Project progress

We carried out travel behaviour research in Lowestoft before starting fieldwork, to get a good understanding of travel behaviour in the town. Read our report here: Lowestoft Baseline Travel Behaviour Research Report (pdf).

Fieldwork for the project is now complete. Around 17,000 households were targeted in the first and second stages of the project in autumn 2008 and spring 2009, in Oulton Broad, Normanston, Pakefield, Whitton and Carlton.

The third and final stage of the project took place in autumn 2009. Over 7,000 households were targeted during this stage, in the St Margaret's, Harbour and Gunton areas of Lowestoft. 

Local impact

The TravelSmart Lowestoft team have had positive feedback from residents on the free, personalised information they offer. One participant said: "I found the cycling map really useful. Even though I know a lot of the local routes, it was nice to see how they all link up so that I can plan child-friendly rides."

Another Lowestoft resident, who was contacted by the team during the second stage, said: "The information pack is brilliant - there's something for everybody! I leave ours on the coffee table so it's there to delve into. The timetables have been invaluable this summer holiday."

Local travel maps

One of the most popular items offered in Lowestoft was the local travel map covering the whole town, produced by Sustrans and updated for each stage of the project. The map is available to download:

• Download the Lowestoft local travel map (pdf)

For more information about the TravelSmart Lowestoft project, visit: www.travelsmartlowestoft.org.uk

Project progress

We carried out travel behaviour research in Exeter before starting fieldwork, to get a good understanding of travel behaviour in the town. Read our report here: Exeter Travel Behaviour Research Report (pdf).

Fieldwork for this project has now been completed. Around 14,500 households were targeted in the first and second stages of the project in 2008, in Alphington, Exwick, Exminster, St Loyes and Topsham.

The third and final stage of the project took place in spring 2009 and targeted over 10,000 households in the Heavitree, Pinhoe and Whipton & Barton areas of Exeter. 

Local impact

One participant told us that he's started cycling more since his visit from TravelSmart's cycling advisor Toni: "If this hadn't happened I don't think I would be going to my evening computer course by bike - it just makes you think there's an alternative."

Other Exeter residents have made changes to their regular journeys too:

“I will change my driving habits thanks to TravelSmart as you've given me the cycle routes to where I work.” 
“I'm walking a lot more. If everybody walked more we'd all be better off!”

Local travel maps

Sustrans produced local travel maps for each stage area as part of the TravelSmart programme:

• Download West Exeter and Exminster (pdf).
• Download East Exeter and Topsham (pdf).
• Download Central and North East Exeter (pdf).

(All information is accurate at the time of printing. Sustrans cannot be held responsible for changes since this date)

Project progress

We carried out travel behaviour research in Watford before starting fieldwork, to get a good understanding of travel behaviour in the town. Read our report here: Watford Baseline Travel Behaviour Research Report (pdf). Interim research was carried out after Stages 1 and 2 of the project, to find out whether local travel behaviour had changed. To see the results of this research read our report: Watford Interim Travel Behaviour Research Report (pdf).

Fieldwork for this project has now been completed. Around 14,300 households were targeted in the first and second stages of the project in 2008, in Oxhey, Holywell, Vicarage and central Watford.

The third and final stage of the project took place in spring 2009. Almost 11,000 households were targeted during this stage, in the Stanborough, Leggetts and Tudor areas.

Maeve Tomlinson, TravelSmart Project Officer, says she's had positive comments from Watford residents: "One of our canvassers was approached by a couple after they noticed the TravelSmart logo on his fleece. They said 'TravelSmart, we know you! That's why we're out walking today.'"

Local travel maps

The most popular items offered in Watford were the local travel maps produced by Sustrans for each stage area. All three maps are available to download:

• Download West Watford, Town Centre and Oxhey (pdf).
• Download Watford Central (pdf).
• Download Watford North (pdf).

(All information is accurate at the time of printing. Sustrans cannot be held responsible for changes since this date)

Project progress

The first stage of the project in Worle was completed in October 2008. Over 1,800 households were targeted with the offer of travel information and advice. Stage 2 took place in spring 2009, targeting over 1,800 households in Brislington and Knowle.

Local impact

Comments from TravelSmart participants show how the project has made an impact:

-  "It's high time someone did something like this - what a brilliant idea!"
-  "The whole concept seems like a good one to us."
-  "I took the train to work for a change today - I'm going to try and do it more often now!"
-  "We're definitely going to do some of the walks!"

Local travel maps

As part of the TravelSmart programme Sustrans produces local travel maps showing local parks, schools, shops and community centres and how to get to them on foot, by bike or on public transport. The Worle and Brislington maps are available to download here:

• Download Worle (pdf).
• Download Brislington and Knowle (pdf).

(all information is accurate at the time of printing.  Sustrans cannot be held responsible for changes since this date).

Results

Following the ITM in Worle, final research was completed to measure the changes in travel behaviour (trips per person per year).  The results from this research can be seen below:

Mode choice	Relative change
Car-as-driver	-12%
Walking	+15%
Cycling	+36%
Public transport	+10%

Results from Brislington and Knowle will be available in Spring 2010.

