The Squeaky Wheel Podcast

Irene McAleese and Phil Latz

The Squeaky Wheel Podcast is here to inform and inspire through engaging conversations with changemakers shaping the future of active travel and urban mobility. Your hosts, Phil Latz and Irene McAleese, speak with leaders across business, government, academia, and advocacy, sharing insights and ideas that drive real-world impact. Got something to squeak about? Get in touch with The Squeaky Wheel team via our website: squeakywheelpodcast.com Follow The Squeaky Wheel on Facebook: facebook.com/squeakywheelpodcast Follow The Squeaky Wheel on BlueSky: bsky.app/profile/squeaky-wheel.bsky.social

  1. 2D AGO

    Grant Ennis Explains the Dangers of Corporate Disinformation

    Welcome to season three of The Squeaky Wheel Podcast! We’re starting the year with an amazing guest who’s from San Francisco, USA, but lives in Paris, France and lectures for a university based in Melbourne, Australia! Grant also speaks five languages and has previously worked for international aid agencies in a wide range of countries around the world including Mexico, Brazil, Paraguay, Honduras, Kenya and Syria. Since 2020 Grant has been an adjunct Lecturer at Monash University. Grant’s teaching and research focuses on the political and commercial determinants of health, primarily exploring the political influence of the sugar, road, and fossil fuel lobbies. Grant has written the acclaimed book Dark PR: How Corporate Disinformation Undermines Our Health and the Environment. His work has been referenced in the Journal of Transport & Health, Traffic Safety Research, Alcohol Clinical & Experimental Research, the Australian, Michael West, the Australian Financial Review, the Irish Times, the Irish Examiner, the Irish Independent, among others. Grant’s scholarship has had international reach and has contributed to parliamentary discussions related to nutrition and transport in Australia, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. Dark PR includes details of “Nine devious frames” used by corporations and in particular their highly paid public relations consultants to effectively fight back against members of the public who are advocating for positive change, for example to make our streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists. In our conversation we deliberately don’t go into these in detail, because there has already been an excellent interview recorded with Grant, that does unpack each frame in order, one by one. It was done by The War on Cars, a podcast that we highly recommend and are Patreon supporters of. You can listen to that podcast episode here. In our conversation, Grant fires off many references to earlier research and reports. Here are the relevant links: F Nuance https://kieranhealy.org/files/papers/f**k-nuance.pdf Twitter and Tear Gas https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_online_social_change_easy_to_organize_hard_to_win If We Burn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_We_Burn Renationalisation of British Rail https://www.lemonde.fr/en/transport/article/2024/12/04/uk-set-to-nationalize-train-operators-from-may_6735167_216.html President of Spain, Pedro Sánchez https://latinolens.tonolatino.com/p/a-message-to-the-far-right-from-spain IMF Report on US$7 Trillion in Fossil Fuel Subsidies  https://www.imf.org/en/topics/climate-change/energy-subsidies Chartists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartism Hands off our charities alliance https://unitingcare.org.au/submission/hands-off-our-charities-alliance-australian-charities-and-not-for-profits-commission-amendment-2021-measures-no-2-regulations-2021/ Sharon Beder - https://youtu.be/gAQKXmUnc4Y Alliance for a Paving Moratorium  / Jan Lundberg https://www.culturechange.org/apm_page.htm Reactionary Centrism https://www.volts.wtf/p/all-about-reactionary-centrism   What’s Up? Unfortunately Squeaky Wheel Podcast co-host Irene McAleese is stepping away for a little while to deal with some personal commitments. The show will carry on with just Phil Latz for the moment, which means a much shorter What’s Up section. Phil mentions World Bicycle Relief has just passed an amazing milestone of building and delivering over one million bicycles into the field. Here’s a great video that shows what this means to the one million recipients. Look out for our next episode, due out on the third Thursday of March. Until then, keep squeaking! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    45 min

  2. 12/17/2025

    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 City” and “Autonorama, The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving.” Peter is a sought after keynote speaker who has given his unique perspective and insights on how we got to where we are today at many conferences around the world. As he reveals in our conversation, even Waymo, the multi-billion automated vehicle operator owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, has had Peter share his perspectives about automated vehicles with them. During our conversation, we refer to this amazing video showing everyday life on Market Street, the main street in San Francisco in 1906. In addition to showing how very different street scapes and traffic looked at the dawn of the automobile era compared to today, it’s also poignant in that it was filmed just days before the vibrant city was largely destroyed by a devastating earthquake and subsequent fires. Later in our conversation we talk about “autonomous vehicles” that as Peter thoughtfully points out, are anything but autonomous and instead should be called “automated vehicles”, we refer to this safety report from Waymo. In our “What’s Up” section at the end of the episode, Irene refers to the new Kangaroo Point Bridge that, less than a year after opening has already had over three million wheeling and walking trips, averaging about 10,000 people per day, with zero cars. Here’s a link to the Brisbane City Council’s announcement of this milestone. And here some progress photos of construction that Squeaky Wheel Phil, (ever the active travel infrastructure nerd!) took each time he visited Brisbane, culminating in his first ride across the newly opened bridge. This is yet another great example of “Build it and they will come.” There certainly weren’t 10,000 people swimming across that stretch of the Brisbane River each day before it opened… We’ll be taking a Christmas break and wish all of our listeners a merry Christmas and happy new year! Look out for our first podcast of 2026 on Thursday 19th February and then on the third Thursday of each subsequent month. Until then, keep squeaking! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    58 min

