Episode 155: Building Solidarity with Bicycles at Velo-city

 

Doug Gordon: Let’s say you’re thinking of getting an Xtracycle, but aren’t sure which e-cargo bike model is right for you. You can schedule a personal ride review—that’s a one-on-one call with an expert from Xtracycle who will listen to what you want, ask questions about how you might use a bike, and help you find the perfect Xtracycle that works for your life, even if you live in a place that isn’t exactly a biking paradise. Take Marie Claire, for example. She’s a mom of two who lives completely car-free in Tallahassee, Florida.

Marie Claire: The really challenging thing in Tallahassee is that life is really centered around individual transportation. There is a public transport system, but it’s not extensive and it’s not very reliable, and no one understands that you can live without a car.

Doug: As Marie Claire’s kids have gotten bigger, staying car free has been a challenge.

Marie Claire: We’ve had to re-decide to not own a car many times. And in fact, I remember one time where I came this close to buying a car. I even test rode a used car because I was kind of at my wits’ end of how to make this work. But we would recommit to not owning a car.

Doug: Riding an Xtracycle Swoop has enabled Marie Claire and her husband to stay car free.

Marie Claire: To be able to carry a nine and an eleven year old on a bike, you really do need—as far as I’m concerned, you really do need the assist of a motor. It still feels like riding a bike, of course, but you just have more stability, less effort, and you get to your destination a little bit less tired, a little bit more on time. In a hilly area, you’re able to climb hills. The other thing about the cargo bike is that you really have a lot of capacity for cargo itself, even with your passengers.

Doug: But Marie Claire isn’t just an Xtracycle owner; she also works for the company. In fact, if you schedule a personalized ride review, chances are you’ll wind up talking with Marie Claire.

Marie Claire: [laughs] Yeah, it’s me. It’s Marie Claire on the phone. It’s me, and I’ve had 16 years of experience in a city like Tallahassee riding bikes still, my experience translates pretty well to other families’ experiences over the span of ages of their children. And I think that that’s often how the conversation feels really helpful to parents.

Doug: We here at The War on Cars want everyone to enjoy the benefits of cargo biking, whether to reduce or even relieve the need for cars in your life. Head to Xtracycle.com/thewaroncars and schedule a personal ride review. It’ll most likely be with Marie Claire, and she’ll help you figure out how an e-cargo bike could work for you. And when you are ready to purchase, you’ll save $500 on an Xtracycle by using promo code WARONCARS500. Again, that’s X-T-R-A-C-Y-C-L-E.com/the-war-on-cars. Find out how an e-cargo bike can change your life with Extra Cycle.

Doug: Hey everyone, our tour in support of our new book, Life After Cars, is shaping up and we’re really excited to announce that we’re coming to Seattle for a live show with our friend Ray Delehanty of CityNerd fame. We’re being hosted out there by Cascade Bicycle Club, and the show will take place on Wednesday, November 5, at the beautiful Town Hall, Seattle. If you’re a Patreon member, you’ll get access to presale tickets starting on Wednesday, July 16 at noon. That is the day after this episode drops, so be on the lookout for an email with a link and Patreon presale access code. Our last show with Ray sold out really quickly, so sign up on Patreon at Patreon.com/thewaroncarspod to get tickets. And if you can’t make it to Seattle, we will also be in Vancouver, British Columbia on November 8, and hopefully in Portland, Oregon sometime after that, and we’re working on lots of other cities. Again, sign up at Patreon.com/thewaroncarspod and we will see you on our Life After Cars book tour.

Sarah Goodyear: This episode is part of the “Deconstructing Car Culture” series produced with the support of the Helen and William Mazer Foundation.

Ian Walker: Something as simple as jumping on a bike addresses a dozen social challenges. It addresses public health and inequality and air pollution and space allocation. It just addresses all sorts of things. And very often people are quite siloed and they don’t see the multiple aspects of the world that would be improved if we just rethought transport a little bit because it feels so mundane. The bicycle is not a glamorous thing, it’s not an expensive thing, so it doesn’t excite policymakers but it genuinely holds the solutions to a lot of these problems. You know, the line I keep using as a bit of a joke is tell me what you care about and I’ll tell you how the answer is less cars, because it does fix everything.