The Socialdata travel survey methodology, known as the New KONTIV design, has been used widely in the evaluation of Individualised Travel Marketing (ITM) projects in Europe, Australia and North America.

This methodology uses a self-administered, mail-back questionnaire and travel diary, coupled with motivation by post and telephone to encourage households to respond. The design of the survey and the response rates - typically between 60 and 80% - help ensure data validity.

Key features include:

• Survey samples drawn at random from across the ITM target population, including representative proportions of households in the ‘Interested', ‘Not Interested' and ‘Regular User' groups
• Further adjustment of results to take account of the proportion of households not responding to ITM, ensuring that the reported results are representative of the entire target population
• Use of a separate control group not affected by ITM to account for any background effects.

In addition to its role in the evaluation of ITM programmes, travel behaviour research conducted by Socialdata with support from Sustrans is providing local authorities with valuable local data to feed into transport planning. 

There are a number of independent studies supporting the TravelSmart approach. The Department for Transport's influential 'Smarter Choices' report of 2005 provides powerful evidence of the cost-effectiveness of TravelSmart compared with a variety of other travel behaviour change measures. Then in 2007, the Department for Transport reviewed all UK ITM evaluations since 2005. Of the 12 projects reporting quantified effects on car use, 11 used the TravelSmart approach.

Segmentation

The ITM process starts with personal contact, either by phone or on the doorstep, with households in the project area. Based on our initial conversation with them, households are segmented into three main groups: regular users of sustainable travel modes; non-regular users who are interested in finding out about sustainable travel; and those who are not interested in taking part.

Information

Most of the ITM campaign focuses on the 'interested' group. These households receive an order form from which they can choose the materials and services that meet their transport needs. These include walking and cycling maps, bus and train timetables, guides, active travel advice and discount cards for local bike and outdoor shops. Each household's personalised pack is then hand-delivered by our local staff. People who don't regularly use sustainable travel modes are offered further support, including home advice sessions with a local expert on walking, cycling or public transport. Regular users are offered a small reward to thank them for travelling sustainably and given the chance to receive a personalised pack if they would like one.

Most TravelSmart programmes are evaluated through detailed travel behaviour surveys conducted before and after the ITM campaign to gather robust evidence of its effects on travel choices and other mobility indicators across the target population.  Wherever possible, data on the use of local bus services is analysed to corroborate the findings of the surveys.

Nonetheless, experience from TravelSmart programmes in other parts of the world (and now in this country) demonstrates the value of two travel information resources rarely available in the UK:

• Neighbourhood travel map and local service guide combining the alignment of bus, cycle and walking routes and locations of key community facilities and other destinations on the same map;
• Bus stop timetables showing times, destinations etc for all services using the bus stop(s) nearest the household concerned.

Sustrans recommends similar resources are offered as part of all TravelSmart programmes and works with local authorities and public transport operators to develop them. Local travel maps and bus stop timetables are consistently among the most frequently requested items during ITM campaigns, and customer surveys suggest they are highly valued by participating households. As a result, in a number of instances, local authorities have rolled out local travel maps and/or bus stop timetables beyond the areas targeted by TravelSmart.

Furthermore, while it is likely that for some people the behaviour change promoted by TravelSmart is short-lived, it is equally probable that the effect on others (even some not involved in the original Individualised Travel Marketing - ITM campaign) increases over time as they discover more and better ways of integrating sustainable travel choices into their daily lives.

There is growing evidence to support these arguments. For example, repeat travel surveys conducted two years after the large-scale TravelSmart pilot project in Gloucester (2001) showed that the behaviour change achieved by the original ITM interventions was 'locked in'. Independent monitoring of bus patronage following a TravelSmart programme conducted by Socialdata in Western Australia showed that its impact was still growing up to four years later.

In projects of a sufficiently larger scale, the findings of the travel behaviour surveys may be supported by independent monitoring of bus patronage and other traffic counts within the project area. For example, following both large-scale TravelSmart programmes in Gloucester, the reported levels of modal shift were verified by passenger counts on local Stagecoach bus services, which showed double-figure percentage increases compared to other services in the city.

Furthermore there is growing evidence that TravelSmart can significantly increase the impact of new or improved public transport services, helping to maximise the return on public investment in large capital infrastructure projects. This was one of the outcomes of Bristol's first TravelSmart project, funded through the EU CIVITAS programme, which showed that ITM more than doubled the impact of a new Quality Bus Corridor on public transport trips.

TravelSmart's project in Gloucester, funded through Active England (jointly operated by Sport England and the Big Lottery Fund), was the first in the UK specifically to incorporate the promotion of physical activity alongside sustainable travel. Targeting around 4,000 households in an inner-city neighbourhood, TravelSmart was successful in generating levels of modal shift comparable to those achieved by an earlier TravelSmart programme in the relatively affluent suburb of Quedgeley.

