The Freewheeling Podcast

This edition looks back at the themes that emerged from the 2025 episodes of The Freewheeling Podcast. We look back at inspirational city leaders who have transformed places for the benefit of their residents (and faced death threats for doing so), we revisit the entrepreneurs building great transport products to improve journeys and we discuss the big ideas that came out of last year’s conversati...

Jane Cole is MD of the best bus company in Britain, at least according to the judges of the UK Bus Awards. In fact, that’s not all: she also leads the best tram company in Britain, according to the judges who awarded them Tram Operator of the Year. Today’s podcast is all about change, but it’s not primarily the sexy kind of technological change that we often think of when we think about change. It...

Caroline Seton is the co-founder of the London bike share firm Forest. They’re in unambiguous second place to Lime, the great global bicycle behemoth - but, famously, being second makes a firm try harder. In today’s episode, we talk about the challenges of being a shared mobility firm in a municipal environment, the realities of whether cities actually want sustainable transport and the changes sh...

The Budget has finally been unveiled. But what does it mean for transport? In this week’s episode, I review the budget with Sir Michael Holden, former Chairman of Directly Operated Railways. We discuss the impact on railway economics (and whether there’s money for the fares freeze), whether the fuel duty increases will actually happen, the Government’s commitment to capital investment and - above...

The world’s moving faster than ever, and policy changes with dizzying pace. It was only in 2021 that the Conservatives issued the most pro-bus policy document probably ever published by a British Government. The National Bus Strategy was something of a marvel for those of us who want to see better public transport. It promised a vision of bus lanes in every town, coordinated networks and exception...

Data City Founder Tom Forth has been told some extraordinary reasons why the North underperforms the South. Including that it’s down to Northerners being stupid. Or drunk. He’s even read academic papers outlining these theories. In a fascinating episode of the podcast, we get into a discussion on the real reasons. They go back a thousand years but transport and our hyper-centralised way of making...

Why does electrification in the UK cost so much more than in the rest of Europe? And why does it always seem to go wrong? In today’s episode, I talk to Managing Director (UK) of Furrer+Frey, the leading Swiss engineering company. We delve into the root cause of the problem: the way HM Treasury makes funding decisions, which results in a feast-famine environment in which teams are trained, mobilise...

𝗙𝗶𝗹𝗶𝗽 𝗪𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗲𝘂𝘄 𝗶𝘀 𝘀𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗼𝗿 𝗱𝗲𝗽𝘂𝘁𝘆 𝗺𝗮𝘆𝗼𝗿 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗚𝗵𝗲𝗻𝘁, and the Alderman responsible for transport and mobility policy. He took over the portfolio and immediately set about trying to make Ghent a more beautiful, peaceful city. As I can confirm from having visited, he really succeeded! But not without a lot of difficulty, even including death threats. Today’s episode is a masterclass in the art...

Founding a startup is hard, but it’s even harder when you’re dealing with the most painful and emotive moments in peoples’ lives. That’s what Dan Garrett decided to do when he created Farewill, now the country’s largest “Deathtech” firm. His business enables peoples to self-serve themselves wills, as well as offering other services including probate and even cremation. How do you move fast when yo...

Mini Holland is the poster-child for the transformation of an urban area. A network of congested residential streets in North East London has become peaceful and tranquil. The local high street converted from a double-parked rat-run into a desirable pedestrianised destination. As the first Low Traffic Neighbourhood of the modern era, council reps from across Britain (and Europe) have visited to le...

Autonomous public transport has the potential to transform our cities. Suburbs that are not currently served by public transport could be cost-effectively connected for the first time, while conventional bus routes could be expanded. One city that is taking the lead in experimenting with autonomous public transport is Paris, under the leadership of James Dick at RATP. In today’s episode, he tells...

Gian-Mattia Schucan founded Fairtiq to make travelling by public transport effortless: no tickets, no gates, no stress. We talk about the journey from idea to reality, what operators really want from innovators and how to make change happen in public transport. I’m sad to say that this is the last episode of Season 4 but, don’t worry, I’ll be back with Season 5 in September.