  3. 11/19/2025

    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 book from their libraries. But that hasn’t stopped staff from those DOT’s creating unsanctioned discussion groups to study the book’s many revelations. Irene talked with Wes in Perth just after he’d given his keynote address to the 2025 Australian Road Safety Conference in late October. Wes Marshall, PhD, is a professor of civil engineering at the University of Colorado Denver, where he holds a joint appointment in urban planning. He plays a pivotal role as director of the university of Colorado's Human-Centered Transportation program and their Transportation Research Center. Wes is a licensed Professional Engineer and focuses on transportation teaching and research dedicated to creating safer and more sustainable transportation systems. Wes, also has a podcast called Look Both Ways that he cohosts with David Zipper. During covid lockdown he wrote “Killed by a Traffic Engineer - Shattering the Delusion that Science Underpins the Transportation System” You can find out more about Wes and subscribe to his newsletter via his website. You can buy his book here. We’d like to give special thanks to the organisers of the Australasian Road Safety Conference, including Elissa Lulan, who arranged a quiet room for the interview and kindly allowed us to display our Squeaky Wheel Podcast banner at the conference.   What’s Up? One interesting story that we edited out of our “What’s Up?” segment for the sake of brevity, but you might like to look at, is this very demeaning to cyclists and tone deaf poster that Irene saw on the Transperth train that was taking her back to the airport at the end of the conference. Irene’s post about this literally went viral: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7387447368486420480/ Phil spoke about the new Sea Otter Australia cycling festival that he attended. This is the first annual edition of huge, long-running Sea Otter cycling festivals held each year in the USA and Europe. He also spoke about receiving and reading “Life After Cars”. If you haven’t yet heard about this excellent book, then please take a look. Irene attended a webinar sharing the results of the new 2025 National Walking and Cycling Participation Survey. She was then heading to Barcelona to speak at the Tomorrow Mobility World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. Then to Hobart for the 2025 National Parks and Leisure Conference in Hobart, Tasmania before finishing her “conference blitz” at the ITS Australia Summit on the Gold Coast, Queensland. ITS stands for Intelligent Transport Systems. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    48 min

  4. 10/15/2025

    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 walk and ride, especially for children.  Prue began her career working within local government, then for a traffic engineering company. Later Prue set up her own consultancy that she ran for almost a decade.  Recently she’s joined the Planning Institute of Australia as State Manager for Queensland and the Northern Territory.   Prue wrote this very widely read article about her work, particularly highlighting evidence-based active transport planning and save independent travel for children, that we refer to extensively in our conversation.  Two great quotes from Prue:  “We don’t build our bridges where people are swimming across the river. Where people are too frightened to go, we’re not going to get traffic volumes data that tells us that.”  “Having a road network without safe crossings is like having a Meccano set without the nuts!”  Here is a link to the website of Carloine Criado Perez, author of the book Invisible Women, that Prue refers to in this episode.  Prue refers to the Ride Score Program that has helped substantially increase the number of children riding to school.  Prue uses CompassIOT data. “Cheaper, faster, evidence-based.”  Prue talks about the ScootSchool program that she created for training young people about safe walking, riding and scooting.    What’s Up?  In our What’s Up Section, Irene spoke about the iMove grant that they’d just been awarded to conduct this important project.  She also mentioned that Ride Score, a project that our guest Prue Oswin has interacted with in Queensland, that is run by We Ride Australia, has just won an iMove grant to expand into Perth, Western Australia.  Irene gave a call to action for anyone wanting to report problems with their local infrastructure to use the See.Sense app and finally, she mentioned the See.Sense newsletter that is called Signals.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    41 min

