The Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions commissioned Transport 2000, in association with University College London and Adrian Davis Associates, to identify and examine approximately 20 organisations that have implemented travel plan measures to encourage their staff to commute to work more sustainably, and which, in some way, exemplify best practice in travel planning. The project has been informed by research undertaken in the USA and the Netherlands together with UK research that relates to travel behaviour. The final UK case studies selected for consideration included four hospital trusts (in Oxford, Cambridge, Plymouth and Nottingham), two local authorities (Buckinghamshire County Council and Wycombe District Council), one university (Bristol) one government agency (Government Office for the East Midlands), a business park (Stockley Park), an out-of-town shopping centre (Bluewater) and ten private companies (including three pharmaceutical companies - Boots, Pfizer and AstraZeneca; four hi-tech companies - Agilent Technologies, Computer Associates, Orange and Vodafone; two financial companies - Egg and Marks & Spencer Financial Services; and the oil company BP). To compare case studies, the research aimed to identify how the modal split for commuting journeys by staff had changed. The headline indicator for each case study was taken to be the number of commuter cars arriving per 100 staff - this measure was identified in the literature review as the most appropriate single measure for assessing the success of a travel plan. During the course of the research, it became clear that there can be serious weaknesses with the monitoring of travel plans, and that survey techniques need to be considerably improved. Problems range from organisations using different monitoring techniques at different times (so that results are not comparable) through to surveys failing to differentiate between car drivers and car passengers, or to allow for informal car sharing. Cross-checking of different indicators provides valuable feedback on the validity of different monitoring results. Despite the problems encountered, it was possible to derive comparative data for all of the organisations reported here. For the covering abstract see ITRD E124693.
Abstract