Mainstreaming Smarter Travel 2013

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Contents

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Minister’s Foreword Baroness Kramer, Minister of State for Transport

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Introduction Rory McMullan, project manager, LSTF Engagement, Landor LINKS

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Landor LINKS Ltd Apollo House 359 Kennington Lane London SE11 5QY Managing Director Rod Fletcher Email: rod.fletcher@landor.co.uk

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Spelling out the benefits The Local Sustainable Transport Fund has been a genuine success, writes Jason Torrance

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New solutions for historic problems Lynn Sloman considers what it will take to ‘mainstream’ smarter travel

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Manchester’s smart solutions Mainstreaming LSTF is the way ahead for Greater Manchester

Advertising Manager Daniel Simpson T: 020 20 7091 7861 Email: ads.ltt@landor.co.uk Editorial Director Peter Stonham Circulation Email: subs@landor.co.uk Design & Production Kevin Noblett T: 020 7091 7879 Justin Andrew T: 020 7091 7880 Email: production@landor.co.uk Printers Hastings Printing Company Ltd Drury Lane, St Leonards-on-Sea East Sussex TN38 9BJ © Landor LINKS Ltd 2013 This magazine comes free as part of a subscription to Local Transport Today.

Travelling in the right direction Greg Hartshorn asks whether smarter travel is just an eddy or really part of the mainstream?

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Project Management Rory McMullan T: 020 7091 7894 Email: rory@landor.co.uk Editorial Mark Moran & Deniz Huseyin

Learning to go with the flow Phil Goodwin says the Mainstreaming Smarter Travel conference offers a real opportunity to define where smarter choices thinking is going

20 Paving the way for smarter travel The DfT’s 2007 guide to personal travel planning has proven to be an influential publication, reports Jon Parker 23 An enterprising vision Paul Johnson provides an LEP’s perspective on sustainable transport 24 Sustainable investment makes economic sense ’Shovel-ready’ transport schemes work best, believes Tony Ciaburro 26 A green and accesible land Personalised travel planning in predominantly rural settings presents very particular challenges, write Richard Adams, Laura Gosling and David Knight

28 Marketing the mainstream Changing travel behaviour requires a finely tuned and sustained marketing strategy, write Amanda Pearce and Amy Boyle 30 Choosing the right ingredients Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire have been perfecting the LSTF recipe, explains Daniel Godfrey 33 De-congesting a complicated county Hertfordshire is embracing smarter travel concepts, reports Mark Moran 34 Changing behaviour to get people cycling Thomas Stokell and Sama Alyasiri share the latest thinking on how we can apply behaviour change theory to encourage more people to cycle more often 37

Delivering the goods Freight and deliveries are the ‘elephant in the room’ of sustainable transport, writes Freddie Talberg

39 Making the right connections Thinking locally could be the best strategic solution and smarter phones will enable us to travel more sustainably, argues Gordon Baker 41

Mainstreaming Smarter Travel Event Guide

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Minister’s foreword

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s the new Minister of State for Transport, I have taken on responsibility for a range of transport issues. This includes the Local Sustainable Transport Fund, which has given a major funding boost to smart travel solutions across England. My new portfolio also covers a number of associated topics, such as integrated journeys, smart ticketing, transport accessibility, and, most importantly, the role of transport in growing our economy.

It’s been an interesting first month in the role of Minister of State. I have been consistently impressed by the aspirations that local authorities have for their transport systems. Transport plays a crucial role in creating places we want to work and live and a good transport system can transform lives. It can link people to jobs and education. It can improve health and wellbeing. And it can bring communities closer together.

This year, Landor LINKS have worked with the Department for Transport, Transport for Greater Manchester, Sustrans and Atkins to deliver a conference and magazine which both take the name of ‘Mainstreaming Smarter Travel’. But what does ‘mainstreaming’ mean? To me, it means a community where cycling or walking, hopping on the

We need to understand what works and what doesn’t. And we need to gather evidence to support business cases for future investment in smarter travel Baroness Kramer

bus or sharing a lift with a colleague, is the norm. Where local authorities do not need to convince the public to travel sustainably, because the public has already bought in to the idea.

We know that smarter travel initiatives deliver high benefit for low cost. And the need for cheap, effective transport solutions continues to be important even as our economy shows sign of recovery.

We need to understand what works and what doesn’t. And we need to gather evidence to support business cases for future investment in smarter travel. My Department’s Monitoring and Evaluation framework goes some way to delivering this, and I’d like to personally thank everyone who is participating in the

collection of evidence for this. But great value can also be gained by talking to each other, discussing barriers encountered and solutions found, and collectively building the knowledge needed to deliver the best local transport networks we can.

I very much welcome this opportunity to contribute to the transport systems of the future, from developing High Speed Rail links, to encouraging better journey connectivity, to promoting the importance of accessibility across transport modes. I wish you all the best as we continue to strive for a transport system that is accessible, integrated and smart.

Travel event and magazine feted the LSTF as reigniting the smarter travel sector after a number of quiet years.

This year’s Mainstreaming Smarter Travel conference in Manchester will give LSTF practitioners opportunity to hear about some of the great work being delivered and take away lessons.

To get a feel for what is happening at the conference take a look at the programme at the back of the magazine. You will see 30 case studies presented in a speed learning format. The busy programme has been designed to facilitate discussion and networking, allowing project teams to discuss what has been tried and how well, or not, it has worked.

We are at the mid-point of the initial LSTF programme, so now is a good time to start thinking about the future. We have had the welcome news from the DfT that the initial LSTF programme will be

extended for an extra year and be included within the Single Local Growth Fund to enable bids for Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs).

Many large businesses were amongst the earliest to adopt travel plans for their workplaces, so this arrangement should hold no fear for those working in smarter travel. However, whether smarter travel becomes mainstreamed rests in large part on the results of the first campaign.

If the theme for 2012-13 is “Mainstreaming”, what word will best sum up 2013-14? We suggest “Embedding”.

What do you think?

I look forward to a productive two days of learning and discussion in Manchester.

Baroness Kramer, Minister of State for Transport

Introduction

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ver the past year Landor LINKS has been working with the Department for Transport on the Local Sustainable Transport Fund (LSTF) engagement programme, which shares best practice between the 96 projects, through a series of events and publications.

As Phil Goodwin notes in his keynote article, if by ‘mainstream’ we mean that smarter travel already represents the biggest item of expenditure in transport in Britain, this is “manifestly unrealistic”, but it is certainly true to say that there is lots of good work being delivered nationwide.

This magazine, the articles that have appeared in the pages of Local Transport Today over the past year, and a national conference which features over 80 speakers attest to the surge of activity happening across the country.

Last December the Rebooting Smarter

Rory McMullan, Project manager, LSTF Engagement, Landor LINKS rory@landor.co.uk

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Learning to go with the flow Phil Goodwin says the Mainstreaming Smarter Travel conference offers a real opportunity to define where smarter choices thinking is going

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ast year the theme of the increasingly important annual conference on smarter choices was ‘Rebooting’, and this year it will be ‘Mainstreaming’. This year several hundred specialists – practitioners and researchers – will be gathering in Manchester on the 3rd and 4th of December to work out how to cope with the way ahead.

Norman Baker had agreed to do the keynote speech, as he did last year (though in the event he and his ministerial team were stranded on a station platform at Paddington). However, following Baker’s transfer to the Home Office, it will be new transport minister Baroness Kramer who will open the event.

Introducing the conference last year I wrote: “By every reckoning the current conditions ought to be favourable for a set of policy measures which offer a (relatively) easy, cheap and politically attractive way of improving travel opportunities.” And surely the same words apply today.

It is normal to give conferences some such title, with words like ‘launching’, ‘studying’, ‘implementing’, ‘understanding’, ‘changing’ and so on. They don’t always have a specific meaning, and maybe they don’t have to – they offer a way of branding an event, designing a leaflet and drawing attention.

But on the face of it the move from ‘Rebooting’ to ‘Mainstreaming’ does suggest at least a symbolic transition from preparatory work to a great flood of activity. The last year has certainly seen the continuation of various funding streams intended to support smarter choices, and almost alone among transport policies there is simply no serious body of opposition. Smarter choices approaches are cheap, quite popular, remarkably effective, and contribute usefully both to specific local improvement of opportunities and quality of life, the attractiveness of local areas, non-transport objectives, especially health, and the highest level of policies on sustainability.

Those who are familiar with experience

and the research (which doesn’t include everybody who ought to be) are by now rather clear that there is a centrality, a comprehensiveness, about smarter choices which justify their inclusion at every level of strategy.

While the case for smarter choices seems clear, this year’s event still sets aside some time to discuss what this

There is substantial evidence that smarter choices give very good value for money indeed – better than most infrastructure projects Phil Goodwin

attractive phrase actually means. The first session of the conference is designed as a proper discussion among the participants rather than speeches from the platform – a welcome move as opportunities for debate are sadly rare in transport conferences.

One session title offers, perhaps as a working definition, “Embedding smarter choices into general practice”.

Rory McMullan, the Mainstreaming Smarter Travel conference organiser, wrote to me stating: “Mainstreaming is one of those words which is often used about smarter choices, but not clearly defined, and I think your article might go some way to clarifying what we mean. How do we go about mainstreaming? How will we know

if we have been successful? How does this fit in the overall context of transport policy and practice?”

Good questions, and not easy to answer.

Let’s think about the word itself. It comes, of course, from basic physical geography; as small streams join larger ones, the flow of water becoming bigger and bigger, until they eventually become a river and flow to the sea. In simple terms, the main stream is the biggest one. Well that, in a sense, is a helpful starting point, and there is a salience in the metaphor because smarter choices are indeed not a single policy, but a wide and changing variety of different streams – information, advice, improvement in operations, opportunities, infrastructure, favouring walking, cycling, public transport, various forms of alternatives to travel including ecommerce – all contributing to a less car dependent culture. Multiple small streams contributing to a greater flow – that’s good.

But here is the reality check; we know perfectly well that smarter choices do not represent the biggest element of transport expenditure or effort. Saying smarter choices should be the mainstream of transport policy is, I think, a legitmate proposition. It needs argument, but it is not silly. Saying that smarter choices are already in that position is manifestly unrealistic. But words evolve, and it is worth recognising that the main use of ‘mainstream’, as a single word, is not about streams and water at all: it refers to cultures.

I like the Wikipedia definition, which starts: “The mainstream includes all popular culture and media culture, typically disseminated by mass media.

The opposite of the mainstream are subcultures, countercultures and cult followings” (It then goes on to a rather American-oriented discussion about whether it is a pejorative term or not, which we can leave for now).

The point of the mainstream is its dominance, it is the prevailing wisdom, it is the zeitgeist. From that point of view, the culture of smarter choices exists, but there are great swathes of government who see

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it as an amusing diversion, a sop to sustainability, a good candidate for rather cheap ‘initiatives’, but simply not in the same class as the ‘real’ priorities of massive expansion of infrastructure for travel, and essentially disposable.

In this context there is a peculiar sort of concept-blindness about smarter choices.

Financial pressures on national and local government, as indeed on most of the public, mean that there is a need for reassurance that any substantial expenditure gives good value for money, and is in accord with the political and economic priorities of the time.

There is substantial evidence that smarter choices give very good value for money indeed – better than most infrastructure projects. This is in line with a decade of discovery that small, local, cheap improvements to the quality and ease of transport (such as local safety schemes, area traffic management, reallocation of road capacity to walkers, cyclists and public transport, and improvements to the public realm in town centres and areas of concentrated shopping and leisure activity) typically give benefit-cost ratios (BCRs) in double figures, with benefits that may be 10 or 20 times as large as costs, or more, compared with ratios in the range 1-6 of even the best infrastructure projects. All this, you would think, fits well into the mainstream of transport appraisal and evaluation, but the reality still is the illusion that ‘revenue spending is bad, capital spending is good’, with burdens of proof on small effective policies, which are more stringent than is ever demanded on even the most implausible claims of infrastructure ‘contributing to economic growth’.

So what we have is the paradox that smarter choices are indeed in the mainstream of transport thinking culturally, but are still at the level of minority interest in the allocation of funds.

They are in the vanguard, I would say, but do not yet constitute the mainstream.

Transport consultant Lynn Sloman, who describes the current situation as “chilly but with some grounds for optimism”, has

We know perfectly well that smarter choices do not represent the biggest element of transport expenditure or effort. Saying smarter choices should be the mainstream of transport policy is, I think, a legitmate proposition Phil Goodwin

LSTF: The key numbers The Local Sustainable Transport Fund amounts to over £1 billion investment in sustainable travel awarded to 96 projects across England. The twin objectives of the programme are to facilitate economic development while reducing carbon emissions. Associated benefits include: improved safety, air quality, and increased levels of physical activity.

South East Number of projects funded: 21 DfT funding (2011-15): £111m Local contribution also provided (2011-15): £102m

South West started to put a figure to this (as she did for cycling, an important piece of evidence which underpinned the £10 per head per year which the Parliamentary Cycling Group formally recommended).

Her interpretation of mainstreaming, expressed in this publication is particularly important. “In 2015, there will be £179m for smarter travel,” she says. “That should become a dedicated, on-going funding commitment, 40% revenue and 60% capital… It needs to increase by 25% per year for the next decade, with each pound from DfT matched by local authorities or their partners. That would give roughly £40 per citizen per year for sustainable travel. Only then will smarter travel really be mainstream.” (See page 15).

That’s very cleverly pitched at the crux of political achievability and real impact, characteristic of Lynn’s targets. I’d vote for it. But we do need to think about the expenditures of billions, if the mainstream has millions.

The author Phil Goodwin is professor of transport policy at the Centre for Transport and Society, University of West of England, Bristol, and emeritus professor at University College London. He chairs a panel discussion on the opening day of Mainstreaming Smarter Travel.

Number of projects funded: 15 DfT funding (2011-15): £88m Local contribution also provided (2011-15): £102.8m

East of England Number of projects funded: 10 DfT funding (2011-15): £51.238m Local contribution also provided (2011-15): £46.165m

East Midlands Number of projects funded: 6 DfT funding (2011-15): £32.575m Local contribution also provided (2011-15): £33.349m

West Midlands Number of projects funded: 12 DfT funding provided (2011-15): £77m Local contribution also provided (2011-15): £58m

Yorkshire & Humber Number of projects funded: 10 DfT funding provided (2011-15): £52m Local contribution also provided (2011-15): £68m

North East Number of projects funded: 9 DfT funding (2011-15): £25m Local contribution also provided (2011-15): £34m

North West Number of projects funded: 12 DfT funding (2011-15): £91m Local contribution also provided (2011-15): £78m

www.getbritaincycling.net The ultimate reference for guidance on the planning, design and management of cycling strategies and infrastructure.