Sarah: This is The War on Cars. I’m Sarah Goodyear. A couple of weeks ago, I went to the Velo-city Conference in Gdańsk, Poland. The huge shipyard in Gdańsk was the birthplace of the Solidarność, or Solidarity movement, that began in 1980, and ultimately led to the fall of communism in Poland. So the theme of this year’s Velo-city was, appropriately, “Energizing solidarity.” In this episode, we’ll be hearing from a bunch of the cycling advocates I met there. But first, I want to quickly remind you that you can find us on Patreon at Patreon.com/thewaroncarspod. You can pick up official podcast merch, including stickers and t-shirts, at TheWaronCars.org, and you can pre-order our new book, Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile, which is coming this October from Thesis, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Visit LifeAfterCars.com to get your copy and find out about events and our book tour.

Sarah: Now, back to Gdańsk. I was really excited about making this trip because the last time I had been to Poland was 36 years ago, in the summer of 1989, when the Solidarity movement was celebrating the first semi-free elections in post-World War II Polish history. The future of Poland still hung in the balance. While I was in Warsaw that summer, I joined a pro-solidarity march that turned ugly when the military started tear-gassing us and using water cannons to disperse the crowd.

Sarah: Now, Poland is a peaceful, democratic nation and part of the European Union. I’m not gonna get into current Polish politics because I am completely unqualified to do that, but I can say that Gdańsk is a really interesting and vibrant city. It has a complicated history that includes alternating periods of domination by Germany and Poland, as well as a brief stint from 1920 to 1939 as a free city. Gdańsk today has a terrific protected bike lane network that connects the medieval pedestrianized center of town with the area where the convention center was hosting Velo-city.

Sarah: Velo-city is an incredibly good mood conference put on each year by the European Cyclists’ Federation. People come from all over the world to share best practices in urban cycling, to learn about technical innovations in bikes and bike parking solutions, and to connect with their fellow advocates, elected officials and other members of the wider cycling community. It’s a networking event, an opportunity to learn, and frankly, a great chance to party—which people did—in some really cool, revitalized industrial spaces downtown.

Sarah: One of the most fun parts of the conference is what they call “technical visits,” aka bike rides. I went on one through the forest and along the Vistula Spit to the border with Russia, which turns out to be an unassuming barrier amid the trees with a few bored-looking Polish soldiers milling around. It was a place where nothing was happening, and where something enormous and terrible could someday happen in an instant, a reminder of the war still raging to the south in Ukraine.

Sarah: The other technical visit I went on took us through the Gdańsk shipyard, where an electrician named Lech Walesa led a strike to demand an independent trade union for the workers there. That 1980 action succeeded. It was foundational to a broader social movement that over the course of many difficult years led to the complete elimination of the communist authoritarian system, not just in Poland, but throughout Europe. Walesa, now 81, ended up becoming the president of Poland and winning the Nobel Prize. His popularity has waxed and waned, but he started as a worker in the Gdańsk shipyard and his name is everywhere in the city.

Sarah: They still build ships in Gdańsk, although the shipyard is much smaller than it was in the 1980s. Some of the abandoned areas are being developed for residential and retail use. One of the conference parties was held in a hipster bar and food court in an old industrial building on the site. The cost of housing in Gdańsk, by the way, is as much of an issue as it is anywhere in Europe or North America. Young people told me they’re being priced out of the city. Many apartments in the new construction we saw are given over to Airbnb. Just a couple of minutes by bike from a former U-boat factory, now home to another jam-packed food hall, we stood in front of the same shipyard gate where Walesa spoke to the crowd that amassed there, waiting for word about the strike.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, guide: After every day of tough negotiations, Walesa was talking from the top of this gate to the people which were waiting here. You see, so that’s why it’s very important. This gate became a UNESCO heritage of the world. So that’s why it’s still here, you see?]

Sarah: It was humbling to stand in the very spot where the shipyard workers had fought for so long against the enormous and brutal force of the Soviet Union to win their improbable victory. Meanwhile, I was going back to my hotel every night and watching videos of the violent suppression of dissent in my own country on the streets of Los Angeles. As the saying goes, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. So when I was talking with people on the floor of the convention center, I confess I was looking for hope. I asked people to talk about the conference’s solidarity theme because solidarity seems necessary and precious right now as we fight for democracy and our planet’s health on so many fronts. I also asked about the struggles people are engaged in on the ground where they live. You’ll hear from a wide variety of conference attendees, including advocates, government officials and researchers, all in solidarity with one another. The president of the European Cyclists’ Federation, Henk Swarttouw, set the tone at the opening ceremony with remarks about how cycling fosters democracy and solidarity. Later, I asked Henk to expand on those themes.

