Archived decisions

Contact: Jon Foley, ext 7559 email: [email protected]

1. Summary

1.1 This report provides a progress update on the workplace, school and personalised travel planning programmes for the Eastleigh area. It also includes an update on the Safer Routes to School programme for schemes within the area.

2. Workplace Travel Plan Programme

2.1 There are currently 19 organisations developing a travel plan, compared to 12 reported at the last meeting of this Panel in October 2004.

2.2 The current status of travel plans in the Eastleigh area is shown in the table below. An indication of the number of employees covered by the plans has also been given. Individual organisations are not identified for reasons of confidentiality - for example some travel plans are related to planning applications or a change in location that is not yet public knowledge.

* this is an approximation. Not all employee data is complete yet.

Travel Plan Partnership Fund

2.3 In June 2004 the Executive Member for Environment approved a £50,000 county-wide allocation from the transport capital programme to the Travel Plan Partnership Fund. Businesses with travel plans were invited to submit bids for matched funding for the provision of `on-site' facilities to encourage use of a range of modes for journeys to work at their establishments. The organisations which have been awarded Partnership funding, together with a summary of their progress, are listed below. Monitoring will be undertaken to establish the success of the projects over the coming months:

(i) B&Q Headquarters: £5,000 for additional cycle parking. Project completed and launched on 30 September 2004.

(ii) Barton Peveril College: £5,000 for cycle parking, showers, car share information and a display unit. Project complete.

(iii) Eastleigh College: £5,000 for secure cycle parking and shower facilities. Awaiting progress.

(iv) Chandlers Ford Commuter Forum, Airport Hub and Eastleigh Borough Council: £3,000 for adult cycle training. Despite continued promotion by officers at Eastleigh Borough Council, there has been very little interest from the business community so this project will no longer go ahead.

(v) Eastleigh Borough Council and Chandlers Ford Commuter Forum: £1,500 for bespoke bus timetable information. The launch of the bus information was delayed at first due to major changes in bus timetables. The February commuter forum was also cancelled due to lack of interest which has meant that businesses could not be consulted on the final versions. Eastleigh Borough Council will therefore progress the scheme and go to print by mid March 2005.

2.4 The Travel Plan Adviser is currently working to update records by liaising more closely with officers in the district to provide a more complete picture of travel plan activity.

3. School Travel Plan Programme

3.1 The School Travel Planning Team continues to work with schools to develop School Travel Plans. To date over 330 schools throughout Hampshire have developed or are in the process of developing plans compared with just over 200 as at November 2004.

3.2 Schools with travel plans approved by the School Travel Planning Team are eligible for funding through the Safer Routes to School programme, as well as a one-off capital grant from the Department for Education and Skills. The latter is only available to maintained schools.

3.3 The School Travel Planning Team distributed an information leaflet to all schools within Hampshire in November 2004. This leaflet was intended to raise awareness of School Travel Plans and has resulted in a number of new contacts from schools interested in developing a travel plan.

3.4 The team works closely with Borough Council officers and is now engaged with 32 of the 43 schools (39 maintained and 4 independent) in the Eastleigh area, compared with 25 schools as at October 2004. A summary of the current status of all School Travel Plans in Eastleigh is shown as a table below. More detail is shown in the attached appendix.

4. Safer Routes to School Programme

4.1 The Safer Routes to School programme links very closely with the development of the School Travel Plan programme. One of the objectives of a School Travel Plan is to encourage as many children as possible to be active and independent by walking, cycling or using public transport to get to and from school on a regular basis. This could be through a combination of physical and other measures. If physical works are identified within the approved School Travel Plan then the school can bid for funding from the Safer Routes to School programme.

4.2 On 21 January 2005 the Executive Member for Environment agreed an indicative allocation of £1.5 million for a county-wide programme of Safer Routes to School schemes from the 2005/06 Capital Programme.

4.3 When a proposal for highway improvements is received from a school with a completed School Travel Plan the feasibility is assessed to determine the scale, implications, costs and benefits. As more proposals come forward, this allows the priorities to be determined for inclusion in the programme. The current status of potential and actual schemes is shown in the appendix.

5. Personalised Travel Planning

5.1 One of the County Council's Public Service Agreement targets is to increase bus passenger numbers. A key part of the County Council's plan to meet this target is a personalised travel planning project called `InfoMotion'. Personalised travel planning is a process whereby individuals are provided with tailored public transport timetable information and free trial travel vouchers for use on local public transport.

5.2 The initiative started in September 2003 and has recently ended. The project was divided into four waves covering Hampshire's busiest bus routes. The second wave, which took place between May and July 2004, included the marketing of local buses to households in the Eastleigh area.

5.3 A total of 16,000 households in Eastleigh and Chandlers Ford were contacted and asked if they wished to participate in the project. Approximately 5,000 households responded, of which 3,000 were interested in receiving the marketing materials available through the project. The impact of the provision of this information on local bus patronage is currently being assessed and will be reported to the next meeting of the Panel. For information, the results from the first wave of this project (in the Gosport-Fareham area) show that a 6% increase in patronage was secured as a result of the InfoMotion project.

Recommendation

That Members note the progress made with the delivery of the workplace, school and personalised travel planning and safer routes to school programmes in the Eastleigh area.

9202/JF