Modernity, mobility, and acceleration: cycling as the blind spot in Swedish transport innovation

ABSTRACT As climate ambitions have increased, questions regarding the sustainability of transport systems have been placed on the transport innovation agenda. Yet the relationship between economic competitiveness and sustainability agendas in national innovation policy is an uneven one. We aim to unpack this relationship by analysing the position of cycling in Swedish innovation policy, focusing on the funding of projects within the field of sustainable mobility. We apply a critical theoretical approach and build on Hartmut Rosa’s critical work on modernity and acceleration, Sheller and Urry’s theories on mobilities – including contributions from followers to this field – and critical innovation studies. The result of our analysis for cycling is threefold. First, the conceptualisation of ‘progress’ does not help to place cycling high on the innovation agenda. Second, the bicycle and cycling have difficulties appearing as ‘new’, in contrast to the car and driving. Third, the unreflexivity regarding automation, digitisation, and sharing prevents taking account of negative effects on cycling and obstructs a fundamental questioning of automobility. In our conclusion, we propose a different view of progress, of which the current interpretation seems to be preventing innovation policy from having a stronger sustainability agenda. An alternative interpretation of progress logically also questions the role and primacy of technological novelties.


Introduction
Innovation policy has a great impact on the future of mobility, and billions of euros are invested annually in R&D in fields such as automation, electrification, digitisation, connectivity and other forms of smart mobility.Innovations in the transport sector have long primarily been 'centred on the development of novel technologies in the car industry' (Nykvist & Whitmarsh, 2008, pp. 237-238), with the primary aim of upholding competitiveness and improving the efficiency of the transport system (Adey et al., 2021).Yet as climate ambitions have increased, questions regarding the sustainability of transport systems have also been placed on the transport innovation agenda, including an increasing discourse centred around alternative forms of transport, including cycling.Still, the relationship between economic competitiveness and sustainability agendas in national innovation policy is an uneven one (Kronsell & Mukhtar-Landgren, 2020), and the automobility norm still permeates discourses on sustainable transport -evident not least in descriptions of autonomous and electric vehicles as hopeful solutions to more sustainable transport (Freudendal-Pedersen et al., 2019).
A large bulk of policy studies within the sustainable mobilities field tend to focus on policymaking in the fields of transport or planning, in order to understand the barriers to a more sustainable transport future (e.g.Koglin & Glasare, 2020, 2020;Lindelöw et al., 2016;Oldbury, 2021;Wu et al., 2017).In this text, we instead follow the money and look at national innovation policy.The overarching aim is to unpack and problematise the relationship between innovation, competitiveness and sustainability in national innovation policies in the transport field by looking at the position cycling has taken in transport innovation.
Moving beyond the growing plethora of more applied innovation theories, this text is set in a broader critical theoretical approach, where studies are centred 'around identifying and elevating the intrinsic bias of "efficient" solutions to social and technical problems' (Feenberg, 2017, p. 4).In this, it is written in the tradition of texts seeking to uncover the conditions under which policymaking is enabled, and aims to unravel contradictions and obstacles to emancipatory projects, as well as pointing to potential alternatives (Thompson, 2017, p. 4).We address our aim by empirically analysing the position of cycling in Swedish innovation policy, focusing on the funding of innovation projects within the field of sustainable mobility.As such, we illustrate and problematise dominant conceptualisations of transport innovation and unpack how they affect the position of cycling.Sweden makes an interesting case, because the country is often seen at the frontier of sustainable development (Lidskog & Elander, 2012); it also ranks 2 on the performance towards achieving the sustainable development goals 1 and 3 on the global innovation index. 2 Cycling, which is a more sustainable solution, can in many ways be described as counter-hegemonic to automobility: it is active instead of passive; humanpowered instead of machine-powered; low carbon instead of high carbon; low speed instead of high speed; outdoors instead of indoors; and carried out with small and light vehicles instead of large and heavy ones (Brömmelstroet et al., 2017;Nikolaeva et al., 2019;Popan, 2019).
To analyse the role of cycling in innovation, we unpack key assumptions in the intersection of transport and innovation by juxtaposing Hartmut Rosa's critical work on modernity and acceleration, Sheller and Urry's theories on mobilities -including contributions from followers to this field -and critical innovation studies (e.g.Godin et al., 2017;Sveiby et al., 2012).John Urry has called for a conceptual shift from the 'social as society' into the 'social as mobility' (Urry, 2000(Urry, , 2007)), and together with Mimi Sheller, he situated mobility in the context of wider societal processes including developments in technology, capital, visions and growth (e.g.Sheller & Urry, 2000, 2006).In a similar way, Rosa (2010Rosa ( , 2019) ) approaches modernity by situating technology in broader societal processes.Earlier critical theorists, like Marcuse ([1964Marcuse ([ ] 1991) ) or Habermas ([1969Habermas ([ ] 1987)), primarily critiqued technological rationalisation -in the service of capitalism -as the main force of domination and social control.Rosa instead argues that social acceleration is the overriding feature that steers rationalisation, differentiation, individualisation, and domestication or commodification -all key processes of modernity.Critical innovation scholars (e.g.Godin et al., 2017;Sveiby et al., 2012) critique the so-called pro-innovation bias and focus on aspects that usually do not receive much attention.Taken together, conceptualisations of innovation, technology, time and speed in these three traditions help us to understand the blind spots of transport innovation, identify the foundational building blocks that prevent a more sustainable approach and, finally, open up alternative conceptualisations.
The structure of the paper is as follows.The following section (2) highlights some earlier research that discusses the imbalance between sustainability and competitiveness in innovation policy.Also in Sweden, a body of literature is started to address this issue.The need for a more critical approach is even acknowledged within different research traditions.After a short description of the methodological approach, theoretical background and the empirical material (section 3), we start by mapping the way cycling is represented in the material (section 4).By unpacking key assumptions in the intersection of transport and innovation, we'll try to understand the marginal role of cycling in innovation policy and projects (section 5).Next, we'll discuss alternative understandings that could help placing cycling higher on the innovation agenda (section 6).We conclude by summarising the main findings (section 7).