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Travelling in the right direction Greg Hartshorn asks whether smarter travel is just an eddy or really part of the mainstream?

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s ‘smarter travel’ now part of mainstream transport planning and delivery by local authorities? The team at Atkins has taken the opportunity to ask some of the many local authorities we are supporting in delivering their Local Sustainable Transport Fund (LSTF) programmes for their views.

Moving to mainstream The concept of smarter travel – the multifaceted promotion of sustainable modes of travel – has been around for some time, and the ambition that it will form part of the transport ‘mainstream’ has been around since at least 2005 (with the launch of the seminal report Smarter Choices – Changing the way we travel). So why are we still asking the question?

Historically, smarter travel has not been a particular focus of government at national level. Whilst the advent of Local Transport Plans (LTPs) meant that a lot more money was available for local transport during the 2000s, local authorities spent a relatively small percentage of their budgets on smarter travel. In part, this was due to a lack of revenue funding to support behavioural change initiatives, but also due to a lack of the skills, guidance and political support to deliver locally.

However, current investment through LSTF, providing dedicated capital and revenue funding for smarter travel activities, means that a greater share of transport spending and activity locally is on smarter travel. Smarter travel spending has of course received further boosts from other funds such as the Better Bus Area Fund, Linking Places Fund and Cycle City Ambition Grant. Despite the loss of the Commission for Integrated Transport and, more recently, Cycling England, there is more funding available for smarter travel and smaller transport schemes than ever before.

Amongst the local authorities Atkins is working with, the momentum created by the Government behind smarter travel,

Signage and information form part of Southampton’s Legible City scheme

and cycling in particular, is welcomed. As Thomas Evans, LSTF project officer at Gloucestershire County Council, explains: “The LSTF has provided a welcome focus and highlighted the role that smarter travel can have as part of an overall transport programme. Concentrating on a smaller geographic area has enabled improvements to have a higher impact on locally identified issues.”

Joe Carter, Slough Borough Council’s LSTF programme director, has a similar view: “The LTSF programme has allowed us to focus significant resources on changing the travel behaviour of those contributing most to congestion in Slough.

We expect the programme to make a tangible difference to employees, employers and school children.”

In itself, though greater investment in the short-term does not make smarter travel mainstream. Rather, smarter travel can only move into the mainstream when it can become sustainable. The LSTF initiative offers a real opportunity to achieve this by: encouraging LSTF’s smarter travel activities to become fully integrated with other programmes (such as those relating to the LTP and developments) demonstrating the value of LSTF’s

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smarter travel to engender political and stakeholder support, and ultimately secure long-term funding.

Integrating smarter travel Of course, local authorities are busy on other smaller transport projects besides those funded by LSTF, the LTP programme being the most obvious example. Some of these projects are similar to what we see in LSTF programmes, such as walking and cycling projects. However, the LTP programme, developer-funded schemes, and those funded through the Better Bus Area Fund are about capital expenditure, so generally there is little opportunity to undertake ‘softer’ behavioural change activities such as workplace and schools travel planning, promotion and marketing.

The LSTF provides the revenue to finance such activities, albeit in selected areas, and brings extra investment to support capital schemes which are additional to those in the LTP programme.

The extra funding invested in a location, and a focus on targeted improvements in end-to-end journeys, means that LSTF can have much more impact in those areas in which it is deployed. LSTF, therefore, offers an excellent role model, but we should remember that many parts of England currently receive no LSTF money. Even in local authority areas which are receiving such funding, initiatives are ring-fenced geographically, with, in many cases, urban areas taking priority.

Rob Murphy, LSTF programme manager, Wiltshire Council makes this point: “There is some integration of LSTF, particularly with our LTP programme, but part of the difficulty is that the LSTF project is somewhat area and theme specific.” It’s also worth noting that LSTF-type intervention may not work everywhere, as Murphy highlights: “In predominately rural areas where car ownership levels are, by necessity, relatively high, mainstreaming cycling and smarter choices will be difficult.”

Having said this, there is evidence that integration of LSTF activities gives local authorities the opportunity to deliver authority-wide initiatives that may otherwise have been unaffordable, adding value to LSTF, developer-funded, Pinch Point and LTP programmes. In Gloucestershire, for example, LSTF has helped to deliver smartcards, real-time passenger information and intelligent bus priority as well as a common brand. The county council’s Thomas Evans explains: “The brand developed for the LSTF

A sustainable transport day aimed at the commercial sector in Cheltenham

We expect the LSTF programme to make a tangible difference to employees, employers and school children Joe Carter, Slough Borough Council

programme is being used to promote a range of mainstream passenger transport information and services. Also, a legacy of our LSTF programme will be a range of services linked by a common brand that is more recognised by the public and which will continue to be used by the council after the LSTF programme has finished.”

Integration of LSTF into other programmes, including developer-funded schemes, public realm and public transport projects can therefore bring mutual benefits which add value by increasing the impacts on both sides.

Adrian Webb, LSTF programme manager at Southampton City Council, notes that: “LSTF measures contribute to our integrated transport programme to meet our LTP aims. We deliver coordinated projects across funds to ensure greater impact and value for money.”

If we can do this right, we can use the legacy of LSTF investment now to support projects funded in other ways for many years to come, in LSTF areas and elsewhere.

Demonstrating the value of smarter travel Over the last ten years, various projects have sought to demonstrate the potential of smarter travel measures to change travel behaviour, among them: Cycling Demonstration Towns, Sustainable Travel Demonstration Towns and the Cycling City and Towns Programme. Evaluation of such projects has tended to focus more on benefits to health than outcomes relating to creating growth or cutting carbon.

If smarter travel is to move into the mainstream, practitioners need to secure sustained funding, both to deliver infrastructure, and to continue to pay for the pool of skilled smarter travel officers

Slough Hospital staff learn how to drive the ‘Smart Way’ on a simulator

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Engaging with school children in Slough…

which local authorities have worked hard to build up. In turn, this requires sustained political and stakeholder support and a clear set of evidence-based achievements.

Whether local authority officers look for funding from existing council budgets or elsewhere, such as the Local Growth Fund, they will need to convince decisionmakers of the benefits of smarter travel, and in particular, the role of smarter travel in delivering local economic growth. This view is shared by a number of our clients.

Joe Carter from Slough Borough Council is clear on what local decision-makers are interested in: “The key objectives of our LSTF programme are to help our residents into work and improve trading conditions for local businesses. We are participating in the Department for Transport’s LSTF evaluation programme so that we can understand better how well we are achieving these objectives.”

Wiltshire’s Rob Murphy shares this view: “I see having a good, robust and locally relevant evidence base as essential in getting decision-makers to champion smarter travel.”

Meeting this goal will be a tall order for any individual authority, meaning that LSTF authorities nationally must come together to identify credible evidence of how investment in smarter travel can create growth, as well as cut carbon and bring health benefits. The level of smarter travel activity across the country partfunded by LSTF is phenomenal, but we are still in the early days of providing enough robust evidence to convince big business of the benefits of investing in walking, cycling and all the other facets of smarter travel. There is also a tendency to focus on monitoring inputs and outputs rather than

...and during a Freshers’ Fayre in Peterborough

I see having a good, robust and locally relevant evidence base as essential in getting decision-makers to champion smarter travel Rob Murphy, Wiltshire County Council outcomes, which could limit the evidence base. The DfT’s plans for a formal study to evaluate the impacts of the LSTF programme is therefore most welcome, but it will be some time before the results of this work are known.

The 2013 Spending Round has given some much-needed certainty to future levels of the Integrated Transport Block.

However, this funding is not ring-fenced for transport, let alone smarter travel.

Local authorities may therefore turn their attention to securing a share of the Local Growth Fund.

To date, the degree of engagement with Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) by local authorities on this issue has been mixed. But it is important that all authorities begin this process before LEPs finalise their Strategic Economic Plans in December. Also, local authorities need to work internally to earmark funding for smarter choices measures to support economic growth and to help local authorities achieve their statutory duties in relation to carbon emissions, air quality and congestion.

Southampton’s Adrian Webb says: “The

reduction in the allocation to integrated transport pots for highway authorities post 2015, and the money being diverted through to LEPs, presents opportunities and threats to the delivery of behaviour change programmes, including the loss of those in favour of larger scale sub-regional projects.”

Compelling body of evidence So, it is only when we can demonstrate the role of smarter travel within the wider toolkit of interventions, and show how it can help to achieve the ambitions of businesses, local authorities and communities, thereby securing support and funding, that we can claim that smarter travel has become mainstream. It is only then that smarter travel will be funded by choice from more traditional funding sources, rather than through a ring-fenced pot such as LSTF. There is an onus on all practitioners to seek out this evidence and share it amongst the LSTF community. Together, the knowledge we can collate and share will result in a body of evidence that is much more compelling than its individual parts.

All these things are achievable, and smarter travel is on a crest at the moment.

Now is the time to take advantage of the momentum kick-started by LSTF to ensure not only that we deliver our programmes successfully, but that we can capture the benefits of doing so.

The author Greg Hartshorn is Atkins’ director of Transport Policy & Strategy. Atkins would like to thank those involved for their participation in this article.

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Spelling out the benefits The Local Sustainable Transport Fund has been a genuine success, writes Jason Torrance

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STF. Local. Sustainable. Transport.

Fund. For the delegates at the ‘Mainstreaming Smarter Travel’ conference, the phrase is as familiar as an old friend. The acronym is bandied around all the time – it rolls off the tongue. But with this familiarity we should not forget that the LSTF revolutionised transport funding in England. The foundations of this revolution can be found in the first two letters of our friendly acronym – local and sustainable.

These two words play right into the heart of Sustrans’ mission. The LSTF, by providing dedicated national government funding for transport, gave local communities the power to make decisions about their transport networks for the first time. It meant that local people with local knowledge could invest in transport schemes that were not only environmentally friendly but good for the economy too. It kick-started an evergrowing list of projects that encourage walking, cycling and public transport.

Sustrans is working with these

communities to deliver changes on the ground that will make it easier for people to choose alternatives to the car for more of their everyday journeys. We believe that car dependency is too high, that it’s crippling household budgets, holding back our economy and inflicting irreversible damage on our environment. But we also believe that there is huge potential to change. With 55% of all car journeys being shorter than five miles, the evidence

Working with schools to educate and encourage walking to school

shows that by investing in walking, cycling and public transport, 9 out of 10 local journeys could be made without the need to use a car.

And the time is now. This year there’s been a political awakening; a realisation by our leaders that we need a plan for the future of transport in this country. It comes right from the top. David Cameron announced £114m in funding in August, saying he wanted to kick-start a cycling revolution; Westminster passionately debated how to ‘Get Britain Cycling’ while 5,000 cyclists surrounded Parliament, heralding the birth of the cycling vote and London mayor Boris Johnson revealed a

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It’s clear that long-term certainty over this funding stream is needed to ensure that councils are encouraged to continue planning for the future Jason Torrance

near-billion pound plan for cycling in the capital. In addition, this government has invested more per year in cycling and sustainable travel than ever before, with almost £700m made available through the Local Sustainable Transport Fund, Community Linking Places Fund and Cycle Safety Fund on top of block allocations provided to local authorities.

But there’s still a long way to go if we’re to reach the dizzy heights of some of the European countries we so often look to for leading examples of best practice for transport. So with that in mind, Sustrans has been busy supporting local authorities and the communities that they serve across England through the LSTF and through other programmes.

This year we celebrated the successful delivery of 84 new walking and cycling networks as part of our Connect 2 programme. In the last five years, with funding from the Big Lottery Fund, Sustrans has worked in partnership to invest £50m and an additional £115m from local authority partners, that will over time transform the way people travel. Our work has focused on creating new bridges and crossings for pedestrians and cyclists across major roads, busy railways or rivers (which deter travel on foot and bike because of traffic danger or long detours), and linking these into networks of new and improved walking and cycling routes. Four million people now have safer travel choices to work, school and the shops.

In London, the Mayor’s Vision for Cycling has set the tone for the rest of the UK. Importantly, alongside some big ticket items, Boris Johnson has announced a new network of ‘quiet ways’ – direct, continuous, fully-signposted routes on peaceful side streets, aimed at people put off by cycling in traffic.

Sustrans has been awarded the contract for scoping these new routes, which we hope will revolutionise cycling in the

Creating routes for pedestrians and cyclists

capital. Over the next 12 months we’ll be working with Transport for London and local authorities to find the best routes for this new network, with the vision of making it easier for all Londoners to make door-to-door journeys safely by bike or on foot.

In Wales, Sustrans was instrumental in the conception and realisation of the Active Travel (Wales) Bill, which was assented into law in October. The result of six years of hard work, the Bill means that all local authorities must prepare a strategic plan for a network of active travel routes and work towards delivering it. New high quality design standards will sit alongside the Act, meaning people across Wales can expect the highest quality infrastructure. We’re very proud to have been behind world-first legislation, which means walking and cycling will no longer be an afterthought in local planning and it’s our aspiration to see this concept replicated throughout the UK in the form of new nation-specific legislation.

But just building routes won’t yield the results we need. People also need to be educated, informed and encouraged to use them. Sustrans works with parents, teachers and students at 1,400 schools to improve skills and awareness around walking and cycling. We typically see a third of students cycling to school regularly. The national average is just 2%.

It shows that when families and schools have the right mix of information and support they can truly transform the school journey and start to form habits for our kids that will last a lifetime.

Sustrans’ Personalised Travel Planning (PTP) projects cut local traffic congestion

and improve health by encouraging people to make a few changes to their daily travel choices when and where it suits them best. We have worked on projects targeting more than 280,000 households and have consistently achieved an 11% reduction in car driver trips and increases in walking, cycling and public transport trips of between 15% and 33%. It’s cheap and incredibly effective.

It’s when capital and revenue funds are combined that the magic really happens.

Our well-loved acronym, L-S-T-F, can help us achieve both these things.

