Streets Ahead

In this episode Laura visits Cardiff to see what the Welsh capital city is doing for cycling and making the city greener and more resilient in the face of extreme weather. In 2015 Greener Grangetown was completed a city centre project to improve water management and reduce huge volumes of water being transported to water processing plants, and to improve flood resilience. 12 Victorian streets were...

The recent local elections have created a national battle for power within the ruling Labour Party. After suffering substantial losses to Reform UK and the Green Party, even traditionally safe Labour councils have changed hands or been thrown into “no overall control”. Across the country, Reform UK gained 1,452 seats, the Greens gained 441, while Labour lost 1,498 seats. In this episode of St...

This episode of Streets Ahead examines the issue of children’s access to neighbourhood streets, and the impact of car dominance on child health. Discussing the issue with Adam and Laura are: Alice Ferguson , who co-founded play streets charity, Playing Out, in 2011, and ran it for 15 years until it wound up this year. In 2009 Alice and a neighbour developed the idea of a temporary play street and...

This episode of Streets Ahead dives into London’s Vision Zero Action Plan 2, the Mayor’s roadmap to eliminating death and serious injury on the capital’s roads by 2041. Laura Laker and Adam Tranter are joined by London’s Walking and Cycling Commissioner, Will Norman, to assess progress so far and interrogate whether the ambition matches delivery. We explore falling casualty rates, the expansion of...

In this episode Laura joins a host of (almost entirely female) guests, out on the road in London to talk about how cycle routes deliver - or not - for women’s safety.  In early 2025 Laura interviewed women on the London Cycling Campaign’s Women’s Freedom Ride, a mass ride, after dark, to highlight the safety concerns women face when cycling in London - and how some of the capital’s routes jus...

This time Adam, Ned and Laura meet to discuss local elections and Ned's recent trip to India. Close to home, the trio discusses the phenomenon of the local being national. From Andy Street and Andy Burnham's successes as regional mayors, to a Court of Appeal ruling that removing LTNs by the Tower Hamlets mayor would be illegal, local politics shapes national politics. And with the political landsc...

This time Ned, Adam and Laura talk targets - and why the third Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy (CWIS3) needs outputs, not simply outcomes. They are joined by the CEO of the Walk, Wheel, Cycle Trust (formerly Sustrans), Xavier Brice, who knows all about strategies, and delivering active transport networks. The government recently ended a consultation on CWIS3 but, frustratingly, the proposa...

Last week marked five years since the previous government's pavement parking consultation ended and in that time, no action has been taken. Despite cross party, and public support, no decisions have been made by any of the intervening four prime ministers’ governments. In the meantime local authorities in Scotland began enforcing its pavement parking law, passed in 2019, with some success. There,...

Lisbon’s Streets and the People Trying to Change Them: Lisbon is one of Europe's most picturesque cities with a reputation for being a safe place to live, work and visit. That's true from one lens, but look deeper and you'll discover a city with one of the worst road safety records in Europe and recently rated one of the worst European cities for children’s urban mobility. This time, Adam and Laur...

This time, Laura talks to four women, and one man inspired and backed by women, about the role of women in the world of cycling. Spanning three continents our interviewees tell us their stories. From improving adventure cycling access in Scandinavia to the need for better gender equity in the bicycle industry, via the role of women in advocacy in the USA, to women empowering women across Europe an...

In this episode, Adam takes you to Guimarães, Portugal, where he attended The Future Design of Streets conference, and came away seeing our streets in a whole new way. Streets aren't only about transport, of course. Importantly, they're about climate, equity, social life, and how we experience a city day-to-day. To explore this expanded view, we’ve put together four conversations with global thoug...

In this episode, Laura chats to Melissa Bruntlett about her new book, Women Changing Cities: Global Stories of Urban Transformation. Melissa is an urbanist, author, and founder of Modacity, an urban mobility consultancy - and one half of urbanist power couple, Chris and Melissa Bruntlett.  Melissa and Chris have authored two books to date, Building the Cycling City, and Curbing Traffic. Their...

Streets Ahead's presenters, well at least two of them, have been gallivanting around Europe in recent weeks, coming back together in this episode as a trio to embark on an audio roam through some of the current topics in cycling. From the link between bike racing and everyday cycling, to the spending review's implications, to the rise of 'fake e-bikes', a recent report which Laura and Adam worked...

