Personalised travel planning is an initiative pioneered by Transport for London in conjunction with London borough councils in order to make transport systems more efficient.
The system involves teams of travel advisors, trained in the local transport, walking and cycling infrastructure, talking one-to-one with residents to gauge what their current primary modes of transport are, and then to educate and inform them of alternatives they may not have considered and supplying them with information and incentives to help them substitute regular car journeys with more sustainable and less congested transport methods.
Among first boroughs to employ the method is the London Borough of Sutton As part of their Smarter Travel Sutton project, which aims to encourage sustainable transport methods and ease congestion by reducing car use (specifically the large number of very short car journeys), encouraging walking and cycling and ensure public transport is running at its optimum capacity.
In Adelaide, Australia, the Households in the West project engaged over 20,000 households in structured conversations about reducing car use, and provided simple, motivating tools and techniques addressing individuals’most significant barriers to making a change. An independent evaluation found that average reduction in car use by participants was 10.4 km per household per day, representing a very significant 18% reduction. Car travel in a control group of non-participating households increased.[1]