Previous research
This text draws on and contributes to ongoing debates on innovation in transport.In an article in Transport Reviews (2023) 31 transport scholars joined to forward a new agenda for social science research in transport studies, arguing that EU transport and innovation policy go in tandem in still prioritising economic, individualistic and technological solutions for sustainability challenges, resulting in an insufficient understanding of inequal consequences and the embedding of new technology and services in society (Ryghaug et al., 2023).
This argument has been confirmed and illustrated in several country-specific empirical studies of innovation processes within the field of smart mobility, at both national and local levels.These studies indicate how 'rationalit[ies] of competitiveness and economic growth' and 'techno-utopianism' inform local policies regarding the introduction of smart technology in transport (Mukhtar-Landgren & Paulsson, 2021, p. 147).Research on particular innovations follow suit; to exemplify, studies of self-driving vehicles and the narratives permeating them indicate that these often have a strong emphasis on economic growth, in addition to being based on a strong technological determinism, both contributing to a depoliticisation of innovation (Mladenović et al., 2020;cf. Cohen et al., 2020;Freudendal-Pedersen et al., 2019).Several studies of MaaS (Mobility as a Service) indicate a tendency to emphasise growth over sustainability (e.g.Kronsell & Mukhtar-Landgren, 2020;Oldbury, 2021), where for instance Pangbourne et al. (2020) note how the commodification of mobility requires customers and travel activity -the more the better -which does not always align with sustainability motives.Finally, the imbalance between economic and other motives is also observed in cycling innovation.Koglin and Mukhtar-Landgren (2021), for example, show that the bike sharing system in Lund, Sweden, is first of all serving employees and tourists.They conclude that it is likely that economic motives seem to have guided the roll-out of the system rather than social and spatial justice motives or other more complex environmental issues within the transport system (see also Henriksson et al., 2022;Spinney & Lin, 2018).
The need for a more critical approach is expressed in different ways within different transport research traditions.Within the sustainability transitions research community (see Köhler et al., 2019), Pel (2022) acknowledges -despite the critical potential of the different approaches -that 'much transitions work remains focused on clean energy, the stakes, politics and ethics of mobility innovation often remaining covered under a blanket of general "sustainability" discourse ' (ibid., 30).The concept of 'transformation' (or transition) -increasingly used in policy -suffers from a similar problem as sustainability (Westman and Castán Broto, 2022).It promises radical change but does not seem to deliver so far.The authors argue that a crucial reason for this is the aligning of this relatively new concept with 'established notions of social improvement and progress, thereby cementing their underpinning values' (Westman andCastan Broto, 2022, 1328).To illustrate this they use the term 'ivory discourse'.
The social and cultural dimensions of innovation are important topics in mobilities research, which places the meanings of mobility -shaped within power relations -centre stage (Cresswell, 2011;Sheller & Urry, 2006).This field calls for more attention to the inequalities and practices of exclusion that are embedded in innovations (Psarikidou, 2020).Nikolaeva et al. (2019) have started to critically unpack innovation related to cycling by focusing on the question 'what kind of ideas about cycling, cyclists and cycling environments are brought to the fore by individuals and companies that produce and promote smart cycling innovations?'They conclude -among other things -that smart cycling futures are diverse and contested; certain lifestyles are propagated and others ignored while at the same time strengthening existing hierarchies.A crucial point the authors make is that the choices made by innovators are deeply political, yet not seldom in the hands of private actors.
We place ourselves in this last research tradition and wish to contribute to a mobilities perspective on innovation.In the next section, we describe our approach more in detail.

Methodological approach and material
The question igniting this study was a simple one: What is being funded by innovation agencies within the field of sustainable transport?In this article, we have reviewed Swedish funding within the field of sustainable mobility.Sweden makes an interesting case, because the country is often seen at the frontier of sustainable development (Lidskog & Elander, 2012).Further, it is ranked 1 in terms of implementing and achieving the sustainable development goals of the Agenda 2030 (Stanujkic et al., 2020).It also ranks 2 on the performance towards achieving the sustainable development goals [1] and 3 on the global innovation index [2].In terms of our analysis, we have first analysed the share of projects relating to cycling and the representation of cycling in the material.Second -and primarily -we have unpacked and problematised the (meagre) representation of cycling by looking at broader conceptualisations of what transport innovation is considered to be, as well as at alternative conceptualisations.By examining alternative understandings, we also open up discussions about the potential for a more radical future transport innovation policy.Below, we describe our approach and the empirical material.

Methodology and theoretical approach
This text is set in a broader interpretative and critical theoretical approach, where studies are centred around identifying assumptions, intrinsic biases, and lock-jams in policymaking (Feenberg, 2017), as well as potential alternatives (Thompson, 2017).By demonstrating the variation of ideas, the possibility of considering alternative conceptualisations is enabled in a more theoretical sense, and the alternative approaches are made more tangible by being discussed in relation to our empirical material (Alvesson & Deetz, 2000, p. 164).In the literature, there are a number of different types of definitions of innovation, and as noted by Vaaben (2013) they often consist of two aspects, first the 'creating or introducing [off] something new in a particular context' and second, that the 'new thing must be implemented or otherwise realised in a way that has led to a change' (Ibid.,18,our emphasis).This is exemplified by van Wee et al.'s definition of transport innovation as 'new elements of the transport system that are implemented in the real world ' (van Wee et al., 2022, p. 1).Including, yet moving beyond, more narrow debates on transport and innovation, we move to social theory and mobilities studies in order to outline a broader conceptual understanding of the intersection between transport and innovation.This is developed by combining Urry and Sheller's mobilities studies and Rosa's work on social acceleration, with critical innovation studies.We have chosen to elevate three key notions: first, innovation as progress.As noted by Vaaben (2013) above, the tendency to emphasise novelty and change is inherent to innovative thinking, and from a broader social theoretical perspective, this centres notions such as progress and development but also growth and competitiveness.Second, the reach for technological novelty is key for innovation in general, and transport innovation more specifically.Thirdly, the notion of innovation as inevitable is, as we will show below, key for how we tend to think of development in a Western context.Below, these three assumptions will be described and motivated -and used to analyse the empirical material.