This episode Laura and Adam talk to two guests from PJA, who happen to be this week’s sponsors, about rural active travel. Phil Jones is chairman at PJA and Ben Coleman PJA's technical director. Active travel is sometimes associated with busy urban bike lanes and bustling city pavements. But rural areas’ transport needs are as, if not more acute. With fewer buses or rail services, and longer dista...

It's fair to say this issue has been rumbling on a while. In the 1970s 70% of 4-11 year olds walked to school. Now less than half do. Three quarters of parents say 'side road zebras' would help them walk their kids to school more. In countries around the world white stripes, painted on the roads where side streets meet main roads, give pedestrians confidence, and drivers a reminder, that pavement...

Terence Bendixson was the Guardian's planning correspondent in the 1960s when he wrote a piece that propelled him into walking campaigning. In 1969 he joined Living Streets (then the Pedestrians' Association) when he and its founder hit it off. Foley, a London-based journalist, founded the Pedestrians Association in 1929 , when motor vehicles were proliferating; he was concerned about the dangers...

We speak to Dr Alex Chapman, Senior Economist at the New Economics Foundation (NEF); Alex focuses on the economics of climate change, nature recovery and inequality.  The Government has announced that growth is its key priority and followed up with its backing of major transport projects, such as the expansion of Heathrow Airport. We ask: do big transport projects always lead to growth, and a...

This time we’re talking about delivery riders. There are roughly 100,000 couriers in the UK, whose working lives are governed by apps like Deliveroo, UberEats and JustEat. 88,000 of these work for UberEats alone (though many riders complete tasks for multiple platforms simultaneously). These app-based delivery services act intermediaries between you and your takeaway, using algorithms to assign on...

Ned and Laura join a bike bus! This celebratory, festive episode of Streets Ahead includes an East End bike ride with tinsel, some Christmas tunes, and a joyful pedal through the streets of West Ham with adults and kids, to Park Primary School. A bike bus is simply a group ride to school, with both adults and kids joining at different points on set days, similar to a school bus. Except everyone pe...

A community group has raised £75,000 to take its local council, Tower Hamlets, to the High Court. Save Our Safer Streets is seeking to retain and improve the changes to the streets in Bethnal Green, implemented in 2020, but Mayor Lutfur Rahman wants to fulfil a manifesto pledge to remove them. Laura and Adam spoke to Jane Harris, spokesperson for Save Our Safer Streets and Ricardo Gama, senior ass...

This time Ned and Laura go behind the walls of Pentonville Prison for this very special episode. Listeners may remember Stef Jones, founder of XO Bikes, who trains ex-offenders in cycle maintenance in south London to help them turn their lives around.  With UK prisons full to bursting, people like Stef, along with prison staff themselves, try to break the cycle of reoffending that sees an est...

Our last episode, an interview with Secretary of State for Transport, Louise Haigh MP, caused a bit of a storm and went viral. Laura's interview was picked up by a host of UK national media including BBC News, The Sun, GB News, The Times and more. We discuss how the story happened, what it means for active travel - and why the wider media picked up on it so extensively. Helping us navigate this is...

Louise Haigh MP, the Secretary of State for Transport, joins Laura Laker on Streets Ahead for an insightful discussion on the future of active travel in the UK. From her own cycling experiences to the role of walking and cycling in tackling public health and climate challenges, Haigh outlines her vision for a national integrated transport strategy that prioritises active travel and discusses "unpr...

In this episode Laura travels to Paris, to meet one of the campaigners behind a successful push to put cycling at the heart of the city's transport plans for the 2024 Olympics. Paris en Selle is one of a cohort of campaign groups who staged an 'Olympic relay' protest that inspired Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo to roll out cycleways linking every one of the city's 35 Games venues. This would mean visito...

This time we're talking with our guest about life across the Pond. If early US cities were inherently walkable, what on earth happened? Is an active travel revolution possible in such a car-centric nation? Why are there parking minimums in new developments? And what on Earth is Euclidian zoning?! John Simmerman, of the Active Towns podcast and YouTube channel, joins Adam and Laura at the start of...