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“I’ve rediscovered my love of cycling”: David Millar and James Carnes of CHPT3 on appealing to every cyclist and designing a commuter shoe you can wear with a suit… and down a Swiss mountain

To mark the launch of the CHPT3 Transit 2.0, we sat down with the brains behind the commuter shoe that claims to possess the “power of a pro cycling shoe and the comfort of a luxury sneaker”. But do the shoes work when you’re mountain biking down an Alp?

If you’re a fan of nerdy technical chat about shoe design and the joy of riding a bike through town in a suit with a multiple grand tour stage winner, then you’re in for a treat on this special bonus episode of the road.cc Podcast.

Because, to mark the launch this week of the CHPT3’s Transit 2.0, we sat down with the brains behind the urban commuter shoe that aims to combine the “power of a pro cycling shoe and the comfort of a luxury sneaker” – pro cyclist-turned-commentator David Millar and ex-Adidas designer James Carnes – to discuss the inspiration behind the potentially revolutionary new cycling footwear, Millar’s rediscovered love for cycling, and whether you can wear the same shoe at the local nightclub, in a meeting at the office, and down a precipitous Swiss mountain.

 

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Finding a shoe you can cycle to work in and not click-clack around the office like Michael Flatley when you get there, or be forced to lug your civvie shoes around with you in a bag all day long, has long proven a headscratcher for commuter cyclists.

While many have tried and failed over the years to build the ultimate SPD-compatible commuter trainer – often veering towards being unwalkable off the bike or ditching the concept of clipping in altogether – the CHPT3 Transit 2.0, and its cleat-covering ‘microplate’, claims to be the “first of its kind engineered for riding in the city”… and walking comfortably around when you get there.

CHPT3 Transit

The shoe’s multipurpose approach stems from a broader desire to bust out of the niches the cycling industry often finds itself in, says CHPT3’s David Millar and James Carnes.

Millar, of course, was for most of his life firmly rooted in the pro cycling world, a stage winner at all three grand tours, including four at the Tour de France and five at the Vuelta a Espana, a confessed doper-turned-staunch anti-doping advocate, ITV4 commentator, and founder of cycling clothing band CHPT3, its vowel-less moniker derived from Millar’s view of retirement as the third chapter of a career previously divided into his pre and post-doping ban eras.

Carnes, meanwhile, is a self-confessed outsider to the often-closed world of cycling. A former global creative director and Head of Brand Strategy at Adidas, he used his decades worth of design experience in the world of sports to rethink the often confused, muddled world of urban cycling shoes, all the while helping a stodgy old former pro like Millar redefine what it means to be a cyclist and break out of his racing-focused bubble.

David Millar CHPT3 Transit 2.0

“What’s been really interesting over the past few years has been my rediscovery of my love of cycling,” Millar tells the road.cc Podcast, from an extremely Swiss-looking chalet nestled in the Alps in the middle of a family downhill mountain biking holiday – where he was testing out the new shoes in perhaps the most extreme environment possible.

“And that’s given a whole new impetus to what we want to do, which is to start to change people’s perception of all types of cycling.

“I found, and James in particular has helped me see this as he comes from outside cycling, that I was becoming blinkered from within the cycling world. It’s very easy to find yourself locked in and only think about people who are in your ‘area’.

“Whether it’s road cycling, mountain biking, or urban commuter cycling, it’s a really strange world, cycling, where every niche has its moat around it, and everyone stays very firmly within their island. And with CHPT3, we really wanted to start to bleed out of that and transfer across, not only those different ideas within cycling, but to start thinking of things outside it that we can bring in.”

CHPT3 Transit 2.0

James agrees: “Unlike running or football, or even yoga, cycling hadn’t really broken the barrier, through making a sport its own that’s very closed off to something everyone wants to be part of. But I kind of feel like cycling is doing that now.

“It’s exciting. Of course you get people saying it’s sacrilegious and you’re totally ruining cycling, but cycling is such an amazing thing… And for me, it’s all in. I could be riding a road bike, a Brompton, a mountain bike, or riding to work,” the American says.

“The joy of riding is something a lot of people are discovering, but there’s still not a proliferation of things you can own and wear that are really rooted in your entire daily life.”

CHPT3 Transit

So how did the idea for the Transit come about? And what problems did they encounter on the way while trying to design the ultimate urban commuter shoe?

A Brompton enthusiast who used the folding bike to propel himself around the Tour de France’s finish areas and to and from his hotel during his Julys in the commentary box, Millar soon became disgruntled with the downsides of cycling to work, especially when it came to his feet.

After coming to his “wit’s end” with the current urban commuter shoes on the market – including one particular popular urban shoe that gave him blisters just walking about at the Tour – Millar sent every pair of cycling shoes he owned to James, who promptly took them all apart to see what worked and what, frankly, didn’t.

“And James was looking at them and all and was like, ‘oh my God, this is so basic, what they’re doing’. And I was like ‘f*** yeah, it feels it’,” Millar says.

“I started taking all these shoes apart, with this brief – this summertime, Tour de France Brompton riding was a perfect microcosm of a brief for the bigger picture,” James adds.

“He was saying, I’m on the bike 20 per cent of the time, walking around 80 per cent of the time, I’m going up hills, I need power and to be able to go fast, but I also want to hop off my bike when I want to and I don’t want to change my shoes. Oh, and by the way, at the end of the day I might go to a press conference, where everyone is dressed up.

