Smarter travel for a healthier and happier Devon
With over half of Devon’s population living in rural areas, there are many occasions where travel is necessary.
Encouraging lower carbon and active travel for those journeys, can contribute to improving local air quality, reducing congestion and tackling climate change. At the same time, it can help you support a happier, healthier workforce and contribute to the health and wellbeing of everyone in Devon.
Smarter travel can help you:
- improve access to your site for staff and visitors;
- reduce the need for employee parking;
- boost productivity of your staff;
- aid staff recruitment and retention;
- encourage more transport investment in your local area;
- reduce travel expenses;
- boost your business’ image of corporate social responsibility and contribution to environmental targets;
3 steps to smarter travel
Follow the steps below to start unlocking the benefits of smarter travel for your employees and business and our environment.
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Step 1: Travel audit
The first step in making your business an industry leader in green and sustainable travel is completing a Travel Audit.
Our audit gives you an idea of how well your business currently supports low carbon travel by giving your site a score of bronze, silver, gold or platinum, based on your answers.
Find out more on our dedicated Using the travel audit page.
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Step 2: Travel survey
A travel survey is a great way to discover exactly how your staff are currently traveling, what is preventing them from making smarter travel choices and what could help them make changes in the future.
Our travel survey template provides a list of tried and tested questions to help you get helpful insights from your staff.
Find out more on our dedicated Using the travel survey page.
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Step 3: Travel plan
A travel plan sets out the strategy for managing travel to and from your business site(s). It includes the measures to support your staff to travel smarter that are already in place and the measures you plan to implement to help more people to make changes in the future.
Use our travel plan guide and template to help you get started. Insights from your travel audit and survey form the basis for your travel plan. In addition, you can use our various toolkits below to develop an effective travel plan for your organisation.
Short on time? Use our Top Ten Quick and Easy ways to Travel Smarter to start creating change at your business.
Smarter travel toolkits
Our smarter travel toolkits are full of all the practical information you need to help you and your colleagues to make smarter travel choices.
Whether that’s getting more of your colleagues cycling to work, including public transport for part of their journey, or understanding how better driving practices can impact our environment, there are plenty of resources available.
You can use our smarter travel toolkits to help you develop a comprehensive travel plan for your business, or just to help promote specific modes of transport at your business.
Our toolkits are grouped by topic. To access the toolkits, select a topic from the drop-down menu below.
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Getting started
The toolkits below can help you get started to make a difference to how your staff travel to work.
Travel plans are an effective tool to increase the accessibility of a site by low carbon modes. If you have never created a travel plan before, the Travel Plan: an introduction, would be a good place to start. We have created a template to help you draft a travel plan for your site.
You can use our travel audit and travel survey to help you inform your travel plan.
[List of hyperlinks to toolkit pages]
Short on time? Check out our ‘Top 10 Quick and Easy Ways to Smarter Travel’.
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Travel information
Sustainable and active travel have a positive impact on the environment, as well as the physical and mental wellbeing of your employees. Encouraging a shift in the way staff and visitors travel to your site can help reduce parking congestion and improve accessibility.
Our toolkits within the Travel Information section provide guidance on the information to include on your company website and the staff web pages, as well as what to include in a staff induction pack.
Providing staff, visitors and customers with travel information can help them make informed choices to suit their daily routines while making access to your site easier for non-car users. These toolkits and templates will help your organisation provide effective travel information.
[List of hyperlinks to toolkit pages]
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Walking and running
These toolkits provide the business case for promoting walking and active working in the sedentary office environment. The toolkits will equip you with information to help you shape the way you empower employees to walk and run for their commute, whilst at work and for business travel. Find out how your site facilities and business initiatives can support staff to walk or run.
The Travel Devon website provides top tips to share with colleagues for them to consider if they want to walk or run for their commute.
[List of hyperlinks to toolkit pages]
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Cycling
Cycling
Encouraging a more active workforce through workplace travel contributes to better physical and mental health of your employees. This means less sick leave and higher productivity, as well as lowering direct overheads such as mileage costs and parking space costs.
Use the toolkits below to help your staff, customers and visitors to make positive, beneficial changes to their lives and your business by supporting and encouraging them to cycle.
[List of hyperlinks to toolkit pages]
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Public transport
Encouraging staff to travel by public transport can reduce car parking congestion at your site and support local services.
Staff often aren’t aware of public transport options for their commute, or the offers available for regular travel, so promoting the different options available can help staff make more smarter travel choices.
General advice about travel in Devon can be found on the Travel Devon website.
The toolkit below provides you with all the information you need to start promoting public transport at your workplace.
[List of hyperlinks to toolkit pages]
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Motor cycling
Motor cycling
[List of hyperlinks to toolkit pages]
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Driving
Sometimes there is no option other than travel by car, especially in a rural areas across Devon. However, there are still ways in which we can make smarter travel choices when driving.
The toolkits below will help you to encourage your workforce to drive in the most efficient way, both for commuting and business purposes. This will enable your business to have less of an impact on the environment, as well as save money.
[EV content:
Electric vehicles (EV’s) can help you reduce the emissions that contribute to smog, improving public health and reducing ecological damage. Charging your EV on a renewable electricity tariff minimizes these emissions even more.]
General information about traveling by car in Devon can be found on the Travel Devon website.
[List of hyperlinks to toolkit pages]
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Remote working
[List of hyperlinks to toolkit pages]
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Business policies
Business policies can have a large impact on how your employees travel. The policies described in the toolkits below will enable more staff to travel sustainably and actively to your site.
Whether you have a travel plan or whether you are introducing single measures, we recommend that other existing business policies are reviewed and updated to ensure sustainable and active travel are considered in anything the business does.
[List of hyperlinks to toolkit pages]
More information and questions
Government has produced guidance on measuring and reporting of environmental impacts by decreasing the number of people traveling to your site alone by car.
The Devon Climate Emergency website provides information on calculation your organisation’s carbon footprint, tailored support for businesses in Devon to reduce their carbon footprint and funding opportunities.
In addition, their website includes resources on low carbon travel for individuals and organisations.
Please contact traveldevon@devon.gov.uk with any questions about business travel planning.