Cairns, S

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BACKIN APRIL2004,Darlington, Peterborough,and Worcester wereannounced as winners ofthe Department forTransport’s ‘SustainableTravel Towns’ competition.Jointly, they were allocated £10 million overfive years to become showcases of what canbe achieved by implementing a range of‘softer’ transport policies. In March, thetowns reported on their first year of work, atLandor’s ‘Making Smarter Choices Work’conference, held in Darlington. This markedthe beginning of a sequence of annualconferences to report progress.The Sustainable Travel Towns initiativefollows on from recent Department forTransport commissioned research on SmarterChoices.1 As reported in the November issueof Town & Country Planning,2 this studyexamined the likely impacts of implementinga range of ‘soft’ measures such as workplaceand school travel plans, information andmarketing campaigns, car clubs and car-sharing schemes, and increased use of tele-options such as tele-working. It concludedthat such measures have the potential to cuturban traffic by 14 per cent overall, and upto 21 per cent in the peak period. Part of therationale for the Sustainable Travel Townsproject is to establish whether these resultscan be achieved in practice.Speaking at the conference, PatriciaHayes, Head of Sustainable Travel at theDepartment for Transport, said that interestin the initiative had significantly exceededexpectations. Over 50 places competed to bechosen as the demonstration towns. In returnfor the funding for ‘smarter choice’ measures,participating local authorities were requiredto promise a contribution to the costs of theproject, to implement an overarchingstrategy for their town, and to put in placehigh-quality infrastructure to enable ‘quick,safe and pleasant travel by all modes’ .In Darlington, Peterborough, andWorcester, the initial phase of work hasincluded an extensive benchmarking study,assessing both existing travel patterns andthe potential for change. Overall, 12,855people were surveyed. Reporting the results,Werner Brög of Socialdata highlighted that,in some ways, the towns are very similar. Inall three, 41-45 per cent of trips are made asa car driver, and about two-thirds are madeby car overall. Similarly, in all three, 22-25 percent of trips are made on foot. All the townsare relatively self-contained, with residentsmaking more than three-quarters of alljourneys within their town. Notably, in allthree, at least 85 per cent of residents wouldfavour a local transport strategy that gavepreferential treatment to walking, cycling,and public transport, even if this were to‘disadvantage’ private cars.All three towns are also similar in that asignificant proportion of car journeys are veryshort. However, the proportions vary. Forexample, the percentage of car trips under3kilometres within each town is 43 per centin Darlington, 38 per cent in Worcester, and27 per cent in Peterborough. Perhaps partlybecause of this, the survey work also revealedsignificant differences in the potential forchange.In a smaller in-depth survey, 1,209respondents were asked why they madespecific journeys by car. For each trip,researchers analysed whether realisticalternatives were available (by walking,cycling, or public transport), taking accountof factors such as acceptable walkingdistances, comparable bus times, andluggage or disability constraints. InDarlington, at least one viable alternative wasfound for 56 per cent of car trips within thetown, compared with 46 per cent inWorcester and 39 per cent in Peterborough.Taken together, these results imply thatthere should be substantial potential toachieve behavioural change in all threelocations using ‘soft’ measures, although thedegree of change achieved could besignificantly different.Achieving change will also depend on thestrategies that the towns adopt. Already, it isclear that their approaches share similarities,but also important differences. All three nowhave staff dedicated to introducingworkplace and school travel plans. However,in Darlington, these are relatively recentappointees, while Worcester has a relativelyestablished travel planning programme,having already worked with about half itsschools.All three towns will be undertakingextensive personalised travel planning (seeSUSTAINABLE TRAVEL TOWNSSHOW TRAFFIC REDUCTIONPOTENTIAL158 Town & Country Planning  May 2005Getting Somewhere Sally CairnsA strip of the images being used to promote the TRAVELCHOICE work in PeterboroughPeterborough City Councilthe ‘Personalising transport choices’ panelabove).All three are also undertaking considerablemarketing activity, albeit with differingemphases. Darlington has initially developedsome relatively general advertising, as part oftrying to generate a ‘mood for change’ (seethe ‘A town on the move’ panel, belowright). In comparison, Peterborough hasdeveloped a specific brand for each mode,displaying consistent colours and images in arange of locations, including cinema adverts,on-street posters, letterheads and businesscards for the council’s Environment Services,and the city’s buses.It is notable that none of the towns isusing TravelWise branding, but have, instead,developed town-specific logos, images, andslogans: ‘Darlington: a town on the move’;‘Your TRAVELCHOICE in Peterborough. Yourcity, your move!’; and ‘Worcester: on themove in town’ (although Worcester will alsobe supporting its corporate work with theTravelWise branding). This raises questions asto whether localised transport marketing isnow considered to be more powerful than ageneric national approach.Other ‘smarter choice’ initiatives are alsounder consideration. For example, bothDarlington and Peterborough are involved incar-sharing schemes, and all three towns areconsidering introducing car clubs. All threehave also involved a wide range ofstakeholders, including the commercial andhealth sectors, as part of taking the workforward.At the same time, all three towns haveparallel programmes of ‘harder’ measures,aimed at reinforcing the softer work whichtakes place. For example, speaking at the‘Making Smarter Choices Work’ conference,Emilie van de Graaff, Passenger TransportDevelopment Manager at WorcestershireCounty Council, explained that Worcester’ssustainable travel work is seen as beingclosely linked with a strategy to develop park-May 2005  Town & Country Planning 159All three sustainable travel towns will be undertaking extensive ‘Personalised Travel Planning’. Their initiativeswill constitute some of the most extensive work of this kind in the UK.‘Personalised Travel Planning’ (also known, for example, as ‘Individualised Marketing’, ‘TravelSmart’, ‘TravelBlending’, or ‘Living Change’), involves giving people information, advice, and other incentives to use moresustainable travel options which are specific to their circumstances. For example, residents might be offered atimetable about buses visiting their nearest bus stop; free ‘taster’ tickets enabling them to try out the services;maps of local walking, cycling, or shopping opportunities; individual advice on how they could optimise theirtravel; etc. Many proponents also argue that a key aspect of successful work is enabling participants to requestwhat they want to receive (rather than distributing materials to all).Work of this nature has been taking place for a number of years, with high-profile success in Australia. In theUK, the charity Sustrans generated renewed interest in the topic by undertaking small-scale projects inGloucester and Frome in 2001. These led on to Transport for London’s ‘Travel Options’ work (involving 4,000households), the Scottish Executive’s ‘Stepchange’ initiative (involving 4,000 households), and a Departmentfor Transport programme of 14 pilot projects throughout the UK (including larger projects focused on 10,000residents in Gloucester and 18,000 employees in Oldham). Initial results seem promising. From the five pilotprojects that it was involved in, Sustrans has reported consistent reductions in car driver trips of 10-12 per cent,and a full evaluation of the programme is expected from the Department for Transport soon.Meanwhile, the sustainable travel towns are planning work on a significantly larger scale. Darlington isplanning to engage all 98,000 of its residents, Peterborough is aiming to target about 70,000 people, andWorcester is focusing on higher-car-ownership areas representing about 60 per cent of the city (56,000people). nPersonalising transport choicestDarlington, the town identified in the recent survey work as having the greatestpotential for change, began its work by extending half-price fares for under-16s to allbus services across the borough. Positive marketing has also been put in place,including catchy radio adverts featuring music from a local band.  ‘Get ready to changethe habits of a lifetime’ proclaims one voice-over, while others advise people to trywalking, cycling, or taking the bus.Travel plan officers have been appointed to start working with local schools andbusinesses. A small grants scheme has been established for employers, and free cycletraining is offered to all schools. The consultancy SDG has been contracted to start thefirst of three phases of personalised travel planning, which will involve all residents(see ‘Personalising transport choices’ box above). Living Streets (formerly thePedestrians Associations) has been involved in community street audits in four areas,aimed at producing recommendations about benches, litter bins, lighting, surfacing,crossing points, signing, and maps. A series of cycle guides are being developed.As part of leading by example, the council has proposed subcontracting its maildelivery system to Green-link, a cycle courier firm, and within the region’s car-sharingwebsite (http://www.2plustravel.com) a car-sharing facility specifically for the council’semployees has been set up and promoted.A number of awareness-raising events are planned for the summer, includingparticipation in national campaigns, a two-day ‘Darlington walking festival’, and aseries of organised bike rides.Meanwhile, the sustainable travel town work coincides with a major pedestrianisationscheme being implemented in the town centre, which should provide substantialreinforcement for the softer initiatives taking place. Measures will include the exclusionof traffic from key central streets, major streetscape improvements incorporatingpublic art work, better routes for pedestrians and cyclists, new bus shelters, andgreater bus priority.  