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TRAVEL PLAN PLUS The Future Direction for Travel Plans in Europe
Posted on 31/12/2008
TRAVEL PLAN PLUS The Future Direction for Travel Plans in Europe
Academics at Loughborough University are leading a new European project aimed at reducing the energy use of Europe’s transport sector.
The project, which wants to promote greener, cleaner travel choices and reduce the reliance on the car, is called TRAVEL PLAN PLUS, which stands for “Travel Reduction Attainment Via Energy-efficient Localities Planning”.
It aims to deliver energy savings by creating a new approach to site-based mobility management across Europe, ultimately helping companies and organisations with their travel planning. It will see the concept of ‘Local Travel Plan Networks’ being applied in the municipal areas of Bages (Spain), Gyor (Hungary), Stockholm (Sweden) and Cambridgeshire (UK). These implementations will consider a range of existing conditions and transport issues, including problems associated with transport for/around industrial estates, educational premises, airports and development corridors.
Loughborough University’s Dr Marcus Enoch, Professor Stephen Ison and Chris Carter all from the Department of Civil and Building Engineering will be working with a consortium of partners on the project.
It is predicted that in the next 20-30 years around 70% of the EU’s energy requirements will be met by imported products, much of which will come from regions that are threatened by political insecurity. Recent predictions also suggest that without significant action, CO2 emissions are expected to increase in the region of 60% by 2030. There is therefore a need to promote and foster energy efficiency within the EU, which Local Travel Plan Networks encourage.
The transport sector accounts for over 30% of the total energy consumption of the EU, and 98% of this depends on fossil fuels. It is therefore essential that the transport sector addresses its energy consumption, by taking radical steps to substantially reduce consumption and emissions and enabling companies to reduce the impact of travel and transport on the environment.
One measure to help promote energy savings would be the wide scale adoption of travel plans by organisations, schools, authorities and industrial and residential areas. There have been isolated cases of success to date, mainly in the education sector, and there is therefore a need for a more robust, strategic approach using the notion of Local Travel Plan Networks and the TRAVEL PLAN PLUS project.
This initiative aims to reduce energy and promote energy efficiency while maintaining economic growth and quality of life.
The TRAVEL PLAN PLUS project is due to last 30 months and has an overall budget of 1 Million Euros. It is being funded by the European Commission’s Executive Agency for Competitiveness and Innovation under its “Intelligent Energy Europe” Programme.
For more information, please log on to www.travelplanplus.eu