So, looking to the future, it’s clear that long-term certainty over this funding stream is needed to ensure that councils are encouraged to continue planning for the future. This kind of forward thinking will help local authorities to make walking, cycling and public transport viable alternatives to car travel. However, with funding moving into the Single Local Growth Fund the reality may well be that local authorities working through their Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) choose to allocate less money to sustainable transport, losing the national leadership and the local momentum created through dedicated funding for sustainable travel.

Our hope is that LSTF continues to be our familiar friend, that it will continue to revolutionise transport in England and that, as a result, everyone has access to healthy, affordable and sustainable travel options.

The author Jason Torrance is policy director at Sustrans.

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New solutions for historic problems Lynn Sloman considers what it will take to ‘mainstream’ smarter travel

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recently had the pleasurable, but daunting, experience of being commissioned to prepare a sustainable travel ‘blueprint’ for the city where I grew up: Canterbury. It was pleasurable because Canterbury’s medieval core and compact urban form should lend itself to sustainable travel.

The opportunities to suggest some practical and transformative solutions were quickly apparent.

But it was daunting because Canterbury is conservative with a small ‘c’, and not a place where new thinking is readily embraced. For example, attempts to tackle traffic problems by closing a main entrance to the city to cars (the Westgate Towers, the largest surviving medieval gateway in Britain) had caused uproar.

Motorists were on the rampage. The city council was under attack.

There is nothing unusual about Canterbury. The challenges it faces in changing from a car-dependent city to a sustainable travel city are typical of those faced by many local authorities. It is in such small and medium-sized cities that the argument about smarter travel has still to be won.

The Local Sustainable Transport Fund (LSTF) has been great news for smarter travel. But the overall climate for sustainable travel at the moment is pretty chilly. Plans by Local Transport Bodies (LTBs) appear set to increase car dependency: recent research by the Campaign for Better Transport and CPRE found that many LTB plans are focussed on road-building. Pronouncements by local government secretary Eric Pickles about parking policy seem designed to undermine vibrant, attractive and sustainable town centres. It all feels rather frustrating.

Three reasons for optimism Despite the challenges in cities like Canterbury, and right across the country, I think there are grounds for optimism. First, some town halls are just getting on with it.

Many have shown a quiet consistency of purpose over the last decade or more.

They are creating better places to live and do business – and they see superb sustainable transport as essential, along

with a high quality public realm. Attitudes to sustainable transport amongst our political class have shifted in the last decade, and ambitious politicians increasingly see bus rapid transit schemes or city-wide cycle networks as the way to make their mark. That would have been inconceivable in the 1990s.

Second, young people are voting with their feet. As Professor Phil Goodwin and others have shown, personal car use peaked in many countries about a decade ago. It isn’t yet clear what all the reasons may be, but changes in attitude and culture amongst young people appear to be an important factor.

Young people are learning to drive later in life (if they bother to learn at all); and transport researcher Gordon Stokes has

Attitudes to sustainable transport amongst our political class have shifted in the last decade, and ambitious politicians increasingly see bus rapid transit schemes or city-wide cycle networks as the way to make their mark Lynn Sloman

shown that those who learn later also drive less. Amongst people in their thirties, those who delay acquiring a driving licence until they are 30 drive 35% less than those who learnt to drive at 17. I’m struck that many of the young adults I know are choosing to live in city centres (not just London), and view a car as a liability. The trend leaders amongst the young are making different choices to those made by their parents. That’s different to what we have seen in the past too.

The third reason for optimism is that we know what works. We have become more sophisticated about combining capital

investment and revenue support. Good smarter travel programmes aren’t just about marketing – that’s a waste of effort unless the service being marketed is excellent. Nor are they just about capital investment – there are many factors that influence travel choice, and service quality is only part of the story. Smarter travel programmes are addressing all the factors that prevent sustainable travel, in a way that they never used to.

Two things we can do better These reasons for optimism are not reasons for complacency. Alongside smarter travel, we need ‘smart growth’ – and sustainable travel practitioners could do more to connect the two areas of policy. It makes no sense to ‘do’ smarter travel programmes while building low density car-dependent housing, large retail parks and out-of-town business parks.

There is a body of evidence that smart growth (compact development with excellent public transport and cycle links) results in less car use, more successful local economies, and more active healthy travel. But most evidence is from the USA and is discounted as irrelevant by many planners, who still propose low-density ‘garden city’ developments. We need to support smart growth, and we need to gather more UK-based evidence of the difference between smart growth (compact, sustainable travel-oriented) and ‘dumb growth’ (low density, cardependent).

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Canterbury’s Westgate Towers

acquisition by young people. Alistair Kirkbride at the Lake District National Park Authority wants to capitalise on our willingness to sample new experiences whilst on holiday (e.g. trying an electric bike). When extended highway closures are planned, we could use the strategy adopted by Transport for London during the Olympics, offering email and text message updates, cycle maps and personalised information about alternatives.

Shifting social norms is important because our actions are influenced by observing what others do. Workplace cycle challenges and cycling festivals can shift the social norm temporarily, and the evidence shows that a temporary change can help reset social norms the rest of the time. But where are the interventions that reset social norms for bus travel?

The one essential ingredient

And I think we can do smarter travel programmes better. My colleague Ian Taylor talks about turning ‘millstones’ into ‘lifebelts’ (below). ‘Millstones’ are the factors that drag someone down into travelling by car. Smarter travel programmes turn each millstone into a ‘lifebelt’ that supports sustainable travel.

We’ve got better at tackling the outer millstones in Ian’s diagram, by improving

poor services and giving people better information. But we aren’t fully addressing the inner ones: habit and social norms.

Habits might be changed through free trials of the travel options we want people to adopt – for example, one month of free bus travel. David Hall and Rob Moore at social enterprise Behaviour Change are working with Greener Journeys to see if such offers can delay driving licence

The Department for Transport (DfT) deserves credit for stimulating the growth of smarter travel programmes: some dedicated people there have taken the ideas of crazy visionaries (of which I’m proud to have been one) and, with local authorities, developed large-scale programmes that have proved themselves in terms of impact and value for money.

But the job isn’t finished. More than anything, the mainstreaming of smarter travel depends upon it becoming a core part of DfT’s programme. In 2015, there will be £179m for smarter travel. That should become a dedicated, ongoing funding commitment, 40% revenue and 60% capital. From studies I’ve been involved in, it needs to increase by 25% per year for the next decade, with each pound from DfT matched by local authorities or their partners. That would give roughly £40 per citizen per year for sustainable travel. Only then will smarter travel really be mainstream.

And Canterbury? Well, we presented our sustainable transport blueprint to councillors, local business people and the public, and talked to the local media. It all went well. The chairman of the business organisation enthused about the blueprint.

The city council voted to put it “at the heart” of their transport strategy.

Canterbury isn’t there yet, like the rest of the country, but it has made a start. We’ll see.

The author Lynn Sloman is director of Transport for Quality of Life.

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Manchester’s smart solutions Mainstreaming LSTF is the way ahead for Greater Manchester

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reater Manchester has a reputation for doing things the smart way. When it comes to transport, the region boasts the country’s biggest light rail system and is currently delivering the largest capital transport spend outside London. But it’s not all about transport infrastructure.

Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) is spearheading an ambitious sustainable travel programme that encompasses everything from personal journey planning and business travel plans, to improved cycling and walking routes and innovative uses of open data on the region’s transport network.

It’s being driven by funding from the government’s Local Sustainable Transport Fund (LSTF) – which, alongside local contributions, has seen a £54m pot available since June 2012 for the ‘Let’s Get to Work’ programme.

Now, 18 months since the funding was awarded, positive results are being delivered. Dr Jon Lamonte, TfGM’s chief executive, says: “Greater Manchester has a great reputation for partnership working.

The success of our LSTF bid was given the active support of the public, private, and community sectors and that same support recently won us a further £20m from the DfT’s Cycle City Ambition Grant.

“There’s a shared recognition that getting people moving on sustainable, greener transport is good for business, good for the environment and good for health. It’s a virtuous cycle.”

Alongside the Commuter Cycle Project, Greater Manchester’s LSTF programme is made up of four integrated workstreams: Sustainable access: through pedestrian and bike-friendly connections to key destinations Travel Choices: expanding the travel choices of jobseekers and commuters, as well as employers at major business sites Smarter technology: to improve traffic flows and speed up bus services – and give passengers real time travel information and smart ticketing Enabling community transport: giving more people better access to local job opportunities.

A key strand of the Travel Choices programme is providing sustainable travel advice to business

Councillor Andrew Fender, chair of the TfGM Committee, a body made up of councillors from Greater Manchester’s ten districts, says: “The LSTF programme has been designed and is being taken forward in partnership with Greater Manchester’s ten local authorities.

“We’re already seeing real results – four community transport schemes that are up and running are being well used, we’ve made on-the-ground access improvements, and the Travel Choices programme is making a real difference to local workers and businesses.”

Linking communities with employment opportunities and encouraging sustainable commuting is at the centre of Greater Manchester’s ambitious plans. This has seen a comprehensive network of cycle and walking route improvements being delivered across the ten districts of Greater Manchester.

Focused particularly on encouraging cycling for short trips, or as part of a longer journey, more than 60km of new or improved cycle and pedestrian routes and over 30 junction improvements will be delivered by March 2015.

Alongside these improved links, improvements are also being made to the

quality and availability of secure cycle parking. This includes TfGM’s flagship cycle hub programme, which looks to provide secure facilities at commuter destinations, key rail stations and Metrolink stops across Greater Manchester.

Delivery is well under way with three cycle hubs opened to date, including the flagship City Tower hub in the heart of the city centre, which provides secure parking for almost 200 bikes along with showers and changing facilities, as well as a bike shop.

For harder to reach areas, existing ‘Local Link’ demand responsive transport services have been enhanced to better connect people with employment opportunities. One example of where barriers to employment have been removed is at the Kingsway Business Park in Rochdale, which is home to several major and growing employers.

LSTF funding has enabled the existing Kingsway Local Link service to be enhanced, offering new early morning and late night on-demand journeys for shift workers to travel to the site. The enhanced Kingsway service was immediately successful with patronage, increasing by

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Transport strategy director Dave Newton

205% following the changes to the services and Travel Choices marketing with businesses and Jobcentres in the local area.

Doing things smart is also important in Greater Manchester, with LSTF funding being used to introduce intermodal, realtime travel information – available to all by web or mobile. LSTF is also part-funding the introduction of ‘get me there’ smart ticketing system on buses, while on-road a new active travel management system should speed up bus journeys and better manage travel flow.

Finally, TfGM’s Travel Choices programme is helping commuters, businesses and jobseekers to get the most out of Greater Manchester’s changing transport network.

Through a wide range of activities the

TfGM is introducing a network of district cycle hubs

Travel Choices programme is helping to remove transport barriers to employment opportunities and support sustainable commuting and business travel.

Partnership working and capacity building is key to delivering success. By working with businesses and Jobcentres, the Travel Choices team has been able to effectively support large numbers of commuters and jobseekers across Greater Manchester. The uptake of the Travel Choices offer has gone from strength to strength, with over 250 businesses, covering 200,000 employees, having already started their sustainable journey, and 140 Travel Champions in Jobcentres having received training.

With an eye firmly on what happens next, Greater Manchester is consistently delivering LSTF excellence while skilfully

balancing ambition with robust delivery.

TfGM’s transport strategy director, Dave Newton, says: “It’s a huge and significant programme of work and our overall aim is to stimulate economic growth – through better, greener transport – while reducing carbon emissions.

“Ultimately, we’re looking for this programme to make a £5 return for every £1 invested – that’s up to £28m for the local economy. And the environmental benefits of taking a projected 26 million kilometres of commuter car journeys off the roads each year are huge.

“Our LSTF bid plans to replace those car journeys by generating 10 million extra public transport journeys and two million extra cycling trips – reducing harmful carbon emissions by up to 1,000 tonnes a year.”

Mainstreaming works Case Study: Increasing access to employment by creating Travel Choices TfGM is providing training for Jobcentre Plus staff and Prime Work Programme contractors to ensure that they are fully aware of new journey planning options, including cycling and walking, that will be developed through the LSTF project and beyond.

The Travel Choices’ Access to Employment service has been working closely with frontline advisors to jobseekers, offering training and information on journeys in Greater Manchester.

Training sessions have aimed to enhance advisor skills in providing customers with comprehensive, informed advice on travel options.

The core aims of the programme are to: • Tackle jobseeker’s travel issues, thereby helping to remove barriers to employment • Share travel planning skills to expand jobseekers’ travel-towork horizons • Give jobseekers access to those hard-to-reach job opportunities.

More than 140 Jobcentre advisors have attended courses to date, with further sessions and follow-ups planned. Attendees are equipped to become ‘ambassadors’ of Travel Choices, sharing the wealth of useful resources provided during the training among colleagues.

Travel Choices is offering on-going advice and support to the advisors, along with further resources to help remove jobseekers’ barriers to work including a free one-month travel pass when entering employment and a bike back to work scheme.

TfGM transport strategy director Dave Newton says: “We ran some sessions at TfGM for Jobcentre advisors and at the outset, 38% of attendees stated they were ‘not confident’ or ‘not at all confident’ at giving travel advice to jobseekers.

Following the training, 100% stated they were ‘fairly’ or ‘very confident’ in dispensing travel advice to jobseekers.

“This is a fantastic example of an intervention paying clear dividends, and making a marked difference in influencing travel behaviour.”

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Paving the way for smarter travel The DfT’s 2007 guide to personal travel planning has proven to be an influential publication, reports Jon Parker

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n 2007/08 I was fortunate to lead a dedicated research team* that undertook a major study on behalf of the Department for Transport (DfT) examining the mechanics and impacts associated with household-based personal travel planning (PTP) programmes.

The study examined in detail 15 PTP case studies from across the UK and Australia, along with a broader international literature review. The study culminated in the publication of a full research report and practitioner’s guide (entitled Making PTP Work), which has subsequently been used to help guide many of the LSTF funded PTP programmes that are currently being delivered.

Back in 2007, a key aim of the research was to understand whether PTP was effective in influencing travel behaviour, and if so, to better understand the PTP process, and enable more local authorities to deliver/commission PTP programmes in different ways. This article takes a look at what has been happening in the world of PTP since the research, and whether the 2008 Making PTP Work guidance has helped to change the shape of PTP delivery across the UK.

