Personality of the Month - Dr Harry Rutter, South East Public Health Observatory
What is your job or other main activity that involves cycling?
I’m an NHS consultant in public health working on obesity, physical activity, climate change, sustainability, transport, built environment and inequalities; cycling has an important role in all of these areas. The main work I’m currently involved in is a project with the World Health Organisation to develop tools for economic evaluation of the health benefits of walking and cycling.
How long have you done that?
About 10 years.
Where do you live?
In Oxford.
What most encourages you about cycling where you live?
All the things that make cycling appealing everywhere – it’s fun, healthy, cheap, quick, and sustainable – along with the opportunity to get away from the traffic and ride along the river to work, ride off road to school with my kids, or head out of my front door and ride into the countryside on my mountain bike.
What most discourages you about cycling where you live?
Traffic, especially the buses.
How would you describe yourself as a cyclist?
Happy.
What is you earliest cycling memory?
The day I took my stabilisers off, cycling along an alleyway near where we lived in Cambridge – I can still taste the excitement and the anticipation of freedom.
Where is the best place you have ever cycled?
Off road in Norway last summer, with wonderful, incredibly steep trails up the mountain, cool, clear lakes at the top, and knuckle-whitening descents.
What is your greatest achievement, in terms of encouraging more people to cycle?
In the end I think the work on the economics will probably turn out to be most effective, that and aligning cycling with other policy priorities, especially climate change. But right now I’m proudest of my contribution to my kids’ school travel plan.
What single thing do you think would do most to encourage more cycling in the UK?
Increasing cycling requires system-wide changes, so no one thing is likely to be terribly effective on its own. If I was forced to pick just one thing I’d say internalising the externalities of motorised transport and making the true, marginal cost of motoring apparent to drivers every time they drive. That might sound geeky and esoteric, but right now the economic drivers are hugely distorted in favour of driving.
What has been your favourite cycling experience?
Other than mountain biking in Norway, taking my Brompton on the Eurostar and cycling off from the Gare du Nord when I got to Paris.
What was your worst cycling experience?
Coming out of a meeting to find my Brompton had been stolen.
What is it about using your bike that you like the most?
Beating the traffic.
The answers given are the opinion of the individual and do not necessarily reflect those of any organisation they may represent.
