Smarter choices

Smarter choices are techniques for influencing people's travel behaviour towards more sustainable options such as encouraging school, workplace and individualised travel planning. They also seek to improve public transport and marketing services such as travel awareness campaigns, setting up websites for car share schemes, supporting car clubs and encouraging teleworking.

STAs, the Travelling to School Initiative allows schools who develop STPs that meet specific criteria to apply to DfES for capital grant funding.

Data from the National Travel Survey show that there has been a decrease in the proportion of pupils walking to school over the last decade, and a corresponding increase in the proportion travelling by car. Specifically, the proportion of primary aged children travelling to school by car increased by 10 percentage points (from 30% to 40%) between 1992/94 and 2002/03, whilst the proportion of secondary aged pupils increased by seven percentage points (from 16% to 23%). Given this, the aim of the Travelling to School Initiative is to reduce the proportion of children travelling to school by car, and increase the

Smart moves

This section contains Smart Moves magazine which promotes sustainable travel, bringing you the latest information about Travel Plan news and events. There are three editions published per year.

Making campaigning for smarter choices work

This document provides best practice guidance for the promotion of smarter choices initiatives covering issues such as campaign initiation, design, management and assessment. The document summarises the key points from the main TAPESTRY Guidance.

Making smarter choices work

Making smarter choices work.

Smarter Choices - Changing the way we travel: main document

This report studies the impact of soft measures, using evidence from the UK and abroad, case study interviews and the experiences of stakeholders.

Smarter choices - changing the way we travel: case study report

Smarter choices - Volume Two. Case study reports.

Review of the take-up of smarter choices in local transport plans

The Operational Research Unit within the Department for Transport prepared two reports for the Sustainable Travel Initiatives Branch. One covers the take-up of smarter choices in Local Transport Plans (LTPs) following the initial findings from a review of LTPs. The other report looks at the findings from 10 local authority case studies on the take-up of smarter choices in LTPs.