Henk Swarttouw: You’ve been here for a couple of days. You have seen how much energy, empathy, how much positive energy there is in this community, in this crowd, which works for a better and more equitable society for everybody through active mobility and through cycling in particular. That’s where the connection is. And the other point I wish to make, and that’s also relating to the Solidarity movement in the 1980s, that a grassroots initiative by individuals, individuals who wanted to change something, who stood up, who organized themselves and actually achieved the change they wished for themselves, for their country, for the society and in their case for an entire continent. And that’s also why I said in my introductory remarks, don’t always look at your government to do something. Start yourself and the government, the authorities will see what you’re doing. And when they see that you have a winning proposition, they will eventually either follow you or they will embrace your proposition, and then you will be a number of steps closer to the goals you want to achieve.

Sarah: One person I met in Gdańsk who has been bringing the government along is Katherine Cory.

Katherine Cory: My name is Katherine Cory. I live in Glasgow in Scotland, and I run a bike bus, and I have done for the past four years at my child’s school. It’s become a very big bike bus, and it’s become a big part of my life. I also now work for a cycling organization in Glasgow called Women on Wheels, where I work with women and their families to get them cycling and gain confidence cycling and learn about how to cycle as a family. And I’m here at Velo-city because I was a speaker two days ago talking about bike buses as a form of social activism because I believe that they’re not just getting kids from A to B, these kids are protesting on the streets every time they bike bus. It is quite a performance. It’s bright, it’s colorful, there’s cute kids cycling their bikes, looking pretty cool and confident on the road. It’s quite a spectacle if you’re a passer-by or a driver and you see this. So it is a practical thing getting children to school, but they are very visible and audible. You can hear the bike bus coming, and then I think it’s quite thought-provoking because there’s the way it can open up how people think about our spaces, really. You know, these kids are making it obvious that they want space on our roads. And so it can be—you know, internally you can think well, how much space do we give here to these kids to enjoy cycling to school? None.

Sarah: So you told me last night about the button. The button. So I want you to tell me that story.

Katherine Cory: Yeah, so the “magic button” I like to call it, or the “doo-dah,” we sometimes call it. We have funny names for it. I can maybe explain to you how it came about. So our bike bus, maybe less than a year in, we go through this very busy junction in Shawlands in Glasgow, and it’s got four very big roads that come through it. And the sequence of lights are annoying anyway as a pedestrian trying to get across and things. And there’s a 10-second green light on the road that we come through, and that was fine when we were five families but as we grew and we’re now up to 60 people, the green wasn’t long enough for us all to get through safely which meant that bike bus volunteers were blocking traffic and things, and people were getting frustrated in cars. And we had an incident, very dangerous incident, where a van behind the bike bus got so impatient that he overtook us and it made us honestly down tools and have an emergency Zoom meeting at the time to say, “What the hell are we doing here?” Like, we can’t—we cannot do this if that’s what’s gonna happen. These are kids cycling, and that van thought it was okay to do that.

Katherine Cory: So we decided to speak to our community police and to Glasgow City Council. And our local councillor, who’s a Green councillor, put us in touch with someone at the council and thought there’s maybe something we can do at the traffic lights. And then this guy, Brian, Brian is just legend and pal at Glasgow City Council, he has really taken this on and worked with a technology company in England to develop the UK’s first smart technology to control the traffic lights. So we now have this funny little 3D-printed remote control that can sit on—you can attach it to the leader of the bike bus’s handlebars. And so as we approach the junction, we press the button, and it signals to a box and it wraps up what it’s doing at all the other points of the junction and then holds the green light for us for 45 seconds, which gets the whole bike bus through and some cars behind us, by the way. So nobody’s being held up, and it’s really quite something. It’s won an award now. There’s other councils getting in touch to talk about it. It’s a very good news story.

 

Sarah: But many of the people in attendance are dealing with bike-lash and governments that are in some cases actively opposed to bike infrastructure. In Ontario, Canada, Premier Doug Ford has vowed to rip out bike lanes. I talked with a few Canadians who are finding ways to stay motivated in the face of reactionary forces.

Eleanor McMahon: So my name is Eleanor McMahon, and I chair the board of the Share the Road Cycling Coalition, which is an NGO, a cycling organization in Ontario. I founded the organization 19 years ago when my husband was killed in a cycling crash. And his loss inspired me to mobilize and to spend a lot of time traveling and looking at jurisdictions around the world. I think this conference is the ideal place to be inspired and informed. And when you meet other people that are either going through the same things you are, there’s solidarity in that, and there’s friendship in that and kinship, but also an opportunity to learn how people have resolved some of the issues that are pernicious or difficult for you, and to be enlightened and inspired by those solutions, and to realize that when it comes right down to it, a lot of this work can be challenging, but a good deal of it is actually quite simple when it comes right down to it. And of course, it has to do with political will, which as you know right now is somewhat challenging. The fact that he has decided that they need to go with no evidence and no public policy behind it and no defensible strategy whatsoever is egregious. But I think what’s even worse is that he’s kind of made it okay to attack cyclists again. And he has polarized cyclists, made us “the other” in really egregious ways. And our task as an organization is to help take back the narrative, because one person should not control the narrative for 15 million people.

