Fourteen councils will share a fund for schemes promoting environmentally friendly travel. They will each receive up to £50,000 to put their ideas into practice.
A scheme to encourage West Sussex students to walk to school is among the projects aimed at encouraging people to leave their cars at home and walk, cycle or use public transport instead.
They are all pilot projects that will test how effective individual marketing, travel diaries and personal travel planning are in changing people's choice of transport. Personalised travel plans can enable organisations to target their staff or students by providing a plan for their particular travel habits. They can also include suggestions and incentives for making journeys in a more environmentally friendly way.
Transport Minister John Spellar said that lack of information is one of the main barriers to opting for alternative ways of travelling. He said:
"Personalised travel planning is an excellent way of overcoming this barrier as it provides information on all the travel choices available for a particular individual.
"We want to learn from these demonstration projects to improve our understanding of the relative effectiveness of the various travel planning techniques available and to identify best practice in their application. This in turn should encourage local authorities and others to use personalised travel planning as part of their strategies to reduce congestion."