Empirical material
In terms of our choice of empirical material, there are many different funds that are both directly and indirectly related to transport and innovation in Sweden.We will exemplify and substantiate our discussion on the role of cycling in transport innovation using examples from 2 of 17 Swedish so-called strategic innovation programmes (SIP).These programmes provide platforms for 'collaboration in areas that are strategically important for Sweden' and in this way create conditions for 'sustainable solutions to global societal challenges and increased international competitiveness' (website Vinnova, July 2023).These programmes receive funding from Vinnova, the Swedish national agency for innovation systems.Vinnova's own website and publications are also part of the empirical material to provide general visions on innovation and cycling.The programmes Drive Sweden and Viable Cities are directly related to mobility and transport (see appendix 1 for a description of the material and appendix 2 for full description of the projects).They are, in a sense, the calls that are 'most likely' to include a sustainability perspective, as their overall goals relate to sustainability goals.The programmes have had several announcements, but in one case, we had to ask for the details of the announcement since they were not accessible on the website.Financing of these programmes and projects is not always transparent, and different websites must sometimes be consulted to obtain optimal insight.We excluded projects that were related to goods.Quotes we use were (between November 2022 and February 2023) -either available in English or translated into English by us.
Drive Sweden published its first call for proposals in 2018.The program has five thematic areas: business models, public engagement, spatial planning, digital infrastructure and policy development.A diverse group of actors is listed as member in Drive Sweden, such as academia, municipalities, public transport agencies, the Swedish Transport Administration, the Swedish Transport Agency, research institutes, consultancies, car/bus producers (Volvo and Volkswagen), mobile phone companies, municipalities, and app producers.Neither the bicycle industry, bicycle-related NGOs or governmental agencies outside transport have been spotted by us on the long list.The total amount of funding so far (February 2023) within passenger transport has been approximately 236 million SEK, divided over 80 projects, including coordination and services for the whole program.
Viable Cities launched its first call for proposals in 2017.On the website, it can be read that the program explicitly departs from a mission-oriented approach and uses transition management (one of the transition approaches) as an instrument to achieve an energy and climate transition; as such it goes beyond transport and mobility.Mission-oriented policy aims to produce transformational systemic change (Hill, 2022), and simultaneously steers towards economic growth (Mazzucato, 2018).Viable Cities' mission is to achieve climate-neutral cities in 2013 and a good life for all within planetary boundaries (website).The programme's goals involve urban climate transitions in which social, ecological and economic sustainability are all considered.A core activity in the program is the cooperation with 23 municipalities that aim to become 'climate neutral cities 2030'.Cities sign 'climate contracts' and play a role as 'system demonstrator'.From the project database, we only selected projects that have some relation to mobility (goods excluded).The broader scope of Viable Cities makes not all of the projects relevant to our goals.The broad character of the projects makes it difficult to categorise the projects or summarise the funding that is attributed to mobility.

