Tom is part of the Active Travel Academy and leads Westminster’s Sustainable Cities and the Urban Environment research community. He and Michael have crossed paths many times in the walking world, from cycling with parliamentarians on Lime bikes in Paris to a trip to Faversham on similar trains and similar tracks.

The London Walking Festival Conference: Friday 15 May

The big news is the London Walking Festival Conference, taking place on Friday 15 May at the University of Westminster’s Marylebone campus (10am to 6.30pm). Organised by Tom and the Active Travel Academy in association with Footways, the event builds on last year’s “New Perspectives on Walking and Wheeling in the City” conference, which was part of the festival but not badged as its official conference. This year, a promotion has been earned.

The conference is free to attend, and Tom’s advice is to book early to avoid disappointment. Tickets are available via TicketSource: Book your free ticket here

The line-up

The day opens with a keynote from author and psychogeographer Iain Sinclair, who will talk about his walking experience before taking questions from the audience. Iain is well known both for celebrating good provision for walking and for being sharply critical when it falls short.

Following the keynote, a panel brings together four speakers who each bring a different perspective on walking and wheeling:

• Morag Rose, author of The Feminist Art of Walking, campaigner and researcher
• Harriet Thomas, host of the podcast There’s a Walk for That, with a focus on the mental and physical health benefits of walking
• Katie Pennick, campaigner, researcher and wheelchair user who chooses to use the term “walking” rather than “wheeling” to describe how she gets around
• Saira Niazi, founder of Living London, who organises walks with underrepresented communities across London and beyond

After lunch, participants will break into three parallel workshops covering the relationship between walking and wheeling and art, campaigning, and research. These are designed to be participatory, giving attendees a chance to get involved rather than just listen.

The afternoon panel features an impressive roster: Andrew Gilligan, former transport adviser to both Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak; Councillor Rowena Champion, who leads on transport at the London Borough of Islington; Steve Gooding, Director of the RAC Foundation; and Bronwyn Thornton, Chief Executive of the Walk21 Foundation, who happens to be in the UK that week. David Harrison of Footways will chair.

The day closes with a showcase of schemes making a real difference to London’s streets, including Regent Street, Silvertown Way in Newham, and projects in Camden at Holborn and Bloomsbury. Then drinks from about 5pm.

Walking, wheeling, and the language we use

Michael and Tom dig into the term “walking and wheeling” and why it matters. Tom explains that the active travel community has been evolving its language. Organisations like Active Travel England and what was formerly Sustrans (now the Walk, Wheel, Cycle Trust) have adopted the phrase. Using “walking and wheeling” is a reminder that if an environment is bad for walking, it is almost certainly terrible for wheeling, because wheeling relies on smooth surfaces, adequate widths, and drop kerbs to an even greater degree. That said, Tom acknowledges the phrase can feel clunky. Katie Pennick’s perspective on choosing the word “walking” to describe her own movement promises to be one of the most interesting contributions at the conference.

The Active Travel Academy

Tom introduces the Active Travel Academy, founded in late 2019 and directed by Professor Rachel Aldred. The Academy is a research centre, but it goes beyond that. Its mission is to produce meaningful research on active travel and to bridge the gap between academia and policy.

Rachel Aldred is widely known for developing the Propensity to Cycle Tool and leading the Near Miss Project. More recently, the Academy has become closely associated with research on low traffic neighbourhoods, looking calmly at the evidence around safety, traffic displacement, boundary roads, emergency vehicle access, and whether wealthier communities benefit disproportionately (the answer, as Tom puts it: it is not as simple as that).

The Academy also publishes Active Travel Studies, an open-access journal, and has introduced lay summaries of 1,000 words so that busy policymakers and practitioners can get the essentials without wading through a full paper. Rachel and colleagues are currently working on Travel Well, a project funded by the National Institute for Health Research, examining the long-term impact of high-quality cycling infrastructure in the West Midlands and Northwest Manchester.

Safety, perception, and the joy of walking

The conversation turns to safety. Tom draws an important distinction between safety from collisions and personal safety. While road danger is the principal reason people give for not cycling, walking is different. People are more likely to be deterred by streets that feel dark, lonely, or overlooked than by the risk of being hit by a vehicle.

Michael offers an unexpected comparison: Disney World, which he argues is the most walkable place on earth. It is designed around joy, location, and experience. Everybody walks, everybody wheels, and while they might complain about the distance, they also recount everything they saw and did along the way. The point being that walking infrastructure is not just about safety or efficiency. It is about making the experience attractive and pleasurable.

Tom gives a nod to Footways, the organisation founded by David Harrison and Emma Griffin, which produces beautifully designed maps celebrating interesting and enjoyable walks across London. Available at libraries and railway stations, these maps are part of a wider movement to give people reasons to walk more, not just remove the reasons not to.

Line bikes, delivery riders, and the next folk devil

Tom does not shy away from the politics of the street. He notes that in electoral communications in Islington, the Greens explicitly chose not to promote cycling, instead focusing on tackling Lime bike pavement clutter and promoting walking and wheeling. This reflects a perception that cycling does not always play well on the doorstep.

He goes further, arguing that delivery riders and Lime bike users have become the latest “folk devil,” following a pattern previously seen with Uber drivers. Tom challenges this tendency, pointing out that the overwhelming bulk of road danger is imposed by people driving motorised vehicles, and that many delivery riders work in deeply precarious conditions, on zero-hour contracts, expected to deliver huge numbers of parcels for very little pay. Blaming individuals is easier than addressing the wider system, but it is the system, he suggests, that needs scrutiny.

On the horizon

Tom shares two current research projects. The first, funded by the Foundation for Integrated Transport, examines the Hierarchy of Road Users, which was added to the Highway Code in 2022. The hierarchy states that those in charge of vehicles capable of doing more harm in a collision have a greater duty of care. Four years on, there is no evidence it has changed behaviour, and the project is exploring what, if anything, should be done about that.

The second project, funded by Active Travel England, tackles “level of service,” a measure that has existed for decades to assess the experience of travelling by a given mode. Until now, measurements for walking, cycling, and driving have not been comparable. The aim is to create a tool that allows a direct comparison, asking: is the experience of walking objectively better or worse than driving on this particular street?

Come along

The London Walking Festival Conference takes place on Friday 15 May 2026, 10am to 6.30pm, at the University of Westminster’s Marylebone campus (just across the road from Madame Tussauds). It is free, open to anyone with an interest in walking and wheeling, and promises to be, in Tom’s words, “a very convivial, very relaxed, but very stimulating and hopefully inspiring event.”

Book your free ticket: https://www.ticketsource.com/active-travel-academy-university-of-westminster/london-walking-festival-conference-2026/e-jzqvjr