Travel Plans are all about influencing people’s travel behaviour towards using more sustainable modes of transport, using a range of integrated activities including incentives and disincentives. Below are a series of frequently asked questions in regards to the design of a Travel Plan.
Frequently asked questions
A Travel Plan is a management strategy for delivering long term behavioural change and sustainable travel patterns across an organisation or precinct. It is about understanding how people make their transport decisions and using this to influence behaviours that lead to better customer outcomes, while reducing adverse impacts such as congestion.
Now that you have gathered and analysed the information on the current situation, define your organisational needs based on your assessment.
Possible organisational needs that a Travel Plan can address are to:
- minimise negative transport impacts of the site / organisation
- maintain and improve viability of existing or proposed site
- relocate with minimal impact on staff retention
- ensure people feel safe, secure and well informed about travel to and from the site
- give employees more flexibility to choose how and when they commute.
Articulate what outcomes you want to achieve from having the Travel Plan in place. At a high level, a Travel Plan is about delivering long-term behavioural change and sustainable travel patterns.
There may be numerous outcomes you want to achieve that fall into several areas including:
- travel accessibility for employees
- workplace productivity
- employee travel safety and personal security
- employee health and well-being
- business improvements
- corporate sustainability.
Identify what impact is required to achieve the outcomes.
Set performance indicators to measure progress towards achieving the impacts. They should include quantifiable results that you are hoping to achieve within a certain timeframe. For example, “the use of public transport to increase by 10% in 3 years.” Be realistic about what can be achieved and over what time period.
The performance indicators should be based on:
- the results from your data analysis
- organisational goals
- the resources available
- suitable services and incentives.
Consider what needs to be created to achieve the impacts and therefore the outcomes. Outputs can include:
- plans/reports
- brochures
- articles, presentations
- digital materials (websites, social media)
- events, workshops
- marketing campaigns
- networks
- policies
- incentives
- facilities
- infrastructure, etc.
Establish how the Plan will deliver the outcomes through a range of integrated activities.
Successful travel plans often have ‘hard’ activities such as facilities and infrastructure, alongside ‘soft’ activities such as providing education, information, and marketing based approaches.
Consider all transport elements:
- staff and business travel
- clients, customers and visitors
- supplies and deliveries.
Secure the human, financial, organisational and community resources needed to implement the activities.
Remember to cover off all the various kinds of costs involved:
- implementation costs – land, construction, vehicles
- operating costs – cost of operating a bus service, security for accessing end of trip facilities, providing Opal cards for staff travel, or a new car park management system for instance
- staff costs – people to coordinate, manage and monitor
- ongoing maintenance and renewal costs.