Bartle and Avineri 1 Personalised Travel Plans in the Workplace: A Case-Study

Workplaces are facing the challenge of sustainable auditing and reducing land dedicated to car parking. Personalised travel plans (PTPs) enable employees to evaluate the full range of alternatives to the car for their journey to work. However, the uptake and effectiveness of such a service may be strongly influenced by the social and organisational context of individual workplaces. This paper draws out findings on the importance of social context from a case-study of user involvement in the development of an innovative, web-based tool to generate PTPs (‘myPTP’). Interviews were held with the innovators, with travel coordinators and with users of the tool in three pilot organisations. Travel coordinators saw the PTP tool from the perspective of a corporate strategy to reduce CO2 emissions- in some cases as a ‘carrot ’ to balance the ‘stick ’ of higher parking charges. Among some employees, this made it a focal point for dissatisfaction with employers ’ wider transport measures. However, staff involved in change management saw it as an effective way of informing employees, often promoting its diffusion within workplace practice. The findings offer a number of good practice points to designers of innovative transport tools, and organisations interested in taking them up