Sustrans is the UK’s leading sustainable transport charity. Our vision is a world in which people choose to travel in ways that benefit their health and the environment. We work on practical, innovative solutions to the transport challenges facing us all.
TravelSmart is based on a process known as Individualised Travel Marketing (ITM) and works with households offering tailor-made information and support, enabling people to walk, cycle and use public transport more often.
Sustrans ‘Broadening the Reach of TravelSmart’ aims to bring about sustained reductions in car use for short trips and to support modal shift to walking, cycling and public transport use across England. To achieve this, we will:
1. Develop and nationally promote our personalised online sustainable travel mapping. The detailed mapping will show local amenities (such as shops, doctors’ surgeries, places of worship, post offices, bus stops) as well as sites of interest (such as parks, public artwork, nature reserves, places of heritage); and how to get to them on foot, by bike or by public transport. People will be able to plan the best route (e.g. from home to school, work to the shops), then save it and share it with family, friends and colleagues. We will direct people to the website through Sustrans projects, marketing activities and a wide range of partner organisations.
Since the launch of the Greener Living Fund we have:
- commissioned a developer to implement the ’save and share’ and advanced editing content for the online mapping, which will be complete by the end of March 2010
- appointed a Project Officer to develop and improve the content of the online mapping, and to promote it by building relationships with information providers and partner organisations
- continued to plot new areas of England at 1:10,000 scale to increase mapping coverage
- implemented an online survey to collect baseline data from mapping users
The Project Officer (Becky Clarke) will work with colleagues at Sustrans to ensure the mapping is promoted to all beneficiaries of our work. This role is also focusing on bringing new data sets to the mapping (e.g. leisure centres, play areas, doctors’ surgeries, and other everyday destinations) to make it as useful as possible for local journeys.
2. Establish two TravelSmart ITM projects offering a total of 25,000 households tailor-made information and support (including the online mapping service), to enable them to choose to walk, cycle and use public transport more often.
We are in the process of establishing projects in Ipswich (Suffolk), targeting 17,000 households and Broxbourne (Hertfordshire), targeting 8,000 households. We have held a number of productive meetings with our partner local authorities to establish the best areas to target and to begin developing our marketing packages. Delivery of both projects will take place in spring/summer 2010, and we completed our baseline data collection in autumn 2009.
3. Build TravelSmart’s capacity to reach new audiences and to promote a wider range of pro-environmental behaviours such as energy efficiency and waste reduction. We have found local authority partners for this work and have developed the detailed concept for a pilot project. We are now trying to secure the funding required to run a project with around 1,000 households in 2010.
For more information about TravelSmart and Sustrans’ online mapping visit: www.sustrans.org.uk
