Case Study (170 Kb PDF)
Summary
The Cleaner, Greener Travel Event was organised in Newcastle upon Tyne on the 31 October of this year. It was organised by the Tyneside Travel Partnership with an interest in travel planning, consisting of a group of organisations, local authorities and the regional passenger transport executive. The source funding for this project was moderate, as the pavilion where the event was held was provided by Newcastle University. Newcastle City Council, as well as other involved partners and organisations, contributed through officer time in planning and attending the event. The objectives of the event were to promote a cleaner, greener way of living in the area, as well as to increase awareness of sustainable and energy saving transport means such as travel planning. This will in the long term result in a reduction of greenhouse gases emission, lower local pollution, higher air quality and saving of natural resources.
The target audience was mixed, ranging from corporate organisations to students and network users. The approach followed was aimed at trying to cover every base: from inviting relevant exhibitors to providing refreshments and promoting the day as a whole. The main results were positive, with over 1000 people attending the event throughout the day, and with a satisfying number of organisations signing up to join the Tyneside Travel Partnership to promote travel planning. It was however also recommended that future events be held at more central locations with a narrower target group to ultimate attendance and saturation.
Results
The initial feedbacks of the event were positive, with an estimate of over 1000 people visiting throughout the day. There was also some local media coverage of the event, further helping the aim of raising awareness. Due to the high amount of visitors, it was felt that the event reached a pleasing percentage of the target population, something which was also evident in numbers of organisations signing up to join the partnership. Behaviour change in this field can through this be process driven, influenced by further events and information processed at the Cleaner, Greener Travel Event. In this context, the event certainly brought travel planning, sustainability and energy efficiency in transport to the forefront of the minds of a number of attendees, as well as assuring that they were facilitated with all information required to promote and make use of travel plans and sustainable travel modes.
Through working with partnership members on this and other collaborative project, it is believed that this event certainly was a step in the right direction towards influencing key policy and strategic decision making in the region. It is also an important step in the process of ensuring that both travel planning and sustainability are highly profiled in the media.
Lessons learned and repeatability
The fact that this project does not need any large preparation involvement or budget allocations makes it easily replicable across Europe. The approach of the event was decided by the Partnership itself, without further involvement from any other organisations, making it relatively painless to carry through. These are the main positives of this project, as well as its ability to promote the partnership and promote and influence the use of sustainable modes of transport. This exercise is also believed to have furthered partnership workings due to the close cooperation promoted by planning this event.
If this easily duplicated project was to be replicated other places in Europe, there would however be some recommended changes in the structure of the event. Had exhibition companies been told to arrive an hour or so before the opening of the actual event, they would have been allowed more time to set up their stands and prevent disruption to the event. As this was a slight problem, some stalls were also forced to move around in order to provide space for last minute exhibitors who had not confirmed their attendance until last minute. This suggests that a deadline for companies to confirm their attendance or non-attendance would have been useful. This is also evident as some exhibitors were forced to move outside due to lack of space € although this did not present a great hindrance to the event due to good weather. Depending on the scope of the event, a larger marquee might thus be beneficial. It was further believed that a more central location would have obtained better penetration and reached a wider target audience, although there are counter arguments suggesting that the event would have been more ideal had it targeted one particular group such as businesses or students only.
It might also have been better not to have the guest speakers at the start of the event. This was not the most highly attended portion of the day, and to ensure that a wider audience was reached the speeches could have been introduced later in the day.
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