Mainstreaming Smarter Travel

Introduction

Over the past year Landor LINKS has been working with the Department for Transport on the Local Sustainable Transport Fund (LSTF) engagement programme, which shares best practice between the 96 projects, through a series of events and publications. 

As Phil Goodwin notes in his keynote article, if by ‘mainstream’ we mean that smarter travel already represents the biggest item of expenditure in transport in Britain, this is “manifestly unrealistic”, but it is certainly true to say that there is lots of good work being delivered nationwide. 

This magazine, the articles that have appeared in the pages of Local Transport Today over the past year, and a national conference which features over 80 speakers attest to the surge of activity happening across the country.

Last December the Rebooting Smarter Travel event and magazine feted the LSTF as reigniting the smarter travel sector after a number of quiet years. 

This year’s Mainstreaming Smarter Travel conference in Manchester will give LSTF practitioners opportunity to hear about some of the great work being delivered and take away lessons. The busy programme has been designed to facilitate discussion and networking, allowing project teams to discuss what has been tried and how well, or not, it has worked.

We are at the mid-point of the initial LSTF programme, so now is a good time to start thinking about the future. We have had the welcome news from the DfT that the initial LSTF programme will be extended for an extra year and be included within the Single Local Growth Fund to enable bids for Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs). 

Many large businesses were amongst the earliest to adopt travel plans for their workplaces, so this arrangement should hold no fear for those working in smarter travel. However, whether smarter travel becomes mainstreamed rests in large part on the results of the first campaign.

If the theme for 2012-13 is “Mainstreaming”, what word will best sum up 2013-14? We suggest “Embedding”. What do you think?

I look forward to a productive two days of learning and discussion in Manchester.

Find out more about the Mainstreaming Smarter Travel event on the 3-4 December 2013