Transport Studies Group

Final Report - Executive Summary

Ruth Bradshaw

Introduction
In the past few years there has been a lot of information and guidance produced to support organisations and schools developing travel plans. However, it is recognised that sites developing travel plans face different situations and problems and it may not be possible to cover everything in general guidance. So in the Spring and Summer of 1999, DETR launched two pilot programmes of site specific advice on travel plans - one for schools and one for organisations. A total of 38 schools and 55 organisations received advice as part of the pilots and a related programme. The Transport Studies Group, together with Cleary Hughes Associates and Social and Transport Research Services, was commissioned to undertake an independent evaluation of the effectiveness of providing this site specific advice to sites developing travel plans.

The key objective of the research was to establish whether provision of external advice to schools and other organisations developing travel plans is of real added value. The research focused primarily on the two DETR pilot programmes but also covered some of the other forms of advice offered by local authorities and others so as to be able to make recommendations on the most effective types of advice for any particular aspect of travel plan development.

The evaluation consisted of a number of different stages. Following a review of the existing material available, including the adviser's report for each site, initial contact was made by telephone with all of the sites which received advice in order to identify those sites which it would be appropriate to examine in detail. The information collected was assessed and approximately half the sites were selected for more detailed study. In-depth interviews were held with 20 schools and 26 organisations to explore in detail the impacts of the advice at each site. These were split equally between site visits and further telephone interviews. Basic information was collected by telephone from ten 'control' schools and ten 'control' organisations (i.e. those which had not received site specific advice) for comparison with the pilot sites. In addition, the programme managers and a sample of the advisers from each of the pilot programmes were contacted to obtain their views on certain issues and also to help in the assessment of the skills that an adviser needs. Finally, a sample of the other sources of advice which are most comparable with the pilot programme were evaluated in more detail by undertaking in-depth interviews with the provider and a small sample of the recipients in each case.

The evaluation was completed in September 2000 and a report has been produced detailing the results of the evaluation and the recommendations made to DETR (Bradshaw and Cleary, 2000).