nDarlington – a town on the moveNotes1 S. Cairns, L. Sloman, C. Newson, J. Anable,A. Kirkbride, and P. Goodwin:  Smarter Choices –Changing the Way We Travel . Final Report (Vol.1), with accompanying volume of case studies.Department for Transport, London, 20042 S. Cairns: ‘Smarter choices – why softoptions may be the best alternative’.  Town &Country Planning , 2004, 73, Nov., pp.308-310would encourage authorities to consider howthey might follow the lead of others in exploringhow ‘revenue-type’ transport activity, aimed atmaximising the benefits of particularinfrastructure projects, could be funded fromcapital allocations’.Speaking subsequently, Geoff Gardner,Travel Awareness Officer at North YorkshireCounty Council, noted that 1 per cent ofcapital expenditure in the council’s integratedtransport programme is already allocated fortravel awareness activities, on the basis thatawareness-raising is needed to maximise thebenefits of capital projects. Don Nutt, ofSteer Davies Gleave, argued that requestingLTP funding for ‘smarter choice’ measurescould be justified, as they should make acentral contribution to achieving progress onthe four shared-priority areas that authoritiesare directed to put at the heart of their nextLTP, namely delivering accessibility, tacklingcongestion, improving air quality, andmaking roads safer.In summary, the recent survey workundertaken in Darlington, Peterborough, andWorcester suggests that there is considerablepotential for towns to achieve travelbehavioural change, and the initiatives beingimplemented offer an exciting opportunity tosee if this change can be achieved inpractice. At the same time, many othertowns have the opportunity to emulate the‘sustainable travel towns’ if softer measuresare made a higher priority for funding. LTPallocations may be key to this.Speaking at the conference, Patricia Hayesemphasised the importance of short-distancelocal journeys, highlighting, for example, thatpeople make as many trips by bike as by train.Yet the recurrent complaint by many localauthority officials is that Department forTransport funding is still heavily skewedtowards long-distance, heavy-infrastructuresolutions.For ‘smarter choice’ measures to achievetheir full potential, this needs to change. If the‘sustainable travel towns’ achieve success, thismay provide the catalyst for an entirely newfocus to transport policy. nDr Sally Cairnsis a Senior Research Fellow at the ESRCTransport Studies Unit at University College London. Thisarticle is reproduced with kind permission of LocalTransport Today magazine. Grateful thanks for help withthis article are due to James Ryle (Sustrans), Emilie van deGraaff and Florentina Riches (Worcestershire CountyCouncil), Jamie Gray (Peterborough City Council), GregMcDougall (Darlington Borough Council), Lynn Slomanand Carey Newson (Transport for Quality of Life), PhilGoodwin (University of the West of England), AlistairKirkbride (Carplus), and Jillian Anable (Robert GordonUniversity).160 Town & Country Planning  May 2005Delegates in Darlington try out a Company of Cyclists bike as part of an awareness-raising event inthe town centreSally Cairnstand-ride around the town, since it wishes tocreate a situation in which no-one can saythat they need to drive into the town. Shealso outlined plans for harmonising bus faresand parking charges, to ensure that publictransport would always be the cheaperoption.Meanwhile, the three towns areintroducing their policies in very differentcontexts.Worcester is a non-unitary authority, andthe relationship between the City Counciland Worcestershire County Council hasneeded clarification (as the money has beenallocated to the county, but is being spent onthe city).Peterborough is scheduled forconsiderable growth, since it falls within theLondon-Stansted-Cambridge growth area,such that sustainable travel considerationswill need inclusion in the development ofsubstantial areas of new housing.In contrast, Darlington falls within arelatively deprived region, and ensuring thattraffic restraint is not sacrificed in order toattract business will be a challenge. RichardAlty, Assistant Director for Development andRegeneration at Darlington Borough Council,reported that the integration of planning,economic, and transport functions withinDarlington should help to ensure consistencyof approach.For all three towns, emphasis was alsoplaced on the importance of a positiveworking relationship with the local media,and the need for economic monitoring, toenable the impacts of any traffic changes tobe interpreted appropriately.As well as focusing on the experience ofDarlington, Peterborough, and Worcester,the conference also explored theopportunities for other towns to undertaketheir own programmes of softer measures.Funding was seen as a critical issue – inparticular, the need for revenue funding andthe problems of obtaining this through thelocal transport plan (LTP) process, which hastraditionally provided capital funding only.Lynn Sloman, one of the authors of theSmarter Choicesreport, reported on newanalysis suggesting that an intensive ‘smarterchoices package’ for a typical town could beexpected to cost an average of £5 perresident per year in revenue funding. Sheargued that latest LTP guidance encourageslocal authorities to bid for money for ‘smarterchoice’ measures, highlighting para.70 inpart 4, which states that ‘the Department

Sustainable travel towns show traffic reduction potential

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