Florence Lehmann: My name is Florence Lehmann. I’m the president of Bike Ottawa. Biggest challenge, one of them, is having a divided city. It’s a city that’s divided between the urban core and the rural areas, and politicians actually tap into that to divide and conquer. And our current mayor was elected on cycling as a wedge issue. He used it to divide. So he always claims he’s working for everyone, but that’s the synonym for, you know, status quo for driving, essentially.

Florence Lehmann: We tried to change the narrative by showing the positive, like it’s about enjoying your neighborhoods. Not just biking, not just walking, it’s about, you know, like, enjoying the neighborhoods you live in. Data is important too, though sometimes I find politicians don’t necessarily listen to that because it goes against their narrative. But it’s about talking to people; it’s about talking to people on the ground, having real conversations, like, away from social media to some extent, too. We’re actually talking about the same thing. We like our neighborhoods, we like getting around safely, we like enjoying our neighborhoods, and we want to make it work for everyone, but in an equitable manner. So—but you can’t have those conversations on social media. You need to talk to people, you need to go meet them where they live.

Madeleine Bonsma-Fisher: My name is Madeleine Bonsma-Fisher. I work at the University of Toronto. I live in Toronto. This is my first Velo-city, so really lovely to be here. And I’m here to present research that we’ve done to quantify the impact of bike lanes and to use that to plan better where we can build bike lanes that are gonna have the most impact. You know, even if you have unlimited money to spend on this, you still have to choose what you’re gonna do first, and that’s where I think we’re really trying to make a data-driven approach to say what is the most impactful thing you can do? What is the most impactful bike lane or road closure you can do to provide access to people? Not just for what’s close to you, but where can you go using that infrastructure?

Madeleine Bonsma-Fisher: I think when I started this work, I had this idea that you would discover facts, you would present data, and it would change people’s minds, that they would say, “Oh, this makes sense. This is what we should do.” But I think the order is actually reversed, that you first have to want the thing. Like, politically there has to be the will, people have to want something. And what the data does is actually just give people that extra support for that thing that they already know they’re gonna do. So I see it a lot when we work with a city that they already—they have a plan, they’re planning to implement it. And what we’re providing for them is kind of one extra piece of information that they can point at and say, “This is valid for these reasons; these are the reasons why this is a good idea.” People will very often just straight up ignore it like we’re seeing with the political situation in Toronto with  the premier removing bike lanes.

Madeleine Bonsma-Fisher: I was at the provincial committee that was reviewing that bill to remove the bike lane, and speaker after speaker was saying, like, this doesn’t make sense. The data doesn’t support this. People were saying all the very good, you know, factually supported reasons why it was a bad idea, and I could see the members of parliament just, like, sitting there and not listening. Like, it didn’t matter. It wasn’t really about data at all.

Sarah: So if data won’t convince governments, how can researchers be part of a mood shift that leads to a mode shift? I spoke with Dr. Catherine Elliot, who has been working on an initiative called e-Bike City in Zurich, Switzerland. It’s a comprehensive reimagining of what Zurich streets could be like. In her Velo-city presentation, Catherine played a beautifully produced video showing just how nice the city’s streets would be if they belonged mostly to people rather than cars. Later, we talked about just how important this kind of communication can be in building support for transformative change.

Catherine Elliot: The basis of the project was to actually see—using modeling, to see if it was actually physically possible to give 50 percent of street space—we’re talking sidewalk to sidewalk—to micromobility. And we found out, at least in the Zurich context, which was the case study, that we can get up to 54 percent of street space for micromobility, and that’s by removing car parking.

Catherine Elliot: I think this is probably the number one most important thing. I do think research is important, but if you want to make change, I mean, what we found basically is we need to remove car parking as the number one basic thing you can do today. This is the number one thing that people don’t like because they feel like their freedom is being taken away. If they say, yeah, you’re gonna lose parking, the vote is automatically no. But if we tell them what they’re gonna get—you’re gonna get your life back. Because we have all these bike lanes, you no longer have to rely on the car because you have this life back. You have the chance to walk and use public transport, particularly in Zurich. You have the chance to ride your bike. You have a chance for kids to play in the street. You know, the greenery, the clean air, just the mental health that you gain from this. When we showed them the greenery and people moving and there was life and there was business happening.

