Steer Davies Gleave implemented a ground-breaking Personalized Travel Planning (PTP) project in the Green Lake neighborhood area of Seattle from May-July, 2015. Working with King County Metro through their 'In Motion' program, this approach used door-to-door outreach to engage participants, adapting a conversation style called 'Motivational Interviewing' from the health sector.
This engagement method used open-ended questions to explore the motivations of participants to change their travel behavior, then helped them to identify resources and strategies to act upon them, such as free transit passes, pedometers, and a neighborhood travel map.
Just over 5,000 households were visited at home on up to three occasions by a trained Travel Advisor, and 42% of those were at home when an Advisor called. The engagement was positive, with the team seeing 55% of those spoken with choosing to participate through having a conversation about their travel and by requesting at least one of a range of resources.
An ORCA transit fare card was the most popular resource with over 1400 households requesting one; a bike map and a walking map were the next most popular resources with over 700 households requesting each of these.
Follow up surveys were undertaken with 15% of participants four to six weeks after the conversation on their doorstep. Almost all survey respondents (90%) claimed that the conversation with the Travel Advisor was worthwhile. Over half of respondents noted that the conversation made them think more about travel (66%) and feel more positive about local walking (62%), bus (50%) and cycling (44%).
Over 25% of participants surveyed reported reductions in driving, with the majority reducing one drive-alone round trip per week. Furthermore, 23% of respondents indicated that they increased their bus trips each week, with the majority using the bus for two additional trips each week. Mode share surveys also showed an overall 4% decrease in drive alone car travel, and increases in bus, bike, walk and carpool modes.
Read more about our involvement in the In Motion program
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