Bottom-Up Shorts: How To Give People Better Transportation Options
Wendy Nash is the founder of Get Around Caboolture, a grassroots transportation initiative in Caboolture, Australia. She and Norm discuss the group's efforts to promote more transportation options, including hosting the first Week Without Driving outside the U.S. Wendy emphasizes the importance of tailoring messages to different audiences and explains why she would like to see more comedy in advocacy.
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Norm Van Eeden Petersman 0:00
Hey folks, welcome to Bottom-Up Shorts. I'm Norm. I'm the director of movement building for Strong Towns, and I'm super excited to be able to share with you the stories of individuals that I've connected with in one way or another, who are doing amazing things in their communities, and often doing so out of a position of being rather normal, being willing to take responsibility for a place and do small things which, over time, become significantly impactful things within their communities. And today, I have my first overseas guest, and so that is Wendy Nash, who is from Caboolture, a regional city about 44 kilometers, or 27 miles north of Brisbane in Australia. It's a place that was served with rail, but also is an area that has seen a lot of suburban development, and Wendy and many members of her community are involved together in a group called Get Around Cabo Car Free. I think I'm saying sorry. Let me correct that. Get Around Cabo Car Free. Still not right! Why don't you jump in and get it right?
Wendy Nash 1:07
So we changed the name to Get Around Caboolture, to make it more inclusive and to be better, actually. Yeah.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 1:15
Nice, yes. And so this is a grassroots movement just a couple of years ago. Two and a half years ago is when the group was founded in order to be able to reach out to the whole community, to lead conversations about, how do we navigate our community in a way that includes everyone? And so they've hosted the first ever week without driving outside of the United States to leading campaigns to help kids bike safely to school, give young people access to jobs without a car. If you go onto their website, you'll see tons of resources that Wendy and her team have been putting together, including a podcast. So if you're an interested podcast listener, go and check out their podcast as well. They kind of focus on different elements of what it takes to build a strong community. And maybe Wendy, I'm going to throw it over to you. What is it that you're doing to advocate for a shift in the way that we approach transportation in our communities?
Wendy Nash 2:06
I'll take that as one of my advocacy efforts. That's the way that I would phrase that question. So look, you know, people have this idea that they have to have everything ready and then get everything organized and then and then start. They'll start when they've got a good place. But I just started with a Facebook group and some flyers and a T shirt, and I just went and I called everybody and anybody, and I rang up all the counselors. So that was my starting place. And obviously, as you said, I've got a website and a podcast now, which is really good, and our focus is about all forms of transport on the outer suburbs in any city. I mean, it's here in Caboolture, but the focus is to really a it gives me advice from experts and specialists around the world. So we've had amazing people like Marco te Brömmelstroet. We've had also some other people from the UK and also local to home, just talking about, how do you solve this problem, and this is the research that they've done, and how do we solve that problem. So that's been really, really helpful for me to learn, which I've really gotten so much from. But I've also spent a lot of time working with politicians who are on team. So my local state, MP, we call it, I don't know what you call it in the US and Canada, is elected representative. He's really interested in this and that's great. So I sort of help him understand the broader interest. And he's taken a bit of an interest, and he participated in the week without driving. And he thought he knew lots of things, and then he realized he didn't. One of my big things at the moment that we're talking about is the journey to work question on the census. So I don't know if it's the same in your area, but in Australia, our only question on our national census is the journey to work question: How did you get to work? And I want four words changed out of that, saying, what types of transport did you use today? Rather than how did you get to work today? And that's all I want changed. And that means it actually touches the whole community, not just those who work. So those sort of small things. And I always tailor everything according to who I'm speaking to. So if I'm speaking to the general community, I find things that work for them. If I'm speaking with council, councilors or other elected representative, if I'm speaking with other advocates, I just am always trying to shift and change. I think one of the most important learnings that I've had is trying to get my skill up on my communications. So, how good am I at listening? How good am I at crafting my message? How much am I really focused on a way that's going to be workable for them? How much can I learn about shifting to be what's going to work for them? So yeah. And the other thing, just in relation to that, is, I recently gave a talk to an environmental group- I tend to not get too involved with the environmental groups, just because it can be so polemic and transport's such a huge thing. But I gave this speech to an environmental group who had just had this car park installed in their area, and I talked about it from an ambiguous loss perspective, that it gives the impression of giving something, but actually you've got a place but you don't have a place at the same time, and how ambiguous that is. And so sort of helping people to look at the more psychological impacts as well has been a really interesting avenue that I've explored as well. So just doing all sorts of stuff and things like, how do I create statistics? How do I put statistics in a way that makes sense? And there's this fantastic- Am I allowed to recommend a resource?
