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Chapter one: Introduction
This report presents the findings of a research project commissioned by the Scottish Executive's Enterprise, Transport and Lifelong Learning Department. The research used quantitative and qualitative techniques and focused on establishing the extent to which Traveline Scotland has contributed to modal shift.
Background
Ownership and car use continues to rise in Scotland, as elsewhere in the UK, despite a growing policy focus to reduce car dependency. According to the Scottish Household Survey (2003) two-thirds (67%) of Scottish households have one or more cars and 65% travel to their place of work or education either as the driver or a passenger of a car ( SHS, 2004). The Scottish Executive is committed to reducing this dependency, by encouraging people to use public transport through a number of policies and initiatives.
Over the years policies have tackled a number of barriers to modal shift, including "hard" factors, "soft" factors and complementary factors, as identified in research conducted by Derek Halden Consultancy (Scottish Executive, 2003). The main barriers to modal shift were the "hard" factors such as cost, reliability of the transport service and the time the journey took, "soft" barriers included security, comfort and information. Within this framework, policies have involved a mix of 'carrots' and 'sticks', addressing hard barriers by improvements to the public transport infrastructure, including newer, more accessible and more comfortable buses and trains, support for bus priority lanes and other measures that both improve the reliability and speed of bus journeys.
Traveline Scotland represents a major investment in addressing one of the "soft" barriers to modal shift: information. The Scottish Executive has responsibility for the policy on the provision of travel information. By providing high quality, easily accessible travel information the Scottish Executive aims to reduce car dependency and encourage more people to use public transport, helping to ease congestion. Traveline Scotland can therefore be viewed as facilitating modal shift, addressing the information needs of people who are investigating potential public transport solutions to meet their journey needs.
Traveline Scotland is a public transport information service for travel within Scotland and to other parts of the UK. Traveline Scotland is one of 11 partnerships across the UK which deliver the National Traveline Service. All telephone enquiries initially go through to a national Traveline number, with local information requests being connected automatically to the local Traveline call centre. Traveline Scotland is jointly funded by a grant from the Scottish Executive and by subscriptions from transport operators. The Scottish Executive is represented on the Traveline Scotland Board, and members are drawn from transport operators and local authorities, who contribute information and expertise.
Research aims and objectives
The over-arching aim of the research was to find out how much and in what ways Traveline Scotland has contributed to modal shift in Scotland. The specific objectives of the research were to:
- determine how many journeys have been made by public transport that would otherwise have been made by car, as a result of accessing information from Traveline Scotland
- determine how many journeys continued to be made by car and the reasons why people elected not to use public transport for these journeys
- determine how many journeys were made by public transport which would not have been made otherwise and the reasons for the journey
- the types of journey Traveline Scotland was used for
- investigate the reasons people elected to use public transport for these journeys
- examine the short-term and long-term changes in transport behaviour and
- investigate changes and improvements to Traveline Scotland which could further improve its contribution to the use of public transport.
The following chapter of the report details the research approach. Subsequent chapters present the main findings from both the qualitative and quantitative research. The final chapter presents an overview of the findings and puts forward implications for future policies on travel information provision.
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