  5. 09/17/2025

    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 Adelaide for this year’s conference that ran from 3rd - 5th September. Phil attended as a guest of the TPA to record this podcast episode. We’d like to thank Kirsty Kelly and Erika Childs from the TPA, not just for their invitation but their wonderful hospitality at the conference. In this episode, you’ll hear from the first two of the three keynote speakers that opened the conference each day. We’re also very happy to report that the third keynote presenter, Skye Duncan who is Executive Director of the Global Designing Cities Initiative, is also happy to join us on the Squeaky Wheel, but because this is already an extra-long episode, we thought it would be best to speak with Skye at a later date. Our first guest, Lucy Saunders is a unique combination of public health specialist, urbanist and transport planner. She has created the Healthy Streets Approach, an evidence based- framework for decision making at every level. Lucy works with organisations across the world adapting her approach to each context. Lucy, who is based in the UK, has advised a wide range of major clients including the World Health Organisation and UK Government Departments for Transport and Health. She is a skilled and engaging presenter and teacher who has inspired and trained hundreds of practitioners, advocates and politicians around the world. To find out more about Healthy Streets where you can also download their free tools and other excellent resources, please visit their website. Giles Perkins, leads WSP’s Future Mobility team in the UK and has over 34 years’ experience in the futures, transportation planning, digital and intelligent transport sectors. He has worked in the public and private sectors as a senior client and director level consultant and has led major projects across all modes. Giles is a recognised expert in the field of Future Mobility / Transport and Zero Emission Mobility. He is a strategic thinker with an in-depth appreciation of the challenges facing all modes of transport resulting from disruptors, both within the transportation realm and wider socio-economic changes which influence it. Amongst many senior roles, Giles is a Board member of the National Centre for Accessible Transport in the UK. What’s Up Squeaky Wheel Podcast co-host Irene gave a presentation and took part in a panel discussion in her capacity as co-founder of See.sense. She’s seen here answering a question with fellow panel members from left to right: Marko Bogicevic from BDO (obscured), James Edwards from Arup, John Bennett from Arup, former Squeaky Wheel Podcast guest Kylie Nixon from Arup and Tim Veitch from Veitch Lister Consulting. It was lovely to catch up with Squeaky Wheel Podcast listener and longstanding advocate Peter Lumb in Adelaide. Amongst many activities, Peter was a co-founder and long time co-organiser of the Australian Walking and Cycling Conference. Next month Irene will be heading to Perth, WA for the 2025 Australasian Road Safety Conference. During the same week Phil will be heading to Batemans Bay, NSW for the first annual Sea Otter Australia that will be including a conference and trade expo. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    1h 25m

  6. 08/20/2025

    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 who was our inspiring guest this month. Sam Johnson is a Sustainable Transport Specialist with the World Bank and Visiting Researcher at the Technical University of Eindhoven, focusing on innovation and urban mobility transitions. He has worked in transport infrastructure advisory for the World Bank with many national governments over the last eight years. Sam co-leads the World Bank’s Active Mobility Community of Practitioners and is a strong advocate for people-centric urban design and reducing car dependency to foster more vibrant, equitable, affordable, healthy, and green cities. On UN Sustainable Transport Day (November 26, 2025), he plans to release an independent, ambitious publication arguing why and how to invest up to 10% of Government road budgets in Livable Streets in all 193 UN member states by the end of the United Nations Decade of Sustainable Transport (2026-2035). The work is tentatively titled ”Investing 10% of Road Budgets in Livable Streets for 2035. Of course, understanding there’s no guarantee that your idea would be adopted, if you can think of a punchier title, a free limited edition Squeaky Wheel Podcast cap could be winging its way to you! Simply write your idea in the contact us form here. Sam packed a huge amount of exciting information into his chat with us, often about places and projects that most of us will have been until now completely unaware of. If any of these topics interest you, below are a series of links through which you can find more information. Here is a link to the cyclingMAX tool that the World bank Group developed in conjunction with the ITDP (Institute for Transportation & Development Policy) and the GFDT (Global Facility to Decarbonise Transport) On 3rd June World Bank Group staff members created a “human bicycle” to celebrate World Bicycle Day. Here’s a link to a video and post by Nicolas Peltier, Global Director Transport, World Bank. During our interview with Sam, he spoke about progress being made with cycling and active travel plans in some unexpected cities around the world. Here are links that he kindly supplied to four cities and countries that he mentioned. Abu Dhabi Singapore Addis Ababa Santiago We’ll also include a link to a detailed power point presentation that Sam gave to the Velo-city 2025 conference in Gdansk, Poland. It includes excellent photos, charts and maps about Tianjin’s vision to transform their city into a vibrant, liveable, active travel friendly destination. What’s Up Phil mentions two major projects underway in Sydney, Australia. Here are photos of the opening day of the new Oxford St protected cycle lane and Sydney and the new ramp currently under construction at the Sydney Harbour Bridge, including one showing the five flights of stairs that it will be replacing. Irene mentions ITS Australia's announcement of world-leading research by a multi-party government led team which explored how to better leverage existing data and technology to deliver safer, faster and more efficient road travel, shaping a future of seamless mobility. By incorporating See.Sense data in the project they found that cyclist movement and braking data revealed hidden safety risks and flow inefficiencies, providing actionable insights for intersection and infrastructure design. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    40 min