The detailed evaluation showed that the shift from car travel to walking, cycling and public transport resulted in a 15% increase in average daily exposure to physically active forms of travel. By marketing local sports and leisure facilities alongside sustainable travel options, the TravelSmart programme also generated increases in participation in other forms of physical activity, including sport.

Even without an explicit focus on physical activity, TravelSmart brings public health benefits from increased levels of walking and cycling as part of people's daily routines. The evaluation of the first stage of the Peterborough programme demonstrated that the reported increases in sustainable travel resulted in an 18% increase in daily time spent using physically active forms of travel.

In 2001-02, Sustrans and Socialdata conducted the UK's first TravelSmart pilot projects in Frome (Somerset) and in Gloucester, each involving a randomly selected target population of around 500 people. These projects successfully demonstrated the effect of  ITM on personal travel behaviour in a UK context:

• In Gloucester, car trips were reduced by 9% (across the whole target population) with three quarters of these journeys being substituted by walking and cycling, and the remainder by an increase in public transport use.
• In Frome the marketing activities resulted in a 6% reduction in car trips, with more than 80% of these substituted by walking.  Use of public transport among the sample population grew by around 10% and there was a significant increase in the low level of cycling.

The success of these pilot projects was instrumental in the decision by the Department for Transport (DfT) to launch a national 'personalised travel planning' demonstration programme. This supported a total of 14 local authority projects conducted during 2003-04 to test a range of personalised travel planning approaches focusing on schools, workplaces and households.

Of the six household-based demonstration projects, five were conducted by Sustrans and Socialdata, bringing TravelSmart to a total population of around 9,000 households in Bristol (Bishopston), Gloucester, Nottingham (Lady Bay and the Meadows), Sheffield and Cramlington in Northumberland.  Each of these projects achieved relative reductions in car use of between 10 and 12%.

The DfT has since published an independent evaluation of its 2003-04 demonstration programme. This provides powerful evidence of the cost-effectiveness of TravelSmart, measured in terms of £ per car kilometres saved, compared with other personalised travel planning approaches focusing on households, schools and workplaces.

Visit the DfT website for 2003-04 demonstration programme evaluation details.

Several of Sustrans 2003-04 TravelSmart projects were featured as case studies in the DfT's study on 'Smarter Choices - Changing the Way We Travel'. This concluded that 'every £1 spent on well-designed soft measures could bring about £10 of benefit in reduced congestion alone'.

Visit the DfT website for information on Smarter Choices - Changing the way we travel.

Recent large-scale TravelSmart projects have resulted in annual savings in car travel ranging from 740 to 1,400km per household. Based on the lower figure in this range, and the average CO2 emissions per km of new cars sold in 2005, it is estimated that a National TravelSmart programme targeting all 25 million households in the UK would save around 0.9 MtC (million tonnes of carbon) a year. This compares, for example, to the projected annual saving of 1MtC from converting 5% of fuel for UK road transport to biofuels in line with the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation.

Sustrans is working with Socialdata and other partners to build further evidence of the effectiveness of TravelSmart in tackling climate change (see below for the initial findings of work conducted by Sustrans Research and Monitoring Unit on the value of carbon savings generated by TravelSmart). It is hoped that this might lead to the UK following the example of Australia, where the National Greenhouse Office has been the driving force behind the growth of some of the world's largest TravelSmart ITM programmes.

A 'carbon appraisal' of TravelSmart

Sustrans' Research and Monitoring Unit has developed a model to estimate the value of the carbon savings generated by TravelSmart.  The model assumes a roll-out of TravelSmart to all households in urban areas of England over a ten-year period.  Based on outcomes of recent programmes, the annual carbon savings generated by this programme would reach at least 0.6 MtC by Year 10.  Using the standard 60-year appraisal period for major transport projects, and current DfT estimates for the societal costs of carbon (£78.66 per tC), the total value of these savings would reach just over £1 billion, outweighing the cost of such a TravelSmart programme by a factor of more than three.

Socialdata pioneered ITM as a tool for promoting public transport in Germany during the late 1980s.  The technique was later exported to Australia, where it was first extended to the promotion of walking and cycling alongside public transport.  A successful pilot project conducted by Socialdata in South Perth, Western Australia, in 1999 led to the world's first large-scale TravelSmart programme targeting 35,000 people in the same city during 2000-01.  This was successful in achieving a 14% reduction in car trips and increases in walking of 35%, cycling 100% and public transport use 17%.

The Western Australia TravelSmart programme has since inspired a number of other states to launch ambitious travel behaviour change programmes.  A national TravelSmart programme supported by the Australian Greenhouse Office (AGO) now includes a range of demand management measures for focusing on schools, universities and workplaces as well as households.  However, as demonstrated by a recent evaluation published by the AGO, Individualised Marketing continues to form the cornerstone of TravelSmart in Australia.  To find out more about TravelSmart in Australia, visit www.travelsmart.gov.au

To date, Socialdata has undertaken TravelSmart Individualised Marketing programmes targeting a total of 75,000 people in the Darebin district of Melbourne (Australia) and in Perth (Western Australia) 200,000 people have received deliveries of ITM materials in nine separate large-scale interventions.