NEWSLETTER No 1
Winter 2001/2002

Welcome to the first edition of the TAPESTRY Newsletter!

If you haven't already heard of TAPESTRY, it is a three year EU project which is aiming to increase knowledge and understanding of how effective communication programmes or campaigns can be developed to support and encourage sustainable travel behaviour.
A major part of the project is testing different types of campaigns in different contexts across Europe. There are three "clusters" of case study campaigns: Intermodal - looking at campaigns to promote all alternatives to the car; Mode Repositioning - focussing on marketing public transport and Health & Environment - campaigns which link to wider health or environmental issues.

In this first edition you'll not only find articles on progress with the some of the sixteen TAPESTRY case studies, but also news from other related EU projects. There are also features on assessing campaigns and the European Car Free Day 2001. Finally, an e - newsletter could not be complete without some interesting weblinks!

We would welcome your feedback. E-mail us your comments on:
tapestry@eu-tapestry.org

For more information about TAPESTRY see our website: http://www.eu-tapestry.org

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News from the case studies

Finding the right target group in Hertfordshire

Why Hertfordshire?
Hertfordshire County Council is a UK Centre of Excellence for Transport Policy, particularly with schools and businesses and has a long tradition of raising awareness of transport issues through the "TravelWise" campaign. Like many other UK local authorities, the work within schools and workplaces has focused on the development of travel plans, with the aim of reducing the number of cars on the roads.

Why TAPESTRY?
However, like many local authorities, Hertfordshire is keen to move beyond just raising awareness of the issues relating to car use and to move more people towards changing their travel behaviour.

With TAPESTRY, the County is hoping to explore how they can better use the resources they have for travel and environment related campaigns to target those groups in the community who are more likely to change their travel behaviour on particular types of trips.

Data, data and more data…
In the last few months, a mass of data collected from various surveys has been analysed. This included data from "pledge" forms signed by visitors to a road show that toured the County in 2000-2001, as part of the UK Government's national environment campaign "Are you doing your bit?". Visitors were asked to sign up to 30 promises on issues such as recycling, water saving, environmental shopping and transport. A follow up survey was sent out in June, which enables a cross comparison with other recent travel survey data.

Once the results of the follow up survey were collected, the analysis process began….
The aim was to identify the characteristics of those people who were most likely to reduce their car use and to explore which sort of information or alternatives could be most useful. This was then clarified using six focus groups based on the characteristics identified from the survey and pledge data.

And the results are that Environmentally aware car users seem more likely to:

· Be Female
· Be in the 25-40 age group
· Be working, probably part-time
· Have young children
· Have flexible transport needs
· Be Owner-occupiers.

Whereas the more traditional methods of transport promotion, e.g. bus back adverts or posters and leaflets in public buildings are used by much younger people or those over 65, new communication methods such as the internet seem to be preferred by the group described above. However whatever communication method is used, the messages should be direct, simple and must provide real practical solutions.

So what next?
With an identified target audience and some ideas about communication methods and delivery mediums the next stage is to develop and run the campaign. This will be done early in 2002 with the objective of running for six months from May to October. With a tightly defined target audience one of the real challenges over the next few months is to get the before and after surveys designed in a sufficiently robust manner. This will then allow us to check how well the campaign reaches and affects the target audience when compared to the general population.

For more information, contact John Rumble at Hertfordshire County Council john.rumble@hertscc.gov.uk

Working together to improve school travel in Geel

Geel is a town of 34 000 inhabitants in the Province of Antwerp, Belgium, near to the border with the Netherlands. Together with the neighbouring town of Mol, it is involved as a case study in the "Intermodal Cluster"

Geel has a long tradition of being a centre for education. There are 14 primary schools, 5 secondary schools and 1 college in the town, which attract students from the surrounding area, as well as those who live in Geel.

As part of a region wide programme to improve mobility in towns and cities, the Municipality in Geel has been recruiting schools to take part in a wide ranging campaign to change the way students and teachers travel to school. So far 18 headteachers have agreed to take part. Each school will decide on the priorities for them and on any targets, for example a 5% reduction in the number of pupils driven to school by the end of the campaign.

The campaign brings together four three main elements:

· Developing and updating classroom material on traffic issues, to include road safety and, for the first time, information about the advantages of cycling, walking and public transport;
· Creating "traffic education routes", so that children can test their road safety skills in practice;
· Establishing green school transport plans in two of the schools communities when information, participation, awareness raising, transport organisation and education
are integrated into one process;
· General campaign to parents and teachers, to encourage sustainable modes for the school journey.