Comparison: 2007 and 2013 At the time of conducting our original research the broad geography of UK PTP schemes was limited to a few locations, largely driven by places that had been successful in securing central government funding to deliver pilot programmes. At that time there was general consistency on the reported success of these schemes, typically reporting to have reduced car driver trips by between 9% and 11%. This is shown in Figure 1.

included an analysis of the final phases of the PTP programmes (the 2007 research examined the interim phases).

Scottish Government-funded PTP programmes have been delivered across seven towns/cities in Scotland (as part of the Smarter Choices Smarter Places Programme), and the final project evaluation reports have now been published.

LSTF projects have been funded and are currently being delivered. Our internal review of the 39 ‘Tranche 1’ projects showed that 31 of these included largescale household PTP and workplace PTP programmes, demonstrating the growing importance of PTP within the suite of smarter choices measures.

Local authorities (and private developers) have been delivering their own large scale programmes.

What does this mean for the distribution of PTP across the UK? Figure 2 (opposite) shows the change in geography of PTP projects since the publication of Making PTP Work.

Has the market changed?

There have been a number of new commercial organisations and local authorities that are delivering PTP using their own adapted processes. In this respect it would appear that the Making PTP Work practitioner’s guide has played

an important role in helping to better understand the PTP process, and the benefits that PTP can deliver.

New approaches to PTP delivery include: Community Hubs: Delivering personal advice through new social enterprises and community groups, and engaging individuals through trusted local networks.

PTP Challenges: Building new concepts, ideas, pledges, rewards, self-monitoring of behaviour and stated intentions into the PTP process to seek to secure stronger long-term outcomes.

New innovation: The use of new technology, including the testing of mobile tablets to record data and distribute materials, and for example, the launch of MyPTP, developed by Liftshare, which provides an automated and electronic personal journey planning tool.

Lighter touch PTP: Delivering PTP on a budget.

Workplace and Education PTP: Redeploying the techniques developed for residential schemes within employment and education sites.

So what does this mean?

The PTP market appears to have been significantly enhanced (in both scale and diversity) as a result of Making PTP Work;

What has happened since?

Since the publication of Making PTP Work there has been significant growth and diversity in the delivery and reported outcomes of household PTP programmes across the UK, including most notably: Full reporting of the findings of the three Sustainable Travel Towns, which *Comprising Integrated Transport Planning Ltd. (ITP) as lead consultants, Richard Armitage Transport Consultancy, Cleary Stevens Consulting and the University of West of England

Figure 1: Reported success of PTP schemes, Making PTP Work (2007)

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we at ITP are very proud of this. We believe this demonstrates the importance of sharing knowledge and experience through appropriately focussed research.

The PTP market is now much more mature and diverse than it was when the original research was carried out in 2007.

However, it also means we need to continue to better understand the long term impacts of PTP, and to answer some of the remaining unanswered questions, such as: What is the longevity of impacts? We still know relatively little about the impact of PTP interventions 2, 3, 4 and 5 years post implementation, which can only be gained by carrying out further longitudinal surveys across PTP programme areas.

What is the impact of technology on PTP programmes? We are still heavily reliant on paper materials, and further research is required to understand the behavioural response of new emerging technologies within PTP programmes.

How do we best create a legacy from PTP projects? There are few examples of PTP programmes becoming embedded within the transport delivery teams across local authorities, or indeed across different service sectors.

What are the wider impacts: economy, carbon, health? PTP delivery and evaluation tends to focus on a narrow set of indicators, and hence it is often not possible to properly reflect the wider impacts on society (and indeed we may not be maximising these impacts by restricting advice solely on transport matters).

Is it a small number of people making large changes to behaviour or a large number of people making small nudge style changes to behaviour that contributes most to reported outcomes? This can only be addressed through longitudinal panel surveys of behaviour, with most PTP evaluation studies focussing to date on randomly drawn independent before/after samples of the targeted population.

What people (market segments) are most likely to be influenced by PTP? We still know relatively little about the ways in which we can improve the delivery of PTP materials to make better use of our knowledge on population segments.

How important is a good local sustainable transport network in securing outcomes through PTP? In

The friendly face of the URS travel advisors working on behalf of Leicestershire County Council

2007 it appeared as if PTP works in almost all community areas (excluding transient populations) and now there is more experience of PTP, it would be helpful to know if this is still the case, or whether we can deduce more about the relationship between the effectiveness of PTP in areas with ‘good’ and ‘bad’ levels of sustainable transport accessibility.

These questions could be answered by a combination of an update to the 2007 findings alongside fresh primary research and evaluation for major PTP programmes.

Future performance Having spent 18 months seeking to understand every detail of the PTP process back in 2007/08 (and seen the exceptional efforts of all members of the

Making PTP Work research team to dissect the evidence base underpinning the various case studies we examined) it is heart-warming to know that the research findings and practitioners guide have proved valuable in helping people to better navigate and understand how to deliver effective PTP programmes.

It’s particularly rewarding to know that the findings of research can be appropriately applied to improve future project performance, and I look forward to the next opportunity to examine if, how and why PTP programmes influence behaviour.

The author Jon Parker is a director of Integrated Transport Planning Limited (ITP).

Contact: parker@itpworld.net

Figure 2: Estimate of the changing scale of LSTF/PTP project

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An enterprising vision Paul Johnson provides an LEP’s perspective on sustainable transport

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windon and Wiltshire Local Enterprise Partnership (SWLEP), like many other LEPs, has had to be reactive to the requirements of central government. This means often having to meet challenging timescales, with a clear emphasis on bringing forward ‘shovel ready’ schemes to deliver economic benefits. As such, it is not surprising that the lion’s share of the prioritised schemes have been made up of highway improvements. Many are closely related to facilitating new development, being comparatively uncontroversial and uncomplicated schemes, with reasonable prospects for securing local contributions.

However, many LEPs are now finding that since completing the prioritisation exercise for their major transport schemes, it has become apparent a greater proportion of the funding will be accessed competitively through the Single Local Growth Fund – a pool of funding previously channelled through Department for Transport (DfT), the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). The Strategic Economic Plan has, in effect, become the bid document for this additional funding, supported by appropriately scoped business cases.

It is increasingly apparent that those authorities with the most considered plans and best developed evidence base are more likely to be the winners in future funding competitions. Yet a key aspect to any strong funding bid is the strategic case put forward for the scheme, which must make clear the role of the scheme as part of a wider strategy. It must be shown to address agreed objectives, and ultimately play a part in achieving the wider vision for the area. Transport is, after all, a means to an end and by mapping transport corridors onto economic growth clusters this will ensure that economic benefits are realised.

What has been lacking to date has been this wider transport vision at a LEP level, and there is an increasing recognition amongst LEPs of the need for an overarching vision or strategy document, developed in synergy with emerging Local Plans and existing local authority transport strategies. It is at this level that LEPs should be beginning to draw together their wider strategies, across the full spectrum of transport interventions, including sustainable transport and demand management measures.

In Swindon and Wiltshire the LEP is developing and articulating their Transport Vision for 2025, which will adopt a holistic and integrated approach that not only supports the LEP’s aspirations for economic growth, inward investment and job creation, but also reflects the local transport priorities for Swindon and Wiltshire. This will entail collating, reviewing and ‘knitting together’ the various scheme proposals, including the nationally promoted road and rail schemes, to create an overall holistic vision for transport that is consistent with the social, economic and environmental goals of the partnership area.

Swindon and Wilshire occupy a pivotal economic location in Southern England and benefit from geographic proximity to key airports and coastal ports. As such, critical to the success of their economy is the east-west connectivity afforded by the M4 motorway and Great Western railway. The proposed

The SWLEP area

enhancements to improve journey times and ease local bottlenecks will therefore be key elements of the vision.

For the Swindon urban area, the Transport Vision will draw together the reasonably advanced proposals to ease congestion through targeted highway improvements, better accessibility for all transport modes and by connecting the proposed urban extensions with a rapid transit system. There will also be an emphasis on improving access to the M4 via junctions 15 and 16 and reducing unnecessary through movements.

However, in addition to the all of the above, the SWLEP will be investing heavily in healthy and environmentally friendly modes of transport, with transport playing its full part in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It will also be promoting active travel through Door2Door strategies with rail stations being used as transport hubs and smart ticketing utilised on bus/rail corridors.

We will also ensure that streets are appropriately designed for their functions, with an emphasis on encouraging walking, cycling and public transport use with a high quality public realm and improving local air quality.

By adopting this holistic approach, the SWLEP are confident that by 2025 not only will social and environmental goals be met but economic benefits will be optimised by investing heavily in sustainable transport and a balanced programme of Infrastructure improvements.

The author Paul Johnson is chair of the Swindon and Wiltshire Local Enterprise Partnership (SWLEP).

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Sustainable investment makes economic sense ‘Shovel-ready’ transport schemes work best, believes Tony Ciaburro

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he basic principle of the ‘Single Pot’ for the Local Growth Fund is that funding is un-ringfenced in order to allow flexibility for Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) to use at their discretion to encourage outcomes that support growth.

This means that the Local Growth Fund will not always be used to deliver schemes directly related to the original funding sources, nor that money is simply ‘passported’ for this purpose – that would defeat the objective.

However, given that more than half of the Local Growth Fund would have originated from transport-related funding sources, it would be disappointing if this did not eventually get used for transport infrastructure and services; but there is no guarantee. It is therefore important that local authorities present very good cases to support the need for sustainable transport solutions as part of a balanced programme of initiatives if it is to secure funding that would traditionally have been met through the Local Sustainable Transport Fund (LSTF).

Most LEPs would recognise the importance of improved infrastructure in supporting growth, jobs and the economy, and there is no reason why they should rule out initiatives that support cycling, walking and public transport in order to provide choice for the potential workforce and an improved local environment.

It is up to the local authorities to demonstrate clearly how LSTF initiatives fit into the growth agenda and provide excellent rates of return on relatively low levels of investment. The business community will recognise this type of language and the importance of developing a clean and prosperous

Local authorities will need to show how LSTF schemes are an integral part of wider Strategic Economic Plans, otherwise they will have no hope of funding at all Tony Ciaburro

environment which the LSTF fund can help with.

The important thing is to recognise that the government will be looking for a high level of delivery in the first year of the Local Growth Fund coming into operation and the types of schemes, and the

initiatives normally delivered through the LSTF lend themselves to fast-track delivery.

If it can be shown that these schemes are highly deliverable and ‘shovel ready’ they will be attractive to LEPs who will be seeking to be responsive to government and hit the ground running with the delivery of projects. Also, local authorities will need to show how LSTF schemes are an integral part of wider Strategic Economic Plans, otherwise they will have no hope of funding at all. A good starting point would be to revisit existing Local Transport Plans where much of this work has already been done.

The author Tony Ciaburro is director of environment, development & transport at Northamptonshire County Council.

www.getbritaincycling.net The ultimate reference for guidance on the planning, design and management of cycling strategies and infrastructure.

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A green and accessible land Personalised travel planning in predominantly rural settings presents very particular challenges, write Richard Adams, Laura Gosling and David Knight

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he late summer and autumn of 2013 has seen residential personalised travel planning (PTP) take place in a number of local communities across Wiltshire. Trained travel advisers have been walking and cycling the streets in urban areas across the county bringing tailored travel information, incentives and travel challenges to the doors of its citizens.

Under the ‘Connecting Wiltshire: Travel made simple’ brand, this initiative has been rolled out to nearly 5,000 households and is the first pilot stage of a two-stage process.

The Connecting Wiltshire website (www.connectingwiltshire.co.uk) includes a specially designed journey planner to allow individuals to consider their travel choices for a particular journey and understand how many calories they will burn and how much carbon their journey would emit. In addition, the website provides a useful travel information resource covering a range of topics such as cycle safety, school travel and car sharing.

Residential PTP is playing a crucial role in Wiltshire Council’s wider programme, enabled by the Government’s Local Sustainable Travel Fund (LSTF), for improving the county’s rail offer. A step change in services on the north-south rail line linking Swindon with Westbury begins in December. Alongside complementary business and school PTP programmes, PTP is engaging directly with citizens to offer them the chance to re-evaluate their travel choices.

Transport Planning Associates (TPA), Contemporary Transport and Richard Adams Consulting form a partnership delivering the residential and business PTP programmes. TPA is leading the residential PTP strand while Contemporary Transport, through Dr Colin Black, is leading the business strand. This arrangement has allowed the team to mobilise quickly to ensure the challenging programme can be met.

Stage one of residential PTP this year offers the opportunity to test the PTP process, on a reduced scale, without the enhanced rail offer in place. The second

stage, which will take place once the improved rail service and other local transport infrastructure enhancements are in place, will benefit from an established process with the tools and incentives that are right for Wiltshire.

The current pilot is being delivered across three towns – Bradford on Avon, Chippenham and Trowbridge – and the county’s one city, Salisbury. Each conurbation has a rail link and, for the trial, each has a designated theme so that the team can learn from the application of residential PTP in this predominately rural county. A process of prioritisation has

allowed for a focussed approach on areas and people with a higher propensity to change travel behaviour. Both accessibility to the nearest rail station by sustainable modes and each postcode segment type, were used to identify priority areas for PTP in Wiltshire.

Bradford on Avon received a traditional PTP approach to engagement techniques and data recording. In Chippenham, PTP was undertaken in residential areas on the east side of the town, allowing us to assess the reliability of the segmentation criteria.

In Salisbury we are seeking to examine whether there is a benefit of offering

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workplace personal journey plans on the doorstep; with business PTP engagement also taking place in Salisbury through the Connecting Wiltshire programme, this offers the opportunity to explore the opportunities for cross-marketing of the message in both the residential and business setting.

In Trowbridge, the approach was targeting an existing community and a new development area, testing the habit discontinuity and self-activation hypotheses – will the new house movers be more receptive because their new travel habits are not yet established?

The recruitment and training of a local team of travel advisers has followed the standard protocol for a PTP programme.

So too was the intensive week of training and practicing with a few ‘tame’ households (drawn from Wiltshire Council staff), which indicated that the travel advisers were indeed ready to be let loose on the public. Resplendent in their branded polo shirts and jackets, the travel advisers have become well recognised in the community. This high profile has been enhanced by their star role in community and business roadshow events where they have dispensed travel advice and branded goodies with skill and good humour.

We have designed eye-catching resources including the introductory and “sorry we missed you” cards, the intervention area travel maps and the A4 wallets to keep maps, timetables and other useful travel information together.

These resources give the facts about the travel modes so individuals can make an informed choice.

The travel advisers have been supported by implementation team leaders, who manage the day to day workload.

Mentoring of the travel advisers is also undertaken by core team members to ensure motivation, commitment and performance is maintained throughout the engagement process.

Many different types of branded incentives are being used and assessed to see which ones prove most popular, but also which of the incentives are associated with a change in travel behaviour. The incentives range from more traditional PTP fare to those not usually used. For walkers we have provided umbrellas along with shoe-bags for commuters. Cyclists have saddle covers and bells, but also a handy tool kit packed full of useful items. For the rail user there’s the chrome travel mug for hot drinks while the bus user gets discounted tickets. The car sharer can also

A member of the Connecting Wiltshire team with assorted publicity materials

enjoy the travel mug as well as the scent of the branded air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror.

The collection of household data has also been tested using different database platforms, such as Sharepoint and Survey Monkey to see how these work with the Samsung tablets that are carried by the team of travel advisers. Nonetheless, one of the biggest challenges for the travel advisers has been poor 3G coverage in some of the target areas.

The engagement stage has taken place over a 12-week period to enable sufficient time for evaluation before moving forward with stage 2 of the project in 2014/15.

This has required the team to work in short, sharp phases in each of the areas.

The different geographical locations of the target areas in the county requires efficient moving from field office to field office. This

has brought unique challenges not typically faced by bigger, longer PTP engagements that commonly take place in one conurbation.

A thorough evaluation will be undertaken, with reporting complete by January 2014. Feedback is a key aspect of this through interviews with the travel advisers and a focus group with residents who participated in the initiative. Before and after travel surveys were also included in the doorstep engagement process, and we will be calculating the value for money of PTP in Wiltshire.

The authors David Knight is director of Transport Planning Associates. Laura Gosling is senior transport planner at Wiltshire Council. Richard Adams is director of Richard Adams Consulting.

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Marketing the mainstream Changing travel behaviour requires a finely tuned and sustained marketing strategy, write Amanda Pearce and Amy Boyle

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hen it comes to sustainable travel, first thoughts may not turn to marketing and communications. That’s understandable; most Local Sustainable Transport Fund (LSTF) projects need to focus significantly upon infrastructure to make sure that the quality and availability of sustainable travel options for residents and local businesses are the best they can be. However, it may not simply a case of ‘build it and they will come’.

Changing behaviours and creating new ‘norms’ is always challenging. In terms of sustainable travel, we’re working against people’s habits, outdated ideas of what public transport is actually like these days and irrational choices: “I’ll drive to work even though it’s more expensive than the bus that stops two minutes from my house… I nearly always get stuck in traffic and have to drive around for twenty minutes to find a parking space…”

It is not enough to just provide the means to travel sustainably – there is a need to sell sustainable travel. It is important start thinking about how this will be done as early as possible. They need to persuade people to change how they travel, and that takes a great deal of

insight, understanding, creativity and, most importantly, persistence.

The selling starts with the thinking…

A successful marketing campaign always starts with understanding where people are at and where we need them to be.

That’s true of any marketing campaign, but when it comes to travel behaviour, it’s particularly important to understand and consider how and why people change their travel choices. As behavioural change specialists, we have adapted the internationally recognised transtheoretical stages of change model (Prochaska and DiClemente, 1983) to demonstrate the process of modal behaviour change that people go through (see chart below).

What are key elements of a travel behaviour change marketing campaign?

As with most things, the recipe for success has many ingredients. Here’s a checklist produced from diva Creative’s extensive experience in sustainable travel and behaviour change marketing: Raise awareness: Ensure as many of the target audience know about the sustainable travel options as possible

while selling the benefits that will appeal to each target audience segment. Don’t assume they’ll already know.

Motivate and educate: Motivate the target audience to want to use sustainable travel and educate them on the specific benefits of using it. This should be delivered with targeted communications that resonate with people and tap into their emotions.

Trigger action: Get those who are considering using sustainable travel to take action, this could be triggered by promotions such as one-day free trails, competitions, and discount rates.

Meet expectations: Once your target audience segments have started using sustainable travel modes you need to ensure that the services available meet their expectations and that they have a positive experience. Regular customer feedback should be welcomed, monitored and responded to, to ensure the service is the best it can be.

Develop customer relationships and loyalty: Developing customer relationships will ensure their loyalty and make them less likely to move to use a competitor (in this instance, the car). Current sustainable travellers can

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iTravel video presentations on handheld devices and poster campaigns

also act as advocates and refer friends and family especially if there are referral reward schemes in place.

This is a process, so if only part the marketing mix is delivered then it will have a limited impact – for example, you could successfully raise awareness of alternative modes and motivate change by selling the benefits, but then actually provide insufficient information to enable people to change their behaviour. Alternatively, you could provide excellent information to enable people to plan alternative sustainable ways to travel but not raise awareness of this and motivate people enough to actually consider them, thus limiting potential modal shifts.

From theory to practice: A tale of two website campaigns Diva were recently commissioned to promote sustainable travel through the LSTF programme in two areas, focusing on the development and promotion of a local website for each area. Their websites were recognised as a key tool to change people’s travel behaviour, both in terms of providing important relevant information, and in encouraging people to travel sustainably.

Both websites are similar – they each feature a travel planning tool to enable people to compare and plan different modes of travel. This is accompanied by information and advice on travel, thus fulfilling the requirement to provide guidance to enable modal change in those that are motivated to do so.

However, one website averages over 12,000 hits a month and the other only averages 1,000. A stark contrast and, by no means, one that could be explained simply by differences in demographics. For the less popular site, diva were not asked to develop a marketing strategy, or deliver

on and offline promotion, the content is less frequently updated and consequently the site gets less visits.

So, having a well thought through marketing strategy that ensures a website has good content and is constantly marketed, offline and online, is essential.

Speaking directly to people about travel when it matters to them Over the last 12 months, we worked with our other client to promote the website, with campaigns that educate and motivate people to consider sustainable travel and sell the benefits of sustainable travel modes for different types of journeys.

These campaigns have all tapped into people’s lifestyles and what’s happening in their lives, from promoting sustainable travel for Christmas shopping to public transport when they move home.

Each campaign had a different message and focus but the call to action was the same – to visit the website for more information and advice on local travel options. Thus the marketing activities were consistent and delivered the strategy to drive traffic to the website to enable informed choice of travel options – without a preachy message to ‘ditch the car’.

A range of communications channels were selected for each campaign including videos, public engagement events, outdoor advertising, online advertising, and social media promotions. Branding also played a key role, with the development of a strong brand and illustrative style.

Launching new ‘products’ to generate interest More recently, a travel planning tool has been launched on the website. To promote this diva developed a high impact campaign that saw website hits soar to over 27,000 a month. To achieve this we

again selected a mix of communications channels, including events at local supermarkets where we demonstrated the planning tool for the public.

Sustaining momentum Just because a website is doing well now does not mean it will continue to do so. If the content stops being updated, and the targeted promotions tail off, then very few new visitors will access the website. This is why sustained marketing activities are so important throughout the lifespan of LSTF programmes.

We only have to look at the corporate marketing sector to see this. Big brands like East Midlands trains and Cross Country trains continue marketing themselves year on year because it is a necessity to sustain sales. They cannot rely on people remembering they exist because they ran a campaign a year ago. It is the same with sustainable travel, especially at this very early stage when we are just succeeding in influencing the early converts. It would be a shame to stop now before we approach the tipping point at which sustainable travel options become the ‘norm’ for some journey types.

When this happens, and sustainable travel truly becomes part of the mainstream, we will have succeeded, but until then we need to sustain our marketing activities. Then we can be assured that the investments made in sustainable travel infrastructure are cost effective and the LSTF programme will leave us with a positive legacy for the future.

The authors Amanda Pearce is managing director of Diva Creative; Amy Boyle is director of strategy. www.divacreative.com/ sustainabletravel

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Choosing the right ingredients Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire have been perfecting the LSTF recipe, explains Daniel Godfrey

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utting together a Local Sustainable Transport Fund (LSTF) programme has a lot in common with making a giant cake. Some ingredients are required in larger quantities and may appear more important than others but, as seen in the Great British Bake Off, miss out just one ingredient and it’s going to be a flop. The trick to successful delivery is ensuring the mix comes together at the right time to deliver a more sustainable pattern of travel.

Unfortunately, the first year of the LSTF has revealed something of a paradox.

Whilst the fund has allowed many more councils to implement smarter choices measures than previously, this has brought to light a lack of depth within the transport planning field. Simply put, staff with skills in delivering such schemes are thin on the ground. This situation has been made worse by the recent cutbacks in both the public and private sectors.

Leicestershire County Council’s approach to dealing with this problem was to build on its pre-LSTF successes whilst also developing areas where it had less experience. “We’d completed 7km of cycleway improvements in Loughborough prior to the LSTF being announced,” says Ian Vears, travel choice and access team manager. “We were confident of delivering a similar level of walking/cycle infrastructure investment in nearby Coalville, but had only recently formed into one team. We are very good at building things, but as any manufacturer knows you need to promote and sell your product, otherwise people don’t buy it.”

Prior to 2010, Leicestershire had no experience of personal travel planning (PTP), the vehicle through which a lot of the LSTF cake would be pulled together and promoted. “We simply hadn’t done any PTP,” says Vears. “As such, we knew it was an area where we needed to gain expertise.”

Leicestershire didn’t rush into

Leicestershire’s pilot PTP scheme resulted in a 14% change in travel behaviour

Through LSTF we’re managing to get more sign-ups to our adult cycling training courses and we’re on course to achieve 1,000 more registrations to our car share scheme Ian Vears, Leicestershire County Council

submitting an LSTF bid. Instead, the authority first embarked on a programme of evidence gathering, which included the delivery of a pilot PTP scheme in September 2011. This project saw an overall 6% shift away from car use and a 14% change in travel behaviour. “We deliberately aimed for the second tranche of LSTF funding,” says Vears. “By that time we had the outcomes of this and other pilot work – and could demonstrate we were ready to deliver a larger project.”

Since LSTF funding has been secured, the county council has offered PTP to 22,000 households. A further 18,000 are scheduled for 2014, including 10,000

within its Better Bus Area (BBA) project submitted jointly with Leicester City Council. “We’ve managed to create an approach to PTP that we can tailor to specific areas,” says Vears. “This has meant our delivery partner, URS, has been able to drive down costs and generate year-on-year savings, which can be fed back into the rest of the programme. We’ve also been able to transfer knowledge to neighbouring authorities, such as Nottinghamshire County Council.”

Both Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire County Councils are members of the Midlands Highways Alliance (MHA). This partnership, which has the objectives to share best practice and generate efficiency savings, currently has 18 local authority members.

“We’d heard about how Leicestershire were delivering personal travel planning with the MHA,” says Kevin Sharman of Nottinghamshire County Council. “Also, URS had recently updated our guidance on preparing Travel Plans, so we were familiar with their sustainable transport team. We got everyone round the table to find out more and look at how we could benefit.”

Importantly, Nottinghamshire’s own bid to the LSTF had not been successful.

“Although we didn’t have any LSTF funding, we still thought it was important to pursue some of the smarter choices

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schemes identified in our bid,” says Sharman. “But we were mindful that PTP wasn’t something with which we were overly familiar. Being able to adopt an existing, proven delivery model was therefore very attractive.”

During the summer of 2013, Nottingham provided PTP to 12,000 households in north Nottinghamshire.

“The basic mechanics of the scheme were the same as the Leicestershire model,” says Sharman. “But we tailored it to our own requirements. In essence, we cut out the basic shape to make it fit within our particular transport jigsaw. For instance, the travel adviser training programme was a straight drop from the Leicestershire model – but the materials, information and incentives were all developed to make it a Nottinghamshire project.”

However, the world of smarter choices doesn’t stand still. “Although we had developed a good delivery model, we wanted to avoid complacency,” says Leicestershire’s Vears. “As such, all our PTP projects have been independently evaluated and we have systems in place to capture any potential improvements.

Learning from each round of delivery means that the results to date have been good, with the percentage of households participating in the PTP programme increasing over that achieved in our pilot work in both 2012 and 2013.”

Another issue is that, at the start of the LSTF process, a lot of what was known related to large-scale pilots funded by central government (such as the Smarter Travel Towns initiative) or specific research projects. The LSTF is transferring this experience to a range of locales, but these outcomes are being generated in parallel and so it is difficult to learn directly from other LSTF programmes. “We’ve hosted a number of innovation workshops so that any ideas being generated across the wider LSTF programme and in Scotland can be considered for inclusion in upcoming phases of work,” says Vears.

Ironically, one area of feedback on the Leicestershire model has come from a source very close to home.

“Leicestershire’s LSTF programme included the delivery of travel clinics to businesses during 2013,” says Nottinghamshire’s Sharman. “But we’d separately delivered a series of travel clinics at business parks across north Nottinghamshire in the early part of the year.”

Council staff are engaging with the public to promote smarter choices

The basic mechanics of the scheme were the same as the Leicestershire model, but we tailored it to our own requirements.

Kevin Sharman, Nottinghamshire County Council

The strategy allows engagement directly with employees at local businesses while local authorities can find out directly why staff do not choose to travel by sustainable transport modes.

“We often hear about issues relating to lack of parking or congestion,” says Sharman. “Particularly near large business parks where lots of employees arrive and depart at similar times.

However, the work we conducted in early 2013 has identified a number of minor infrastructure schemes – crossing improvements and so on – which will hopefully enable staff to encourage their employees to travel more sustainably. It’s also been beneficial to talk directly to businesses about how they can take advantage of smarter travel grants and set up schemes such as a car share system.”

That experience is now being used by Leicestershire County Council. “Whilst

the specifics of engaging businesses are different to Nottinghamshire, the techniques of providing travel advice directly to those staff employed in Loughborough and Coalville is very similar to the approach taken in Nottinghamshire,” says Ian Vears. “For the LSTF programme as a whole, we’re managing to get more sign-ups to our adult cycle training courses and we’re on course to achieve 1,000 additional registrations to our car sharing system.”

As for the future, both Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire are continuing to seek opportunities to improve their understanding of smarter choices initiatives. “We know that another member of the MHA, Milton Keynes, has been using URS to support their Better Bus Area Fund project,” concludes Vears.

“We have our own BBA scheme along the A426 corridor, which will require us to adapt our existing PTP model and take on board lessons from this wider experience.”

The authors The article was written by Daniel Godfrey, principal transport planner, URS with Ian Vears, travel choice and access team manager at Leicestershire County Council, and Kevin Sharman LTP team manager at Nottinghamshire County Council. Independent evaluation of the Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire PTP projects has been undertaken by Jon Parker from Integrated Transport Planning (ITP).

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De-congesting a complicated county Hertfordshire is embracing smarter travel concepts, reports Mark Moran

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here is not a single solution to reducing traffic congestion and a package approach is required. This means that in addition to the necessary ‘big kit’, local authorities need to implement smarter travel solutions to help support economic growth and provide an attractive environment in which people can live and work. This was a core message delivered by John Wood, chief executive at Hertfordshire County Council, at the national Changing Commute Conference, held at the University of Hertfordshire and organised

by Landor LINKS. Wood, who is also the council’s director of environment, said Hertfordshire and its partners were committed to developing sustainable transport solutions for their residents. “We want Hertfordshire’s economy to continue to grow,” said Wood.

“It may be complicated and congested at the moment, but it provides a great location for business and employees.

Some big kit is necessary, but we believe our small local sustainable solutions are also a key part of the answer.”

Located just north of London, Hertfordshire is a complex place. The county does not have one major urban centre but instead comprises around 30 medium-sized towns, ranging from the cathedral city of St Albans to garden cities such as Welwyn and Letchworth, new towns like Stevenage and many market towns. Watford, meanwhile, is in some respects part of London and even has its own tube station.

Hertfordshire is provided for with northsouth rail links, with services running into Euston, King’s Cross and St Pancras, making it an attractive place to live for commuters into London. However, eastwest rail links could be improved and the county’s geography and the availability of cars means road travel remains the most attractive option for many. The county is currently home to around 650,000 cars and road traffic levels are 50% above the national average.

The county is densely urban but with important green fringes, hence 70% is classified as Green Belt. This, together with the lack of towns or cities of a significant size and a good road network, means the county’s 1.1 million residents

could be described as car-dependent. The population’s affluence means 42% of its 480,000 households have two or more cars. Yet, despite its well-heeled reputation, Hertfordshire does have pockets of deprivation and around 20% of households have no cars at all. The county’s population is growing – some 71,582 new homes were built between 1991 and 2011 and 91,371 square metres of commercial floorspace has been created over the last decade.

“Hertfordshire’s environment makes the county an attractive place to live and work,” said Wood. “We want Hertfordshire to remain a county where people have the opportunity to live healthy and fulfilling lives in thriving, prosperous communities.”

Hertfordshire’s mixed suburban and rural character may make it an attractive place, but the dominance of the car means congestion and carbon emissions are a cause for concern, as Wood pointed out.

“Transport emissions are predicted to rise by 23% by 2031,” he reported, adding that the county’s wider ecological footprint is some 35 times the size of Hertfordshire.

Action has been taken to address some of these problems. These include bypasses at Baldock, Cheshunt, Cole Green and on the A41. There have also been projects such as the M1 Link Ascot Road at Watford and major works on junctions 1623 of the M25, junctions 6A-10 on the M1 and the A1(M) Hatfield Tunnel. There have also been major public transport projects, including station upgrades on the Thameslink route and the Croxley rail link scheme, which re-routes London Underground’s Metropolitan Line to connect Watford Station and Watford Junction.

While major capital projects are important, Wood told delegates that the county’s Local Transport Plan approach includes solutions involving an integrated approach to transport delivery. “This means making better use of existing infrastructure, implementing small-scale highways improvements and encouraging walking, cycling and road safety,” he said.

The increased use of smaller-scale schemes has been made possible by the Local Sustainable Transport Fund (LSTF) money the county successfully secured from the Department for Transport. “The

John Wood

LSTF provides a step-change and is key to the delivery of sustainable travel solutions at a local level,” said Wood.

The county and its partners have invested LSTF money in projects in the critical south-west corner of the county – a triangle formed by St Albans, Hemel Hempstead and Watford. The schemes have been packaged under one umbrella – BIGHERTSBIGIDEAS – and focus on: New cycling and walking infrastructure New passenger transport infrastructure, and development of passenger transport partnerships Intelligent transport systems, including real-time passenger information Travel planning for businesses and schools Personalised travel planning, mapping, information and journey planning Employer engagement, including workplace planning, marketing and events.

Organisations now actively engaged in BIGHERTSBIGIDEAS include the NHS, the Building Research Centre, BT, Ericsson, Epson, Hilton and MEPC. Wood pointed to examples such as the implementation of Quality Network Partnerships, which aim to improve bus services and introduce improved ticketing measures in the three urban areas.

Partnership initiatives have included the recent introduction of the ‘Watford 10’ scheme, where Arriva unveiled ten new buses for the service ten in Watford. The buses now run every ten-minutes and a weekly ticket costs £10. There has also been a major investment in cycling, especially at St Albans City Station on the Bedford-Brighton Thameslink line.

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Changing behaviour to get people cycling Thomas Stokell and Sama Alyasiri share the latest thinking on how we can apply behaviour change theory to encourage more people to cycle more often

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he term ‘behaviour change’ is not a new one. Coined in 1975 by Martin Fishbein and later developed by Icek Ajzen, behaviour change research examined the effects of attitudes, reasoned actions and consequential behaviours. Since the 1980s there have been several prominent behaviour change (BC) theories and models, providing the tools used today to promote health and sustainability – from promoting recycling to changing the way we travel.

It’s time to take a fresh look at how we can use contemporary behaviour change research, theories and tools to encourage more people to cycle, more often.

After carrying out a comprehensive review of the current literature on behaviour change theory, we have developed a new behaviour change framework specifically designed for encouraging cycling.

The framework has four parts: 1) The user journey: Identifying the key stages of change people go through on their journey from being a non-cyclist to regular rider. Imagine this journey is like a ladder with each of the stages being a rung of the ladder.

2) Barriers and benefits: An analysis of the real and perceived barriers and benefits that people have, which need to be addressed to get people to go through each stage of change of this journey.

3) Behaviour change theory and tools: Identifying how the behaviour change theories and the tools of change can be appropriately applied at each different stage of change.

4) Creativity and innovation: The creative application of these theories and tools so that we engage our audiences effectively and efficiently. This creative application uses a combination of

technology (to scale the approach, and achieve cost efficiencies), face-to-face interaction and conventional promotional channels.

Measure, target, measure When we apply this framework, the first step is to find out which stage of the user journey someone is on. Then we can ask specific questions relevant to that stage to identify what barriers and benefits they perceive to taking the next step.

This information then enables us to target each individual with the right information, incentives, advice and programmes. People are bombarded with messages online and by email, so to be effective, our best chance is to be as targeted and relevant as possible.

For example, let’s take someone at the ‘contemplation stage’. They haven’t cycled for over a year, they own a bike, but it’s out of working order. They feel confident riding, but not confident riding in traffic.

We could send them an email which has 5 tips for getting your bike back on the road, a discount to get a bike service at a local bike shop, and encourage them to take a ‘Confidence in Traffic’ cycle course.

From theory to reality This new behaviour change framework is currently being built into the online cycling platform – Love to Ride (www.lovetoride.net).

When we apply this approach, information is collected automatically by the Love to Ride website through a series of very short surveys to monitor where people are at on their journey and what barriers they face next.

This on-going measurement allows the system to monitor people’s progress and adapt messaging people receive by email and on the website (e.g. for skills training, for tips on cycling, relevant discount vouchers, etc).

The authors Thomas Stokell is a director and Sama Alyasiri is head of projects at Challenge for Change.

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Delivering the goods Freight and deliveries are the ‘elephant in the room’ of sustainable transport, writes Freddie Talberg

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here is a certain inevitability for Local Sustainable Transport Funding (LSTF) schemes to focus on the obvious – reducing car travel, increasing public transport use and encouraging walking and cycling. But there’s an elephant in the room, one that tends to arrive with a diesel engine and more than six wheels.

The elephant is, of course, freight transport. Without it, High Street shops would be bare, petrol pumps would be empty and, come Christmas, our new found love of online shopping would prove fruitless.

While the proportion of freight vehicles on the road is much lower than cars, freight vehicles are bigger, slower, noisier and, with the need to make regular stops to make deliveries, a lot more disruptive than other road traffic.

For a local authority with a mandate to stimulate economic development and simultaneously improve road network use patterns, freight transport is both a hindrance and a help. So, how do we resolve the problem?

Restricted movements The obvious answer would seem to be to limit freight movements to an extent deemed appropriate for an individual area.

London took exactly this step some years ago by introducing the London Lorry Control Scheme. It works by excluding HGVs from the vast majority of roads

in the capital during the evening and at weekends unless they have prior permission. To travel on an excluded road requires approval by London Councils.

Ostensibly, the scheme was introduced to combat noise pollution, but during recent years the London Lorry Control Scheme has helped to facilitate freight transport being taken off roads even during ‘normal working hours’. This was particularly the case during the 2012 Olympics, which led to an increase out-ofhours deliveries in affected areas.

The London Lorry Control Scheme has had several outcomes. It has freed up network capacity and made freight journeys less likely to cause disruption which subsequently reduces emissions.

London, London, London...

The notion that individual local authorities can follow the lead of the UK’s wellfunded capital to establish their own lorry control schemes is fanciful. But the principle of working with the freight industry to make restriction information easily and readily available to the benefit of both parties is surely common sense.

To achieve this shared goal, there has to be a viable mechanism for collecting, displaying, sharing and distributing accurate data about restrictions. And such a scheme needs to function beyond and across the boundaries of specific local authority areas. After all, HGVs drive hundreds of miles per week, not all of them in one area.

To try and achieve this grand vision will require a lot of work and strong relationships to come to fruition.

Despite that, or maybe because of it, the idea is already taking shape.

The shape of things to come PIE Mapping, an online routing and mapping specialist, is launching a National Freight Journey Planner.

The planner will be the UK’s first free national routing service specifically for HGVs. It uses commercially available Navteq data.

Besides tempting the freight sector to the table with the planning service, PIE Mapping is also engaging with local authorities to allow individual areas to host their own localised version of the routing system and most importantly, to add their own restriction information over the top of the base Navteq data. This data is then fed into the national map, meaning any routes generated by HGV drivers or operators take into account the restrictions a local area has put in place.

A number of areas are already signed up and are now feeding their local information into the National Freight Journey Planner. These areas include Wiltshire, Hampshire and Kent, with several others in the pipeline.

Routing in Wiltshire Kingsley Hampton, senior transport planner at Wiltshire Council, says the National Freight Journey Planner is being built into the county’s transport planning.

“Efficient distribution in any area is critical in determining market diversity and consumer choice, and in doing so drives competitiveness, jobs and prosperity, but we’re particularly sensitive to the environmental and social impact that road freight transport can have,” says Hampton.

“Freight Gateway has quickly become a key component of our freight management strategy, providing industry with a valuable mapping resource while addressing crucial environmental and social issues.”

The key element for affecting behavioural change is the accurate data that resides within local authorities. If this can be appropriately captured, then it is possible to imagine a scenario whereby the changes or restrictions a transport officer wants to put into place are sent real-time to satnavs and smart phones.

For the first time, the ability to affect driver behaviour really will be available with the click of a mouse. And if driver behaviour means fewer emissions, quicker journeys and less disruption, should it not also be a key focus for LSTF? Here’s to the elephant in the room and telling it where you want it to go.

The author Freddie Talberg is chief executive officer at PIE Mapping.

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Making the right connections Thinking locally could be the best strategic solution and smarter phones will enable us to travel more sustainably, argues Gordon Baker

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ebate continues over both the affordability of transport investments and the best way of meeting future travel demand to achieve sustainable outcomes. We entered the 21st century with social demands for travel increasing, but serious economic constraints and growing environmental concerns seeming to restrain our ability to chart strategic progress.

‘Piecemeal’ and ‘ad-hoc’ are words that many of us can readily associate with transport investment. This begs the question of whether or not there is a paradox between traditional investment planning and the need for sustainable transport options.

It has been argued that current planning practices tend to value mobility rather than accessibility and so favour motorised modes over non-motorised modes and motorists over non-drivers (Litman 2011).

It has been observed that we have a general tendency for transport systems to cater for physical movement rather than improving access to goods and services for the population as a whole (Lucas 2004). This not only results in expensive investment in infrastructure but creates a vicious circle that prioritises the car over other modes.

In the emerging political and economic framework, public investment in transport can become limited in scope or, dare we say, misdirected. A political system operating under severe financial pressures is apparently incapable of improving transport and accessibility through delivering sustainable outcomes. This creates a major challenge; how successful can we truly be in providing inclusive accessibility solutions?

Traditional investment approach Traditional planning methods, based on trip-models and cost-benefit analysis, inherently prioritise the car over sustainable modes for their savings in values of time. Despite their wide acceptance, these practices lead to outcomes contrary to the principles of sustainability, and due to their focus on

Increasing quality, which is not inclusive, is a matter of privilege and not social benefit. We need to think and work differently Gordon Baker

large investment projects, sector growth becomes limited.

Transport modelling and cost-benefit analysis focus on trips rather than activities. They overlook human behaviour in their models, only reinforcing the current travel patterns and favouring movement over access. Martens (2006) exemplifies this: By ignoring the fact that current travel patterns are a reflection of the way in which transport resources have been distributed in the past, transport models thus create an inherent feedback loop.

The models use the high trip rates among car owners in the present to predict high trip rates among car owners in the future. These predictions favour

policies that cater to this growth through improved services for car owners (e.g., road building or investment in costly rapid rail). These improved services, in turn, result in higher trip rates among car owners and the circle begins again.

In addition, the use of values of time on cost-benefit analysis by default creates the need for large infrastructures in order to increase travel speeds. There is a huge inequality in the values of time. For example, these values are higher for drivers than for public transport users, pedestrians and cyclists. Why should we perpetuate this inequality when they justify higher investments for those who are already better off? Improving the quality of transport services for drivers is achieved at the expense of those who experience mobility constraints.

Increasing quality, which is not inclusive, is a matter of privilege and not social benefit. We need to think and work differently.

Thinking differently: Increasing opportunities for all Who hasn’t got a mobile phone these days? It is widely agreed that as transport is a derived demand, activity-models should focus on human behaviour in

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contrast to the traditional views (Gaker et al 2010; Lew and Leong 2009). Mobile phones are a case in point.