“And I was like, okay, no sweat, this doesn’t sound too hard!”

David Millar CHPT3 Transit 2.0, Girona

Faced with Millar’s extremely wide-ranging brief, Carnes noticed the same problem popping up, that cycling shoes – even ones supposedly built for urban commuting – were still too rooted in the cycling world of performance, leading him to completely reevaluate the build, design, and style of the shoe that ultimately, three years later, became the Transit 2.0.

Which leads us to the most important questions: Do they look cool? Are they suitable for cycling and walking about the office and town? How do they fare on a downhill mountain biking route in the Swiss Alps, or in the most inhospitable of British town centres? And most importantly, can you wear them with a suit?

“For me personally, the journey of watching James design and develop has been so eye opening,” Millar says. “And it’s genuinely the sneaker I could wear with a suit, or in jeans, or even downhill mountain biking – which is nuts, because that’s the dream shoe.”

The road.cc Podcast is available on Apple PodcastsSpotify, and Amazon Music, and if you have an Alexa you can just tell it to play the road.cc Podcast. It’s also embedded further up the page, so you can just press play.

After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.

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17 comments

Avatar
Bigfoz | 3 months ago
1 like

If I were still bike commuting in to the office (I retired from the sh*tp*t last year), then these would be perfect for riding in then tooling around the office and going to mtgs etc. Smart enough to blag it, comfy enough for the day, practical enough to ride in

Avatar
Rendel Harris | 3 months ago
2 likes
Quote:

leading him to completely reevaluate the build, design, and style of the shoe that ultimately, three years later, became the Transit 2.0.

It took three years to design a fairly nondescript pair of sneakers that incorporate an SPD cleat - something that, incidentally, numerous other companies have already successfully done (see Adidas, Endura, Specialized, Pearl Izumi, Giro and many others)?

Avatar
Bigfoz replied to Rendel Harris | 3 months ago
1 like

As the "rtcl" clearly states - there are other brands on the market and they all do it badly. (I've paraphrased slightly). This is a less bikey and less bike focussed shoe (as clearly stated), and as such differnt to a hooney bright orange pair of downhill MTB shoes you can walk badly in. These should walk like a shoe and ride like a cycle shoe, unlike most cycling brands which sacrifice pretty much all walking ability to ride function,

 

Avatar
mdavidford | 3 months ago
1 like
Quote:

CHPT3, its vowel-less moniker

I'm so out of touch - I didn't even realise 'R' was a vowel these days.

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john_smith replied to mdavidford | 3 months ago
0 likes

Say "R" out loud. Do you hear a consonant?

Avatar
mdavidford replied to john_smith | 3 months ago
3 likes
john_smith wrote:

Say "R" out loud. Do you hear a consonant?

AAAARRRRRRRRRR!!!!

Avatar
hawkinspeter replied to john_smith | 3 months ago
1 like
john_smith wrote:

Say "R" out loud. Do you hear a consonant?

Sounded like a pirate

Avatar
E6toSE3 replied to mdavidford | 3 months ago
1 like

Not in some dialects of English, eg Scottish. But it's a glide in most forms of English

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chrisonabike replied to mdavidford | 3 months ago
2 likes

You're in company - due to declining formal English teaching and phonological changes nowadays many don't know their "R"s from their "L", bro.

Avatar
Simon E | 3 months ago
1 like

Funny how they don't mention the price - £195. I wonder why that is...

Well, Dave has to fund his lifestyle, I guess.

I use SPDs on my commuter bike and would like something a bit more practical when off the bike than MTB shoes but haven't tried any of this type (and to be fair to my ancient Shimano MT40s they are surprisingly good on stairs and shiny surfaces).

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stonojnr replied to Simon E | 3 months ago
0 likes

Tbf the Adidas velosambas are £110 rrp. So given these are a little less commonly produced, the price is probably fair.

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Rendel Harris replied to stonojnr | 3 months ago
0 likes

That does of course assume that £110 is a fair price for the Adidas product which may be a moot point…

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simon tatler | 3 months ago
0 likes

wow, what an incredibly unnecessary creation. surely there's literally zero benefit in using these.

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IanGlasgow replied to simon tatler | 3 months ago
4 likes

Depends how you use your bike. For a sports cyclist there's no point. If you use your bike for transport and prefer clipless pedals then shoes you can comfortably walk in are essential. It's a niche market, but it's certainly a market.

Avatar
hawkinspeter replied to simon tatler | 3 months ago
2 likes
simon tatler wrote:

wow, what an incredibly unnecessary creation. surely there's literally zero benefit in using these.

I've got SPD pedals on my road bike and I'm often using the train, so that involves walking up and down stairs and on slippery surfaces. I get away with some Bont MTB shoes, but some more casual shoes would be useful for when I take my other bike (also SPD pedals) to go shopping.

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chrisonabike replied to simon tatler | 3 months ago
2 likes

I'm more "flat" for casual use now, but certainly when I only had one bike (after the toe-strap years...) it was SPDs for me.  And for safety reasons and ergnomics my recumbent pretty much needs some foot retention - and I use that for outings rather than races so being able to walk comfortably when off it is a must!

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E6toSE3 replied to simon tatler | 3 months ago
0 likes

Been wanting something like these for nigh on 25 years. Can't afford them now and no longer need them in the way I did when cycling to business meetings all over London. Age 69, I now ride flats on the urban town bike. They'd have been perfect for the steps and tunnels where I used to take off cycling shoes to walk in socks

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