Travel Blending®
An Evidence-Based Practice
Description
The Travel Blending® program tracks household travel behavior and encourages individuals to reduce the use of their car by mixing their travel choices over time. The Travel Blending® Program was developed as a part of the public initiative Clean Air 2000, aimed at reducing pollution caused by car travel prior to the year 2000 Olympics in Sydney. Participating households receive a series of kits, containing information booklets and travel diaries, over a nine-week period. The first kit includes information introducing the Travel Blending® concept, and a travel diary. Completed travel diaries are analyzed and a summary of the household's travel and emissions patterns are sent back to the participant in the second kit, along with personalized suggestions to reduce vehicle use. The third kit includes a second set of travel diaries, which are analyzed to create a comparative summary that is returned to the user in the final kit, along with a log book to allow continued weekly car travel monitoring. Suggestions for reducing the use of the car include planning activities and travel in advance, blending modes of transportation, combining activities into single trips, and making small sustainable changes over time. One example of blending would be to use public transport to commute to work one day per week, a manageable and sustainable way to potentially reduce weekday peak period vehicle use by 20%.
Goal / Mission
The goal of Travel Blending® Program is to reduce personal vehicle use.
Impact
The Travel Blending program reduced car trips, car kilometers, and hours spend in the car.
Results / Accomplishments
This program was evaluated using quantitative results from "before" and "after" travel journals from 100 households in the Adelaide, Australia implementation of Travel Blending®, called TravelSmart Adelaide. Participants in the program significantly reduced car trips per person (from 14 to 10.8 trips), car kilometers per person (from 146 to 114.8 km), and total hours spent in the car per person (from 7.2 to 5.3 hours). These reductions were significant at a 5% or lower significance level, measured using a Z test. Aggregate reductions in car use included 22.7% fewer car driver trips, 21.3% fewer car driver kilometers, and 26.2% fewer hours in the car.
About this Promising Practice
Organization(s)
TravelSmart Australia
Primary Contact
Geoffrey Rose
Department of Civil Engineering
Institute of Transport Studies
Monash University
Wellington Road
Clayton, Vic. 3168
Australia
+61-3-9905-4959
geoffrey.rose@eng.monash.edu.au
http://www.travelsmart.gov.au/training/packaging.h...
Department of Civil Engineering
Institute of Transport Studies
Monash University
Wellington Road
Clayton, Vic. 3168
Australia
+61-3-9905-4959
geoffrey.rose@eng.monash.edu.au
http://www.travelsmart.gov.au/training/packaging.h...
Topics
Community / Transportation
Environmental Health / Air
Environmental Health / Air
Organization(s)
TravelSmart Australia
Source
Science Direct
Date of publication
2001
Date of implementation
1996
Geographic Type
Urban
Location
Australia
For more details
Target Audience
Adults, Families