Chris and Melissa Bruntlett promoting their book “Building the Cycling City” at the Vimy Brewing Company, Ottawa, 29 August 2018. (Photo: Cécile Lecoq.)
When Vancouver-based urban cycling advocates Chris and Melissa Bruntlett dropped by the Vision Zero Canada World Headquaters in Ottawa they were wrapping up the Canadian leg of the tour promoting their brand-new book Building the Cycling City: The Dutch Blueprint for Urban Vitality (Island Press, 2018). I wanted to record a talk with them, but after all the media attention, including many podcasts, I figured they needed a break from paraphrasing their book. The result is a casual, free-wheeling conversation about the changing state of urban cycling in Canada, and what we can learn from the Dutch in everything from engineering to municipal politics.
We mention — at least in passing — the cities of Ottawa, Kitchener, Guelph, Kingston, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Victoria. We also hear a lot about Vancouver — including East Vancouver, where Melissa and Chris live with their two kids — and Toronto, where both Melissa and Chris attended university. And we share our obsession with the cycling infrastructure in Dutch cities, including Utrecht and Eindhoven.
To listen to the complete conversation use the player below, or click HERE for more options. If you enjoy this interview, please support this site.
Thanks for listening and sharing. You will need to abide some patches of muddy sound and volume changes (baby steps, with hastily-borrowed equipment) and my loquaciousness. But I think there’s some good material in there.
Scroll down this page for tweets showing some of the things we discussed, along with some links to further reading.
Enjoy!
Graham Larkin
Executive Director, Vision Zero Canada
Vision Zero Canada 