Who Plans Their Journeys? I Know I Don’t!

Guest blog by William Spurr Network Services ITSRG Traffic Technologist at Highways Agency.

Working on the current Engineers of the 21st Century Project with Forum has been an engaging and enjoyable experience so far and here’s hoping that continues! Our project is all about medium distance journeys and understanding how we can influence people’s travel choices with better information.

‘Better information?’ I hear you ask…

‘Better than what?’

Image courtesy of Hey Paul via Flickr

Well, that’s a good question. Travel information can be patchy at the best of times and I guess this may be one reason why, according to a recent Highways Agency survey, only 16% of us regularly plan our journeys. Most of us just bumble through on our commutes or regular leisure journeys with little thought as to what we could do differently.

Well, we’re trying to change all that!

Not only to inform people about better routes or modes of transport, but more profoundly to get them to reconsider their travel behaviour from almost every conceivable angle. Be it the carbon impact of the journey, using travel time more productively or sharing top tips with fellow commuters, we’re aiming to redefine the way people think about their journeys. It’s a big ask, but if a job’s worth doing…

The project team is made up of four organisations – Highways Agency, RAC Foundation, IBM and AECOM. With such a diverse group working on the project, there’s a risk that we all have different agendas and visions of the outputs. Not a bit of it! In fact, we’ve had very little difference in opinion as to the routes (pun intended) we’re exploring. Everyone’s on board with the project and we’re all bringing interesting and creative ideas to the table, which is just as well given the size of the task we’ve got! A particular insight we’ve had is that existing journey planning tools seem to lack both personalised information, i.e. tailored for individual users needs, and rich, in-depth information such as that provided by Trip Advisor.

I’ve found the experience an interesting one so far. It’s almost a bit like being back at Uni and working on a group project, but the difference is here I know everyone will pull their weight! It’s been a challenge to fit the work in with the day job and trying to understand what factors help people change their behaviour. As mentioned in the title, I tend not to plan my shorter journeys, often trusting to luck my route and timings. So if the project outputs can convince me, here’s hoping we can convince you too!

It’s a great advert for collaborative, cross-industry working and, with Lorna and Zoe from Forum skilfully facilitating, we’re on track to deliver what we think could be a real game changer.

My colleague Ivo will be blogging in May to enlighten you further but if you would like to know more in the meantime, go and have a look at our project page.

Thanks for reading.

Will

This is a guest blog. The views expressed are those of the author, and are not necessarily endorsed by Forum for the Future.