How Perth Travels (and how to change this)

Our November Forum explored how people get around in Perth and how we can use insights to encourage more trips by foot, bicycle and public transport.

For their presentation Shaun Griffin and Tammy Tran of the consulting firm Ipsos draw on their experience with travel surveys and market research. As we well know, most people drive for most trips, however there are opportunities for change.

Local research suggests that these people are more likely to consider active transport options:

• Younger people
• People on low to moderate incomes
• People who have recent experience riding a bicycle or catching public transport or who have a SmartRider card.

Barriers to change include: trips where we are taking other people somewhere (e.g. kids to school), access to free car parking and the need to use a private car for trips during working hours.

Promoting functional advantages of active options could be a good strategy, like the real time and cost of public transport or cycling and how direct and frequent bus and train services can be. There is interest in change in the community and we can show the way.

Luke van der Beeke of The Behaviour Change Collaborative offered practical ideas for targeting people to promote alternatives to driving.

He suggests starting with what motivates people. Building an understanding of your target market (e.g. age group, where they are likely to source information, what matters to them) should provide a good basis for working out behaviours to promote to them and how.

Luke pointed to useful resources for designing change efforts for your workplace or community. The Your Move team can help you apply them to your active transport initiative.