“If You Don’t Do Parking Management .. Forget Your Behaviour Change, It’s Not Going to Work.”: Health and Transport Practitioner Perspectives on Workplace Active Travel Promotion

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: After having conducted two studies of the effectiveness of workplace travel plans for promoting active travel, we investigated health and transport practitioners' perspectives on implementing workplace travel plans to share some of the lessons learnt. The objectives of this study were to describe perceived elements of effective workplace travel plans, barriers and enablers to workplace travel planning, their experiences of working with the other profession on travel plan implementation, their recommendations for workplace travel planning, and also to explore similarities and differences in transport and health practitioner perspectives. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Fourteen health and ten transport practitioners who had prior involvement in workplace travel plan programs were purposefully selected from workplaces in Australia. We conducted 20 in-depth interviews since data saturation had been reached at this point, and data were subject to framework analysis. RESULTS: Perceived essential elements of effective workplace travel plans included parking management; leadership, organisational commitment and governance; skills and other resources like a dedicated travel plan coordinator; and, pre-conditions including supportive transport infrastructure in the surrounds. Recommendations for promoting travel plans included supportive government policy, focusing on business benefits and working at different scales of implementation (e.g. single large worksites and business precincts). Health and transport practitioner perspectives differed, with transport practitioners believing that parking management is the key action for managing travel demand at a worksite. CONCLUSIONS: Health practitioners implementing travel plans may require training including concepts of travel demand management, and support from transport planners on parking management strategies. Promoting an understanding of the shared travel behaviour change skills of transport and health practitioners may assist further collaboration. For take-up by organisations to be of sufficient scale to create meaningful population level reductions in driving and increases in active travel, promotion and travel plans should be focused on the priorities of the organisations. Supportive government policy is also required.

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