Make Virtual The New Travel Urges Report.
Reduce travel (and congestion) by making more of ICT - something the Eddington Report missed?
The organisers (www.workwiseuk.org) hope “to bring about a workplace revolution”.
Article from Green Futures, May/June 2007
Now here’s something the Eddington Transport Study missed: ‘information and communication technology’. Planes, ports, road pricing were all in there, but why not ICT? It’s time that solutions to congestion and pollution, such as working from home and shopping online, were treated by policy-makers as another mode of transport in the planning mix, argues Forum for the Future in a new report. The average teleworker at BT, for example, travels 120 fewer miles each week. If this took off across the board, the potential is huge. The RAC motoring club has itself estimated in a study that the use of ICT could reduce commuter travel by 15%, heavy freight by 18%, and shopping journeys by car by 10% within the next ten years.
For that to happen, says the report, it’s essential that the government writes travel reduction into its policy, by following its Transport White Paper with a supplement on how ICT can help reduce travel. It must reform its own travel practices too, so that it can lead by example. “Transport is responsible for over 25% of the UK’s CO2 emissions,” points out David Aeron-Thomas, head of metrics at Forum for the Future. “And congestion and delays cost business and the economy over £20 billion a year. So reducing the need to travel will not only improve quality of life, it will boost the economy and cut carbon.”
Smarter travel seems to be yet another area where the business community is one step ahead of the Government. A group of businesses, along with the CBI and TUC, have just signed a pledge to promote smarter working practices, such as flexible working, mobile and remote working. The organisers (www.workwiseuk.org) hope “to bring about a workplace revolution, similar in impact to the Industrial Revolution”.
– Hannah Bullock
The study ‘ICT as a mode of transport: the use of information and communication technology to achieve transport policy goals’ was funded by BT, and is available at www.forumforthefuture.org.uk/publications
Article provided by “Green Futures” Magazine, March / April 2007
March 21, 2007
Watch a video tour of the Travel Plan Builder
The Workplace Travel Plan Company Ltd is a Strategic Partner of Work Wise UK North East.
Find a parking space to rent »
Powered by
“The Travel Plan Builder does so much more than I thought it would.”
Trisha McDermott
Travel Plan Co-ordinator