The representation of cycling in the empirical material
This section proceeds to describe how cycling is generally represented in the programmes and projects.Programme descriptions and all projects, including information about the content, the amount of funding, and the participating partners were extracted from the websites of Vinnova, Drive Sweden, and Viable Cities.Appendix 2 and appendix 3 list all projects within the two programmes that were judged relevant to personal transport, with a link to their website.Projects targeting the transportation of goods are excluded as are projects within Viable Cities that don't include any mobility aspects.
Vinnova describes the development of the transport system in three generations: the horse, the personally owned car, and, thirdly, 'mobility as a service' as the third.It is remarkable that the substantial role cycling played before the personally owned car became commonplace is wiped out of Swedish history (see Männistö-Funk, 2012).The role of Drive Sweden is to focus on integration, service development and user acceptance within 'mobility as a service' (Modig et al., 2018).
Drive Sweden presents a clip on YouTube 3 that reflects the programme's vision of the future of sustainable urban mobility.It is centred around (mostly shared) autonomous vehicles (cars); car parking is largely eliminated, road lanes are smaller, and vacant spaces are used for wider sidewalks.However, the infrastructure barriers are intact, which results in 'islands' of social spaces surrounded by traffic space.The urban fabric is separated into a traffic space and a social space; shared traffic spaces are missing.Bicycles -and bike paths -are completely absent.Most vehicles seem to be shared in this clip, but only with people that are already traveling together.People are, without having to wait, picked up from the station, and it also seems that people are dropped off at the front door of their destination.Automated driving is imagined as a seamless event without any delay.
Table 1 gives an overview of the main focus in the projects.Automation, digitisation, sharing and electrification are the common themes in the programme, but projects focus on different aspects which in this paper are subjectively defined.When a project deals with more than one issue, the main issue is deduced from the description.By February 2023, Drive Sweden had issued four calls for proposals.Three of them are very similar and directed towards a digitised, autonomous and shared transport system.Eighty projects (one of the projects on the list in the appendix is the overarching project Krabat) had received funding by February 2023, totalling an amount over 236 million SEK.Projects that focus on technology for automation or digitisation are in the majority.Only 1 of 80 projects that have received funding within these calls has cycling as its explicit sole subject of innovation (Project nr 81 in appendix 2: Increased use of propertyrelated electric bicycle pools).This project raises the fact that the bicycles in an e-bike pool are not used sufficiently, which makes achieving a sustainable business model difficult.E-biking is also included in a project that aims to provide mobility as a service for Scania's industrial area in Södertälje (project nr 53 Scania Go).Hence, cycling in innovation is, in general, understood in the sense of cycling being part of -an electrifiedsharing economy.The programme requires coordination and provides common platforms; four projects serve this purpose.Three projects serve the purpose of external collaboration, on a European level and with Viable Cities.These seven programmes are not included in the table.Drive Sweden's latest call is for the safe and sustainable use of small vehicles (at the time of the analysis no projects had received funding).The questions that are asked in this latest call are as follows: 'What is required for the vehicles to be used safely, securely and efficiently?Can digital technologies such as shared data from connected and drivers be used to improve planning for these vehicles?How can road safety be increased and the conditions for microdeliveries improved?' (our emphasis) Notice that 'small vehicles' is a broad category where bicycles can be included but also small delivery vans and e-scooters.There seems to be a focus on how to increase road safety and how to improve conditions for micro-deliveries.This is in line with Nikolaeva et al. (2019), who observed that in countries with low to medium strong cycling cultures, innovations target safety rather than convenience.
Moving to Viable cities: At the time of our analysis, there were around 50 relevant projects (see appendix 3).In Table 2 we tried -despite the broad character of the umbrella projectsin particular, to categorise the projects.Notable is the much larger role played by local governments, the greater attention paid to for measuring and evaluating sustainability indicators, and a less commercial focus.Apart from 3 umbrella projects, there are 11 'stand-alone' projects more-or less-related to mobility.In the project Xplorion in Lund, 'a car-free accommodation' is built by providing mobility services -such as public transport and car-and (e-)bicycle-pools -instead of private car parking.In the project 'Climate Fight Uppsala' (categorised in the table as having a focus on 'behaviour change'), among other things, a campaign was organised to stimulate children to bike (this information was not available on the website but retrieved from a brochure of the project).Becoming 'car-free' or stimulating 'cycling as such' (as a practice, and not as part of a service) are two issues that signal a slightly different focus in Viable Cities compared to Drive Sweden.
However, both Drive Sweden and Viable Cities have a strong focus on providing digital platforms and mobility as a service (which often includes cars).We will try to explain the very limited representation of and attention on cycling by applying a critical perspective based on the aforementioned theoretical fields.We will unpack key assumptions, followed by critiques and alternative understandings that would enhance the role of cycling.

Understanding cycling as the blind spot in innovation -innovation and transport in modernity and beyond
Summing up, the empirical analysis indicates that cycling is marginalised and not considered innovative, except when it is shared.In this section, we continue to unpack this by making key assumptions in the intersection transport/innovation our point of departure.Three interrelated facets of transport innovation -as progress, as a technological novelty, and as inevitable -will be discussed below and exemplified using examples from the two Swedish funding institutes' contexts.The discussion will be followed by a section where we point towards important shortcomings and alternative understandings, before moving on to the concluding discussion.

