The first stage of the project was based in the north of Cardiff, from Whitchurch across to Pontprennau, and aimed to reach around 19,000 households. The field office team, based at Llanishen, offered people a range of free walking, cycling and public transport information then delivered their tailor-made travel packs to their homes by bicycle. They also offered home visits on local cycling, walking and public transport options. 

Stage Two of the project starts in April, and aims to reach around 30,000 households. The project team will cover a large area of Cardiff, from Radyr down to Grangetown, and will also offer local information to Penarth residents.

Rhyann Sutton, Sustrans Project Officer, said of the first stage in Cardiff: “It’s been really positive – people on the door have been really receptive and interested in making changes to their travel habits. The team has been working exceptionally hard and everyone genuinely believes in the aims of the project. We’re all really excited about seeing the outcomes.”

This work forms part of the biggest Personalised Travel Planning (PTP) programme of work ever undertaken by Sustrans and project partners Socialdata.

The four-year project, funded by the Welsh Government, will target more than 100,000 households across Wales. Sustrans hopes that project results will match those of previous PTP projects, which have achieved an average reduction in car driver trips of 11%, along with corresponding increases in walking, cycling and public transport use.

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

• Local travel maps showing schools, community centres, shops and green spaces and how to get to them on foot, by bike or by public transport
• Bus stop timetables showing times and destinations for all buses using the nearest stop to the household concerned.

Sustrans recommends that 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.

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.

Sustrans and partners Socialdata have pioneered TravelSmart in the UK since 2001, undertaking Individualised Travel Marketing (ITM) programmes targeting over 250,000 households and gathering a unique body of evidence testifying to its effectiveness in changing travel behaviour.

In 2001-02, Sustrans and Socialdata conducted the UK's first TravelSmart pilot projects in Frome (Somerset) and in Gloucester. 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.  Each of these projects achieved relative reductions in car use of between 10 and 12%.

The DfT's independent evaluation of its 2003-04 demonstration programme 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.

Since these early projects TravelSmart has gone on to offer travel information and support to thousands of people across the UK, and to date has run projects covering more than 280,000 households.

TravelSmart outside the UK

The origin of TravelSmart dates back to the late 1980s in Germany where Socialdata, building on its expertise in travel behaviour and social research, first pioneered Individualised Marketing as a tool for promoting public transport. 

During the 1990s the technique was exported to Australia, where it was first extended to the promotion of walking and cycling alongside public transport. Internationally, the TravelSmart ITM technique has now been applied successfully in programmes targeting a total of nearly three million people in Australia, the United States, Canada, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and France, as well as the UK. All have achieved significant levels of behaviour change, making TravelSmart the most widely tested and consistently successful programme of its kind in the world.

The Socialdata travel survey methodology 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, this travel behaviour research provides 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.