and it called on government to, just to, to, to scale back the investment in road building. And I think that's my, that's what my underlying thing is.

we've gone on really for decades now, what, since the second world war and maybe before, and just continually making it easier to drive. You know, and that's what we do. we built, we keep building roads and we built car parks and, and we still do in the UK. I was talking to somebody the other day, you [00:33:00] know, where they're planning new schools and, and building drop off areas for parents.

On the one hand, we've got a government that's saying we want more children to walk and cycle to school, and then some local authorities are building car parks for schools, just for parents to make it more convenient for them to drop their kids by car. And you think, why is this? You know, so I think just fundamentally, we've got to just. how much do we want to continue to make it easy to drive?and that means by increasing capacity and doing all those things, because I actually think what we have to just do is start to tilt the balance in the direction. and, and that's not easy. We know that's not, that's not easy. it's certainly not easy to, to, to.

Go out of your way to make things harder to drive, you know, cost more or more congested or whatever. But at least as a starting point, we could, we could stop making it easier. And I think that's, that's perhaps where the UK is still doing that. We're not so wealthy these days. So probably our roads [00:34:00] program is being curtailed as much because of lack of budget.

But Australia is a wealthier country. And, You know, and he's still investing huge amounts of money in in road building. So I would echo that maybe firstly would echo the calls. Um,the AIT PM made just to just for government to to kind of rethink that. I can still remember, you know, it's a child having such a lot of freedom to go out and meet friends and play and and and then being called in.

And I just fear so much for our Children's lives these days. Mhm. There, you know, you, you see these, these diagrams of the shrinking freedom of children across generations. how much, how far they're allowed to go. And, and these days children are almost in their, their lives in their bedroom. You know, they're, they're not even in their rest of the house.

They're just in one room. and that, I think just recognizing the, benefits particularly. to people like that, to children and to older people for the freedom they get, you know, and, and the, the, when you often lose your [00:35:00] independence, in older life, when you don't, when you can't use a car,

Irene McAleese: There's a men mental health benefits as well as the physical, the, the wellbeing?

Phil Jones: absolutely, I read something the other day about the value of acquaintances. You know, we, we talk about friends and our friendship groups, but apparently acquaintances are really good for us, people that we just see. Yeah, people that, you know, people that we see on the street that we don't really, might not even know their names, you know anything about them, but we see that same person and we nod to them and, or maybe, you know, them gonna have, you know, text or go to things like the park.

We see the same people. We can, we can just, and just, and you get this kind of recognition of another person. it validate us as human beings and apparently that is really good for our mental health.

Irene McAleese: Ah,

yes. And that's not something you get when you're whizzing by in the car.

Phil Jones: You don't get in the car and you don't get on. You probably don't get on Facebook or, you know, you know, that's right.

You don't get that. And you get you get that by being outdoors and seeing people. And just so I think, [00:36:00] you know, if we begin to kind of appreciate. The two sides of the coin is the harms the cars do in all kinds of ways. And maybe we just need to stop making it a little bit easier and recognize that the benefit of such a range of benefits that we get from being, being active, and outdoors ourselves, people of all ages, I think if we just begin to put those two things together on the balance and to tip it the other way, that would be, that would be my kind of wish, really.

Irene McAleese: that makes absolute sense, wise words. Thank you. Um, so listen, this has been a fantastic conversation, I think you've shared some really great insights. We really appreciate your time.

Phil Jones: thank

Phil Latz: Thanks for being on the Micromobility Report podcast.

Well, Irene, what were some of the interesting things you thought came out of that chat with Phil?

Irene McAleese: I really like Phil. Isn't he just such a wealth of knowledge. He's so humble actually, I think, you know, given the amount of the breadth of things that he's [00:37:00] involved in, yet he's, he's generally so down to earth as we would say in Australia, and very easy and approachable .

I, I thought your question was great actually, just to really unpack what is the capability rating. that has been used in, in the UK because I think his explanation was probably one of the best explanations, that I've heard . It is interesting,to sort of turn things on the head, as you said, you know, now people are saying, well, why isn't my council good at building bike lanes? Why are they out of one? And creating some FOMO, you know, fear of missing out that, you know, other, other local authorities actually getting more funding, more attention because they've not brought their skills up.

but it's, it shows the gap in the, in, I guess, the skills and the capability of Local authorities are capable of doing and there is that sort of, you know, the people are trained to build roads and and highways. The skills are just not. As good as they could [00:38:00] be,in regards to active travel.

and that's why I really like speaking with Kylie Nixon as well, who was on our podcast recently, because here, here we've got an engineer who, really cycles herself, and that's not always. That's not always a thing, which is why the guidance and standards are so important and then, you know, making sure they comply to those and then mixing it with political will as well.

Absolutely and I would like,

Phil Latz: to see rankings, rating system implemented in Australia for all local governments in Australia. I think that would be a great thing to see. Hopefully we'll see the day when that happens here. So we'll roll over to our final segment that we do each month, which we're calling What's Up, not to be confused with What's Up, Doc.

In this case, it's the question, What's Up, Irene?

Irene McAleese: so for me, I've got quite a lot of conferences [00:39:00] coming up. So this week in Brisbane, we have the, I move R and D conference, which is looking at transport innovation in transport, the latest stuff that's been showcased in terms of. Projects that I move have carried out, so I'm really excited to be on a panel talking about the future of transport planning.

and obviously I'll be talking about what we do with SeeSense and our data use cases, particularly building on from our project down in Melbourne with the Transport Accident Commission and a couple of the councils down there. So really excited to talk about innovative use cases for our data. Then I'll be down in Melbourne the following week for, a couple of meetings and then I'm going to tie that in and pop in to check out the Mobility Live conference.