Catherine Elliot: In my opinion, if we want to really invest money, politically, we should be putting money into showing what does cycling lead to. The bicycle is just the mode, but it’s not—I think, too often as cycle advocates, we focus on it as the end, but it’s just a means to the end. And I think we need to show them that vision. We’re not selling the picture, and it’s really a shame because there’s so much—you know, people who have been to The Netherlands have seen it. So I do see e-bikes and electric micro-mobility scooters, et cetera as being the game changer. And I see wide cycle lanes. I consider the cycle lane the LGBTQ+ space on the road, because it doesn’t matter if you’re a scooter, roller blades, you know, whatever, you know, electric wheelchair, normal wheelchair, everyone’s invited.

Catherine Elliot: In my opinion, the bicycle is the ultimate vehicle for democratic freedom of movement. It’s this freedom of mobility, freedom to go where you want. And on a bicycle, especially muscle-powered bicycle, you have this feeling that you’ve been able to do something that was maybe hard in a headwind, in the rain. And that’s what the car takes away. It takes away this hard thing, this hard aspect. And in doing that, it makes you feel this sort of privilege. But the bicycle, it doesn’t matter who you are, you still have to pedal, even on an e-bike. And I think it’s like a great equalizer, and it just brings people back to humanity.

Sarah: So many of the advocates I spoke with talked about that issue of humanity, how riding a bike can help to restore basic human connection, like Maria Elisa Ojeda Acosta, an active transportation consultant from Barcelona. One of her favorite projects is a program called Cycling Without Age, which gets older people out on bicycles and into their city.

Maria Elisa Ojeda Acosta: It’s really amazing. The results, you see them just right away. The other projects take a long time, you know, and a lot of meetings and discussions, but this Cycling Without Age every day give you the joy of the bicycle in the first person, so it’s amazing. Most of these people around 80 are women, and many of them were not able to ride bikes when they were young because, well, times were different. So sometimes we found out that this woman of 80 years old is the first time that she’s on a bike. Some others were able to cycle themselves when they were younger, and they really, really enjoyed to get back that feeling, that nice and relaxed feeling of, you know, like, floating over the pavement.

Maria Elisa Ojeda Acosta: Also, very, very important for us is this right becomes an opportunity for them to reconnect with the city. For example, the market, the beach, the places that they can encounter with the neighbors, with their former—I don’t know, people that sell them the food and things, so they can talk again. Sometimes they ask us to take them to the place where they used to live, because there were many times that they don’t go there, and it was a place that they lived for their whole life. So it’s very emotional to re-encounter your street, your neighbor. And this is what we do every day, in the morning, in the afternoon, every day.

Sarah: Her colleague, Belén Calahorro Lizondo, gets that same thrill teaching people—mostly women—to ride bikes in Valencia.

Belén Calahorro Lizondo: Normally, we have more women than men. Normally, it’s nine from ten people are women. And there are women from 40s to 60s. That is the age more common. They come and they start to change their lives. [laughs] It’s very nice. I always say that is the best work in the world to teach people how to ride a bike, because you are together with a person that is changing the feeling that they have about them. And when they discover they can think they can do this, it’s like, “I can do more things now. I can do this or this.” So it’s very empowering.

Sarah: Simply riding a bike can be a political action under the right circumstances. After a short break, we’ll hear more about that, and we’ll also hear what the Dutch ambassador to Poland has to say about the name of this podcast.

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Sarah: So I had the chance to talk with the Dutch ambassador to Poland. He started by telling me about the adventurous route he took to Velo-city.

Jennes de Mol: My name is Jennes de Mol. I’m the Dutch ambassador in Poland. I’m here for Velo-city because we as an embassy have been very much involved in sustainable mobility. But I also love cycling. And I was, since I’m Dutch, it is part and parcel of my life for transport, for health, for fun, for sports, et cetera, et cetera. So I decided to come to Velo-city here in Gdańsk by bike from Warsaw, which is about 380 kilometers just to show that it is possible, but also since we have a policy in the Netherlands of connecting longer stretches, distances between cities with, let’s say, continuous pathways for cyclists. It was a little bit of an experience and an adventure, but it is really rewarding and I enjoyed it. So I did three days.

Sarah: So the theme of this conference is solidarity for obvious reasons, the Solidarność Movement, of course, very important in the history of Poland and the world. And maybe especially as a diplomat, as an ambassador, as somebody who is dedicated professionally to cultural exchange, you could talk about the importance of the cultural exchange that happens here, and what solidarity means in this context, in the transportation context.