“It's fine when you're swinging big to have a few misses in a controlled environment” - 𝗝𝗼𝗻𝗻𝘆 𝗠𝗼𝗼𝗱, 𝗗𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗡𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗔𝘂𝗱𝗶𝘁 𝗢𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗲 making it very clear that it’s fine for public sector organisations to try things and fail. In today’s episode, I talk to Jonny about what value for money really means, why BCR is often misused and how the NAO supports innovation in the public sector. The conver...

What happens when a rail consultant unexpectedly becomes an MP? In this episode, I talk to Olly Glover MP about the chaos of election night, the shock of landing in Parliament and what the job of an MP really involves. We explore why innovation is hard in legacy sectors like rail, and how the UK’s political system both helps and hinders progress. Olly shares his frustrations with UK transport poli...

In this episode, I’m joined by Lars Strömgren, Vice Mayor for Transport and Urban Environment in Stockholm, and one of the people most responsible for Sweden’s cycling boom. We explore how Stockholm went from a city with less than 1% cycling modal share in the 1980s to one of the most bike-friendly places in Europe. Lars reflects on how his childhood on his grandmother’s bike shaped his passion fo...

My guest this week is Anjali Devadasan, founder of Treeva, a startup generating energy from passing vehicles and trains. Her turbines harness airflow to power local infrastructure like lighting and EV chargers. We talked about the technology, the challenges of scaling, and her personal drive to tackle climate change, inspired by her family’s personal experience of climate-change induced flash floo...

In Oslo, Christian Willoch and his team at Ruter are doing something most cities haven’t even begun to talk about – using autonomous vehicles to strengthen public transport, not compete with it. In this episode, I visit the pilot project they’ve got going, with real members of the public travelling on Ruter-branded autonomous vehicles in exactly the kind of outer suburb in which this technology wi...

Stephen Bush, Associate Editor at the Financial Times , is one of the few political journalists who truly gets transport policy. In this episode, we talk about why transport matters far more to economic productivity than politicians realise, why ambition in major infrastructure projects has declined since the financial crisis and why simply nationalising services won't fix public transport. Stephe...

Elke Van den Brandt has transformed Brussels' streets – and taken a political battering for doing so. As the city’s mobility minister, she’s championed slower speeds, safer roads and public spaces that feel more like “living rooms than corridors”. We talk about her 30km/h city-wide limit, the backlash it sparked, the silent majority that supports it and the power of empathy, small projects and sho...

Here’s a taster of what’s coming up in Season 4. Subscribe to enjoy the full series!

For the last episode in Season 3, I’m joined by Tom Nutley of Urban Sharing to dive into the state of micromobility: what’s working, what isn’t - and why. We explore the roots of the industry, from 1960s bike shares to the scooter boom, and discuss how cities have too often repeated past mistakes. Tom argues passionately that micromobility must be treated as part of the public transport ecosystem,...

Why is Britain’s economy so lopsided? In most developed countries, you don’t have to move to the capital to find the best jobs, yet in the UK, that’s still the reality for many. London dominates, while our second-tier cities (Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, etc) underperform compared to their European counterparts. Paul Swinney, Director of Policy and Research at the Centre for Cities, has spent...

Most politicians either follow public opinion or get trapped in the orthodoxy of the established approach. Lee Waters took a different route. As both Minister for Transport and Minster for Climate Change in Wales, he led some of the most radical shifts in UK transport policy: drastically curtailing road-building, introducing a national 20mph speed limit and putting in place the foundations of a Eu...

Frank Elter may be a part-time Professor, but he’s a very real-world professor. As Chief Scientist and Vice President at Telenor Research, he’s responsible for innovation and planning for one of Norway’s telecoms giants. He has thought deeply about how corporations can stay innovative. He’s thought about it concerning his work, and he’s researched at his university. He’s even written a book. On th...

The UK public sector spends somewhere between £300 billion and a trillion. A lot of that goes through public procurement processes. That creates enormous innovation potential. Yet, being honest, the words “public sector procurement” aren’t seen as synonyms for innovation. This week, the new Procurement Act 2023 comes into force, so it seems a good time to stop and look at why public sector procure...