So, I don't know if you've been to that one, Phil, but,

Phil Latz: Actually, I chaired or hosted a micromobility mini [00:40:00] conference within that last year when I was at Darling

Irene McAleese: Oh,

Phil Latz: at the International Convention Centre, but this year it's down in Melbourne, so I think you'll enjoy it.

Irene McAleese: okay. Yeah, good. There does seem to be a bit of active travel on the first day, at least a little bit less on the second day, but, quite interested to see what that's like.and then I think I've got one more, one more conference, before we all come back and record our next, podcast. And, I'm very excited to be heading over to Barcelona for the Smart City Expo.

Thank you. And I'll be speaking there as well, sharing, Some of our innovative projects, one of them working with Transport for London who used our data for their Vision Zero agenda in terms of trying to understand the risk for cyclists, and use data to understand before and after and all sorts of stuff.

So I'm very excited to be heading to Barcelona and speaking.[00:41:00]

Phil Latz: How's your Spanish, Irene?

Irene McAleese: Not so good, but you know, to be honest, I have actually been to this conference quite a few times. And it's a little bit sad that I don't get to see as much as Barcelona as I would like. You might get the odd meal. Pretty much, it's it's hard graft to be honest. You're in, you're in.

Phil Latz: me just get my violin out. Where is it? I

Irene McAleese: Nobody believes me. The life of a startup founder is not that glamorous. I've been staying in some kind of cheap hotel and working so hard during the day,

Phil Latz: my goodness. Let me just tune up that violin.

Irene McAleese: well, the last time I did go, I did manage to squeeze in on the very last evening, a ride on the chairlift, the chairlift, takes you up to one of the mountains just outside of Barcelona and you get the lovely view that was absolutely spectacular.

So if I can find time to do that [00:42:00] again. I'll definitely do that. And I'm very excited to catch up with a lot of my pals. The whole Northern Ireland, West Northern Ireland, Belfast crew are going to be there. Lots of the UK is going to have a stand there this year for the first time. So there'll be lots of Different local authorities and hopefully some friendly faces for me to chat to.

the Dublin crew will all be there. So, yeah, it's going to be, it's going to be great from that point of view as well. The acquaintances that, I mentioned.

Phil Latz: That's right. Good for your

Irene McAleese: That's, you know, it's a mental health trip. What about yourself, Phil?

Phil Latz: Well, as I mentioned last time, Our media business, including the Latz report and micro mobility report is currently on the market. But I just want to re emphasize in case anyone ever reads one of our newsletters that goes on the website where it's been announced that regardless of what happens with that process, we're going to be continuing this podcast, even if it might get a [00:43:00] rename at some stage.

And we'll do one more podcast for December. And then have a break for Christmas holidays. So I don't think there'll be one coming out in January, but we'll kick off again in February. And finally, Phil Jones made me aware of the Streets Ahead podcast. It's three people, Adam Tranter, Laura Laker, and Ned Bolting.

And I must admit, I didn't know about that podcast until I spoke to Phil. the other day in preparation for this interview that we've just done. I've already almost finished my third episode of their podcast. I'm planning to listen to more, so I'd really recommend that podcast. They just did a great interview with the new UK Secretary of State for Transport.

In other words, their Federal Transport Minister Louise Hague, and it was a fantastically positive interview. After they'd been on a [00:44:00] bike ride, actually, Laura Laker and Chris Boardman, who was just mentioned by Phil in the interview we've just done, but they went on a bike ride with this new Secretary of State for Transport.

And then she gave an interview that was very candid. And in fact, it was picked up the next day, the next morning. It was on the BBC morning program. It was on the front cover of the Times newspaper and just massive national media, which for a little podcast, that was a great achievement. So we'd recommend people look up that podcast and have a listen.

It's excellent. Anything else from you to wrap up? Irene,

Irene McAleese: Yeah, just to reiterate, I think it is, yeah, it's a lovely podcast and, there's a, there's a nice sort of mix of different skills. You've got Adam Tranter, who is the, he was the previous,cycling commissioner in the, in the West Midlands under the previous mayor.

and he has a PR [00:45:00] background as well, his own sort of, PR companies. So he's, he understands communication and actually he, he was responsible for a very good little video. I don't know if you ever saw that part of the bike is best campaign when he was there. You see that with a really

Phil Latz: with the milk going in the

Irene McAleese: Yes, having the right tool for the job.

I love that video. That's

Phil Latz: mm

 

and Laura Laker. She's more of a journalist, but, she's got a book out, Potholes and Patrons. That's right. And in fact, the Transport Support Minister had read that book and was a fan, and followed Laura on her social media and contacted Laura, not the other way around. Normally to get to speak to a senior federal minister.

Good luck

Irene McAleese: wow, that's encouraging,

Phil Latz: Min, the minister contacted her, so that That's incredible.

Irene McAleese: yeah, that's quite encouraging. That's very positive, I should say.

Phil Latz: is. It

Irene McAleese: I need to go listen to that

Phil Latz: It's worth. It's well worth a listen. So, and I'm more than [00:46:00] happy to plug anyone else's podcast, because as, as you know, we're certainly not in this as empire building, we're in this to try and advance the cause of cycling and micromobility. So on that, positive note, I'd say to everyone, thanks for listening and we'll see you next

Irene McAleese: Thanks everyone. Bye bye.

Phil Latz: Bye.