'Smarter choice' soft measures

Smarter choices are techniques for influencing people’s travel behaviour towards more sustainable options, such as encouraging school, workplace and individualised travel planning.

Signage, Southend-on-sea. Photo by Andy Hendry.

‘Smarter choice’ soft measures can often have a significant impact on behaviour and ultimately on carbon emissions.

They also seek to improve public transport and marketing services such as travel awareness campaigns, setting up websites for car share schemes, supporting car clubs and encouraging teleworking. They are thus targeted at achieving behavioural change at a city or neighbourhood level, and can be considered alongside wider initiatives to encourage lower energy lifestyles. The Department for Transport has developed a number of studies and guidance notes on the effective application of smarter choice schemes.

Smarter choices have been effective in reducing car use, principally by overcoming barriers in terms of attitudes and information to using more sustainable modes of transport. The sustainable travel demonstration towns - Darlington, Peterborough and Worcester – have been used to illustrate the potential effects of a sustained package of ‘smarter choice’ measures when coupled with infrastructure improvements. The three towns have shared £10m of revenue funding during the 5-year project. Initial results have been impressive, showing an increase in public transport trips (13-22%), walking trips (17-29%), cycling (25-79%) and decrease in car trips (11-13%).

Smarter Travel Sutton is a similar initiative in London, funded by the London Borough of Sutton and Transport for London.

Smarter choices have also proven to deliver value for money with DfT research ‘Smarter choices changing the way we travel’ finding that the cost of achieving reduced car use through soft measures is estimated to be 1.5 pence per car kilometre. Current official practice calculates the benefit of reduced traffic congestion to be about 15p per car kilometre removed, and more than three times this level in congested urban congestions.

Travel awareness campaigns can also be used to encourage reduced car use. Travelwise and Act on CO2 are national awareness and marketing campaigns. Individual events, such as ‘In Town Without My Car!’ and ‘European Mobility Week’, are two linked European Commission backed campaigns which aim to open up town and city centre streets to all users at specific times of the year. Local authorities can have a central role in promoting events associated with such campaigns.

Priority: reduce car use and improve the carbon efficiency of vehicles
Tags: transport, cities and towns, neighbourhoods