The Department of Estates is pleased to announce that the University has won the prestigious Employer of the Year award in the West of England Travel Plan Awards.
The annual Travel Plan Awards give organisations the opportunity to have their Travel Plan success recognised publicly, and rewards those who are making a genuine time and resource commitment to develop and support their travel plans.
The University has entered the awards for the past three years and won Gold each time.
The judges commended the University: “Over the 15 years since its Travel Plan was first introduced, it has demonstrated good, sustained modal shift. Single-occupancy vehicle use has been reduced from 77% to 50% including 8 percentage points over the past year – typically it gets much harder to reduce car use after the first easier wins.”
The judging panel was also impressed that that we are currently funding a Psychology PhD studentship to research the factors which influence people’s travel behaviour and to improve and conduct our staff travel surveys: “The University is treating its Travel Plan as a living working document and is seeking continuous improvement and development over time, especially by working with its staff, students and local community.”
Martyn Whalley, Director of the Department of Estates, will attend the ceremony and give a presentation outlining some of the specific steps we are taking in our Travel Plan, such as reducing single driver journeys by supporting car-sharing initiatives, encouraging the wider use of public transport and facilitating cyclists.
Martyn said: “We are very pleased to receive this award which publicly recognises the University’s commitment to develop a robust Travel Plan.
“I would like to thank all those staff and students who took time to complete the University Travel Survey earlier in the year. The results were very useful in developing our Travel Plan and submitting our application for the Awards, and we will be publishing the full results for the University community in the near future.”
Dr Ian Walker from the Department of Psychology has also been invited to talk at the awards ceremony. He will share his expertise on the psychological aspects of travel behavioural change.
The presentation ceremony takes place at Bristol Airport this Friday (23 September 2011), marking the end of European Mobility Week.