Unleashing the Power of Cycling With Smart Messaging

I recently had the honour of being the opening keynote speaker at Unleashing the Power of Cycling, a conference organized by the University of Toronto’s School of Cities School of Cities’ Urbanist-in-Residence, Lanrick Bennett Jr. My talk can be summarized in the following points, which I previously published in my post Piles of research on why we should promote bike lanes, bikes, e-bikes and e-scooters:

• Bikes, e-bikes, and other forms of micromobility have significantly lower carbon footprints than ICE cars or electric cars.

• Bike lanes encourage more people to ride longer distances.

• Properly designed, bike lanes do not significantly delay drivers.

• The e-bike revolution will put more people on bikes and will unlock the suburbs, which are the source of the cars.

• Promotion of cycling and micromobility could be the most significant approach to reducing carbon emissions.

One highlight of the conference was meeting Tom Flood. Tom is now working full-time on bike advocacy at Rovélo Creative, where he keeps cranking out bike ads, T-shirts, posters, and “in addition to this creative and strategy work I have been writing, giving lectures & running workshops that focus on reframing the mainstream narrative around road safety, road violence and active transportation.​​” Here are some of the posters that I have loved over the years, reproduced with Tom’s permission:

One of my favourites is an early one. “the all-new 2020 child” invisible to the driver of the pickup truck.

It’s probably been knocked off a million times, including by me and my granddaughter Edie.

Lately, Tom has been doing social media posters for Dave Shelnutt, the biking lawyer, pointing out the silliness of the “shared responsibility” campaigns that are often run by the police. (here is my interview of Shelnutt, We Shouldn't Need a Biking Lawyer, but We Do)

Lately, Tom has been doing a lot more with words than with images, with clever copywriting in a number of languages.

Two more that I love; pushing a baby carrriage absolutely radicalized my daughter. And of course, highways get approved without a second thought, but every bike lane is a pitched battle.

Tom goes on about the imbalance and absurdity in the way we treat cars vs pedestrians and cyclists. He shows us how to flip the script, to change the focus, to reframe road safety. We need more of this, and more of Tom Flood, and I need more 15-minute city T-shirts.