Jennes de Mol: It’s all about connectivity. And that is also part and parcel of who we Dutch are and what our tradition is. Solidarity means also living together and taking care of each other, appreciating each other. And when it comes to mobility, well, your podcast is called The War on Cars. It’s a very provocative title, which is nice, but at the same time we have to live together. And it is not either/or, but it’s and/and. And we have to live together and interact. And here you see, for example, in cities like Gdańsk, that when you’re in an urban environment, it is very difficult to be together because the space is limited. So you have to find smart ways of interacting here and accepting each other’s role. That means that speed goes down, but you have to accept all modes of transport. That takes solidarity, but also cooperation and a lot of respect.

Jennes de Mol: I spent, as an ambassador, five years in Ukraine, the last five years. So wartime, very difficult. And solidarity is something which is the core for me as a diplomat. So I’m very happy with the title. It translates into mobility issues, but more generally I think we need more solidarity in the world.

Sarah: I got an interesting perspective on the current state of solidarity in Poland from Maciej Kautz. He wasn’t at the conference as an advocate or elected official or planner. He was actually the MC. But that meant he had a pretty fresh and at least somewhat objective perspective on what he saw at Velo City.

Maciej Kautz: All right, so I’m Maciej Kautz. I’m a professional event MC and moderator.

Sarah: And what do you think Poland can teach the world about solidarity?

Maciej Kautz: To be honest, I would hope that the quality of solidarity is still with us, but having lived here for 36 years, and that, by the way, is exactly the number of years that the Solidarity movement has been most active, and when Poland finally broke ties with, with the Soviet Union and when we truly became independent, I have to say that our country has developed tremendously, and I’m a huge fan of what’s happening here. But I am afraid that the price that we had to pay is being less together. And I’m not sure if “solidarity” is still the word that truly describes our society. I wish it was the case, but I’m also afraid that together with economic development and the high standards that came from the West, which we appreciate, rule of law, all of that, also came more individualism, which on the one hand it’s beautiful because it’s about your freedom and how you can be a better human being, but I think it also takes us further apart from each other.

Maciej Kautz: So something that is probably pretty obvious for a citizen of the US or anywhere in the Western world, it’s now also pretty much a staple here in Poland that we are all just after our own good, that we don’t care so much about our neighbor anymore, and that we don’t interact with one another that much, then again, aggravated by social media. I know that’s probably not the answer you were hoping to hear, but I feel like solidarity is in our DNA, but I’m afraid there’s a little bit less of that nowadays.

Sarah: But maybe we can find it if we get on the bicycle, huh?

Maciej Kautz: That’s what really makes me happy to be here, because I find this event truly democratic, making everybody equal. As you can see, there are no VIP stands, there are no sponsored speeches on stage, and all the attendees are equal. And, you know, I’ve been to tons of events, and it’s usually not the case. Here we’re all on the same ground, and I think that’s the quality of bikes actually, that it doesn’t matter what kind of bike you have, it just matters that we’re next to one another and we can talk to each other which, you know, in our fancy, luxurious cars, we cannot really afford that because we have windshields, all the windows that disconnect us from one another. So even though I have nothing against cars and I actually own a car, I’m so happy to be here because I feel like this might be one of the places where we could actually get back to solidarity and to being closer together.

Sarah: Some of the people at the conference were there explicitly to build solidarity across different movements, using the bicycle as a tool.

Guillaume Otrage: So my name is Guillaume Otrage. I’m one of the organizers of a global initiative called the COP Bike Ride. And what we are organizing is a huge bike relay going from a climate conference to climate conference. The goal of that is actually to put the focus on the fact that biking is a very good solution for reducing carbon emissions. It’s what I would call a quick win for governments when you look at the solutions for reducing emissions in transport. So we’re going from—in fact, we’re going from COP to COP on a very long distance, like for instance this year we’re talking about 13,000 kilometers from COP to COP with a large number of cyclists. This year we’re expecting about a thousand participants. Then when we get to the COP we are trying to interact with ministers or people in charge of transport policies in order to convince them to put biking into their policy as a real solution among, of course, the many solutions for reducing emissions in transport.

Guillaume Otrage: And the interesting thing is as we are doing this very, very large, very big journey, we are stopping over in cities, in large cities, in order to interact with municipalities and ask them about their current biking policies, challenge them. And this year, in fact, we’re asking each city that we are meeting with three commitments at the horizon of 2030 on biking policies. So it can be number of kilometers of bike lanes, parking space and so forth. And the idea is to collect as many commitments as possible from as many cities to solidify our message at the COP.

