Promoting Sustainable Travelling Choices



Sustainable travelling can be achieved by strategies like the following:
• improving public transport facilities
• using travel awareness campaigns (personalised travel planning, Information and marketing)
• car sharing and car clubs
• home shopping and technology
• walking
• cycling

The UK government is encouraging all its town/city authorities to step up their campaign towards smarter choices of travelling in all the country’s urban areas and countryside in order to cut down on the CO2 emissions. Most of the counties have promoted the ‘smarter choice’ in one way or the other including Darlington, Peterborough and Worcestershire who have carried out combined promotional strategies and came up with a convincing result that sustainable travelling is possible in some areas. The results from these three counties show that there is a considerable increase in the number of people who have chosen the sustainable travelling route. Sustainable travelling has positive results in improving air quality and reduces congestion.

The smarter choices implemented by the above counties have led to the following statistics:




The case study show an improvement in reducing the car trips by using other travelling options, although this needs some resource inputs efficiency, planning and might take time to implement. The pattern will obviously differ from one county to another due to some factors like availability of cash, the design of the towns/cities (including shopping /leisure places location, the size of the town/city, compliance of residents to changes and other unforeseen factors. The above results cannot be an accurate representation for all the towns/cities in the UK
Likewise Leicestershire’s eco-town proposal through the Co-operative (a sponsor) has put forward a proposal aimed to assisting the residents to optimise their use of public transport, walking and cycling to work places and schools.

The eco-town will be on the edge of Leicester conurbanation and will connect to the existing transport network by means of faster trains, buses as well as cycling and walking. The plan will also include a park and ride site, shopping complex and high quality transport interchange system. The plan aims to achieve a modal split of 55% public transport, 20% walk and cycle and 25% private car journeys out of the town. The eco-town will follow the Leicestershire’s Local Transport Plan (LTP) for 2006 to 2011 which includes tackling congestion, improved access to facilities and improve the air quality.71% of Leicestershire residents travelled to work by car (65% driving and 6% as passengers). Only 17% of the journeys were made by other options (9% walking, 50% by bus and 3% by cycling (2001 cencers).

Links:
http://www.ecotownforleicestershire.coop/
http://www.cleanersafergreener.gov.uk/
http://www.i2i.org/articles/2-2005.pdf
http://www.plan4sustainabletravel.org/