  7. 07/16/2025

    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 a wide range of locations around the world. Unfortunately, the sound quality of the recording of one of the guests was too poor to use, so you will only see six guests below. Apologies to Murat Suyabatmaz, Co-founder and Director of the Turkish Cyclists Association – hopefully we can chat at a future Velo-city! Our guests in order of appearance are: Aangi ShahSenior Associate, Institute of Transportation and Development Policy, Mumbai, India Amanda NgabiranoChairperson, The National Physical Planning Board, Kampala, Uganda Chris BruntlettInternational Relations Manager – Dutch Cycling Embassy, Utrecht, Netherlands Karen VancluysenSecretary General, Polis (Cities and Regions for Transport Innovation), Brussels, Belgium. Philippe CristSenior Advisor at the International Transport Forum (ITF) and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), but emphasising that he was speaking in a personal capacity. From Paris, France via Nashville Tennessee. Elanor McMahonFormer cabinet minister, CEO & Founder of Share the Road, Ontario, Canada. The four questions asked for their personal perspectives on what the scene was like in their home city- the biggest recent wins, main challenges and their hopes for the future. You’ll hear a lot of vision, passion and a unique global snapshot. Enjoy! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    52 min

  8. 06/18/2025

    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. Having already completed a bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering in Iran, followed by a masters in transport engineering and planning, Hafez then migrated to Australia and did a PhD in road safety and injury prevention at Monash University. Based in Melbourne, Monash’s Accident Research Centre is the largest and most respected of its type in Australia. After a distinguished career spanning state, federal and international government funded authorities, Hafez created his own consulting firm in 2020 which he continues to run today. You might think that road safety research is a dry and dull topic for conversation, but as you’ll soon hear, Hafez has an irrepressible enthusiasm for life and his passion about this topic is contagious! Here are some links to a range of presentations Hafez has previously posted on LinkedIn: 10 Common Myths About Speed & Speeding. Hafez collaborated with colleagues to produce this humorous 10 point article and an excellent four minute video explaining the dangers of speeding. How a Local Council in the US Eradicated Road deaths? Hoboken, New Jersey Seven strategy tips after Hafez, who is a prolific traveller, visited Hoboken. How to Provide a Safe System for Valuable Road Users, i.e. Pedestrians, Cyclist and Micrombility Users: A LinkedIn post and video produced by Hafez based upon the Kinetic Energy Management Model developed at Monash University Accident Research Centre. How to Organise Our Roads and Streets with Safety of Everyone in Mind A graphic explainer from Hafez about how street hierarchy should be organised and designed. Community’s Reaction to 30km/h Zones in Melbourne, Australia Spelling out the proven benefits of 30 kph zones for all local streets. How to Provide a Safe System for E-Scooter Riders A five point plan, written by Hafez, for achieving safer e-scooter riding. How to Look at Different Infrastructure from a Safe System Perspective. This time a Dutch-style Roundabout A two minute video produced by Hafez that explains the key design features needed to make a roundabout safer, not just for people driving, but also cycling and walking. Hafez also briefly refers to CASA, this is the Centre for Automotive Safety Research, which is based in the University of Adelaide, South Australia. What’s Up Both Irene and Phil refer to the 2025 Velo-city conference in Gdansk, Poland which will have finished just before this podcast goes live, at which See.sense will be presenting and Phil will be attending and recording Vox Pop’s for next month’s podcast. Irene also gave a sneak preview of a new project they’ll be doing with Tier Dott in Helsinki Finland. You can see ongoing See.sense news announcements here. Irene will also be speaking at the AITPM Conference in September in Adelaide. Phil mentioned that in addition to Velo-city he’ll be attending Micromobility Europe in Brussels and Eurobike in Frankfurt. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    44 min
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About

The Squeaky Wheel Podcast is here to inform and inspire through engaging conversations with changemakers shaping the future of active travel and urban mobility. Your hosts, Phil Latz and Irene McAleese, speak with leaders across business, government, academia, and advocacy, sharing insights and ideas that drive real-world impact. Got something to squeak about? Get in touch with The Squeaky Wheel team via our website: squeakywheelpodcast.com Follow The Squeaky Wheel on Facebook: facebook.com/squeakywheelpodcast Follow The Squeaky Wheel on BlueSky: bsky.app/profile/squeaky-wheel.bsky.social

Information

  • Creator
    Irene McAleese and Phil Latz
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    19
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Irene McAleese and Phil Latz
  • Show Website
    The Squeaky Wheel Podcast