Using “smarter choices” to support TDM

Smarter Choices is the collective term for measures that influence people’s travel behavior toward more sustainable options. Having seen the successes of its applications, the UK is now investing heavily in Transportation Demand Management (TDM) programs. Here we set out some lessons learned.

Transportation Demand Management (TDM) is the application of strategies to reduce travel demand (specifically of singleoccupancy private vehicles) or to redistribute this demand. TDM offers solutions for tackling increasing travel demand without having to expand road capacity.

In the UK, TDM has reached the top of the transportation planning agenda. A key component of TDM is a package of measures known as “Smarter Choices”.

Smarter Choices techniques seek to promote alternatives to automobile use and include travel awareness campaigns, setting up websites for carpool projects, supporting car sharing programs and encouraging telecommuting. They have a proven ability to generate low-cost, high impact transportation solutions and significant investment is now being directed to ensure Smarter Choices measures are implemented across the UK.

Until recently, the application of TDM had been relatively ad hoc as practitioners grappled with uncertainties about its effectiveness and funding was hard to come by. So how did the UK get from there to here, and can others follow suit? We believe they can.

The turning point

In 2003, three medium-sized English towns (circa 100,000 population.) were granted Sustainable Travel Town status and given $20 million from central government and local sources to invest in sustainable transportation over a period of five years. Monitoring was commissioned to assess the impact of such intensive spend on Smarter Choices measures. A significant component in each town was a TDM solution at individual levels through personalized travel planning (PTP), a technique which centers on structured conversations about people’s motives for their travel and identifies realistic alternatives tailored to them. Between 50% and 100% of households in each of the towns were targeted, and up to 45% of households participated.

Household travel surveys in the three towns were carried out in 2004 and 2008 to monitor the effectiveness of the interventions. The following key results were reported by an independent study team appointed by the UK’s Department for Transport*:

• Car use: Car trips fell by 9% per person, and mileage by 5-7%. This compares with a decrease of about 1% in mediumsized urban areas over the same period.
• Bus transit use: Bus trips per person grew substantially, by 10%-22%, compared with a national decline of 0.5%.
• Biking: The number of bike trips per person grew substantially in all three towns, by 26-30%, while biking trips declined elsewhere.
• Walking: Walking trips per person grew substantially, by 10-13%, compared to a national decline in similar towns.

The effectiveness of the methods is now generally accepted, and the UK government actively encourages local government to develop and implement area-wide transportation plans that include TDM and Smarter Choices components targeted at explicit performance objectives.

The future of TDM in the UK

In January 2011 the UK government invited local transportation authorities (LTAs) in England to bid for a slice of a four-year US$950 million Local Sustainable Transport Fund (LSTF). The Fund is a mixture of capital and, critically, revenue funding, which will enable LTAs to develop coherent packages involving both infrastructure and complementary revenue-funded measures including those associated with TDM outlined above.

The response has been resounding as the Government received bids from 73 LTAs in the first round and the remaining LTAs are expected to bid as part of a second tranche early in 2012. Of the bids received to date, all incorporate TDM in some form, notably personalized travel planning, and engagement with the business community to encourage them to adopt changes in their travel behavior. Many bids include the formation of dedicated TDM units to deliver integrated programs of measures to support a move toward much greater use of sustainable transportation.

The ad hoc approach to delivering TDM interventions is a thing of the past and the successes of the demonstration projects in particular has led to both UK government and LTAs embracing the role of TDM much more fully in their transportation programs. In other parts of the world, TDM is also gaining momentum; in Canada, we are currently supporting the City of Ottawa by developing a TDM strategy to help mitigate congestion impacts during their upcoming LRT construction; and in Vancouver, we are providing TDM expertise as a key input to TransLink’s new Transport 2045 long range strategic plan. We hope that the UK’s experience can provide lessons and inspiration for others to learn by and, at the very least, show just what TDM can achieve for local communities.