Guillaume Otrage: Talking about solidarity, I would say it all starts with the common values that you realize as you are putting a project together like this, as you’re communicating about this project, you see that there’s a lot of common values between people from different countries. So amazing to see that we are in a collective effort where Georgians, Turks, Romanians, Brazilians, Africans are all collectively working on this project because they share the same values that are related to cycling. So there’s climate, of course, but there’s also other values. So I would say that yes, we are climate driven, but we leverage solidarity and we increase solidarity as well by what we are doing. Because in the end, yes, I fully think that taking a bicycle or hopping on a bicycle and cycling to some place is an act of solidarity that you can do every day, yes.

Sarah: I checked in with longtime friend of the podcast and motornormativity theorist Ian Walker to get his perspective on how promoting bicycles as transportation can help to achieve a broad range of policy objectives.

Ian Walker: I hope that there’s enough of the right people here that they start to be exposed to the more joined-up nature of this stuff. This is not a novel observation, but one of the problems is that something as simple as jumping on a bike addresses a dozen social challenges. It addresses public health and inequality and air pollution and space allocation. It just addresses all sorts of things. And very often, people are quite siloed and they don’t see the multiple aspects of the world that would be improved if we just rethought transport a little bit because it feels so mundane. The bicycle is not a glamorous thing, it’s not an expensive thing, so it doesn’t excite policymakers, but it genuinely holds the solutions to a lot of these problems.

Ian Walker: You know, the line I keep using as a bit of a joke is, “Tell me what you care about and I’ll tell you how the answer is less cars.” Because it does fix everything. So my hope is that people here at this event can be reminded or be shown the joined-up nature of this and how relatively simple mundane changes to the public realm can dramatically influence a whole bunch of other government objectives.

Sarah: How do you see this movement for active mobility, for a less car-centric society, how do you see that as being in solidarity with some of the other really important movements that we are seeing or needing to see in our world right now? For instance, you know, the fight to preserve democracy, the fight to mitigate and adapt to climate change. What does that mean in this context that we are in here?

Ian Walker: There’s probably a lot of ways that could pan out, and it’s a really quite expansive question. I mean, there’s obviously interesting historical examples. So people have written in the past about the role of the bicycle in early feminism, for example, and the bicycle as a liberator of people who otherwise might not have mobility or independence. There’s probably a lot of other ways you’d see that sort of thing happening, but the one that just immediately comes to mind is the importance of human-scale interaction. We’ve literally got friends in our lives who I’ve only met because I was on a bicycle. You know, neighbors who I’ve had interactions with, which would not have happened if I’d been in a car. And the human-scale nature of mobility—mobility of people on foot, on wheels, human-sized vehicles, it enables connectivity, it breaks down barriers, it enables everyday frictionless social interactions that surely cannot help but improve understanding amongst society.

Sarah: That theme of understanding and engagement came up again when I was talking with Cyprine Odada, whom Doug interviewed last year at Velo-city in Ghent.

Cyprine Odada: Who am I? I am the outgoing director of Critical Mass, Nairobi. I think last time when I had—when I spoke to Doug, I was the director. But I’m transitioning to a different initiative called Women Shaping Cities. And that initiative was mainly inspired by my desire to champion for mobility rights of women, children and other marginalized road uses. So the way I look at solidarity, specifically with the Kenyan context, it’s bringing people of different economic divides to be together and enjoy something, and just remove all those barriers that stop people from engaging with each other.

Cyprine Odada: I was talking to someone just now, and they were asking me what I see, and the impact of a bicycle bicycle is to, you know, a city. And I say, like, for me, bicycles help to reduce the communication barrier and loneliness in cities. Cars have become a metallic—like a prison for people. People are lonely, depressed, anxious, and bicycles have just become that antidote, an antidepressant that people need. And yeah, so solidarity to me is people enjoying something and not just shedding that, you know, rich versus poor mentality.

Sarah: And I spoke with another friend of the podcast, Melissa Bruntlett, co-author with her husband Chris of several great books about how active transportation can improve our cities and our lives.

Melissa Bruntlett: Yeah, my name is Melissa Bruntlett. I am an author and an advocate for better cities—namely for walking and cycling. And I like to come to the Velo-city Conference because I get to meet so many people like yourself, Sarah. And yeah, basically get reminded of this wonderful global community of advocates, professionals, researchers, that are all working in this space, and leaders to make cities around the world amazing for cycling.