Much of the work will concentrate on the older age group in the primary schools (10-12 year olds) and the first year of the secondary schools (13 year olds), who are likely to be allowed to travel on their own or have just changed their travel habits, due to travelling to a new school.

The schools will not be working in isolation! This work will be happening in parallel to more general efforts to develop a mobility plan for the whole town and to promote sustainable modes. Much of the work will be in partnership with the Municipality and the Flemish Government, who are responsible for some of the major roads in the town and for overseeing the mobility plan. There is even special funds available for work with schools and general communications efforts.

A flexible workplan has been set out from the beginning of the process and will be carried out by agreement of all the different partners, guided by Langzaam Verkeer, in close co-operation with the campaign initiator, the Municipality of Geel.

For more information please contact Nele Raets in Geel (nele.raets@geel.be) or Patrick Auwerx at Langzaam Vekeer patrick.auwerx@langzaamverkeer.be

Chisinau Public Transport website now up and running

The City of Chisinau in the Republic of Moldova are one of the cities "following" the TAPESTRY project. Chisinau is part of the "Mode-repositioning" cluster, as one of their main concerns is to boost the image and patronage of public transport in the city.
The City Hall, in collaboration with the City Public Transport company is running a campaign as part of TAPESTRY to promote three new trolleybus lines. The campaign has only just got underway. However, a web site showing the three new routes is already up and running. Other techniques use by the campaign will include direct marketing to employers with workplaces along the new routes and the printing of a revised public transport guide for the whole city, highlighting the new routes. For the first time, sponsorship from local businesses will help to pay the costs of bus stop information and maps.

For more information contact Petru Pinteac cityhall@dnt.md
For the website see: http://www.chisinau.md and then click on "EVENIMENTE"

Assessment news

Developing TAPESTRY questionnaires for children

Campaign focusing on schools are part of a number of TAPESTRY case studies, including Scuolabus in Rome & Torino, Geel & Mol, Bikes and Buses in Gavle, Walking and Cycling in Dublin and Belfast, as well as Travel Awareness in Austrian Schools (Linz, Graz and Vienna). How to measure the success of these campaigns will often depend on developing ways to ask children about their attitudes, perceptions and behaviour in relation to the way they travel.

The Common Assessment Framework developed for use by all the TAPESTRY sites give example questions for adults, but the challenge is to adapt these for use by children. How do you measure a 9-year-old's attitude to cars or to cycling to school? How do you find out what sort of factors are important to them, if they were given the choice between different modes? Or perhaps the most difficult challenge is how to devise a questionnaire that 11-year-olds won't dismiss as not important to them and a waste of time?! These are just some of the problems that the University of Westminster are trying to solve, with help from those involved in the school related case studies.

If the right solutions can be found, then an added bonus of TAPESTRY could be some of the first cross-European data on the attitudes of children to the way they travel, whether to school or to other destinations and the sort of campaign measures that work best to promote alternatives to the car.

For more info on the Children's Common Assessment Framework questions, contact Andrew Cook at UoW: cookaj@westminster.ac.uk

News from elsewhere.

Media event or awareness raising tool? - European Car Free Day 2001

The 2001 European "In town without my car" Day took place on 22 September, which this year fell on a Saturday. More local authorities than ever before took part, not only in the EU, but also in many other European countries, such as the Czech Republic, Serbia, Slovenia, Hungary and Malta. It is estimated that over 100 million European citizens would have had the opportunity to test out different ways of getting around their towns and to experience part of their normally noisy, traffic dominated environment without cars.

In many cases, attempts were made to measure the impacts of the day. These ranged from traffic counts, public transport patronage counts, air quality and noise measurements to attitudinal surveys on what people thought about the campaign. Final reports on the results from each of the participating countries are in the process of being written. However, some preliminary reports give an interesting picture of the variety of different activities organised and why the campaign in some towns was more successful than in others.

In France, where an annual Car Free Day has been held since September 1998, an overwhelming 91% of those interviewed using a representatives sample in 6 towns or cities thought the day was a good idea. Perhaps more interestingly, 65% of those questioned thought that public transport was better than a car in towns. Similar results were found in the UK and Portugal where locally organised surveys were carried out. Results from surveys carried out on behalf of the national co-ordinators in Spain, Serbia, the Netherlands and Finland are also available.

