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 Gosport area. It also includes an update on the Safer Routes To Schools programme for schemes within the Gosport area.

2. Workplace Travel Plan Programme

2.1 There are currently two organisations developing a travel plan, unchanged from the data reported at the last meeting of this Panel in November 2004.

2.2 The current status of travel plans in the Gosport 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

+ across the Fareham and Gosport region

2.3 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 continue 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 in 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 is now engaged with 13 of the 34 schools (32 maintained and 2 independent) in the Gosport area, compared with 6 schools as at November 2004. A summary of the current status of all School Travel Plans in Gosport is shown as a table below. More detail is shown in the attached Appendix.

3.5 County Council officers attended a meeting of the Gosport Road Safety Council on 15 March 2005 to discuss progress to date and links between School Travel Plans and safety issues.

4. Safer Routes to School Programme

4.1 The Safer Routes to Schools 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 Schools 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 Schools 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 attached Appendix.

5. Personalised Travel Planning

5.1 One of the County Council's Public Service Agreement targets is to increase bus passenger numbers. As Members will be aware 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 first wave, which took place in Autumn 2003, included the marketing of local buses to households in the Gosport area.

5.3 A total of 20,000 households in the Fareham/Gosport area were contacted and asked if they wished to participate in the project. A total of approximately 8,000 households responded of which 5,000 were interested in receiving the marketing materials available through the project. It is encouraging to note that, following an analysis of data on the routes marketed, that a 6% increase in patronage has been secured as a result of the InfoMotion project.

5.4 The impact of the whole InfoMotion project is currently being evaluated to understand more about its potential role in future transport strategies in the county.

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 Gosport area.

9215/JF

APPENDIX

Gosport Highway and Transport Advisory Panel

School Travel Plan levels as at 7 February 2005

Key:

0 Interest shown

1 Initial work on travel plan started

2 Draft travel plan completed

3 Final travel plan submitted and approved

P Travel plan submitted for planning application

C Contacted, awaiting response

() School Travel Plan Level at time of last HTAP. No change to level if not shown.