Travel surveys for business commuters
About this good practice
Last year in Vilnius travel surveys were carried out in multiple companies and business centres by Municipal Enterprise “Susisiekimo paslaugos” (Transport Services). It reached more than 5200 respondents: 3200 employees and 2000 students of the largest universities. The questionnaire includes questions regarding person’s commuting habits, e. g. transport mode used most often, travel time, work start and end times, home and work address, how many stops a person has in the morning (kindergarten etc.), as well as open questions e. g. what are the main problems travelling with certain travel mode etc.
This helps to get a more comprehensive image about how people are commuting and offer suggestions for the employer to help solve certain problems like lack of car parking, promote cycling to work by installing showers and bike racks, offer to consider different workday start time (e. g. not on peak hours).
During presentation, employees sometimes even get to know that there are showers in their business centre, which they noted as an argument for not cycling to work before. In a few other companies, during the similar presentation employees got to know that many of them live in the same area which later resulted in car-pooling organised by the employees themselves.
Expert opinion
The first step to supporting modal shift in vehicles is to understand the current situation. This approach, targeting commuters, enables a comprehensive overview of the travel situation in individual companies and institutions, enabling travel advice and co-operation amongst employees. Although the impact is not huge, a 3% reduction in car use is excellent considering the low-cost of the intervention. It represents a low-hanging fruit that could be reached by other cities and regions throughout Europe.
Resources needed
No specific resources needed, except for surveying platform, finding contact with partners (businesses/eployers) and analytical resources to dig the data. We used GIS platform to get the data, PowerBI for analysis.
Evidence of success
Reaching large numbers of respondents providing detailed commuting data helps the city on several aspects: better planning or more informed decisions for travel alternatives (as well as checking if past decisions make any impact), a chance to inform employees (and employers) on other commuting choices and more sustainable way. In 2019, the number of commuters by car dropped by 3.3% (compared with 2018).
Potential for learning or transfer
This practice is considered good, because modal split and city’s travel surveys are not done frequently enough and the data from those surveys cannot help as much as the specific data from one company to learn and change ir commuting habits. In these surveys many important, but not typical travel surveys’ questions can be included.
It also helps to collect more data for better decisions as well as be in touch with companies (especially, in larger office “campuses”). This is a learning and good practice exchange opportunity.
Further information
Website
Good practice owner
You can contact the good practice owner below for more detailed information.
Municipal Enterprise Susisiekimo paslaugos (Transport Services)