Progress
As noted by Pel, "transport innovation is a particularly influential example of the modernist belief in progressive innovation that 'pushes the boundaries of what can be realised in society" (Pel, 2022, p. 17).Conceptualisations of progress are fundamentally based on the assumption of a past, a present, and a future (Koselleck & Samuel Presner, 2002, p. 225), and includes a gap between what we have today and what we could have tomorrow (Sztompka, 1993, p. 24).As such, notions of progress during modernity often came to represent a driving force to reach further and achieve more -a driving force which also came to characterise politics and policy making (Mukhtar-Landgren, 2012, p. 79) and lies at the core of innovation policies.In their chapter Accelerating the Innovation Race: Do we need reflexive brakes?Hasu et al. (2012, p. 88) describe the tendency to see innovation processes as 'ever-accelerating' -and note that it is not rarely conceptualised in terms of a 'race' where some are leading development, and others are falling behind.This is partly inherent in modernist understandings of progress, not least in Western historiography where the world has traditionally been narrated into a division between a 'developed' (or first world) and 'developing' (or third world) countries, where the latter are striving to 'catch' up with the first world (e.g.Escobar, 1995).This is also clear in the empirical material, particularly from Drive Sweden, where it is noted that The demands to rapidly develop products and services to meet new needs and markets are increasing . . ..(website,February 2023, our emphasis) Rosa (2010) derives the ever-accelerating pace of innovation from an economic logic where standing still is falling behind, also called the 'slippery slope phenomenon' (Ibid,32).From this perspective, not only speed but also competition becomes an important driver of acceleration in innovation.It is also inherent to the 'competitive capitalist market system' which speeds up 'production, circulation and consumption' (Ibid., 27) and which is generally seen as an important engine of progress (Nelson, 1990).Even though the Swedish innovation agency Vinnova, which funds the projects, has recently adapted its policy and website to resonate more with the changing imperatives of innovation -from being mainly directed towards growth and competitiveness to include sustainability (see Schot & Edward Steinmueller, 2018) -the close association between progress, competitiveness, growth and innovation is evident in the empirical material: We believe innovation is needed everywhere in society.This will make Sweden competitive and our world a different place.(website Vinnova 2023, our emphasis) We encourage organisations in different sectors to cooperate, changing existing laws and policies to pave the way for innovation that makes a difference.We give many people the opportunity to experiment and test new ideas before they become profitable (website Vinnova 2023, our emphasis).
In a similar capacity, Drive Sweden (website) comments that: Through broad collaborations, we develop and test new solutions that strengthen Sweden's competitiveness (our emphasis).
As such, it is not possible to conceptualise the role of cycling in innovation without acknowledging the elephant in the room, the car.Private transport is dominated by the car -as the main item of consumption (Sheller & Urry, 2000).In the transport sector, the car industry has long been the cradle of innovation in its aim to decrease labour costs (think Fordism and post-Fordism) but also to increase driver convenience.The production of the car is locked into a myriad of other types of commercial companies (Paterson, 2007).As such, competition, and progress, has been represented by the car industry, and today is also increasingly represented by the digitisation industry.This is also clear in the empirical material from Drive Sweden.
Progress is understood as progression in a certain direction (Metcalfe, 2001, p. 564) and in transport this has led to the aim of saving ever more time and of increasing efficiency.Rosa pinpoints 'time-hunger' as central in modern society (Rosa, 2010, p. 26).This is particularly evident in transport, where time is the most valued economic entity, hence an area in which it is important to achieve growth.The car has been a game changer in this respect.The car system has also transformed 'the concept of speed into one of convenience' and, with this, subordinated other modes into being seen as fragmented and inflexible, i.e. inconvenient (Urry, 2007, p. 114).Digitisation can be seen as a more recent game changer for human connectivity, convenience, and efficiency, and follows a comparable progressive trajectory.The car and digitisation industry now cooperate in the move from substituting arms and legs (towards a sitting society) towards substituting the senses, and finally, the brain (Habermas, [1969(Habermas, [ ] 1987, p. 241), p. 241).
Innovation seems to be for economic growth, what the car is for mobility, which raises the question of what it is that sustains and reproduces the significance of innovation.Part of the answer can be found in the institutionalisation of innovation through the increasing entanglement between policy and industry.As Habermas formulates it: It is only since the capitalist mode of production has equipped the economic system with a self-propelling mechanism that ensures long-term continuous growth (despite crises) in the productivity of labour that the introduction of new technologies and strategies, i.e., innovation as such, has been institutionalised.(Habermas, [1969(Habermas, [ ] 1987, p. 247) , p. 247) It is important to realise that the car industry is of great importance to Sweden's economy (scb.se).Growth in the car industry has enormous spin-off effects on other industries; 1000 new jobs in the car industry means 1000 additional jobs elsewhere.Labour in the car industry has partly been transferred to other countries, but hightech competence has remained in Sweden and the industry has a strong focus on technological development and innovation.This economic significance shines another light on the circumstance that Volvo, as well as Ericsson (a large company for digital technology), is participating in around a quarter of the 80 (personal mobility) projects in Drive Sweden.These large industries have an enormous influence on how our future mobility is imagined.Palmberg et al. comment, in an evaluation of the program Viable Cities, that actors that challenge the 'current regime' also need to be included (Palmberg et al., 2020), a comment that could have also been made regarding Drive Sweden.This is in line with earlier literature that observes that innovation practices seem to confirm or even strengthen existing hierarchies, sustain the exclusion of different groups and fail to include actors who could provide alternative perspectives (Psarikidou, 2015(Psarikidou, , 2020;;Zhang, 2022).

Summing up
In summation, the quotes show that innovation is still mainly pushed by market-forcesrather than by societal problems -and still understood through the language of economics, despite the goals of sustainable mobility inherent in both strategic innovation programmes.The entanglement between innovation and economic growth (as measurement of progress) excludes a large role for cycling or seeing cycling-as-a-practice as innovation.Cycling -when not part of a bike-share system -is not associated with economic growth in the sense of the current paradigm that aims for quantitative economic growth.This is confirmed in research (Meulen & Mukhtar-Landgren, 2021) that has shown that -in Sweden -cycling largely falls outside of the growth discourse.However, when cycling is part of a sharing service that is commercialised, there is a possibility of rendering growth.This partly explains why only shared cycling is included in innovation projects.

Technological novelty
Technology and progress have been closely intertwined in Western historiography since the early nineteenth century.Through industrialisation and modernity, progress was often understood as based on different steps related to new technological innovations, where the 'machine' (from the printing press to the steam engine) was seen as the source of social and economic transformation (Mukhtar-Landgren, 2012).These beliefs have come to form the basis of a perceived historical pattern where new knowledge and technologies are seen to create new possibilities (Lasch, 1989, p. 229).Transport innovations are often associated with new technologies or services, moving from walking to horse-and-carriage, to cycling, to the train, the car, the aeroplane, the drone, etc., creating the image that new technologies are continuously replacing old ones, hence modernising movement at an increasing pace.
The preference for technology and new solutions is visible in the empirical material.Drive Sweden claims to follow 'a new approach to mobility' (Website, Feb 2023) and: Drive Sweden is driving the development of digitised, connected, and shared mobility solutions for a sustainable transport system.(bold in original) The assumption that new technologies create different forms of values is recurring in the material, and sometimes this value needs to be created, like in this quote from Viable cities: Viable Cities works for information and communication technology and digitisation to be strong contributors to accelerating the transition towards sustainable energy systems for cities. (programme description of Viable Cities, p 3) Yet other times, the process seems autodynamic, like in the quote below from Drive Sweden: New and sustainable technology in mobility and transport services creates business opportunities.(website February 2023) And from the website of Viable Cities: Viable Cities aims to 'spread and scale up new solutions with a focus on impact'.(February 2023) Rosa argues that technological acceleration is often the consequence of the introduction of a new technology that aims to speed up certain processes (Rosa, 2010).Hence, transport innovation, following the argument of Rosa, intends to -besides speed up production and consumption -speed up transport itself, reduce pauses, impede a slowing-down, or destruct other obstacles for speeding-up.The mass production of the car is one of the most obvious examples of such an innovation (Urry, 2007).Possibilities for speeding up in the sense of increasing objective speed are limited, but a lot of time can supposedly be gained in making necessary transfers more seamless, and hence more convenient.Digitisation is an important tool to reach this.
The centrality of technology and technological novelties is driven by the goal to speed up processes and transport.Sheller and Urry (2006) point at the human will to connect (referring to Simmel) and Urry (2016) emphasises the significance of emotion.Besides the often-positive emotions that are associated with speed, there is also an idea that future systems 'should be fashionable and faddish and win the hearts and minds by being more fun' (Urry, 2016, p. 136).New technology takes the lead in this respect, reinforced by the idea that something new -preferably technology -is needed to achieve change and progression.
Vinnova itself acknowledges, in an evaluation of Drive Sweden and other programmes, that many projects focus on technology and autonomous vehicles and that there is a need for a more holistic perspective (Modig et al., 2018).Vinnova also notes, in an earlier report (Elg, 2014), that innovation does not have to be high-tech.However, the projects in Drive Sweden, where car industry and information and technology companies align, are very much high-tech.

