Smarter travel
Encourage people to change their travel behaviour
Being able to change our travel behaviour becomes easier if we know where our local bus stop is, where buses go, and which way to get to the shops, school, work and each other by foot and bike. Information - it's a wonderful thing, but surprisingly hard to get hold of when it comes to being able to choose to leave the car behind for even a few journeys every week.
Sustrans has worked in this area for many years and has pioneered much of the successful travel behaviour change work in the UK. As most of our journeys begin and end at home, focusing on promoting smarter travel choices as ways of getting to and from home makes perfect sense.
Helping people to change the way they travel for regular, everyday journeys is another way. Sustrans first began creating safe routes to schools in 1995 - we pioneered the notion of reversing the decades-long decline in children travelling under their own steam to school. Now we are working with thousands of schools, and hundreds of thousands of children to make walking and cycling to school the obvious choice.
This is why, as part of our call to action, Sustrans calls on UK governments to:
- Establish UK-wide travel behaviour change programmes using proven, cost-effective techniques to encourage and support people to travel more sustainably within communities and to workplaces, schools, further and higher education, leisure and retail centres.
- Give every child and young person the knowledge, skills and confidence to establish the habit of travel by foot and bike early in life.