Today the results for the Interstate TravelSmart program were announced, including a 9% reduction in auto trips among the targeted households.
Most efforts to change people’s transportation choices involve infrastructure – building rail lines, adding buses, striping bike lanes.
TravelSmart is different – it’s all about education and personal touch.
Relative Changes |
Today the results for the Interstate TravelSmart program were announced, including a 9% reduction in auto trips among the targeted households.
Most efforts to change people’s transportation choices involve infrastructure – building rail lines, adding buses, striping bike lanes.
TravelSmart is different – it’s all about education and personal touch.
This approach has been used successfully in Europe and Australia, and a small scale pilot was done here in Portland in the Hillsdale neighborhood in 2002. The idea is simple: people would use alternate modes more if they were just educated about their choices.
The Interstate project involved contacting over 14,000 people along the new MAX line and offering them information on how to make choices to increase walking, biking and transit use. If they didn’t want the info – no problem – they were left alone. If they did, it was delivered by bicycle!
The target group was then surveyed to see how their transportation choices changed. A control group who were not contacted was also surveyed for comparison.
No surprise – transit use was up for both groups. But the TravelSmart group saw much greater changes, as the chart illustrates.
Much more detail is available at www.GettingAroundPortland.org.
So why aren’t we doing this in EVERY neighborhood?
2 responses to “9% Reduction in Auto Trips!”
Traffic counts done by PDOT before and after Interstate MAX on 75 corridor arterials show a 9% reduction in vehicle trips. Fits nicely with the TravelSmart data.
In light of this it is sad that more capacity across the Columbia River, whether arterial or freeway, will dump 20-40K new vehicles trips onto North Portland streets, undoing all this progress in making the community more accessible to all.
Hopefully, the Columbia River Crossing Concept will be more then more lanes and more on and off ramps. We, who have spent time at the meetings and open houses have made it clear that doing more then a capacity increase to the corridor only for the automobile will not be acceptable.
My hope is for a local bridge (current spans) for local traffic (tolled), Light Rail, High Speed Rail, and biker/walkers and a separate, new toll bridge with less on and off ramps (none for Jantzen Beach for example) to MAKE the corridor do its job for all demands.
Hopefully, this separation of the requirements will help keep the local traffic away from the through traffic.
That part of town will always be the transportation hub for our region, and everyone needs to focus on getting this Crossing done right.
Ray