The emergence of mobile technologies, and the spread of internet communications, have significantly changed people’s behaviour and interactions. Most every day activities, from shopping or going to the cinema now have an app. This includes travel.

The reality is that technology has enabled transport systems to become smarter and require less planning and less thinking, and therefore provide a competitive alternative to the car.

For example, Google Maps, which accounts for 150 million users, guides users 12 billion miles per year using its Navigation application, saving people an average of two days’ worth of travel time each year (Sheffer 2011). More importantly, this was achieved without requiring new transport infrastructure construction or large public investments.

Since mobile phones are widely accessible in the UK, technology also enables inclusive travel planning.

According to the European Travel Commission (2013), more than half of the mobile phones in the UK are smartphones, equipped with internet connection and built-in applications. Forecasts show that they will represent 75% of the market by 2016 (Graph 1).

Furthermore, mobile devices now represent 33% of all web traffic, an increase of 164% in just two years (Cavanagh 2011; Digital Strategy Consulting 2013) (Graph 2).

Graph 1: Smartphone share of market by 2016

Graph 2: Mobile devices share of web traffic

The author Gordon Baker is managing director of JMP Consultants Ltd.

References CAVANAGH, S. 2011. UK Mobile Internet Statistics – August 2011 [online]. [Accessed 9 October 2012].

Available from: www.tecmark.co.uk/uk-mobile-stats-2011/ DEPARTMENT FOR TRANSPORT. 2011. How people travel? National Travel Survey [online]. [Accessed 8 October 2012].

Available from: http://assets.dft.gov.uk/statistics/releases/national-travel-survey2010/nts2010-03.pdf DIGITAL STRATEGY CONSULTING. 2013. Mobile trends: ‘One third of UK traffic now from smartphones or tablets’ [online]. [Accessed 9 October 2012].

Available from: www.digitalstrategyconsulting.com/intelligence/2013/02/ mobile_trends_one_third_of_uk_traffic_now_from_smartphones_or_tablets.php EUROPEAN TRAVEL COMMISSION. 2013. Mobile Devices [online]. [Accessed 8 October 2013].

Available from: www.newmediatrendwatch.com/markets-by-country/18-uk/154mobile-devices

GAKER, D., Y. ZHENG and J. WALKER. 2010. Experimental Economics in Transportation: A Focus on Social Influences and the Provision of Information. Institute of Urban & Regional Development, UC Berkeley.

LEW, Y. D and W. Y. LEONG. 2009. Managing congestion in singapore — a behavioural economics perspective. LTA Academy. Land Transport Authority.

Singapore Government.

LITMAN, T. 2011. Evaluating Transportation Equity: Guidance For Incorporating Distributional Impacts in Transportation Planning. Victoria Transport Policy Institute.

LUCAS, K., Ed. 2004. Running on empty: transport, social exclusion and environmental justice. Bristol: The Policy Press.

MARTENS, K. 2006. Basing Transport Planning on Principles of Social Justice. Berkeley Planning Journal.19. pp. 1-17.

SHEFFER, S. 2011. Google VP lays down mobile stats, boasts 150 million Maps users [online]. [Accessed 8 October 2013].

Available from: www.engadget.com/2011/03/14/google-vp-lays-down-mobilestats-boasts-150-million-maps-users/

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LOCAL

SUSTAINABLE

TRANSPORT

Hosted by:

Supported by:

Organised by:

FUND

MAINSTREAMING

smarter travel Local Sustainable Transport Fund National Conference 3 & 4 December 2013 Manchester Town Hall ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Mainstreaming – Embedding smarter travel into general practice Integration - New technology, buses, trains and interchange Active Travel – Walking and cycling initiatives Engagement – Partnership working Monitoring and evaluation Marketing and communications

MORE THAN 3 0 DELEGA 0 TES BOOKE D

This is a vital event for all practitioners and stakeholders involved in the delivery of LSTF projects nationally

KEY PARTNERS Sponsored by:

Supported by:

www.mainstreamsmart.co.uk

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speedlearning

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The Speed Learning session at the Mainstreaming Smarter Travel event in December provides a platform for knowledge sharing, generating discussion and helping LSTF teams to network with each other.

The 30 case studies will be presented simultaneously at ‘bar tables’ marked by numbered balloons, in SIX – 12 minute sessions.

The case studies will be short presentations followed by discussion.

A horn will be sounded when it is time to change tables.

Delegates choose to attend six from the following 30 speed learning sessions...

LSTF Case Studies Mainstreaming – Embedding smarter travel into everyday practice 1

4

Alina Tuerk, LSTF Project Manager, Thurrock Borough Council The app encompasses all modes of sustainable travel including walking and cycling for leisure purposes. The app is free and over 1,000 downloads have been made in the first month.

The App features maps, timetables and real-time train information. We will present lessons learnt from commissioning the App and legacy plans including sponsorship from local businesses

Extending services to connect people with jobs Caroline Corless-Carter, Customised Services Officer, TfGM The existing Kingsway Local Link service was extended to the Kingsway Business Park, a major employer in the Rochdale area with early morning and late night running for shift workers.

Travel to Rochdale bus, rail stations and tram stops are possible with inter-available ticket products. Thanks to TfGM’s intervention, patronage has more than trebled in the past year and passenger feedback has been very good.

2

5

Integration - New technology, smart cards, buses, trains and interchange 7

Successful roll-out of an innovative and ground breaking Real Time Information System and the delivery of a Citywide Legible Bus Network project which has carried forward the 'Legible Cities' approach to the public transport realm. Conceptual system architecture (1st of its type in UK and EU); Design Guidelines for Legible Bus Networks; Signal Based bus priority; Partnership working with bus operators.

Kerbside Diaries Travel Data and Kerbside Culture Pilot Project

Smartphone technology collects experiential data on sustainable journeys, which is used to engage people locally to start conversations about kerbside culture, travel choices and how journeys could be more efficient, attractive, accessible, healthy and fun.

The findings of the pilot project can be integrated into schools and community groups to explore sustainable travel and kerbside culture and influence local decision making.

April 2015 - Planning for it now

The council has been working in Leicestershire on our next target areas. We have mainstreamed Smarter Travel and submitted our programmes for both Capital and Revenue spend for the next four years under the ‘Plan, Prepare, Do’ model.

8

The Train, Learn, Drive, Earn programme helps unemployed people in Greater Manchester access training and work experience, as a volunteer driver or member of support staff, at participating community transport operators.

The scheme targets unemployed individuals, who, once trained, will have skills that can be transferred to roles within the same or other organisations, both in the sector and beyond.

6

Slough’s new cycle hire scheme has just been launched. This session will overview of the initiative, its aims and objectives, the involvement of partners including NEETs (young people not in eductation, employment or training) in the maintenance and re-distribution of the bikes. While too early to present ‘outcomes’ we will present early anecdotal evidence and usage figures.

Bike Back Derby Fixing bikes and gaining skills in Derby Presenter Adam Sendall, LSTF Programme Coordinator, Derby City Council The scheme provides affordable refurbished bikes to local people in Derby to help them access work, education, training and other facilities by bike. Donations of abandoned or unwanted bicycles are transferred to HMP Stocken, and refurbished by the inmates. The bikes are then sold to individuals who cannot afford the cost of a new bike.

Slough’s new cycle hire scheme Savio DeCruz, Slough Borough Council Team Leader for Integrated Transport and Road Safety

Train, Learn, Drive, Earn Jenny Coates, Customised Services Officer, TfGM

Real Time Passenger Information and Legible Bus Networks Richard Cooke, RTPI Delivery Officer, Southampton City Council

Ashley Dalton, Ideas in Motion Community and External Funding Manager – Southend-on-Sea Borough Council

Ian Vears, Team Manager Travel Choice, Leicestershire County Council

3

Thurrock Smartphone App

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Access to Stations – better cycle-rail integration Martyn Brunt, Sustrans’ NCN Development Manager The Access to Stations project, is led by Bedford Borough Council, coordinated by Sustrans, funded through the Local Sustainable Transport Fund and delivered by a range of local authority partners. The project aims to increase levels of sustainable and active travel amongst rail users and promote rail travel in general.

The key learning outcomes are how best to design for cycling at stations; early lessons from supporting behaviour change interventions.

Images: Speed learning in action at Velocity Vienna 2013.

Other images courtesy of Sustrans

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3–4 December 2013 | Manchester Town Hall 10 Bus travel app pilot project Andy Whitehead, LSTF Project Manager - Public Transport, West of England LSTF In April we launched a pilot bus app for the LSTF WEST region. Based on UK Bus Checker, the app shows bus stops, real-time information and routes. We provided a limited number of free downloads for the public to use.

New York City has now done the same!

Active Travel Walking and Cycling initiatives

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15 Working with public health to increase active travel

20 Cycle Coventry: Building effective health partnerships

Bryn Dowson, Sustrans’ Regional Director, North East

Richard Smith, Cycle Coventry Smarter Choices Coordinator, Coventry City Council

Sustrans is working with local authorities in Newcastle, Gateshead, Sunderland, North Tyneside, South Tyneside and Durham to encourage children and families to walk and cycle for everyday trips. This LSTF-funded project is a partnership with the local public health team, and builds on a pilot which was commissioned by the Director of Public Health for North Tyneside.

Smarter choices are healthy, but are we doing enough to tackle health inequalities? Cycle Coventry is responding to this challenge by developing interventions in partnership with public health colleagues. Ask not what Public Health can do for you, but what you can do for the health of your city.

21 Motivating businesses to consider sustainable travel

16 The Walk to School Outreach Project

11 Are you Winter Ready?

Nicola Appleby, LSTF Comms Lead, TfGM

Jenni Wiggle, Living Streets

In Autumn 2013 TfGM launched the Are You Winter Ready? campaign, to reinforce the message that cycling to work can be a year-round activity. Using a varied marketing mix, and tying in with business-as-usual activities, the campaign supports commuter cycling initiatives, such as TfGM’s cycle training offer and network of Cycle Hubs.

The Walk to School Outreach Project is a partnership of 11 local authorities, led by Durham County Council. We audit the local street from the perspective of the children. We take teachers, pupils and parents on a walkabout around their school and ask them to identify barriers to walking and how to tackle them.

12 Community-led street design

Liam Potts, Business Travel Advisor, TfGM Kellogg’s is a large employer based in the heart of Trafford Park, Manchester, Europe’s largest business park. With the help of TfGM’s Travel Choices business engagement team, a wide ranging programme of activities has been delivered to enable sustainable commuting to this hard to reach site. Find out how this was achieved and what developments are planned as TfGM takes Kellogg’s on a sustainable travel journey.

Engagement - Partnership working 22 Integrating road safety and sustainable travel messages

James Cleeton, Sustrans’ National Project Coordinator, Communities The aim of this project is to inspire and support the residents of Hamp, South Bridgwater, to redesign their urban environment to make it safer and more attractive for everyday walking and cycling. This, in turn, will help to remove the barriers relating to access to work and educational opportunities, change resident’s attitudes towards walking and cycling, and create a culture of participation within the ward.

13 Making Liverpool walking and cycling friendly Karen Stevens, Cycling Officer, Liverpool City Council

17 Slough Borough Council School's Engagement Programme Jennifer Ward, Senior Transport Planner, Atkins

14 Pedestrian planning – Wayfinding in Southampton Simon Jay, Senior Managing Consultant – Pedestrian, Cycling and Space Planning, Atkins A high quality on-street pedestrian wayfinding solution for Southampton city was developed by Atkins as a cost-effective family of signage, way-finding graphics and mapping products.

This creates a comprehensive and recognisable system, which is now being rolled out across the city and surrounding areas.

Sheffield’s City Council’s Road Safety Team work with businesses, training organisations and apprenticeship programmes to deliver road safety presentations across Sheffield. The LSTF funds have enabled us to incorporate sustainable travel messages into eco-driving and show how to make better use of public transport as an alternative. Combining both sets of messages is more attractive to business.

We have been actively engaging with schools for over a year as part of the LSTF programme.

The case study looks at the identification of priority schools to engage with as part of the programme on how to keep schools engaged.

It also discusses travel initiatives which have been successful and less successful and monitoring of the impact of the programme. .

18 Travel Support for Jobseekers, Creating Travel Champions Gareth Hughes, Travel Support for Jobseekers, TfGM

The council has developed an off-road walking and cycling route connecting to the university campus, business district and additional works through the Regional Growth Fund. We have identified, through work with the business district, Sustainable travel promotion through our ‘Choose Freedom’ project. This has achieved solid results, using a local specialist provider, BikeRight! to reach out to communities.

Claire Molyneux Principal Road Safety Officer, Sheffield City Council

TfGM offers bespoke training to complement the advisory skills of staff from Jobcentres and partner organisations, which equips them with the skills to help jobseekers get to interviews and jobs by the best and most cost-effective mode of transport. By being a Travel Champion, this knowledge is shared among customers and colleagues alike.

23 Leicester Fit 4 Business Sally Slade & Sharon Mann, Local Sustainable Transport Team Leaders, Leicester City Council Sustainable travel grants and training for small and medium sized businesses are provided in this programme to help the businesses and employees of Leicester to access affordable and sustainable transport. It provides cheaper commuting and business travel in the UK, such as rail and bus season ticket discounts, and a sustainable travel grant up to the value of £5,000

19 Jobcentre Plus Initiative in West Yorkshire Nicola Whatmuff, Travel for Work Advisor, METRO (WYPTE) The Jobcentre Plus initiative engages with all 23 Jobcentre Plus offices in West Yorkshire to reduce the barriers discouraging job seekers from taking up employment in the main towns and cities in West Yorkshire. This successful programme offers free travel for job interviews and a free travel pass for the first month of work.

www.mainstreamsmart.co.uk

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Marketing & Communications

Monitoring & Evaluation 24 LSTF impacts on rural economy and tourism - Drive less, emit less, spend more?

Helen Tate & Alistair Kirkbride, Cumbria Tourism and Lake District National Park Why is it worth investing in visitor travel? We’re breaking new ground finding out how far visitor travel behaviour can shift. This forces us to ask new questions about how we evaluate behaviour change. So, come along and ask yourself whether you travel differently on holiday, and whether this might change how you look at day-to-day travel.