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 6:03
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Wendy Nash 6:04
By Chip and Dan Heath, called Making Numbers Count. And I cannot recommend their books highly enough either. They've really made a lot of difference. So I think it's that sort of stuff. Really thinking about, how am I saying? How am I listening? And how am I using the numbers? So that's, that's what I would say. So I hope I've answered your question.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 6:29
Yeah, I love that. And as I think of the audience of folks that are listening to this, Chip and Dan Heath have popularized some of the ideas also of cross cultural communication and doing things, for example, of not inflaming other people's elephants. So if you know that there's an elephant and a rider, there's a metaphor that's just baked into what Strong Towns does. Each of our staff learn about this, but also, we encourage our group leaders to be knowledgeable about the fact that many people will have a deep set of sort of core convictions, and those convictions are often almost unstated. They're just like residual and if you inflame that element, we say that's the elephant that is normally controlled by the rational mind, but all of a sudden, can quickly become spooked and sort of run off the path. And there's no way to bring them in in a fruitful way, into the place that you'd like them to go. And so I think I love that you're learning all of those different elements, and I think that's such a key part of it. And I recall from our earlier conversation, about two and a half years ago, that a key part of what you were doing was noticing how people in your community were struggling, and then taking that ownership of that, and taking responsibility to say, in what I can do, as well as together with other people, I want to address these things. Can you share a little bit more about how you got involved in Get Around Caboolture Car Free, as well as the broader project that you're underway?
Wendy Nash 7:47
Sure. Well, the first thing we did is we dropped the car free. So you can skip the car free experience completely out of that.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 7:54
Get around. Let's all get around. Yeah.
Wendy Nash 7:56
It's just Get Around Caboolture. So just because I feel that it's quite exclusive. And actually it was Marco te Brömmelstroet who said, drop the car free. You don't say you're helicopter free. Why would you say you're car free? So it's like, yeah, when you put it like that, of course that's true. Basically, we moved up here about more than three years ago now, and I just got on the bus, the local bus. I wanted to go down to the local shops. We did fairly central and I just wanted to get to the main shops. And it took 40 minutes by bus. And I just thought, this is a 10 minute drive. This is nuts. And I got really angry on behalf of people, not only myself, but also, what about people with disabilities, seniors and people looking for jobs who are low incomes? That really bugged me, that you're actually increasing the decreasing the possibilities for people who are unemployed, who want jobs, but you can't actually get them out of that. And so that's how it started. And I found out there are no busses at 9am because we don't have school busses. Our ordinary busses are rented out to the schools to be able to ship people, all the kids around, and so there's no bus service at 9am or 8:30 because it's more lucrative for the bus companies, and they need that cash because it's so poorly subsidized. So all that was there. So that's basically it. I also am a middle aged woman, and in my 50s, and no one would give me a job. So I thought, Okay, well, no, no one else is doing anything in this space. I've got time on my hands. I've got the desire to make this change. I'm just going to run with it. And I didn't know where I would go, and I still don't know where I'm going to go, but we are slowly making head roads, so we've got some minor tweaks on some bus timetables. There's also more stuff coming about timetables and bus routes. But what is really important is that actually, it turns out Get Around Caboolture is the number one stakeholder group for transport in my council region. So if they have any transport questions, they can come straight to me and I go, Yep, this is the problem. So that's really useful. I never thought that that would be the case. So I think in big cities, it might be harder to be in advocacy because there are oily systems set up. But when you're in a small town or a regional area or out of the main city spaces, no one else is doing it. Though, I can rest assure you, if you want to do it, just do it and know that there's no competition. That's what I always think. No competition so go for it! You make it your own thing. That's the thing. And what I loved about Chuck Marohn's approach is that he started with some blogs, and as a traffic engineer, you know, he just went, This is the problem. So he spoke to his strengths, which was writing blogs and technical things, and said, This is a problem, this bugs me. And I would be no good writing blogs. I've tried writing blogs, I'm terrible at it. But I'm really good at talking to people, and that's what I like to do, and I like to learn. So I do podcasting, and I just go and talk to people, and I don't have any qualms about that. So I think really, just play to your strengths, whatever works for you. Don't copy somebody else's model. Do what works for you. That's what I would say.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 11:27
Yeah, and maybe I'll ask a question for follow up on the podcasting because I love the idea that you can, through a podcasting medium, ask questions of someone that they might give you insights, but it's also something that then can be shared with a broader audience. And hyper localized content related to Strong Towns or related to the topics that we talk about all the time can be really curious, because on the one hand, you know that the audience is not going to be massive, and yet, on the other hand, that niche becomes really valuable. And like you said, you become that participant at the table who's ready to be at the table. And sometimes that is the key distinguishing factor. When community leaders are saying, Who can we talk to about this? And be like, well, we have a group, and that group has a name, and we know how to reach them. That can really go a long ways. I know in my community, we've had it where I have written a personal letter of support for changes that the city was proposing related to land use plans. And then there was something a little bit empowering to also write the letter on behalf of our group, because I knew that I was representing a broader group. And therefore, in a sense, I got to, you know, speak twice, but actually speak in a way that made a difference within the spaces. And so let's just talk. I mean, you're some distance away from Brainerd, Minnesota. I'm curious then, just a little bit about your hero origin story, like, what put Strong Towns on your radar, and kind of, what has been the evolution of your thinking on these topics?