Melissa Bruntlett: And I think yeah, this year there’s a lot happening in places that we haven’t been thinking about. And I think that’s important to be reminded about is that yes, we have the Netherlands where there’s lots of cycling, or Copenhagen or Paris, but then there’s also wonderful things happening in Tirana, in Albania, or here in Gdańsk. And being able to learn about what’s happening in those other contexts, I think, helps to energize those of us that maybe don’t get to live in cycling paradise. But it is possible, and all we do have to do is really come together, support the leaders that are making that happen and be inspired.

Melissa Bruntlett: Really, it’s, you know, this idea of solidarity, this—like I said, this global community. I think we need to remember that although things around us are in some places feeling quite dire, or we’re feeling a bit like we’re fighting a losing battle, everything goes in waves, and we know that when we’re feeling the most opposition it’s likely when we’re moving ahead in the most positive way. And so yeah, at this time where we find ourselves, I think these kinds of events are so important to remind each other that we’re not alone, that the fights that we might be having in North America or in Latin America, Africa, Europe, everywhere, there’s commonalities between all of them. And so finding the people that we can work with, finding, like I said, that inspiration. People—most people leave Velo-city Conference feeling energized, feeling like okay, not all is lost, I can still be hopeful. Which is part of the reason that I do what I do, is to let people know that we’re not alone. There are—there’s inspiration to be found everywhere. We can learn from each other. And, you know, all we have to—all we can do is, is keep—keep trying. And, you know, as many of us that are getting on in years like to say, “We’re not fighting for us anymore. We’re fighting for the next generation.” And, you know, someone has to do it. So why not us? [laughs]

Sarah: Why not us, indeed? I’m gonna give the last word to Catherine Elliot, because I love her determination and her joy in the work she does—and her hope.

Catherine Elliot: The democracy of movement is no better defined than to ride a bike. And when you bring people together, then of course you have a critical mass, and that’s what we need right now. So let’s keep doing it, and keep doing your podcast, keep writing the books, keep talking the talk, because eventually we’re gonna shift that over to a new window. It has to. Actually, there’s no way—there’s no future when it’s in flames. It actually doesn’t exist. And that’s the other message is everyone’s a cyclist; they actually just don’t know it yet. Even the people who are die-hard car drivers are actually—would be perfect cyclists because that’s what they want is that freedom. But what they don’t realize is they’ve been sold a lie, and there’s another sort of freedom.

Catherine Elliot: I think the e-bike can be a gateway for them because maybe they don’t feel super fit or don’t feel confident on a bike, and that’s where people like us can bring them into it. But we need to be open to talk to the other side. They can’t be our enemies. We need to bring them on, “Hey, look at what we have here. Why don’t you join our group?” And so that’s where I think we could probably be a bit more friendly to the other side and say, “Hey, look. Let’s talk about it. Let’s just talk.” That can be the most powerful thing is to have their voices heard. “What is it? Is it freedom you want? Because I can give you that. Why don’t you have a try? Here’s my e-bike.”

Sarah: That’s it for this episode of The War on Cars. Thank you so much to everyone at Velo-city. I’m so sorry I couldn’t include every person I spoke with there. It was a real privilege to talk with all of you. We will have links to the European Cyclists’ Federation, and many of the other organizations represented by the people we talked with in the show notes.

Sarah: The War on Cars is produced with the generous support of the Helen and William Mazer Foundation, and by listeners like you. Go to Patreon.com/thewaroncarspod and support our independent podcast by becoming a member. You’ll get exclusive bonus content, ad-free versions of regular episodes like this one, merch discounts and more. Big thanks to our top Patreon supporters: Charley Gee of Human Powered Law in Portland, Oregon, Virginia Baker and Mark Hedlund.

Sarah: And don’t forget, our new book, Life After Cars, is now available for pre-order. To get your copy, ask for it at your local bookstore or go to LifeAfterCars.com.

Sarah: Thanks also to Cleverhood. You can save 15 percent off the best rain gear for cycling and walking with code SUMMERRAIN now through the end of August. Visit Cleverhood.com/waroncars for more information. Thanks also to Xtracycle. Head to Xtracycle.com/thewaroncars and take the one-minute ride guide to find out which e-cargo bike is best for you. And save $500 by using promo code WARONCARS500. Again, that’s X-T-R-A-C-Y-C-L-E.com/thewaroncars.

Sarah: This episode was produced and edited by me. Our music is by Nathaniel Goodyear. On behalf of my co-host Doug Gordon, I’m Sarah Goodyear, and this is The War on Cars.