Travel Plans from Developer's Perspective

Travel plans are packages of measures tailored to meet the needs of individual sites, which aim to promote greener, cleaner travel choices and reducing reliance on the car. Crucially, in a world where transport problems are notoriously difficult to address they offer a cheap, quick, popular and effective means of delivering transport improvements. However, to work they require “mediating institutions” whereby traffic generators like employers, events and schools become involved in addressing transport issues, something these organizations are often unwilling to do voluntarily. Consequently, local authorities in several countries now require organizations to adopt travel plans, and in the UK this is done through the planning process. This means that land developers are a major stakeholder involved in travel plans in the UK, yet evidence on the views of developers towards travel plans is limited. Accordingly, this paper reports the results of ten exploratory interviews with informed developers to determine their views on the travel plan concept. The paper highlights that developers are generally positive about travel plans and have a good understanding of what they are, and that the main benefits identified were centered on the cost savings that travel plans could provide to them and the site occupiers. However, concerns were expressed relating to financial penalties and the associated future costs which travel plans can tie them into. The paper recommends that: future travel plan-related policies ought to better consider the nature of a developer and their involvement at a site; travel plan partnerships would help ensure stakeholder involvement and buy in; further evidence on the benefits of travel plans is required (which implies that monitoring efforts need to be improved); and supporting policies which constrain car use and improve alternative modes are necessary if travel plans are ever to achieve their full potential.