One of the most important traffic impacts highlighted by the day was noise. Where noise levels were measured, they were between 33 to 80 % of their normal values, In many other cases, the surveys highlighted reductions in noise as one of the advantages of the day most appreciated by the public.

The focus of the 2001 day was the launch of permanent measures, such as new pedestrian zones, new cycleways or improved public transport services and car-pooling schemes.

For more information on the results and plans for next year, see http://www.22september.org . You can also find a full list of the towns and cities that participated.

How 10-13 year olds get around town

A major study about the mobility habits and aspirations of 10 to 13 year olds has just been published in France. The study, funded by the Institut pour la Ville en Mouvement was carried out by a number of partners including the national education authority, the RATP (Parisian transport authority) schools, local politicians and those responsible for family related social security. The study also had a local dimension, with schools involved from one urban area and one rural one.

The results of the survey revealed that although walking to school was normal for 50% of the children surveyed, the car was much more important when it came to after school activities.(50% relied on their parent to take them by car). 22% were driven to school and 22% used public transport. However, cycling was much more important for non-school trips (6% cycled or roller-skated to school, 12% for an after school trip, 14% of trips to visit friends).

The survey would seem to suggest that more needs to be done to help this age group attend extra-curricula activities, without be driven by their parents. Paradoxically, the use of a parents- taxi is seen to be positive by most 10-13 year olds (79%). However, this could be due to the fact that these journeys are often to destinations outside the immediate neighbourhood and are too far for parents to let them cycle unaccompanied.

Children and teenager's travel is being addressed by the following TAPESTRY case studies:

Scuolabus in Rome
Geel & Mol
Travel Awareness in Austrian Schools
Dublin Bus
Bikes and Buses (Gavle)
Walking and Cyling (Dublin and Belfast)

To download the full report see: http://www.ville-en-mouvement.com

News from other EU projects

News from MOST

The main aim of MOST is to develop and evaluate Mobility Management (MM) strategies for the next decades. It is a combined research and demonstration project running over three years with over 30 partners and about 20 demonstrators. At present, MOST is at the threshold to its third phase, the dissemination of the findings and results across Europe.

Some of the demo sites are still running, some are already finished. The site presented here is Lund, a university town in the south west of Sweden with about 60 000 inhabitants. There, an extensive new transport scheme called LundaMaTs is ongoing (it roughly means Lund's Sustainable Transport system). The purpose of LundaMaTs is to show whether it is possible to reduce CO2-exhaust by increasing the awareness of the citizens about negative effects of car use and by introducing new mobility services.

LundaMaTs involves a large number of projects and is organised in 5 thematical areas: the bicycle city, extended public transport, company transportation, environmental friendly car traffic and town and country planning. Within LundaMaTS, the approach of Mobility Management is both a very important tool for implementation of LundaMaTs and a task in itself. Since January 2000 the mobility centre in Lund has seven employees, working on five main projects: MM in the City, MM in companies, a pilot project in Södra Sandby, Eco cars and Car sharing, and local production and local services.

Within the project MM in the City, an awareness raising campaign among decision makers, other important contact persons and the 12000 employees was launched. The employees of the centre are visiting selected companies, informing about bike and bus facilities, travel time from their company to different residential areas and the surrounding villages, as well as the health implications. At two companies, 19 employees were selected to commute by bus instead of car for two months.

Last but not least, a survey has been made to evaluate the awareness and the impacts of LundaMaTs. 90 % of the citizens consider the investment good or even very good. It shows that all the activities have caused measurable effects: the people use more sustainable transport modes instead of car, the number of kilometres driven by car has decreased about 1 % during the last year - instead of rising steadily, as in many other cities in Europe.

For more information about MOST, please contact Juergen R. Vetter: most@ils.nrw.de or see http://mo.st

For more information about LundaMaTs, please contact: pernilla.hyllenius@trivector.se

Website alerts

The French Ministry for the Spatial Planning and the Environment has recently launched a national campaign aimed at encouraging small changes in behaviour to help the planet. These include using alternatives to the car for short trips and better vehicle maintenance to reduce emissions.
See the "Merci dit la planete!" site at: http://www.environnement.gouv.fr/merci

The 2002 European Conference on Mobility Management (ECOMM) will be held in Gent on 15-17 May. The full programme and registration details will be available soon via the EPOMM website. See: http://www.epomm.org/events/events.html