Summing up and concluding
The empirical material shows that thinking about future (sustainable) mobility is dominated by solutions that give primacy to technology and novelties.The further diffusion of cycling (or e-biking) as such is not seen as part of innovation, with or without the help of technology.The material shows that e-biking is not a sufficiently 'new' technology if it is not shared.Yet, one can think of multiple ways in which (new) technology could be used to advance cycling or the bicycle and make it more convenient, comfortable, and faster, as seen in Nikolaeva et al.'s paper on smart cycling futures (Nikolaeva et al., 2019).However, judging by the role cycling plays in the empirical material, technological novelties serve that which is seen as progress (see also the former section) instead of sustainability.

Inevitability and the logic of no alternative
Innovation -and in particular, technological innovation -is seen as inevitable in order to survive in a capitalist society, aiming for an economy of constant growth, competitiveness, and commercialisation in the service of 'progress'.In section 4.1 we already discussed 'the slippery slope' phenomenon, raised by Rosa, yet the inevitability of innovation is also inherently linked to the understanding of progress as improvement or 'greater fitness for purpose' (Metcalfe, 2001, p. 565).Such an understanding makes it very difficult to stand in the way of innovations, which are almost always initiated to improve something (Urry, 2016).This seemingly inevitability of (an) innovation and the idea that there is no alternative is associated with a 'pro-innovation paradigm', a belief that (an) innovation is always good.This has not always been the case.The meaning of innovation has gradually changed over the last 200 years (Godin & Dominique, 2017), from something negative towards a positive and fundamental concept of economic policy, in line with the modernist conception that the world is stable and needs innovation to change or revolutionise it (Godin, 2017).Earlier, in the sixteenth century it was, on the contrary, used to serve stabilisation.The world was seen as constantly changing, and innovation -in that time understood as imitation of successful deeds and a return to ancient institutions -was supposed to stabilise it (Ibid.)First in the twentieth century onwards, originality became a dominant construct, in the sense of 'first commercialisation'.The meaning of innovation changed from imitation to 'innovation as subversive of the established order' (Ibid.,21).
The belief in the positive effects of new technology is evident in the empirical materialfor instance, on Viable Cities' website (February 2023): . . .we also assume that digitisation and digital tools can contribute to the big change in different ways.(our emphasis) Positive expectations are also expressed within several of the projects, such as 'Eldsjäl', that received funding within Drive Sweden, for example: Future vehicle concepts will be automated, shared, and likely also electrified.Properly applied, these will contribute to a sustainable transport system (project 'Eldsjäl' Drive Sweden) Rosa attributes this logic of no alternative to the desynchronisation between the speed of innovation and the speed of policymaking.This desynchronisation decreases the ability to set political frames and directions: '. ..the idea of political steering has turned from an instrument of social dynamization in early and classical modernity into a hindrance or obstacle for further acceleration under late-modern conditions' (Rosa, 2010, p. 72).Hasu et al. (2012) build on Bauman's Liquid Modernity (2013) to raise the problem of the lack of reflexivity caused by innovations following each other very quickly, resulting in a less critical attitude toward innovations.The logic of no alternative is also fed by the increasing need for expert knowledge (Urry, 2016), which often places non-experts at a disadvantage in dialogues about alternative futures.The idea that the role of policy is not frame-setting but rather reacting becomes evident from the following quotes in the empirical material: Vinnova writes on its website (February 2023): We encourage organisations in different sectors to cooperate, changing existing laws and policies to pave the way for innovation that makes a difference.(our emphasis) On the website for the project 'policy lab' within Drive Sweden: In the policy lab, Swedish actors can increase their knowledge of how existing regulations support and hinder the market introduction of new technology and new services within Drive Sweden's area of interest.(Website February 2023, our emphasis) There is only one project ('Future scenarios for self-driving vehicles in Sweden, Drive Sweden) that investigates the possible effects on the amount of car traffic.Some scenarios point at an increase of traffic, which would be very negative for people that use the streets and public space in other ways (playing, cycling, walking and socialising).

Summing up and concluding
The material reveals the assumption that automation, electrification, and sharing are inevitable and good.This understanding results in a rather uncritical or unreflexive belief in the contributions of innovation to competitiveness and the good cause of sustainability.Hence, the domination of solutions (mainly the automation of driving) that enhance the car (and to a lesser extent, public transport) entails an unreflexivity about the consequences for people that will not or cannot use those solutions and other modes such as walking and cycling.
Speed and acceleration are central to all three assumptions.Competitiveness and the constant urge for growth trigger innovation at an accelerating pace.Innovation is often equivalent with technological novelties that aim at speeding up processes and in transport -under influence of the car -also at increasing convenience.The speed of innovation outgrows the speed of policymaking which results, together with the belief in technology as solution, in an unreflexivity regarding effects of innovations.The consequences for the meaning of cycling in innovation are not exactly favourable.

