Policy

Cracking the Code on Travel Behaviour Change

What is the best combination of interventions to get people to switch to sustainable transport modes? The Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies (ITLS) is developing a framework to answer that question.

Key Takeaways

• There is no single dominant behaviour change theory in transport.
• Beyond financial incentives and regulations, people’s choices are shaped by habits, norms, identities, the neighbourhood they live in and perceptions of convenience and safety.
• The proposed framework situates interventions which influence their effectiveness, namely: time frame, impact levels, push v pull and “soft” or “hard”.
• A fifth dimension is to consider the impact of interventions across different locations (spatial).

• The three pillars: behaviour change, capacity creation, and network management, can be leveraged to influence travel patterns leading to significant impacts.
• Combining measures tends to be more effective than each policy on its own.

• You need to develop behaviour change measures for different places, such as cities, suburbs, and regional and rural areas.
• There is a lack of understanding of how the combination of strategies can create systemic effects that encourage behaviour change within a given context.
• Adopting a multi-faceted approach that combines both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ measures is crucial for long-term success.
• Tailoring interventions to specific populations through segmentation and recognising context is essential for maximising impact.

Comment

There is a lot to consider in this paper, and it is not easy for transport professionals to apply the behaviour change research into practice. There is a need to develop tools and methods to make it easier.

An additional complication is that the measures have different levels of desirability for decision-makers, with the highest-impact measures (such as road user charges) being the least desirable.

What Next?

Are you developing policies to maximise behaviour change, including combining hard and soft measures and tailoring policies to different segments of the population?

Active Transport

What Would It Take to Get Kids Walking and Cycling to School Again?

How can we reverse the decline of children walking or cycling to school? This research looked at how the UK has halted the decline and how the lessons learnt could apply to Sydney, Australia (and elsewhere).

Key Takeaways

• Kids who walk to school experience significant physical and mental health, learning, and development benefits. Their independence will relieve parents (particularly women) of having to drive or escort their kids.
• Car traffic dangers are a key barrier, and action is required to remove or reduce these dangers.

Recommendations:

1. Invite communities to lead - Engage early and often, including with kids, to define shared visions and to co-create designs and programs that serve local community needs.
2. Implement community-led, bottom-up changes to make local streets safe, comfortable, and healthy for kids - Implement targets and programs for active travel to school, safer speeds, and transformative projects that encourage kids to walk independently while discouraging car traffic.
3. Shift car traffic and car parking away from schools -Trial school streets on local streets outside schools and coordinate these changes with education and promotion programs to encourage a shift to sustainable travel.
4. Make it easy for local communities to run their own play street sessions - Implement policy, programs, and support to encourage more people to set up play street sessions in their local residential streets.
5. Expand safe routes to schools into a network of active streets that prioritise walking and bike riding - Calm and filter car traffic in strategic locations using existing street design capabilities such as park streets, quietways, and shared streets.
6. Invite interested local councils to trial new active neighbourhoods - Enable locally managed cameras on some filters, with reinvestments directed into local sustainable travel.
7. Prioritise active travel in school architecture and education policy - Provide active travel facilities in all schools. In school design projects, engage with kids, create civic entrance spaces and active street frontages, and minimise tall fencing.
8. Enable a collective reimagining of streets by using them differently - Make street changes that are big enough for people to experience the differences, that free kids and adults alike to walk, and that deliver substantive community benefits.

Comment

I agree with everything in this research. One gap that I think is missing is the creation of a platform for change. For example, providing pollution monitoring equipment for schools, educating kids and parents on the negative impacts on health, can create demand for change.

What Next?

How aware is the local community of the problems of the existing system? How can you increase awareness of those issues to stimulate demand for change?

Community Transport

Wheels of Change: How Autonomous Vehicles Could Reshape Transport for the Elderly

Due to moving cities, I recently stood down as a board member of a community transport organisation for the elderly and disabled. However, it remains an area of transport that I am passionate about. AVs are likely to create significant disruption to the sector; therefore, I was interested in this research, looking at what that might mean.

Key Takeaways

• As populations age, elderly mobility becomes an increasingly significant challenge as larger proportions of the population are unable to drive due to limited physical and cognitive abilities.
• Autonomous demand-responsive transport is a potential solution to cater to their transport needs.
• The research interviewed 232 elderly individuals aged 60 or above in Hong Kong to try to understand their preferences.
• The elderly were more concerned about the walk and on-street wait time than the in-vehicle travel time.
• The travel fare and seat availability were significant factors influencing their adoption.
• The use of smartphones (digital proficiency) ranked highest among all perceived risks from the elderly, which limited their intention to adopt the transport.
• The elderly had wide differences of opinion on the provision of on-board staff. About 35% of them hold a negative perception of this arrangement, while others were more likely to want an on-board staff member for safety concerns.
• The elderly were also hesitant to adopt autonomous demand-responsive transport because of concerns about autonomous driving.
• Recommendation - while AVs might operate at a lower operational cost and have the potential to offer lower travel fares, the government should provide subsidies on travel fares or include autonomous demand-responsive transport in fare concession schemes.

Comment

I believe that concerns over AV technology and the use of digital platforms will fade as people get used to AVs and an increasing proportion of the elderly population are comfortable with digital platforms.

I suspect that AVs will undermine the current business model of community transport providers. It remains to be seen whether they will adapt. If they don't, this could create a service gap, leaving people who need human support to travel without it.

What Next?

As AVs roll out, will you be able to monitor the trends in different population segments and adjust policy accordingly?

Quick Adventures in Transport Wonderland

Here is what else I came across this week:

• ​8 Principles of Rider-Centered Transit - A blog post with a slightly different take on what we need to do to make public transport work well.
• ​CAV vehicle scenarios - A report looking at the opportunities to encourage the positive impacts while minimising the negative impacts of CAVs.
• ​Bologna: The Italian City Rewriting Urban Planning - An update on the impressive progress of Bologna's transport system.

Podcast

Can Midsize Cities Escape The Car Dependency Trap?

The latest Transport Leaders podcast discusses the midsize cities' car dependency trap.

You can listen here.​

You can watch here.

Tool

Whole Life Carbon Management

The UK Government has published best practice guidance to assess and drive holistic emission reductions in programmes in infrastructure and the built environment.