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Company travel plans
SummaryTaxonomy and descriptionFirst principles assesmentEvidence on performancePolicy contributionComplementary instrumentsReferences

Summary

A company travel plan (CTP) is "a strategy for an organisation to reduce its transportation impacts and to influence the travel behaviour of its employees, suppliers, visitors and customers" (Rye, 2002). Very often, the travel plan focuses on employee travel behaviour.

CTPs are also referred to as Employer Transport Plans and have in the past been known as Green Commuter Plans or Green Transport Plans. The term CTP is UK parlance. Elsewhere in Europe CTPs are referred to as site based mobility management. The phrase mobility management alone refers to more than a CTP; it is an umbrella term encompassing all attitudinal and behavioural measures which can include information provision. In the US CTPs are known as transportation demand management (TDM). As with mobility management, TDM can be an umbrella term for more than just a CTP.

CTPs consist of a package of measures, which are implemented to reduce solo car driving. A ride sharing scheme is a common measure. CTPs should have a number of common elements. These elements are a co-ordinator within the company (ideally full time), communication with staff, a staff travel survey (to identify travel patterns and potentially useful measures) and monitoring. Many organisations include incentives to take up alternatives and some also initiate disincentives. The stages involved in changing travel patterns through a CTP are the same generic stages of behaviour change discussed under individualised marketing campaigns to reduce car use.

Organisations introduce CTPs of their own volition to tackle parking shortages, improve accessibility, solve staff recruitment and retention problems, comply with planning regulations or in the case of some public sector organisations, comply with government directives. Organisations can also save money in the long term. This could be achieved by replacing company cars with pool vehicles for example, or reducing the kilometres travelled for business mileage through telecommunications.

Demand impacts are usually in terms of reductions in car use and increase in other modes (depending on availabilty). The impacts are normally incremental over time, and can generate increases in supply of alternatives to the car.

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Text edited at the Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT