Nottingham Creative Quarter based consultancy ITP, along with their project partners URS and Leicestershire County Council, are the proud winners of the 2014 CIHT Sustainability Award. This prestigious award from the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation, was for the ‘Choose How You Move’ project which was delivered across Leicestershire during 2011-2014. The award was announced at a gala dinner held at the Royal Courts of Justice on 11 June 2014, and follows ITP’s success at the 2013 CIHT Awards where they also won the Sustainability Award for their work on the Suffolk sustainable transport programme entitled Lowestoft Local Links.
‘Choose How You Move’ is a large scale travel behaviour change programme, which over the last three years has targeted 26,500 households across Loughborough and Coalville, encouraging people to consider more sustainable travel options. ITP’s role has been to offer strategic advice, training support, and evaluation services, and builds on the company’s role as a leading provider of sustainable transport planning advice and evaluation services.
The key outcomes from the project suggest that:
- 26,500 households were targeted with sustainable travel advice targeted between 2011 and 2013, covering Loughborough and Coalville;
- approximately 25% of these ‘targeted households’ actively participated in the programme;
- as a result, car trips to work for project participants has reduced by between 4 and 22 percentage points;
- this has led to an estimated annual saving of around 3.5 million vehicle kilometres travelled;
- with carbon savings equating to approximately 475 tonnes per annum; and
- a significant improvement in the health and well-being of those that have started to walk and cycle more often.
Of the award entry the judges said:
“We were impressed with the reduction in car use that has been achieved, especially given the method adopted, which resulted in substantially lower costs than typical for PTP schemes.
It is to be hoped that the Leicestershire example will encourage faster and cheaper roll-out of personal transport planning to other authorities around the country, and can thus lead to a significant degree of behaviour change.
The objectives of the scheme, involving ‘smarter choices’ travel advice to 26,000 households, were well defined and well met.”
ITP Director Jon Parker said “it’s fantastic to have won this prestigious award for the second year in a row! In particular the project has been a great team effort, combining the delivery, management and organisation skills of lead partners URS, with our extensive understanding of effective behaviour change programmes. We’ve been proud to be part of this exemplar project”.