Wendy Nash 12:51
I think it was probably just something on my social media feed. I wouldn't have known about it. I think I started studying it and looking at it. And I started off with the Urban Cycling Institute, because I actually started off with the book Movement by Thalia Verkade and Marco te Brömmelstroet. And then once you start doing all that, and all the algorithms tell you everything, and they feed you into a system. And so it narrows and narrows and narrows. And so I ended up with this Parking Reform Network and Strong Towns. And I must say, I came across Strong Towns very, very early on. And I read the books Strong Towns, and also Confessions of a Recovering Engineer. And I loved them. I thought they made so much sense. And it was really nice to read something that was quite technical at a level like it was written by a professional and and helped me step through many things. Now, I didn't know how much was Australian and how much was American, but actually, it turns out a lot of it is really, really similar. So it's not all of it the same, but enough of it is there to make sense. So that's how I came across it. But yeah, I just started and connected. And it was very useful for me to learn that context of Strong Towns, to have language around it. I've done quite a lot of the courses, which I have found super helpful. Thank you very much, Norm, for setting up that, because it helps me understand the larger context. And I love the crash analysis course. I didn't get to the end of it, but it certainly made me rethink crashes completely and start to understand much more when I see comments on social media and people ranting about blaming this and blaming that, then I always try to sort of say,This is actually a systemic issue. It's not necessarily one person or another. We know where the collisions are going to happen. And it also helped me start to look at some of the language around collisions, which I you know, we talk about a traffic accident, and it's like, well, actually, it's a car crash. A driver drove into. And looking at that sort of stuff. So I've probably gone on to a bit of a tangent there, but what I really liked was the understanding of siloed thinking as a big problem, and also how- there's a lot of road widening projects here, and they call them upgrades. I'm going nope.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 15:30
Right Improvements!
Wendy Nash 15:31
Exactly. And so this is what I've really gained from Strong Towns, is a stronger understanding of the way that there's this fudging with traffic engineering. Yeah.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 15:44
And I did want to highlight too, that the government of Australia has a black spots program. And I'd not come across that language, but I think it's very evocative and very powerful to say, There are black spots on the map and those are the areas where someone has been struck or killed by a vehicle being driven by someone in irresponsible ways, but also with the design of those places not being adequate to the situations that people find themselves in. Where we're mixing high speeds together with unpredictability together with people in vulnerable positions. And so do want to commend that, even just as we think about that. Where are the black spots on the map around us? And we sadly know way too many of them, and we have to have that resolve in our hearts to allow those places to be addressed, to be fixed and improved in real ways, not just sort of paper ways. But as we close. Man, we could talk for a lot longer on this, because there's so much to cover. But do you want to share just, what is it that gives you hope and something maybe that you can leave with our audience as well?
Wendy Nash 16:44
You know what I would like to see going forward? I think us advocates are really earnest, self righteous and kind of wet blankets often. I think we lack a sense of humor often. And what I would like to see is more comedy. So I read a book called Cascades, by Greg Satel, and that actually, I would really recommend this book for people. It's about coming together as a group and connecting with other groups, exactly what you and I have been talking about here, about Get Around Caboolture meeting with Strong Towns, and how effective that is. A lot of the examples in the book about social change have come about because the people making the change did something very funny. And so I've got this idea about, I don't know, sort of jugglers at pop up bus stops, or clowns on trikes or bike riders in group wearing wedding outfits, and things like this. I think it'd be really fun to see more of that light hearted, How can we make this a positive, fun experience, rather than, You should eat your greens kind of experience? And I think too often we're in the eat your greens end, and not enough on that, Gee, that looks really cool and fun. And, you know, car advertisers, they go, This is really cool and fun. You can drive into nature and destroy it, and you can have freedom, but it so they're really good at it. They've nabbed that thing. We too can step into that space on a much lower budget.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 18:20
Yeah, totally .Yeah. And often, in a way that's more social with more people. And yeah, I love that. And so if you head on over to Get Around Caboolture, and I'll spell that out for the folks that are listening, it's C, A, B, O, O, L, T, U, R, E, dot, a, U, for Australia, is the website. Wendy Nash, it's been wonderful to chat with you. I'm so glad that we had the chance to showcase a little bit about what's happening down under, and to be able to take an opportunity to really share this with the audience. And I would definitely encourage each of you as well. You probably have within your community a growing network of people that you can share these ideas with. As Wendy alluded to, once you start to take in some of this content, more and more starts to show up on your plate, because the algorithms know. But also, there's a process of discovery that I think really can help to build those lasting ties, where you say, Hey, now that I look my at my community with fresh eyes, with some humor as well. In order to be able to cope with all that we see around us, we can definitely make these changes. I'm hopeful that you're all able to pick up something from what Wendy has shared. Thank you so much, Wendy. And for everybody that's listening, take care and take care of your places.
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