Alternative conceptualisations
After having unpacked how dominant conceptualisations of innovation marginalise the role of cycling in Swedish innovation policy, we now turn to developing some alternative conceptualisations of innovation that may enhance the meaning of cycling.New conceptualisations arise first of all from criticism of the current ones and the negative consequences of acceleration seem to be a key issue in this.

Rethinking progress
Both Urry and Rosa emphasise the 'accelerating turnover time in production, the "magnified speed" of transactions, the sense of an increasing pace of life, the shrinking of "time-horizons for decision-making", the decline of a "waiting culture", and the "proliferation of new products"' (Rosa, 2010;Urry, 2000, p. 125, 129).Speedsaving time as well as increasing convenience -has become an overarching and addictive social norm and a main ingredient of progress, which gives rise to some serious consequences.Our analysis shows that innovation is very much entangled with progress, which in its turn is enmeshed with growth and competitiveness.A logical consequence of this interpretation is also the understanding of innovation as a technological novelty and something that is inevitable and always good.
Rosa's fundamental critique is that acceleration -and hence progress -has outgrown the project of modernity.He argues that political reforms no longer serve the end of improving social conditions, according to democratically defined social goals.Instead, it is almost the 'sole goal of political shaping to keep or make societies competitive, to sustain their acceleration capacities' (Rosa, 2010, pp. 81-82).In line with this, one can argue that innovation is taken out of the political realm, despite its role in governing society (Pfotenhauer & Juhl, 2017).An example of such an innovation that has outgrown the project of modernity is the mass production of the car, originally an intrinsic ingredient of the modernity project (Sheller & Urry, 2000), promising high accessibility for all.Yet, it delivered this only for a part of the population, and for those it has become addictive, the other part feels decelerated.Rosa (Rosa, 2010) argues that supporting the car industry has no (ecological or social) sustainability motive; the sole goal is to keep the industry competitive.
Rosa offers an alternative conceptualisation to modernity's conception of progress with the first meaning in his book Resonance: 'If acceleration is the problem, then resonance may well be the solution' (Rosa, 2019, p. 1).The problem with acceleration is that it has the tendency to escalate in a fundamental transformation in our relationship to time and space, to other people and to the world around us, resulting in alienation, or disturbance and disorder, and ultimately in a decrease of the quality of life (Ibid.)This has actually already happened.The opposite is resonance, which involves restoring balance in our connection to the world and ourselves.
For cycling to be enhanced, progress would need to be reconsidered in line with Rosa's concept of resonance and not centred around economic growth, competitiveness, and technology.Cycling is rather linked to degrowth, which centralises well-being and health for all living creatures as well as for the planet.To decouple progress from economic growth demands a larger focus on the demand side instead of the supply side.In mobilities research, an alternative that is gaining support is the framing of 'mobility as a commons'.This aims to 'reconfigure the very relationship of humans with mobility and with each other' (Nikolaeva et al., 2019, p. 348;Sheller, 2018) and is understood as 'a process that encompasses governance shifts to more communal and democratic forms while also seeking to move beyond small-scale, niche interventions and projects' (Nikolaeva et al., 2019, p. 353).Such 'user-driven' or 'participatory forms of innovation' URBAN, PLANNING AND TRANSPORT RESEARCH might also slowdown the innovation process (Leitner, 2017, p. 211), which may increase reflexivity.A redefinition of progress that follows these lines of thinking could be 'a planned reduction of energy and resource use designed to bring the economy back into balance with the living world in a way that reduces inequality and improves human wellbeing' (Hickel, 2021(Hickel, , p. 1105)).

Rethinking technological novelties
The focus on technological novelties excludes other ways of tackling the problem (which in Drive Sweden is barely defined).To go beyond new technology, innovation (in transport) could be conceptualised as including also changing arrangements of movement, meaning, and practice, and a change of mobility cultures and discourses (Freudendal-Pedersen et al., 2020;Sheller, 2012).It obscures the view that the diffusion of existing products and practices, or even phasing out of old practices, can also be part of innovation.Cycling as such is not associated with something new in absolute terms.The electric bike already seems to become old; it is mainly the idea and implementation of e-biking within mobility as a service or other shared systems that is considered new.Besides a 'technology-first' attitude, there is also the matter of one or very few new technologies that come 'first'.This risks the emergence of new technological lock-ins.After the first 'Faustian bargain' with machines in the nineteenth century, Urry notes a second bargain between humans and digitisation -'database-ization' in his words (2007,275) -creating a new technical lock-in, where there is 'more or less no movement without digital tracing and tracking' (Ibid.,276).
This simultaneously questions the meaning of 'new' in the conceptualisation of innovation (Godin, 2017;Goulet & Vinck, 2017).Schumpeter, seen as the father of innovation, makes a distinction between 'primary or genuine innovation versus re-innovation, and between imitation and copy' (Godin, 2017, p. 22).While innovation policy heavily leans on Schumpeter, this broader understanding seems to have been forgotten.The famous anthropologist Malinowski undermines the classical idea of innovation as the diffusion of an (original, new) invention and argues that mere 'diffusion never takes place: it is always a readaptation, a truly creative process' (Godin, 2017, p. 23, citing;Malinowski, 1927, p. 46).In other words, diffusion is never 'copy and paste' and the same counts for imitation.'new' can also be 'reinstating old', in line with Shove (2012).We are already reinstating old arrangements in the quest for sustainability, such as buying locally grown food, promoting diets from the past, or reopening canals which have previously been replaced by roads (Ibid.)Shove argues that a 'process of reintroduction [of a large role for cycling] has much in common with that of a first-time innovation: in both cases, competencies have to be built, connections made, and markets established' (Ibid., 368).

