blog: The Journey of TripSwitch
Thursday 25th May 2023
Designing and delivering behavioural change in society has always been at the forefront of ITP’s mission to improve the way the world moves. After all, there’s not much point in designing infrastructure to support sustainable mobility if no one is going to choose to travel sustainably! As such, ITP has used its expertise and knowledge of the industry to encourage people to do exactly that – travel sustainably – for over 25 years. It is this Influencing Behaviour team that has been my home since I joined ITP in September 2022 as a Consultant on the SUNRISE Graduate Scheme. To work on projects that engage with so many different stakeholders, from employees to global corporations, has been extremely inspiring and provided me with a fresh insight into how crucial it is to collaborate cohesively to ensure sustainable mobility is utilised efficiently.
However, the world has changed significantly since the Covid-19 pandemic silenced our cities and halted our livelihoods, necessitating a re-think in our strategy; as transport planners, it is imperative to understand the new patterns of every day, or every-other-day travel, that now dominate society and adapt our tact accordingly. From the outset of my role, the idea of a new travel planning package that listened to these needs of a ‘new-normal’ had floated around, so it has been great to see this idea grow into what we now call TripSwitch - something that I can safely say we are all proud of and delighted to formally launch to our clients. But how did we get here?
Our Journey
With offices in London, Manchester, Birmingham and Nottingham, our Influencing Behaviour team is widespread and multifaceted. A month into my new role, our team came together in Birmingham to brainstorm how best to rethink our approach to designing and delivering behavioural change.
Despite my experience being limited compared to the decades of knowledge in the room, I was immediately involved in the conversation and encouraged to share my thoughts and contribute to the discussion. Together, a strategy was produced, with all members of the team clear on what they needed to do and the tools we needed to construct. After what was a productive day, a trip to town for some food and drink(s) was in order and went down quickly.
Fast-forward months of dialogue, analysis, and meetings, and the various elements of TripSwitch were ready; a truly unique and extensive travel planning package that works by combining our proficiency in promoting sustainable mobility with state-of-the-art data tools to assist organisations in achieving their net zero carbon targets by influencing more sustainable trips. All we needed now was an organisation to pilot TripSwitch with. My job – exactly that. So, located at East Midlands Gateway, a regionally significant logistics park with 6,000 employees in the heart of the country, we trialed our work.
To begin with, our audience assessment tool examined the attitudes and actions of the workforce regarding transport, recognising the factors that influenced employees travel choices in addition to simply surveying how they travel.
This more nuanced comprehension of the organisation’s attitudes enabled us to segment the audience and locate where the scope to deliver successful behavioural change was greatest. That said, people’s travel choices often correspond with the infrastructure available to them. As such, we used our modal optioneering tool to identify how practical it is to travel sustainably to East Midlands Gateway by auditing local travel infrastructure and the on-site facilities and policies in place at the organisation. Finally, in came our carbon calculator, created to measure the organisation’s transport-related carbon footprint, and establish a criterion for current transport use. These calculations will be repeated annually to monitor the success of the TripSwitch programme at the organisation and identify any areas for improvement.
After this, we integrated our tools to implement initiatives that bring about the most significant changes in travel behaviour. But not before we got the client involved!
As their knowledge of their company is unrivalled, we believe constant co-operation throughout the programme is crucial. At our co-design workshop, we took key stakeholders through all the information our tools have collected and combined it with their intimate knowledge of how best to reach the target audience. Through this stimulating process, together we created a bespoke TripSwitch package of initiatives to optimise a switch towards sustainable travel.
From a personal perspective, it has been great to be so heavily involved in the development of such an important scheme so early on in my career. Each of the tools work independently to measure the scope for mode shift before the team’s expertise in delivering behavioural change does exactly that. The invaluable knowledge I have learned from my colleagues will no doubt assist me in my career development. A particular highlight of this includes the opportunity I was given in exhibiting TripSwitch at two conferences, the first being the BASIS Sustainable Sport Conference at Ashton Gate Stadium in Bristol and the second being the Modeshift TravelWise Conference in York. It was fantastic to showcase TripSwitch to clients and colleagues in different industries and understand the diverse ways society and business can adopt sustainable travel to reduce transport-related carbon emissions.
As the need to mitigate climate change is becoming ever more critical, we truly believe there is a place for TripSwitch in every organisation and its ability to be flexibly designed to meet your needs is hugely beneficial. For further information or a quote for our Bronze, Silver, and Gold packages, please contact Jim Bradley at bradley@itpworld.net