1. Gain Senior Management Commitment

Senior Management support is critical to the success of any Travel Plan. In addition to securing the budget to implement the Travel Plan, support from Management will demonstrate to employees that your organisation is committed to the Travel Plan process.

To achieve this support, it is important to show the decision makers that a Travel Plan can solve a certain problem, or save your organisation money.

2. Research

Before you can write your Travel Plan, you need to understand what the current travel patterns generated by your organisation are, what barriers exist to modal change, and what other modes of transport staff are willing to consider.

This is usually achieved through a staff travel survey and a site transport audit.

3. Analysis of data

By carefully considering the information that you have gathered, you can begin to understand what issues affect your site, and which measures will be most successful. From here it is a short step to:

4. Setting targets and choosing measures

The data collected should suggest what you can achieve with your Travel Plan, and what you need to do to achieve the targets that you have set.

5. Implementation

Once measures are chosen, they need to be put in place and monitored.

Generally speaking, it is a good idea to put some easy, highly visible measures in place to launch your Travel Plan. That way, your employees can see that things are actually happening on the ground.

6. Monitoring

Monitoring is essential, as this will tell you if your Travel Plan is working, and if you are going to reach your targets.

There are two types of monitoring; monitoring the Travel Plan as a whole, and monitoring of individual initiatives, to see if they are being taken up.

7. Review

Your Travel Plan should be reviewed annually. Then you can decide if it needs amending in light of the results of your monitoring.

Further details on each of these stages are available in the Travel Plan Resource Pack