Rethinking inevitability
The unequal character of automobility -as a project of modernity -is just one example that shows that progress is not even; improvement in one direction is always followed by deterioration or destruction in others -in other words, there are winners and losers, albeit often unintended.The idea that innovation is inevitable and always good (conceptualised above as a pro-innovation bias) entails a fundamental unreflexivity.In the case of transport innovation, this is, for instance, expressed in a lack of concern for both the unequal access to systems of mobility (and immobility) and the unequal distribution of burdens of those systems (Sheller & Urry, 2000).
This lack of reflexivity about the consequences of innovation does not only concern inequality.Innovations have unintended consequences when they try to 'synchronise with other elements in a putative new system' (Urry, 2016, p. 75) and one of those is increased energy use in the form of rebound effects (Paterson, 2007;Urry, 2016).Rosa expands on the idea of (de)synchronisation and relates it to acceleration; he argues that acceleration sets in motion a process of desynchronisation resulting in an 'overburden of time-frames of surrounding nature' (Rosa, 2010, p. 70).As he formulates it: 'whenever two processes interlock, i.e. whenever they are synchronised, the speeding up of one of them puts the other under time-pressure -unless it speeds up too, it is perceived as an annoying break or hindrance ' (Ibid.,69).Rosa even illustrates this by using the example of a trip-chain where part of the chain is sped-up but not the other, which means either extra waiting time (which feels like a waste of time) or alternatively speeding up or adapting the other one too.One would also think that speeding-up commuting time would result in an augmentation of free time, hence a slowing-down of the pace of life.This is, however, not the case.Distances and activities have instead increased to such a degree that this outweighs the time that is won by speeding up transport in the first place (Ibid.)All those phenomena increase the use and/or deterioration of natural resources.Energy use is inherent to technology and 'novel technologies call forth further novel technologies' (Urry, 2016, p. 77, citing;Arthur, 2013, p. 5).Rethinking inevitability comprises a much greater amount of reflexivity in relation to the effects innovations and technology have on society than we have encountered in our analysis.

Conclusion
Our aim was to unpack and problematise the relationship between competitiveness and sustainability in national innovation policies in the transport field; to unravel contradictions and obstacles to the sustainability project; and to point toward potential alternatives.We did this by problematising dominant conceptualisations of innovation policy in field of sustainable mobility and by unpacking how they affect the position of cycling.Building on definitions of innovation, we developed three key assumptions: innovation as progress, innovation as a technological novelty, and innovation as something inevitable.In our analysis, we juxtaposed Hartmut Rosa's critical work on modernity and acceleration, Sheller and Urry's theories on mobilities -including contributions from followers to this field -and critical innovation studies.
We observed, in line with the already-observed uneven relationship between competitiveness and sustainability in innovation, that the position of cycling in innovation policy and projects is marginal.The result of our unpacking of dominating assumptions is threefold.First, the conceptualisation of progress -on which innovation leans so heavily -with primacy for growth, does not stimulate placing cycling high on the innovation agenda.Second, despite innovations such as the e-bike, or improvements in cargo bikes, the bicycle and cycling have difficulties appearing as 'new', in contrast to the car and driving, which succeed in reinventing themselves over and over to appear 'new', as the epitome of progress.Third, the strong belief in the positive effects of automation, digitisation and sharing -equivalent with our future mobility as it seems -obstructs a fundamental questioning of automobility.
The conceptualisation of progress seems to be an essential building block -or rather the foundation -that prevents innovation policy from having a stronger sustainability agenda.Just like we have to redefine what constitutes 'good weather' in light of the climate crisis, we also have to reconsider what constitutes progress.Acknowledging the blind spots related to inequality and excessive resource and energy use must be part of such a redefinition.Urry argues that a conception of progress has to account for the fact that a lot of what is done in the name of progress requires 'suffering, struggle and conflict' (Urry, 2016, p. 85).
An alternative interpretation of progress -in line with possible alternative conceptualisations -logically also questions the role and primacy of technological novelties and the direction this technology takes us.As several scholars argue (e.g.Urry, 2016), it is not technology in itself that accelerates energy and resource use, it is what we wish to use technology for, how we use it and how we relate to it.Currently, in transport, the wish to develop a certain technology is often driven by competitiveness, commercialisation, or the wish to increase convenience or speed, and not by sustainability goals.This makes the view and the use of technology an important building block that prevents more sustainable approaches in innovation policy.A turnaround would bring innovation policy with its new-technology bias back into the political realm and, as such, depart from the needs of human and environment, which can possibly -but not always -be satisfied by new technology, instead of the other way around.
Our paper does not pose that the discussed assumptions make it impossible for cycling to have a larger role.It is likely that in countries with high cycle shares, such as the Netherlands and Denmark, cycling is better represented in innovation policy.However, under the same assumptions, cycling innovation will probably reflect the same surge for speed, convenience, and commodification (see Nikolaeva et al., 2019).While being a bit more sustainable this will still prevent a fundamental questioning of automobility.
With this study we empirically substantiate earlier claims that economic motives are prioritised over sustainability motives in innovation policies.With the crossovers between Rosa's theory of acceleration, mobilities research and critical innovation studies we also introduced new perspectives into critical transport research.For example, how to understand the constant drive for convenience and seamlessness in transport in light of an all-encompassing process of acceleration.
Building on Rosa, Sheller, Urry, other mobility scholars and critical innovation research, we illustrated that adding sustainability as a goal in innovation policy beyond the traditional competitiveness is not sufficient when the interpretation of innovation does not change.This calls for continuous reflexivity and an ongoing process of questioning promising new concepts and buzzwords, to not deprive them from their radical potential by reproducing conventional underlying assumptions (cf.Westman and Castán Broto;Lindberg et al., 2023).

Table 1 .
Contents of Drive Sweden projects, with funding in SEK (the projects within Krabat are excluded under 'funding'; in total they received around 47 million SEK).

Table 2 .
Projects in Viable Cities (the numbers refer to the projects in appendix 3).