The Freewheeling Podcast

• Lee Waters on Breaking Orthodoxy to Achieve Real Change

  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 European-style integrated public transport system.But change is hard, and in this discussion, he lays bare the political resistance, entrenched car dependency and cultural battles that make sustainable transport such a tough sell. We explore why transport is often ignored in politics, how it’s the paperwork of design manuals and Treasury rules that quietly shape our world - and why politicians need to stop treating mobility like an economic formula and start seeing it as a social justice issue.Lee also reflects on the personal toll of political leadership, the lessons he learned about winning public support for difficult changes and why even the most radical policies can become accepted norms - if you stick with them. If you care about transport, politics or just how to get big changes over the line, this is an episode you won’t want to miss.

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  54:40
• Frank Elter on How Big Firms can stay Innovative

  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 this edition of The Freewheeling Podcast we talk about how modularity can help organisations be “ambidextrous” (i.e. able to focus on operations and innovation), and the fact that every approach creates new problems to solve. He also tells a pretty remarkable story about how Telenor started its most innovative project to date!

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  39:00
• Rikesh Shah on Public Sector Procurement

  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 procurement is a challenge and what can be done about it.My guest is a former colleague. I knew Rikesh Shah when he was a colleague as Head of Open Innovation at Transport for London, but now he heads up the Government’s Innovation Procurement Empowerment Centre. In this conversation, we discuss how cultural barriers, such as fear of failure, hinder innovation in procurement and the barriers startups face in selling to the public sector.Rikesh talks me through how the new Procurement Act introduces pre-market engagement as a requirement and he emphasises the benefits of a process called the Competitive Flexible Procedure.Above all, though, it’s about the need for public sector organisations to embrace experimentation and iteration.

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  35:10
• David Milner on The Design of Cities - and on Trams

  Why don’t we build homes people wish to live in? Terraced streets are popular and sustainable and support shops, services and transport, so why do we keep building low-density, car-dependent suburbs? And what needs to be done to create a nationwide tram renaissance?These are just some of the questions I get into in discussion with David Milner, the MD of Create Streets.Create Streets is a curious outfit: officially, it’s a design consultancy. But it has a policy and lobbying arm, and is highly influential with the current Government. Not bad for just 10 people…If, like me, you would love to see some big changes in how we design and build towns, this is an episode you’ll enjoy.

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  53:10
• George Hazel on Land Value Capture Funding

  Everyone agrees we need more sustainable transport but no-one has enough money to pay for it. Could ‘land value capture’ be the answer? This is the approach where by transport lines are funded through the increases in the land value that the stations stimulate.Well, George Hazel thinks so. In fact, he knows so, because he developed the land value capture method used for the recently-reopened Northumberland line. In today’s episode he tells me how it works; but only after a fascinating discussion on the “Seven Deadly Wins” for making a city succeed.

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  46:05

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