Peter Norton Warns Don’t be Dazzled by the “Magic” of Automated Vehicles

This month we’re very excited to be speaking with Associate Professor Peter Norton who is a historian at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA. Peter has authored two highly successful and thought-provoking books, “Fighting Traffic, The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American …

Are we being killed by traffic engineers? Shocking revelations from Wes Marshall

Our guest this month is Wes Marshall, Author of the thought provoking book, “Killed by a Traffic Engineer.” This book has certainly ruffled feathers amongst some elements of the traffic engineer “establishment.” So much so that some state DOT’s (Departments of Transport) in the USA have banned the …

How Prue Oswin achieved better outcomes for safe children’s travel

After graduating with degrees in Geography and Environmental Engineering, Prue Oswin spent eight years as a water engineer before switching to active transport in 2009.  Ever since then, Prue has been deeply involved in making her home region of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland a better place to w…

National Transport Conference Special Edition Featuring Keynotes Lucy Saunders and Giles Perkins

We recorded this month’s episode at the National Transport Conference, that is run each year by the Transport Professionals Association. Both the conference and association have just been rebranded and relaunched by the organisation formerly known as the AITPM. Both Irene and Phil headed to Adelai…

Sam Johnson Reveals the Amazing Potential of the World Bank

The World Bank might not be the first organisation that active travel advocates think of as an important potential partner. But with billions of dollars at their disposal they’ve already been enabling some amazing projects around the world, in part through the work of the highly motivated expert wh…

Voices of Velo-city: Wins, Challenges and the Future of Active Mobility

Welcome to a completely different format for this month’s Squeaky Wheel Podcast. At the Velo-city conference 2025 in Gdansk, Poland, held from 10th-13th June 2025, Phil recorded a “vox pops”. He asked the same four questions in the same order to seven different conference presenters, who came from…

Valuable, Not Vulnerable: Reframing Road Safety for Active Travel with Hafez Alavi

In this episode we’re talking with leading safety expert, Dr Havez Alavi. Hafez has a passion for making our lives safer when we travel. Havez was born and raised in Iran. We start by asking him about key events during the first half of his life that helped to inspire his passion for road safety.…

Wheels of Progress: Jill Warren Reflects on 5 Years as CEO of the European Cycling Federation

Just over five years ago, Jill Warren left a very senior global corporate career and took a serious pay cut to follow her passion and become the CEO of one of the world's largest and most influential cycling advocacy organisations, the European Cyclists’ Federation (ECF) She’s overseen some histor…

AITPM's CEO Kirsty Kelly on decarbonising our transport systems

Kirsty Kelly is quietly spoken, but in this interview she shares great insights with authority. Since 2019, Kirsty has been CEO of the AITPM (Australian Institute of Traffic Planning in Management) which is Australia’s national association for transport professionals. Under Kirsty’s leadership, t…

Matt Burke wants us to reckon with autobesity 

Matt is a great communicator who not only gives many insightful comments, but does so with a smile on his face and a glint in his eye. In our interview he covers a wide range of topics from the “D-Day Invasion” of cars that lands in every schoolground twice a day, through to “autobesity”, the need…