Personalised journey planning

Terminology

Personalised journey planning (PJP) programmes are designed to support individuals and households in reducing their car use by providing information on alternatives to the car tailored to individuals and the trips they make. Such programmes are usually implemented within defined geographical areas, e.g., the whole of a smaller town, or district of a city. In the case of cities, the programme is often targeted at districts with good alternatives to the car in the first instance, and may be followed by a roll out over time across the whole city. PJP fits into the spectrum of travel awareness campaigns designed to increase individuals’ awareness of alternatives to private car use, and encourage modal shift. Awareness campaigns can range from blanket advertising (e.g., television, radio, bill boards, backs of buses – all forms of passive communication) to PJP, which is highly interactive. It is also possible to run both, such that the advertising supports the PJP (and vice versa). The term Travel Smart is sometimes used in specific reference to PJP regardless of who implements it. TravelSmart is also a brand of PJP referred to as IndiMark in some applications (Brog and Schadler, 1999 and see case studies included here).  In Australia Travel Smart is also an umbrella for a variety of linked travel awareness activities (e.g., PJP, school travel activities such as walking buses, and company travel plans). In the UK Smarter Choices is the umbrella term for such travel awareness activities.

Personalised journey planning is also referred to as personalised travel planning or individualised marketing.

The process of changing behaviour

There are a number of steps on the way to changing behaviour (see the Transtheoretical Model also known as the Stages of Change Model - Prochaska & Di Clemente, 1992) that can be summed up as making individuals aware of the need to change, making individuals aware of the options available to them, facilitating change, and encouraging the maintenance of new behaviours. The TAPESTRY (TAPESTRY, 2003) project expanded these stages to seven more specific stages for the purposes of changing travel behaviour:

1. Awareness of problem,
2. Accepting responsibility,
3. Perceptions of options,
4. Evaluation of options,
5. Making a choice,
6. Experimental behaviour,
7. Habitual behaviour.

It should also be noted that having taken on board the need to change and/or actually made a change, habitual drivers can relapse into old ways of thinking and behaving. Relapse may occur if individuals do not feel supported, they feel they are making changes in isolation and therefore making no difference to the problem, the alternatives they are using do not adequately meet their needs or involve too much effort (in terms of planning, physical effort, or stress of using the alternative mode), or they perceive that the need to use cars less has receded. Such relapses may not be permanent. Individuals can cycle through the stages of change several times (Sutton, 2001). The change can be longer lasting each time until it becomes habitual.

Mechanisms for Change

Stage of Change	Mechanisms
Problem awareness and accepting responsibility	Blanket advertising re negative impacts of car use. More targeted communications, e.g., leafleting or adverts targeting a specific audience, which should make the link between individual behaviour and negative consequences of car driving. Community and media discussion can also have an influence. PJP projects can be used as a vehicle to provide targeted information, as well as a basis for running community events and discussions.
Perception and evaluation of options (making individuals aware of alternatives, and selling them)	More targeted advertising of alternatives available to make individuals aware of these. Communications need to be positive about alternatives, and position them as positive in comparison with other options, including the car. This might include an advertising campaign for walking, or promoting bus services along a corridor. New alternatives, incentives and/or disincentives can be introduced and advertised at this stage. PJP provides information on alternatives appropriate to an individual’s specific journeys, and often includes incentives such as free trial public transport tickets or bicycle hire. PJP can be implemented in conjunction with new or improved walking, cycling or public transport facilities and services.
Making a choice and experimental behaviour (facilitating change)	Highly targeted communications are appropriate at this stage, ideally at the individual level. PJP is highly relevant as it can include home visits or telephone calls to discuss individuals’ travel needs and provide detailed information on alternatives to the car for journeys people are making. This supports making a choice and trying out new travel behaviours, e.g., catching the bus or cycling to and from work. It would be appropriate to combine this stage of PJP with the implementation of new alternatives, incentives and/or disincentives if they have not already been introduced.
Habitual behaviour (maintenance)	To reinforce experimental behaviours and make them habitual, communications should be targeted at those who have made changes, and should ideally address individuals and the specific changes they made. Letters of encouragement and reminders about changes people said they would try; progress reports to show how much difference individuals have made, what changes others have made, and progress in terms of improvements resulting from reduced car use across a community, and rewards and further incentives are ideal at this stage. PJP is an ideal mechanism through which to provide such support since it can build on the one to one communications in the previous stage.

The initial awareness raising, and assessment of alternatives stages are unlikely to result in substantial change in levels of car use, although one or two innovative and/or already environmentally conscious individuals may change at the initial stages. Anable (2005) was able to identify six clear market segments for travel behaviour change amongst a sample of travellers making leisure trips. These market segments were thought to be applicable to other journey purposes (see Anable (2005) market segmentation of “day trippers”). “Car-less crusaders” (4% of the cohort) are perhaps most likely to change in the early stages of an awareness and behaviour change campaign. To achieve more substantial change, more targeted marketing is needed to help those with no concept of using alternatives to the car make changes in their travel habits. An effective way of doing this is to identify individuals who are willing to make changes to their travel habits, find out what journeys they make and provide information on specific alternatives available for those journeys. This process is known as PJP to reduce car use. When providing information on specific alternatives, PJP can promote other policy instruments, as well as providing standard information on walking, cycling or public transport as appropriate. Examples of policy instruments that can be promoted through PJP include ride sharing schemes or the introduction of a guided bus. PJP can also suggest, trip chaining, carrying out multiple activities in one location, and telecommunications (e.g., telecommuting or Internet shopping) to reduce car mileage.

PJP to reduce car use can be the sole constituent of a local authority travel awareness campaign, or it can be combined with other measures. Darlington, one of the UK Department for Transport’s Sustainable Travel Demonstration Towns, implemented a range of sustainable travel measures, including PJP, as a coherent package over five years. By 2004/2005 the following measures had been implemented: a baseline survey for monitoring purposes, school travel plans to promote walking and cycling, workplace travel plans, a ride sharing scheme, ‘A Town on the Move’ awareness campaign, community street audits, cycle network audits, a town wide PJP programme, location specific bus information, and a programme of promotional events (Darlington Borough Council, 2005).

Technology

A PJP project is not dependent on technology. However, technology can aid the collection and processing of an individual’s travel data. Travel diaries are normally used to collect data on individuals’ journeys. In most examples, these are paper diaries, but it would be possible to use laptops, PDAs or the Internet. It may also be possible to use global satellite positioning (GPS), but so far as the author is aware, there are no examples of this in the PJP context. Once data is collected, it is necessary to identify car journeys an individual is making that it would be possible to undertake by other modes, or in different ways, e.g.., trip chaining or trip substitution. It is then necessary to check personal details such as mobility problems to ensure the recommended alternative is suitable and find any appropriate public transport journey itineraries. For monitoring purposes, it is necessary to record details (mode, distance and number of journeys) of journeys an individual is making before and after recommendations are made, for comparison. Travel diaries are again often used to collect after data. Clearly all of this is possible by hand, but it is extremely time consuming. Thus, use of a programmable database is recommended. GIS mapping functionality may also be informative to identify routes between origins and destinations, and feasible modes, as well as presenting information to participants.