25 Monitoring the success of Swindon travel choice interventions Claire Flemming, Swindon Travel Choices, Swindon Borough Council

26 Connect Tees Valley bus campaign Darlington Borough Council Shelli Smith, DIVA creative We undertook research with young people in the Tees Valley area to understand their perceptions of, and attitudes towards bus travel. Using this, we created an integrated online and offline targeted advertising campaign to raise awareness of the bus travel information available on the Connect Tees Valley website. Our campaign created a 89% increase in monthly unique visitors to ConnectTeesValley.com compared to the same period of June to Sept in 2012, and Connect Tees Valley facebook page “likes” increased 51%.

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27 Branding for smarter travel Vicky Doyle, Hampshire County Council

Swindon has been working on its LSTF programme and investing a lot of time evaluating various initiatives in order to learn what has worked and what can be improved in future. This case study will cover: - The Swindon “Rounds” – self guided circular routes for walking and cycling - Cost effectiveness of various media outlets - Bus smartcard trial - Social media campaigns

The ‘My Journey’ brand has been adopted by six neighbouring councils in the south of England.

This shared identity promotes a variety of transport options to local residents and businesses. The brand offers a strong and simple proposition that is easily recognised in and around the Hampshire area.

28 Supermodals Social Media Campaign – Lessons learned Paula McGivern, Hereford County Council

The speed learning session takes place at 15.40 on Day 1 The 30 case studies will be presented simultaniously at ‘bar tables’ marked by numbered balloons, in SIX x 12 minute sessions.

The case studies will be short presentations followed by discussion.

A horn will be sounded when it is time to change tables.

Who are the Supermodals? Why do promoters of active travel need them? Who has used the campaign and what have we learned? How much does it cost? Should government fund social media campaigns like this in the next round LSTF?

29 Connecting Wiltshire - Personalised Travel Planning Laura Gosling, Wiltshire Council This PTP programme encourages more people to use sustainable modes of transport, especially rail and to reduce the need to travel. The project is run in four towns and in each town the intervention has a specific theme to help test the approach. These include: assessing the segmentation priority ranking, existing community versus new development, combining residential and business PTP.

30 Changing behaviour at key transition points Phil Wright, Engagement & Support Services Manager, LSTF West of England Habits are formed quickly and difficult to break. Experience and emerging research show that key life transitions points are when habits can be broken.

We aim to change travel habits when people move house, get a job or start training, go to university and when children move from primary to secondary education.

Published programme subject to change. See www.mainstreamsmart.co.uk for latest updates

www.mainstreamsmart.co.uk

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If you are involved in sustainable transport provision then this is the event to attend to input into the future of smarter travel and find cooperation opportunities.

3 & 4 December 2013 | Manchester Town Hall

Local Sustainable Transport Fund National Conference Programme 3 DECEMBER 2013 - DAY 1: OPTIONAL MORNING BONUS SESSIONS 10.30

Bonus session registration: Delegates register within the Bees area in the Town Hall

11.00

(Advance Booking Required. £65 + VAT Add-on to standard delegate rates)

Option 4

Streamed sessions Delegates choose to attend 1 of 4...

Option 1 MediacityUK Metrolink to MediaCityUK, a leading hub for the creative and digital sectors, and home for both the BBC and ITV. Visit includes a tour of the site, and opportunities to hear about joint working on sustainable transport.

Finding your way to procure, implement and provide better travel information 10.00 Registration and Coffee

11.35

Where is transport mapping going – what you now need to know Peter Miller, CEO, ITO World • Navigating in the smarter city – a glimpse of the near future • The common reality of disconnected traveller information (Case study) • Delivering a consistent and coherent message across all transport models – on a budget • A single mapping and information database – How Ordnance Survey, Open Data and OpenStreetMap are coming together • Meeting the travel information needs of all users any time, any place, anywhere, any format

11.55

On-street and on-vehicle information technology Speaker TBC • What do customers value most?

• Cultural considerations – an international perspective on information provision • Immediate benefits, integration and and futureproofing • Making the right buying decision

12.25

Question & discussion

12.30

Lunch served in the seminar room

10.30 Welcome

Option 2

10.35

Sustainable travel and geographical imaging in Greater Manchester David Hytch, Information Systems Director (Technology Initiatives), TfGM • Linking modes and information • Passenger information methods • Open Data to improve service • Considering the mix of modes and information – Why geographic systems work well

10.55

Lessons from experience – UK and International best practice in transport mapping Peter Warman, Consultant to FWT • The perspective of the traveller – how do we look after different user groups?

• The map as a navigation aid • Tracking and GPS. Why don’t we have ‘tom-toms’ in buses?

• Where is personal navigation going?

• Combining static and real-time information

National Cycling Centre Metrolink to the National Cycling Centre, home of British Cycling. There will be a tour of the velodrome and BMX tracks, and opportunities to hear about Greater Manchester's ambition to increase cyclist numbers by 300% over the next 12 years.

11.30 (Note: Later departure time)

Option 3 City Tower Cycle Hub A walking visit to the flagship City Tower Cycle Hub, with the opportunity to view facilities and hear more about Transport for Greater Manchester's commuter cycling programme.

11.15 12.30

Return to Manchester Town Hall ACT TravelWise Re-launch in the Great Hall

‘Information provision’ not ‘information pollution’ on transport maps Dr. Max Roberts, Department of Psychology University of Essex (author of ‘Underground Maps Unravelled’) • The enduring role of ‘a good map’?

• The psychology of mapping • Usable versus beautiful • Cultural considerations • Some International best practices

www.mainstreamsmart.co.uk

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3 DECEMBER 2013 - DAY 1: WHAT WILL THE LSTF DELIVER? 12.30

Delegate registration: Registration and light refreshments served in the exhibition area

13.20

Keynote- Mainstreaming Smart Travel in Greater Manchester Dr Jon Lamonte, Chief Executive of Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM)

13.30

Panel discussion - Mainstreaming Smarter Travel - and the LSTF Chaired by Prof. Phil Goodwin, University of West of England Panellists: Panellists: Graham Pendlebury, The Department for Transport; Greg Hartshorn, ATKINS; Peter Lipman, Sustrans & Dr Jon Lamonte, Transport for Greater Manchester

15.00

Break: Refreshments served in the exhibition area

BREAK FOR THE FOLLOWING DAY

4 DECEMBER 2013 - DAY 2: HOW SMARTER TRAVEL DELIVERS - LESSONS LEARNED 08.45

Registration opens: Refreshments served in the exhibition area

09.00

Optional pre-conference 30 minute ‘International Breakfast Briefing’ in the Great Hall New York's sustainable transport policy and practice

to 09.30

Jon Orcutt, Director of Policy, New York Department of Transport & Kate Fillin-Yeh - Director of the NYC Bike Share scheme

09.50

Sustainable transport in Manchester Councillor Andrew Fender, Chair of the Transport for Greater Manchester Committee (TfGMC)

10.00

The views of LEPs on Sustainable Transport Mike Blackburn, Chair of the Greater Manchester Local Enterprise Partnership & BT's regional director for the North West

10.10

Mainstreaming the Local Sustainable Transport Fund Local Transport Minister Baroness Kramer

10.20

Interview with the Minister, Chair of GM LEP and Chair of TfGMC Interviewer: Lynn Sloman Director of Transport for Quality of Life

11.00

Break: Refreshments served in the exhibition area

11.30

Streamed sessions:

Delegates choose 1 of 4

The Great Hall

Lord Mayor's Parlour

Conference Hall

Committee Room

Marketing and Communications

Engagement Partnership working

Mainstreaming embedding smarter travel into general practice

Integration - New technology, smart-cards, buses, trains and interchange

Sponsored by Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM)

Sponsored by ATKINS

Sponsored by Diva The Key Ingredients of a Successful Behaviour Change Campaign Amy Boyle, DIVA Creative The Greener Journeys Behaviour Change Lab: getting motorists to try the bus Lynn Sloman and David Hall, Behaviour Change Lab A campaign to increase awareness of shared transport and create legacy Ali Clabburn, Liftshare & Thomas Evans, Gloucestershire CC

Sponsored by TfGM Delivering Success Through Partnership Working Helen Ramsden, TfGM Lessons from the Award Winning Lowestoft Local Links Steff Jones, Lowesoft Council and Jon Parker, ITP Employers group - business enagement Ann O'Driscoll, North Bristol Suscom

How big can we go?

Gordon Baker, JMP The devil is in the delivery Jon Foley, Steer Davies Gleave Maximising value- tapping into existing funding to maximise LSTF project funds Tim Anderson, Energy Savings Trust

Effective partnerships for passenger transport Andy Summers, Hertfordshire CC How technology & gamification can be used to encourage travel behavioural change. A case study from Leeds METRO James Datson, ATKINS; Ginny Leonard, METRO, Ronan Carter, Stravel & PleaseCycle; Jon MJ, Cambridge University Demolishing Information Silos for the Benefit of Customers Pete Johnson, TfGM

12.45

Lunch: Served in the exhibition area

Secure your place at Mainstreaming Smarter Tr

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3–4 December 2013 | Manchester Town Hall

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15.40

speedlearning 30x case studies from LSTF projects to discuss. Held in the Great Hall and Bees Area. See p42–44

17.30

Break: Break in the exhibition area

18.00

Welcome to Manchester Dave Newton - Transport Strategy Director, Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM)

18.10

Informal Networking Light bites and drinks party

19.30

Day 1 Close

13.45

Streamed sessions: Delegates choose 1 of 4

The Great Hall

Lord Mayor's Parlour

Conference Hall

Committee Room

Mainstreaming Embedding smarter travel into general practice

Monitoring and Evaluation

Active Travel - Walking and Cycling initiatives Workshop

Integration - New technology, smartcards, buses, trains and interchange

Sponsored by ATKINS Local Growth Deals & Smarter Travel Jonathan Foster-Clark, Atkins

Best Practice in Monitoring Andy Cope, Sustrans Cost effective monitoring of behaviour change interventions Tony Duckenfield, Steer Davies Gleave

LSTF and Young Adults: The real potential for sustained, life - long travel behaviour change Damian Price, Mott MacDonald & Rachel Evans, Centro

Sponsored by Sustrans Mainstreaming Cycling for All Nick Vaughan, TfGM & Eleanor Roaf, Sustrans Regional Director, North West Getting more people cycling lessons from three years of challenges Sam Robinson, Challenge for Change

Sponsored by ATKINS Real Time Travel Information Delivering the benefits Daniel Hobbs, AECOM Connecting the Dales LSTF Randall Ghent, DITA Sustaining access and connectivity in remote areas: some issues for smart communications Coen Salemink, University Groningen

How do we ensure a local LSTF legacy?

Adrian Webb & Lee Parker, Southampton CC & Parose Projects

14.45

Break: Refreshments served in the exhibition area

15.15

Streamed sessions: Delegates choose 1 of 4

The Great Hall

Lord Mayor's Parlour

Conference Hall

Committee Room

Marketing and Communications

Active Travel - Walking and Cycling initiatives Workshop

Engagement partnership working

Monitoring and Evaluation

Sponsored by Sustrans

Sponsored by TfGM

Integrating hard and soft measures in access to education & work Tony Russell, Transport Engineering Manager, Sustrans & Zsolt Schuller, Strategic Sustainable Travel Officer, Devon County Council

Cross Boundary Partnership Working - The Trials and Tribulations, a practical guide Daniel Caffrey, St.Helens Council

Sponsored by ACT Travelwise Market Segmentation John Screeton, DfT A Blueprint for an Effective Sustainable Travel Website Steve Dupree, Diva Creative Engaged Employers and intergrated funding Rachel Evans and Thomas Evans, Gloucetershire County County Council

16.15

Sponsored by the Department for Transport Workshop on Monitoring and Evaluation Betty Leow & Angela Trevithick, DfT

Delivering Smarter Travel Choices through Social Landlords Lucy Low, Cheshire West

Event Close Published programme subject to change. See www.mainstreamsmart.co.uk for latest updates.

r Travel today at: www.mainstreamsmart.co.uk

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LOCAL

SUSTAINABLE

TRANSPORT

Hosted by:

Supported by:

FUND

The 2-Day Mainstreaming Smarter Travel event includes 'round-table’ discussion forums, workshops, panel discussions, case study and key-note presentations taking place over the two days.

Delegates will have the opportunity to learn lessons from the early projects already underway, for those planned for implementation in 2014/15.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

3 & 4 December 2013 | Manchester Town Hall

With an expected 450 delegates, Mainstreaming Smarter Travel is the meeting place for sustainable transport experts from around the UK.

Supported by the Department for Transport and hosted by Transport for Greater Manchester, this conference is the second national meeting of all the LSTF projects.

If you are involved in sustainable transport provision then this is the event to attend to input into the future of smarter travel and find cooperation opportunities.

The programme features a mix of networking discussion, panel debate, keynote presentation and streamed sessions providing a knowledge sharing platform for delegates.

Delegates and speakers include:

Local Sustainable Transport Fund National Conference

It is an opportunity for delegates from a number of different sectors to network with each other, share good practice, find opportunities for cooperation, and to discuss the future of smarter travel.

■ Listen to presentations from experts on the future of smarter travel ■ Network with practitioners tasked with delivering LSTF projects throughout the UK ■ Learn from good practice being delivered as part of the LSTF ■ Join networking groups to discuss cooperation opportunities

■ ■ ■ ■

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

transport planners travel planners sustainable transport officers facilities and transport managers from large employers LEP representatives public health officials academia transport operators consultants ...from both the non-profit and private sector.

DELEGATE RATES Mainstreaming Smarter Travel is endorsed by:

First private sector delegate

£245 + VAT

Each additional private sector delegate

£195 + VAT

Public Sector delegates

£95 + VAT

Add-on Mapping & Information for Smarter Travel Morning Session on Day 1 +£65 + VAT

HOW TO BOOK Secure your place online at: www.mainstreamsmart.co.uk If requesting an invoice online, you will be prompted for a purchase order number.

Mainstreaming Smarter Travel is organised by Landor LINKS. Landor LINKS connects with every Local Authority in the UK, Central Government, Universities and research bodies, suppliers, consultants, contractors and service providers.

Professionals depend on us for authoritative information, news and analysis. We deliver this through targeted events, traditional print, such as the respected transport planning and policy journal Local Transport Today, online and through social media.

Conference enquiries: Gemma Mensah conferences@landor.co.uk +44(0)207 091 7865

Organised by: Landor LINKS Apollo House 359 Kennington Lane London, SE11 5QY

All bookings are subject to payment terms which can be found at: www.landor.co.uk/smartertravel/terms.php

Book online: www.mainstreamsmart.co.uk